Communism and Socialism megathread

[Alsheb]

Yeah... I don't agree with you on the concept of "stalinism" even existing, but I get your point.

Stalinism refers to the ideology and policies of Stalin.

Which is called Marxism-Leninism. I don't get the need of inventing a new name for something that wasn't new at all. Stalin wasn't an ideologue, but a pragmatician.

[Alsheb]

#eventuallyyourunoutofotherpeoplesmoney
it's other people's money because the government is only earning money by collecting it from citizens. If i, a hard worker earn the same amount as a slouch, why should I work? Why take from people who do work and give to those who dont?

Wait... you ACTUALLY think that under Socialism "everyone earns the same amount of miney, regardless of what they do"??

Newsflash: in no Socialist country that ever existed, that has ever, EVER been the case.

[Alsheb]

silly anarcho-pipe dreams. Syndicalism is where it's at.

Syndicalism is a good theory. I prefer mutualism, as markets can be extremely beneficial to society, so long as they are stripped of exploitation and private property.

As long as you don't conquer political power, the syndicalist influence will remain tiny, and Socialism cannot be achieved. And to to obtain political power, you need a leading force (i.e. the vanguard party) to wrest power from the hands of the ruling class.

[Kubra]

Stalinism refers to the ideology and policies of Stalin.

Which is called Marxism-Leninism. I don't get the need of inventing a new name for something that wasn't new at all. Stalin wasn't an ideologue, but a pragmatician.

pragmatists don't write theoretical tracts
that's for ideologues
stalin did write those

[Alsheb]

Which is called Marxism-Leninism. I don't get the need of inventing a new name for something that wasn't new at all. Stalin wasn't an ideologue, but a pragmatician.

pragmatists don't write theoretical tracts
that's for ideologues
stalin did write those

The only tracts Stalin wrote were practical applications of Marxist-Leninist ideology. He had some theoretical works in his early life, when Lenin was still alive, yes. But after coming to power, he concentrated on practical matters, such as Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics and Economic Problems of Socialist in the USSR. He did not write grand theoretical works such as Lenin did with State and Revolution and Imperialism as Highest Stage of Capitalism. Stalin concentrated mainly on the practical work laid out before him, and doing it by applying Marxism-Leninism.

[Bratislavskaya]

Considering the mentions of Stalin, and in preparation for the "He wasn't a real communist" etc, I will leave this here:

[Unitaristic Regions]

...

Can't we all just get along?

Everyone one turns... the left is infighting...

[Jinwoy]

Considering the mentions of Stalin, and in preparation for the "He wasn't a real communist" etc, I will leave this here:
(Image)

Stalin may have quite literally been insane. He didn't contribute much to the revolution, except the creation of a famine because he broke the delicate peace between slow industry formation under Lenin's NEP and just march forward with massive internal industrialisation projects and collectivisation, which the Soviet peasantry was ill equipped for - new farming technology that isn't wood, plus the inexperience on how to use this technology, led to poor harvests throughout the Soviet Union and hit the Ukrainian SSR particularly hard.
Moving on, Stalin was a poorly committed socialist; recriminalising Homosexuality in order to gain more popularity with the Church? How is that in any way Socialist? That seems like the anti-thesis to Socialism right there.

Lenin didn't want Stalin in power with good reason - all Stalin cared about was expanding his empire under the façade of socialism; an ideology that has the working people's support.
Everyone who dared stand up against him was immediately destroyed and any trace of their existence erased from record, creating a generation of subverts and yes-men who ended up training the next generation of Soviet Leaders, unfortunately.
Remember, Gorbachev was the only leader born after the Revolution. He was a full product of Stalin's purges, and the yes-men that followed.

[Kubra]

pragmatists don't write theoretical tracts
that's for ideologues
stalin did write those

The only tracts Stalin wrote were practical applications of Marxist-Leninist ideology. He had some theoretical works in his early life, when Lenin was still alive, yes. But after coming to power, he concentrated on practical matters, such as Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics and Economic Problems of Socialist in the USSR. He did not write grand theoretical works such as Lenin did with State and Revolution and Imperialism as Highest Stage of Capitalism. Stalin concentrated mainly on the practical work laid out before him, and doing it by applying Marxism-Leninism.

How about "Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism", published in 1938? str8 up theoretical writing. Apart from that, multiple works can be found on the nature of Leninism. Which is, well, str8 up theorizing.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Considering the mentions of Stalin, and in preparation for the "He wasn't a real communist" etc, I will leave this here:
(Image)

Stalin may have quite literally been insane. He didn't contribute much to the revolution, except the creation of a famine because he broke the delicate peace between slow industry formation under Lenin's NEP and just march forward with massive internal industrialisation projects and collectivisation, which the Soviet peasantry was ill equipped for - new farming technology that isn't wood, plus the inexperience on how to use this technology, led to poor harvests throughout the Soviet Union and hit the Ukrainian SSR particularly hard.
Moving on, Stalin was a poorly committed socialist; recriminalising Homosexuality in order to gain more popularity with the Church? How is that in any way Socialist? That seems like the anti-thesis to Socialism right there.

Lenin didn't want Stalin in power with good reason - all Stalin cared about was expanding his empire under the façade of socialism; an ideology that has the working people's support.
Everyone who dared stand up against him was immediately destroyed and any trace of their existence erased from record, creating a generation of subverts and yes-men who ended up training the next generation of Soviet Leaders, unfortunately.
Remember, Gorbachev was the only leader born after the Revolution. He was a full product of Stalin's purges, and the yes-men that followed.

Actually, Stalin kinda stole forced collectivization from the Trotskyites, and why not? Farmers are technically bourgeois, and authoritarian Marxists don't care about being nice. They care about furthering the 'revolution'. You and I may disagree with their methods, even despise them, but we should still be honest: Stalin was probably still revolutionary.

I do agree that gaining popularity with the Church is counter-revolutionary on the face of it, but it might've been considered necessary to the internal stability of the state, something necessary to build socialism further. But, I'm just speculating here.

[MERIZoC]

...

Can't we all just get along?

Everyone one turns... the left is infighting...

The left branches as far as from Chomsky to Stalin, people with almost nothing in common. If there wasn't disagreement, I'd be legitimately scared.

[Unitaristic Regions]

...

Can't we all just get along?

Everyone one turns... the left is infighting...

The left branches as far as from Chomsky to Stalin, people with almost nothing in common. If there wasn't disagreement, I'd be legitimately scared.

Do you know what democratic centralism is? Plus, isn't anarcho-primitivism supposed to be post-left? (Not that that means that you should be )

[Unitaristic Regions]

By the way, I uphold a different form of centralism than the Bolshevik one. I just think that "freedom of discussion, unity of action," is a good basis for a movement.

[Jinwoy]

Stalin may have quite literally been insane. He didn't contribute much to the revolution, except the creation of a famine because he broke the delicate peace between slow industry formation under Lenin's NEP and just march forward with massive internal industrialisation projects and collectivisation, which the Soviet peasantry was ill equipped for - new farming technology that isn't wood, plus the inexperience on how to use this technology, led to poor harvests throughout the Soviet Union and hit the Ukrainian SSR particularly hard.
Moving on, Stalin was a poorly committed socialist; recriminalising Homosexuality in order to gain more popularity with the Church? How is that in any way Socialist? That seems like the anti-thesis to Socialism right there.

Lenin didn't want Stalin in power with good reason - all Stalin cared about was expanding his empire under the façade of socialism; an ideology that has the working people's support.
Everyone who dared stand up against him was immediately destroyed and any trace of their existence erased from record, creating a generation of subverts and yes-men who ended up training the next generation of Soviet Leaders, unfortunately.
Remember, Gorbachev was the only leader born after the Revolution. He was a full product of Stalin's purges, and the yes-men that followed.

Actually, Stalin kinda stole forced collectivization from the Trotskyites, and why not? Farmers are technically bourgeois, and authoritarian Marxists don't care about being nice. They care about furthering the 'revolution'. You and I may disagree with their methods, even despise them, but we should still be honest: Stalin was probably still revolutionary.

I do agree that gaining popularity with the Church is counter-revolutionary on the face of it, but it might've been considered necessary to the internal stability of the state, something necessary to build socialism further. But, I'm just speculating here.

Aha, perhaps I should've made it a bit clearer that it wasn't forced collectivisation alone that brought about the famines - it was the mixture of new, almost alien technologies, lack of experience with them AND collectivisation (which essentially just made it collective stupidity) that brought about the famines.
It was a similar story with China, except they forced non-farmers to farm and farmers to make steel in their backyards.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Sounds like they were a tad blinded by power, again and again . Rule so much people with so much power at your hands, and you start to think you deserve to rule them.

[Jinwoy]

Sounds like they were a tad blinded by power, again and again . Rule so much people with so much power at your hands, and you start to think you deserve to rule them.

I'd also like to quickly add that collective farming is actually more productive than normal farming: the Soviet Union was the biggest grower of cereals, and the farms weren't even at 100% efficiency. According to Sovietologists, the max peak of their efficiency was roughly 20-30% (I may be wrong, this is all recalled from memory).
Modern Israeli Collective farms operate very well, even if it is from within a capitalist standpoint.

[Alsheb]

Considering the mentions of Stalin, and in preparation for the "He wasn't a real communist" etc, I will leave this here:
(Image)

Stalin may have quite literally been insane. He didn't contribute much to the revolution, except the creation of a famine because he broke the delicate peace between slow industry formation under Lenin's NEP and just march forward with massive internal industrialisation projects and collectivisation, which the Soviet peasantry was ill equipped for - new farming technology that isn't wood, plus the inexperience on how to use this technology, led to poor harvests throughout the Soviet Union and hit the Ukrainian SSR particularly hard.
Moving on, Stalin was a poorly committed socialist; recriminalising Homosexuality in order to gain more popularity with the Church? How is that in any way Socialist? That seems like the anti-thesis to Socialism right there.

Lenin didn't want Stalin in power with good reason - all Stalin cared about was expanding his empire under the façade of socialism; an ideology that has the working people's support.
Everyone who dared stand up against him was immediately destroyed and any trace of their existence erased from record, creating a generation of subverts and yes-men who ended up training the next generation of Soviet Leaders, unfortunately.
Remember, Gorbachev was the only leader born after the Revolution. He was a full product of Stalin's purges, and the yes-men that followed.

Except for your statement about homosexuality, none of what you say makes any sense. The USSR actually made huge progress in all terms eocnomical and humanitarian under Stalin's rule, wether it was life expectancy, healthcare, women's rights, education, wages, access to culture or simple economic growth. Under Stalin, the USSR grew from a still backward agrarian state to a grand industrial powerhouse, modernised and with a much higher standard of living than ever before.

Also, the idea that "everyone who stood against him was destroyed" is total nonsense. There was also no "generation of yes-men" after Stalin. Ever heard of Krushchev? Not exactly a yes man of Stalin, since he effectively destroyed pretty much everything Stalin had built up before him.

[Alsheb]

Sounds like they were a tad blinded by power, again and again . Rule so much people with so much power at your hands, and you start to think you deserve to rule them.

I'd also like to quickly add that collective farming is actually more productive than normal farming: the Soviet Union was the biggest grower of cereals, and the farms weren't even at 100% efficiency. According to Sovietologists, the max peak of their efficiency was roughly 20-30% (I may be wrong, this is all recalled from memory).
Modern Israeli Collective farms operate very well, even if it is from within a capitalist standpoint.

So why are you complaining about Soviet collective farming, if you ackowledge it to be most efficient and productive? Why, because it was "forceful"?
Stalin even temporarily reversed collectivisation for a while, when reports came in that the local party leaders were forcing peasants into collective farms. He only enforced it in one case, and that was in Ukraine, in order to boost production to combat the effects of the famine.

[Grand Calvert]

Better dead than red. Say no to socialism, kids.

[Alsheb]

Better dead than red. Say no to socialism, kids.

You guys really have very useful comments here

[Unitaristic Regions]

Sounds like they were a tad blinded by power, again and again . Rule so much people with so much power at your hands, and you start to think you deserve to rule them.

I'd also like to quickly add that collective farming is actually more productive than normal farming: the Soviet Union was the biggest grower of cereals, and the farms weren't even at 100% efficiency. According to Sovietologists, the max peak of their efficiency was roughly 20-30% (I may be wrong, this is all recalled from memory).
Modern Israeli Collective farms operate very well, even if it is from within a capitalist standpoint.

A buddy of mine once told me that under feudalism, big famines were pretty common: the collectivization of farms resulted in one big famine and after that food production was stabile.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Better dead than red. Say no to socialism, kids.

You guys really have very useful comments here

"Socialism sounds nice in theory, but Human Nature..."



I hate that comment

[Jinwoy]

I'd also like to quickly add that collective farming is actually more productive than normal farming: the Soviet Union was the biggest grower of cereals, and the farms weren't even at 100% efficiency. According to Sovietologists, the max peak of their efficiency was roughly 20-30% (I may be wrong, this is all recalled from memory).
Modern Israeli Collective farms operate very well, even if it is from within a capitalist standpoint.

So why are you complaining about Soviet collective farming, if you ackowledge it to be most efficient and productive? Why, because it was "forceful"?
Stalin even temporarily reversed collectivisation for a while, when reports came in that the local party leaders were forcing peasants into collective farms. He only enforced it in one case, and that was in Ukraine, in order to boost production to combat the effects of the famine.

I'm not complaining about Soviet Collective Farming, I'm complaining about Stalin's approach to Collective Farming.

[Grand Calvert]

You guys really have very useful comments here

"Socialism sounds nice in theory, but Human Nature..."



I hate that comment

Socialism is impossible unless you want to extort everyone.

[Bratislavskaya]

"Socialism sounds nice in theory, but Human Nature..."



I hate that comment

Socialism is impossible unless you want to extort everyone.

Capitalism is a few people extorting everyone else, to the extent that the worlds 85 richest have the same amount of wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest. At least even in the failed Socialist states the money was spread evenly.