What do you think of Communism

[Existential Cats]

https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /01/12.htm

1: "Marxists.org", biased
2: Politicians, especially dictators, lie, all the goddamn time.

Marxists.org is an internet archive of left-wing, primarily Marxist, documents. It's a very resourceful tool for understanding the ideology, and I say this as someone who's not remotely a Marxist.

That being said, yes, Stalin's reply was a down-right lie.

[Sordhau]

Except you haven't really debunked anything. In fact, we've proven that the USSR oppressed religion very recently.

No, i have proven that you people fail to use basic logic in your claims-how could someone lie about a well known punishment for something that was repeatedly conducted.

Bro I'm going to be real with you here: you're not refuting false claims, you're denying objectively provable crimes with little to no evidence to back up these denials. It makes the entire Left look bad by proxy. Please remember that we are trying to convince people that our cause is just and denying factual events committed by those in our camp doesn't aid in that - it makes us look worse. The USSR wasn't perfect; it did bad and stupid things. It's important to acknowledge that they happened and condemn them thusly so we can alleviate concerns that we intend to repeat such atrocities in the future as McCarthyist fearmongers would have people believe in addition to making sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

I dont like communism as historically communist countries have suppressive governments like the Eastern Block,USSR and China and they just killed anyone that disagree with them like protesting Eg Tienanmen square square, the famines in china and russia and lastly plus theirs corruption where there much more well off then their citizens

Ironically the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred under the reign of the CCP's principle reformist--Deng Xiaoping--who was instrumental in moving away from Maoism and toward Capitalism. So trying to blame that one on "Communism" a bit of an lol moment. Despite the name China has not been committed to Communist values even in theory since Deng.

Never mind that famines occurred regularly in China and Russia before Communists took over and, miraculously, the famines stopped during the tenure of Communist rule in both countries. A fact often overlooked by the "commie no food" memes.

And your last criticism rings rather hollow. The wealth gap between the Nomenklatura and Soviet workers was astronomically smaller than the wealth gap between US Congresspeople and American workers.

[Laasmistan]

Bro I'm going to be real with you here: you're not refuting false claims, you're denying objectively provable crimes with little to no evidence to back up these denials. It makes the entire Left look bad by proxy. Please remember that we are trying to convince people that our cause is just and denying factual events committed by those in our camp doesn't aid in that - it makes us look worse. The USSR wasn't perfect; it did bad and stupid things. It's important to acknowledge that they happened and condemn them thusly so we can alleviate concerns that we intend to repeat such atrocities in the future as McCarthyist fearmongers would have people believe in addition to making sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

Bingo. I'm something of a leftist myself, but to see other leftists act like leaders like Stalin and Mao outright did nothing wrong is simply disgusting. It makes us look no better than the far-right types who deny their own leaders' atrocities. It's terrible apologetics and it has sort of made me move away from the Marxist left in recent days. There's other ideologies out there, ones that don't engage in genocide denial like Tankies so regularly do.

[Sordhau]

Bro I'm going to be real with you here: you're not refuting false claims, you're denying objectively provable crimes with little to no evidence to back up these denials. It makes the entire Left look bad by proxy. Please remember that we are trying to convince people that our cause is just and denying factual events committed by those in our camp doesn't aid in that - it makes us look worse. The USSR wasn't perfect; it did bad and stupid things. It's important to acknowledge that they happened and condemn them thusly so we can alleviate concerns that we intend to repeat such atrocities in the future as McCarthyist fearmongers would have people believe in addition to making sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

Bingo. I'm something of a leftist myself, but to see other leftists act like leaders like Stalin and Mao outright did nothing wrong is simply disgusting. It makes us look no better than the far-right types who deny their own leaders' atrocities. It's terrible apologetics and it has sort of made me move away from the Marxist left in recent days. There's other ideologies out there, ones that don't engage in genocide denial like Tankies so regularly do.

I don't hate Tankies (though I disagree with them on quite a bit) but I can understand why other Leftists tend to get frustrated when dealing with them.

[Transsibiria]

Bingo. I'm something of a leftist myself, but to see other leftists act like leaders like Stalin and Mao outright did nothing wrong is simply disgusting. It makes us look no better than the far-right types who deny their own leaders' atrocities. It's terrible apologetics and it has sort of made me move away from the Marxist left in recent days. There's other ideologies out there, ones that don't engage in genocide denial like Tankies so regularly do.

Nobody is perfect and to say somebody did nothing wrong is simply false.

Instead what we need is a proper analysis of what historical figures did right or wrong. We must also take the historical and material conditions in which they took their decisions into account, to understand why they did what they did and what formed them in the first place.

Our objective ought to be to learn from the past and its mistakes to not repeat them, but also look where people have been successfull.

My 50 cent.

[Laasmistan]

Bingo. I'm something of a leftist myself, but to see other leftists act like leaders like Stalin and Mao outright did nothing wrong is simply disgusting. It makes us look no better than the far-right types who deny their own leaders' atrocities. It's terrible apologetics and it has sort of made me move away from the Marxist left in recent days. There's other ideologies out there, ones that don't engage in genocide denial like Tankies so regularly do.

Nobody is perfect and to say somebody did nothing wrong is simply false.

Instead what we need is a proper analysis of what historical figures did right or wrong. We must also take the historical and material conditions in which they took their decisions into account, to understand why they did what they did and what formed them in the first place.

Our objective ought to be to learn from the past and its mistakes to not repeat them, but also look where people have been successfull.

My 50 cent.

"Material conditions" is such a crappy excuse. That does not excuse the famines, the genocides, the extreme political repression, the persecution of minorities, etc.

[Transsibiria]

Nobody is perfect and to say somebody did nothing wrong is simply false.

Instead what we need is a proper analysis of what historical figures did right or wrong. We must also take the historical and material conditions in which they took their decisions into account, to understand why they did what they did and what formed them in the first place.

Our objective ought to be to learn from the past and its mistakes to not repeat them, but also look where people have been successfull.

My 50 cent.

"Material conditions" is such a crappy excuse. That does not excuse the famines, the genocides, the extreme political repression, the persecution of minorities, etc.

It's not an excuse. It is an explanation that helps us understand.

We cannot understand history and the actions of historical people and persons without considering the environment they operated and acted within.

Understanding someones actions, that is why and how they did it and, does not equates approval or support of said actions or people.

We often have to examine rather unsavory individuals or entities across history. To simply take a moral high ground and say "this guy was bad, lets cancel him" may work for an religious exorcism. It does fails short though for proper historical analysis.

[Laasmistan]

1: "Marxists.org", biased
2: Politicians, especially dictators, lie, all the goddamn time.

Marxists.org is an internet archive of left-wing, primarily Marxist, documents. It's a very resourceful tool for understanding the ideology, and I say this as someone who's not remotely a Marxist.

That being said, yes, Stalin's reply was a down-right lie.

Speaking as someone in the library sciences I can actually say it's a decent resource for anyone wanting primary sources on Marxist ideology. Like, if there's a particular theoretical work you want to read for your own research, for whatever reason, then it's there without bias. It's simply presenting the works as is without any added commentary or anything.

[Alexiandra]

Marxists.org is an internet archive of left-wing, primarily Marxist, documents. It's a very resourceful tool for understanding the ideology, and I say this as someone who's not remotely a Marxist.

That being said, yes, Stalin's reply was a down-right lie.

Speaking as someone in the library sciences I can actually say it's a decent resource for anyone wanting primary sources on Marxist ideology. Like, if there's a particular theoretical work you want to read for your own research, for whatever reason, then it's there without bias. It's simply presenting the works as is without any added commentary or anything.

If only there really was a lack of bias. See for example the ludicrous and defamatory 'introduction' that the MIA appended to the International Communist Party's 'Auschwitz or the Great Alibi'.

[Kubra]

Let's remember that Stalin was a master at the useful trick of navigating policy failures by way of the classic 'blame the subordinates' defense: if a policy succeeded, it was due to the his sterling leadership. If it failed, or like the Great Purge became unpopular, he could simply announce that he was appalled at the power-grabbing and overzealous actions of his subordinates and that they would be punished at once. The USSR being ideologically anti- antisemitism and also its state organs engaging in antisemitic tropes or actions when it was convenient (such as in denouncing a perceived threat) are two facts that can coexist with one another.

And contrariwise let's also remember that if you were a Jewish person in 1930's Europe, you were probably a lot safer in the USSR than you were in vast stretches of the rest of the continent. Antisemitism was incredibly common in pre-war and post-war Europe. That cover, however imperfect, probably saved a lot of Jewish lives where in other places they were handed off to the Nazis for extermination.

I mean it's important to note that stalin having Trotsky exiled for his leftism and then having bukharin offed for his rightism happened, what, a couple years apart?
As the old joke goes: three prisoners are working in the gulag. The first one says "I was arrested for denouncing Karl Radek." The second one says "I was arrested for supporting Karl Radek!" After some silence, the third prisoner says "I'm Karl Radek."

[Haganham]

And contrariwise let's also remember that if you were a Jewish person in 1930's Europe, you were probably a lot safer in the USSR than you were in vast stretches of the rest of the continent.

Only because by the end of the decade the USSR collaborated with the Nazis to allowing them to occupy the rest of Europe.

[Alexiandra]

And contrariwise let's also remember that if you were a Jewish person in 1930's Europe, you were probably a lot safer in the USSR than you were in vast stretches of the rest of the continent.

Only because by the end of the decade the USSR collaborated with the Nazis to allowing them to occupy the rest of Europe.

Lol Stalinoids hate talking about this.

[Hispida]

Bro I'm going to be real with you here: you're not refuting false claims, you're denying objectively provable crimes with little to no evidence to back up these denials. It makes the entire Left look bad by proxy. Please remember that we are trying to convince people that our cause is just and denying factual events committed by those in our camp doesn't aid in that - it makes us look worse. The USSR wasn't perfect; it did bad and stupid things. It's important to acknowledge that they happened and condemn them thusly so we can alleviate concerns that we intend to repeat such atrocities in the future as McCarthyist fearmongers would have people believe in addition to making sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

Bingo. I'm something of a leftist myself, but to see other leftists act like leaders like Stalin and Mao outright did nothing wrong is simply disgusting. It makes us look no better than the far-right types who deny their own leaders' atrocities. It's terrible apologetics and it has sort of made me move away from the Marxist left in recent days. There's other ideologies out there, ones that don't engage in genocide denial like Tankies so regularly do.

honestly, as someone who will sing the praises of stalin and mao until the cows come home, it's fucking stupid to act like they did nothing wrong. i do believe they were some of the greatest leaders in history, titans of democracy and socialism, &c., &c., but a depressing amount of people praise them ignoring all the terrible shit that happened during their tenures (in stalin's case: horrible government response to the 31-33 famine, anti-semitism after WW2, incidents of dekulakization going a bit far, frequent war crimes near the end of WW2 (which, to the USSR's defense, were cracked down on and punished but still happened a lot), and in mao's case: the sparrow extermination campaign, the outright torture of some struggle sessions, a lack of government control over many red guard units, supporting pol pot to own the libs, &c.)

And contrariwise let's also remember that if you were a Jewish person in 1930's Europe, you were probably a lot safer in the USSR than you were in vast stretches of the rest of the continent.

Only because by the end of the decade the USSR collaborated with the Nazis to allowing them to occupy the rest of Europe.

after the west rejected stalin's offer to create a defensive pact against the nazis twice. stalin offered to send 1 million men to fight germany in the event that poland is invaded after the munich conference and both britain and france said no --- and this was the second offer! the molotov-ribbentrop pact was a deal with the devil to stave off armageddon by a year or two at most (stalin did not think hitler wouldn't invade, this is poppycock); and it paid off, given that the USSR held the nazis during the crucial first two years of barbarossa nearly entirely on their own.

[Hispida]

Marxists.org is an internet archive of left-wing, primarily Marxist, documents. It's a very resourceful tool for understanding the ideology, and I say this as someone who's not remotely a Marxist.

That being said, yes, Stalin's reply was a down-right lie.

Speaking as someone in the library sciences I can actually say it's a decent resource for anyone wanting primary sources on Marxist ideology. Like, if there's a particular theoretical work you want to read for your own research, for whatever reason, then it's there without bias. It's simply presenting the works as is without any added commentary or anything.

i can certainly praise marxists.org for shying away from bias. despite being run by open trotskyists, it provides ample resources for thinkers they would disagree with (stalin, mao, &c.) and even has works by utopian socliasts (iirc)

they could easily only post marx, engels, lenin, and trotsky, but they don't, and i respect them for it

[Alexiandra]

after the west rejected stalin's offer to create a defensive pact against the nazis twice. stalin offered to send 1 million men to fight germany in the event that poland is invaded after the munich conference and both britain and france said no --- and this was the second offer! the molotov-ribbentrop pact was a deal with the devil to stave off armageddon by a year or two at most (stalin did not think hitler wouldn't invade, this is poppycock); and it paid off, given that the USSR held the nazis during the crucial first two years of barbarossa nearly entirely on their own.

So it's okay for communists to collaborate with the bourgeoisie - fascists, no less - if other factions of the bourgeoisie reject them? What kind of twisted justification is this? Bearing in mind that the non-aggression pact was hardly the extent of Soviet-Nazi relations, but that the USSR actively contributed to Nazi war preparations by shipping materials to Germany. It's also funny that you credit the USSR with trying to save Poland, despite the fact that Stalin went on to carve Poland up in conjunction with Hitler.

Face it: the USSR behaved as any other bourgeois nation would, by wheeling and dealing to secure its own interests. It switched sides according to convenience, not according to some master plan for defeating the Nazis. And even if it had been hellbent on destroying the Reich, this would prove nothing about its class character.

[Hispida]

So it's okay for communists to collaborate with the bourgeoisie - fascists, no less - if other factions of the bourgeoisie reject them? What kind of twisted justification is this?

when the only alternative is total destruction --- not just for the country, but for entire ethnicities and nations --- i'd buy a year or two to prepare, yeah.

Bearing in mind that the non-aggression pact was hardly the extent of Soviet-Nazi relations, but that the USSR actively contributed to Nazi war preparations by shipping materials to Germany.

again --- when preparing for total war, you're going to have to engage in a bit of hypocrisy. nevermind the fact that the USSR was still industrializating up until barbarossa, and nevermind that every gram of steel counts when you're fighting against an existential threat --- especially without allies!

It's funny that you credit the USSR with trying to save Poland, despite the fact that Stalin went on to carve Poland up in conjunction with Hitler.

which was a stipulation of the treaty only signed by the west declining both of stalin's offers to fight the nazis. nevermind, of course, that the land was taken by the RSFSR in the polish-soviet war, and even disregarding that was vital to create a buffer against, again, an existential threat.

you cannot rationalize the nazis as any other state. to the soviet union, and any of nazi germany's enemies, it is an existential threat. if you have to do questionable things, make questionable deals --- you do them and make them. total war is near-incomprehensible, but it must be comprehended in any discussion about nazi germany.

Face it: the USSR behaved as any other bourgeois nation would, by wheeling and dealing to secure its own interests. It switched sides according to convenience, not according to some master plan for defeating the Nazis

if by "own interests" you mean "not total ethnic and political destruction" and by "switched sides" you mean "preparing for total war to defend against said ethnic and political destruction after its offers had been rejected to take down the nazis," then sure.

and it did have a class character -- undoubtedly a socialist one.

[Carios Federation]

Commuism IS Poop
Its Kills Companies
It Does Not Go For The provinces
Companies funded hard

[Bovad]

Also, the death counts, if they were real, would only show the strengh of communism-a third of the soviet population supposedly dissapeared and yet it went on to become a superpower.

[Bovad]

:rofl: Commuism IS Poop
Its Kills Companies
It Does Not Go For The provinces
Companies funded hard

Wake up, its time for our next incoherent anticommunist awnser.

[Alexiandra]

when the only alternative is total destruction --- not just for the country, but for entire ethnicities and nations --- i'd buy a year or two to prepare, yeah.

What you're doing here is establishing the USSR, certain ethnicities etc. as worth defending in themselves. Now you may have any number of moral reasons for this position, but you make no attempt to link it to communism at all. Why should communists, in their capacity as communists, have cared about whether the USSR - by this time itself a bourgeois country committed to imperialism and slaughter - was defeated by Nazi Germany? How would the USSR's survival have contributed to the liberation of workers and the abolition of class society? We know for a fact that it didn't, given the historical record we are able to access. Why should communists at the time have supported the USSR?

again --- when preparing for total war, you're going to have to engage in a bit of hypocrisy. nevermind the fact that the USSR was still industrializating up until barbarossa, and nevermind that every gram of steel counts when you're fighting against an existential threat --- especially without allies!

This is only hypocrisy if you consider the USSR to have been anything other than a bourgeois nation - I don't. I bring this up not as proof of the USSR's hypocrisy, but as proof that its behaviour is entirely consistent with that of a bourgeois nation. It was not implacably opposed to the class enemy, but in fact very much willing to cooperate with both the Allies and the Axis, as you yourself have admitted.

which was a stipulation of the treaty only signed by the west declining both of stalin's offers to fight the nazis. nevermind, of course, that the land was taken by the RSFSR in the polish-soviet war, and even disregarding that was vital to create a buffer against, again, an existential threat.

you cannot rationalize the nazis as any other state. to the soviet union, and any of nazi germany's enemies, it is an existential threat. if you have to do questionable things, make questionable deals --- you do them and make them. total war is near-incomprehensible, but it must be comprehended in any discussion about nazi germany.

Why? Why should communists support any 'total war' between bourgeois powers? Would you take the same line on World War I? Probably not.

if by "own interests" you mean "not total ethnic and political destruction" and by "switched sides" you mean "preparing for total war to defend against said ethnic and political destruction after its offers had been rejected to take down the nazis," then sure.

and it did have a class character -- undoubtedly a socialist one.

Yes, bourgeois states routinely prepare for war in order to defend themselves against other bourgeois states. The USSR wasn't fighting for communism, for class victory, but for the USSR. That's the point that should be of interest to communists.

I would love to see how you rationalise the USSR - a society featuring capital, wage-labour, profit, private property guaranteed by the constitution, and which had explicitly renounced internationalism - as a socialist country.

[Picairn]

Also, the death counts, if they were real, would only show the strengh of communism-a third of the soviet population supposedly dissapeared and yet it went on to become a superpower.

>The death toll isn't real but if it was, it was a testament to our strength!

Tankies have made mental gymnastics into an art.

[Europa Undivided]

:rofl: Commuism IS Poop
Its Kills Companies
It Does Not Go For The provinces
Companies funded hard

Wake up, its time for our next incoherent anticommunist awnser.

Well it is pretty difficult to take tankies seriously.

[Duvniask]

This is an extremely disingenuous equivalence you're positing, not least because the boundaries of what we're genuinely allowed in "non-authoritarian" societies, as generally conceived, lie far beyond what one is allowed in, say, China. My country doesn't harvest my organs, nor does it criminalize non-coopted dissent, nor am I likely to be tortured under arrest. In addition I have much freer access to the Internet. This isn't just reducible to power structures being less "visible"; it also represents a qualitative difference.

The centering of your own personal experience here demonstrates the problems with this. You may not experience the blunt end of our society's authoritarianism, in the same way the average middle class person in China does not experience the blunt end of their society's authoritarianism. Class position, ethnicity/race, gender identity and religion all intermediate the ways society enforces its mandates on us.

My personal experience does not include being arrested or being sent to prison. I am saying the things I am on the basis of what I know about the society in which I live, which, while I'm perfectly cognizant may be a temporary phenomenon, is far more preferable to anything offered by the autocracies of the world, as they are commonly classed by the public and by the political science literature. And to explain my view further, it is not me saying that force does not exist, that there is not a power that asserts itself when it is threatened, but the way it nominally rules and functions is fundamentally different to that of an autocracy. It is not just a matter of visibility; how capitalist democracies maintain themselves is fundamentally different from authoritarian capitalist states. And it can afford to be different precisely in the sense that if a regime or system of power has popular legitimacy and functions like a well-oiled machine in balancing the different class interests in the population, it need not strengthen its grip very much on the population to survive.

See, for example, the famously draconian and Orwellian 'social credit' system in China. The vast majority of enforcement actions against individuals are for things like jaywalking, traffic violations, outstanding debts and various petty offenses like not paying fares on public transit. If you're an average middle class ethnic Chinese person, you're probably not going to get shot to death by a police officer by speeding. Or even for criticizing the Chinese government. An important component of authoritarian societies' self conceptions, after all, is that the state's force is only ever deployed against people who deserve it, not good law abiding people who sometimes run a red light. Ask a Uyghur person in Xinjiang about their experience with the Chinese state though and they'd probably tell you a different story.

Being shot to death for speeding is not to be expected, even in autocracies, although the trigger happiness of police in certain parts of the world certainly show it happens. But this is also not about traffic violations or petty offenses - since most crime is concievably of this type, you're not really proving anything by showing that enforcement actions are primarily taken against this type of behavior. Far more important is that of a political nature. Criticizing the Chinese government means being censored outright, unless it is the type of criticism where you prostrate yourself and only criticize through the prism of acknowledging CCP supremacy. We're not talking the relatively quiet and indirect censorship types we sometimes see in the west, intermittently and not as routine practice; we are talking outright crackdowns, terror.

As would a person in colour in a Southern urban centre in the US to the average white person. All of the same components of China's 'social credit' system exist there - ubiquitous surveillance, sweeping police powers of arrest and prosecution, even a literal credit system by the name of Equifax. The difference between the US and China in that regard is not between non-authoritarian and authoritarian societies, but in philosophies of control. Much of American society's enforcement apparatus is 'outsourced' to private entities like Equifax, and so it is invisible. That doesn't mean those apparatuses aren't there though. Just ask the Amazon union organizers who were surveilled by their employer or the LA county supervisor who made an enemy of the LAPD and had her house searched for compromising evidence.

It is not to be understood from my view that the United States does not maintain a brutal police force that crushes the Black population in particular, but I certainly wouldn't say it is (as yet) comparable in practice, scale or intensity to the Great Terror. It is oppression, just as union busting is oppression on behalf of bourgeois interests (naturally), but it does not possess the same kind of all-encompassing crushing or even annihilation of the opposition as we see in the most bona fide autocracies. Independent trade unions are legal and extant in the US (even if the authorities constantly try to play the slippery slope) - they are not in China. The lower classes in the US may vote someone in who promotes their well being somewhat more than another - they may not in China.

All this is of course to an extent a distraction, to be sure, because I'm also not someone who holds democracy in some sort of intrinsic regard; as I have said above democracy maintains the bourgeois society all the more surely in times of prosperity, because it keeps diverse interests in equilibrium and maintains a status quo far better than any authoritarian imposition does. But I recognize, and am glad, that in a bourgeois democracy I'm more free to speak my mind, to exist with the views that I have, than elsewhere.

[The Plantain Republic]

Personally, although I do believe that it was formulated with very noble intentions, I think that there are more than a few problems with communism as a political ideology in practice that cannot be easily repaired without the implementation of less government-centric practices. That said, I will never not stop pretending to completely support communism when Facebook conservatives criticize it online. It’s just too much fun.

[Picairn]

again --- when preparing for total war, you're going to have to engage in a bit of hypocrisy. nevermind the fact that the USSR was still industrializating up until barbarossa, and nevermind that every gram of steel counts when you're fighting against an existential threat --- especially without allies!

Ironically it was the USSR's vast resources which helped Germany come close to conquer it. Had it not been for the USSR's vital supply of grain, oil and raw resources to circumvent the British blockade (established after the UK's declaration of war), Nazi Germany would have run out of rubber and grain by June 1941, and oil by October.

The German war machine was constantly running on fumes, and it required enormous resources - whether by plunder or trade - to operate. Without critical Soviet grain and oil, Barbarossa wouldn't have even begun.

Source is Ericson (1999), Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941.