this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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The problem with this argument is that the risk for someone taking advantage of the situation to accumulate power is the same under any system. I would rather take that risk for an economic system that aims to treat everyone more fairly than for one that, by design, sends wealth up to a select few who hoard it.
If the risk is so equal, why did the USSR fall to it very quickly, where the US, 300 years after our founding, just resisted Trump when he tried to do the same?
I think your risk is higher, because you are taking down the current system in order to put in a potentially improved one. But during that downtime you have extreme vulnerability.
We do not have that problem unless we also dismantle our system to a similarly vulnerable state.
I don't stop with authoritarianism as the only measure of people being oppressed. There are a ton of ways USA citizens are being oppressed. We just vote for who our oppressors are.
"Dictatorships are inherently unstable: you can slaughter, imprison, and brainwash entire generations and their children will invent the struggle for freedom anew. But promise every man a chance to impose the will of the majority upon his fellows, and you can get them all together behind a system that pits them against each other." Source
I agree, there are many forms of oppression. However, without the rule of law, the oppression would become rather Mad Max, instead of just disappearing.
We had oppression before we had states. So long as one man can hurt another with physical damage, oppression will be possible
"Vote for our oppressors". Maybe we are, but if you look through history, you'll find that every time period has oppression. Doesn't matter where. You can't get rid of oppression. It's not something you can toss away.
This is true and sort of adds to my point. If I am going to risk being oppressed oppressed anyways, I might as well risk it for a system that, if done halfway decent, can lead to more fair distribution of resources. Currently a lot of wealth is being funneled into the hands of a few.
I think it has to do with how they deal with certain things. Democracy is inherently stable, although there are major flaws.
The USSR fell because Yeltsin illegally dissolved the USSR by withdrawing the RSFSR from the union. Yeltsin illegally dissolved the USSR because after decades of anti-communist propaganda and an escalation of the Cold War from Reagan, the people elected liberal leaders (Gorbechev and Yeltsin) from the communist party, who tried to appease the west and destroyed the party, weakening the government, and making it vulnerable to a stunt like Yeltsin's.
Just out of curiosity, would you describe the Stalinist USSR as a communist society?
No. If you knew how ridiculous that statement was, I don't think you would have said it. The USSR was never a communist society. Do we change between direct democracy and a democratic republic depending on which party is elected in the US?
Never? Even when they tried to get rid of the ruble, implementing their strides system instead, that tried to measure work based on the average exertion it required?
This occured before Stalin, under Lenin. It lasted about 20 years.
A communist society is a stateless, classless, moneyless society where the means of production are owned by the workers, the basic needs of all people are met, and all people give what they are able. Considering the fact that the means of production were owned by the state, the state maintained currency, and that they were a state, I don't think they met the criteria. This can be said even if an informed leftist has a different definition of communism. Lenin was experimenting with methods of implementing a socialist economy. As the first country to have a proletarian democracy with a communist party, they didn't exactly have a lot of historical examples to try and model.
Fair. Thank you for the reasonable response. My point is that strides were being made, before Stalin was in charge. Then serious attempts largely stopped. Would you describe that as inaccurate?
I acknowledge that this isn't a question towards me, but I'm gonna take a stab regardless, so compared with Lenin, Stalin:
He was decent. He isn't a god, he didn't do perfect, but when you count how shitty the hand he was dealt was and how much better things were going by the time he walked from the table, he did pretty damn decent.
Russia has more arable land than any other polity on our planet. I find it awfully suspicious that famines were somewhat frequent, and so conveniently not his doing. China had a long history of famines, but they're often weather-related. A famine requires a good excuse, you can't just be like "oops". Otherwise you should be fixing it before the humans all starve, which takes weeks at a minimum, usually much longer since there are some things to eat.
Thank you for your reasonable response btw. I'm enjoying this conversation with the people that are willing to actually have a serious one. I know I probably look like a troll, but I'm really not trolling.
you are in over your head if you think replacing a currency with a different currency pegged to the value of labor is communist. Socialist, maybe, communist, not even a little.
This document is very dated and fairly simplistic but it's a good 101 basis for what we believe. Just so we're speaking eye to eye, go read this (it's very short and light reading, don't worry), then come back, and use this definition of communism. It's the definition that communists actually use and it'll do you well to know your enemy before you pick fights with them.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm jk the Manifesto is more relevant here, a little less short and substantially more dense but if you're gonna argue with Marxists about Marxism you should probably read the 23 page pamphlet that Marx is actually famous for https://www.marxists.org/admin/books/manifesto/Manifesto.pdf
I would argue that the attempt to abolish money and replace it with a measure of value that was neither arbitrary nor pegged to a commodity like gold was very much a move to liberate the proletariat.
I picked it because the abolition of money has a great deal of symbolic value, that's all. We could use them getting rid of factory owners and seizing industry instead if you wish.
That's still money. It's just pegged to something besides a bar of gold.
Yeah, true. A step in that direction perhaps, but not the actual result yet. Alright, fair point.
Because every single other dominant power teamed up more thoroughly than they had ever done prior or since for the sole purpose of ratfucking them down to every last brick and feasting on the carcass?
So? We did not invade and destroy them. Was the USSR so weak it was unable to be self-sufficient on the world stage?
Well, US did do a huge part in the fall of the USSR, but you're right, we did not invade them.
True. I was kinda hitting back at this idea that the USSR was getting lots of credit for anything good that happened there, but when it came to their fall, well, that was all our fault.
I generally agree with your other comments as well.
Yeah. However, that doesn't mean that US is the villain. Nations are well...rather complex.
We didn't invade them because of mutually assured destruction. We did proxy war them, espionage them, propagandize them, sanction them, embargo them, engage in brinkmanship with them, send blank checks to their enemies, sabotage them, and more, and all of NATO was of a one track mind in doing so.
Was the USSR so weak it was unable to be self-sufficient on the world stage? No, the USSR was so strong that starting from a mean 27 year life expectancy and zero productive infrastructure, it was able to survive this onslaught for nearly a century, and while doing so, put the first human in space, achieve world-class technological innovation, gender equality, literacy rates, and more.
North Korea has even fewer friends and allies than the USSR did, with their Warsaw Pact. Kim is doing just fine, even got Putin to lick his boots recently.
I think they shouldn't need us to play nice with them in order to survive.
Yeah, but the people are suffering.