Chomsky expains the cold war in 5 minues

Just to freedom... Hence the quote (or paraphrase) which you panned.

ummm, no they wern't a threat to peoples freedom either, especially not America's freedom.

The USSR was not a threat to people's freedom? Do you really mean to say this?

No ones freedom outside the USSR.

That's presupposing the Nazi-like place the USSR was according to the reactionaries in the US.

Most leftists posit the merits and likewise the faults of the USSR, not a black and white picture that the USSR was Nazi Germany.

Alas, more idealist criticism of the USSR based on the level of 'freedom' it possessed.

The USSR did not represent the interests of the international proletariat and therefore was not worth supporting.

Like many have said, freedom is a muddled word. It is meaningless in the face of our real objective: emancipation.

Yet the USSR offered its workers a better deal then Russia after the collapse of the USSR, the USSR ruling class also had more difficulties dealing with worker militancy then the bourgeoisie as a result the Warsaw nations. The ruling class of the soviet block couldn't flaunt their wealth as the whole justification of their rule was they were dividing up wealth in a fair manner and were working in the interest of the masses. The very facade of the Warsaw nations limited the power of the ruling class as they were playing with the ideas Marx's while being a ruling class thus had to be very careful not get burned by the ideas of Marx.

So basically your argument is that workers were better off?

Workers in the U.S. enjoyed better living standards today than in 1902, so?

Um
What exactly is the difference between proletarian emancipation and proletarian freedom, apart from being contrary to the definition posed by the utilitarians?

Are you suggesting we are against improvement of working conditions within capitalism? Yes Marxist understand that such improvement are not enough but we still should support workers getting the best deal they can with their capitalist masters till there is a revolution to get rid of capitalist masters.

That's a sound point. That's also, essentially, what I've been saying, all along, minus some of the rhetoric.

Despite your protestations to the contrary, freedom is not an especially nebulous or complicated concept.

This is a semantic distinction to justify authoritarianism.

That depends on what you should care about. I think we should care about the well being of the working class. What does it mean to care about someone? First; you don’t deliberately harm them. You try to help them, to the extent of your abilities, even if allyou can do is ameliorate their suffering, somewhat. Otherwise; you don’t care.

No, we are for weakening the class enemy, and if part of that is improving our conditions then maybe.

However, it should be noted that the worst of the Slave owners were the ones that gave their slaves better living conditions. Why would I say such a thing? Like Zizek said, they tried to put a veil over the terrible institution of slavery, they stopped people from waking up and fighting against the system.

That didn't happen in the Warsaw nations, the opposite happened where reforms the ruling class made to humanize the state resulted in workers becoming more militant. You have to remember these state had to deal with a far more obvious contradiction in they held up Lenin as a hero for waking up the working class to the call of revolution yet at the same time the state didn't want the workers to be militant it just wanted to be revolutionary in name only and only wanted Marxist critiques of the USSR enemies not its allies and the USSR itself.

Then why were the American people the most radical during the best boom years in the history of the nation?

My initial post on this thread was not that the revlefters had no bad things to say about the USSR, but rather when things move beyond mere theory and talking points and actual decisions and choices have to be made, they would find themselves on the USSR side of things.

I mean, when a fellow like Gacky, who has been quite clear in his distaste of the USSR, will actually say the reds threatened nobody's freedom, what is a non-socialist supposed to conclude?

I did'nt say that, I said they threatened nobody's freedom outside the USSR, they simply were not that powerful ... What a non-socialist is supposed to conclude is that those are the facts, and the red scare was nothing more than propeganda.

Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary were not outside the USSR?
Moreover the support given by the USSR to N. Vietnam, N Korea, Cuba, and the various insurrections and rebellions throughout the mid-20th century?

Each of those nations in your first list were not democratic nations but fascist protectorates (I think the Czechs were the exception) when the USSR stepped in.

The second list were indigenous and native rebellions that only later the USSR decided to help. In all cases they were fighting reactionary regimes aided by the West.

A lot people on revleft believe the USSR was the lesser of two evils when you compare the damage done by US-led Western imperialism vs. the internal oppression of citizens in the USSR.