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.
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.