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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
OK, face of Karl Marx then. The German guy who never even set foot in the USSR.
Oh wait you think that’s bad too.
What about Mao-no.
What about Che Guev-no.
Ho Chi-no.
Venez-no.
What about the Paris commune? No? Still bad in your mind?
Marxist Austria? Nah I’m sure the army that put an end to that is preferable according to you. They called themselves socialist with none of the Soviet imagery after all!
Even if we completely rebranded socialism you’d make it your mission to add the Soviet imagery back in and remind everyone of it. Like y’all do for decidedly capitalist bandaids like student loan forgiveness or food stamps that don’t even have anything to do with socialism.
Americans threw Eugene Debbs in jail for protesting WW1. Americans unleashed the national guard on college campuses at Columbia and Kent State and on anti-homeless activists in Chicago and police reformer in Baltimore and Ferguson and now LA and New Orleans, in an endless war on anyone that even smelled slightly of whatever we’re defining as Marxist of late. These are people who spend God only knows how much money and manpower to put a surveillance dragnet around The Quackers, while screaming from the pulpit about how there’s no such thing as religious freedom anymore.
Even if we completely rebranded socialism you’d make it your mission to add the Soviet imagery back in and remind everyone of it.
They brand Donald Trump as a Soviet Socialist. It’s utterly divorced from reality.
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.
Okay, cool. I’ll continue to organize with groups that uphold existing socialism, rather than throw it under the bus for an easy rhetorical strategy that has always backfired by legitimizing anti-communist narratives.
The symbolism used by communist parties around the world, both in power and not, is a symbol of working class internationalism that trancends borders. Any genuine socialist is going to be slandered and drug under the dirt anyways, abandoning the socialist movement around the world just to try to kick that can down the road just a tiny bit means throwing away allies. It’s why the TERF movement is worse for cis feminists, and why trans-inclusionary feminism gains more traction.
Thanks for the response without calling me a racist plantation worshiper. That makes a lot of sense and I didn’t mean to offend anyone, I just know that a lot of people would love socialist policies but that symbolism is linked to something else entirely, I know it’s stupid, it’s not me personally, and it was just a thought to try to further expand socialism’s reach by bringing it into the 21st century. Be well.
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.
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.
Over 90% of the Chinese citizenry support their system, and the vast majority believe it to be democratic, more confidence than westerners have in their system. Having police and censoring the speech of capitalists is important for upholding the socialist project, especially in its early stages as it is in China.
Honestly, anyone could help Texas. I just met a homeless guy who refused to leave his tent and wore an honest to fuvk tinfoil hat.
His administration could do a lot for Texas. I’ll accuse the dengists of a lot, but, uh… Anything would be a step up from Texas. Give the fuckers a Hapsburg and they’ll do better than they are right now.
I suspect if you dug around in the lineage of Texas state leadership you’d find a few Hapsburgs. At the very least, you’ll find plenty of 1940s German refugees.
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.
what do you mean where bro. it’s everywhere. south america had a pink wave, and it’s going through another of sorts atm. it’s your continent, how do you not know that. the US is very much biased to the far right, but it’s common in the rest of the world for demsocs to pop up.
entryism has a long history of not going well, either.
look things up instead of being contrarian and coming here just to get angry with people.
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%
I love how this thread is like microcosm of westolefto. We got decaying carcass of kautskyism sprinkled by raw cointelpro, dbzeroer anticommunist, solarpunk asspull nonsense and of course .worlder who starts with ableism plus another one who gets angry when provided with evidence.
I don’t even know what to respond to a comment like this except to point out that you are absolutely hurting every cause you say you believe in with rhetoric like this.
Honestly if people want communism and socialism to be taken seriously you gotta drop all the soviet imagery.
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
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
[8 min]
[6 min]
[30 min]
[16 min]
[42 min]
[38 min]
[9 min]
[5 hr 51 min]
[5 hr 25 min]
Stalin's Major Theoretical Contributions to Marxism
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
History of the CPSU (B)
The Foundations of Leninism
Marxism and the National Question
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
No problem comrade! 🫡
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”.
OK, face of Karl Marx then. The German guy who never even set foot in the USSR.
Oh wait you think that’s bad too.
What about Mao-no.
What about Che Guev-no.
Ho Chi-no.
Venez-no.
What about the Paris commune? No? Still bad in your mind?
Marxist Austria? Nah I’m sure the army that put an end to that is preferable according to you. They called themselves socialist with none of the Soviet imagery after all!
Even if we completely rebranded socialism you’d make it your mission to add the Soviet imagery back in and remind everyone of it. Like y’all do for decidedly capitalist bandaids like student loan forgiveness or food stamps that don’t even have anything to do with socialism.
Americans threw Eugene Debbs in jail for protesting WW1. Americans unleashed the national guard on college campuses at Columbia and Kent State and on anti-homeless activists in Chicago and police reformer in Baltimore and Ferguson and now LA and New Orleans, in an endless war on anyone that even smelled slightly of whatever we’re defining as Marxist of late. These are people who spend God only knows how much money and manpower to put a surveillance dragnet around The Quackers, while screaming from the pulpit about how there’s no such thing as religious freedom anymore.
They brand Donald Trump as a Soviet Socialist. It’s utterly divorced from reality.
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.
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Okay, cool. I’ll continue to organize with groups that uphold existing socialism, rather than throw it under the bus for an easy rhetorical strategy that has always backfired by legitimizing anti-communist narratives.
Removed by mod
The symbolism used by communist parties around the world, both in power and not, is a symbol of working class internationalism that trancends borders. Any genuine socialist is going to be slandered and drug under the dirt anyways, abandoning the socialist movement around the world just to try to kick that can down the road just a tiny bit means throwing away allies. It’s why the TERF movement is worse for cis feminists, and why trans-inclusionary feminism gains more traction.
Thanks for the response without calling me a racist plantation worshiper. That makes a lot of sense and I didn’t mean to offend anyone, I just know that a lot of people would love socialist policies but that symbolism is linked to something else entirely, I know it’s stupid, it’s not me personally, and it was just a thought to try to further expand socialism’s reach by bringing it into the 21st century. Be well.
White people were put off by the civil rights movement. We don’t have the choice to abandon things based on popularity. Plus the symbols are cool.
New deal with Chinese characteristics!
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.
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.
Over 90% of the Chinese citizenry support their system, and the vast majority believe it to be democratic, more confidence than westerners have in their system. Having police and censoring the speech of capitalists is important for upholding the socialist project, especially in its early stages as it is in China.
Sure thing babe. Hey whose numbers are those?
President Xi, Liberate My People
#SOSTEXAS
Honestly, anyone could help Texas. I just met a homeless guy who refused to leave his tent and wore an honest to fuvk tinfoil hat.
His administration could do a lot for Texas. I’ll accuse the dengists of a lot, but, uh… Anything would be a step up from Texas. Give the fuckers a Hapsburg and they’ll do better than they are right now.
I say give xi a chance.
I suspect if you dug around in the lineage of Texas state leadership you’d find a few Hapsburgs. At the very least, you’ll find plenty of 1940s German refugees.
done and done. doesn’t work.
done too, doesn’t work either.
None of these have been done.
You’ve done nothing, and pretend it doesnt work.
they have, insistently. and you literally don’t know me.
look into the history of leftist movements, and don’t be an asshole.
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.
Calling me an asshole implicitly, after asking me to make your argument for you is actual asshole behaviour.
what do you mean where bro. it’s everywhere. south america had a pink wave, and it’s going through another of sorts atm. it’s your continent, how do you not know that. the US is very much biased to the far right, but it’s common in the rest of the world for demsocs to pop up.
entryism has a long history of not going well, either.
look things up instead of being contrarian and coming here just to get angry with people.
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%
i literally answered your question very directly and specifically. i cited a rich historical example you could look into and see for yourself.
you too have to want to have a conversation. i agree this chain will not be productive anymore, have a nice day.
Communists have successfully created socialist states through revolution. Throwing socialist states under the bus backfires.
This response doesnt even seem congruent with mine. Im not even sure what you;re responding to here.
I’m responding directly to your suggestion that we should abandon solidarity with socialist states, and that revolution has never worked.
He’s responding to your nonsense.
Hey, nobody serious said that one.
Truly.
They are not representative of what any sane person wants.
They absolutely are, they made the world’s first socialist state and that came with dramatic improvements for the working classes. Don’t use ableism.
I love how this thread is like microcosm of westolefto. We got decaying carcass of kautskyism sprinkled by raw cointelpro, dbzeroer anticommunist, solarpunk asspull nonsense and of course .worlder who starts with ableism plus another one who gets angry when provided with evidence.
The gang’s all here!
I don’t even know what to respond to a comment like this except to point out that you are absolutely hurting every cause you say you believe in with rhetoric like this.
No, I’m not, and I know because I do real life organizing work too.
Damn right! All that immagery and symbolism is a real dealbreaker for me too!