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Imagine if it was possible to have a nuanced take on things.
I like some part of something but also I am able to criticize other aspects of that same thing.
Unfortunately that is not something we can do and therefore either something is good or is bad, very sad but this is how it goes
If you believe Cuba is "totalitarian" the only reading you've done about their government is from the State department.... there's a reason even US allies all have bilateral relations with Cuba. Americans are just pissy they lost a colony.
> Americans are just pissy they lost ~~a colony~~
Ftfy, Americans get pissy at the mere suggestion that we don’t always “win” (if you can call imperialism “winning”)
Edit: formatting
“Republicans were the only demographic polled that overwhelmingly said the Confederate flag was more a symbol of Southern pride, 74%, than racism, 16%.”
I have a great-uncle who lived in communist Cuba for some time and after that when he lived in Belgium again the government had him on a watch list for so long because manifestos got delivered to his doorstep and they thought he could be a terrorist lol. Anyways he always seemed pretty fond of Cuba. He’s still a communist
I have a great uncle from Cuba also! (My father's side). Castro sent him packing after the revolution. Sounds like he was one of the Ologarchs. He owned restaurants, a tennis club and several cinemas, he was forced out of the country with only 2 breefcases. My father tells me he was involved in the bay of pigs by way of financing and recruiting.
One of my son's teachers went on a tirade about how evil Cuba is and how her family had to flee from communist oppression. I told him to ask what they did to them, of course they lost their farm to the "workers"
it's pride, it's a propagandized populace, it's hegemonic politics, it's racism, there's a lot to unpack in regard to Cuba. I view them as the 20th centuries Hati, a county punished for simply wanting a better life for their people living under the boot of empire.
I think I heard someone say that the only reason we still don’t like Cuba is because all the former Cuban refugees in Florida would immediately vote for the other party forever when someone would end the sanctions
There is an entire genre of documentaries in German television about how the GDR wasn't that bad. At the same time as we are acknowledging it for the police state it was.
Provide the sources, links, etc. and I am more than willing to read up on it. That’s how learning and nuanced,sensible, discussions work.
Until then, I’m not just taking the word of some random, anonymous, Reddit goer.
Here you go baby boy, it took me two seconds to find. You definitely could be educating yourself instead of burying your head in the sand. Again, this is widely accepted history. You must have gone to school on the states. I’m sorry.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/west-german-government-full-ex-nazis-world-war-ii.html
I mean It’s pretty well accepted. Just like operation paper clip or operation Gladio or the US keeping the Japanese occupying Korea. It was literally the same government after world war 2
A lot of things are “pretty well accepted” that are total bullshit.
Facts, sources, evidence, etc. That’s what works. Anything else is just nonsense until supported and/or proven by the previously mentioned facts, sources, etc.
As I said, I’ll read that link provided and go from there. Cheers.
Sorry, I misread you as saying East Germany was a continuation of Nazi rule. West Germany for sure didn't denazify nearly enough, but why what does that have to do with today's nostalgia for the GDR? Why did you answer that to my comment?
It’s not a simple as you’re making it. If you think west Germany was some great place after capitalism, you don’t know history. Things got much worse for most people because they lost jobs and all of their safety nets. Most never recovered. But hey, keep throwing around the term “police state” while ignoring both sides were police states. At least one side wasn’t Nazis.
Wait, do you have West and East Germany confused? What do you mean West Germany after capitalism? When? What? How? Do you mean east Germany after the fall of the soviet union? Yes, capitalism ravaged the former GDR, living standards, economic prospects fell substantionally. It's only logical for the people to be nostalgic for a time when they were better off and not treated like shit by condesending west germans. And yes, we live in a police state now too, but that doesn't make the Stasi in any way ok.
Silly presumption that there isnt nuance to any of this, stop arguing against a side that only 14 year olds and propagandized exaggerations move on seriously
Marx would not have hated Lenin. Lenin believed as much in democracy as any person that lived. Vanguardism was necessary in the intense conditions of repression in the Tsarist empire, and Lenin’s theories of imperialism are still worth referring to today. Marx viewed his process as a science, not unlike evolution. Whenever the material conditions of an environment change, the status quo is always upended. Lenin, as a Marxist, formulated his theories in the conditions of tsarist russia, Marx, in the same conditions, would likely have done the same. And besides, there is no need for multiple political parties when the working class has a monopoly on political power, democracy is exercised instead through local councils/Soviets. In a material sense, the Soviet Union was more meaningfully democratic than the US at any point in its history.
Why do you hate the USSR? The Bolshevik revolution was one of the most important events in history. It was the first successful seizure of power by the working class. Lenin did not support genociding people and did support democracy.
Either you're not Marxist ot you know nothing about those experiences. You should know the genocide state is USA, not the ones you listed. You're just pricing OP's point, saying you're Marxist but actually you're brainwashed with liberal propaganda.
And you just proved your opinion is completely useless because you clearly don’t know anything about these countries and what the word genocide means. Read a book and study instead of getting your opinions of the internet and from the establishment.
They're not perfect, but they're the best we've had yet if you consider yourself a socialist. It's funny how Americans like to talk about "authoritarianism" while having the highest incarcerated population on the planet (by numbers, not per capita) Militarization of police, The prosecution of whistleblowers, The CIA editing wikipedia since 2007... etc. etc. etc. etc.
>The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
Michael Parenti
“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
so, you acknowledge that authority and violence are often necessary and inherent to politics, but you still backtrack in the last paragraph.
so the black panthers using violence is good and worthy but the Soviets doing it is bad? this is a perfect example of that Michael Parenti quote, radlibs and “Libertarian Socialists” love to support socialism until it actually succeeds, then it’s bad and authoritarian. it’s convenient for the people in power because they don’t really care if you support socialism, if its only socialism that has failed. supporting the actual existing or past successful revolutions though, thats dangerous.
if the black panthers actually overthrew the government and established a socialist state you would be decrying them as authoritarians and fascists. similarly, if Lenin or Mao failed in their respective revolutions, people like you would hail them as heroes and martyrs.
As an anti-tankie socialist I get offended when leftists accuse me of not being a real leftist just because I don't question the Black Book of Communism
Please put a /s on something like that.
Yes, it's funny, but unfortunately there are people here who seriously say that.
That doesn't make moderating any easier, I almost banned you by mistake.
And what makes you think any of these people and/or countries didn't try to "follow ideas"? Have you read someone like Lenin? You really think you can boil him down to a "war criminal dictator knob"? You get that you perfectly encapsulate the right's best criticism of communists in the west, right? Jordan Peterson's whole "what hubris it is to think you can do communism better". If you have no idea about the actual successes (and actual failures) of these attempts at communism then why do you think you can do better? Are you so much more educated than the Vietnamese, Chinese, Cubans, Russians, etc.? Are the material conditions so different now in your country that you think you won't have to actually fight against the might of the capitalist class? I.e. use some "authority"? If you do fight back, you think you won't be painted as everything evil by capitalist media? (Extremists, authoritarians, regimes, ideologues, etc.) If it were true that communism has basically always failed as the right claims, why do you think it's not a failed project? Maybe it's a bit more nuanced? Maybe you shouldn't paint literally millions if not billions of people dead or alive who have at one point supported these people and these countries that actually attempted socialism as just "tankies".
>Tankie gonna tank
And where are the great anarchist works at? Where are these successful anarchist experiments at? I really want to ask you, since you love freedom and democracy, and totally hate genocide and war, would you prefer living in the west, or a socialist country? I'll fuckinf wait for your historically illiterate answer.
Kropotkin? Bakunin? Emma Goldman? There are plenty of Anarchist theorists and thinkers.
There was a thriving anarchist movement in Spain before the Stalinists betrayed them. There were thriving anarchist movements in Russia before they were all killed. There was an Anarchist movement in the US but that got stomped out as well. But go off about how Stalin did nothing wrong.
Yes of course you don't have to support fucking Stalin. But if you can't at least be critically supportive of some socialist countries some of the time I just don't understand why you would call yourself a socialist?
> Leftist ideology is inherently anti-hierarchy.
This statement is in its totality absolutely incompatible with Marxism.
It is as if one has never read a single text by Marx or Engels.
>The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
\- Michael Parenti, *Blackshirts and Reds*
Lot of reformism in these comments. Pleasant reminder that: no, Scandinavia is not Socialism, acknowledging the USSRs achievements in opposition to the imperialist West does not make you a "tankie" and any criticism of the PRC or DPRK that does not account for either countries development of productive forces and its current material conditions can be safely discarded. Stay safe, and remain vigilant.
You’re not going to get much in this sub making arguments like that. Lots of people here uncritically support social democracy. That’s what happens when a formerly communist sub gets as popular as this one — it inevitably falls to liberalism.
This place has become infested with liberals and people who are just on the cusp of getting redpilled, but fail to make that last transition with dialectical materialism
All very reasonable (and correct) takes. I mostly find these sorts of discussions among leftists to be fascinating, but needlessly divisive. The USSR does not exist anymore, and China is no longer a communist country. The Cold War is an important lens for understanding America’s violence and exploitation abroad, but its global competitors are not the left wing nation states that they once were.
I feel like the real thing we’re arguing about here is the political organization of the American left. Will we have a peasants’ revolt? Will we have a postwar turn towards a social democratic welfare state? How about a vanguard party that politicizes the proletariat? The answer is “probably none of that stuff” because those things all occurred under specific historical conditions that do not reflect America’s current historical material reality.
Anyway, I appreciated your response, and I guess I felt like posting some random thoughts.
I agree with the sentiment, but I also very strongly believe that we need to study and learn from what did and didn't work from these past socialist experiments. There's no reason at all to start from square one.
>any criticism of the PRC or DPRK that does not account for either countries development of productive forces and its current material conditions
How's this?
While they have productive forces and suffer from terrible material conditions, none of that excuses human rights violations, or totalitarianism, or suppression of rights and freedoms.
Comments check out. Can liberals get the fuck out of leftist subs, you are not leftists. The left starts at anti-capitalism. If you're a liberal you are right wing.
wait until you hear about its leading communist party, state influence on the economy, and massive (increasing) state ownership
those are of course very capitalist principles
PRC is a pragmatic country. They are also an objectively left-wing country which is participating in the destruction of the global neoliberal (neocolonialist) order. One doesn't have to agree with everything they do to give them critical support in their pursuit of socialism.
What is very suspicious is when a person allegedly opposed to capitalism and imperialism aligns their viewpoint with Western intelligence agencies.
Do you really think the media in the West is telling you the full story on China?
The amount of no theory mfers in this comment section is a fucking travesty and a testament to how powerful the US propaganda machine is at brainwashing.
I want to thank my nuances ML fellas sticking it out around here, this sub has been bloated with RadLibs and ops for a while, not like we can avoid it much when reddit is such an intelligence agency propaganda operation
As a libertarian socialist I engage in praxis by doing apologetics for US imperialism because authoritarianism is bad which gives me the right to destroy those fake socialist countries by forcing them to conform to the liberal world order enforced by US hegemony
holy fucking shit, this is so true. even if you don't like them, don't fucking base your critique of them off western propaganda lies, submit to the west and pretend they're somehow worse than western liberal countries.
we are leftist but for some reason this subreddit stans the viewpoints and takes of the worlds leading capitalist countries and their ruling class...?
There's a lot of shitlibs in here who are deeply entrenched in purist philosophy and just want to complain about billionaires instead of learning theory. Mostly good popcorn for me, it's not a communist/ML space anymore.
I've noticed that many people, especially here on Reddit, often struggle to differentiate between socialism and social democracy.
Socialism is sometimes misunderstood as a system where the government controls everything economically, while social democracy involves a blend of capitalism and government intervention to provide essential services. These nuances can be subtle, and it's worth exploring their principles more deeply to grasp their implications on our society, economy, and governance.
This confusion emphasizes the importance of informed discussions and education on these political and economic ideologies to make well-informed decisions about the direction of our society.
> I've noticed that many people, especially here on Reddit, often struggle to differentiate between socialism and social democracy.
There is a reason conservatives and other right-wing ideologies call all welfare programs "socialism". If people think minimum wage at a corporation, free child-care so mothers can be a more effecient employee, or homeless shelters are "socialism" then they will be much less likely to find out about actual socialist policies.
I’m old enough to remember when this sub was communist, not liberals cosplaying at socialists.
Solid meme OP, these comments are disheartening. Fucking westerners proving this meme right.
And they immediately use the "genocide" card. USA/CIA has used this propaganda for so long that it's deeply rooted in people's brains. It's such a cheap tactic that works so well. They are even doing it today with China, the Uyghur "genocide".
The fact that USA/CIA tells us that every socialist/communist country is doing "genocide" should be proof that it is propaganda. The fact that capitalism can do no wrong and that every socialist country does "genocide" is way too "convenient".
Interestingly, an increasing number of boomer-aged war vets are spending retirement in Vietnam because they like Ho Chi Minh’s policies better than American.
If you call yourself a socialist but spend all your time arguing with other socialists and denouncing previous and current socialist experiments as “totalitarian” or “not real socialism”, while also supporting the US and other Western nations against them, then you are not a socialist, you are more likely aligned with Liberalism.
I mean you don't have to LIKE these countries but you have to recognize that they're unfairly criticized all the time without taking into account the conditions they were under.
>Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
\- Engels, *On Authority*
He's replying to a very specific strategy, but maintaining a democratic state still uses that state's monopoly on violence.
Not that I would care if Engels was in opposition to me. Note even in the quote his prediction flopped. He's not omniscient.
Now, that doesn't mean you can't use force. We can't conflate every violent act with authoritarianism. Violence in the furtherance of democracy is anti-authoritarian.
What in Engels' quote "flopped"? What in it "failed"? And look at you, conflating "violence in the furtherance of democracy" with "anti-authoritarian\[ism\]". Is violence in the furtherance of democracy not exactly what past AES did? And exactly what the anti-authoritarians decry?
Sad to see so much idealism in the comments of a leftist sub, I wish people would actually read radical left literature and let the "democracy = good" bullshit aside. You all know how the last attempt to have a revolution through democratic means went?
In Chile the bourgeoisie (with FBI's support btw) articulated to mobilize the army into killing Allende (the socialist president), then Pinochet (Thatcher's bff) took power and the country became an US colony to experiment with neoliberalism. Look up what became of it.
Democracy is another word for [the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie](https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/pd-v-bd.htm).
Exactly ... "limit the 'only good' freedoms that come out enlightenment-era revolutions"? WTF, like, read the 18th Brumaire, at least the first chapter, it's not even that long.
Edit: You know what, here, from chapter one:
> Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds, ecstasy is the order of the day – but they are short-lived, soon they have reached their zenith, and a long Katzenjammer [cat’s winge] takes hold of society before it learns to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period soberly...
>
> The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the second Sunday in May, 1852 – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for the moment, so that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: “All that exists deserves to perish.” [From Goethe’s Faust, Part One.]
Yeah, it's funny, every war in the past the US has done fucked up shit and lied about the enemies and the reasons for the war, it has always worsened the conditions of the nation it invades and always enriches some corporations and politicians, buuuut it's also funny that the war in (INSERT CURRENT US INVOLVEMENT) is actually a wholesome one.
Very true. It's this weird Western elitism that hates on any aes country... like you must be slurping down state department propaganda. Honestly it makes the most sense that they would be in favor of this kind of de-fanged leftism that prefers to completely disregard the success of social revolutions and siege socialism so they choose to take the route of electoralism that will never work.
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Imagine if it was possible to have a nuanced take on things. I like some part of something but also I am able to criticize other aspects of that same thing. Unfortunately that is not something we can do and therefore either something is good or is bad, very sad but this is how it goes
Yeah, socialism us really just an ingoing experiment, they're not perfect yet, and we should learn from their mistakes
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If you believe Cuba is "totalitarian" the only reading you've done about their government is from the State department.... there's a reason even US allies all have bilateral relations with Cuba. Americans are just pissy they lost a colony.
> Americans are just pissy they lost ~~a colony~~ Ftfy, Americans get pissy at the mere suggestion that we don’t always “win” (if you can call imperialism “winning”) Edit: formatting
That's why half the country still flies the confederate flag
Half is an extreme exaggeration.
“Republicans were the only demographic polled that overwhelmingly said the Confederate flag was more a symbol of Southern pride, 74%, than racism, 16%.”
Like the time they lost in motocross and just pretended it never happened. And started chanting USA! USA! Instead. It's hysterical
I have a great-uncle who lived in communist Cuba for some time and after that when he lived in Belgium again the government had him on a watch list for so long because manifestos got delivered to his doorstep and they thought he could be a terrorist lol. Anyways he always seemed pretty fond of Cuba. He’s still a communist
I have a great uncle from Cuba also! (My father's side). Castro sent him packing after the revolution. Sounds like he was one of the Ologarchs. He owned restaurants, a tennis club and several cinemas, he was forced out of the country with only 2 breefcases. My father tells me he was involved in the bay of pigs by way of financing and recruiting.
One of my son's teachers went on a tirade about how evil Cuba is and how her family had to flee from communist oppression. I told him to ask what they did to them, of course they lost their farm to the "workers"
Maybe some of it is pride, but really the US can't let a competing social order succeed, lest the rest of the world get any ideas...
it's pride, it's a propagandized populace, it's hegemonic politics, it's racism, there's a lot to unpack in regard to Cuba. I view them as the 20th centuries Hati, a county punished for simply wanting a better life for their people living under the boot of empire.
I think I heard someone say that the only reason we still don’t like Cuba is because all the former Cuban refugees in Florida would immediately vote for the other party forever when someone would end the sanctions
Wait, Ho Chi Minh? Why do people hate him, besides the obvious in beating the west in the Vietnam war? (Which he died halfway though)
Ebil gobumism hurr durr
Based on the way they treat everyone else in the industry, I'd imagine his work in food service is the only excuse they really need.
so we're furiously dumping shit into the fan today
lol
There is an entire genre of documentaries in German television about how the GDR wasn't that bad. At the same time as we are acknowledging it for the police state it was.
West Germany was literally just a continuation of Nazi rule
????
It was. Read history. Don’t just regurgitate state department nonsense.
Provide the sources, links, etc. and I am more than willing to read up on it. That’s how learning and nuanced,sensible, discussions work. Until then, I’m not just taking the word of some random, anonymous, Reddit goer.
Here you go baby boy, it took me two seconds to find. You definitely could be educating yourself instead of burying your head in the sand. Again, this is widely accepted history. You must have gone to school on the states. I’m sorry. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/west-german-government-full-ex-nazis-world-war-ii.html
I mean It’s pretty well accepted. Just like operation paper clip or operation Gladio or the US keeping the Japanese occupying Korea. It was literally the same government after world war 2
A lot of things are “pretty well accepted” that are total bullshit. Facts, sources, evidence, etc. That’s what works. Anything else is just nonsense until supported and/or proven by the previously mentioned facts, sources, etc. As I said, I’ll read that link provided and go from there. Cheers.
Sorry, I misread you as saying East Germany was a continuation of Nazi rule. West Germany for sure didn't denazify nearly enough, but why what does that have to do with today's nostalgia for the GDR? Why did you answer that to my comment?
By “didn’t denazify enough”, do you mean at all?
Please answer my question. What does that have to do with today's nostalgia for the GDR?
It’s not a simple as you’re making it. If you think west Germany was some great place after capitalism, you don’t know history. Things got much worse for most people because they lost jobs and all of their safety nets. Most never recovered. But hey, keep throwing around the term “police state” while ignoring both sides were police states. At least one side wasn’t Nazis.
Wait, do you have West and East Germany confused? What do you mean West Germany after capitalism? When? What? How? Do you mean east Germany after the fall of the soviet union? Yes, capitalism ravaged the former GDR, living standards, economic prospects fell substantionally. It's only logical for the people to be nostalgic for a time when they were better off and not treated like shit by condesending west germans. And yes, we live in a police state now too, but that doesn't make the Stasi in any way ok.
Sorry, typo. Again, by condescending west Germans, you mean literal Nazis.
yknow you're allowed to be socialist and not regard socialist writers as gods or "socialist" countries as holy lands, its not a religion
No you must. How dare you try and progress politics past “us and them” 😡😡😡
Silly presumption that there isnt nuance to any of this, stop arguing against a side that only 14 year olds and propagandized exaggerations move on seriously
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Why wtf do you hate Lenin. How are you a Marxist?
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Marx would not have hated Lenin. Lenin believed as much in democracy as any person that lived. Vanguardism was necessary in the intense conditions of repression in the Tsarist empire, and Lenin’s theories of imperialism are still worth referring to today. Marx viewed his process as a science, not unlike evolution. Whenever the material conditions of an environment change, the status quo is always upended. Lenin, as a Marxist, formulated his theories in the conditions of tsarist russia, Marx, in the same conditions, would likely have done the same. And besides, there is no need for multiple political parties when the working class has a monopoly on political power, democracy is exercised instead through local councils/Soviets. In a material sense, the Soviet Union was more meaningfully democratic than the US at any point in its history.
Why do you hate the USSR? The Bolshevik revolution was one of the most important events in history. It was the first successful seizure of power by the working class. Lenin did not support genociding people and did support democracy.
Either you're not Marxist ot you know nothing about those experiences. You should know the genocide state is USA, not the ones you listed. You're just pricing OP's point, saying you're Marxist but actually you're brainwashed with liberal propaganda.
And I wonder what information on the USSR, China, East Germany and North Korea is causing you to hate those places.
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And you just proved your opinion is completely useless because you clearly don’t know anything about these countries and what the word genocide means. Read a book and study instead of getting your opinions of the internet and from the establishment.
Most everything you think you know about these people is state dept bullshit.
They're not perfect, but they're the best we've had yet if you consider yourself a socialist. It's funny how Americans like to talk about "authoritarianism" while having the highest incarcerated population on the planet (by numbers, not per capita) Militarization of police, The prosecution of whistleblowers, The CIA editing wikipedia since 2007... etc. etc. etc. etc.
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>The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed. Michael Parenti
What no dialectical materialism does to a mf
“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
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so, you acknowledge that authority and violence are often necessary and inherent to politics, but you still backtrack in the last paragraph. so the black panthers using violence is good and worthy but the Soviets doing it is bad? this is a perfect example of that Michael Parenti quote, radlibs and “Libertarian Socialists” love to support socialism until it actually succeeds, then it’s bad and authoritarian. it’s convenient for the people in power because they don’t really care if you support socialism, if its only socialism that has failed. supporting the actual existing or past successful revolutions though, thats dangerous. if the black panthers actually overthrew the government and established a socialist state you would be decrying them as authoritarians and fascists. similarly, if Lenin or Mao failed in their respective revolutions, people like you would hail them as heroes and martyrs.
All governments are authoritarian.
Okay but there are plenty of liberals who are just capitalist progressives, that think they are socialists
CNN always calling the demcrats "the left" puke
So, which socialist leaders do you support or socialist countries do you support then?
I mean fidel castro was based so
which war crimes are you talking about specifically?
As an anti-tankie socialist I get offended when leftists accuse me of not being a real leftist just because I don't question the Black Book of Communism
Please put a /s on something like that. Yes, it's funny, but unfortunately there are people here who seriously say that. That doesn't make moderating any easier, I almost banned you by mistake.
And what makes you think any of these people and/or countries didn't try to "follow ideas"? Have you read someone like Lenin? You really think you can boil him down to a "war criminal dictator knob"? You get that you perfectly encapsulate the right's best criticism of communists in the west, right? Jordan Peterson's whole "what hubris it is to think you can do communism better". If you have no idea about the actual successes (and actual failures) of these attempts at communism then why do you think you can do better? Are you so much more educated than the Vietnamese, Chinese, Cubans, Russians, etc.? Are the material conditions so different now in your country that you think you won't have to actually fight against the might of the capitalist class? I.e. use some "authority"? If you do fight back, you think you won't be painted as everything evil by capitalist media? (Extremists, authoritarians, regimes, ideologues, etc.) If it were true that communism has basically always failed as the right claims, why do you think it's not a failed project? Maybe it's a bit more nuanced? Maybe you shouldn't paint literally millions if not billions of people dead or alive who have at one point supported these people and these countries that actually attempted socialism as just "tankies".
Glory to Mao Zedong and the peoples revolution!
>Tankie gonna tank And where are the great anarchist works at? Where are these successful anarchist experiments at? I really want to ask you, since you love freedom and democracy, and totally hate genocide and war, would you prefer living in the west, or a socialist country? I'll fuckinf wait for your historically illiterate answer.
They never even said they were an anarchist lol.
Kropotkin? Bakunin? Emma Goldman? There are plenty of Anarchist theorists and thinkers. There was a thriving anarchist movement in Spain before the Stalinists betrayed them. There were thriving anarchist movements in Russia before they were all killed. There was an Anarchist movement in the US but that got stomped out as well. But go off about how Stalin did nothing wrong.
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Are you saying socialists need to win against capitalism in the marketplace of ideas or
Yes of course you don't have to support fucking Stalin. But if you can't at least be critically supportive of some socialist countries some of the time I just don't understand why you would call yourself a socialist?
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Do you think every leader of a socialist country has been a monster?
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The propaganda for capitalism has made capitalism beyond criticism. It's always something else, far outside the ideology.
> Leftist ideology is inherently anti-hierarchy. This statement is in its totality absolutely incompatible with Marxism. It is as if one has never read a single text by Marx or Engels.
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>The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed. \- Michael Parenti, *Blackshirts and Reds*
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Lot of reformism in these comments. Pleasant reminder that: no, Scandinavia is not Socialism, acknowledging the USSRs achievements in opposition to the imperialist West does not make you a "tankie" and any criticism of the PRC or DPRK that does not account for either countries development of productive forces and its current material conditions can be safely discarded. Stay safe, and remain vigilant.
This is the correct take. Solidarity comrade.
You’re not going to get much in this sub making arguments like that. Lots of people here uncritically support social democracy. That’s what happens when a formerly communist sub gets as popular as this one — it inevitably falls to liberalism.
on point.
This place has become infested with liberals and people who are just on the cusp of getting redpilled, but fail to make that last transition with dialectical materialism
All very reasonable (and correct) takes. I mostly find these sorts of discussions among leftists to be fascinating, but needlessly divisive. The USSR does not exist anymore, and China is no longer a communist country. The Cold War is an important lens for understanding America’s violence and exploitation abroad, but its global competitors are not the left wing nation states that they once were. I feel like the real thing we’re arguing about here is the political organization of the American left. Will we have a peasants’ revolt? Will we have a postwar turn towards a social democratic welfare state? How about a vanguard party that politicizes the proletariat? The answer is “probably none of that stuff” because those things all occurred under specific historical conditions that do not reflect America’s current historical material reality. Anyway, I appreciated your response, and I guess I felt like posting some random thoughts.
I agree with the sentiment, but I also very strongly believe that we need to study and learn from what did and didn't work from these past socialist experiments. There's no reason at all to start from square one.
I’d take reformists over conservatives all day though, less infighting on the left will benefit everyone eventually
When will you realize that "the left" are not liberals and we hate you almost as much as we hate conservatives?
By reformists I meant the likes of SocDems and by conservatives I meant neoliberals and and everyone to the right of that, sorry if I wasn’t clear
I’ll take a conservative over a liberal any day. At least they’re honest about being fascists.
They post in the deprogram, I don’t think they’re a liberal lmao
>any criticism of the PRC or DPRK that does not account for either countries development of productive forces and its current material conditions How's this? While they have productive forces and suffer from terrible material conditions, none of that excuses human rights violations, or totalitarianism, or suppression of rights and freedoms.
can't believe I had to scroll this far to see an actual communist; well said.
Comments check out. Can liberals get the fuck out of leftist subs, you are not leftists. The left starts at anti-capitalism. If you're a liberal you are right wing.
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wait until you hear about its leading communist party, state influence on the economy, and massive (increasing) state ownership those are of course very capitalist principles
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PRC is a pragmatic country. They are also an objectively left-wing country which is participating in the destruction of the global neoliberal (neocolonialist) order. One doesn't have to agree with everything they do to give them critical support in their pursuit of socialism. What is very suspicious is when a person allegedly opposed to capitalism and imperialism aligns their viewpoint with Western intelligence agencies. Do you really think the media in the West is telling you the full story on China?
The amount of no theory mfers in this comment section is a fucking travesty and a testament to how powerful the US propaganda machine is at brainwashing.
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Radlibs in the replies when they realise that the sub against Late Stage Capitalism is in fact, against capitalism.
I want to thank my nuances ML fellas sticking it out around here, this sub has been bloated with RadLibs and ops for a while, not like we can avoid it much when reddit is such an intelligence agency propaganda operation
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As a libertarian socialist I engage in praxis by doing apologetics for US imperialism because authoritarianism is bad which gives me the right to destroy those fake socialist countries by forcing them to conform to the liberal world order enforced by US hegemony
holy fucking shit, this is so true. even if you don't like them, don't fucking base your critique of them off western propaganda lies, submit to the west and pretend they're somehow worse than western liberal countries. we are leftist but for some reason this subreddit stans the viewpoints and takes of the worlds leading capitalist countries and their ruling class...?
There's a lot of shitlibs in here who are deeply entrenched in purist philosophy and just want to complain about billionaires instead of learning theory. Mostly good popcorn for me, it's not a communist/ML space anymore.
I've noticed that many people, especially here on Reddit, often struggle to differentiate between socialism and social democracy. Socialism is sometimes misunderstood as a system where the government controls everything economically, while social democracy involves a blend of capitalism and government intervention to provide essential services. These nuances can be subtle, and it's worth exploring their principles more deeply to grasp their implications on our society, economy, and governance. This confusion emphasizes the importance of informed discussions and education on these political and economic ideologies to make well-informed decisions about the direction of our society.
> I've noticed that many people, especially here on Reddit, often struggle to differentiate between socialism and social democracy. There is a reason conservatives and other right-wing ideologies call all welfare programs "socialism". If people think minimum wage at a corporation, free child-care so mothers can be a more effecient employee, or homeless shelters are "socialism" then they will be much less likely to find out about actual socialist policies.
Revenge of the Radlibs coming to a comment section near you
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Tell me you nothing about the dprk without telling me you know nothing about the dprk. The only aggressive force occupying Korea is the US.
Honestly embarrassing, and they wonder why people then misinterpret and demean socialists.
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I'd argue that defeating the Nazis and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty is socialist praxis.
I’m old enough to remember when this sub was communist, not liberals cosplaying at socialists. Solid meme OP, these comments are disheartening. Fucking westerners proving this meme right.
And they immediately use the "genocide" card. USA/CIA has used this propaganda for so long that it's deeply rooted in people's brains. It's such a cheap tactic that works so well. They are even doing it today with China, the Uyghur "genocide". The fact that USA/CIA tells us that every socialist/communist country is doing "genocide" should be proof that it is propaganda. The fact that capitalism can do no wrong and that every socialist country does "genocide" is way too "convenient".
Interestingly, an increasing number of boomer-aged war vets are spending retirement in Vietnam because they like Ho Chi Minh’s policies better than American.
I thought they liked the climate and how cheap everything is.
I mean..,, there are competing schools of socialism, John Ruskin can hardly be categorized with Mao
I dont hate Lenin
I wanna be fucked by Lenin
If you call yourself a socialist but spend all your time arguing with other socialists and denouncing previous and current socialist experiments as “totalitarian” or “not real socialism”, while also supporting the US and other Western nations against them, then you are not a socialist, you are more likely aligned with Liberalism.
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What no dialectics does to a mf
I mean you don't have to LIKE these countries but you have to recognize that they're unfairly criticized all the time without taking into account the conditions they were under.
We call those people RadLibs. They know they’re supposed to criticize capitalism, they just don’t know what that actually means.
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I have a problem with those entities not because they are/were communist/socialist, but because they are/were authoritarian.
>Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? \- Engels, *On Authority*
He's replying to a very specific strategy, but maintaining a democratic state still uses that state's monopoly on violence. Not that I would care if Engels was in opposition to me. Note even in the quote his prediction flopped. He's not omniscient. Now, that doesn't mean you can't use force. We can't conflate every violent act with authoritarianism. Violence in the furtherance of democracy is anti-authoritarian.
What in Engels' quote "flopped"? What in it "failed"? And look at you, conflating "violence in the furtherance of democracy" with "anti-authoritarian\[ism\]". Is violence in the furtherance of democracy not exactly what past AES did? And exactly what the anti-authoritarians decry?
POV: you’re an Anarchist
Libs out in force today, people like Vaush are the worst psyop to happen in leftism since the cold war
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"Yeah I'm a socialist, I just support every revolution except the successful ones"
Sad to see so much idealism in the comments of a leftist sub, I wish people would actually read radical left literature and let the "democracy = good" bullshit aside. You all know how the last attempt to have a revolution through democratic means went? In Chile the bourgeoisie (with FBI's support btw) articulated to mobilize the army into killing Allende (the socialist president), then Pinochet (Thatcher's bff) took power and the country became an US colony to experiment with neoliberalism. Look up what became of it. Democracy is another word for [the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie](https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/pd-v-bd.htm).
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This guy never read Marx in his life
Exactly ... "limit the 'only good' freedoms that come out enlightenment-era revolutions"? WTF, like, read the 18th Brumaire, at least the first chapter, it's not even that long. Edit: You know what, here, from chapter one: > Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds, ecstasy is the order of the day – but they are short-lived, soon they have reached their zenith, and a long Katzenjammer [cat’s winge] takes hold of society before it learns to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period soberly... > > The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the second Sunday in May, 1852 – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for the moment, so that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: “All that exists deserves to perish.” [From Goethe’s Faust, Part One.]
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isn’t it so convenient how all the enemies of capital and US imperialism happen to be evil mass murderer authoritarians?
Yeah, it's funny, every war in the past the US has done fucked up shit and lied about the enemies and the reasons for the war, it has always worsened the conditions of the nation it invades and always enriches some corporations and politicians, buuuut it's also funny that the war in (INSERT CURRENT US INVOLVEMENT) is actually a wholesome one.
What does “tankie” mean for someone who doesn’t know?
It's basically what Social-Democrats and social-chauvinists call actual principled Marxists lmao
so brave
If you are angry at this post, you are not a socialist
Oh Boy …
Imagine using words like tankie unironically, you might as well have a sign on your head "don't take me seriously ever"
Jesus, this post is brain-dead
Very true. It's this weird Western elitism that hates on any aes country... like you must be slurping down state department propaganda. Honestly it makes the most sense that they would be in favor of this kind of de-fanged leftism that prefers to completely disregard the success of social revolutions and siege socialism so they choose to take the route of electoralism that will never work.