Seeing some of the zingers in the comments here, now seems like a great time to plug my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Read up, comrades!
you know, i tell you what. i’m fed up with all this gringo self-righteousness when you talk about “oh communism was bad, oh people where killed, oh people had no food, oh people had no liberty, oh people could not buy ataris, oh our countries are so democratic”. your countries were democratic during the cold war in the first place because you had people to sort things out for you here in the global south. for each person complaining about how the food rations in eastern europe were not tasty enough, there were 10 dying of hunger or malnourishment here in the global south. for every person complaining they had to wait 5 years in a queue to buy a trabant or an oka, there were 10 who got no school in a range of 50 km. for every person complaining that their 8 hour shifts in state owned factories were overwhelming, there were 10 who were indentured workers. for every person complaining about how the stasi, kgb or the stb had bugged their apartment, there were 10 suffering the most horrific tortures inside black sites of the military of u.s. allies here in the “third world”. for every person complaining about dull standard apartment blocks in mikrorayons, there were 10 who lived in mud shacks and slums, and those are just who were lucky enough to have a roof over their heads. finally, for everyone complaining about chinese sweatshops, which are indeed a problem, there are 10 americans who work and yet cannot afford proper housing.
you wanna complain about how communism was bad? go ahead. you wanna complain how your parents lived under communism and could not drink coke? do so if you wish. but there are still millions of people down here who would give an arm and a leg to have a polish ration, an apartment in a russian gray building, or a yugoslav job. and while the chinese maoist red guard was bad, surely it won’t be an inch closer to the harassement people endured on a daily basis by our police forces.
again: you wanna complain? be my guest. but for me that’s an encyclopedic example of white privilege.
This, so much this. Having a job and a roof over your head is such a luxury in the ‘global south’, the true face of capitalism
When people ask me what communist country was successful I usually say all of them until cia decided to go there and spread freedom 🇺🇸🦅
Well… There was this thing called Soviet Union. They decided to try to speed up the transition to communism by using repression and violence. And ended up being a totalitarian state, a direct opposite of what a communist state is supposed to be like.
Of course you can argue that Soviet Union was not communist, it was just a state that had chosen to call itself communist for propaganda reasons… But still, Soviet Union is an example of a communist country that was unsuccessful as a communist project already by itself. Then came outsiders and helped make it even worse, but bad doesn’t become good by some people wanting it to be even worse. Burma is another example. I’d say they hacked away their own leg before anyone else, such as CIA, had time to interfere in their business.
The USSR had to deal with a civil war, rising up during WWI and being sabotaged by the Germans, more civil war, foreign meddling, and all while being the first successful communist revolution. Yet they still managed to raise literacy, raise health outcomes, raise average life expectancy, gender equality, science and technology, end the cycle of famines (after the first one or two they had when they were still building up), had faster growth during that period than any capitalist country (except maybe the US, which was doing imperialism at the time and the biggest hegemon), all while helping sustain other socialist countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.
The USSR didn’t “do repression and violence to speed up Communism,” they had a successful revolution and established Socialism. By all accounts it was quite successful overall, but we can learn from where they erred and adapt for the future.
The only ones who believe the Soviet Union wasn’t Socialist are generally Western Trots or liberals/Anarchists who already don’t want the form of society Marxists want, which is a government that publicly owns its large and key industries and gradually folds in the new firms that grow to that level until the entire economy is publicly owned.
Have you never heard of bolševiks and menševiks? What you’re explaining is what menševiks wanted, but what happened was what bolševiks aimed for.
And that was inhumane horror.
Least smug shitlib
I like this version better, thx.
Anytime anyone whines about “commies / tankies”, they’re entirely complicit with these mass killings.
Don’t know how your get one from the other. I can think that state socialist experiments were flawed, misguided, and ultimately destined for autocracy, and still think that targeting them with imperialist intervention is wrong.
Just because the US empire is evil doesn’t make everyone opposing them good. The world is not black and white.
Who’s the one telling you that the USSR, Cuba, China, Venezuela or Vietnam are/were autocracies?
If you actually investigate countries that have substantive / economic democracy, which goes far beyond the liberal equality before the law, you’ll find them to be far more democratic than the countries accusing them of being autocracies.
The US Empire being incredibly evil and predatory towards anyone daring to exert domestic control over their economies and even their own allies does paint a better picture for AES states. It doesn’t make them automatically good, but it starts them off on the right foot.
Then you can analyze how AES states have brought immense democratizations of the economy, massive expansions in key quality of life metrics like education, literacy, life expectancy, Home Ownership, and more, while expanding worker rights and supporting the Global South against the Imperialist countries, it’s hard to see AES as “bad.”
There are genuine critiques of AES countries, but I wouldn’t call them “autocratic,” considering they are generally more democratic than western countries, and moreover the needs of the people are better met. For example, people in China believe the government represents their interests at rates surpassing 90%, and more Chinese workers believe they have democratic control than USian workers.
All of these considerations need to be taken into account, and the fact that these AES states have been treated with the harshest of violence from the US Empire means they are deserving of support for their own existence.
