“Not Real Socialism” vs “USSR did nothing wrong”

Basically this.

This is exactly how you should do it.

This. No matter your ideology, defaming Stalin, Mao, the USSR is the worst thing you can do. It sounds like a cop out and makes you look like a weak bitch.

the MoP belonged to the state, and that's the crux of it. they weren't socialist.

Hi Batko

Look, maybe they genuinely tried to establish worker ownership but variosu things got in the way. It wasn't entirely their fault, and I won't make the muh millions and billions argument that others do.

it wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either.

I'm willing to defend the USSR, Mao and the DPRK. I'll shit on the Venezuelan opposition too, if I have to.

why aren't you namefagging?

The only place to attack fellow socialists is among fellow socialists. But when you are dealing with anyone else, not one step back.

Part of the time they achieved socialism, but a lot of it was barracks socialism. USSR did nothing wrong regarding the kulaks though.
I also borrow from Cockshots critique.

because you have it in your head that i'm "batko" for whatever reason

good point that I actually haven't really thought about before. Most of the "crimes" and faults attributed to socialism haven't got shit to do with the actual ideology.

I point Holodomor wasn't intentional and was mostly natural causes and although people died from the way things were handled people also were saved from the same policy. I also bring up Stalins abusive childhood when talking about how he killed religious leaders because it obviously is related. That and it wasn't communism or even what I would consider socialism and I don't really support the idea of state-capitalism anyway even if it was socialism.

USSR was great

When I'm talking to people who understand history enough to make a real argument against my points I generally keep talk of the USSR strictly economic and don't mention soviet democracy, substituting in theoretical stuff. When I'm talking to people who don't understand history enough to make a real argument I hold the USSR up as a shining example of socialism

Concede it was a genuine attempt at socialism, and also concede that a lot of things went catastrophically wrong. At the same time stress the successes, the impossible conditions the USSR had to face, and state that the kind of socialism I'm proposing is very different from theirs.

I like to take the Orwellian (George Orwell had this position) position and point out violent revolutions (regardless of ideology) seldom result in anything but authoritarian governments.

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It doesn't make sense to me that Communists have to defend USSR, DPRK, Pol Pot, Mao when Capitalists aren't expected to defend every single actual abuse of Capitalism.

Does this really make me a pacifist? If anything this should make me a realist. Besides, is it not a good argument? Most of the so-called "conservatives" claim to be opposed to "Big Government". The Holla Forums crowd doesn't seem to care about whether their burger government is supersized or not. The Holla Forums crowd does seem to care about the rule of law and this greatly appeals to them.

Barely know any revolution that wasn't violent. Most if the time, they just vary in terms of the resistence they meet. You sound like one of these people who think Mao was "authoritarian".

I'm sure capitalists have to excuse the abuses of the proletrariat during laissez-faire capitalism and colonialism in the 19th century when you press them about it. /liberty/ does it all the time. The difference is that capitalists have the "successful" examples of capitalism like Switzerland, Norway, Singnapore, Australia, etc. while communists have nothing else but the USSR, Cuba, DPRK, etc.

Back that claim up by data. Is there actually a correlation between how violent a revolution is and how authoritarian the resulting government is? Or are you basing that off only a few cherrypicked examples and not actually basing your belief on a real material phenomenon? Because I suspect it's the second one.

meant for >>2422914

You actually do, because if the result of every successful revolution and implementation of socialism has resulted in failure, as both anti-communists and demsoccs say, then the notion that communism is impossible starts to gain merit.
Luckily it isn't true. Surely not every socialist experiment is without flaw but there are plenty of successes that existed historically and still exist today. Discarding the largest and most noticeable applications of socialism will be rightfully seen as piss-legged special pleading.

Man I wish Stalin's spies had succeeded in killing that guy.

Let's see, I said:

You say:

I am not talking about the socialist experiment or the implementation of socialism. I am talking about authoritarianism and NOT the implementation of socialism. The organization of government and the organization of economic policies are not always interrelated.

French Revolution results in a new authoritarian state that has just as much regard for workers as the previous one. American Revolution results in a new landed gentry and does nothing for the common white man who had to fight for decades thereafter to gain the right to vote. Longer still for black men and let's not get started on enslaved persons.

I never said that it is impossible for violent revolutions to NOT end in an authoritarian government. Also, again, I am referencing the

Fucking tanks

Not really. Let's look at four nations that are worshipped by liberals for their "freedom" and lassies-faire attitudes: UK, US, Netherlands, and Belgium.

What do they all have in common? Violent revolutions. The UK had sustained two violent revolutions in the 17th century and had one regicide instigated by bourgeois republicans in the 16th. The US had a violent revolution in the 18th century and had a second violent revolution against slavery known as the Civil War.

The Benelux region rose up against monarchial Spain during the 17th century and started one of the first experiments with Republicanism. Later, Belgium would split off from the Netherlands in a bourgeois revolution that while not particularly violent, wasn't peaceful either.

These four countries are often considered heaven on Earth by liberals but it seems that violent revolution was a factor in the development of all four. Even Norway had a somewhat violent independence struggle.

I only use these examples because they are well-liked by liberals, the deeply rooted reactionary conviction that the world has been getting worse and worse since the uprising of plebs in Ancient Rome isn't worth considering. AnPrim is the only thing that could probably sway someone with that type of mental disease towards something like socialism. I would maintain by the way that there's more freedom in France then there is in Britain/America btw and their revolutions are considered "less violent"

The Jacobin government had more regard for workers then the Monarchy. I would also argue that the French Republics, while more conservative than the Jacobin government, were more friendly to workers-rights than the Ancién Régime or in Victorian Britain across the channel.

If you're referring to the rise of the slave-owning class in the South that was destroyed by another violent revolution known as the Civil War. The American revolution did free the US from British domination, destroyed the old aristocracy in the US and gave the bourgeois room to rise. Outside France, there wasn't really a better model for a bourgeois democratic state in the first few decades of the 19th century.

Did the violent revolution of the Civil War make the US more or less tyrannical? Slavery was pretty tyrannical and likewise Reconstruction would be the most racially egalitarian period of American history up until the 1960s.

It's counter-revolution and not violent revolution that results in tyrannical post-revolutionary regimes.

*16th century

I believe it was in a documentary about the French Revolution in which Zizek says that in order to establish the fundamentals of democracy, you have to go through a certain level of Jacobinism or violence.

The day Stalin became a good commie

>>>Holla Forums

You can talk of it as a socialist revolution that was tried and failed. But arguing with right wingers is very different to arguing with USSR supporters. They don't give a damn about the specifics or the theory, they care about wether it yielded results.

There's not much point wasting time over the USSR's states absorption of trade unions to the point where became extensions of its power and didn't offer much in the form of direct workplace democracy, when you could argue that it provided workers with stable jobs, labour rights, and economic stability.

There's not much point arguing wasting time over the authoritarian and reactionary policies, when you could argue that the places like the US were worse and actually had institutional racism. The USSR at least made efforts to have women's rights, even though it backfired.

Furthermore, there's much time talking about "Muh 600 gorillion starvation" when 1. the holodomor wasn't a planned genocide and Ukranian anti-soviet historians are in agreement with this, 2. Most of it can be attributed to Kulak sabotage, which lead to starvation 3. The USSR's mismanagement of grain during the early times of the famine only for it to be curbed and halted and have no famines after that.

I'd be incredibly hesitant to call it socialist, but to call the USSR a failure of a country when it basically turned a backwards feudal country into an international super power. It doesn't hurt to show you have nuance, even if you do disagree on the USSR's model.

?? How? I still think Lenin and Stalin have been one of the staunchest advocates of women's rights in history. In the GDR, you would have your day care center in your workplace, so mothers could see their child in the 2-3 lunch breakes they got. There was also ZERO commodification of women in the USSR. I dare you to watch any Sean Connery movie, or any Western outlet at that time, to identify the obvious sexism or sexualization of women. Cuba and the DPRK still promote women's rights very much, Cuba's parliament has 50% women.

Maybe not Stalin himself, but the USSR did backtrack on the women's rights made by Lenin.

For example:
Abortion was made illegal, homosexuality was declared a crime, legal differences between legitimate and illegitimate children were restored, and divorce was once again difficult to attain.
Engel, Barbara Alpern. 1987. “Women in Russia and the Soviet Union”. Signs 12 (4). University of Chicago Press: 781–96. jstor.org/stable/3174213., 788

Also I don't really know why you'd bring up Cuba or the DPRK when we are talking about the USSR.

This is where I massively disagree with Stalin, that shouldn't have happened. About the other things, I think they ought to be understood as products of their time. Homosexuality was illegal everywhere, and Stalin didn't say "I really hate those gays", rather, he agreed to a new criminal law code, which was needed, after Lenin suspended the Tsarist criminal law code in the revolution. Back in those days, homosexuality was seen as paraphilia and this was scientific consensus. Later, this was reversed, and the reason I brought up Cuba was because they have a similar, Marxist-Leninist system, and Fidel even apologized to the LGBT community. All I'm trying to say is that Stalin wasn't a homophobe, he just went with what was established science at the time - under this paragraph, pedophilia and man-on-man rape was also subsumed, which surely everybody today would consider a crime and which was a big problem in Russia at that time.

Wasn't that done at a time when the country really needed demographic change? Overall, women would be enormously liberated under Stalin, watch this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=933jsB5ChlA&t=6s

I never accused Stalin of being one. Like I said, the USSR made efforts but in hindsight I think we'd both agree given the knowledge we have out our finger tips it is as you said "should not have happened".

No shit. Didn't he go into a labour camp disguised as a trans-woman to see if rumour of gay people being opressed were true? I wouldn't expect less from the mad chad of cuba.

I doubt it. Russia had a steady population and it did continue to grow even during the era's of "le great purge".

True, women had better rights than they did in the US, but again, in hindsight there were still reactionary policies enforced by the USSR, even though they had intially progressive ones.

Like I said, even if a right winger was to say "but the USSR hated gays and women " it doesn't really add much due to the contextual societies they lived in and them making the initial move for gays and women to have rights. And given the comparisson between the US and the USSR, it's without a question of doubt that the USSR was still more progressive.

On top of that, homosexuality was deemed as being fascist in nature, and it was only later reversed until 1993. Again, the USSR did have its major fuck ups, but that's due to us being granted the benefit of hindsight.

I'm not saying all ML models will garuntee persecution of minorities: look no further to women's rights under Maoist china and Sankara's Burkina Faso, but it can't be denied that the USSR did have and did enforce reactionary policies.

Sure, but wouldn't you agree that many anarchist experiments, like the Free Territory, or the CNT-FAI would have similar socially reactionary laws in place?

That's a bit of a polemic, and you know that. Actually don't disagree with you much.

True. But however, I would argue that modern Russia enforces even more reactionary policies, which in the end is sort of a confirmation of dialectical materialism.

This but unironically
Also, go ahead and roll faggots
please give me the free territory

contrary to what ☭TANKIE☭s might tell you, Tukachevsky was not an honorary kulak

Actually, I think you didn't mean to be cynical about the issue of Fidel actually doing that. Sorry for misunderstanding.

I want to be reborn in the DPRK, but in the year of 2200, when they've achieved full automation, space colonization and Kim Jong Un's Great-great-great-great-grandson is in power.

Well, at least we're in bunkertopia together now comrade.

roll

I ain't no coward, roll tide

Not in regards to the CNT-FAI as they did practice free love and womens rights were, like the USSR comparatively better to what they once were. They had their own own organisations such as the Mujere's Libres.

libcom.org/history/women-spanish-revolution-solidarity

web.archive.org/web/20150926095452/http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws98/ws54_mujeres_libres.html

As for woman's rights under the free territory, not much is known other than Trotskyist propaganda calling Makhno a rapist bandit. However, in combatting reactionary tendencies, Makhno did have anti-semites and pogromists tried and shot. I doubt that these reactionary tendencies would have been able to have manifested themsleves in a manner similar to the USSR. But again, this doesn't mean that the model of ML is powerless in combatting reactionary thought. The cultural revolution and Sankara's policies for woman's rights against tribal leaders were testaments to that.

nestormakhno.info/english/makfaq/h_6_9.htm

Rollin'

It's like the Russian civil war all over again.

To that we can agree. But it does fall into criticism as to how a state can be utilised to enforce reactionary politics. ML revolutions in my opinion are initially good at combatting reactionary politics, but they do seem to enter a stage where those models are re-enforced in later years. True, it might not be the same given our current state of things and the gift of hindsight, but we do have to take into account that it can certainly pose a risk.

rolll

This is a good post. I agree that liberatarian-socialist experiments have been more socially liberal, but I highly discourage everybody from being idealistic towards social policies concerning the era in question.

Exactly.

Well at this point I would become a bit more orthodox and say that as long as capitalist (super)powers still exist, there is no other option but to adhere to the state, even if its power structures perpetuate somewhat conservative social policies - which of course, shouldn't be the case.

we must stand with orwell in his noble fight against stalin social imperialism, rat out our "comrades" to british secret service, and write books that'll be used as anti-communist propaganda for generations

Which again, is why we have to understand it in hindsight. If right wingers do as a matter of a fact try to say "hurr durr the USSR didn't treat gays right and women right" you could point to other ML revolutions or Anarchist ones such as Catalonia, or the Zapatistas.

If it was to happen within the third world, I would probably be more sympathetic to this as there are huge disparities in education so a state could certainly help in adressing these inequalities by appoiting people who are familiar with running a country. However, there have been third world conditions in which lib-soc revolutions have occured and have no doubt made progress. I doubt a state is necessary in combatting imperialism (i.e Shin Minh and Free territory), and nor is it needed to combat reactionary tendencies (Spain and Free territory), HOWEVER there have to be measures put into place to garuntee the insurance of combatting reactionaries and in my opinion a state isn't the best at combatting it in the long run. Regardless of what can be said of Mao, he made a huge mistake in dissolving the red-guard. True, they may have taken things a little too far imho, but their committment to combatting revisionism and reactionary thought was without question.

I would argue more decrentralised forms of governance would make it easier to operate on more local and national levels, and should reactionaries by hook or by crook get into power, they wouldn't have as big of an effect as they did in the USSR and China, and would be easily disposed.

3-4 get

The hallmark of the brainlet too stupid to understand what "the USSR wasn't socialist/socialism" means.

How would faux-socialism look? As in workers theoretically possessing the means of production, but not in practice. Is such a hoax possible or am I overthinking..

Even though I am a M-L(-M-curious) to the core (and have been for a few years now) this is what's constantly pushing me towards "libertarian socialism". When it comes to basically everything but the economy I am a libertarian. I believe all of the liberal freedoms and rights should be protected as far as possible during peace time, and I believe people should be able to fuck who ever they want (consenting adults), smoke whatever they want, dress however they want, etc, etc. You don't cross my shitline, I don't cross your shitline.

I think all of that is perfectly compatible with M-L in theory, but obviously M-Ls haven't always had the same attitude historically and most of them still don't, which often makes me feel like I belong in the libsoc camp rather than the M-L camp.

I'm in the same boat. ML to the core, but socialism without free drugs and public orgies? Miss me with that shit.

ML DEGENERATE GANG when?

fucking count me in

Why no DDR? :(
Rollin'

I defend the good things about Soviet Union, and knowledge bad things about it. However I credit good things to leftism and bad things to other factors.

What about the bad things that come from leftism?

Such as?

The murdering of the tzar children, clergy, destruction of church, the defacing of cultural symbols?
The collectivization attempts that ends up in starvation?

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Most of the things happened during civil war or in case of famines were caused by sabotage.

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Those don't excuse them.

And it doesn't excuse the censorship during peace time either, when you can get arrested for having a porno mag.

If communism wins, why is Lenin wax corpse still in his tomb?

Wait are you that retarded Holla Forumsack who argued how the USSR destroyed muh tsarist culture a few weeks ago?

The same, is that not true?

And how am I retarded for saying the truth?

Most of the famines were due the civil war and the devastation which followed.

At the very least Lenin has a grave, and a body, unlike someone's idol.

It doesen't excuse it, but it explains it. Besides, killing people is not leftism. It's part of war.

Never happened. Also illogical. In such case, half the males would be imprisoned. (unless that is what you already believe in)

Said someone's idol might have lived a comfy life in south America instead of being a wax mummy but I don't think you care much about that.
No, it doesn't explain it since the purge still happens during peace time.
The fact corrupt officials exist does not mean pornography was not banned in the USSR.

wow you fuckers really are degenerate i guess Holla Forums wasnt wrong about that one. Under socialism drugs will be illegal because they're addictive and stop people from doing anything productive. Maybe weed and light drugs/party drugs like shrooms and some pills will be accepted but hard drugs including anything which is injected, snorted as a powder, or smoked out of a pipe (besides marijuana/tobacco) will definitely be unlawful and addicts will be sent to mandatory rehab

with regards to public orgies, WTF
who the fuck ever said public orgies are necessary for communism? how about having a monogamous relationship you god damn sicko

I usually go with what I believe, that post Lenin USSR was state capitalist and overall shit… but I will fucking tear out anyone's throat who goes full whermaboo and pretends as if Stalin and Hitler are somehow equally bad. Stalin is a shitty human being, but not some moral monster who climbed out from the abyss, and I do believe him and the soviet union as a whole had a surface level commitment to the vague idea of "socialism". The fact that the economy never refocused towards consumer goods after WWII is really the best illustration that the system wasn't actually socialist though.

My usual strategy is just to go full trot and say the Stalin/USSR was a bunch of imperialist capitalist(s), no different than the US. I find most people are put on the backfoot by it.

I will absolutely defend Mao on the other hand, even if he was a fucking idiot who didn't take advice/understand basic ecology. The cultural revolution was necessary to remove the dogshit that was Confucianism, and I feel very little sympathy for the people who were forced to go onto the farms, since most of what I hear about them is that they resented that they, the bourgeoisie, were living in farmer conditions…. rather than attacking the conditions themselves, and demanding reform. Fucking Confucianism and the concept of 'face'.

Not my comrade

You know what's productive? Wage slavery with 18 hour days and no breaks. Stop fetishizing labor, communism is the enemy of work, we want to abolish work not larp as middle aged coal workers from the 30s.

Communism is Soviet Power + 5 hour work day and smonk weed.

Orgies aren't necessary but they'll happen when we completely eradicate bourgeoisie morals and spooks.

I mostly agree with your general opinion on drugs, but you are idiotic if you think the form of injection means anything.

Weed, psychedelics (within reasons), light opioids, and alcohol are perfectly fine. Ban tobacco products other than the leaves though, as that shit isn't healthy for you.

Fuck you. My body; my choice to be used as a cum dump.

Obviously this includes safe sex practices, though honestly we are on a time scale where that might not mean anything outside of "no rape and no humping against a chainsaw".

Count me in comr8

Roaches lay eggs fam, sorry.

If the children survived the royalists would use them as a political tool.

Rollin'

I defend the USSR but blame democratic centralism for its eventual collapse back into liberalism and the overkill of Stalinism which contributed to this, and the general poor management in many areas, which many top tanks such as Michael Parenti acknowledge. Also you don’t really have I defend the historical legacy depending on who you are talking to just hit them with historical context, peasants were brutal and lived a brutal life so they had a brutal revolution blah blah no worse than the French or American one, actually probably less brutal, etc

I don't have a problem with having drugs/orgies be legal, but I'm of the opinion that the conditions that will emerge from socialist production will have most people not wanting or having the desire to indulge in these things in the first place.

Read Engels and reverse this

Fair enough. I do think you are over estimating the effect the commercialization of sex has on people, and even that is seeming to slowly change with millennial. It would probably be more along the lines of a hobby honestly.

I will agree drugs will probably not be as popular under socialism though, since the major reasons why they are a problem involve the failures of capitalism.

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It wouldn't really be different from the Eastern bloc

"Ussr was socialist up until kruschev"

I believe there will be fewer heroin addicts, opiate pain killer addicts, crack addicts, etc. in socialist society. In many cases the abuse of certain drugs have a very clear connection to capitalism. Poverty making existance miserable for tons of people and making them either turn to drugs as an escape or start selling them in order to make money, pharmaceutical companies pushing doctors to overprescribe their shitty pills, and shit like that. So I agree that there will most likely won't be as much of that kind of drug use in socialist society (hopefully).

I believe people will still wanna party in socialism though. I believe people will still like to smoke weed and chill with their friends sometimes. Having sex with someone you love on psychedelics is a fucking mind-blowingly beautiful experience and I don't think people will stop wanting to occasionally do shit like that in socialist society (I sure as hell won't). So hopefully there will be less of the "bad" kind of drug use in socialism but the justification for most laws prohibiting drugs is unscientific, moralistic garbage.

On the issue of sex I don't really care if there are orgies or not (lmao). It might turn out that heterosexual monogamy is the only form of sexual and romantic relationship people will choose in socialism, and that would be fine as long as it's not forced in any way. As long as sex is between consenting adults and they're not hurting anyone I don't care if monogamy is completely eradicated or becomes the norm.

OP here. I agree with your point about democratic centralism. My position is that the decisions made in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion (specifically the ban on factions) were understandable, but ultimately a mistake. They created the foundations of Soviet oligarchy which quickly became unwield, calcified, and bureaucratic, which meant it wasn’t accountable to the public, sufficiently responsive to dynamic needs and conditions, and developed its own class interests. The ultimate downfall of the USSR was its failure to come up with innovative socialist solutions to problems as they arose. They could have easily started to experiment with Yugoslavia style market elements, Lange model, cybernetic planning, deventralized planning etc once things started to stagnante under Brezhnev. Instead they only made minor tweaks to the existing system because the elite were invested in it.

bump

I explain to the right winger that they did not achieve socialism and then I would defend the USSR.

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holy fuck that's brutal, kek

The lack of self-regulation amoung leftists and general refusal to publicly self-criticize and denounce bad actors is part of the reason the left is losing ground with people lately and why it has become such a meme with younger people.

Also, the not one step back policy was utterly moronic. It cost multitudes more casualties and prolonged the war most likely by several months.

that's basically capitalism because that's what porky wants you to believe tbqhwufamalam

I didn't include any Warsaw Pact states because I wanted them to be as diverse as possible. Can't complain about not living in the DDR now that you'll be reborn in the land of Tito-san though

This, even if that doesn't make it less cruel, it was a necessary move. He does have a point about things like the destruction of the church and cultural symbols though, I think those are unjustifiable

roll

i usually point out that the right's conception at all of both communism in general and the ussr is ill-informed and contradictory. they want to say that communism doesn't work because ussr when it itself is an example of a rapidly industrializing, well-oiled machine that they otherwise praise hypothetical capitalism for. and if they default to another reason like "gulags" i usually point out that gulags in of themselves are no different than prisons and as for the people who died, i see it as a disingenuous appeal from the people constantly fantasizing about concentration camps and throwing people out of helicopters. as well as the number of dead people under stalin being exaggerated or outright fabricated

Weird how the child of wealthy British aristocrats would be against violent revolution.

Rollan

rollade

My line is "the USSR was not socialist (for long) in a meaningful technical sense, but socialism is so good that even faking it or failing miserably at it gets some pretty good results, especially if you're comparing to regular capitalism."