a totally planned economy is set to fail because it’s impossible to plan for everything.

What do you mean? Can you provide an example, and how Capitalism can better account for it?

Even Paul Averich, an anarchist who wrote the definitive history of the 1921 Kronstadt uprising and critic of the Bolsheviks, didn’t call Lenin genocidal. Ever heard about the White terror? After the civil war Lenin was sick and by Feb 1924 he would be dead, but go ahead and keep believing in myths. Calling Lenin a genocidal dictator, and hand wringing about the red terror after the Russia fought off civil war and invasions for years after the October revolution, is akin to taking the side of the confederates after the American civil war. Complete ignorance of history, complete acceptance of bourgeois myth.

I’m not uncritical of the USSR or the Bolsheviks and I’m a little skeptical of campists who are; but at least they have usually read reliable history books on the topic and come to a conclusion based on some factual information. You are not dealing with the historical context in which these tragedies occurred.

I’ve very much heard of the red terror, i.e. the internal response of the Bolsheviks in the RSFSR to the civil war against Tsarism and their allies. It was very restrained in numbers (nothing like the Stalinist terror), can be very well compared to the oppression within republican Spain in the Spanish civil war against fascism, both in scope and in numbers. I wonder why people never criticise the latter… Oh right, because they lost against fascists, and the only acceptable leftist movements in the west, are those that fail, like Spanish Second Republic, Mosaddegh, Salvador Allende…

What you anticommunists can’t stand isn’t the red terror, but the fact that for once, the leftists used the means they needed to use in order to secure a victory against fascism

Lenin was the man who presided over the creation and support of new worker power and socialist modes of production.

All he did was create a centralised state capitalism and perpetuated existing class conflict, with his party taking the role of the bourgeoisie.

What separates any form of Marxism from “state capitalism,” in your eyes? Marx was an advocate for central planning.

Secondly, please describe how the CPSU competed against each other in Markets for the purpose of Capital accumulation into their own pockets, and explain why wealth disparity greatly decreased during the USSR and increased after it’s dissolution.

The USSR had numerous struggles and issues, both external and internal, but it was Socialist. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds if you want a critical look at the successes and failures of the USSR, and its place in Socialist history.

You could dispute the genocidal bit but you cannot in good faith argue that the communist party wasn’t dictatorial.

In what manner was the Communist Party “dictatorial?” It held immense power, yes, but it wasn’t 1 dude deciding everything, there was worker participation in how it ran and the party itself was democratically run. There was corruption, yes, but it wasn’t a dictatorship either.

And I believe the OPs point is that that’s a bad thing.

We shouldn’t be basing our politics and imagery today off the guy who fucked socialism for a century.

How, exactly, did Lenin “fuck socialism for a century?”

Trotsky was in charge of the red army wrt the suppression of the Makhnovists, so your ire directed at Lenin is misplaced. Even the idea that Lenin had total dictatorial control is a slanderous myth. He was a sheer intellectual force of history, committed to revolution. The Bolsheviks were flawed and contained many bellicose elements such as Stalin; and Lenin was content if not often forced to leave many matters in the hands of Trotsky, Kamanev, Zinoviev and others. If anything, Lenin didn’t have enough control over the Bolsheviks

(Said the dude from .ml)

I really don’t mean to be rude, but both you and the other user seem to have no concept of anarchism. I mean, what you said straight up makes no sense. Marxists and AnComms both have the same end goal, so what do you think the difference between them is?

Anarchist societies and groups exists and have existed throughout history; they didn’t have to be “build towards” by taking control of the government first.

And please don’t be telling me why you like or don’t like anarchism; I’m arguing about what it is. Whether you like or think is viable is an entire different conversation.

AnComms are under the socialist umbrella, but the comic isn’t delving into every single thing that’s under that umbrella, because it’s not 600 pages long.

This is the conclusion I’ve come to since reading the State and Revolution. The people who are capable of overthrowing the current system aren’t likely to be the same people capable of keeping true to an approach that’s legitimately socialist. There are problems with reformism as well, as it can result in an endless series of small concessions to distract from an equally endless series of measured power grabs.

If I take what I read of Marx and Engels as likely to be accurately predictive, my conclusion has to be that the circumstances they’re discussing haven’t occurred yet. Basically, Lenin jumped the gun with his support of imposing a revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat. The power structure it creates is too centralized to achieve its goals.

This would suggest to me that if Marx and Engels are correct, a spontaneous and universal proletariat uprising is probably still down the road somewhere. Basically, we see hints at this state reflected in the microcosm of revolution, but have yet to see the circumstances that cause an actual change of prioritization and autonomy rather than simply a changing of the guard.

What are you? A Trotskyist? A Liberal?

immediately dismantled the socialist power structures that were in place

That’s insanely ahistorical. The socialist power structures that were in place, existed precisely BECAUSE of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. And soviets had a very high degree of government control all the way up until the death of Lenin. You’re seriously mistaken about this

Hitler had famous writings detailing his ragingly racist and antisemitic views, and committed holocaust against specific ethnicities and nationalities out of Aryan-supremacism.

Napoleon was a militarist nationalist whose life was purely a militarist endeavour. He pursued violent expansionism out of patriotic fervor.

Comparing Lenin, a lawyer who escaped the autocratic regime of his homeland and spent a life in exile examining Marxist texts on how to improve the life conditions of people, to either Napoleon or Hitler, shows you have absolutely no idea of the values Lenin valued and promoted, you haven’t read one single of his texts, and you’re speaking purely out of anti-communist sentiment that’s been ingrained in your brain.

Generations of socialists have been critical of social democracy. Generations of capitalists have been saying that social democracy is the closest we will ever get to socialism. So who should I believe, the western consensus of capitalist academia, beholden to big money donors for research grants, or the most brilliant, brave and capable intellectuals of the past 200 years, such as Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, DuBois, Lenin and (for a bit of Nordic flair) Pannekoek?

Because what is the Nordic model really? A huge part of the Nordic economy is defense contractors, which means your social democracy is paid for with mass death, imperialism and immiseration. Also, as a member of the western hegemon, Nordic countries enjoy the fruits of neocolonial exploitation of Africa, Asia, South America, etc., not very socialistic to prop up a class of war mongering rich, even if they pay marginally higher taxes than elsewhere.

This debate has existed for a long time, but to socialists it is settled. The Wikipedia entry for the Gotha program of 1875 calls it “explicitly socialist.” And even by today’s standards, it was and would be fairly progressive; calling for workers rights, universal sufferage, etc., but to many of the members of the first socialist international it was controversial because it relied on an upper class of politicians and business men to administer the social reforms. Karl Marx wrote his “Critique of the Gotha Program” tearing apart every point of the short document as another form of class rule, and even created some problems for his socially a connected partner Friedrich Engels by calling Ferdinand Lasalle, a popular reformer, politician and architect of the Gotha program, “a petty dictator in waiting.” He could not have known that Lasalle was in fact conspiring with von Bismarck to enact a plan of social democracy that would serve as a cover for a new regime of class domination that would undercut the socialist movement with moderate reforms, while making the working class beholden to the political/economic upper class.

These reforms can be taken away over time, which we are seeing in European social democracies over the last 40 years; leaving only the naked coercive competitive drive of capitalism to govern all social relations.

And like, I’m an American, my country is the imperial epicenter for neocolonialism imperialist expansion, bourgeois decadence, exploitation and immiseration (for now.) My experiences with people from Nordic countries who I have met have been overwhelmingly positive. Your social democracies are superior to our laissez faire capitalism, they make more sense, are more stable and less subject to natural instability cycles inherent to the system. Nothing is cut-and-dry, there are blended forms of political and economic organization, just like there are blended classes, and new forms are always emerging as history marches. If you want to believe that your social democracies are an island within capitalism, that’s mostly true! But to a socialist, it is not socialism. Quoting a Wikipedia article at us when most of us are acutely aware of how it is used by businesses and governments to shape our remembrance of history and the ideas with which we use to shape the world, comes off as incredibly weak and unconvincing, especially when so many of us spend years studying independently, having discussions and organizing our communities. You can quote wikipedia but it will never convince a socialist. I hope you become more mindful of where you are getting your information and whom that particular interpretation of facts serves. Spoiler alert! Its the owners of private property, the means of production, which have always shaped history and defined the classes and antagonisms inherent to them.

You seem to cite Wikipedia as your favorite source. How about opening articles on capitalism and socialism before you go any further?

This should help you get up to speed before you accuse me and all others of making stuff up.

humans in general are more equipped to have empathy for a smaller tribe

not even - the small tribe is who tribe members with dark triad personality traits hurt the most

I agree.

People gain power and become greedy and selfish. It’s not a capitalist thing, it’s been going on throughout all recorded history

Yeah that’s really what my point boils down to. We humans ruin everything

Huh? Do you think the people on top aren’t going to get more money, better food, better everything? That’s been proven over and over and in America? That would be abused immediately. Do you think things work for free in a socialist society? If there’s money, there will be skimming. And we’re talking about socialism. Not communism. I’ve lived under a communist regime, it’s not good. You young North American people shouldn’t dream about that shit.

Socialism is good. Communism has been bastardized and corrupted beyond repair.

What’s your point?

Rather than a dry, aseptic description of the Cuban institutions and form of government, the book reads as a historical account of the process that took place in the years of the Periodo Especial.

The second half of the book, for some reason, is a recount of the Cuban revolution and its historical causes, which you may or may not skip reading depending on what your purpose is with the book.

Thanks for providing a link!

Thanks for posting the link!

I’m not the person you asked and they surely have a better answer, but I thought I’d throw some things out there:

A lot of what are understandably called “one party states” are not technically one party. The DPRK has like three other parties and I’m pretty sure there are countless parties all over the PRC. It’s still reasonable to refer to these countries as one party states because they have some kind of constitutional provision preventing any other party from taking power at the highest levels, but they still use multiple parties as a means of representing diverse interests.

Our comrade VI evidently knows way more about Cuba than I, but something I happen to know is that, when you run for office in Cuba, you are not the candidate of any party, you are effectively independent. I think that they conceptualize what a party is in a very different way. In America, the political parties are literally private entities, with all the legal ramifications that entails, and are effectively companies pushing brands in order to get money from donors via held seats (that’s a crude generalization, but I think it works well enough). In the “one party states” I know of, the “one party” is considered to be part of the governing apparatus itself, rather than something that exists outside it seeking to influence it. It’s all a conjoined project that way.

I personally think that, assuming there is actual democracy in terms of the government needing to enact the popular will, a one party state is probably a more coherent way of having society united in its various projects, even if the proverbial ship needs to change course now and then for whatever reason. That’s just my feeling though, and it’s mainly informed by the overwhelming sense one gets if they follow American elections that they are engineered at every level to be anti-democratic.

Thanks for being open to discussion, I appreciate it. I’ll start talking about the reality of multi-party systems and liberal democracy.

Generally, multi-party systems aren’t democratic if we adhere to the definition that “the power of legislation is in the hands of the people”, which I think would be a good premise for a parliamentary multi-party system. Ideally, you’d choose a platform in elections, which has a given program, or even create your own platform if you don’t feel represented enough. Then, this platform supports its program in a Congress, and votes through representatives to pass legislation according to its program. Sounds good, but let’s examine whether the policy that people want to enact is actually passed, and whether policy that people don’t want to enact is passed.

We can start with the case of the US. The vast majority of Americans support an extended universal healthcare system of some sort. The technical details are a bit hazy, but the reality is that most people would support such a system as poll after poll shows. Yet, the years pass, and there’s basically no progress in this direction, how is this democratic? How come if a majority of people support this, it’s not pushed forwards and legislated? It’s the same with abortion rights, a vast majority of Americans believe in legal abortion rights for women, yet no legislation is passed in that regard and many states actually go backwards. A majority would support increased taxes on the extra-wealthy and on big companies. Study after study show that public opinion is one of the worst predictors for policy, i.e., there’s barely any correlation at all between polls on policy, and actual passing of policy. Can we say that there’s an actual democracy in the US, when the interests of the people don’t correlate with legislation?

I’ll talk about Europe now, since I’m Spanish and it’s a closer example to me. Recently we assisted to the outrageous example of Macron unilaterally skipping Congress to increase the retirement age against the desires of basically the entirety of France. Huge protests broke out, he was vilified in social media, and all polls showed that this was an extremely unpopular decision. Yet it passed. The same happened all over the EU during the 2010 Euro crisis. Austerity policy was enforced by the authorities everywhere: lowering expenditure on healthcare, education and public retirement pensions, reducing investment in infrastructure, increasing taxes such as VAT… Again, this was extremely unpopular and against the desires of most people. It’s been a decade and a half since then, and these austerity policies are still in place. VAT is still higher than it was, expenditure in healthcare and education hasn’t increased to the levels prior to the crisis… Yet another example of blatant anti-democracy. If the policy isn’t carried out with the will of the people, the system isn’t democratic.

I could go on giving examples of failed cases of policy in multi-party systems, but now I’ll do the opposite and bring examples of multi-party systems that actually applied popular policy.

Salvador Allende was a Chilean leftist politician in the previous century, who was elected by a majority of citizens to carry out nationalizations of the mining industry (the heart of the economy of the country at the time), and to improve the welfare state. His term didn’t last very long at all, because when popular policy started being actually enacted in a democratic fashion, a fascist coup murdered him and replaced him with a fascist dictator.

In the Spanish Second Republic, a similar thing happened. In the 30s, a very progressive leftist government was elected, and promised to carry out land reform, i.e. expropriation from big landowners and redistribution of land to the farmers in a country which was primarily agrarian. It suffered the same fate: a fascist coup, a bloody civil war, and almost 40 years of fascism.

In Iran, under the administration of Mosaddegh, a leftist secular politician who wanted to make sure that the Iranian oil was profiting the majority of Iranians instead of the Shah and a few British companies, nationalised the oil industry. This was met with economical blockade, with paid actors pretending to be communists destroying private property to agitate people, and fake protests organized by the mafia funded by the MI6 and the CIA ousting him from the government.

Now let’s go to a period in which actually progressive policy was passed in Europe in a popular and democratic fashion: the post-WW2 period. Under the looming threat of a socialist revolution, and the high level of labour organization through unions, the governments of Europe were successfully pressured into passing meaningful legislation on the limit of working hours per week, on progressive tax systems, on welfare state (healthcare, education and pensions)…

So it seems to me, that the only way to make governments pass actually progressive and democratic policy that most people agree with, is through the organization of workers and the threat of a communist revolution. That, if people just vote socialists into power without organizing labor, they suffer coups, that if they vote social-democrats they get austerity and antidemocratic policy. What percentage of Europe agreed to increase the military budget after the start of the war in Ukraine? I’m not trying to argue whether that’s a good or a bad policy, I’m just saying all polls showed it was an originally unpopular decision, yet it was carried out.

If the only way to enforce governments to enact popular, progressive and democratic policy, is through the organization of labor, then why would I want multi-party systems instead of a system of representation of workers in a single, unified, democratic structure?

I know it’s a long answer, but I appreciate it if you made it to the end.

You’re literally posting liberal nonsense in a leftist community

Removed by mod

Because they continue what they have historically done: outsourcing the most extreme poverty and suffering to the countries they exploit for resources.

You do know that hunger and malnutrition in the US impacts millions of people every year, and Cuba has eliminated food insecurity for its entire population, right?

If not, now you do.

Exporting your poverty and starvation to foreign countries where you super-exploit and plunder does not mean that the cause isn’t with the “well functioning Capitalist country.”

This comic makes a ton of logical leaps, by which i mean that it assumes that the reader is already familiar with certain information and leaves it implied. More broadly, it seems to assume that the audience already agrees that communism is the best. I’m particularly annoyed at the second pannel describing a command economy in a very short and unconvincing way, as if the audience already knows and agrees.

That’s the purpose of building up dual power via leftist orgs, so that when Workers do sieze control, there are pre-existing structures. It’s difficult to put all of theory into a comic.

Human nature? Which part of human nature? Humans are multifaceted. Also, there has never been an example of socialism in practice, even moderate social democracy that secured domestic mineral and oil resources for its own people, that hasn’t come under direct attack, invasion, embargo, sanction, etc., by western capitalist powers. It usually isn’t human nature messing things up, its direct capitalist imperialist intervention.

Also what model of human nature are you using? I prefer the dialectical construction of Benedict Spinoza in his book Ethics, have you ever considered what you mean by it or where you picked it up from? I see a lot of hand waving about human nature from people, but no description of what it actually is. How do you know you aren’t using a flawed concept in your determination?

Sure, so let’s try nothing, because the current system works so well. I mean, what with us having solved homelessness, having equality, and fixing the climate, I can’t imagine why we should do something different.

I understand that you’ve had a bad experience, and I also understand that the real world examples of nation states claiming to be socialist have been less than ideal, but, as a species, we have to decide what is more important, because we’re running out of time. I’m not a Soviet fan boy or a tankie, I’m an anti authoritarian, libertarian socialist. But it’s a bit like the US election right now. I don’t like Kamala, but I’ll take her over Trump, and continue to work outside of that to achieve my actual goals. I don’t like state socialism, but it’s better than what we’ve got. If the biggest problem with socialist states has been corruption in the upper echelons of power, then that is excellent real world data to draw from when we considering alternatives to both our current system and the experiments of the past. Strict transparency, more citizen involvement, less concentration of power. Sure, again, not my ideal system, but it’s something better. We have examples to draw from, both in failures and successes. Yugoslavia had a lot more personal freedoms than the USSR, and a strong focus on worker cooperatives. Cuba has managed to create one of the best healthcare systems in the world with shoestrings and belt buckles. The USSR gives us an example of just how quickly progress can be made in areas like industrialization, crucial information that could help us in the transition to renewable energy. The US and Western Europe have created citizenry that are unwilling to accept, at least in theory, authoritarian, iron-fist control. We absolutely can create something that blends these philosophies, but it is imperative that it’s focus be on the creation of an egalitarian society that works towards ending tyranny, which includes the tyranny of workers, and seeks to solve the climate crises. We do not have a choice if we want to survive the next few decades.