Do you support the Soviet Union?

Why did you people reopen this thread?

Just move along people, the original person was a Troll who sought to Enlighten us with strawmans on how evil the Revisionist Soviet Union was. He also used that as a basis to criticize Communism... :laugh:

There is also nothing to gain, as the original person hasn't logged in for a few months and won't read any of your comments.

I find it absolutely disgusting the way people in this thread are so apathetic towards the millions who suffered under Stalin.

On the first page, someone was mentioning the Gulags etc.

'RAWWWWWWWWWWR Stalin killed puppies rawm whram' Became part of a popular reply... It seems some people here lack compassion.

Can someone explain to me why it seems people are so eager to disregard the amount of suffering the occurred under Stalin?

Noone should seek to deny that there were "crimes of humanity" committed during the construction of socialism in the USSR. But you also have to note that by this same bodycount logic, capitalist-imperialism can be blamed for most of the deaths from poverty during the 20th century. Why are communists saddled with this idealistic logic?

Most of the deaths in the "holodomor" were caused by class enemes themselves when they willfully and maliciously destroyed their produces. Stalin's indifference to their suffering seems cruel in hindsight, but he had shitload of other stuff to worry about.

I don't think you can justify what Stalin did.

Even if you accept the view that preventing counter revolution was vital, which I dont buy as I'm not a Marxist, the way he wiped out fellow members of the Communist party is a testament to the fact he was not interested in wiping out people who threatened Marxism - rather wiping out people who threatened him.

He consolidated his power, and once he had complete control he was ruthless in how he used it.

Furthermore, the sheer level of the imprisonment should give the game away I suggest. 10% of the Russian economy during the 30s was produced purely by slave labour - which considering the way Marxists criticise capitalism for the 'slave labour' of the working class I think is remarkable - and I would challenge anyone to justify it.

name one time marxists referred to capitalist relations as "slave labor".oh wait, you can't, because you're talking out of your ass.

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I can not begin to tell y'all how played out this topic is. Yes, lets rehash Stalin and the evil red empire, and maybe in some cathartic way we can finally find the truth and connect with our class. Yeah, that's what's gonna happen. Fucking people kill me.

Many Marxists argue that workers have no free will in accepting jobs, and they cannot work as they wish. They argue that because of the threat of being made unemployed and having sub-satisfactory jobs they are in fact 'forced' to work in ways they do not want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Wage slavery and the slave labor are two different types of employment.

Firstly, "wage slavery" as a concept isn't inherently Marxist, it has definite Anarchist and PreMarxian socialist origins. The concept of "wage slavery" is ideological rhetoric, not an official theoretical component of our (Marxist) analysis of the proletarian class and it's relationship to the capitalist mode of production. Secondly, there's a clear difference between "wage slavery" and "slave labor". Marx clearly demonstrated, in his earliest of days as a theoretician, that the difference between Wage and Slave labor is that the former requires one to constantly rent out one's labor, while the latter composes of the ownership of labor by another person.

They bear no relationship to one another. The swastika is a symbol for Nazism, the sickle and hammer is a representation of Communism, not of the Soviet Union itself. All it is is a symbolic representation of the industrial proletarian (the hammer) and the agricultural proletarian (the sickle). There is nothing offensive about it.

symbols don't kill people, people kill people. And for the record, the USSR was NEVER Communist. Not even close.

I think anybody who answers yes or no to this question needs to consider how they arrived at that answer, and why. It's like asking "Do you support the USA?" It's such a simplistic question and reflects such a simplistic binary, good/bad, black/white type of view. While I am not a supporter of giant bureaucratic police states, and that goes for both the USSR and the USA (can't say I support the political system of either), there are aspects of the culture that I like, there are achievements Soviet people were responsible for that I think are good (like all the achievements in space for example). Some efforts in different areas I like and some I don't.

To simply answer yes or no is a ridiculous answer and doesn't reflect a critical thought process, I think. The Soviet Union, like any country, was more than the structure of it's government - there were cultural movements, there were artists of all kinds, there were scientific achievements, there were improvements and there were steps backwards.

I can't ever really say I "support" an entire country or not. Take the US for example - I don't support it's political system or foreign policy, but there is much there that I do "support" - i.e. much of the culture (music, film, and other things), or athletes, scientific achievements, and organisations (like NASA for example).

I think it's a poorly phrased question - I don't "support" any state or not.

no, i support Liverpool

seriously politics isn't fucking football, i find the idea that people would support a country pretty bizarre. I might support individual things that happened in the Soviet Union at some point during its seven decade long existence, sure. I sure as hell condemn lots of things that went on there. Some leftists, and non-leftists sure, have a really weird way of simplifying politics to a "us vs them" kind of mentality where you're willing to brush ridiculous amounts of shit under the carpet. It's intellectually corrupt and belongs to bougie party politics, not to self-respecting leftists.

It is hard to believe a moderator reopened this thread.

PEOPLE, THIS THREAD IS DEAD!
STOP POSTING!

If you think the thread should be closed, then PM a moderator, otherwise you're just making off topic posts (which isn't allowed). This doesn't constitute a warning or anything, but try to keep on topic when you post. Otherwise contact a mod or admin if you have an issue.

I used to support the RSFSR...

But then it took Stalin to the Kremlin.


Oh, sorry guys, I couldn't help myself.

But seriously, I think it had some rather significant aspects. Its health system, for example, went from Lenin saying "Socialism will defeat the lice, or the lice will defeat socialism!" to being described as aggressively defending the health of the soviet people.

But, as you can probably tell by my username, I don;t believe it was a genuine Workers State.

I think people in the USSR and other former communist nations were far better off under "state monopoly capitalism", then under regular capitalism. Therefore, I supported those nations.

It's true that real "communism" never took root. Nonetheless, a transition period was needed to go from feudalism to communism, and "state monopoly capitalism" was the best option for the worker.

you have a personal dislike for this thread, that's perfectly ok.

I agree that the self proclaimed communist states that started with Lenin were and are horrible, state capitalist structures that are in no way representative of Marx or non-market alternatives to capitalism.

soviet symbols are still all over Russia once you go to the real bad cities.

no I don't support the soviet union.

edit: oh wow this is old

Around 11.00 (minute) Chomsky discusses the early history of the Soviet Union:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNGk_4GGaBM

I'm not a fan of Russian "socialism" but err....it was "free market" policies that desroyed the Russian economy in the late 1980's. Before that Russia actually industrialized faster than any other "free market" capitalist nation. I could make a ten page post picking apart your lame take on things. Waste of time it would be.