You wouldn’t think of a European community of being so insanely pro Russia, yet on every single post mentioning Russia, any negative comments about Russia or their government will get downvoted to hell, some people get banned. I would not be surprised if I am banned or downvoted for posting this. People who are not just blatantly spamming Kremlin propaganda, please say why you are so pro Russia, to someone confused.
The idea of a political vanguard was already present with Marx and Engels. Lenin advanced Marxism to the era of imperialism. Further, characterizing socialist democracy as “a small group of people [with] absolute power” is just not how socialist democracy or vanguards function in reality.
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I don’t have 50+ pages on why the next revolution will be different. In many ways, the next revolution will be very similar, such as concentrating political power in the hands of the working classes, and the violent reaction towards counterrevolutionaries. This is generally true of revolution. We do live in a different time, so different conditions will lead to different results (for example, Eastern European socialism may look more like China today than the USSR). However, I do have evidence supporting how your characterization of the distribution of power doesn’t actually hold up to scrutiny.
The soviet union was a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets brutalized the capitalists, tsarists, fascists, landlords, and kulaks, while liberating the workers and peasants. The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Death rates spiked:
And wealth disparity skyrocketed alongside the newly impoverished majority:
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism and reintroduction of capitalism, and this is why the large majority of post-soviet citizens regret its fall. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries. A lot of Eastern European countries were swarmed with western capital during the destruction of socialism, which is what temporarily caused the rise of the far-right in these countries, but in time their problems will no longer be able to be ignored.
Regarding the death rate and life expectancy, I believe I mentioned this before but the graphs don’t support what you’re saying here. Death rates started climbing since the 1960s in Russia, and that trend was only reversed post-collapse (in your graph). And the supposed spike is not wildly out of line with that rising trend line since the 1960s. Furthermore, it seems to line up with a birth rate spike approx. 70 years earlier, which matches the life expectancy in Russia during that time. So it’s not clear that the collapse caused these extra deaths, or that there were just more people dying of natural causes/old age-related ailments because a large cohort of the population reached life expectancy at that time. The graph certainly does not seem to support the reading that it was due to the collapse. Birth rates also started climbing post-collapse (but that can be interpreted both positively as well as negatively so it’s harder to judge in isolation).
Similarly with life expectancy, trend line largely flatlined during the Soviet era after an initial strong climb (caused mostly by advancements in treatments for common age-related issues like heart diseases, same reason it climbed similarly in the West during this time), saw a dip post-collapse but then started rising again, for the first time in decades. That’s not because the Soviets did materially worse necessarily, it’s likely again due to advancements in medicine discovered in the West now spreading properly to the former Soviet states.
The collapse was certainly rough and had plenty of bad effects (see your income graphs for example, excellent example), don’t get me wrong. But death rate/life expectancy are imo very weak evidence of this, or can even be construed as counter-evidence.
We’ve discussed this before, at best I can say we agreed to disagree. With the immense economic collapse came, internally to the Soviets, an extreme drop in the ability to feed themselves and get proper healthcare. Prostitution skyrocketed, and with it came sexually transmitted diseases (this wasn’t regulated prostitution, but the criminal kind that is even more dangerous). Same with drug and alcohol abuse, violent and organized crime, and more. These are all standard effects from economic collapse.
Outside of the USSR, trading partners that relied heavily on the Soviets, like Cuba and the DPRK, underwent extreme turmoil. The Special Period in Cuba and the Arduous March in the DPRK could have been mitigated by a standing Soviet Union, but instead they had to largely fend for themselves, creating mass famine. While there was no famine of the same scale and intensity in the former Soviet Union, the economic collapse was still significant enough to result in excess deaths internally that amounted to a major tragedy.
did you have that one prepared or are you chatgpting me.
Prepared. I talk about Marxism-Leninism a lot, and as such have a big backlog of effort-comments I can draw from. I have one about the PRC as well:
PRC general effortpost
In China, the backbone of the economy is in the public sector, in huge State Owned Enterprises. The large firms and key industries in China are overwhelmingly publicly owned, while private ownership is relegated to small industry and highly competitive industries. As for working hours, the average is between 40 and 48 hours, usually hovering around 44-46. 996 is illegal, was largely in big tech firms, and is overall rare.
The PRC is a socialist state, not a state capitalist state like the Republic of Korea, US Empire, or Singapore. China being socialist has nothing to do with the name of the party in control, and everything to do with the mode of production and distribution in China. Rather than a neoliberal paradise, it’s closer to a nightmare for neoliberals. This editorial from The Guardian explains it quite well, actually:
How then, does China’s economy work? Public ownership is the principal aspect of China’s economy. This means that public ownership governs the large firms and key industries, and is what is rising in China, as private ownership is kept to small and medium non-essential industries. No system is static, meaning identifying the nature of a system depends on identifying what is rising and what is dying away. Cpitalists are held on a tight leash, and are prevented from gaining political power as a class. The reason private ownership is allowed at all is because China has very uneven development due to their rapid industrialization, and private ownership does help with filling in gaps left by the primary aspects of the economy like SOEs.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
China does have billionaires, as you might then protest. China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes and the state, run along the lines of a common plan, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized.
Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
To dogmatically collectivize the entire economy would actually be a move undesirable by Marxist standards. Certain economies like the DPRK and USSR have had to do so in order to develop military deterrence, China managed to negotiate itself into the global economy and take advantage of the utility of markets in socializing the small industries, making them ripe for central planning.
I’m a big 'ol commie. Like you, I’m also woke and colonial history-pilled, I just try to use that to help persuade people towards what I believe is the correct political line for certifying a better future.
fair. thanks for engaging.
No problem!
You are not the first person having a misguided opinion on the Soviet Union.
Shocker, I know. But it’s not necessarily your fault, obviously the bourgeoisie, who controls most of the media you have access to, makes sure to propagate those beliefs, and not only in the obvious and crude ways.
But seriously, Cowbee is one of the most prolific posters here, he has those posts ready on a couple different subjects.
Of course a piefed bot immediately rejects evidence
prepared. seen it many times
I’ll work on new material I promise 🫠
I don’t want people bored of my commenting
I don’t even read it anymore, I already know what’s in it.
Sorry… I am serious though, I do plan on making new material. I especially need to update the DPRK one considering their democratic model has made some fairly major changes in the last 2 years I was unaware of until recently, such as the introduction of multi-candidate primaries and the dissolution of the Democratic Front that helped democratically select candidates for the single-candidate approval vote. They are undergoing more changes and adjustments, especially since they don’t forsee unification in the short or medium run any longer.
Hope I haven’t been boring, I know you check on my comments from time to time and I try to be useful in general. If people don’t even read my comments anymore then even if it saves me time it isn’t worth it.
Of course I am a special case. I have already read it multiple times, and therefore don’t find the need to again.