GarbageShootAlt2 @ GarbageShootAlt2 @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

I always thought that communism has been proven not to work multiple times throughout history.

The more accurate lesson would be that communist nations have been defeated by capitalist hegemony multiple times throughout history, mainly during the Cold War; the countries didn't just implode of their own accord. Now, it's fair to criticize them for this, if you have an ideology all about material conditions and then you aren't able to survive those conditions, you probably messed up, but I think that's a very different assertion from "communism doesn't work".

You probably want to replace "atheism" with "antitheism" in that context. I would disagree either way, but I think you'd have a point with antitheism.

I apologize about the language bit. I rarely get a liberal arguing about this who wouldn't use such a term as "comrade" derisively.

Anyway, I explained the reason I shared it, which is that it is:

showing Stalin getting outvoted on a basic ideological issue by revisionists.

But that's not precisely what you asked for, I just don't have a good source on your real question.

The ICC is not trustworthy, and I certainly trust the objective events that even liberal media report on when they come into conflict with what the ICC says. I don't know what Putin says on this and have not cited him once because that would be absurd. You are denying reality in favor of statements.

Aside from the ICC notoriously being an American running-dog, charges are not convictions. We've already seen Russia cooperate with returning children, we can't say that there's no intention of it.

They were children abandoned in a war zone. Russia needs to do something about keeping them fed, housed, and clothed. If it didn't, then it would still be getting accused of genocide, though in that case with more reason! Furthermore, Russia clearly and demonstrably is cooperating with humanitarian organizations to reunite families, and many have been reunited already. The accusation is alarmist nonsense from the perpetual self-proclaimed ethnic victims to justify their fascist cult to literal perpetrators of the Holocaust.

No worries about the Israel part

I would say that yes, it would certainly involve reliquishing land, that's the reality of the situation. I don't think there's any credence to the "abducted Ukrainian" story. On the off chance you mean POWs, they would surely be returned. If you mean the children who Russia evacuated from the war zones that it controlled, most likely the children with a surviving guardian will be reunited with them as has already happened, and the children who can't be reunited with a guardian (for any number of reasons) will wind up in the local foster system in Donbass. The Ukrainian government loves crying wolf about being the victim of a supposed genocide by Russians, but here as ever there simply isn't adequate reason to believe it's true.

To be clear, I'm not saying Trump would take any action an anglosphere liberal would approve of (though I think his stance on Ukraine is the one thing he supports that is surprisingly reasonable if it's true), I'm just trying to explain as best as I understand it the things Putin would take into consideration. This is of course all in the "pro" column for him, but it's also extremely unreliable (Trump could easily be lying about his position, though I believe he isn't) and doesn't make up for the much worse possibility of Trump dramatically increasing US involvement. As things stand, Russia is surely going to win the war, so it would be poor strategy to rock the boat with the wildcard Trump currently represents with respect to this specific issue.

I'm not saying he's a dove or anything, but he doesn't really give a shit about NATO therefore isn't terribly invested in protecting the Zelensky regime, and he has been consistent about saying the war should be ended so Ukrainians survive, [which, to be clear, I doubt he personally cares about, but it's his platform] and even said this when he was pressed with the insanely unprofessional and ridiculous bait question "Do you want Ukraine to win?" at the debate.

Anyway, it's no guarantee, he's a very unstable and erratic guy, but I think he sees the war as a waste of money and would prefer friendlier relations with Russia.

People are imagining this like (if you'd forgive the analogy) Dragon Ball Z, where Vegeta is the big villain and we all need to rally around defeating him, but then an even bigger and more evil villain appears, Frieza, so now we team up with the still-evil Vegeta because he's more good than Frieza.

That's not what this is. This is Reaganites tipping their hand that they and the democrats are fundamentally on the same team, they are all part of the neoliberal establishment, and Trump, in his instability, is rocking the boat.

That's a good question, but I think Putin's being honest. Trump is more likely to try to negotiate a peace deal, but if that goes badly, he's also much more likely to order some off-the-wall shit like giving Ukraine ICBMs and permission to use them. Remember this was the guy who was presented with a range of options to retaliate against Iranian sabre-rattling, and for seemingly no reason chose the most extreme, drone striking their top general! There's lots of reason to not want Trump in charge.

As for your books, you may realize that I am a bit short on time and do not have the energy to read 4 entire novel-length books instead of specific pages or chapters.

Let me start by saying that the general idea of this response is fair, but I checked and I think it's only 3 books, two of which are novella-length at best (I think the Losurdo one is a bit longer). I would furthermore like to encourage you to click on the link and glance at The Soviet World because it has a nice hyperlinked table of contents and most of the individual sections, clearly labeled by topic, are just a few pages each.

I believe the idea is that the person saying that is clearly a hypocrite who has no grounds for their decrying of violence when they support so much of it, and possibly that retaliatory violence in self-defense is therefore justified.

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

Within a few weeks after the 13th Congress Pravda published Stalin’s report…. Stalin’s report also contained an attack on Zinoviev, though without naming him:

“It is often said that we have the dictatorship of the party. I recall that in one of our resolutions, even, it seems, a resolution of the 12th Congress, such an expression was allowed to pass, through an oversight of course. Apparently some comrades think that we have a dictatorship of the party and not of the working class. But that is nonsense, comrades.”

Of course Stalin knew perfectly well that Zinoviev in his political report to the 12th Congress had put forward the concept of the dictatorship of the party and had sought to substantiate it. It was not at all through an oversight that the phrase was included in the unanimously adopted resolution of the Congress.

Zinoviev and Kamenev, reacting quite sharply to Stalin’s thrust, insisted that a conference of the core leadership of the party be convened. The result was a gathering of 25 Central Committee members, including all members of the Politburo. Stalin’s arguments against the “dictatorship of the party” were rejected by a majority vote, and an article by Zinoviev reaffirming the concept was approved for publication in the Aug. 23, 1924 issue of Pravda as a statement by the editors. At this point Stalin demonstratively offered to resign, but the offer was refused.

-Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 144

This is from an explicitly anti-"Stalinism" book showing Stalin getting outvoted on a basic ideological issue by revisionists.

For the record, I do think that historical texts by "comrades," as you sneer, can be interesting and insightful, but I mostly concern myself with texts by liberals (or otherwise anti-communist ideologies) because I know those are the only ones that won't be rejected out of hand.

I already said there are valid complaints (and again, I dislike it and don't use it), I simply believe that the hate being so emphatic is because of sinophobia, though a lot of people wouldn't say it openly (though the "crazies" do, as you say, and there are a lot of "crazies" on Steam and Reddit").

I think it's that a Chinese company owns significant stake in them. I agree that they certainly aren't improving the platform

Sinophobia. There are valid complaints about the platform, to be clear (and I personally don't like or use it!), but the reason is recieves so much dislike is Sinophobia. We even got a dweeb saying "Chinese spyware" in this very thread.

I don't think the new assassination fad is especially productive, but a complete state monopoly on violence would definitely not be an improvement. Trump can take a few bullets, it doesn't matter.

You'll probably need to think beyond liberal dogma if you want to solve a problem with liberalism. "Paying for something is speech and therefore unimpeachable" is an insane thing to take as a fundamental element of how society is run when the end result is so obviously and demonstrably the rich using that ruling (which was always made for them) to buy elections.

People want to find some policy wonk solution to these fundamental problems ("Oh! Sortition fixes everything! Wait, maybe a parliamentary system. Ooh, ooh, how about . . .") but they are just red herrings, silly schemes that distract you from critical thought about the assumptions that brought you here.

If diverse opinions were allowed, what was the entire focus on eradicating factionalism?

The general line according to Stalin (e.g. in "Foundations of Leninism") was that there should be thorough and exhaustive debates among those with differing opinions within the Party but that, once a resolution was reached by a vote following the debate, further fighting on the topic as a Party official was essentially a form of wrecking, though of course matters were revisited periodically (for good and for ill). Even if you disagreed, you were then expected to go along with whatever the motion was in the interest of the integrity of the Party as an actor. This was "Diversity of opinion, unity of action" [edit: I got the motto slightly wrong, see cowbee]

I don't really have a developed opinion on it (I guess I should have left this to cowbee for that reason) but I definitely have sympathy for this approach when I look at it in the context of glory hounds like Trotsky being constantly contrarian for the sake of political brinkmanship instead of, you know, acting in good faith and believing in things besides that he should be top dog. There shouldn't be tolerance for people like that, and the long-term harm that Trotsky's opposition bloc did to the SU is hard to fathom.

where it means that everyone must vote whatever the elite thinks

citation needed