COLD WAR. Do you guys really think it was?

[R_P_A_S]

I been revisiting some events that had to deal with the cold war that I remember a bit from when I was a child. Back then I didn't really care much. Now that I do it's interesting to read about them and come up with a conclusion of my own. I'm sure some of you do that too.

By now most of you that read my post can probably tell I have a strong stance against being obsessed with the past. Specially with those regimes and individuals who dump to the side our real cause and used them for personal gain and to build cults around their image.

So my question is.

It's it safe to say that the cold war was not a fight between democracy vs tyranny?
A war in which social justice and freedom were trying to prevail over oppression and injustice?
BUT more between two world super powers. with their elite classes personal interest FIRST?

One in the west brainwashing their people with anti-communist propaganda and squashing it's neighbor's movement against imperialism with brutal violence and illegal acts of war.

The other in the east building walls, shooting those who want to escape, oppressing student protest and swallowing up neighboring countries and subjecting them to their "socialist model"

Both super powers used the people in a way to benefit the interest of those on top. It's undeniable. the facts are there and history can't lie. when you look at it from both sides.

And it reminds me why the animosity and misunderstanding of socialism and communism. Most of you here know this.

But some of you at times tick me off. You celebrate this time period(the cold war) as if it were some football game in which YOUR team was leading for most of the match.
Many people were caught up in this "game" between too super powers and not only was there physical damage done. BUT psychological as well.

Why hasn't been voices or books explaining our side of the story. not justifying it.

[Tatarin]

It's it safe to say that the cold war was not a fight between democracy vs tyranny?

Democracy was oppressed on both sides. On the Soviet side, people had stable lives in sence of appartments, medical care and so on. In the west, people were oppressed (and still are) in form of economic problems.

I'd say that people were oppressed on both sides, only in different ways.


A war in which social justice and freedom were trying to prevail over oppression and injustice?

There were injustices on both sides. I mean, didn't the US oppress people? Didn't they kill thousands of people? What's so "free" with that?


BUT more between two world super powers. with their elite classes personal interest FIRST?

I think that's and adequate description. At least the Soviets helped real oppressed people in some cases, like the ANC in South Africa. The US "fought" to keep the "free market" open anywhere they could.


And it reminds me why the animosity and misunderstanding of socialism and communism. Most of you here know this.

Ask me, I'd say that "communism" was involved as a "bonus". The Soviet Union was communist, that state was it, it's leaders and so on. Never have they taught people that communism is a system without government.


Why hasn't been voices or books explaining our side of the story. not justifying it.

Why would they ever do that? Communism equals terrorism, state ownership, huge taxes and oppression. Why explain that? As long as people don't understand real communism....

[The New Left]

The USA and USSR were the 2 world superpowers, both with different ideologies. It was going to happen either way. I do believe that people were oppressed on both sides, but the US was ignorant to everything that communism was trying to achieve, while in the USSR they were ignorant to what capitalism was trying to do... Cause "freedom", but were taught about making as much money as possible. What we should be asking is what would have happened if the Soviet Union had won the cold war?

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by The New [email protected] 18, 2007 10:52 pm
The USA and USSR were the 2 world superpowers, both with different ideologies. It was going to happen either way. I do believe that people were oppressed on both sides, but the US was ignorant to everything that communism was trying to achieve, while in the USSR they were ignorant to what capitalism was trying to do... Cause "freedom", but were taught about making as much money as possible. What we should be asking is what would have happened if the Soviet Union had won the cold war?
I don't think no one won.
I don't think the Soviet Union represented communism or even socialism.
The U.S. stands for worst in my opinion by representing their system well.. capitalism

[al-Ibadani]

The Cold War was a conflict between two imperialist blocs. The two contending propagandas were the"free world" vs. "socialism". Both were lies.

[Faux Real]

We know that after Lenin's death and Stalin's rise gave way to oppression of the very own working class Marxism seeks to emancipate, though in his view he was merely centralizing power in order to preserve the revolution from capitalist interventionists.

Democracy v.s tyranny are merely labels. Wrong ones at that. "Democracy" was an illusion as the States was(and still is) very much a subtle tyranny-that of the bourgeois. PR campaigns and government officials started slandering and operated oppressive measures against communists and anarchists ever since the 1880s. They made their point "proven" by continuously instilling in peoples minds "COMMUNISM = STALIN = GENOCIDE = EVIL".


A war in which social justice and freedom were trying to prevail over oppression and injustice?

The edge to social justice goes to the Soviet model. People were guaranteed a livable home, health care, employment, and (when there wasn't mad collectivization) food. Of course it could have been better had power been decentralized and put into the hands of locals, as there would not have been nearly as much death, destruction, and demonization by the West.

Injustice and oppression was caused by both sides. The West justified it by saying they were pursuing a policy of "communist containment" and that they wouldn't tolerate communist subversion. The socialists called out people who were supposedly counterrevolutionaries or who simply wanted to cross a border into Western Germany.


BUT more between two world super powers. with their elite classes personal interest FIRST?

Looking at the worlds geopolitics today, it's safe to say the USA was more determined and self interested in global hegemony. The Soviet Union during and after Stalin likely wasn't that interested in the original socialist project begun by Lenin and would have remained state capitalist for quite some time had the West collapsed, but we'll never know.

Given the conditions,circumstances and how isolated the USSR was from global capital it's an amazement it endured as long as it did. It's fall certainly did hurt the radical left, but communism cannot be achieved by imperial force. It needs to be begun by the working class alone, not social-imperialists.

The Russian Revolution was like a premature baby who should have been aborted as soon it was known about because the mother didn't have the financial support for it.

[capitalistwhore]

There were two obvious hegemons after WWII, and the Cold War was nothing more that a battle between hegemons to gain an imperial edge and diplomatic power through FEAR, i.e. the arms race.

It is interesting how treaties and allies were formed during the Cold War...

I hate to return to it because it is often cited, but I think the Vietnam conflict is really a key in understanding what the Cold War was really about. Ho Chi Minh seeks freedom and appeals to a country allied against Vietnam's French oppressors. Often it is called a war of communism vs. capitalism, and compared to the morality of the American Civil War.

If you look closely, the similarity is much more akin to the American Revolutionary War. Ho Chi Minh was like most of the American founding fathers, going out and seeking foreign assistance to free his country. He quoted the Declaration of Independence! The communist ideology is second to the power and assistance Uncle Ho needs to free Vietnam. Would you shake hands with an ideology if it meant freedom for your people? Remember, the capitalists turned him down.

So enough with the tangent. The point is that, as most people are saying on this thread, it had nothing to do with ideology. You can go inside any of the Cold War situations and see that the ideology was all smoke and mirrors, a mere diplomatic tool used by the hegemons.

But it would have been nice to have a full scale, leftist ideological battle for freedom.

[RNK]

However, you shouldn't disregard the Cold War entirely... while it's true that the main antagonists were nothing but imperialist liars, there did occur a massive amount of struggles for freedom from capitalism and imperialism. All throughout South America, Africa, Asia and even Europe there were at times brutally violent struggles of liberation from domination. It is just unfortunate that most of the Cold War is boiled down to "Imperialist USSR vs. Imperialist USA", without shining some of the spotlight on the smaller but far more important struggles that took place.

[tarendol]

It was a fight between the two biggest imperialists states in the world at that time.

People were oppressed on both sides, by State Capitalism (USSR) or Market Capitalism (USA).

The real struggles that occurred during the cold war were mostly lost because of these two imperialists states.

[peaccenicked]

It is not that simple. The cold war has its origins in Marx's day. Communist ideas were under attack as godless and anti-family. The Russian revolution represented the highest point of miltant communist influence through out the world. The counter revolution produced basically dysfunctional corrupt States with welfare States after the Second world war.

The cold war drained the resources of the eastern bloc through the arms race. The success of counter revolution meant the return of the market and the demise of the welfare state. Not that the welfare State is something to celebrate in its etirety, it supports poverty but it is needed for the poor and should be defended and developed when reforms are possible.

The cold war was the ideological basis for the arms race, and as such was the backbone of US imperialism which has been on the ascendency since WW1 as the British empire was franchised out to US companies.
The USSR was a poor but nuclear power with a massive army. The territories that it 'liberated' and stole were largely late developers when it came to capitalism, with the noticeable exception of East Germany.

The US was well on its way to being a Unipolar power whose currency dominated the world economy. The rouble being nearly worthless.

The cold war in essence is the ideology of the US military industrial complex finding enemies and demonising them. It still goes on. In the Middle East, and against Russia and China, Cuba, anywhere that has an economy independent from the US is considered a threat to national security.
The cold war is against imagined or potential communism. It is also against real communism. They dont give you "Animal Farm" at school for no reason at all.
Everything that stands for human freedom is victim to the cold war.
Institutionalised fear mongering is at the root of the slave mentality.

[Leo]

It was a fight between the two biggest imperialists states in the world at that time.

Exactly. Cold War, with all its "glorious" imperialist wars, was an an imperialist struggle between two different imperialist camps.


People were oppressed on both sides

I think it is important to note that it wasn't about the people being oppressed, but it was instead about the working class being exploited on both sides.

[chimx]

I think it is rather interesting to read the documents from the period of Potsdam through the late 1940s. Remember that the USSR and the USA were allies, even after the defeat of fascism in Europe. It wasn't until the death of Roosevelt--who genuniely believed that in a natural economic competition between the USSR and America, the US would come out on top--that antagonisms really came out. This particularly came out in competition for territorial influence in Poland, Korea, and Japan.

It was only after this competition that things escalated to things such as the Berlin airlift, the Korean War, the civil war in Afghanistan, etc.

Now what could still be considered up in the air, is whether either the USSR or the US believed at any time that it was their ideological differences, rather than geo-political goals, that was the true driver of the Cold War. It probably changed from time to time, depending who was in power, and what was occuring in the world at the time.

[Ol' Dirty]

The cold war was mostly a kind of mexican standoff between neoliberals and -disproportionately- hard-line communists. I say that because most of the "communists" in power (USSR, 'Nam, China, Cuba) used powerful police forces, millitarism, nationalism, and restriction, imprisonment of dissidents to achieve their ends.