This meme was inspired by the response to a meme I posted on r/worldjerking
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10351845
This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/
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Most people know about the end states. How you get there is way more important. Gotta get to communism without becoming a dictatorial hell scape like ussr or China.
The two main avenues are slow change through existing means and violent revolution. The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don't already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I've ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
Look at Project 2025. That's a fascist takeover plot that has a plan for future government. No one really takes it seriously, unfortunately since it could happen. so even fewer will take other plans seriously.
dictatorial hell scape like ussr or China
Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia is a great book that goes into this, a lot of the terror during that period was not Stalin personally going around and shooting every peasant who had more than 5 rubles to his name (during the rare moments he wasn't personally eating everyone's grain). Rather it was the people using the new system to settle old scores or for personal advancement.
The book doesn't cover the period between 1917 and 1923, or the Hundred Flowers Campaign in China, but you can see similar sentiment in transcripts and letters when Lenin, Mao, et al look at how many people had gotten into the party entirely for the purpose of abusing their positions for personal gain.
At a very general level, we can infer any socialist country is more democratic after the revolution based on the fact that the government pursues the interests of the people more than it did before the revolution.
In Cuba for instance, their last constitutional referendum had a 90% approval rating. Do you think that happened by chance, or that you are simply unaware of/trained not to recognize how the people determine the actions of the state?
Rather it was the people using the new system to settle old scores or for personal advancement.
Lenin, Mao, et al look at how many people had gotten into the party entirely for the purpose of abusing their positions for personal gain.
How was that allowed to happen? Did they build a system of oppression that was ripe for takeover by petty tyrants, some of whom became actual, fully fledged tyrants, whilst simultaneously shutting down the mechanisms by which workers could have power over their own lives?
This isn't about whether Stalin personally gets into heaven, plus the absurd strawman that people think he did anything personally shows a complete lack of systemic thinking, which was ironically one of Marx's great contributions to political thought. It is about whether the systems we build are liberatory or oppressive.
I'm not watching a youtube video.
Did they build a system of oppression
No, such a system already existed, evidenced by the famines, massacres, etc that happened almost yearly in China and Russia before the revolutions.
What I'm getting at is that while the post-revolution states weren't utopias, they were far better than what came before. Telling people otherwise only serves to prolong the status quo.
Also they kinda did have a government ready to go in the case of the USSR, the Soviets.
simultaneously shutting down the mechanisms by which workers could have power over their own lives
Except they had and used those mechanisms, as evidenced by the massive improvements to the average person's lives after the revolution.
the absurd strawman that people think he did anything personally
Apologies, typically when I see people doing anti-communism use the term dictatorial, they mean a single person exercising absolute power. Though I don't understand why you'd consider a dictatorship of the working class "hell".
There was no dictatorship of the working class. They defanged the Soviets - you know the workers' councils that the USSR was named for.
You don't have to watch a video, here's the script text for the entire series:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary
MLs love reading, don't they? Oh but wait, that's anarchism. Go ahead, tell me it's beneath you and I should read On Authority. I have. It was underwhelming to put it nicely.
And yes, the system they built was on the back of and patterned after the authoritarian monarchist regimes they followed. That's not a favourable light to put that system in. Was it marginally better than a monarchy? Sure, why is that relevant to anything? We live under neoliberal regimes of which none to my knowledge has ever been toppled by an ML revolution.
That ideology is centuries out of date. Anarchists saw its downfall before it started. It's failed.
Even if you're combatting some bizarre strawman about absolute dictators, it's equally bizarre that your response is to attempt to rehabilitate Stalin's character. That puts you squarely in tankie territory.
MLs
?
thx
Assuming you're trying to ask what that term means, it's short for Marxist-Leninist, it's a polite way of referring to tankies, where you accept their rebranding of what is effectively Stalinism. It was after all Stalin's term to coopt and puppeteer the legacy of two dead men to give legitimacy to his reign of terror. They will try to tell you there are principled MLs but if they think there is any merit in the concept then they are doing the same kind of historical revisionism that all tankies do.
And you can see this person was in fact clearly trying to defend Stalin, if only indirectly.
Edit: Also look at the username - they're from lemmy.ml, where the .ml is the Mali country code but in this case it definitely also stands for Marxism-Leninism. It's a tankie instance.
been spending too much time reading about machine learning sorry but ty for the (now obvious) explanation.
probably time for bed.
Oh yeah, that is confusing lol. Glad to help :)
I'm not watching a youtube video.
Why not?
The way they feed you information is patronizingly slow, and while I'm not expecting a widely cited academic paper published in a reputable journal, Youtube essays are one step below shitposts on internet forums in trustworthiness and academic rigor.
Guess we're watching different video essays, then. Most are edutainment at best, true. But there are *soy many with cited sources on youtube.
I gave them the text as published on the anarchist library, but they didn't seem to appreciate that either. It's almost like they just don't want to learn history that isn't their revisionist version of it.
Everyone knows that any critique of Stalin is CIA propaganda. /s
The frustrating thing is that most of it was CIA propaganda at one point in time, it just happened to also be true, which made it much more effective propaganda. It's a big gift the USSR gave to anti-communists.
Most based tankie
this is why i like syndicalism, it's sort of a hybrid of the two resulting in a fairly fast soft and nonviolent revolution if enough people join in.
unionize, have the unions take over the businesses, stop running things for profit, bish bash bosh socialist state.
The two main avenues are slow change through existing means and violent revolution. The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. (...)
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. (...)
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of To-morrow.
That's brilliant. I'm going to save this.
prefigurative politics!
The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
The expectation that revolutionaries aiming for a future without hierarchy, states, or class should have a plan for exactly those ready to go is how you actually get the autocratic takeover - because you're maintaining the existing systems of power for the sake of taking comfort in the familiar (or worse - as a deliberate ploy by those presenting themselves as "in charge" to grab power).
The whole point of a revolution, from an an-com point of view anyway, is to start building something new from the bottom up, horizontally, abolishing hierarchy and power structures, not just replace the existing ones with our own.
The fact that people can't even begin to imagine a different way of living, even though our existence under kings and masters has only been a blink in human existence and civilisation, just goes to show how well the indoctrination works, but better is possible once you start unlearning constructs you've come to accept as facts.