Even the DDR wasn’t doing socialism. The public were sold on the idea or they were discredited or arrested. It was an authoritarian autocracy acting in the name of socialism.
That is indeed what your capitalist NGOs tell you with unlimited funds.
Consider that socialism is about control over the means of production, of deposing the capitalist system, and that your dismissal of the DDR as socialist didn’t address that at all. Do you think it’s possible you’ve been lied to?
No, I think I’m far enough on the left to be aware of capitalist propaganda. In all fairness to you, my statement did not treat the subject with the appropriate nuance the subject should require.
The DDR was socialist. However, it was state socialism, which in my opinion is not ideal and not something we should strive to replicate. Yes, the means of production were “owned by the people,” but the state tasks itself with protecting the people. And therein lies the problem with state socialism - the state is easily commandeered by a corrupt minority who then uses the governmental apparatus to run an authoritarian regime. Precisely what happened in the DDR and the USSR.
We should be able to recognize the imperfections in prior socialist attempts, without immediately calling it “capitalist NGO propaganda.”
There was no issue re: nuance in your statements, they were just nonsensical and revealed a lack of understand the basic ideas of the topic. This trend has continued with this reply.
The DDR was socialist. However, it was state socialism, which in my opinion is not ideal and not something we should strive to replicate.
The framing of socialism as ownership of the means of production goes hand-in-hand with control over the state. It’s how it was originally formulated by Marx, Engels, etc. The term “dictatorship of the proletariat” is stated in the same breaths and texts and concepts. There is no such thing as non-state socialism in this conception, the only conception that is relevant to this discussion.
This is something a person would know if they had ever read even a basic summary of this topic.
Yes, the means of production were “owned by the people,” but the state tasks itself with protecting the people. And therein lies the problem with state socialism - the state is easily commandeered by a corrupt minority who then uses the governmental apparatus to run an authoritarian regime.
You’re even using the liberal NGO lexicon for this description! Vague generalizations about authoritarianism and cute little stories with no grounding in reality.
We should be able to recognize the imperfections in prior socialist attempts, without immediately calling it “capitalist NGO propaganda.”
It’s not hard to identify a poor understanding when you have, you know, actually learned about these things. And interacted with thousands of people just like you and know why they parrot such nonsense. If you had an informed or valid criticism that would be something to talk about, but we are not in that situation. I think we are looking at a graduate of Reddit University, with all the intellectual humility that implies.
It’s always as a “See!! Socialism bad!!” but yep they were literally fascist, Rushia too and yet here we are with people still thinking communist Rushia was communist.
Saying that Facists are Facists is trivializing the holocaust? How’s that work? The fact Nazis were Facists doesn’t trivialize the fact that other groups are also Facists. Facists like to kill people that’s kind of their whole ideology. Fascist ideology leads directly to the kind of ideas the Nazis had.
Fascism is when you destroy Nazi Germany and end the Holocaust which the Nazis started, rescuing countless Jews and other people from Nazi death camps. I am extremely historically literate.
You could always actually read the essay that you were linked to, rather than continue to just put your fingers in your ears and shout your false assertion over and over.
Soviet Union will eternally be among the greatest nations of all times and humanity will forever be in its debt for the sacrifices of the Red Army in its victorious struggle to defeat Nazism. Soviet Union bled in the millions so that everyone could live. No greater sign of love by a nation has been given.
You could always actually read the essay that you were linked to, rather than continue to just put your fingers in your ears and shout your false assertion over and over.
> article by a jewish linguist who spent decades interviewing holocaust survivors, writing about how the claim that the soviets were “as bad as the nazis” feeds into holocaust apologia (like when the Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to a former SS member Yaroslav Hunka last year because he fought against the USSR)
> “I dont really care what Jewish holocaust scholars want”
🤔 its almost as if you dont care about the victims of fascism and just want to score cheap internet points
Incredibly I don’t think that the USSR is “as bad as the Nazis” nor did I say anything like that. Is that why you morons are calling me a Nazi? Do you guys need a paragraph explaining that yes I do think the Nazis are bad?
I’m not trying to win fuckn internet points I’d still be on reddit if I got turned on by that kinda shit. You people are.
Ignoring everything else wrong about your one sentence, a dictatorship needn’t be helmed by a single person. Brazil was a dictatorship from the 60s to the 90s, and had 6 different presidents during that time.
You’re moving the goalposts. Obviously a succession of dictatorships is possible, even with a preservation of an overarching dictatorial system. However, you can’t have a dictatorship where the so-called dictator doesn’t even have the authority to resign unilaterally. Try “oligarchy” next time and you’ll get more interesting responses.
Okay, what about the whole soviets and sharing power with trade unions thing? What about their innovations in participatory democracy. The USSR were hyperdemocratic, even on war footing, at least until destalinization happened and the bureaucracy started taking hold.
Cuba follows a really similar system to the soviets system and it is probably as close to a democracy as you can get in a capitalist world, so how is it that the USSR was undemocratic? Did the evil russkies implement council democracy but forgot to actually do it??? Just like they implemented the Washington Consensus post-breakdown but forgot to do the American-“democracy”??
His sentence isn’t wrong. Stalin did try to resign multiple times (four actually). When his fourth resignation was rejected by the party he then attempted to abolish his own position entirely.
Democracy under socialism is simply structured differently. You need to study it properly.
Several countries that you support today still use a system very much like this. Cuba and Vietnam for example. A solid video on Cuban democracy is here: https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds
Dictatorships are when almost the entire population supports the government. Democracy is when corporations own all candidates and the electoral college designed by slaveowners almost 300 years ago decides all presidential elections. I am a critical thinker.
There are definitely some folks that see “National Socialism” as the party name and look no further. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s a strong majority, but they pop up online.
Both Crowder and Shapiro have claimed this. They point out that the Nazi party was the ‘National Socialist German workers’ party’ and claim that’s enough for it to be socialist, and then also claim Russia is a communist country.
The USSR was a communist country. A normal use of that term is that a country communist is one that’s run by a communist party.
If you mean it didn’t achieve communism, well duh communism is a hypothesized society achieved through socialism where the state ceases to exist. No socialists, including the people of the USSR, would think that their nation-state has achieved communism as that’s oxymoronic. They would think of it as a transitional socialist state.
There’s a Hitler quote somewhere, in some letter that was like “we laugh at the fools who think our ideology has anything to do with the socialism of the bolsheviks”
There was another one where he says “I didn’t want to kill the Jews, but they’re all communists”
Someone with a better ability to keep track of sources than me probably knows where to find them
I mean the big ones people like to point at (Rushia and fucking Nazi Germany) sure as shit weren’t doing communism or socialism
Nazi Germany wasn’t left and the USSR, which included more than Russia, was a transitional socialist country lol.
Even the DDR wasn’t doing socialism. The public were sold on the idea or they were discredited or arrested. It was an authoritarian autocracy acting in the name of socialism.
That is indeed what your capitalist NGOs tell you with unlimited funds.
Consider that socialism is about control over the means of production, of deposing the capitalist system, and that your dismissal of the DDR as socialist didn’t address that at all. Do you think it’s possible you’ve been lied to?
No, I think I’m far enough on the left to be aware of capitalist propaganda. In all fairness to you, my statement did not treat the subject with the appropriate nuance the subject should require.
The DDR was socialist. However, it was state socialism, which in my opinion is not ideal and not something we should strive to replicate. Yes, the means of production were “owned by the people,” but the state tasks itself with protecting the people. And therein lies the problem with state socialism - the state is easily commandeered by a corrupt minority who then uses the governmental apparatus to run an authoritarian regime. Precisely what happened in the DDR and the USSR.
We should be able to recognize the imperfections in prior socialist attempts, without immediately calling it “capitalist NGO propaganda.”
There was no issue re: nuance in your statements, they were just nonsensical and revealed a lack of understand the basic ideas of the topic. This trend has continued with this reply.
The framing of socialism as ownership of the means of production goes hand-in-hand with control over the state. It’s how it was originally formulated by Marx, Engels, etc. The term “dictatorship of the proletariat” is stated in the same breaths and texts and concepts. There is no such thing as non-state socialism in this conception, the only conception that is relevant to this discussion.
This is something a person would know if they had ever read even a basic summary of this topic.
You’re even using the liberal NGO lexicon for this description! Vague generalizations about authoritarianism and cute little stories with no grounding in reality.
It’s not hard to identify a poor understanding when you have, you know, actually learned about these things. And interacted with thousands of people just like you and know why they parrot such nonsense. If you had an informed or valid criticism that would be something to talk about, but we are not in that situation. I think we are looking at a graduate of Reddit University, with all the intellectual humility that implies.
Not sure if alternative spelling or if your autocorrect really likes controversial vtuber Uruha Rushia.
Ah shit. Guess you can tell what kinda stuff I like watching
I don’t think anyone points at Nazi Germany as an example of a leftist system. They were literally fascist lol
It’s always as a “See!! Socialism bad!!” but yep they were literally fascist, Rushia too and yet here we are with people still thinking communist Rushia was communist.
Jew here, go fuck yourself you Nazi garbage.
Jewish holocaust scholars don’t like it when you call the USSR fascist
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
That sucks. USSR by definition was a fascist regime so I don’t really care what they want
Fascism is when you oppose fascism.
Do you even understand what the words you’re using mean?
Okay have fun with the holocaust trivialization I guess.
Saying that Facists are Facists is trivializing the holocaust? How’s that work? The fact Nazis were Facists doesn’t trivialize the fact that other groups are also Facists. Facists like to kill people that’s kind of their whole ideology. Fascist ideology leads directly to the kind of ideas the Nazis had.
Fascism is when you destroy Nazi Germany and end the Holocaust which the Nazis started, rescuing countless Jews and other people from Nazi death camps. I am extremely historically literate.
You could always actually read the essay that you were linked to, rather than continue to just put your fingers in your ears and shout your false assertion over and over.
The soviets sacrificed tens of millions of lives to save you and the rest of the world from the Nazis. Show some fucking respect.
Soviet Union will eternally be among the greatest nations of all times and humanity will forever be in its debt for the sacrifices of the Red Army in its victorious struggle to defeat Nazism. Soviet Union bled in the millions so that everyone could live. No greater sign of love by a nation has been given.
Tankies are tiring, right? ✌️
If you’re tired, just give up. It’s better in the collective:)
Yeah despite how much I want to fight back I know I’ll just be wasting my energy
Insisting on being wrong to own the Holocaust scholars.
How do holocaust scholars relate to the USSR being facist or not? Facist ≠ Nazi though fascism leads directly to the kind of ideas the Nazis hold
Have you actually read it yet?
I read it before I’d even replied. It’s got nothing to do with the USSR being facist or not.
You could always actually read the essay that you were linked to, rather than continue to just put your fingers in your ears and shout your false assertion over and over.
> article by a jewish linguist who spent decades interviewing holocaust survivors, writing about how the claim that the soviets were “as bad as the nazis” feeds into holocaust apologia (like when the Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to a former SS member Yaroslav Hunka last year because he fought against the USSR)
> “I dont really care what Jewish holocaust scholars want”
🤔 its almost as if you dont care about the victims of fascism and just want to score cheap internet points
Incredibly I don’t think that the USSR is “as bad as the Nazis” nor did I say anything like that. Is that why you morons are calling me a Nazi? Do you guys need a paragraph explaining that yes I do think the Nazis are bad?
I’m not trying to win fuckn internet points I’d still be on reddit if I got turned on by that kinda shit. You people are.
The USSR was a dictatorship, but not a fascist dictatorship.
Stalin tried to resign 3 times and wasn’t allowed to. Weird thing for a dictator to not be allowed to do.
Ignoring everything else wrong about your one sentence, a dictatorship needn’t be helmed by a single person. Brazil was a dictatorship from the 60s to the 90s, and had 6 different presidents during that time.
You’re moving the goalposts. Obviously a succession of dictatorships is possible, even with a preservation of an overarching dictatorial system. However, you can’t have a dictatorship where the so-called dictator doesn’t even have the authority to resign unilaterally. Try “oligarchy” next time and you’ll get more interesting responses.
Okay, what about the whole soviets and sharing power with trade unions thing? What about their innovations in participatory democracy. The USSR were hyperdemocratic, even on war footing, at least until destalinization happened and the bureaucracy started taking hold.
Cuba follows a really similar system to the soviets system and it is probably as close to a democracy as you can get in a capitalist world, so how is it that the USSR was undemocratic? Did the evil russkies implement council democracy but forgot to actually do it??? Just like they implemented the Washington Consensus post-breakdown but forgot to do the American-“democracy”??
The only thing he got wrong is that Stalin tried to resign four times. Delete your account.
His sentence isn’t wrong. Stalin did try to resign multiple times (four actually). When his fourth resignation was rejected by the party he then attempted to abolish his own position entirely.
No it wasn’t. This is propaganda. Even the CIA admits that it is propaganda in this document:
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Democracy under socialism is simply structured differently. You need to study it properly.
Several countries that you support today still use a system very much like this. Cuba and Vietnam for example. A solid video on Cuban democracy is here: https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds
All the socialist countries built on this system.
Dictatorships are when almost the entire population supports the government. Democracy is when corporations own all candidates and the electoral college designed by slaveowners almost 300 years ago decides all presidential elections. I am a critical thinker.
No it wasn’t fuck off.
Lol I get the feeling that kinda opinion isn’t popular round here
Holocaust trivialisation isn’t popular in many places
Really? Weird. It’s always really well received at the Nazi bars I visit.
Must just be a coincidence though.
(I don’t actually visit Nazi bars, for the record—not knowingly anyway)
Have you considered that you seem to know almost nothing about this and therefore shouldn’t share your opinion like it’s some kind of fact?
Does it take a lot of effort to achieve levels of liberalism this high or were you just made in a lab like this
In your own words, what is fascism?
I’ve seen many idiots do that unfortunately
Removed by mod
There are definitely some folks that see “National Socialism” as the party name and look no further. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s a strong majority, but they pop up online.
Oof I feel concerned about those people.
I guess it’s similar to “an” caps.
The Intersection is indeed a very high degree.
It would be funny if there weren’t people suffering and dying because of it
Reminder that there’s a bird called titmouse
Correct. They are both idiots who pointed at Nazi Germany as an example of a leftist system.
Both Crowder and Shapiro have claimed this. They point out that the Nazi party was the ‘National Socialist German workers’ party’ and claim that’s enough for it to be socialist, and then also claim Russia is a communist country.
Crowder and Shapiro are complete idiots.
Idiots? On the right? Arguing in bad faith? You don’t say…
The USSR was a communist country. A normal use of that term is that a country communist is one that’s run by a communist party.
If you mean it didn’t achieve communism, well duh communism is a hypothesized society achieved through socialism where the state ceases to exist. No socialists, including the people of the USSR, would think that their nation-state has achieved communism as that’s oxymoronic. They would think of it as a transitional socialist state.
There’s a Hitler quote somewhere, in some letter that was like “we laugh at the fools who think our ideology has anything to do with the socialism of the bolsheviks”
There was another one where he says “I didn’t want to kill the Jews, but they’re all communists”
Someone with a better ability to keep track of sources than me probably knows where to find them