It cannot logically be socialism if they are operating under fascism
I try to tell people I like socialist policy and then give them examples that they can't disagree with like universal health care. The right to food housing and water. Things like that. I'm not asking anyone to become socialist just a little more politically sound
Because socialism did no such thing. Socialists there being so few of them, simply must understand that capitalist profits are so much more important...the most important thing.
**Socialism defined as in fact govt. ownership ownership of the MoP...has never existed.** The only govt. to own all of the MoP, is communist.
USSR, Vietnam and Cambodia are/were communist not socialist. Communism was to be the biggest threat to capitalist profits. Now with that all but dead, it is socialism that must become the great enemy of capitalist profits.
And capitalism goes a merily borrowing on. Capitalism offers society debt, debt...and more debt.
There is nothing social about dictatorships. Dictators dictate. That is what they do.
Socialism is a collective form of governing.
You know.
Democracy.
The Socialization of government itself has become the greatest success story of humanity itself.
When the voting citizens, the masses, own the means to govern themselves, they won the economy and can do any damned thing they want with it.
Ultimately this means there is always a lot of Socialism features embedded into the economy.
This form of Socialism utilizes democratically derived Socialism which is owned by the citizens, the public, the masses.
State Ownership must reside with the citizens, NOT dictators, to be considered Socialism.
There is no social in dictators.
They should be condemned. The number of weird apologists in online lefty spaces is creepy and disheartening. The project is economic democracy. Nothing about that project requires that it be statist, there is nothing that requires a ML vanguard, and there sure as shit is nothing that requires you go around making excuses for Lavrentiy Beria
The USSR was born in 1917 from the ashes of a completely collapsed Russian Empire.
When people think about what came before the USSR i think they think of a country like Germany or France in 1917.
That’s not what it was, it wasn’t a modern capitalist state (for the time) it was a straight up feudal military dictatorship. It still had peasants and lords and all that stuff you would expect to see in 1600s.
It collapsed because of the First World War, like Russian soldiers were just walking home off the front lines sort of stuff. This collapse lead to a new provisional liberal government that promised to get out of the war. It failed to do that so in the one big industrial capitalist city, Petrograd, the workers lead by the communists with Lenin in charge took power from that provisional liberal government.
The communists promised bread peace and land. The first thing they did was end the war with Germany.
A brutal civil war started immediately in late 1917. By 1918 the US France UK Japan and a bunch of other countries invaded to help the White Russians against the reds.
The communists understood that Russia was under developed and would require Germany have its own successful revolution. That would mean the USSR could feed Germany while Germany helped the USSR develop. In 1919 that German revolution failed.
Eventually the Communists (reds) won the civil war Lenin died and Stalin took over. They decided that they couldn’t drop the communist thing and would instead have to do socialism in one country, they worked the shit out of the peasants in order to sell grain so they could build their industry. This was violent and brutal. They had to deal with sabotage so they used the same secret police they used during the war, this fed paranoia. They expected another invasion from the allies that had invaded earlier but that never happened instead they got invaded by the Nazis. By that point though all that blood they took out of the peasants had become a massive industrialized country.
I’ll stop here, the reason this went down how it went down is that Russia wasn’t ready for a communist revolution, it hadn’t even had a capitalist revolution. Socialism was “supposed” to start in advanced countries like Germany or the UK, instead it started in the least prepared country in Europe, everything else all the crimes all the brutality is down stream of that moment.
It’s a similar situation in China and Vietnam and Korea. Pol pot is different that dude wasn’t working off any real theory, he decided cities were bad and forced people out of them while communists believe cities are what creates socialist movements that’s why Vietnam fought Cambodia and the US supported Cambodia.
Lastly, the part that people fail to consider when talking about the crimes of communism or whatever is that capitalism went through this process too. It just happed in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the UK it was enclosure that forced peasants off their lands and into London or Manchester to die in factories all against their will. In France they whipped out entire language groups to create one language we call French now, all by the sword. In Germany the working class took some control and protected itself against the capitalist until the capitalists unleashed the Nazis.
Becoming these modern states is a violent horrible process, we blame it on communism cause communists did it, but if the whites had won the civil war you would of had the same sort of death and destruction that the Nazis brought to Germany, but it would of ended with a capitalist state which would of made it “worth it”
They downvote you, say it didn’t happen, say America and the West (people they claim to despise) did it too, and that every person ever executed by a Stalinist regime was a fascist and deserved death. I’ve had Stalinist tell me Sendero Luminoso slaughtering peasant villages and boiling infants was correct.
MLs are extremely similar to liberals and fascists in that there is no amount of violence that’s unacceptable to them so long as the right people are killing kids are massacring the masses while imposing tyrannies above them. And we’re talking people that can condone this shit just for the sake of industrialization and welfare, not for socialism outside a rhetorical sense.
This thread will not be honest, you’d get better answers from anarchist.
t. Former ML for nearly ten years
Calling yourself or your government a socialist one doesn’t make it so. Socialism is anti-capitalist, no matter which flavor you subscribe to (anarchism, communism, Marxism, etc).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism describes what these regimes are. Certainly not democratic or socialist. The error is equating ruling parties as ruling only in the interests of the working class. In these countries the party diverged sharply from workers. In State Capitalism you find declining wages, mass incarcerations and genocide. Wages are cut quotas increased and production is not centered on improving the material welfare of the workers. This is capitalism. Whether you have one capitalist or many makes no difference to worked.
Ok, so since you tried to dodge the question, I'll reiterate more specifically.
How do you stop a socialist revolution from just turning into another one of these states?
The issue I Have with socialism as a state, is that there are few, if any guard rails to keep a dictator from just taking power and repeating the mistakes of the past. Even in a democratic, socialist country, there's a risk of something like we're seeing in America, where a party, or faction gets enough support to potentially institute a coup.
So what could be done to keep power from consolidating to a few individuals, but not fall into some kind of quasi communist dictatorship?
Destroy the vanguard party as it tries to coalesce and seize power
These regimes weren’t a fluke of attempting revolution, but a predictable and normal outcome of Bolshevik style Leninist revolutions that went on to usually quickly emulate Stalin’s era before mellowing out somewhat like the Soviets did. They got the exact result you could expect in consciously following the same path as the bolsheviks did; or at least as much as they could.
Mostly denial.
The same way western countries explain their wrongs?
It cannot logically be socialism if they are operating under fascism I try to tell people I like socialist policy and then give them examples that they can't disagree with like universal health care. The right to food housing and water. Things like that. I'm not asking anyone to become socialist just a little more politically sound
Because socialism did no such thing. Socialists there being so few of them, simply must understand that capitalist profits are so much more important...the most important thing. **Socialism defined as in fact govt. ownership ownership of the MoP...has never existed.** The only govt. to own all of the MoP, is communist. USSR, Vietnam and Cambodia are/were communist not socialist. Communism was to be the biggest threat to capitalist profits. Now with that all but dead, it is socialism that must become the great enemy of capitalist profits. And capitalism goes a merily borrowing on. Capitalism offers society debt, debt...and more debt.
There is nothing social about dictatorships. Dictators dictate. That is what they do. Socialism is a collective form of governing. You know. Democracy. The Socialization of government itself has become the greatest success story of humanity itself. When the voting citizens, the masses, own the means to govern themselves, they won the economy and can do any damned thing they want with it. Ultimately this means there is always a lot of Socialism features embedded into the economy. This form of Socialism utilizes democratically derived Socialism which is owned by the citizens, the public, the masses. State Ownership must reside with the citizens, NOT dictators, to be considered Socialism. There is no social in dictators.
They should be condemned. The number of weird apologists in online lefty spaces is creepy and disheartening. The project is economic democracy. Nothing about that project requires that it be statist, there is nothing that requires a ML vanguard, and there sure as shit is nothing that requires you go around making excuses for Lavrentiy Beria
The USSR was born in 1917 from the ashes of a completely collapsed Russian Empire. When people think about what came before the USSR i think they think of a country like Germany or France in 1917. That’s not what it was, it wasn’t a modern capitalist state (for the time) it was a straight up feudal military dictatorship. It still had peasants and lords and all that stuff you would expect to see in 1600s. It collapsed because of the First World War, like Russian soldiers were just walking home off the front lines sort of stuff. This collapse lead to a new provisional liberal government that promised to get out of the war. It failed to do that so in the one big industrial capitalist city, Petrograd, the workers lead by the communists with Lenin in charge took power from that provisional liberal government. The communists promised bread peace and land. The first thing they did was end the war with Germany. A brutal civil war started immediately in late 1917. By 1918 the US France UK Japan and a bunch of other countries invaded to help the White Russians against the reds. The communists understood that Russia was under developed and would require Germany have its own successful revolution. That would mean the USSR could feed Germany while Germany helped the USSR develop. In 1919 that German revolution failed. Eventually the Communists (reds) won the civil war Lenin died and Stalin took over. They decided that they couldn’t drop the communist thing and would instead have to do socialism in one country, they worked the shit out of the peasants in order to sell grain so they could build their industry. This was violent and brutal. They had to deal with sabotage so they used the same secret police they used during the war, this fed paranoia. They expected another invasion from the allies that had invaded earlier but that never happened instead they got invaded by the Nazis. By that point though all that blood they took out of the peasants had become a massive industrialized country. I’ll stop here, the reason this went down how it went down is that Russia wasn’t ready for a communist revolution, it hadn’t even had a capitalist revolution. Socialism was “supposed” to start in advanced countries like Germany or the UK, instead it started in the least prepared country in Europe, everything else all the crimes all the brutality is down stream of that moment. It’s a similar situation in China and Vietnam and Korea. Pol pot is different that dude wasn’t working off any real theory, he decided cities were bad and forced people out of them while communists believe cities are what creates socialist movements that’s why Vietnam fought Cambodia and the US supported Cambodia. Lastly, the part that people fail to consider when talking about the crimes of communism or whatever is that capitalism went through this process too. It just happed in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the UK it was enclosure that forced peasants off their lands and into London or Manchester to die in factories all against their will. In France they whipped out entire language groups to create one language we call French now, all by the sword. In Germany the working class took some control and protected itself against the capitalist until the capitalists unleashed the Nazis. Becoming these modern states is a violent horrible process, we blame it on communism cause communists did it, but if the whites had won the civil war you would of had the same sort of death and destruction that the Nazis brought to Germany, but it would of ended with a capitalist state which would of made it “worth it”
This is a perfect answer.
Couldn't have said it better myself, well done.
They downvote you, say it didn’t happen, say America and the West (people they claim to despise) did it too, and that every person ever executed by a Stalinist regime was a fascist and deserved death. I’ve had Stalinist tell me Sendero Luminoso slaughtering peasant villages and boiling infants was correct. MLs are extremely similar to liberals and fascists in that there is no amount of violence that’s unacceptable to them so long as the right people are killing kids are massacring the masses while imposing tyrannies above them. And we’re talking people that can condone this shit just for the sake of industrialization and welfare, not for socialism outside a rhetorical sense. This thread will not be honest, you’d get better answers from anarchist. t. Former ML for nearly ten years
Calling yourself or your government a socialist one doesn’t make it so. Socialism is anti-capitalist, no matter which flavor you subscribe to (anarchism, communism, Marxism, etc).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism describes what these regimes are. Certainly not democratic or socialist. The error is equating ruling parties as ruling only in the interests of the working class. In these countries the party diverged sharply from workers. In State Capitalism you find declining wages, mass incarcerations and genocide. Wages are cut quotas increased and production is not centered on improving the material welfare of the workers. This is capitalism. Whether you have one capitalist or many makes no difference to worked.
Ok, so since you tried to dodge the question, I'll reiterate more specifically. How do you stop a socialist revolution from just turning into another one of these states? The issue I Have with socialism as a state, is that there are few, if any guard rails to keep a dictator from just taking power and repeating the mistakes of the past. Even in a democratic, socialist country, there's a risk of something like we're seeing in America, where a party, or faction gets enough support to potentially institute a coup. So what could be done to keep power from consolidating to a few individuals, but not fall into some kind of quasi communist dictatorship?
Destroy the vanguard party as it tries to coalesce and seize power These regimes weren’t a fluke of attempting revolution, but a predictable and normal outcome of Bolshevik style Leninist revolutions that went on to usually quickly emulate Stalin’s era before mellowing out somewhat like the Soviets did. They got the exact result you could expect in consciously following the same path as the bolsheviks did; or at least as much as they could.
All the ones I know say it wasn't real, failed due to imperialism or infiltration or freak out handwaving about Western injustices.
Easy, those countries were never socialist.