Being rained upon by reactionaries...

[Weezer]

It's hard for me to be a socialist sometimes. My mom doesn't like my politics. She was born in Sweden, and has friends from the Eastern Bloc who had a bad time living there, political oppression, etc. I've also read first-hand accounts of being living under Soviet/Yugoslavian/[insert socialist regime here]...they don't sound good. Then there's all the apparent connections between fascism and socialism...

If all this stuff about the Eastern Bloc, Maoist China, etc. is true, I have one question:

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

I don't want to sound like a flamboyant liberal, but dammit I'm mad. Socialism is freedom, I know that, but sometimes...I have doubts. Can somebody help
me? I would fucking hate to be a reactionary again.

[AK]

It's hard for me to be a socialist sometimes. My mom doesn't like my politics. She was born in Sweden, and has friends from the Eastern Bloc who had a bad time living there, political oppression, etc. I've also read first-hand accounts of being living under Soviet/Yugoslavian/[insert socialist regime here]...they don't sound good. Then there's all the apparent connections between fascism and socialism...

If all this stuff about the Eastern Bloc, Maoist China, etc. is true, I have one question:

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

I don't want to sound like a flamboyant liberal, but dammit I'm mad. Socialism is freedom, I know that, but sometimes...I have doubts. Can somebody help
me? I would fucking hate to be a reactionary again.
Propaganda played a big part. Also, the false equation of socialism with authoritarian state capitalism did, too.

My mum was born and raised in the Ukrainian SSR. My dad was born and raised in the SFR Yugoslvia. It doesn't help me much, either.

[revolution inaction]

It's hard for me to be a socialist sometimes. My mom doesn't like my politics. She was born in Sweden, and has friends from the Eastern Bloc who had a bad time living there, political oppression, etc. I've also read first-hand accounts of being living under Soviet/Yugoslavian/[insert socialist regime here]...they don't sound good. Then there's all the apparent connections between fascism and socialism...

If all this stuff about the Eastern Bloc, Maoist China, etc. is true, I have one question:

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

I don't want to sound like a flamboyant liberal, but dammit I'm mad. Socialism is freedom, I know that, but sometimes...I have doubts. Can somebody help
me? I would fucking hate to be a reactionary again.

its a bit weird you saying this when your tendency is leninist. leninism is responsible for most of those cults of the personality and oppression you object to.
Not sure what you are talking about with "the apparent connections between fascism and socialism"?

[Zanthorus]

"the apparent connections between fascism and socialism"?

I think he means that Mussolini was a socialist before he became a fascist. There are also links between the SPD and the Nazi party. I think Proudhon inspired some fascist groups or something as well (And no I'm pretty sure I'm not thinking of national anarchism).

[AK]

its a bit weird you saying this when your tendency is leninist. leninism is responsible for most of those cults of the personality and oppression you object to.
Not sure what you are talking about with "the apparent connections between fascism and socialism"?
The ideology itself isn't to blame for cults of personality - and he's opposed to those states because he's a Trotskyist.

[Universal Struggle]

Well, if he USSR was so bad, why has poverty massively risen after its dismantling.

Yeah they oppressed reactionaries, why should liberals/ capies have freedom of speech.

Giving them freedom is giving the workers the danger of falling for their propoganda.

[Chambered Word]

its a bit weird you saying this when your tendency is leninist. leninism is responsible for most of those cults of the personality and oppression you object to.

:rolleyes:

Anyway RedVelvet, as a Trotskyist I would expect you'd know how the whole thing happened. It wasn't 'our' fault, objective material conditions happened to be like that and we've learned our lessons from the past. The best any of us can do is to just keep going and never give in to pressure.

For every person who had to live under the Stalinist former USSR there are going to be many, many more living under the capitalist nations of today, putting up with the lowest wage their bosses can get away with while being spoon-fed bullshit by rightwing newspapers and television and beaten into submission.

[revolution inaction]

Well, if he USSR was so bad, why has poverty massively risen after its dismantling.

Yeah they oppressed reactionaries, why should liberals/ capies have freedom of speech.

Giving them freedom is giving the workers the danger of falling for their propoganda.

In the ussr anarchists, communists and any attempt at workers self organisation was repressed, and some of the worst reactionaries were in the government.

That the standard of living was better in the ussr does not in any way show it had anything to do with communism or socialism

If workers need the state to protect them from reactionary ideas then socialism is impossible, it is not the business of revolutionaries to make decisions on behalf of the working class.

[revolution inaction]

The ideology itself isn't to blame for cults of personality - and he's opposed to those states because he's a Trotskyist.

the ideology idolises lenin and trotsky and thinks the problem with the ussr was that it had the wrong leader.

[AK]

the ideology idolises lenin and trotsky and thinks the problem with the ussr was that it had the wrong leader.
The theories that Lenin came up with don't idolise Lenin - how they've been put into practise by various parties do.
You must be thinking of specifically Trotskyism (and then again, it's only Trotskyist parties that do that shit, not Trotskyist ideology itself; the idolising crap anyway), not generic Leninism - which I feel is distinct from ML'ism.

[Zanthorus]

the ideology idolises lenin and trotsky and thinks the problem with the ussr was that it had the wrong leader.

I don't know what Trotskyists you've been reading but I've never actually seen any of them argue that.

[graymouser]

It's hard for me to be a socialist sometimes. My mom doesn't like my politics. She was born in Sweden, and has friends from the Eastern Bloc who had a bad time living there, political oppression, etc. I've also read first-hand accounts of being living under Soviet/Yugoslavian/[insert socialist regime here]...they don't sound good. Then there's all the apparent connections between fascism and socialism...

If all this stuff about the Eastern Bloc, Maoist China, etc. is true, I have one question:

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

I don't want to sound like a flamboyant liberal, but dammit I'm mad. Socialism is freedom, I know that, but sometimes...I have doubts. Can somebody help
me? I would fucking hate to be a reactionary again.
Capitalism was founded on the basis of slavery and genocide. The "primitive accumulation" of capital involved the immiseration of the European farmer, the physical destruction of the majority of the native inhabitants of the American continents, and the genocidal slavery (with millions dying on the "middle passage" or worked to death) of Africans. The United States in particular, it took two revolutions to get rid of the slave system and this "democracy" was founded on land stolen from its inhabitants (and later, Mexico). Its perpetuation has involved a constant state of misery and war for the planet.

The Russian Revolution was the first time that the proletariat ever overthrew this system, and for the honor they faced a vicious civil war in which the White Armies killed many of the workers who made October possible. The shattered remnants of the working class held power by a thread, and the bureaucrats who they needed to restore normal life took full advantage - essentially turning themselves into a parasitic caste that held the workers hostage and fed off them while keeping the workers state in tact. Why are the martyrs of the Red Army responsible for this? Why do you think this stains the red banner of socialism? Because the bureaucrats called themselves "Marxist-Leninist" and took control of the world party of socialist revolution? Nonsense.

As for the crimes committed in Russia and China - the ones that bring the most shocking numbers aren't the executions of political prisoners, which are a horror in themselves, but the large-scale famines. Essentially, both in the Ukraine in the early 30s and in China in the late 50s, bureaucratically mangled collectivization policies clashed with supremely poor growing conditions that would have led to a famine anyway. The governments of both Stalin and Mao basically exacerbated them with their heavy-handed methods, making the mass starvation worse than it otherwise would have been; this was definitely a crime but nothing comparable to the orchestrated genocides of the Nazis.

Cults of personality? That was a method that the bureaucracy had of keeping its power over the workers - not being a class in relation to the means of production, they had to use a combination of idolization of the leaders and the constant threat of physical violence to keep their control going. And remember - the only heavily industrialized nation ever to go over to the Stalinist camp was the German Democratic Republic (DDR), which had to rebuild itself physically from the ashes of the second World War. Unlike the BRD, the DDR didn't have the superprofits of imperialist capitalism flowing into it, just the help of a few other states which were also devastated. If a higher state of living was achieved in the BRD (Federal Republic of Germany), that was because money had flowed into it to keep it from having a socialist revolution and to provide a glittering but false "counter-example" against the socialist road. Considering the situation that they were in, the East European states actually recovered pretty well, they were just not rich countries compared to the BRD, France, England or the US.

The Stalinist banner should be burnt and the workers in the few remaining deformed workers states should overthrow their bureaucratic leaders and take power into their own hands. But the Trotskyist banner needs to be held high, and not polluted with the filth of the Stalinist crimes.

[#FF0000]

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

The USSR had a real rough go of it from the start. From what I've read, the government on a national level was in shambles from day one, pretty much. Russia was also the most "backward" of the industrialized countries, which presented some real problems, especially with peasants being such a majority in the country.

And on top of all that, they were basically the only socialist country in the world, except for China and a few others.

The USSR, I think, had some redeeming qualities, but it's really a perfect storm of things fucking up.

[revolution inaction]

The theories that Lenin came up with don't idolise Lenin - how they've been put into practise by various parties do.
You must be thinking of specifically Trotskyism (and then again, it's only Trotskyist parties that do that shit, not Trotskyist ideology itself; the idolising crap anyway), not generic Leninism - which I feel is distinct from ML'ism.
People who are leninsts idolise lenin, leninism isn't just "the theories that lenin came up with" it is an ideology that considers lenin to be right about pretty much everything. I have often seen leninists arguing about something based not on the how things function in reality but on based on what lenin said or what he meant.
I think of trotskyists and marx-leninists as different variants of leininsm, i havent really seen any leninists that are not either trots or starlinists, so i don't think leninism exists outside these tendencies.

[revolution inaction]

I don't know what Trotskyists you've been reading but I've never actually seen any of them argue that.

i've often seen trotskyists arguing from the point of view that the russian revolution was fucked up by starlin coming to power, and that things would have turned out much better if trotsky had been in power instead.

[Zanthorus]

I think of trotskyists and marx-leninists as different variants of leininsm, i havent really seen any leninists that are not either trots or starlinists, so i don't think leninism exists outside these tendencies.

Amadeo Bordiga was neither a Trotskyist or a Stalinist yet it was remarked that he was "more Leninist than Lenin".

Jacob Richter/DNZ/Die Neu Zeit also claims to be a "Leninist Marxist" in contrast to "Marxist-Leninists" and Trotskyists.

[Crusade]

Well, if he USSR was so bad, why has poverty massively risen after its dismantling.

Yeah they oppressed reactionaries, why should liberals/ capies have freedom of speech.

Giving them freedom is giving the workers the danger of falling for their propoganda.

What? You mean like how we have freedom of speech to suggest that they shouldn't have freedom of speech in a socialist society? You'd be amazed at how fast you look like a "reactionary" when you start questioning those in power. You question the leadership of these authoritarians you'll start looking more and more like a reactionary/revisionist/counter revolutionary every day. If they can kill him they could kill you too. You don't seem to have a lot of faith in your fellow workers. I trust my comrades to make up their own minds. And even if I didn't, that wouldn't put me in a position to make that kind of decision for anyone. I'm not part of some master race of humans that knows all and sees all. There is nothing I, or anyone else can do to possess that kind of authority. If the government funds/runs a telivision station they can restrict speech just because they build it and fund it. But if someone wants to say anything, even capitalist propaganda, on their own then they have the right to. They certainly shouldn't be KILLED or imprisoned for it. Actually, I'd probably be killed too, because of my reactionary, utopian, counter revolutionary Anarchist tomfoolery. Off with his head says the red queen.

[#FF0000]

He is saying that the bourgeoisie should not have freedoms in a socialist society.

[ContrarianLemming]

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly?

We..they, trusted leaders.

[Proletarian Ultra]

It cannot be said that the first experiments in bourgeois rule were stunning achievements in human rights either. Start with the continual bloodshed and civil strife of the Italian city-states, even leaving aside the episode of Fra Girolamo Savonarola...the Germanic burghers with their Jew-hating and witch-burning and the terror of the Vehmic courts...Oliver Cromwell, small in mind and voracious in bloodshed...the Americans and their genocide of the Indians...the French and their Terror...the Dutch are a comfortable and tolerant people but oh my they made the Portuguese look like enlightened colonizers...

It wasn't very long ago at all that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was a crackpot, brutal anomaly. An anomaly whose only virtue was that it would discredit itself so thoroughly that no one might ever again question the natural, decent civilized order of things - feudalism.

[AK]

People who are leninsts idolise lenin, leninism isn't just "the theories that lenin came up with" it is an ideology that considers lenin to be right about pretty much everything. I have often seen leninists arguing about something based not on the how things function in reality but on based on what lenin said or what he meant.
I think of trotskyists and marx-leninists as different variants of leininsm, i havent really seen any leninists that are not either trots or starlinists, so i don't think leninism exists outside these tendencies.
Maoism, maybe?

He is saying that the bourgeoisie should not have freedoms in a socialist society.
What the fuck are the bourgeoisie doing in a supposedly "socialist" society?

[Animal Farm Pig]

It's hard for me to be a socialist sometimes. My mom doesn't like my politics. She was born in Sweden, and has friends from the Eastern Bloc who had a bad time living there, political oppression, etc. I've also read first-hand accounts of being living under Soviet/Yugoslavian/[insert socialist regime here]...they don't sound good. Then there's all the apparent connections between fascism and socialism...

That's funny. I have a few friends from Eastern bloc countries (Hungary, Estonia, East Germany, former Czechoslovakia, former Yugoslavia) all of them say that the quality of life was better during the Soviet times. Maybe it's age-- all are in their early to mid 30's, so were young when socialism ended-- or nostalgia, but I'm inclined to believe them.

[Jimmie Higgins]

In the ussr anarchists, communists and any attempt at workers self organisation was repressed, and some of the worst reactionaries were in the government.

That the standard of living was better in the ussr does not in any way show it had anything to do with communism or socialismThis, I totally agree with. Average standard of living isn't a great indicator of what class runs society and who has power or not. Social-Democrats use the high standard of living in capitalist countries with good welfare states to justify capitalism. The establishment in the US uses the living standard in the US as "proof" of how well capitalism works for workers. (Of course the standard of living in the US was the result of 100 years of hard struggle and lots of strikes and movements and so on, but then again the right-wing doesn't really care for history or facts too much).


i've often seen trotskyists arguing from the point of view that the russian revolution was fucked up by starlin coming to power, and that things would have turned out much better if trotsky had been in power instead.This, on the other hand, not so much.

Saying that all trotskyists worship Trotsky or Lenin (or Marx for that matter) goes against all evidence. How can Trotskyists be accused of splitting and constantly arguing AND ALSO being slavishly devoted to everything Trotsky said and wrote?

My whole tradition is based on an analysis of why Trotsky and his followers in the 1930s-40s were WRONG about the USSR being a "deformed workers state" and in need of only a political revolution; that Trotsky was WRONG about what would happen to the USSR and the US after WWII. We also think the revolution ultimately failed, so obviously it is ridiculous to claim that we see Lenin or Trotsky as some kind of infallible "great-men".

It is also a crude generalization to claim that Trotskyists believe that if one man changed in the USSR at the top of that system, then the counter-revolution would not have happened. Stalin was the figure-head of an internal movement that had been building due to the problems and failures of the revolution; it's not like everything was fine but Stalin was sitting in a room since 1917 trying to figure out how he could massacre a bunch of people.

I think the actual Stalinist cult of personality (which under Stalin was all about Lenin and Marx as pseudo religious figures, more than it was about even glorifying Stalin himself) was a deliberate attempt by the rulers of the USSR to de-politicize the revolution - emphasize the role of leadership (and how Stalin was continuing that) rather than the role of revolutionaries and workers.

Of course there are many groups and parties who did hero-worship (Trotsky or Lenin or Mao or whoever) there are also groups claimed to be "the vanguard" and many more groups that looked to a top-down approach. But to claim that ALL Trotskyists or Leninists do this as a result of some kind of magic side-effect of the ideology is as ridiculous as saying that ALL anarchists ignore the working class and go dumpster diving or are little sectarian cults.

[Chambered Word]

In the ussr anarchists, communists and any attempt at workers self organisation was repressed, and some of the worst reactionaries were in the government.

I'd like it if you sourced these claims. Also:


the ideology idolises lenin and trotsky and thinks the problem with the ussr was that it had the wrong leader.

...this is just plain ridiculous.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Everything Lenin and Trotsky and Marx said was 100% gospel - except their rejection of the "great-man" view of history. They are obviously wrong on that since these "great-men" created all revolutionary movements out of their very thoughts and words like Zeus giving birth to demi-gods out of his forehead.:lol:

[#FF0000]

What the fuck are the bourgeoisie doing in a supposedly "socialist" society?

Former bourgeoisie. People who are aligned with bourgeois interests.

[revolution inaction]

Saying that all trotskyists worship Trotsky or Lenin (or Marx for that matter) goes against all evidence. How can Trotskyists be accused of splitting and constantly arguing AND ALSO being slavishly devoted to everything Trotsky said and wrote?

How can there be all the different Christian sects if they all believe in the bible?
This is a general tendency i've noticed, there are exceptions, but generally, (name)ists tend to believe that (name) was right about everything and try to justify there own views by referring back to what (name) wrote

[Ocean Seal]

I've also read first-hand accounts of being living under Soviet/Yugoslavian/[insert socialist regime here]...they don't sound good.
I have accounts from relatives who disagree.
My grandmother loved Yugoslavia (she was around during the revolution).
My aunt moved from Peru to the USSR and the USA and she said that in the USA she experienced racial prejudice and had a tough time getting by while in the USSR she received an excellent education, the people welcomed the ethnic diversity that she added, and she had no trouble working.
Lastly my Cuban friend who lives there now and also lived in the United States, tells me that he is happier in Cuba than in the US.


Then there's all the apparent connections between fascism and socialism...
Don't believe in anything that the Tea Party tells you.


How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

Every ideology has fucked up in its early years. Look at the start of democracy. The Americans had slavery, the French had a dictatorship and returned to monarchy, and in Latin America democracy became plutocracy as a few wealthy strongmen controlled the economy and the government.

[Chimurenga.]

How the fuck, why the fuck, did we fuck up so fucking badly? All those cults of personalities and oppression have stained socialism, and can't be washed out with bleach, or anything.

Most, if not all of the Eastern Bloc countries were at one time fascist, I'm pretty sure things couldn't get much worse than that.