Ok so there’s three parts in your message. First you “correct” me by pointing out I didn’t mention liberalism as a justification for colonization. Indeed, but I tried to keep concise given the context. I also didn’t mention other important aspects of liberalism such as economics. Also, liberalism was hardly the only justification for colonization, it was used against it, and colonization predates it in any case. You also point out I didn’t mention Lenin sought to apply Marxism to under-industrialized nations. That is accurate but besides the point, and he wasn’t the only one. But he also theorized the vanguard party as you mention, and that is crucial to the rest of my paragraph. The parent comment asked what was the difference between a liberal and a leftist, and what was a tankie, and I replied as concisely as I could.
Now adding to what I mentioned is fine but you also imply that I in fact did it on purpose :
You did a great job disregarding the colonial history of the west and the implications it had for billions of people in the global south.
You’re basically saying that I’m racist. Why would you say that ?
Lenin led a democratic vanguard party until his death, but understood that a socialist project in construction will have interference from capitalists both locally and abroad, and needs state repression of said interference in order to be able to carry out the goal of redistribution of power to the people because capitalists won’t just give it away.
I think you misspelled “eliminated fascism from Europe and saved tens of millions of lives from Nazi extermination”. It wasn’t done personally by Stalin, but by the socialist project of the USSR as a whole.
And there is the reason. I criticized Lenin and Stalin as being undemocratic and you disagree. The problem is the only source that will call Stalin “democratic” are stalinists themselves ― most leftists in fact criticize stalinism, and more largely the way the bolshevik party was set up. Trotsky himself predicted it would come to a dictatorship in Our Political Tasks (1903).
So you just reply with stalinist apologia : the Soviet Union was in fact democratic (it wasn’t, and only stalinists will assert thus), they fought the nazis (true, but that’s besides the point of using military force against the people), capitalists would interfere (true, although far less than implied before the cold war, but again that is besides the point of establishing a dictatorship and using military force against the people)
I just want people to recognize this pattern. This is what “tankie” is : you make side comments to my main points, you paint me as a monster and an enemy by calling me a racist, and you spew apologia about dictatorship actually being democratic but still being justified by the circumstances and military force being necessary under the context and also the nazis.
The fact you can, in a single message, paint me as an enemy before explaining that using lethal force against enemies is acceptable is chilling and I hope you’ll never get near any position of power.
I’d be more charitative to your comment if it couldn’t be summarized as “liberalism is when human rights and enlightenment, Leninism is when le evil dictator with iron fist”.
Your analysis of what constitutes a dictatorship or a democracy is simply anti materialist.
The country that guaranteed universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, guaranteed housing, the abolition of unemployment, guaranteed retirement pensions, and maintained the historically lowest inequality levels in the region is a dictatorship to you. This is only possible if your understanding is that, for 70 years, the USSR had a succession of benevolent dictators unlike anything else the world has seen for some reason. No dictator elsewhere at any time has achieved remotely anything like that, but somehow FIVE in a row in the USSR maintained the highest welfare state in history.
To you, democracy is strictly defined as “the existence of a multi party system with periodic representative elections”. This is a faulty understanding of who makes decisions in class societies. There cannot be democracy in class society. Tell me an example of an existing democratic country to you.
“Democratic” is an overloaded word that I could have wielded with more caution.
I believe the utmost importance is to preserve human freedom and dignity (meaning to treat people as an end and not a mean). Western liberal democracies enable a ruling class to use violence to preserve their power and the exploitative system they benefit from. Their political system, as presented in the media, is largely a farce. But they do, so far, preserve more individual freedoms than leninist states do : freedom of speech, of movement, of organisation, from arbitrary police repression, etc. Many freedoms are lacking in the West though, such as the freedom from exploitation or the freedom not to participate in society (ie not to consent to be governed).
It’s good the Soviet Union after Stalin tried to improve the standard of living. But that is besides the point of individual freedoms and governing only through the consent of the citizenry.
In fact I’m unsure whether you’re counting Gorbachev in your list of benevolent dictators, but he was of your opinion and tried to actually acquire the consent of the governed. It didn’t go very well, for various reasons. Lenin himself disregarded the result of a popular vote, the constituant assembly election in 1917.
There’s also the question of the nomenklatura and the army. It cannot be denied they enjoyed privileges beyond what was necessary and therefore the Soviet state was at least in part extractive in that it took wealth from the workers to hand it to a minority who controlled the system.
There’s also the question of the nomenklatura and the army. It cannot be denied they enjoyed privileges
Oh it cannot be denied? There must be some pretty strong numeric data suggesting that. Care to share?
Western liberal democracies […] preserve more individual freedoms than leninist states do
Ask that to Vietnamese, Iraqi, Libyans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Burkinabe, Algerians… Turns out that the western liberal democracies don’t preserve individual freedoms, they only export more of the authoritarianism abroad and keep the situation easier at home because the richer working class is less prone to murdering them!
It’s good the Soviet Union after Stalin tried to improve the standard of living
After? With Stalin, life expectancy went from 28 to 55 years of age, land collectivization was successfully carried out (not without difficulties), and massive literacy campaigns taught everyone to read. Again, not because of Stalin in particular, because history isn’t made by one person and he wasn’t an absolute dictator the way you believe he was.
You’ve completely ignored my point of how it is possible that the USSR got 5 benevolent dictators in a row maintaining the highest welfare state and lowest inequality in the history of the region.
Ok so there’s three parts in your message. First you “correct” me by pointing out I didn’t mention liberalism as a justification for colonization. Indeed, but I tried to keep concise given the context. I also didn’t mention other important aspects of liberalism such as economics. Also, liberalism was hardly the only justification for colonization, it was used against it, and colonization predates it in any case. You also point out I didn’t mention Lenin sought to apply Marxism to under-industrialized nations. That is accurate but besides the point, and he wasn’t the only one. But he also theorized the vanguard party as you mention, and that is crucial to the rest of my paragraph. The parent comment asked what was the difference between a liberal and a leftist, and what was a tankie, and I replied as concisely as I could.
Now adding to what I mentioned is fine but you also imply that I in fact did it on purpose :
You’re basically saying that I’m racist. Why would you say that ?
And there is the reason. I criticized Lenin and Stalin as being undemocratic and you disagree. The problem is the only source that will call Stalin “democratic” are stalinists themselves ― most leftists in fact criticize stalinism, and more largely the way the bolshevik party was set up. Trotsky himself predicted it would come to a dictatorship in Our Political Tasks (1903).
So you just reply with stalinist apologia : the Soviet Union was in fact democratic (it wasn’t, and only stalinists will assert thus), they fought the nazis (true, but that’s besides the point of using military force against the people), capitalists would interfere (true, although far less than implied before the cold war, but again that is besides the point of establishing a dictatorship and using military force against the people)
I just want people to recognize this pattern. This is what “tankie” is : you make side comments to my main points, you paint me as a monster and an enemy by calling me a racist, and you spew apologia about dictatorship actually being democratic but still being justified by the circumstances and military force being necessary under the context and also the nazis.
The fact you can, in a single message, paint me as an enemy before explaining that using lethal force against enemies is acceptable is chilling and I hope you’ll never get near any position of power.
I’d be more charitative to your comment if it couldn’t be summarized as “liberalism is when human rights and enlightenment, Leninism is when le evil dictator with iron fist”.
Your analysis of what constitutes a dictatorship or a democracy is simply anti materialist.
The country that guaranteed universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, guaranteed housing, the abolition of unemployment, guaranteed retirement pensions, and maintained the historically lowest inequality levels in the region is a dictatorship to you. This is only possible if your understanding is that, for 70 years, the USSR had a succession of benevolent dictators unlike anything else the world has seen for some reason. No dictator elsewhere at any time has achieved remotely anything like that, but somehow FIVE in a row in the USSR maintained the highest welfare state in history.
To you, democracy is strictly defined as “the existence of a multi party system with periodic representative elections”. This is a faulty understanding of who makes decisions in class societies. There cannot be democracy in class society. Tell me an example of an existing democratic country to you.
“Democratic” is an overloaded word that I could have wielded with more caution.
I believe the utmost importance is to preserve human freedom and dignity (meaning to treat people as an end and not a mean). Western liberal democracies enable a ruling class to use violence to preserve their power and the exploitative system they benefit from. Their political system, as presented in the media, is largely a farce. But they do, so far, preserve more individual freedoms than leninist states do : freedom of speech, of movement, of organisation, from arbitrary police repression, etc. Many freedoms are lacking in the West though, such as the freedom from exploitation or the freedom not to participate in society (ie not to consent to be governed).
It’s good the Soviet Union after Stalin tried to improve the standard of living. But that is besides the point of individual freedoms and governing only through the consent of the citizenry.
In fact I’m unsure whether you’re counting Gorbachev in your list of benevolent dictators, but he was of your opinion and tried to actually acquire the consent of the governed. It didn’t go very well, for various reasons. Lenin himself disregarded the result of a popular vote, the constituant assembly election in 1917.
There’s also the question of the nomenklatura and the army. It cannot be denied they enjoyed privileges beyond what was necessary and therefore the Soviet state was at least in part extractive in that it took wealth from the workers to hand it to a minority who controlled the system.
Oh it cannot be denied? There must be some pretty strong numeric data suggesting that. Care to share?
Ask that to Vietnamese, Iraqi, Libyans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Burkinabe, Algerians… Turns out that the western liberal democracies don’t preserve individual freedoms, they only export more of the authoritarianism abroad and keep the situation easier at home because the richer working class is less prone to murdering them!
After? With Stalin, life expectancy went from 28 to 55 years of age, land collectivization was successfully carried out (not without difficulties), and massive literacy campaigns taught everyone to read. Again, not because of Stalin in particular, because history isn’t made by one person and he wasn’t an absolute dictator the way you believe he was.
You’ve completely ignored my point of how it is possible that the USSR got 5 benevolent dictators in a row maintaining the highest welfare state and lowest inequality in the history of the region.