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

[Thirsty Crow]

We know what Socialism is, and we know what Communism is, if we didn't know what it was then why would we be leftists? You think we choose to embrace ideas we know nothing about? Do you take us for fools?

Oh geez, let me take a wild guess: socialism is the stage of transition, marked by an acheived expropriation of individual capitalists and state control and direction of production and distribution (alongside state monopoly on foreign exchange) - effectively classless since capital is tied to individual private property, but still somehow witnessing the existence of the working class - while communism is society of the distant future, supposedly classless and stateless but nevertheless defined by the ever increasing importance and role of the state in socialism (thus the state producing the movement towards communism).

[Rooster]

Why they do it, who knows.

I imagine it has much to do with the state's justification for itself, with the policy of "socialism in one country" and such.

[Comrade Hill]

Oh geez, let me take a wild guess: socialism is the stage of transition, marked by an acheived expropriation of individual capitalists and state control and direction of production and distribution (alongside state monopoly on foreign exchange) - effectively classless since capital is tied to individual private property, but still somehow witnessing the existence of the working class - while communism is society of the distant future, supposedly classless and stateless but nevertheless defined by the ever increasing importance and role of the state in socialism (thus the state producing the movement towards communism).

I'm so sorry to hear about your distain for Leninists.

Everything you said, I agree with, except for the last part. It won't be just the state that produces the movement, but the working class themselves.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm so sorry to hear about your distain for Leninists.

Everything you said, I agree with, except for the last part. It won't be just the state that produces the movement, but the working class themselves.

Well, that's just a nice icing on what is otherwise an excellent Stalinist cake. It's great to advocate total subordination of the workers movement to the ("workers'") state and simultaneously call for the movement of the working class themselves towards communism.

[Comrade Hill]

Well, that's just a nice icing on what is otherwise an excellent Stalinist cake. It's great to advocate total subordination of the workers movement to the ("workers'") state and simultaneously call for the movement of the working class themselves towards communism.

Is there anything else you'd like to say?

I'm not some staunch supporter of Stalin....I realize that there were some things he did that were wrong.

[Thirsty Crow]

Is there anything else you'd like to say?

I'm not some staunch supporter of Stalin....I realize that there were some things he did that were wrong.

Well, you did advocate sentencing workers who criticize the regime to labour camp "vacations". Or rather, you justified it, saying it was reasonable, and then failing to provide any reason for such a position.

There's really nothing else to say besides this.

[Charlie Watt]

It baffles me slightly that you ban fascists from here, yet advocates of the brutal repression of the working class are allowed to spread their historical revisionist drivel, simply because they might be sporting a hammer and sickle.

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

both WHERE socialist states, and any progress they made was backwards after everything they did was said and done

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

It baffles me slightly that you ban fascists from here, yet advocates of the brutal repression of the working class are allowed to spread their historical revisionist drivel, simply because they might be sporting a hammer and sickle.

oppressive as they where, they did make some progress toward communism.
and i really would not go the Trotsky route. im really not a sympathizer, but it was better than every other Feudal place. EVER

[Charlie Watt]

One was a failed revolution. The other was the importation of the ideals of a failed revolution. Neither the PRC nor USSR made any real progress toward communism so far as I could see.

[Agent Equality]

Several people standing on rotten flooring remain at a disadvantage compared to somebody standing on solid flooring.



Not the same. As can be properly concluded from the discussions on this thread amongst the comrades, you folks can't even figure out how to get into the game, much less figure on how it works.

Yet you seem to be implying that you are the one standing on solid flooring? I think it would be a more accurate observation to say that there are some who are at disadvantage due to standing on rotten flooring while others are on solid flooring. You on the other hand are sitting in a hole in the ground which has rotted through the already rotten flooring.

[Jimmie Higgins]

[QUOTE=Baseball;2301815]

An "organization of revolutionary workers" IS a vanguard. Whether they are of the type and stripe of what was produced in the USSR et. al. rests upon answering the following question...

Yes, I was using the phrase organization of revolutionary workers as a stand-in for the word "vanguard" in order to clarify what I meant.

[Paul Cockshott]

One was a failed revolution. The other was the importation of the ideals of a failed revolution. Neither the PRC nor USSR made any real progress toward communism so far as I could see.

What is your baseline? Relative to Tsarist Russia the advance was huge.

[Paul Cockshott]

One was a failed revolution. The other was the importation of the ideals of a failed revolution. Neither the PRC nor USSR made any real progress toward communism so far as I could see.

What is your baseline? Relative to Tsarist Russia the advance was huge.

[RED DAVE]

What is your baseline? Relative to Tsarist Russia the advance was huge.

That's a liberal argument. Relative to 1920, 1950 America was huge. Do you therefore support US capitalism?

RED DAVE

[Tim Finnegan]

Hell, relative to the ancien régime, Napoleon's advances were huge. It's a completely uninformative measure.

[Black_Rose]

Good Donovan for dealing with these lib-com, anarchist, and Trotskyist hitters.

To put it as a baseball analogy, I'll say you went 7 IP, 2 R, 2 ER, 5 H, 0 HR, 7 K, 2 BB.

[Paul Cockshott]

Dave you cant be serious in claiming the social changes in the US between 1920 and 1950 were comparable in scale to those in Russia from 1910 to 1940?

[Paul Cockshott]

Yes that was why Napoleonic France was still an ideological threat to the ancien regime accross Europe.

[ComradeOm]

Dave you cant be serious in claiming the social changes in the US between 1920 and 1950 were comparable in scale to those in Russia from 1910 to 1940?

They were the changes that every society went through during industrial take off. Take Germany 1870-1900, for example, or Britain a century earlier. Even if the process was slightly truncated in the case of the USSR, this was merely shaving a decade or two of the typical European experience

But then there we go using something other than Tsarist Russia as a baseline. You could pick the NEP or the post-Stalin periods or capitalist contemporaries or a hypothetical socialist alternative, etc, etc. You could even project Tsarist growth rates forward thirty years. All are better and more honest alternatives