This Destroys the Commie

How can you still defend your position?

How many of you have honestly even read this.

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/mandel/1974/05/solzhenitsyn-gulag.html
mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/the-gulag-archipelago-shouldnt-be-taken-seriously/
foxnews.com/world/2014/09/16/indigenous-people-in-brazil-facing-deforestation-joblessness-seek-out-cities.html
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I've read from cover to cover, I'm not a stalin fan, I'm still a communist

Victor Serge>>>>>SolyenitSHIT

memoirs of a revolutionary is like a who's who of the third international and the early 20th century left. Bordiga is in there, gramsci, Lenin, Lucaks, old man trotsky, Weimar, catalonia, Stalin "banal and frightening like a caucasian dagger''

That's good at least, every irl commie I've talked with either has no knowledge of it, or just spouts "propaganda".

Pic related.

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Will check it out.

This is the shit I'm talking about.

yeah it was honestly one of the first political books I've ever read

I've read both parts. Stalin betrayed communism, betrayed the workers, as noted by Bordiga. Fuck off, chum.

I don't read much fiction.

wew

marxists.org/archive/mandel/1974/05/solzhenitsyn-gulag.html

I'll give it a read tonight, thanks.

exblain

pic unrelated

this was meant to be a more or less "YOU BOTH SUCK" shitpost.

kk; will take the bump nonetheless

thx 4 this. looks gr8

Not a big fan of fiction tbh.

holy fucking goodpost, my mans

Wew.

Capitalism is far worse than any gulag, and pointing to Soviet crimes does not excuse you from the necessity of imagining and creating an alternative to capitalism.

If you don't want the alternative to have gulags, get to work coming up with a better alternative.

Do you unironically believe that the 1st world you live in is worse than a gulag? This is bateman tier "we have to help the poor" levels of disconnect.

Sauce?
Was article 58 made up? The tales of what happened to the kulacks? The edicts charging people tenners for not indicting their neighbor or the tenner given out to engineers and students for wrongthink? Or the clapping fiascos?

Almost every country in the world has capitalism.

Fuck off with this obnoxious sentimental bullshit.

The enemies of the revolution deserve what they get.

Every corporation is a (wage) slave labor camp, not much different in character from a gulag. And the way it is bureaucratically organized where everyone has to obey and worship the Leader? Very reminiscent of Stalinism. Capitalism and Stalinism are much closer than you think - this is why the Soviet system is referred to as State Capitalism. It is not communist, nor even socialist. They swapped out the capitalist for the bureaucrat, but workers were still exploited.

Point made.

I'll just leave this quote here:

Correct…10 points. For the kolkhozniks 10 points is many months worth of points, you might even get food soon!

The Wikipedia article.

Did you do any research on the book before accepting it as unquestionable canon?

Yeah, the person being arrested for stopping clapping first is completely made up, and I challenge you to find proof it ever happened.

I can't prove it. Nor do I think it is unquestionable canon.

Is this satire?

Imagine actually believing such a blatant piece of propaganda.

It's literally 'Auschwitz bear and eagle cage' tier.

It doesn't even make any sense from the most uncharitable view of Stalin and/or the USSR.

Awesome read, thanks.

The only joke here is that you didn't even bother reading the Wikipedia article on it.

Ernest Mandel is an extremely underrated writer here, he's excellent

actual true story time, not bullshitting:

i have a columbian friend i went to highschool with who i used to play video games with. he was dumb as a rock. in remedial classes all his life and literally couldn't solve basic math problems (no street smarts either, even the dumbest jokes would go over his head).

dude loved watching joe rogan and bodybuilding, for a long time we were bros and even when i went to graduate school to study political science and he decided to sell houses with his rich dad for a living. Anyway i started reading marx and listening to richard wolff and getting class conscious and i would talk to him more and more about exploitation and why socialism is necessary for society to evolve, why communism is good, why taxing the rich more makes sense, and why everything good is being corrupted by neoliberal capitalism and the bourgouise. he would just nod his head and agree, i knew everything i was saying was going in one ear and out the other, then one day he said "This book proves that marxism is scientifically illogical". he showed me a picture of the gulag archipelago. i asked him what he meant by "scientifically illogical", (since i've never heard him say the word illogical in his life, it was a big word and the guy really wasn't bright, and i really wanted to see him back up his claim). he didn't say anything else, he just kept telling me i wouldnt understand unless i read the book and i didn't read the book so i'm in the wrong and marxism is "scientifically illogical"

we got into an argument and i told him that even though i didn't read the book it was probably a critique of stalanism or retarded made up propoganda to make communism look evil. i knew he probably didn't even know what the word propganda or stalinism meant, he just kept saying "dude you didnt even read the book your argument is invalid". the fact this guy i knew with 100% certainty was a complete retard who fried his brain on insane amounts of drugs and booze, who didn't even know how to spell basic words, was telling me that "marxism is illogical because of the gulag archipelago" showed me that anyone who even brings up this book as a "CHECKMATE LEFTIES" has no fucking clue what they are talking about and are just looking for an easy out to validate their shitty "le evil communism" worldview thats actually based on never reading any theory whatsoever or knowing what communism even is.

so enjoy your american retardation op, you saying "this destoys the commie" only shows that you are a moron.

ps im still good friends with the guy

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the book is bullshit. its almost like a parody writer wrote it.

seriously its flat out silly.

i can understand why it exists though, during the cold war anything that dehumanized your enemy or made them seem like an evil other no matter how fictitious got around

op this is the guy who wrote that book

great author, totally really happened stuff

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago is a pseudo-historical fiction novel widely celebrated among anti-communist circles. The book is treated as an authoritative depiction of the Stalin-era Soviet prison system and invoked ad nauseam. Not only is The Gulag Archipelago not a historically accurate work (and written by a fundamentalist anti-semite), it is most of all a work of fiction. This obvious fact seems to be often totally ignored.

mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/the-gulag-archipelago-shouldnt-be-taken-seriously/

op is a retard. the dude was a blatant right wing anti-semite and the book is flat out a work of fiction

Already in 1999 W. Bland pointed out that America’s prison population was actually higher then that of the Stalin-era Soviet Union:

“If we add those in prison for non-political offences, we get a figure of 2.5 million, that is, 2.4% of the adult population.

In contrast, there were in the United States in 1996, according to official figures, 5.5 million people in prison, or 2.8% of the adult population.”
(Bland, “Stalin: The Myth and the Reality”)

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Good read, but he doesn't take into account the fact that The Gulag Archipelago is a fantastical work of fiction from cover to cover. Solzhenitsyn weaves such a colorful and engaging story because he made the whole fucking thing up.

How horrible they make their prisoners WORK!

this guy is a fucking meme

Read this article:
mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/the-gulag-archipelago-shouldnt-be-taken-seriously/

Underrated post

you're retarded

No problem here
Uhh…
Oh
OH…
JESUS
BTFO
Fair enough.

I read about 50 pages of this and it read like shit that didn't happen.txt

I'm not at all denying how shit stalinism was, but this book seemed like pretty obvious bullshit.

No you, dumb anarkiddie. Taxing the rich more (to pay for healthcare and stuff) is an improvement while we still live in capitalism. Wanting to tax rich people more short term, is not incompatible with being a communist. That user did not imply he thinks communism means higher taxes. Stop being so fucking stupid and misunderstanding him on purpose.

I hope you suffocate in your sleep tonight.

Class traitor detected.

Taxing the rich to give to the poor delays the collapse of capitalism.

accelerationism is dumb

Yeah if we don't tax the rich however are we going to pay for ubi and implement socialism

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thats because it is propaganda. Its a semi-fictional novelization of one guy (who was a fascist sympathizer btw) 's experiences in the soviet prisons/labor camps. It isn't a substitute for an actual academic treatment of the soviet penal system. Political prisoners were only 10% of the population max and they got better treatment. Furthermore there is no possible way he could have known the number of people in the gulags since that was only declassified in the 1990s. Its largely politically motivated anti communist fiction

A reactionary "oral history" that's basically just pizzagate 1.0

Did gulags exist till the 50's anyway?
The same year all other penal prisons/colonies where abolished, everyone but US and A
Shit i know the soviet union did some bad shit but can we instead of demonizing the USSR try examine the wrongdoings and try to come up with better solution?

the gulag shit was obviously bad, but the claim that it characterises the whole of Soviet history instead of the period of stalinism is ridiculous. in 1975 there were 850 political prisoners in the whole of the Union for example, hardly a major part of the population.

Funny think is that gulags where basically penal colonies or penal prisons, its not like everyone back then had this shit or has *cough* USA *cough*

How do you prevent another Stalin?

O R G A N I C
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G
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I'm sorry dude, but Peterson won't be your daddy no matter how much you listen to his advice

No, the "shit you're talking about" was people not reading it. We've read it, understand it's history, and know it has a shaky relationship with reality at best. Most people are perfectly capable of criticizing Stalin, the USSR, and communism in general without resorting to fanfiction.

it's literally nazi propaganda

Capitalism is a social system. Capitalists voluntarily choose to live by means of trade within the paradigm of Division of Labor Economy. This is unlike socialism or communism wherein the subjects are forced against their will to labor for the State that exploits their labor to reap profits or 'surplus value' if one is willing to ignore Marx's many problems. Thus user's claim in 2143917 is false because volitional choosing to benefit one's own self by trading with others is superior to allowing one's self to be enslaved and forced to labor for needful subsistence.

heh

any Graphic design artists want to design a cover that says "Shit that never happened.txt" in the same constructivist style as the book?

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who cares, moralfag

I think its poignant to point out that the US literally has a political prison on Cuban soil

It's like how America is the land of freedom, political and otherwise. You get to choose whichever political alignment you want, as long as it is the correct one. Similarly you can freely choose between starvation and working for capital.

>anyone who tries to live outside the capitalist system either dies, ends up in prison, or gets murdered by capitalists<

This statement is obviously false. Those who voluntarily choose to create a set of norms, mores, rules to guide social interactions also choose to create a political body to protect and enforce those social rules that comprise their social system. Political bodies are constructed to confer the benefits of civilization to the members of that political body, the citizens. Those who seek to undermine or destroy the social system or political body are it's and the citizen's enemy. Enemy should, as a moral prescription for living a life as a Rational Being, be destroyed. Such enemies understand this and yet choose to wage aggression against the citizens who choose to live life for their own benefit by means of trade, pursuit of self-interest, Division of Labor Economy without victimizing any other persons. This makes the enemy malefactor subject to corrective action by the Political Body that was erected for that purpose, i.e.: to protect the Rights of the Citizens. OTH, if the malcontent who wishes to live by plunder, theft, robbery, piracy, fraud, con artistry or legerdemain simply takes their aggression beyond the effective jurisdiction of protection provided by the Political Body opposed, then they will not be interdicted.

No Capitalist will seek to stop those who wish to live as primitive hunter gathers in a wilderness devoid of resources and not owned by others. However, all humans who accept reason as the means of acquiring knowledge and rationality as the means of Man's survival will understand that they will profit from division of labor economy and so will want to join themselves to a political body and group of citizens that allows and facilitates their practice of capitalism.

There are more Americans in prison today than there were people in gulags at the height of the archipelago.

Yes.

I read it, doesn't seem nice at all to be in a Gulag. Not a bad book. But so what?

Judging the Soviet union based on this is like judging contemporary US based on Prison break

Except Prison break is more represntative of the American experience than this book

I think Limonov (founder of the naz-bols) said something like "they always want gulag stories" about the western publishers

Its quite disgusting, we can see the same trend about North Korea were literature about North Korean prison camps is constantly boosted, for one of those novels it later came out that part of it was fabricated

Pick up a single history book you fucking brainlet

Try selling your labor to something besides a corporation, and see how far you get. This is your "voluntary choice." Having a choice of slavemaster doesn't make them not a slavemaster. And most people don't even have that because they need to accept the first job offered in order to pay rent and bills. I don't know what universe you're living in where workers just have free choice of employers waiting with open arms. More likely that you were forced to accept the first offer that came to you like everyone else, and you're rationalizing it as "muh free choice" like stockholm syndrome.