So socialism

[GenMarshall]

I think some socialism is a good thing. People put down the ussr because it caused more human suffering to its own people than any other regime in history.

My recollection is a bit fuzzy around the early 20th century. I recall that sometime during and after the Russian Revolution. There was a split amongst socialist between the Marxist-Leninist and Social Democrats, with the criticisms towards MLs being illiberal, authoritarian, and totalitarian. (Friedrich Ebert and George Orwell comes to mind with them being, iirc, socialist yet hold criticisms of communism). Even the American Federation of Labor was staunchly anti-communist and the Congress of Industrial Organization purged communists out of its organization in 1947.

It’s not just the USSR that people put down because of its authoritarian nature. North Korea and China gets their fair share. Though one could argue that North Korea’s government has evolved into a Frankenstein Commu-Monarchy state with the Kim family under Juche.

 

[Snowygerry]

Belgium has to feature socialism, though; it's three countries held together with some duct-tape ^^

And capitalism of course, ever since the time we smuggled English wool across the channel made into cloth to sell to the French.

History of the Wool Trade

Wool as a raw material has been widely available since the domestication of sheep. In medieval England, wool became big business...

www.historic-uk.com

Nothing new under the sun.

In the 1570’s to 1590’s a law was passed that all Englishmen except nobles had to wear a woollen cap to church on Sundays, part of a government plan to support the wool industry.

 

[amadeus]

The USSR was not perfect but it was by far better than the present crap.

Will you be the ones asking the Estonians to surrender their cars, or having the Latvians wait in line for meat, or telling the Lithuanians they will only get to vote for one party from now on? I would extend the question further into the former satellite countries if the Czechs want Russian tanks on their streets because the one-party government in Prague tried to be a little less dictatorial?

Why is it, casual observation ahead—the more ex-CPSU political leaders retained political power, the more of a basketcase the countries became? We expect communists to build capitalism when they couldn’t even build the socialism they believed in?

 

[Angst]

preface for this post: the sovjet union was cruel and vicious and its position as a historical black mark is fair. i'm not a goddamn tankie.

that said, going back and forth a few times here, rambling;
- its positioning in the cold war was a weird one; conceptualized as both existentially dangerous to the west and (particularly in retrospective) fundamentally dysfunctional
- (fascistoid Great Other echoes; both existentially dangerous and too weak to be competent; in reality, something can't be both)
- regardless of its position of "true communism" (it wasn't) there's a bunch of weird things here
- it was by far a secondary power on the world stage. the idea of a clash between two world orders is absurd when the lesser is lesser to such a degree. yes nukes are so overpowering that they even out everything (doesn't matter in a duel that only one person is armored when they both wield bazookas), but in regards to power projection, gdp, etc...
- even so, it was reasonably economical succesful even if isolated from the western post-colonial order. (no, five year plans are never ok; we're not discussing sovjet ethics here, but the question of whether state capitalist power projection is viable)
- so, its secondary position was a markedly secondary one.

so, on viability of the sovjet system.
- it was state capitalism. leninist economic foundations. internally communist (mostly), but was supposed to compete on the international market and to abide by market rules a lot when it came to economic growth
- so it was under an order of the market in international competition. y'know what makes a good market? free enterprise & trade, therefore lack of political (and market) isolation
- it was abiding under these rules as the western world held a firm bloc of colonial and post-colonial trade relations (barriers backed up by better guns), isolating the sovjets
- when there's no free access to goods, internal economies suffer. there's a multitude of other examples of this; and also a multitude of historical examples of very authoritarian economies being succesful.
- whenever the sovjet union tried to expand its own bloc/sphere against the superior western bloc, the west reacted harshly (again, often installing fascists in sovereign governments, but let's keep that out of this discussion)
- so all in all; we're dealing with a trading power whose effective economic ability is restricted by trade; a trading power so far behind in power projection that most of its expansion is fruitless against the might of the west. securing wealth is difficult and the internal economy will suffer
- they were not gonna be magically fixed if they were a free market economy under those conditions. they would still struggle.
- the point is:
- i'm not sure the material viability of the sovjet system is inherently impossible. i don't believe history proved the system wrong when it comes to power. don't get me wrong, again, one should never aim to reproduce the sovjet structure, as the fundamental legitimacy of wealth and economic efficiency is to make people happy (power projection's purpose is to secure wealth). but to me, it smells like proving that plants can't live on their own because you forget to water them in your apartment and they die. it's very fishbowl-y. it's proving communism doesn't work by having an apartment bloc organize as communism, and then a year after you send in the military and shoot the bunch. paris commune.
- i can't for sure say whether leninism or stalinism or whatever works well, what i can say that at least, with the practical context of dominant world powers, it didn't. and i can say that many other authoritarian economies historically did just fine and that regardless of communism's weird fascistoid Other position on the world stage, it was still considered "the Other superpower". i'd say that in regards to power projection it has to have been doing pretty ok regardless of being fundamentally isolated by every other dominant power on the planet

.

so, with all that said... socialism doesn't work?
idk i live in denmark and we historically embraced certain marxist practices to try and patch up some of capitalism's inherent problems. as i've said a bunch of times (here?) elsewhere, if you want capitalism to actually work, you gotta read some marx on some of its inherent problems that have, or will, ruin your life.

whether real communism can work is still an abstract question, and i don't think conceptualizing the sovjets as anything here is helpful at all. they were so succesful as to be considered a superpower. and were so horrendously incompetent (and honestly, maybe just isolated) that they cracked and failed.

liberalism's historical strides were horrendous. french revolution was inhuman. whole of europe beat them up for a few decades, collapsing France into a dictatorship. yea yea they won most of the wars; they had romantic france as the bulwark, not goddamn 20th century russia, and napoleonic corps over the disaster that is the russian army. (and yes, i know the justaxposition is hilarious, with the french revolution ending in russia.) 200 years later the pre-Napoleons got the last laugh. so to me worrying about these abstractions go to the wayside over realpolitik. sometimes you have a good idea, execute it terribly, have your country destroyed, and then eventually your vision became the status quo anyways.

that said, realpolitik matters. that you're proven right eventually - that your way is proven to work eventually - doesn't mean you were right - that what you tried to do worked. the french were not right. it didn't work. they failed. the sovjets were not right. it didn't work. they failed. was it the fault of the abstract goodness of communist purity? maybe not. it was probably the fault of the world order cracking down on you. but that's kind of the thing. it was the fault of concrete realpolitical practices where you face a gunman and insist he's wrong for robbing you. you need the metaphorical gun for being metaphorically able to shoot, to be right.

 

[r16]

when you are firing bazookas at each other , say beyond 300 metres , depending on whether it is really old and stuff , you are more likely to get hurt , if he has armour and you don't . Because you two will be really trading secondary effects other than armour penetration . Just caught my eye while passing by . ı think a different example would be better in this world of nerds .

 

[Angst]

when you are firing bazookas at each other , say beyond 300 metres , depending on whether it is really old and stuff , you are more likely to get hurt , if he has armour and you don't . Because you two will be really trading secondary effects other than armour penetration . Just caught my eye while passing by . ı think a different example would be better in this world of nerds .

i mean yea but i think the point is well illustrated: maybe like this. two cities on two islands. one is vastly more wealthy than the other. wealthy island has ten thousand troops, poor island has one hundred. both has one nuke that can level one island. here both are therefore infinitely a threat to each other. it has nothing to do with the armies or the viability of either system. the nukes overpower everything to that degree; it really has nothing to do with the economic systems or conditions of either island

or i could just say, like: north korea

Something like the Scandincoubtries irvore 1984 is probably about the best we can achieve.

Mote more than that you'll probably have to resort to violence and then your socialist regime goes down the path of all the various autocratic kleptocracy.

... just asking, did you mean
"Scandinavian countries before 1984"?

 

[Hygro]

Would make RD but even after all these years I can't say anything intelligent

I used to want to believe a better world was possible and I saw socialism as the way.
I still Feel kind of disgusted by how things are, but I've not gotten enlightened in socialism really, and now I don't know.

The Soviet union was reprehensible. Same with all other supposed revolutions that have been taken out really. And in the west or whatever I see mainly ignorant fools yapper past eachother about things they don't understand. I was among them. I'm not much better now.

What's the merit of socialism. Is there any hope?

How would one learn?

No.

The only thing that has hope is a very diverse system not understood by the people in it.

We can do a lot of smart things that get much of what we want to provide more room for more human agency and prosperity.

Try asking people to imagine what socialism is and see how quickly it turns into “well not the thing I dislike” instead.

This is why I like answers more like Lexicus’s: we can do specific things that are specifically good.

But it’s also why I think some of what joij is saying is actually the crux of the problem. The “movement” is full of misanthropes and snitches.

Not even snitches but those who project positions based on internal psychology and then attack. People are walking on eggshells and are infinitely more comfortable with problematic people to their right who are personally accepting than purity obsessed people among their shared left who are socially enforcing.

There are a number of solutions to how we can have a freer more equitable society. But even among the left where minds are more open, the close mindedness and difficulty in accepting information from someone who knows better than you, because how could you even know? Since you don’t know, leads to big errors. There’s no way for “socialists” to impose their minority position of their democratic society and not completely miss the mark.

Built into the entire movement is that it’s positioning itself within a much larger system; that is to say, most “socialists” subconsciously have zero intention of actualizing their identity.

Those on the left who are imagining something realizable speak differently and will, by virtue of being away from the subculture’s core memes (as the main of the subculture is people not seeking change, but this sub-sub group is) will be imagined to be to the right and therefore attacked.

So the “real” and not capitalism reinforcing socialists are like the tiniest group, who are not accepted by the larger left, who are actively pushed out one way or another. The larger group is defending the status quo by being impotently against it.

So whatever goals we hope to achieve as humans that align to socialism won’t come from trying to work with other socialists. So then what?

There’s a lot of answers, but most of them are private.

 

[Lexicus]

never say anything like this in public anywhere on former Soviet territory. Total ridicule would be guaranteed, risk of physical harm entirely non-negligible.

This is only true in your little corner of the Soviet Union. In most former Soviet territory the majority opinion is that living in the USSR was better than what has come after. Which is less praise of the Soviet Union and more an indication of just how bad things got in the 1990s.

Anyway, in Russia now they have Putin. Not sure how anyone can say that's sooo much better than the USSR, at least the post-Stalin USSR.

People put down the ussr because it caused more human suffering to its own people than any other regime in history.

No, it didn't.

Also, I'm pretty sure Gorbles is onto something here. Slavery in the USA was as bad as anything that happened in the USSR and yet few people will declare the US a categorically evil society as they will with the USSR.

 

[Yeekim]

This is only true in your little corner of the Soviet Union. In most former Soviet territory the majority opinion is that living in the USSR was better than what has come after.

In my mind, Russia counts as "current Soviet territory", as opposed to "former".
And yes, Soviet nostalgia is strong there. But even in Soviet times, the border fences were built (and guarded with machineguns) to keep people IN, not OUT.

From Putin's Russia, you can still leave. Until now, at least. Probably not for long though. Then there won't be much of a difference any more indeed.

 

[Kyriakos]

The post-Stalin USSR included the Yeltsin years. It'd be hard to claim those were better for Russians than Putin's era - at least up to the war.
Many Russians are entirely disillusioned with the soviet version of communism anyway, which should include virtually all of them that emigrated to the west.

 

[Lexicus]

In my mind, Russia counts as "current Soviet territory", as opposed to "former".

So, what, they're commie-nazis since they're "rashist" but apparently also Soviet? Makes no sense

 

[Narz]

The larger group is defending the status quo by being impotently against it.

It's safer emotionally to be right if only people would just listen to you than to actually exact change.

There used to be a 'communist' here, wont mentioned his name, started w a g. Before communism he was a rapid libertarian. Ive known many types like this irl, going from one extreme to another. I mentioned to him there were quite a few resources sharing communes in the US but he dismissed them as if he was somehow more radical than people actually attempting what he only opined. His lack of curiosity was telling. It was the ideas that gave him the kick.

I give props to people enacting ideals, however imperfectly (or even disastrously) because they're the ones we can all learn from.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

track record of communism is among history's worst. some degree of social programs have existed a long time, without killing millions. thus it's useful to first define what "socialism" even is.

it might be better to figure out why nations/cultures/etc decay into decadence and corruption reliably and a way to alter that course. it's been like clockwork in history. regardless of how nicely (or usually not) nations behaved, none have escaped this outcome, and from what i can tell no country that exists at present will either.

 

[Narz]

Also, I'm pretty sure Gorbles is onto something here. Slavery in the USA was as bad as anything that happened in the USSR and yet few people will declare the US a categorically evil society as they will with the USSR

I agree that slavery (and the genocide of the natives) were worse but no one claimed slavery or Indian genocide were for the good of the blacks or natives.

I don't see how the whataboutism strengthens your case for communism

 

[Yeekim]

So, what, they're commie-nazis since they're "rashist" but apparently also Soviet? Makes no sense

That's because you don't follow Russian social media, I guess.
Imperialism is the common denominator here.

 

[PhroX]

I agree that slavery (and the genocide of the natives) were worse but no one claimed slavery or Indian genocide were for the good of the blacks or natives.

I don't see how the whataboutism strengthens your case for communism

There were many people, particularly in the 19th century, that claimed that slavery benefited blacks. And while I don't know of any claims that the killing of natives benefitted them, claims that the destruction of their society and culture - which is genocide - did so were widespread and are still seen today (i.e. "civilising them").

 

[Gorbles]

I don't see how the whataboutism strengthens your case for communism

The thread is about socialism, despite the repeated attempts from folks at a) conflating that with communism and b) attempting to link that to the USSR. If you want to complain about whataboutism, what are people here repeatedly doing with communism and the USSR? Socialism might be related on some axis to communism, but it isn't the same thing.

Last I checked, when criticising our modern capitalist society (slash societies), we're apparently not to blame it for all the things people do wrong with it. Why does this standard never seem to get applied to socialism (or communism)? Why do people rush to go "but the USSR was bad", every single time? We can't even get past the USSR to discuss socialism itself (though Angst tried his absolute best a bit earlier), because everything gets bogged down in "USSR bad".

Case in point:

track record of communism is among history's worst

Nobody asked, but cool story dude

 

[Kyriakos]

It's the only manifestation of a system which is at least superficially tied to socialism.
Capitalism is also pitiful. But actual socialism would need to be based on tech that is on an entirely different (more advanced) level than 19th century Germany's.

I'd offer Athens during Pericles, but they needed to leech off their empire. At least the citizens had a safety net and thus none of those would risk hunger. The state also taxed the super-rich through the demiourgoi program=>they had to pay for public works such as artistic festivals, maintaining a trireme etc. Moreover literally any citizen could have a say, and they would end up (for brief times) in ruling bodies too; eg even Socrates was a judge, during the infamous trial on the Arginousae naval battle. The state even PAID you to vote, to ensure the public wouldn't become indifferent due to lack of immediate risk. Last but not least, anyone becoming a danger in the eyes of the public - either legitimately or just perceived as such - would find themselves exiled through the ostracism practice. Even Aristeides was ostracised, for being "too just" and thus getting on people's nerves

 

[Yeekim]

It's the only manifestation of a system which is at least superficially tied to socialism.
Capitalism is also pitiful. But actual socialism would need to be based on tech that is on an entirely different (more advanced) level than 19th century Germany's.

On that note, I am wondering how current AIs would manage to handle economic planning.

 

[Kyriakos]

On that note, I am wondering how current AIs would manage to handle economic planning.

The planning wouldn't be done by the ai - assuming real ai is even existent. Nor is a computer needed to prioritize common well-being=> no one facing insurmountable risks.