• CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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    306 days ago

    Why would there need to be an alternative? It was already the best possible version of what could have happened, within the bounds of a crushing siege by the entire capitalist world on one hand, and basic human fallibility on the other. There is no other political leader in history with a higher proportion of correct decisions to mistakes than Stalin, and they were mistakes, as in consequences not intended from actions taken earnestly to protect the people of the USSR - unlike the actual unspeakable atrocities being committed constantly by every single imperialist nation at the time, as well as before and since.

    Even just on its own terms, the USSR was unimaginably more humane than what came before:

    what existed outside of it:

    and what came after:

    This is called the “Eastern Cross” by the way, a demographic phenomenon unique to former nations of the USSR, where the death rate and birth rate suddenly cross over each other in the 90s. It’s way better that this happened, of course, than the USSR being run by “”“authoritarians”“” who would protect their people from sabotage and murder using the necessary amount of violence (that is, still less than their enemies).

    But I forgot, we’re comparing an actual nation that had to actually exist in the dirt and blood of the real world, to the geometrically perfect platonic anarchist society that lives in your head, so I guess I have to concede. I’ll go tell all the communists in the third world to pack it up and disband their organizations and scratch out all the hammers and sickles so you can go tell them how to avoid being assassinated by the CIA the right way.

      • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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        185 days ago

        Thanks, and to add even further, this had global effects too

        High living standards and strong workers’ rights and compensation in the USSR forced capitalist nations around the world to make concessions to their workers. Once the USSR had been destroyed, the concessions could be rolled back and the profits guzzled by the capitalists.

          • FunkyStuff [he/him]
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            224 days ago

            If we argue based just on principles and philosophy, we’re dogmatists.

            If we argue based on lived experience of people who lived in socialist countries, we’re nitpicking.

            If we argue based on statistics and empirical evidence, we’re using pre-prepped propaganda.

            If we argue based on more basic knowledge about communism defeating fascism, we’re oversimplifying history.

            So how do you want us to argue? Would you rather the communists just not explain their case at all, McCarthy?

    • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
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      216 days ago

      It’s crazy that the absolute lowest mortality rate the empire ever managed was still like double the Soviet Union’s mortality rate during the middle of WW2.

    • Aatube
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      65 days ago

      it’s not like stalin purged the census statisticians for months when he didn’t get the statistics he wanted

      It’s way better that this happened, of course, than the USSR being run by “”“authoritarians”“”

      eh we all know capitalist oligarchies are always worse comrades

      • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
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        195 days ago

        is it just me or is literally every single liberal rebuttal in this thread purely spoken from an armchair deep within a mind palace?

      • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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        265 days ago

        Damn, I didn’t know you could bluff the Wehrmacht with fake industrial output. Who knew you could just lie about how much steel you were producing and simply will more divisions of tanks into existence?

        Also, more importantly than that, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you have a single shred of evidence to back up that claim? In fact, do you have a single shred of evidence to back up ANY of your claims? I’ve never even heard a claim like that before. Did you just make it up off the cuff? Do you care about evidence? Do you read books? Have you even the slightest singlest iota of interest in the actual factual history of the world, or are you just a larper who prefers a particular set of drapery on the society they idly daydream about?

        I care because these were people who actually lived and fought and bled for a better world and I will not have some imperial core shitstain besmirching their name by drooling out the cheapest CIA propaganda ever produced. Are you stupid? What do you think living inside a successful propaganda campaign would look like? Have you ever considered why your opinions align exactly with the interests of the US State Department? Go and read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, it’s short and you’ll learn something.

        • Aatube
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          24 days ago

          I didn’t say anything about Soviet voluminous military output or the prowess of determined command planning under Stalin at rapid industrialization. I was talking about their human statistics, their mortality statistics.

          https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/knigi/polka/gold_fund08.html is Soviet academia rehosted on Demoscope, a neutral website on the publications in demography—not democracy.

          I’ve read that part of that book. On the topic of prison mortality, it just repeated the historical consensus of 799,455 official executions between 1921 and 1953, and 1.5–1.7 million additional deaths in the Gulag out of the 18 million that passed through between 1930 and 1953. 1.5 million ÷ 18 million is over 8%. Meanwhile, the review article “‘A Dark Cloud Will Go Over’: Pain, Death, and Silence in Texas Prisons in the 1930s” lambastes the suffering of state prisoners, weeps over “the prison population swelled from 5,000 prisoners in 1930 (itself cause for much concern in prison Annual Reports) to crisis levels of 7,177 in April 1939, making the Texas Prison System one of the largest in the country” and denounces the 68 deaths per year. ( 68 + 21 lynching deaths ) ÷ 5,000 is 0.178%.

          • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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            154 days ago

            Damn, I wonder what events occurred betwen 1930 and 1953 that would have caused a spike in both occupancy of Soviet prisons, and the death rate in them.

            1942, I wonder what was happening in that year?

            Anyway, nice cherry-picked comparison, let’s take a look at the actual mortality statistics:

            Well would you look at that, as soon as the genocidal Nazi threat against the Soviet people was destroyed, their life expectancy almost instantly doubled from pre-communist times. I believe neutral demographs would call that the second highest rate of increase in life expectancy in human history.

            So a prison system in the incredibly wealthy imperial core, where the denizens can raise themselves up on the plundered blood and gold of South America and later the entire third world, has a lesser need for incarceration than a nation under siege from an entire planet of enemies who would stop at nothing to sabotage and destroy their state, and then enslave and murder their people. And the US has absolutely zero external threats on its entire continent - how did that happen again?

            And how’s the US prison system going now?

            (It’s the highest incarceration rate in the world, and by a looooooong way.)

            And why are we only focusing on one communist state? Let’s take a look at another one:

            It’s China, with the first highest rate of increase of life expectancy in human history. As a bonus, here’s a comparison with India’s historical life expectancy - almost the perfect experiment, as it gained independence around the same time as the PRC was established, had a similar climate and demographics, but did not have the benefit of communist central planning:

            Simply taking the integral between these two curves and multiplying up by their populations means that the Chinese people were collectively afforded literally tens of billions more years of human lifespan - thanks entirely to the communist party and the communist people who supported it - making Mao Zedong the greatest humanitarian of all time.

            • Aatube
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              04 days ago

              surely you know that prisoners in wartime go instead to the frontline? gulag occupancy in fact decreased during the great patriotic war despite an initial increase from including petty criminals.

              let’s compare 1942. 157,514 total prisoners. 111 executed, 912 dead otherwise. that’s 0.65%. for 1944, 130,805, 63, 756, 0.63%.

              their life expectancy almost instantly doubled from pre-communist times

              that’s a LOW bar. pre-communist times are a very low bar. nobody here argued that russian life was better before the sfsr

              has a lesser need for incarceration

              when were we comparing that? when were we justifying the US?

              (It’s the highest incarceration rate in the world, and by a looooooong way.)

              among colonizing countries definitely, but among the rest of the world no. El Salvador has nearly triple that of the US, and surprisingly Cuba is second. and I definitely prefer the Cuban state over the US (though not to live there due to the sanctions).

              what are we even arguing over? i sense we have a different conception of the topic at hand due to how much seemingly irrelevant stuff you bring up

              but did not have the benefit of communist central planning

              again what are you talking to? where’d your series of questions about the purging of the statisticians go? if what you want is to expand the argument, that chart looks quite similar to that of south korea

              • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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                114 days ago

                I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say in the first part

                that’s a LOW bar. pre-communist times are a very low bar. nobody here argued that russian life was better before the sfsr

                The literal entire argument is that Russian life didn’t improve enough under the USSR as compared to a fictional anarchist alternative, such that communists are indistinguishable from fascists. That is the entire crux of the argument in this 400+ comment section. If it’s a low bar, then how come no non-communist third world country ever had even close to that kind of explosive increase in life expectancy and quality?

                when were we comparing that? when were we justifying the US?

                I don’t understand what you don’t understand. You brought up Texas incarceration and death rates, and their contemporary characterization as horrific, and then compared them to USSR imprisonment rates as some kind of gotcha that the communists were unusally inhumane in their prison system even compared to the barbaric US, so I pointed out that as a beneficiary of imperialism the US doesn’t need as brutal punishment in its own territory, it can reserve its oppressive violence for all its vassal fiefdoms in South America - such as, for instance, El Salvador.

                where’d your series of questions about the purging of the statisticians go?

                Huh??? I asked those questions and you just didn’t respond to them or provide any evidence for your assertion, you just moved the conversation on to different points and I followed along. You and the other guy have a habit of just ignoring questions you can’t answer so I just let it slide. But again, what are you talking about purging statisticians? You know that word has a specific meaning of being expelled from the communist party, right? It’s not just a synonym for ‘being killed’, so what statisticians are you talking about that were in the communist party and got expelled for, I’m guessing, “showing statistics that Stalin didn’t like”?

                • Aatube
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                  03 days ago

                  im gonna try and any% speedrun this response

                  I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say in the first part

                  atl you understood the second paragraph, right? i was stating the US prison statistics from the similar period you asked for

                  The literal entire argument is that Russian life didn’t improve enough under the USSR as compared to a fictional anarchist alternative, such that communists are indistinguishable from fascists.

                  firstly no it’s that it still went into many of the governance horrors capitalist states are criticized for

                  secondly how does “oh look at that it was so much worse before” manage to give you anything to prove that

                  imprisonment rates

                  i never compared or even gave you an imprisonment rate. that’s amount of prisoners divided by population. i gave the prison excess mortality rate, deaths divded by prison population. that’s very different

                  as a beneficiary of imperialism the US doesn’t need as brutal punishment in its own territory

                  i don’t understand this logic. what makes brutal punishment necessary when you don’t do imperialism?

                  you just didn’t respond to them or provide any evidence for your assertion

                  yes i did did you even click on the link what did you think it was talking about

    • db0OPM
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      36 days ago

      Yeah, doing the same thing without imperialism, massacres, oppression, population displacements, secret police, thought crimes, and other stalinist atrocities was just not possible. I understand now. Those are things are a necessary path to a society which will eventually transform into a liberal capitalist cleptocracy.

      Likewise imperialism, slave trade, enclosures, exploitation was clearly the only way for the UK to transform into a democracy you see, and they too fought the fascists so they were clearly on the right side of history.

      I swear, MLs and their fetishizing of stats are exactly like the nroliberals fetishize GDP growth.

      • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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        235 days ago

        Oh shit yeah, I forgot about all that bullshit the CIA made up.

        Wait a second, THOUGHT CRIMES??? THOUGH CRIMES??? Do you think ‘Thought Crimes’ were a real thing that existed outside of the anticommunist screed ‘1984’?

        Anyways, on to your next point, oh, it’s the most unreasonable fucking false equivalency I’ve ever seen in my life. The UK is not and has never been a democracy, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that has occasional political pageantry where it pretends the people have any power at all, just like every single nation that is not communist. Fighting the Nazis is the literal only time the British Empire did a single good thing, and their problem with German fascism was the German part, not the fascism part. And then they immediately started drawing up ‘Operation Unthinkable’, the plan to resume an invasion of the USSR using mainly Wehrmacht soldiers, a plan I assume you support wholeheartedly as it would have destroyed what was obviously the most evil nation in the world at the time, the one whose soldiers liberated Auschwitz.

        • RedSailsFan [none/use name]
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          5 days ago

          Fighting the Nazis is the literal only time the British Empire did a single good thing

          didnt they fight the boers at one point. would have been much better if they beat the amerikkkans too tbh

          • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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            5 days ago

            didnt they fight the boers at one point

            That’s true and good, but even then, in the process they also invented the concept of the concentration camp. I mean, rounding up civilians into cramped, unsanitary conditions with little food so that they all die of disease is a pretty obvious idea, but they systematized and came up with the euphemism for it.

        • db0OPM
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          5 days ago

          it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that has occasional political pageantry where it pretends the people have any power at all, just like every single nation that is not communist

          FTFY

          Wait a second, THOUGHT CRIMES??? THOUGH CRIMES??? Do you think ‘Thought Crimes’ were a real thing that existed outside of the anticommunist screed ‘1984’?

          … They said while “AES“ China is massively oppressing it’s LGBT populace from expressing LGBT ideas.

          But I know the typical delusions of campists, any criticism about “communist” nations is “CIA lies”, (until it’s irrefutably proven, at which point it becomes an “unfortunate mistake”) much like any criticism of fascist nations is “fake news”. Just one of those wacky coincidences.

          • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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            155 days ago

            Chinese people both feel that their country is more democratic, and that democracy is more important, than every other country in the world.

            They said while “AES“ China is massively oppressing it’s LGBT populace from expressing LGBT ideas.

            What the fuck are you talking about?? When you make a claim you have to back it up with evidence. It is obviously much, much safer to be LGBT in China than in most other countries in the world, ESPECIALLY the US - and if you want the most progressive legislation on LGBT rights, womens rights and the rights of children then you have to go to the communist state of Cuba.

            Ah, of course, I forgot that protesting against claims that are false is exactly the same as protesting against claims that are true, you’re so balanced and wise. Saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen and saying that Stalin didn’t actually personally eat all of the corn in Ukraine with a giant spoon are exactly morally equivalent. If you would like to provide any evidence for a single one of your “irrefutable claims” I would love to see it.

            • db0OPM
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              25 days ago

              Chinese people both feel that their country is more democratic, and that democracy is more important, than every other country in the world.

              And US republicans say they believe in freedom above all.

              What the fuck are you talking about??

              Just the most recent one of many examples

              • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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                145 days ago

                And US republicans say they believe in freedom above all.

                Nonsequitur, of course everyone says they believe in freedom, including you, the difference is whether their actions lead to it, which the Communist Party of China’s have done.

                I figured it would be this story, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t some other phantasm you’d conjured up. Pornography is illegal in China (as it should be). These women were writing erotic novels that crossed the legal boundary into pornography, however that’s judged, and selling them. There is a thriving market for gay erotica that skirts the pornography law, and a thriving scene for ‘pornographic’ novels that aren’t being sold for money, the problem is when you try to secretly sell the latter. As a result, 22 people have been arrested for essentially tax fraud, out of a population of 1,400,000,000.

                And why would China be anti-LGBT? Like most of the third world, China has some cultural conservatives with anti-LGBT views, but also like in most of the third world, these were installed by colonizers forcing westernization and Christian morality upon them. China has a long history of LGBT acceptance and even celebration in its pre-modern history, such as the ‘passion of the cut sleeve’ (go look it up). The crucial difference is that unlike in the western world, they don’t have a massive, powerful, fundamentalist religious lobby that can dictate policy and force them back in the wrong direction. The Chinese youth are unsurprisingly more progressive than their elders, so as time goes on attitudes should soften more.

                But this brings up another important point: without a state, what are you going to do with all the homophobes? Do you think you could have a peaceful anarchist revolution in the United States and everyone would just stop hating gay and transgender people by themselves? Do you think the reactionaries of the US won’t need to be imprisoned until they can be educated into not hating the gays? Do you think you won’t need a special body of armed men to forcibly suppress the urge to lynch which lives in the heart of a large fraction of USians? What is the anarchist mechanism for actually transforming the world as it is now, into the world we want it to be, without apparently inconveniencing anyone? You can’t answer this of course, because anyone who thinks about it long enough and actually references history becomes a communist.

                • FunkyStuff [he/him]
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                  144 days ago

                  Do you think you won’t need a special body of armed men

                  smug-explain I think we should have a special body of armed women and enbies, personally.

                • db0OPM
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                  25 days ago

                  Nonsequitur, of course everyone says they believe in freedom, including you, the difference is whether their actions lead to it, which the Communist Party of China’s have done.

                  Yeah, the one party state is clear evidence of a strong democracy. 🤣

                  I knew there was evidence of this, I was just acting incredulous for cheap rhetorical points because I thought you’re too lazy to link to evidence. Achsually pornography is illegal and furthermore imprisoned people don’t count because blah blah tldr

                  Thanks tankie for once again showing your entire ass.

                  • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
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                    5 days ago

                    Lazy and stupid. You can tell EXACTLY where in their comment you decided to stop reading and it’s before the second sentence in their second (really first) paragraph.

                    You got suckered into believing capitalist propaganda that made you believe there was a MASSIVE CRACKDOWN ON LGBT SELF EXPRESSION. And you just had it explained to you that story was mutated from the actual reality of China enforcing its ban on for-profit pornography.

                    Just for passing on such obvious capitalist state propaganda you could easily be called incurious. But holy shit look at the juvenile way you just decided to ignore someone plainly laying out what’s happening behind the english press. You’re just fucking stupid and lazy.

                    And if you didn’t bait @CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net with that dumb shit “more parties = more democracy” you probably should have gotten the response you deserved (this one).

                    Are you going to have a single fucking moment of self reflection about how you could be deceived so eagerly into adopting a fascist state’s political line?

                  • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
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                    165 days ago

                    Oh, so you care about bourgeoise multiparty elections for control of a state? Which is it, are all states evil or are some actually okay, now that you think about it? Perhaps the ones you live in and have assimilated all the cultural norms of? What a curious coincidence.

                    Ah yeah, I forgot the anarchist counter to communist arguments, not being able to read.

                    Here’s some pretty pictures for you to look at - Chinese life expectancy

                    and Chinese solar panel production

                    If the human species still exists in a thousand years, it will be thanks to the communists of China