Anti-Socialism Thread

[Wink Wonk We Like Stonks]

Assuming that your second paragraph is talking about the higher stage of communism (it’s unclear)If we’re starting from the presupposition of communist society having being reached (which is problematic since it is pointless to speculate on the minutiae of something so different to the current state of things), this doesn’t make sense. The law of value and exchange do not exist in communist society. “Paying” for labour power, an exchange of commodities, does not occur. The engineer is “paid” in the sense that they are fulfilled by their actions and their actions increase the overall prosperity of society.

The position of “engineer” may also imply set professions (I don’t know if you intended to imply), was high is also at odds with the abolition of the division of labour.

What I'm saying is that divisions of labor are natural, or at least that there is a tendency of nature toward them. I can't continue tonight because very tired, and will have to check in another day, but basically, societies that lack them have a difficult time being economically competitive and productive. When faced with influxes of products from societies that do have them, or even the arising of one somewhere if we assumed the whole world to go classless and stateless, the people who knew how to invent rare products and organize these time-efficient labor divisions would gain (a) popular support from the introduction of that product (as the Indian fur trade showed) and (b) get people signing on for inequality because that is the only way to produce said product, or get it fixed for that matter.

You can see where that goes: initial market inequality -> eventual full capitalism.

It's rooted in genetics. Some people have better memories, intelligences, learning capacities than others, and will always find a way to leverage a position of influence or providership of inventions/reinventions to unskilled and semi-skilled labor for personal benefit, even when you hit a classless society.

The Handicapper General would like to know your location.

[Picairn]

Saw this on Reddit today:

Fucking lmao

[Aureumterra III]

Saw this on Reddit today:

(Image)

Fucking lmao

To be fair, that’s on r/PCM where no one takes themselves seriously and ironically that’s the only sub where people of different ideologies can get along

The rest of Reddit is basically Twitter

[Duvniask]

Saw this on Reddit today:

(Image)

Fucking lmao

To be fair, that’s on r/PCM where no one takes themselves seriously and ironically that’s the only sub where people of different ideologies can get along

The rest of Reddit is basically Twitter

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

[Exalted Inquellian State]

Alright, I've been a good little tankie and began reading the PDF just so I can hit back harder. I'm four pages in. Furr already lied by saying no evidence the confessions were faked was ever published. He then twisted words by using the quotes of a soviet presidium member that state that Bukharin(who, mind you, was Stalin's close ally), and Rykov weren't spies. He then pointed out they weren't convicted of being spies, but recruiting spies for a spy agency. But obviously, it's kinda tough to say "Bukharin and Rykov weren't members of spy agency recruiting spies", so it's likely the presidium member shortened it and they weren't THAT either. The only upside I give Furr is that he admitted yagoda was a murderer.

[Exalted Inquellian State]

I'm just going to stop on page 6. Iakir was tortured between May 31st and June 9th when the letter, in which he proclaimed himself guilty, was sent. And for parts of his trial on June 11th, he maintained he was innocent, showing the letter was one big fake. Also, Furr said two sentences were omitted even from the published letter and assumed they were Iakir saying Trotsky collaborated, but he didn't give the same benefit of a doubt to the presidium member, and just assumed what he said was a direct line and not a shortened version. So yeah, i won't bother.

[Auze]

To be fair, that’s on r/PCM where no one takes themselves seriously and ironically that’s the only sub where people of different ideologies can get along

The rest of Reddit is basically Twitter

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

Based.

[Nuroblav]

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

Not on reddit myself, but I used to hang around the Political Compass meme pages on Instagram quite a fair bit. Now I no longer bother with the comment sections (which tend to be one massive shithole) and quite frankly the memes are terrible most of the time.

Obvious lesson: Don't use memes to find out about ideologies.

[Orostan]

Well you obviously don’t know what Furr is like because you refuse to read his work.

Remind yourself to never lecture anyone about someone whose work you haven't read.

I do think Trotsky sending regular messages to his buddies in the USSR and sending messages urging a coup to parts of the government is indicative of a conspiracy, yes.

In the same way someone sending messages to my mom that they should bang means she's being unfaithful to my dad?

As for this conspiracy, I'm sure it was necessary to purge the army, including of some of its best and most forward-looking commanders, like Tukhachevsky and Rokossovsky. Now Rokossovsky luckily survived, because he proved the charges against him were completely baseless and because he refused to confess under torture; btw explain how there wasn't torture, considering the guy had his fucking teeth knocked out (he was reluctant to smile, thus showing his steel teeth), his ribs broken and had to suffer several mock executions, and then only released because the military was in need of skilled officers.

And I do think there is evidence in the German archives to support the idea that the nazis knew what was going on and provided at minimum passive support.

And how are we supposed to measure that against the claim that Trotsky was working for the Nazis to carve up the USSR?

Read the PDF, liberal.

I have read enough of it to know its horseshit.

Your quote from Gotha proves my point! That’s how rubles functioned India the USSR. Just because what is functionally a socialist labor voucher is called a ruble doesn’t mean that when you get paid with it you are doing wage labor. The USSR didn’t even pay people with normal wages and the fact that you claim this shows that you are illiterate and incapable of reading my sources. The USSR paid people rubles according to production norms which is exactly what marx describes as certificates from society for labor done.

This is hardcore mental gymnastics.

Whatever you mean by "normal wages", it's pure nonsense, as you've already been shown. Wages are the price of labor power that employers pay out, and its commodification in the USSR should be clear to anyone who has not buried their head in the sand. The USSR had a labor market like anywhere else: you look for a job offer, sign a contract or whatever that specifies your rate of wages, either piece-wise or based on work-time, and then you go work for a state firm which has its own revenue stream and profits, a substantial part of which is, firstly, absorbed by enterprise managers in the form of bonuses and by other party-parasites before going to the state to be reinvested back into the economy through the designs of state planners* - it's an accumulation of capital, and the worker just described is producing the surplus value appropriated by the firm and state.

The worker then goes about his or her day, to spend their wages on the "market for consumer goods", to paraphrase Stalin. Now you can harp on all you want about the prices being controlled by the state, like some MLs do, but all that does is, in effect, to distort information about the value of goods. Suppression of monetary forms in general and the fact that firms under Stalin didn't need to be profitable only ensured that the economy had a chronic utilization and waste problem. Predictable efforts to rationalize production then occurred under subsequent Soviet leaders, because the law of value asserts itself independently of the will of state bureaucrats and captains of industry. There's a reason the USSR had a state bank that could lend money to people, including for the purposes of starting their own enterprise-operation, and also the fact that you could buy government stock which would earn you interest. And I have as of yet said nothing about the private household plots of the kolkhozes, from which farmers could sell their own produce to market prices.

*To even call the Soviet economy planned is a misnomer. The "plans" were bullshit, adopted ex post and constantly revised: see for example Nove, The Soviet Economic System (1977). The plans were, aside from an expression of political objectives, mere descriptions of the process of competition and bargaining for resources and easy quotas that took place between the various ministries and state firms. Enterprises were run like personal fiefs, with managers engaging in autarky via total vertical integration, because the "planning" system was anarchic and didn't properly guide production at all, thus forcing them to produce outside the plan and use semi-official expediters to get their hands on the necessary materials.

1. lol

2. No, in the same way sending messages to someone and then claiming you weren't while wiping your archive of any evidence apart from some mailing receipts you forget to get rid of indicates something funny might be going on. Tukhachevsky was an actual fascist sympathizer and had said extremely alarming stuff in the past. What got him in trouble was making anti-semetic and pro-german remarks while drunk in Czechoslovakia. It was the Czechs that started the chain of events that lead to his execution.

There were abuses by the NKVD against people like Rokossovsky, but you neglect to mention that Rokossovsky himself did not blame Stalin nor the soviet government as a whole for what the NKVD did and believed the moscow trials as a whole were legitimate.

3. Because it's true? The Germans had military and political relations with the USSR at the time as both had been cooperating under the Wiemar government to develop new weapons. It's not at all unreasonable to say that they would have known about a planned coup that involved significant parts of the military. In fact, it's more unreasonable to say they wouldn't have.

4. Obviously not if you can't make a sensible argument against it.

5. Getting a job and doing work does not equal wage labor. There was no change in wages with supply and demand or any type of labor market. If you'd read some of the stuff I've linked, you'd know that production norms were set with a great deal of influence from the workers doing the actual work. There was no wage labor market in the USSR and you have failed to provide evidence their was.

Lastly you simultaneously criticize the USSR for not doing enough economic planning and doing too much. You criticize the USSR for allowing the purchase of "government stock", which didn't happen and I challenge you to find evidence it did, while also criticizing the USSR for not mandating that state enterprises be profitable. What are you even doing? Did the USSR plan too much or too little? Were they too socialist or not socialist enough? You switch between maintaining the USSR couldn't be socialist because of the law of value doing what it wanted despite their best efforts to plan and saying that the USSR was too socialist by trying to plan their economy against economic laws.

Alright, I've been a good little tankie and began reading the PDF just so I can hit back harder. I'm four pages in. Furr already lied by saying no evidence the confessions were faked was ever published. He then twisted words by using the quotes of a soviet presidium member that state that Bukharin(who, mind you, was Stalin's close ally), and Rykov weren't spies. He then pointed out they weren't convicted of being spies, but recruiting spies for a spy agency. But obviously, it's kinda tough to say "Bukharin and Rykov weren't members of spy agency recruiting spies", so it's likely the presidium member shortened it and they weren't THAT either. The only upside I give Furr is that he admitted yagoda was a murderer.

He didn't lie, if he did lie then prove it. There is no evidence the confessions were faked because none exists and I challenge you to find evidence if it does exist. Furr also isn't twisting anyone's words, he's criticizing anti-communists for doing exactly what you say he's doing. He gives the full context of that passage from the letter unlike the author he is criticizing. You read Furr without actually considering anything he was saying. Hardly a fair way to read any work of any type. I don't read like that when I read Mises even.

NK and SK were similar until the seventies, with NK actually ahead of the south. This only started changing when massive amounts of foreign capital came into South Korea while the North was becoming increasingly economically isolated. I can’t contest you on that claim that NK industrialized caster than the USSR did but if they did that’s great for them.

SK has edges over its northern neighbor but I’d hesitate to call if a better society. For what North Korea has to work with they do a very impressive job at providing for their people.

We can agree there.

One can wonder, maybe look at, what went wrong in NK for it to lose its initial progress edge. I do have my theory how it happened.

There aren't many people in the world who actually know how to build industrial machinery. Stalin understood that; a big part of Soviet industrialization was paid for by sending state-requisitioned grain to capitalist countries, notably the U.S. before the Cold War. The U.S.S.R. did prioritize education very highly, probably for reason of raising up minds who could understand such machines.

The D.P.R.K. had a sort of "thaw period", if you can call it that, where there was more freedom of thought than today. No criticizing the government, of course, but the infrastructure was pretty much allowed to be developed by the people, and the state more or less stayed out of it. Korea also had the advantage of a previously educated population.

But a major concern for communist parties, at least if they haven't gotten addicted to wealth themselves, has always been trying to keep inequality in check. Left to themselves, people tend to develop black market-type of habits; even without the protection of laws, black markets have inequality.

If you start finding that the scientists, engineers, etc., become a threat to state ideals, it's either the economic growth they lead or the political ideal that gets sacrificed. This is one factor that could cause what Fidel Castro referred to as a "brain drain".

One could refer to Marx, and note his remarks on society progressing in stages. Stalin himself had written on the subject of closing the gap with the capitalist world, if I recall this right, so as to speed Russia past the capitalist stage and produce an economic base that will support a socialist superstructure.

But if forced to choose between economic progress and equality, that could be a really big snag for reaching socialism, and we have yet to see a socialist project that managed to surmount them; one would expect a better, more humane society not to revert to capitalism unless some really powerful economic forces were at work.

Absolute nonsense, socialist states have always promoted education. You have no idea what you're talking about, especially when it comes to what socialist states want from doctors and engineers and why they had black markets. You are making claims that you can't give even one single shred of evidence for. There is no choice between economic progress or equality that has to be made, that's elitist nonsense. You reference North Korea but you fail to mention that the country clearly has education good enough to develop its own nuclear program and maintain better health and education standards better than every other country at its level.

[Sicilian Imperial-Capitalist Empire]

The German Empire isn't on the list.

Mexico, curiously enough, is though. Four times, in fact.

What counts as an aristocratic pre-WW1 dictatorship?

Any dictatorship/dictatorial monarchy from before 1914. There were no dictatorships except the one led by Yuan Shikai that began during WWI. Even so, that one was quite aristocratic in nature (I mean he crowned himself Emperor of China for crying out loud).

However, to be more specific, the list of "aristocratic" dictatorships is essentially the equivalent of the "other" category. Dictatorships that may have been capitalist in nature, but weren't driven by ideology like the dictatorships of the 20s and beyond.

Okay, but Lenin made theoretical distinctions Marx did not make. It is important for me to specify what I am when other leftists are in the thread who might disagree with me if I make certain statements.



75 years is a long time to be temporary. The USA survived as long as it has for many historical reasons, but this is like me saying that liberal democracy doesn't work because of the Dutch Republic or the early merchant republics. It's not an argument because it ignores how successful the system was in the time it was around and what it did for people. The collapse of the USSR was a long and complex process, but you should note that for the majority of Russians and most other people in the former USSR the Soviet Union didn't fail. They want it back.

They want a one-party, politically oppressive, communist state back? Where did you hear this?

Apparently, they do. Crazy how nostalgia captivates some people.

Yes, but ultimately it was temporary. Despite the Soviet Union's long existence, the USA survived longer, had a higher standard of living, and, most importantly, was democratic and had a powerful capitalist economy. Ultimately, the socialist economic system of the Soviet Union started to fail by 1989, and it collapsed in 1991. Also, the Soviet Union copied a lot of the things it made from capitalist countries. It could never have made its nuclear weapons if it hadn't paid spies to steal the US designs, and then copied them. Then there was the engine for the Mig-15. Finally, explain the Soviet Union's Line X program (Google it). The capitalist West never had any need to carry out a program like this. You have tried and failed to convince me and change my views. Lol, some anticommunists can be very stubborn like me.

---

I am reposting this.

The USSR made the greatest leap in standard of living in history and was democratic until the fifties, and remained with democratic elements until the moment it fell. The USSR did copy stuff it's enemies did right, but that is what you do when you're behind the other guy. Both sides of the cold war were very interested in the other's technology, and you forget the USSR was the first to put a man in space, send a probe to mars, and make almost every major space race milestone. They didn't steal Sputnik from the west.

Ever heard of a Georgian man named Joseph Stalin?

1) Yes and Yes. My family fled socialism in East Germany, now it threatens to infect the US

Anyone who actually takes the time to understand US politics will know that this is a nice joke. The Democrats are not socialist, and socialism isn't giving people free healthcare. Socialism is when you seize the means of production, not appeasing the proletariat with trinket reforms.

And, just to add insult to injury, the democrats have affirmed time and time again that they will do anything to destroy progressives in their party, including calling them socialist to scare the American public. That's why we have the centrist Biden as the current democratic candidate.

2) Yes, they should. Unfortunately, our fundamental disagreements on trivial beliefs prevent us from seeing the true enemy

Unfortunately for you, that "true enemy" is dead in the US, and has been dead for over a century now. Socialism died in America with the First Red Scare, and is unlikely to come back. Whether that's great or not is up to you.

-snip-

Look guys, the socialists are returning to the anti-socialist thread!

[Punished UMN]

Dismissing political opinions as just nostalgia can be silly. The USSR factually had a higher standard of living than its successor states, for the most part.

[Exalted Inquellian State]

Alright, I've been a good little tankie and began reading the PDF just so I can hit back harder. I'm four pages in. Furr already lied by saying no evidence the confessions were faked was ever published. He then twisted words by using the quotes of a soviet presidium member that state that Bukharin(who, mind you, was Stalin's close ally), and Rykov weren't spies. He then pointed out they weren't convicted of being spies, but recruiting spies for a spy agency. But obviously, it's kinda tough to say "Bukharin and Rykov weren't members of spy agency recruiting spies", so it's likely the presidium member shortened it and they weren't THAT either. The only upside I give Furr is that he admitted yagoda was a murderer.

He didn't lie, if he did lie then prove it. There is no evidence the confessions were faked because none exists and I challenge you to find evidence if it does exist. Furr also isn't twisting anyone's words, he's criticizing anti-communists for doing exactly what you say he's doing. He gives the full context of that passage from the letter unlike the author he is criticizing. You read Furr without actually considering anything he was saying. Hardly a fair way to read any work of any type. I don't read like that when I read Mises even.
.

I told you, Iakir confessed to being guilty on June 9th, but then maintained he wasn't guilty on June 11 at the trial. And he was tortured. Seems like forceful confession to me. Furr twisted the presidium members words because the man said "Bukharin and Rykov weren't spies". Furr obviously ignored the fact he could've shortened the statement for time an claimed Bukharin and Rykov were accused of recruiting spies, not being spies themselves. To be fair, the member did ignore part of the question, so it does hold some ground Would you say "Rykov and Bukharin were not in fact recruiting spies for a spy organization?" Plus two other sentences on a TV interview, which the man was in? No. And the man wasn't anti-communist, he was a member of the Presidium, which only had communist party and members from independent organizations, but a law from 1931 forced them to be subservient to party rule(and Stalin made that law. So much for "democratic until the 50's" am I right?). And at the end of page 5, in parenthesis, Furr says some text was omitted form the official publication to. He just assumes they were proof he collaborated with Japan and Germany, and unlike me doesn't give him a benefit of a doubt by saying he did right on page six. And I just want to say, if Stalin had to murder most of the military and his own allies to remain in power, how much of the country do you think liked him, especially after that? Do you seriously think that with all the famines, murders, and disappearances he'd stay in power within a democratic society?

[Exalted Inquellian State]

What counts as an aristocratic pre-WW1 dictatorship?

Any dictatorship/dictatorial monarchy from before 1914. There were no dictatorships except the one led by Yuan Shikai that began during WWI. Even so, that one was quite aristocratic in nature (I mean he crowned himself Emperor of China for crying out loud).

However, to be more specific, the list of "aristocratic" dictatorships is essentially the equivalent of the "other" category. Dictatorships that may have been capitalist in nature, but weren't driven by ideology like the dictatorships of the 20s and beyond.

They want a one-party, politically oppressive, communist state back? Where did you hear this?

Apparently, they do. Crazy how nostalgia captivates some people.

The USSR made the greatest leap in standard of living in history and was democratic until the fifties, and remained with democratic elements until the moment it fell. The USSR did copy stuff it's enemies did right, but that is what you do when you're behind the other guy. Both sides of the cold war were very interested in the other's technology, and you forget the USSR was the first to put a man in space, send a probe to mars, and make almost every major space race milestone. They didn't steal Sputnik from the west.

Ever heard of a Georgian man named Joseph Stalin?

1) Yes and Yes. My family fled socialism in East Germany, now it threatens to infect the US

Anyone who actually takes the time to understand US politics will know that this is a nice joke. The Democrats are not socialist, and socialism isn't giving people free healthcare. Socialism is when you seize the means of production, not appeasing the proletariat with trinket reforms.

And, just to add insult to injury, the democrats have affirmed time and time again that they will do anything to destroy progressives in their party, including calling them socialist to scare the American public. That's why we have the centrist Biden as the current democratic candidate.

2) Yes, they should. Unfortunately, our fundamental disagreements on trivial beliefs prevent us from seeing the true enemy

Unfortunately for you, that "true enemy" is dead in the US, and has been dead for over a century now. Socialism died in America with the First Red Scare, and is unlikely to come back. Whether that's great or not is up to you.

-snip-

Look guys, the socialists are returning to the anti-socialist thread!

I think the only pre-WW1 dictatorial monarchies were Napoleon and his nephew, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and absolutist regimes.

[Punished UMN]

Grover Furr is not a historian and his writings have no relevance to any kind of productive discussion of the history of the Soviet Union. There are valid defenses of Stalin, but Furr does not offer any of these.

[Exalted Inquellian State]

Grover Furr is not a historian and his writings have no relevance to any kind of productive discussion of the history of the Soviet Union. There are valid defenses of Stalin, but Furr does not offer any of these.

I think he's a historian on English literature. Should've stuck with that probably.

Edit: nevermind. he just teaches literature from medieval times.

[Kiu Ghesik]

What I'm saying is that divisions of labor are natural, or at least that there is a tendency of nature toward them. I can't continue tonight because very tired, and will have to check in another day, but basically, societies that lack them have a difficult time being economically competitive and productive. When faced with influxes of products from societies that do have them, or even the arising of one somewhere if we assumed the whole world to go classless and stateless, the people who knew how to invent rare products and organize these time-efficient labor divisions would gain (a) popular support from the introduction of that product (as the Indian fur trade showed) and (b) get people signing on for inequality because that is the only way to produce said product, or get it fixed for that matter.

You can see where that goes: initial market inequality -> eventual full capitalism.

It's rooted in genetics. Some people have better memories, intelligences, learning capacities than others, and will always find a way to leverage a position of influence or providership of inventions/reinventions to unskilled and semi-skilled labor for personal benefit, even when you hit a classless society.

The Handicapper General would like to know your location.

*cocks shotgun*

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

Based.

Auze is officially based! Their Based Count is now 1.

Rank: House of Cards

I am not a bot, or so I think. Reply /info for more info.

[Auze]

Dismissing political opinions as just nostalgia can be silly. The USSR factually had a higher standard of living than its successor states, for the most part.

Which really shouldn't be surprising, considering government collapse is not generally good for welfare programs or the economy (and that's without going into the ethnic conflicts).

[Cordel One]

To be fair, that’s on r/PCM where no one takes themselves seriously and ironically that’s the only sub where people of different ideologies can get along

The rest of Reddit is basically Twitter

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

They also portray Nazism as auth-center, sometimes even to the left.

Reddit is best avoided in general, there are a few neat parts but it's extremely toxic and a bad place to spend time on. r/dankleft is great though

[Sicilian Imperial-Capitalist Empire]

Any dictatorship/dictatorial monarchy from before 1914. There were no dictatorships except the one led by Yuan Shikai that began during WWI. Even so, that one was quite aristocratic in nature (I mean he crowned himself Emperor of China for crying out loud).

However, to be more specific, the list of "aristocratic" dictatorships is essentially the equivalent of the "other" category. Dictatorships that may have been capitalist in nature, but weren't driven by ideology like the dictatorships of the 20s and beyond.

Apparently, they do. Crazy how nostalgia captivates some people.

Ever heard of a Georgian man named Joseph Stalin?

Anyone who actually takes the time to understand US politics will know that this is a nice joke. The Democrats are not socialist, and socialism isn't giving people free healthcare. Socialism is when you seize the means of production, not appeasing the proletariat with trinket reforms.

And, just to add insult to injury, the democrats have affirmed time and time again that they will do anything to destroy progressives in their party, including calling them socialist to scare the American public. That's why we have the centrist Biden as the current democratic candidate.

Unfortunately for you, that "true enemy" is dead in the US, and has been dead for over a century now. Socialism died in America with the First Red Scare, and is unlikely to come back. Whether that's great or not is up to you.

Look guys, the socialists are returning to the anti-socialist thread!

I think the only pre-WW1 dictatorial monarchies were Napoleon and his nephew, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and absolutist regimes.

In Europe, yes. There were a couple other ones scattered around the world and from 4 centuries ago, but Europe was the main area of those dictatorial monarchies.

[Sicilian Imperial-Capitalist Empire]

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

They also portray Nazism as auth-center, sometimes even to the left.

Reddit is best avoided in general, there are a few neat parts but it's extremely toxic and a bad place to spend time on. r/dankleft is great though

Yeah. r/communism is just a bunch of Stalinist and CCP apologists who have forgotten the true goal of communism and bathe in being authleft.

[Exalted Inquellian State]

r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a cesspool that serves to normalize fascism and pass it off as a reasonable political doctrine.

They also portray Nazism as auth-center, sometimes even to the left.

Reddit is best avoided in general, there are a few neat parts but it's extremely toxic and a bad place to spend time on. r/dankleft is great though

I mean, they're not completely wrong. It's either auth-center or third position.

[Cordel One]

They also portray Nazism as auth-center, sometimes even to the left.

Reddit is best avoided in general, there are a few neat parts but it's extremely toxic and a bad place to spend time on. r/dankleft is great though

Yeah. r/communism is just a bunch of Stalinist and CCP apologists who have forgotten the true goal of communism and bathe in being authleft.

They call themselves MLs but they don't follow Marxist or Leninist theory. I don't know how to describe those people, but they're not MLs or communists.

[Polska Rzeczpospolita Robotnicza]

Yeah. r/communism is just a bunch of Stalinist and CCP apologists who have forgotten the true goal of communism and bathe in being authleft.

They call themselves MLs but they don't follow Marxist or Leninist theory. I don't know how to describe those people, but they're not MLs or communists.

They're called Dengists, and they're not people.

[Orostan]

The USSR made the greatest leap in standard of living in history and was democratic until the fifties, and remained with democratic elements until the moment it fell. The USSR did copy stuff it's enemies did right, but that is what you do when you're behind the other guy. Both sides of the cold war were very interested in the other's technology, and you forget the USSR was the first to put a man in space, send a probe to mars, and make almost every major space race milestone. They didn't steal Sputnik from the west.

Ever heard of a Georgian man named Joseph Stalin?

I've made it clear what I think about Stalin.

He didn't lie, if he did lie then prove it. There is no evidence the confessions were faked because none exists and I challenge you to find evidence if it does exist. Furr also isn't twisting anyone's words, he's criticizing anti-communists for doing exactly what you say he's doing. He gives the full context of that passage from the letter unlike the author he is criticizing. You read Furr without actually considering anything he was saying. Hardly a fair way to read any work of any type. I don't read like that when I read Mises even.
.

I told you, Iakir confessed to being guilty on June 9th, but then maintained he wasn't guilty on June 11 at the trial. And he was tortured. Seems like forceful confession to me. Furr twisted the presidium members words because the man said "Bukharin and Rykov weren't spies". Furr obviously ignored the fact he could've shortened the statement for time an claimed Bukharin and Rykov were accused of recruiting spies, not being spies themselves. To be fair, the member did ignore part of the question, so it does hold some ground Would you say "Rykov and Bukharin were not in fact recruiting spies for a spy organization?" Plus two other sentences on a TV interview, which the man was in? No. And the man wasn't anti-communist, he was a member of the Presidium, which only had communist party and members from independent organizations, but a law from 1931 forced them to be subservient to party rule(and Stalin made that law. So much for "democratic until the 50's" am I right?). And at the end of page 5, in parenthesis, Furr says some text was omitted form the official publication to. He just assumes they were proof he collaborated with Japan and Germany, and unlike me doesn't give him a benefit of a doubt by saying he did right on page six. And I just want to say, if Stalin had to murder most of the military and his own allies to remain in power, how much of the country do you think liked him, especially after that? Do you seriously think that with all the famines, murders, and disappearances he'd stay in power within a democratic society?

Furr didn't manipulate anything, he gave you the facts you're trying to use against him right here. Being part of a socialist government doesn't automatically make you a socialist, especially in terms of power struggles. If you're objecting to democratic centralism in the soviet government that's hardly an objection to anti-democratic behavior. I don't know what specific law you are referring too but the 1936 constitution of the USSR had its problems but was in general very good and gave the civilian elected government a lot of new powers. Wikipedia says, which I assume you are referencing, that Iakir admitted being part of a conspiracy but denied being a spy. His full letter doesn't even conflict with that, and wikipedia is hardly a reliable source for political history.

[Cordel One]

They also portray Nazism as auth-center, sometimes even to the left.

Reddit is best avoided in general, there are a few neat parts but it's extremely toxic and a bad place to spend time on. r/dankleft is great though

I mean, they're not completely wrong. It's either auth-center or third position.

Not really, their support of hierarchies and supremacy makes them very authright. The political compass is inaccurate, but there isn't any ascended "third position".