Message from @quiscalus
Discord ID: 387536868260053002
The DSA is really nothing more than the radical wing of the Democratic Party.
how do you know what is good theory is there a way to test the validity of one mode of thought over another?
And Jacobin puts out good stuff on occasion but for the most part they are pretty liberal.
yeah I mainly approach the left because I am motivated by a moral philosophy that I think fits pretty well with it
Just examine the results of the practical application of a given theory in the historical record.
yeah that's why I question anarchism because it appears every manifestation of leftism on a large scale seems to meet a violent end from outside nations unless they have a military
For example, the command-style economy of the USSR effectively transformed a backwater, semi-feudal nation into an industrialized superpower in just a few decades.
It's almost mind-boggling.
yeah I think they could have done that will out all the social repression but that is just my opinion on the matter
now i don't mean to start an argument here, but has marxism ever been attempted at all?
yeah both china and russia were transformed from dramatically poor agrarian societies to modern wealthy educated industrial ones in a very short time
I am not super well read but based on the outline in the communist manifesto I think not
One thing you have to understand is that they were literally surrounded by capitalo-imperialist nations whose mission was to crush what they perceived as a fundamental threat to their way of life. In the early years of the socialist experiment in Russia, 7 foreign powers sent in armies in an attempt to stop the Bolsheviks in their tracks.
has there ever been a command economy with democratic representation? didn't the soviet state replace capitalists with bureaucrats who controlled production, distribution, etc?
They failed. I suggest you look into Soviet Democracy, which was a form of Direct-Democracy.
that is true every state trying to achieve leftist aims faces opposition from other forces
shit look and thomas sankara france murdered him pretty quickly to reestablish control of the former colony even in the 80s
The USSR did manage to create a socialist economy after the NEP and prior to its collapse due to capitalist influence after Stalin's death.
is it possible to have a socialist state with a powerful enough military to hold out against outside forces while preserving human rights?
Was it ideal? Of course not. The conditions were not ripe for the kind of socialism Marx predicted would come about in advanced, capitalist nations in the West. But nonetheless it was socialist at one point.
I will be back soon though I am enjoying hearing from you dudes
Ok, ttys.
ok lemon i must ask you
how much different is marxism from stalinism
I would like to add that you seem to believe that the USSR was some kind of bastion of human-rights abuses. This isn't supported by the evidence, nor is it supported by the fact that over half of the population of the former Soviet Union wish to return to that kind of socioeconomic arrangement.
well when people cite the ussr they talk less about the human rights abuses
and more about the starvation toll
now can you prove to me that millions of people did not die of starvation in the ussr, and if this is true then tell me what the reasons were for this
@Brickiest Brick Stalinism is really just a buzzword commonly used by Trotskyites, Liberals and conservatives. They use it to refer to "Marxism-Leninism". Lenin was an Orthodox Marxist until the day he died. Stalin was one of his many comrades who made some mistakes, but he wasn't the mass-murdering psychopath that red scare propaganda would have you believe. He also didn't have absolute power.
ah interesting
im still learning more about far-leftist theory as well
Were there famines in Ukraine? Yes. Was it orchestrated by any central administrative power? No. Does that region of the world have a long history of famines which predated the existence of the Soviet Union? Yes.
Evidence aside, how could anyone believe that an individual or a group of individuals would intentionally starve millions of laborers when their goal was to increase productivity and output?
what about the great leap forward under mao I am not a person who thinks nothing done in china or russia at the time is totally evil I am just not sure if collectivizing farms was needed after giving land to the landless working peasants
sorry about taking so long had to put some egg wash on but had no brush so I did it with my hands, I am making some challah which I haven't made in a while
I am not a tankie but they aren't wrong all the time, but I am far from stalin did nothing wrong
well of course i dont believe stalin willfully killed millions of his own citizens
The GLF was a disaster, certainly. But if you analyze the situation around that time, you'll find that Mao wasn't in charge of it. Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaopeng, who were later discovered to be capitalist roaders, were effectively in charge of the operation.
it's the economics of communism i have a problem with
my question is how do we know if a system is good unless we have a functional example in history?