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So when Gorbachev allowed for "glasnost," why did more things become to fall apart?
What are you arguing here? That repression is necessary for socialism?!
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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.
Because the state takes on the role that private investors and banks would play in other capitalist countries. Not all state-capitalist countries claimed to be "worker's states" - Germany in the late nineteenth century, Japan, and Arab nationalist countries all used the state to coordinate development of a national economy.
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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.
"It's not perfect, but it's better than what they got over
there..." is the same argument made by US defenders of capitalism and the status quo. It's not a very good argument for people wanting the liberation of humanity though.
So why do I criticize the USSR and China and other so-called socialist countries (including democratic-socialist countries which claim that their lower inequality and reforms mean that they have "a socialist government")? Well because not only did they not achieve worker's power over society and production, but they actively prevented it domestically and abroad during the cold war (in order to keep the status quo) and when socialism (worker's power) was not achieved, the maintained that it had been established which basically derailed the entire working class movement for much of the 20th century.
Because of the betrayals of the CPs all over the world and the deliberate bastardization of the basic concepts of Marxian socialism by the USSR in order to create a fiction, we are entering into a new period of class conflict largely disarmed and back starting at square one.
So why WOULD anyone who wants to see the end of exploitation and the self-emancipation of the working class have anything BUT disdain for a whole history where tyrants used our traditions, language, and symbols to carve up the world between them and the western capitalists?