volodya_ilich @ volodya_ilich @lemm.ee

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1 yr. ago

when I pointed out that people had to wait for years to get a car, and bread lines were common

Breadlines weren't common. Breadlines never took place in the USSR between WW2 ending and Perestroika taking place, you're being ahistorical. Food supply wasn't secure for all the population in any nation until the green revolution, the USSR being no exception to that.

Regarding waiting for a car, the soviet economy simply didn't prioritize car manufacturing. The planning didn't intend for every citizen to have a car in the 70s or 80s, they didn't intend to make so many cars, so naturally, the people who had the wealth to buy a car, had to wait in waiting lists to get one, it's not so hard to understand. There are no waiting lists in capitalism because you can segregate 99% of the population from consuming a particular good simply by making it expensive. In socialism, when you don't have extreme inequality, most people will have access to purchase power for the vast majority of goods you produce. This in turn means that either you manufacture literally from the start one product for every citizen, or there will be waiting lists, it's really as simple as that.

When you can't afford a house in capitalism until you're 35 (if you can ever afford it) you aren't technically in a waiting list, so even if there's only new housing for 5% of the population every year, there will be no "waiting list" because simply the prices will go up until only 5% can afford it. In socialism, the same 5% of housing can be afforded by 50% of people, so the way to allocate the goods is a waiting list instead of priority through wealth accumulation.

Do you really fail to understand this?

From Wikipedia article on Mensheviks: (you've been talking to someone else in the comments)

Mensheviks came to be associated with the position that a bourgeois-democratic revolution and period of capitalism would need to occur before the conditions for a socialist revolution emerged.

So yes, mate, there are literal historical figures of communism debating this exact same issue that you find so laughable, it's literally the raison d'etre of the word Bolshevism. There is no specific "Marx passage" as if it was the bible, where it says "in case some fella called Mao organizes a socialist revolution in a peasant agrarian society, pls pull it back to capitalism first, and then go to socialism once it's capitalist, ok?" If you generally read Marx, you can see how he puts socialism as the necessary and logical end of capitalism, as something inevitable that will happen because capitalism will bring forward the material conditions for the revolution. But despite that, Marx also was a highly politically involved individual, who pushed forward momentously the socialist movement in Europe together with Engels.

Marx isn't a gospel that you're supposed to be able to chant and have undying faith for, it's an analysis of reality that you can agree or disagree with, which explains the existence of different flavours of communism such as menshevism and bolshevism or such as Maoism and Dengism, which can be explained by the material and historical conditions leading up to those moments. Marx himself said that Marxism has to be constantly interpreting the reality of the moment and critically adapting everything. So if you're looking for a direct quote from Marx about Dengism or Menshevism, I'm not here to provide that, I'm here to tell you that the definition you consider stupid has been hotly debated for a hundred fucking years, so maybe it's not so stupid.

And I'm saying that you have clearly not dedicated much time to thinking about or studying the issue. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, so I'm not very supportive of Dengism, but if you listen to Dengists and Mensheviks they will tell you that China still has a communist party in power (as does Vietnam and as does Laos) whereas the former USSR has a capitalist proto-fascist in government. Only time will tell who's really right, and whether china shifts to a less market-socialism society and more towards a democratic centrally planned economy in the hands of the workers and the state.

the situation on the other side of the planet

Not so far down the planet when it's your government funding the genocide, giving the perpetrators their political legitimacy in the international sphere, and literally shipping the weapons with which the genocide is carried out.

go fight with hamas

Go make a counter-reactionary terrorist insurgency or political group in the US if you're so concerned about the other types of rights you'll lose if Trump gets into office

I'm not myself trying to make the assertion that china is communism or that it will achieve communism, I'm saying that what you consider "ludicrous", has been a hotly debated topic for the past 100 years with many proponents on both sides, many of them with much more knowledge of socialism and revolutions than you or I possess.

Ok, so if it hurts the party's image being pro-genocide, they can solve it very easily right now while they're in government

Last I checked the SPD's party program still speaks of socialism

I'm sure the SPD party program talks about the end of capitalism /s

Again, not here to engage with smug factionalists. Have a good day

Harris openly said in the DNC convention that she believes in "Israel's right to defend itself", while not letting any pro-palestinian talk in the convention (cops had a representative though). It's painfully obvious.

there’s already a term for socialists who tolerate capitalism, it’s social democrats

Social Democrats don't want a transition to communism, not even ideologically. Dengists and Mensheviks do, at least ideologically. Whether you believe that or not is a different debate, but equating socialdemocrats with mensheviks is dumb, not a dunk.

why did they implement, and I quote Lenin, state capitalism

Look, I'm not here to argue for Marxism-Leninism against you because you're obviously trying to be smug, not trying to have a civilized discussion. If you actually want some good (in my opinion) analysis of actually-existing socialism, there are plenty of Michael Parenti videos online, or you can pick up his book "Blackshirts and Reds". But I suspect you're just here to punch to those communists that are further left than you are. If you do want to have this discussion let me know.

"we can ignore genocide as long as it's bipartisan"

"let's blame voters for wanting to vote against genocide instead of blaming the party which is committing genocide and openly speaking of having the most LETHAL army in the world"

You could be less condescending, I think I've been quite clear in my comment but maybe you don't understand because of the language barrier (I'm not a native speaker). Can you make the effort to consider that there exist actual countries that for the past decades have engaged in no war against any other country?

The party is literally in the government right now. Biden is a rotting corpse who is obviously not making the decisions for US international policy, so the arm deals with Israel are with the full consent and approval of all the democrat elites. Harris won't change this as it hasn't changed for the past 80 years.

My code are the lamps, the car is the internet code

Milei managed to improve on the deficit a lot! Turns out all you needed to do is to put 3/4 of your country in poverty and destroy 3.4% of GDP in a year! And you'll solve inflation as well, prices can't rise if people don't have money to buy things!!

Deficit is a good thing for the most part. It literally means by definition the government is putting more money into the economy than it's extracting, which increases the capacity of families and businesses to save and to spend. Surplus means, by definition, that it's collecting more money from the economy than it's reinvesting into it, which literally, by definition, makes people poorer.

The problem isn't with deficit itself, public expenditure is cool, the problem is where it's spent. We want fewer corporate bailouts and fewer corruption schemes, and more investment in education, healthcare and pensions.

Europe really shot itself in the foot privatising all its former public services

Mods? Why aren't you banning this post for genocide denial? I'll help: Uyghur Uyghur Uyghur! That should get your attention

Give me evidence

Please tell me on how many international wars countries from Latin America have engaged during the past 3 decades. Maybe, you know, let's do what they're doing in that regard?

Western propaganda apparatus