Anti-Socialism Thread

[Orostan]

Giving guns to our adversaries doesn't help either.

If given the choice, workers vote in droves in favor of capitalism and its virtues. Socialism has nothing to offer them; capitalism offers prosperity.

That's why all the proles are voting Trump.

The proles actually aren't voting trump, he won based on middle/upper income votes. Also even Bernie's mild social democracy is extremely popular in America, and socialist movements are growing.

[Debate Proxy 1]

Yes, it's the most anti-socialist thing that can be done sometimes lol.

Then perhaps we should consider not infighting? I prefer my leftist friends sipping tea and eating cake, not bashing each other's heads.

It's not infighting. Apparently, you're the class enemy.

[Orostan]

Then perhaps we should consider not infighting? I prefer my leftist friends sipping tea and eating cake, not bashing each other's heads.

It's not infighting. Apparently, you're the class enemy.

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

[Valrifell]

If your entire argument is precipitated on me doing research for you, you've basically conceded the argument. You should have a grasp of the material to be convincing on your own, not rely on your sources to carry you through.

[Exalted Inquellian State]

Every day there is less and less of value in examining the cadaver of the Soviet experiment. Our material and social conditions today are as wildly divergent from 1905 as it was from 1789, and the conditions that produced, guided the growth and ultimately ended the USSR are never coming back because history is not cyclical.

The USSR had its successes and failures, it is important to recognize these features of its economic and political structure so what they did right can be repeated and what they did wrong can be avoided.

Avoid messing up the Holodmor, avoid killing good generals, avoid labour camps, avoid press restrictions, avoid signing any pact with people who said they hate you, avoid murdering poles, avoid murdering doctors, avoid betraying everyone you worked for, avoid a one party state, and avoid rapists in the government.

[Nilokeras]

Every day there is less and less of value in examining the cadaver of the Soviet experiment. Our material and social conditions today are as wildly divergent from 1905 as it was from 1789, and the conditions that produced, guided the growth and ultimately ended the USSR are never coming back because history is not cyclical.

The USSR had its successes and failures, it is important to recognize these features of its economic and political structure so what they did right can be repeated and what they did wrong can be avoided.

Recreating anything from history is doomed to failure. Theory must be adaptive to lived reality today and not the other way around.

[Orostan]

If your entire argument is precipitated on me doing research for you, you've basically conceded the argument. You should have a grasp of the material to be convincing on your own, not rely on your sources to carry you through.

I make my arguments, it is not my fault that other people ignore them.

The USSR had its successes and failures, it is important to recognize these features of its economic and political structure so what they did right can be repeated and what they did wrong can be avoided.

Recreating anything from history is doomed to failure. Theory must be adaptive to lived reality today and not the other way around.

Theory has to be amended with historical fact. A big part of Marxism is history.

[Debate Proxy 1]

It's not infighting. Apparently, you're the class enemy.

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

Yes, I am a capitalist, I own means of production, and am quite proud of it.

It would not be bad for you to read Rand if you want to understand why I do not fear the proles opposing me in the slightest.

[Sanghyeok]

It's not infighting. Apparently, you're the class enemy.

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

They're a right winger, as their anti-leftist stance has shown.

[Orostan]

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

Yes, I am a capitalist, I own means of production, and am quite proud of it.

It would not be bad for you to read Rand if you want to understand why I do not fear the proles opposing me in the slightest.

That's extremely elitist, but I don't expect you to view that as a bad thing. Give your workers healthcare and paid sick leave.

[Orostan]

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

They're a right winger, as their anti-leftist stance has shown.

Yeah, but most right wingers are just slaves who think their master is good and not actual capitalists. Most Capitalists don't get high on their own supply (of propaganda).

[Debate Proxy 1]

Yes, I am a capitalist, I own means of production, and am quite proud of it.

It would not be bad for you to read Rand if you want to understand why I do not fear the proles opposing me in the slightest.

That's extremely elitist, but I don't expect you to view that as a bad thing. Give your workers healthcare and paid sick leave.

Not just that, but freaking guns. That's more than any socialist can say they've ever delivered for workers.

[Kiu Ghesik]

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

Yes, I am a capitalist, I own means of production, and am quite proud of it.

It would not be bad for you to read Rand if you want to understand why I do not fear the proles opposing me in the slightest.

Rand's philosophy is kind of garbage, though. I mean, even the philosophers contemporary to her disowned it as nonsensical.

[Aureumterra III]

Does owning stock count as owning the means of production?

[Washington Resistance Army]

Are you an actual capitalist or something? Do you own the means of production, or do you not understand leftist theory?

Yes, I am a capitalist, I own means of production, and am quite proud of it.

It would not be bad for you to read Rand if you want to understand why I do not fear the proles opposing me in the slightest.

Rand was literally a bum who left the USSR because she didn't want to work lol

[Senkaku]

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/res ... n_2013.pdf

Katyn was done by German bullets made in 1941 in an area the germans controlled in winter that year when these people were killed and the people were buried in a way similar to how people killed by the Germans elsewhere were buried. In addition to that children were killed at the massacre, and the USSR never executed children.

So, to be clear, based on the discovery of one 70-odd-year-old Polish body we think has been identified and is in an unexpected place, and the lack of direct reference to the actual executions themselves in transit documents about "execution camps," one fringe historian has dismissed all the other considerable evidence on various grounds, including bad translation, the simple assertion that the Soviets never killed children, and the assumption that older men's memories and therefore testimony are universally quite hazy and unreliable-- and this is the only source you have?

The burden of proof seems considerably higher, given the rather damning evidence that exists to support the mainstream view. Surely there are other scholars who've come around to this, if it's a credible view?

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover%20Furr/Furr%20tortsky%20japan.pdf

Trotsky was talking to his friends in the USSR, one of the big accusations of the moscow trials, but we only know this from mailing receipts because the actual letters were removed from the archive by someone. We also know for a fact that Stalin and the people around him as well as the American ambassador to the USSR at the time believed the trials were legtimate. I highly recommend reading at least some of this PDF.

So now we have both sources being from the same guy, which doesn't raise any questions in your mind as to whether he may be on an ideological mission with his work and whether he is in fact a completely reliable source. Cool. Based on an omission of some text from the confession of a prisoner praising Stalin... we are to take it as a legitimate confession and therefore his crime as having been real (and the interrogation process to extract confessions having presumably been humane)? And then we have a few paragraphs of not actually saying anything before arriving at a new segment of the paper trying to prove that Trotsky was indeed perhaps still trying to get people still in the USSR to remove Stalin...? I'm not reading this whole thing because I have to go to dinner, but the number of times this guy has already cited his own other works as he offers "facts" about the trials should maybe raise a little bit of doubt in your mind.

If you have other scholars or credible sources, feel free to offer them. If the proof that Katyn didn't happen and the show trials were actually good are two PDFs by the same guy... then I have to question your thought process in taking it as legitimate.

[Debate Proxy 1]

They're a right winger, as their anti-leftist stance has shown.

Yeah, but most right wingers are just slaves who think their master is good and not actual capitalists. Most Capitalists don't get high on their own supply (of propaganda).

You're just afraid because I'm discrediting the very core-most foundational belief of socialism.

[Nilokeras]

Theory has to be amended with historical fact. A big part of Marxism is history.

And a correct approach to history from a theoretical perspective requires us to have the foresight and wisdom to be able to set aside the past when we are finished with its lessons in favour of the future, and not engage in hagiography for the dead. Learning the causes of the revolution in Russia is important, because revolutionary moments echo and reverberate across time and space. Learning the railway gauges in Soviet Tajikistan or factory structures in 1970s Moscow or Soviet models of commodity production is not because the conditions that lead to those phenomena will never come about again.

[Orostan]

That's extremely elitist, but I don't expect you to view that as a bad thing. Give your workers healthcare and paid sick leave.

Not just that, but freaking guns. That's more than any socialist can say they've ever delivered for workers.

Socialists delivered the largest increases in standard of living in history to millions, but continue going off about guns most people can't afford.

Does owning stock count as owning the means of production?

Do you derive most or a significant part of your income from it?

[Senkaku]

Does owning stock count as owning the means of production?

Well yeah, you now own a piece of an entity that will produce goods and/or services which will be sold to enrich the owners... including you. You might not have very much, but still.

[Orostan]

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/res ... n_2013.pdf

Katyn was done by German bullets made in 1941 in an area the germans controlled in winter that year when these people were killed and the people were buried in a way similar to how people killed by the Germans elsewhere were buried. In addition to that children were killed at the massacre, and the USSR never executed children.

So, to be clear, based on the discovery of one 70-odd-year-old Polish body we think has been identified and is in an unexpected place, and the lack of direct reference to the actual executions themselves in transit documents about "execution camps," one fringe historian has dismissed all the other considerable evidence on various grounds, including bad translation, the simple assertion that the Soviets never killed children, and the assumption that older men's memories and therefore testimony are universally quite hazy and unreliable-- and this is the only source you have?

The burden of proof seems considerably higher, given the rather damning evidence that exists to support the mainstream view. Surely there are other scholars who've come around to this, if it's a credible view?

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover%20Furr/Furr%20tortsky%20japan.pdf

Trotsky was talking to his friends in the USSR, one of the big accusations of the moscow trials, but we only know this from mailing receipts because the actual letters were removed from the archive by someone. We also know for a fact that Stalin and the people around him as well as the American ambassador to the USSR at the time believed the trials were legtimate. I highly recommend reading at least some of this PDF.

So now we have both sources being from the same guy, which doesn't raise any questions in your mind as to whether he may be on an ideological mission with his work and whether he is in fact a completely reliable source. Cool. Based on an omission of some text from the confession of a prisoner praising Stalin... we are to take it as a legitimate confession and therefore his crime as having been real (and the interrogation process to extract confessions having presumably been humane)? And then we have a few paragraphs of not actually saying anything before arriving at a new segment of the paper trying to prove that Trotsky was indeed perhaps still trying to get people still in the USSR to remove Stalin...? I'm not reading this whole thing because I have to go to dinner, but the number of times this guy has already cited his own other works as he offers "facts" about the trials should maybe raise a little bit of doubt in your mind.

If you have other scholars or credible sources, feel free to offer them. If the proof that Katyn didn't happen and the show trials were actually good are two PDFs by the same guy... then I have to question your thought process in taking it as legitimate.

1. read the pdf, liberal. I get tired of having to explain shit over and over.

2. Read the pdf, he cites an enormous amount of evidence from western historians and primary sources.

Yeah, but most right wingers are just slaves who think their master is good and not actual capitalists. Most Capitalists don't get high on their own supply (of propaganda).

You're just afraid because I'm discrediting the very core-most foundational belief of socialism.

lol

[Debate Proxy 1]

Does owning stock count as owning the means of production?

I would say so. Stock connects to literal, physical implements of production. It also helps capitalize economic progress.

When it comes down to it, the system that delivers is the one that people will support. Socialism simply doesn't deliver.

[Senkaku]

read the pdf, liberal.

the forlorn cry of the lone tankie

[Punished UMN]

No, he's a literal genocide denier in the same league as Walter Duranty.

Duranty was an alright reporter.

Of course learning is important. But to me it seems that you are more interested in preserving a particular narrative than undertaking an objective, materialist examination of the way that USSR was organised. It should also be noted that the utility of the Soviet experience in our present situation is limited, as the prevalent material conditions of the present are distinct from those a century ago. This dogmatism gets us nowhere.

I think I've been objective, the facts support every claim I've made. The world is different from a hundred years ago but we have a lot to learn from what the USSR in terms of the social forces that shaped it and its government/economic structure regardless of that.

because I don't feel like trawling all the way back in this quote chain for wherever it may or may not be, could you review this "proof" you've presented that's so strong it should be taken as factual over the literal statements of the Russian and Soviet states re: Katyn and Stalinist political purges

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/res ... n_2013.pdf

Katyn was done by German bullets made in 1941 in an area the germans controlled in winter that year when these people were killed and the people were buried in a way similar to how people killed by the Germans elsewhere were buried. In addition to that children were killed at the massacre, and the USSR never executed children.

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover%2 ... 0japan.pdf

Trotsky was talking to his friends in the USSR, one of the big accusations of the moscow trials, but we only know this from mailing receipts because the actual letters were removed from the archive by someone. We also know for a fact that Stalin and the people around him as well as the American ambassador to the USSR at the time believed the trials were legtimate. I highly recommend reading at least some of this PDF.

The Soviet Union literally admitted it conducted the Katyn massacre.

[Sanghyeok]

Comrades, can we at least pretend to have some left-unity here? It's an anti-socialism thread, where we are being attacked together, and yet you insist on hitting each other instead of the actual capitalists and reactionaries.