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?

that is my big question for the anarchist college kids that are my friends, they just go to the most super liberal college

It also wasn't simply a result of human error on the part of the Maoists. Refusal to cooperate, lying about grain supplies, hoarding of grain and weather disturbances were also to blame.

I never read any mao how does he differ from his soviet counterparts?

Well, capitalism is highly functional.. just not in the way you might imagine it to be. Environmental destruction, capital accumulation into the hands of a minority of the world's population, frequent destabilization of governments and displacement of millions of people, endless wars...

i would argue that while capitalism has its flaws, it works better than communism

i do acknowledge its flaws

however i also acknowledge the progress we've made in technology

without capitalism, we would not have these computers to type on

or discord

I am far from educated on the subject but I feel the main thing that keeps people from leftist ideas is very wrong ideas about them that seem to be common

@quiscalus Mao was very pro-Stalin and anti-revisionist. He was often at odds with Khrushchev who took Stalin's positions after his death.

you can't deny this?

Mao was a brilliant tactician and a wonderful Marxist theoretician.

His military tactics are still studied to this day in places like West Point and elsewhere.

yeah his civil war from 1911 to 49 was interesting, poor chinese suffering 3 wars at once at some points in time then

a lot of my coworkers are very reactionary against words like communism and socialism

@Brickiest Brick Capitalism is not some kind of anthropomorphic entity that is responsible for computers and other technologies. These things were created by laborers, many of whom were and are exploited and subjected to the most degrading of working conditions thanks to the profit motive.

I work with a lot of people from SE Asia, lots of cambodians one of them survived pol pot

I think it is hard to know what products would be made with or without capitalism?

but lemon, if it were not for the greed and motivation to make those ideas, they would not have happened. do you believe, under a communist system instead of a capitalist one, we would have all this technology around us today?

Pol Pot was not a Marxist. He was a psychopathic, dictatorial murderer though with possible connections to Western intelligence.

i know you have an issue with the morals of capitalism, but you can't deny it works

do you think there might be room for markets for certain luxury items in an ideal society?