LWDT IX: Discussing the Left From All Engels

[Kubra]

no it's truly symbiotic, because when coalition talks come up I mean it's sort of a done deal that the two sides will stick together. The socdems will agree to get a majority, the farther left parties because it's all they can hope for to govern as a junior partner.

True. So technically, socdems win! =D

everyone wins, it's mutual sustainability.

[Byeclase]

Marxist Materialism is still dogmatic assumptions on the value of material things.
And again still saying “trot cult”.

But the rest is the truth, Albania and the Soviets achieved several positive things, but at massive human and environmental costs, and had deep flaws and a lot of failures.

That is not in dispute. Basically no serious academic claims they were the best systems and not deeply flawed.

Domenico Losurdo passed out not long ago, he wrote "Stalin: History and Criticism of a Black Legend"

Anyways even if you believe what you believe you still need to change your tactics and marketing of your ideas. They way you currently present them will convince no one and merely invite ridicule.

Convincing on the Internet where I can't even see the class properly... it's not even the way of doing it in real life as it's simply preaching and debunking some stuff here. But others here will see if they want.

[Novus America]

Marxist Materialism is still dogmatic assumptions on the value of material things.
And again still saying “trot cult”.

But the rest is the truth, Albania and the Soviets achieved several positive things, but at massive human and environmental costs, and had deep flaws and a lot of failures.

That is not in dispute. Basically no serious academic claims they were the best systems and not deeply flawed.

Domenico Losurdo passed out not long ago, he wrote "Stalin: History and Criticism of a Black Legend"

Anyways even if you believe what you believe you still need to change your tactics and marketing of your ideas. They way you currently present them will convince no one and merely invite ridicule.

Convincing on the Internet where I can't even see the class properly... it's not even the way of doing it in real life as it's simply preaching and debunking some stuff here. But others here will see if they want.

Domenico Losurdo is not well regarded in academic circles. For using bad history and being a politicalized although even he acknowledged the Gulags were prettybad. I said basically no, sure there are tiny number of out there types like Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr but even they take a more critical view than you appear to do.
And few people take them very seriously, admittedly Losurdo is a little less insane than Furr.

Also praising Stalin and especially Hoxha is not a way to get anywhere in real life either.
Hohxaism is a tiny insignificant fringe movement.
You are not doing your cause any favors.

[Joohan]

Marxist leninists would be a lot cooler if they just full on embraced how tyrannical Stalin and his acolytes were.

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

It would certainly increase their overall based factor, which is arguably even more important than theory or practice.

[Duvniask]

If anyone regards Grover Furr, the guy who unironically says "I have yet to find one crime that Stalin committed" as a good historian, you really shouldn't waste your time.

[Byeclase]

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

No one said they should have killed more, fascists do that.
Grover Furr isn't even ML, and he thinks Stalin would have liberalized the country in his last years (The struggle for democratic reform), yet I posted a quote few posts ago which said to be a good communist you have to spend several years of education. This was speculation.
At the same time, just because right now he isn't famous in academia, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously. A big part of the left academia still take seriously Trotsky and the non revolutionary new left, as said previously, with Zizek supporting Syriza as something revolutionary while they fall down on the European Union for their socdem impossibility.

[Cekoviu]

Marxist leninists would be a lot cooler if they just full on embraced how tyrannical Stalin and his acolytes were.

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

It would certainly increase their overall based factor, which is arguably even more important than theory or practice.

No, no, the issue was that they were killing people for the wrong reasons, not with the wrong quantity. Stalin's mistake was targeting predominantly white male bourgeoisie for the bourgeoisie part rather than the white male part. :^))))))

[Hanafuridake]

If anyone regards Grover Furr, the guy who unironically says "I have yet to find one crime that Stalin committed" as a good historian, you really shouldn't waste your time.

He's not even an actual historian. At least not in the field that he writes revisionist books for.

[Byeclase]

No, no, the issue was that they were killing people for the wrong reasons, not with the wrong quantity. Stalin's mistake was targeting predominantly white male bourgeoisie for the bourgeoisie part rather than the white male part. :^))))))

J-Sakai.jpg

[West Leas Oros 2]

Marxist leninists would be a lot cooler if they just full on embraced how tyrannical Stalin and his acolytes were.

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

It would certainly increase their overall based factor, which is arguably even more important than theory or practice.

No, no, the issue was that they were killing people for the wrong reasons, not with the wrong quantity. Stalin's mistake was targeting predominantly white male bourgeoisie for the bourgeoisie part rather than the white male part. :^))))))

The duality of Stalinism.

[Byeclase]

How leftcoms see defenders of the legacy of Stalin and socdems.webm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTCFreBMNVY

[Dahyan]

Marxist leninists would be a lot cooler if they just full on embraced how tyrannical Stalin and his acolytes were.

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

It would certainly increase their overall based factor, which is arguably even more important than theory or practice.

Still more believable than self-proclaimed leftists who go out of their way to condemn every single actual Socialist nation that ever existed, and jump on every single reactionary bandwagon they can find.

[Duvniask]

Marxist leninists would be a lot cooler if they just full on embraced how tyrannical Stalin and his acolytes were.

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

It would certainly increase their overall based factor, which is arguably even more important than theory or practice.

Still more believable than self-proclaimed leftists who go out of their way to condemn every single actual Socialist nation that ever existed, and jump on every single reactionary bandwagon they can find.

Your twisting of yourselves into knots to defend some of the worst regimes in history is not anything of the sort that could be described as "believable".

[Byeclase]

Fallen comrade Bill Bland explains the mythology behind Stalin "the butcher tyrant" in a single page:

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

In contrast, there were in the United States in 1996, according to official figures, 5.5 million people in prison, or 2.8% of the adult population.

That is, the number of prisoners in the USA today is 3 million more than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1999/x01/x01.htm

Edit: prison in the US here shall be read as under correctional supervision, not the category of prison or jail which are separate (here probation and parole are included too in the numbers).

[Cekoviu]

Fallen comrade Bill Bland explains the mythology behind Stalin "the butcher tyrant" in a single page:

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

In contrast, there were in the United States in 1996, according to official figures, 5.5 million people in prison, or 2.8% of the adult population.

That is, the number of prisoners in the USA today is 3 million more than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1999/x01/x01.htm

And in doing so, transparently rehashes the Soviet "and you are lynching negroes" argument.

[Duvniask]

Fallen comrade Bill Bland explains the mythology behind Stalin "the butcher tyrant" in a single page:

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

In contrast, there were in the United States in 1996, according to official figures, 5.5 million people in prison, or 2.8% of the adult population.

That is, the number of prisoners in the USA today is 3 million more than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1999/x01/x01.htm

These numbers are bullshit. You will not find any data, anywhere, supporting a 5.5 million figure for US prisoners in 1996. He's including people on probation, that is to say, people who are not in prison.

[Kubra]

True, Stalin did not support the “people’s army” concept and obviously took a radically different approach than Hoxha to defense. Stalin brought back military ranks, professional officers and a conventionally organized military....

Albania came from a partisan war, conditions change and also what they have to do. Yet they had a military apart from the trained people. More or less equipped another debate that we already talked before.
In the case of the USSR they had to prepare for a war which would be also offensive, not merely defensive, the fascists had to be conquered.
Lenin already proposed the idea of arming the people in "The April theses" but in the time of the revolution:

"Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy."
"[1] i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.—Lenin".

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/ ... apr/04.htm

Stalin would have had to have been clairvoyant, seeing as Trotsky was defeated in this topic in about the mid 20's. Stalin later rank reforms was merely rationalising a system that was already in place, that of a regular army as oppose to territorial militia formations.

[Kubra]

Marxist leninists would be a lot cooler if they just full on embraced how tyrannical Stalin and his acolytes were.

" Hell yes it was real communism, and their only mistake was not killing more! "

It would certainly increase their overall based factor, which is arguably even more important than theory or practice.

Still more believable than self-proclaimed leftists who go out of their way to condemn every single actual Socialist nation that ever existed, and jump on every single reactionary bandwagon they can find.

self-criticism tends to be a more constructive sort, you feel?

[Byeclase]

Fallen comrade Bill Bland explains the mythology behind Stalin "the butcher tyrant" in a single page:

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

In contrast, there were in the United States in 1996, according to official figures, 5.5 million people in prison, or 2.8% of the adult population.

That is, the number of prisoners in the USA today is 3 million more than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/1999/x01/x01.htm

These numbers are bullshit. You will not find any data, anywhere, supporting a 5.5 million figure for US prisoners in 1996. He's including people on probation, that is to say, people who are not in prison.

True, he's including people on probation, and law makes a distinction between jail, prison and parole too. He's referring to everything together.
My mistake for not clarifying, he should have used correctional supervision.

[Duvniask]

Also, nothing says "reactionary" quite like the USSR re-criminalizing homosexuality in 1933 under the view that it was a "fascist" subversion of the social fabric, which was "corrupting the young" as Gorki put it.

[Kubra]

Also, nothing says "reactionary" quite like the USSR re-criminalizing homosexuality in 1933 under the view that it was a "fascist" subversion of the social fabric, which was "corrupting the young" as Gorki put it.

Don't forget the wholesale reintroduction of tsarist era geopolitical objectives and the russification policies pursued among the outlying SSR's.
And as I am a good marxist, piece wage. Horrible bit, that. No good, nasty sort of wage. Pure reactionaryism.

[Byeclase]

Also, nothing says "reactionary" quite like the USSR re-criminalizing homosexuality in 1933 under the view that it was a "fascist" subversion of the social fabric, which was "corrupting the young" as Gorki put it.

As far as I know they criminalized it under the excuse of the "science of their times", when homosexuality was viewed as abnormal behaviour (1933). Also Lenin thought the higher classes practiced it more so it was something degenerate so to speak.

The crucial thing here for me is who was acting with the science of their times; although it was an error as we know now, that old science was outdated like the non revolutionary new left rooted in the academia.

I think most claiming themselves MLs admit this was an error.

Also, nothing says "reactionary" quite like the USSR re-criminalizing homosexuality in 1933 under the view that it was a "fascist" subversion of the social fabric, which was "corrupting the young" as Gorki put it.

Don't forget the wholesale reintroduction of tsarist era geopolitical objectives and the russification policies pursued among the outlying SSR's.
And as I am a good marxist, piece wage. Horrible bit, that. No good, nasty sort of wage. Pure reactionaryism.

Deportation of nations: https://espressostalinist.com/the-real- ... f-nations/

[Cekoviu]

Don't forget the wholesale reintroduction of tsarist era geopolitical objectives and the russification policies pursued among the outlying SSR's.
And as I am a good marxist, piece wage. Horrible bit, that. No good, nasty sort of wage. Pure reactionaryism.

Deportation of nations: https://espressostalinist.com/the-real- ... f-nations/

For a crowd who complains so heavily about Western imperialism, it's quite fascinating how quickly you jump to justify Soviet imperialism in the Caucasus and Asia. :thinking:

[Novus America]

On Stalin and science Lysenko...

Oh and banning cybernetics which massively set back the Soviet ability to develop early computers.

[Byeclase]

Deportation of nations: https://espressostalinist.com/the-real- ... f-nations/

For a crowd who complains so heavily about Western imperialism, it's quite fascinating how quickly you jump to justify Soviet imperialism in the Caucasus and Asia. :thinking:

Antifascism isn't imperialism.

On Stalin and science Lysenko...

Oh and banning cybernetics which massively set back the Soviet ability to develop early computers.

True, errors contributing to the fall. There's an actual article defending Lysenko in Spanish as the criticism as pure propaganda, but I won't defend it as I'm not sure of it/didn't read enough.