Why does much of the left have such a distain for the Soviet Union and China

If they weren't communist enough for you, then what is?

How do you revisionists argue your position for Communism without looking like you are living in some kind of dreamland, where we should just jump straight from global capitalism to "true global communism?"

Didn't Marx and Engels advocate for SOME kind of transition stage? Or am I the one who is dreaming?

A stateless, classless society.

Being able to leave freely would have been a good start. Internationalism also. The expropriation of wealth from the productive class is nothing I'm going to support any tme soon. Free speech is another good one they lacked. Violent totalitarian political repression... meh, not a fan.

I acknowledge them for their successes and rebuke them for their failures.

Why do you support state capitalism so much?

They are not really leftists.

So when Gorbachev allowed for "glasnost," why did more things become to fall apart?

And also, the word "state capitalism" is sort of redundant. All capitalist systems have a "state," regardless of whether the majority of GDP comes from the private sector or the state sector. Since the private sectors usually expand due to more investment into the global system, you will need a bigger state to protect the private sector.

You criticize the Soviet Union for not having freedom of speech, but then again, what country actually has freedom of speech?

And please do not say the United States.

Lenin was the ultimate revisionist of Marx's thought. After all, Marx's method was based on historical materialism, and proceeded from the premise that the only reason, and the only times and places, where socialism could be feasible is under circumstances where capitalism had already massively developed the means of production, and socialized the proletariat to a consciousness of its own revolutionary potential to provide for the needs of all. Lenin promptly twists Marx into a banner to fly over a revolution in a backward, peasant-dominated, underproductive society utterly incapable of meeting even the most basic needs of the masses. As people like my great-grandfather warned at the time of the Russian revolution, trying to build up those productive capabilities under a revolutionary leadership will only lead the workers' party and the workers power ever further away from the socialist path.

in essence, what Lenin did was to discard entirely the fundamental underlying premises on which all of Marx's thought was based.

[FONT=Calibri]A state-capitalist society is just as much a class society as a private-capitalist one, but even more dramatically hierarchial. The hierarchy has been simplified to the point that one class has complete unfettered control over the state, means of economic production, and consequently the people. State-capitalism is despotism. It’s called what it is because the lenninist state replaces the private capitalist as the exploitive element in society.[/FONT]

While Lenin did adapt Marxism to Russia's situation, it was hardly a total revision. The Russian Empire, despite popular thought, was not un-industrialised, it underwent Rapid Industrialisation under Nicholas II early in his reign, and he had picked up where his father had left off. So Russia did have a reasonable industrial base, just no where near the rest of Europe, this was how it was able to hold out for so long in the first world war, and gave Russia a reasonable sized working class for which to lead a revolution in 1917. Lenin's intention was to take the Soviet Union through Socialism, as in the government controlling the commanding heights of the economy and redistributing large land owners property to the lower classes, the problem was he died of a stroke before he could complete his projects, and despite warnings from Lenin himself, Stalin managed to gain enough support to have himself declared leader upon Lenin's death, and thus setting the Soviet Union down a path of being a deformed worker's state, betraying the revolutionary ideals.

I personally, however, do not agree with Lenin's policy of an alliance of the worker and the peasant, it should have been a fully worker's revolution rather than adding the peasants into leadership positions they couldn't possibly hope to effectively carry out. The better solution would have been to just slowly educate and, with industrialisation, turning the peasants into workers and then adding them to the positions of leadership.

Okay, well it looks like you guys have answered my question.

You guys refuse to accept the Soviet Union as socialist, basically because of Cold War myths promoted by the Western media that it wasn't as "free" as the more private capitalist countries. How to you measure "freedom?" What country was more "free" than the USSR? Why did the U.S. government assasinate so many communists, if private capitalist countries were so much more free?

You guys prefer the private capitalist countries, but yet you expect people to call you a "leftist" because you don't support the original interpretations of Marx created by Lenin, which was to have "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Karl Marx does not purport to support any kind of one "system." Lenin has created things such as the vanguard party, to help organize peasants being exploited in rural areas for a revolution against the tsarist regime. It wasn't against capitalism, it may not have gone the way how Marx wanted it to, but it Lenin was the first one to try to implement Marx's ideas, and I think you need to give him credit and not try to revise the idea of a vanguard party.

I'm sure it would be way more organized and successful if it was revolution against a more developed, capitalist society.

And I'm, sorry, but I refuse to embrace the private capitalist systems over the one that was implemented in the USSR. I think that as a communist, that is like shooting yourself in the foot. Have a nice day.

I never said it wasn't "socialist", it was quite socialist, the government owned the economy fully and by definition that is socialism. But it was not communism as it was not a classless society, there was a centralised government, and the system was highly authoritarian. Therefore by definition, it was an Authoritarian Socialist State, not a communist state.

1) Why does not supporting the USSR equate to support of the US?

2) Who said there was any freedom in the US?

3) It (USSR) wasn't socialism

You said the USSR was more hierachical than the private capitalist countries.

That gave me the idea that you supported the US over the USSR.

The USSR was socialist.

And Mr. Mikhail, my apologies. I tend to throw out the words "you guys" a lot and it tends to confuse a lot of people. I was really referring to people like Anarchists, and people who have a distaste for the Soviet Union.

No worries, though I don't have much love for the union Post-Lenin (as a Trotskyist, I have obvious reasons to dislike it ;) )

The USSR and China are examples of a dictatorship of the party, which is very different from a dictatorship of the proletariat.

No... no, I don't think I did. Why you trying to be such a jive turkey? :cool:

No

So why hasn't it happened, or even come remotely close in the capitalist heartlands of America or Britain?

@Revolution starts with U: I would have to say that the USSR, at least until after Stalin was indeed socialist, it had state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, socialised medicine, and so on which by definition makes it socialist, however it never left the transition state of Socialism to advance to communism. Post-Stalin I would have to say the USSR could even have been considered State Capitalist however.

state ownership of the MoP is socialism? Could've fooled me. I thought that was just bureaucratic collectivism :rolleyes:

That is State Socialism, yes. Which is of course essentially an official name for what you mentioned in bureaucratic collectivism.

I don't dislike the USSR and China, but if you think revolutions in places like the U.S. and France are going to even remotely look like them you are truly living in the past.