- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmygrad.ml
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The irony being that the boomers who say the “builds character” shit had a vastly easier life compared to their parents and grandparents, who fought literal world wars. They think all societal change before them was good (including stuff like colonialism which they see as “civilizing” the savage natives) but any progress after them is the devil because it means they might have to change their behaviour or worldviews, hell, or even the idea that people they think are less than them getting less disadvantaged and oppressed than before which I guess make them jealous or something?
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Honestly if people want communism and socialism to be taken seriously you gotta drop all the soviet imagery.
drop all the soviet imagery
if people want communism
Tell you what, we’ll stop venerating Actual Existing Socialists when you guys quit dry humping plantation owners and genocidal war mongers.
Get Jefferson of the $20 and I promise never to quote Stalin again.
calling Stalin a socialist is like calling North Korea a bastion of freedom, associating with people like him is why its so easy for the shitty rich people to claim we are evil
calling Stalin a socialist is like calling North Korea a bastion of freedom
It’s also like…
Calling january 6 funny
Calling russians humans
Calling tankman a video
Calling nordstream 2 sabotaged by usa
Calling moldovan elections rigged by the eu
They’re all provably true, yet liberals will always lie about them.
Stalin was a committed Marxist-Leninist, and oversaw the world’s first socialist state for the overwhelming majority of its most tumultuous period. He was no saint, but at the same time was no monster either. He is remembered by liberal historians as far worse than comtemporaries like Churchill who in actuality were far worse than Stalin.
As Nia Frome says, we can either distance ourselves from Stalin, and by extension the USSR and actually existing socialism, or we can fight back against bourgeois narratives about Stalin and the USSR, acknowledging their faults while being able to uphold their tremendous successes as examples of the possibilities of socialism in power. Historical nihilism, and throwing Stalin and by extension much of the early soviet union under the bus, was ultimately what allowed for liberalization within the USSR and partially contributed to the death of socialism in eastern Europe.
Demystifying Stalin
I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.
- J. V. Stalin
- Nia Frome’s “Tankies”
[8 min]
- W. E. B Dubois’ On Stalin
[6 min]
- Domenico Losurdo’s Primitive Thinking and Stalin as Scapegoat
[30 min]
- Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin and Stalinism in History
[16 min]
[42 min]
[38 min]
[9 min]
- Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend
[5 hr 51 min]
- Ludo Martens’ Another View of Stalin
[5 hr 25 min]
- Anna Louise Strong’s This Soviet World
Stalin's Major Theoretical Contributions to Marxism
I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good.
- Che Guevara
As for the DPRK, it isn’t a utopia, but it’s also a democratically controlled country. It has 3 major parties in power, the WPK has the broad majority of control while a social democratic party and a religious party also hold minor aspects of control. They have worker councils that allow for democratic decision making, and people for the most part have their needs taken care of by the socialist system they have. The DPRK is poor, but despite that achieve far greater metrics than peer countries at similar levels of wealth and development thanks to their socialist system.
Thank you for sharing these resources, bless you
calling Stalin a socialist is like calling North Korea a bastion of freedom
Which end of Korea hosted the anti-Japanese resistance movement, again? Which end of Korea is still filthy with Japanese collaborators and their heirs and benefactors to this day? What was the Bodo League Massacre and how did it instigate the war? Which country held parliamentary elections starting in 1948, free from the influence of an outside occupying government? What is Juche and how did it inform redevelopment following the war? Which country spends more on its military by a factor of 8x, primarily through grants and loans from its allies?
I’m sure you could talk shit about North Korea for hours, days even, based on what your tabloid press has punched into your ears. I gotta wonder if you’ve even once heard how North Korean expats arrive in the South or are treated by their “liberators”.
After Mr. Jang, the North Korean “defectors” are given time to speak. The most notable thing about both of them is that they both wish to return to the North. With the South so often being portrayed as a land of milk and honey when compared to the North the fact that the “defectors” wish to return, expeditiously, does again speak to the narratives about the North not being wholly accurate.
Mrs. Kim doesn’t discuss much about the North outside of missing her family, most notably her daughter. Her tragedy, being kidnapped, forced to remain in the south, attempting suicide multiple times, and forced to carry on is one of the most heart-rending testimonials from a “defector”.
Mr. Choi is a bit of the opposite, he too is a tragic case, as he’s still extremely loyal to the North. He’s an open and avowed communist and Korean nationalist. He speaks with pride of his country but does acknowledge economic hardship is what drove him to China, which in turn led to him being in the South. His passion for his homeland shines through and stands in stark contrast to the common narrative from other defectors.
ah yes “one side sucks so clearly that means the other side is absolutely perfect” you are fucking disgusting, people like who are why we never get any progress. You idealize tyranny and oppression because you have been lied to and told it is communism while true communists cannot get anywhere because of filth like you celebrating nations that murder anyone who has an opinion.
one side sucks so clearly that means the other side is absolutely perfect
It’s funny to hear liberals defend the genocidal members of the Democratic Party by insisting “we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.
But when you’re a guerrilla resistance fighting of the Japanese at their most bloodthirsty, or a country that’s painstakingly recovering after suffering more bombings in a year than all of Europe suffered in four, the bar gets raised through the roof.
You idealize tyranny and oppression
You are living under a totalitarian regime right now, you big dummy. You don’t seem to mind.
lmao you think I’m defending the genocidal losers who only still have any power because half the country is worse than them, this country is a shitshow, but worshiping dictators will not fix it. If you want actual change you need to push for progress instead of idealizing a shit past, grow up.
you think I’m defending the genocidal losers
If the shoe fits
These people are unhinged I’m just not gonna engage anymore for my mental health.
I’ll let the various communist parties currently in power in countries like the PRC, Vietnam, etc. to distance themselves from the hammer and sickle, as you don’t personally take them seriously.
Yeah, it’s just me. lol.
I’m not aware of people not taking parties like the CPC, CPV, etc seriously.
New deal with Chinese characteristics!
President Xi, Liberate My People
#SOSTEXAS
China’s socialist market economy, unlike FDR’s New Deal, is commanded by public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy under a proletarian-led and controlled state, unlike FDR’s bourgeois controlled imperialist state. Socialism isn’t simply having safety nets, it’s a mode of production.
Totally, totally. Those are the nets I think of when i think of their production. Very proletarian led, that’s why they need all the cops and censorship.
The worker’s state needs worker’s cops and worker’s censorship. Crime and cia outlets don’t magically disappear in a worker’s state.
Those are the nets I think of when i think of their production.
It’s weird how liberals will insist “one county, two systems” is a fiction, then point to a glaring example of Hong Kong labor policy and blame Beijing.
Nevermind the fact that you’re describing Foxcon, a Taiwanese company focused on manufacturing for American and Japanese electronics distributed into Western markets.
That’s the evil Chinese Communism you’re complaining about. No word on when Americans plan to sanction Foxcon for these abhorrent labor practices.
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None of these have been done.
You’ve done nothing, and pretend it doesnt work.
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they have, insistently.
Where?
A few people trying to try something doesnt mean they succeeded at trying said things.
I mean, here we are on lemmy where people insist on nonsensical revolutions and have hated the idea of working to change parties; the only pragmatic solution, for ever.
look into the history of leftist movements, and don’t be an asshole.
Calling me an asshole implicitly, after asking me to make your argument for you is actual asshole behaviour.
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I don’t think further conversation on this chain will be productive. Spouting irrelevant rhetoric with strenuous relations while completely neglecting any of the points I’ve made can only go so far.
Also, to call me a contrarian, while being unable to acknowledge that you have a severe marketing issue I think is a great microcosm of the attitudes here.
You feel that being angry and isolated enough will somehow spread change, forgetting that you’re probably in the sub 1% in terms of groups of people, and haven’t made a dent into the other 99%
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Yeah things were “better” under the Soviet Union.
They were. The large majority of people who lived in the soviet union regret its fall. The introruction of capitalism and the destruction of the socialist system caused metrics like life expectancy, home ownership, quality of life, and more to plummet while poverty, starvation, prostitution, and drug abuse skyrocketed.
People love getting high on nostalgia when things aren’t looking up well in the present moment. Even many of those who were under fascism are nostalgic of it. That’s the point of nostalgia: only remembering the good parts of the past while pretending the bad never happened.
“sure, the people living there say that it was better under communism, but obviously they’re too stupid and foreign to know what they think. Only I, the enlightened westerner, can truly judge if things are better, which I will do based on vague vibes that I can’t identify the source of”
“People hated living under communism just ask them”
Actually you’ll find most people preferred living under communism
“They’re just blinded by nostalgia”
So you can’t just ask people about what it was like under communism?
“No you can, if you did you’d find they all hated it”
“I like to say I love communism without under duress.”
“I love communism not because I am a card-carrying party member.”
“The fact that more people fled from communist countries than coming in means those people are crazy.”
Least incoherent anti communist
Life being worse ensures you never get any power.
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Until you suddenly have all of it and things are very chaotic and messy
.
Liberals talking about how much worse life could be as soon as Mamdani won the NYC mayoral election (suddenly its how much things are supposedly going to get):
Its absurd to me that you think Mamdani is closer to the right of this image than the left.
Really feels like people here have no idea what the soviet union was like and just see politics as a way to show how alt they are rather than wanting practical solutions to real problems.
When people just make edgy memes instead of talking about sane steps towards a better world such as socialized post secondary education, nationalized resources, UBI, full coverage single payer etc.
Its always some nonsense about decapitating people, because thats easy, doesn’t require any real work (as they’ll never do any of those “you first” actions) and allows them to feel suprior for literally working against the goals they claim to support.
No, the people that want genuine socialism instead of safety net band-aids want socialism because it has a proven track record of dramatically uplifting the working classes in ways capitalism cannot. We socialists do know what the soviet union was like, we read books, study history, and more in order to try to best emulate what worked well while learning from what didn’t, and adapting it to our conditions. The safety nets you describe cannot stop the imperialist decay of the dying US Empire.
This is a lot of buzzwords with very little to no content.
With so many significant problems with their system, why use it as a base at all as opposed to simply advocating for the change you want to see?
No, the people that want genuine socialism instead of safety net band-aids
The previous commenter brought up Mamdani, and they were wrong for thinking Mamdani is a socialist, but they weren’t wrong for observing that reality does not bring you to your socialist utopia dreams within a lifetime, and thus the “bandaids” you decry are necessary to even begin to convince people to be less afraid of the ideas of socialism.
You are clearly letting perfect be the enemy of good, or improved here, because hard line idealist stances do worse than accomplishing nothing; they make the politics you state you support harder to sell people on, and harm change towards that direction.
Mamdani is actually a great example of what the stepping stones actually look like. A real person, making real, socialist changes within a much larger system at a level that people accept and will hopefully grow to appreciate rather than sitting making grungy alt comments on the internet in an effort to put down other people they agree with far more than any other groups.
.
This type of purposefully too vague to be worth while conversation is just irksome.
The idea that your votes don’t matter, despite billionaires bending over backwards to encourage exactly that type of opinion, so that people stop using all of the levers they have (especially given how easy this one is to pull) is ridiculously counterproductive.
Organizing with your fellow workers sounds like a great idea, except that you can’t do so effectively if the ballot box you want to ignore the importance of works to effectively remove your protections and help the ownership class press you.
Even if you think its little oppression vs big oppression, that difference absolutely matters, especially given the cost the benefit analysis which makes voting crazily valuable for literally just showing up and casting a vote every few months.
you will find that demsocs like mamdani are relatively common throughout the world outside the US. how it usually goes for us is he will eventually either hit a wall or be forced to by the system.
This right here also lacks significant nuance. Its once again based on some vague idea that if a solution isnt everything, its nothing. You ever wonder what would happen if there were enough Mamdanis out there?
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