"Go on, call me a tankie, you are only cancelling a lib"
And it started at the same time the capitalists started to degrade and cancel the concesions made to workers in the rest of the world.
What would happen if the proletarians of all countries did not sympathise with and support the Republic of Soviets? There would be intervention and the Republic of Soviets would be smashed.
What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.
The real problem was that Gorbachev loves Bush as much as Bernie loved Biden lmfao.
This comparison is gross from every direction but I can't argue with it.
We, yes. The succs? Eh, it wasn't until the mid 80s when things really started to go very bad for them too.
Succs died in the 70s lol, and it's because the world became more multipolar and that hurt economic growth. Social democracy was able to thrive because of imperialism.
Maybe in the anglo sphere, they were very prominent in Europe. In some countries they weren't as prominent UNTIL the 70s.
Its really the case that by 75 it was in decline everywhere. If anything it came back in the 90s with the pink tide.
Back where? In Europe they ate shit. In Latin America yeah, they came back for a while. The big succ governments (Olof Palme, Mitterrand, Papandreou etc) came to be around the late 70s and early 80s. Then the USSR fell and the climate completely changed in favor of neoliberalism.
Latin America, also Spain became progressively more left since the fall of Franco.
Spain also mostly succumbed to neoliberalism years ago. So basically just Latin America, where a lot of these leaders were much more radical than what is considered a succ in Europe.
And we still cant nice things, weak ass SocDem reforms are enough to prompt a coup in LatAm, which sucks.
:flag-su: :heart-sickle: :stalin-fancy:
The world owes the USSR more than it could ever repay.
Ask not what the USSR can do for you, ask what you can do for the USSR.
Why are Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Estonian islands not red?
EDIT: and East Germany.
This is a legitimate point, but Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales have something to say about challenging capital through elections. Chavez in particular tried both violent and non-violent means and only succeeded with the latter.
Yeah!, and look how well their legacy is doing, oh wait shit
Losing the URSS and the rest of countries was a disaster, even for the scabbiest scabs from the imperial core.
Would be doing better if they didn't let far right fascist parties and movements grow in power and internally sabotage the gains made under the socialist government. You'd think leftist parties in latin america would have learned the constraints of this type of democratic socialism after Allende and everything else.
The point is they can't just remove them. But they've held on to the gains they've made and have good organization and have the military on their side and so on. It's not about "learning the constraints", it's about learning what you can actually accomplish within constraints that you have no way to push past.
Sure they can, and its why ML states have had better success in maintaining these gains without constant internal opposition and sabotage. How did Chile hold onto those gains? There's been a constant internal conflict in Venezuela between these two opposing class interests and parties for years now, its barely holding on under this current system. Bolivia did everything right and they still paid the price for it in the end. This is a repeating failure of upholding this liberal democracy and basing your gains on electoral strategies that do not work to resolve the internal class contradictions and opposition movements.
Bolivia did everything right
Well, no. They didn't purge the military (probably because they couldn't). In Venezuela, the military is on Maduro's side. In Venezuela, they have a 3 million member militia. But that doesn't mean they can just start kicking out liberals and fascists, because they don't have the kind of international backing to do that. The US would just invade (with bombs, not necessarily troops) and destroy the entire movement, which is probably what Biden is planning on doing.
I mean the US has already invaded and directly worked on destroying socialist movements in virtually every country in latin america. But also Cuba is literally right there lol, the conditions vary but the history of latin america has shown how much is wrong with this democratic socialist approach and the idea that upholding liberal democracy is the correct approach.
You guys are talking about two separate things here:
- How a socialist movement can gain power
- How a socialist movement can maintain power in the face of reactionaries
The same approach might not work for both problems.
The answer to both and always been the same through 99.99% of successful revolutions throughout history. Violent revolution and repression of the bourgeois class through a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Well when your idea of gaining power doesn't also uphold it than there is something wrong with gaining power that you can just lose once the internal opposition has done enough to turn people against you. Gaining power that you can't maintain is meaningless, and in some cases even directly harmful when the failures caused by internal capitalist forces can just be blamed on the socialist government. In the case of gaining power through liberal democracy you're inadvertently upholding the institutions that work directly against you instead of building a mass revolutionary movement to deal with those contradictions. Addressing the failure of this approach is crucial going forward.
when your idea of gaining power doesn’t also uphold it than there is something wrong
Sure, hence the "the same approach might not work for both problems." We may have to gain power with one approach and maintain it with another.
But that works both ways -- maybe what works best for maintaining power isn't always the best way of gaining it in the first place, at least not in one specific time and place.
Would be better if they had a violent revolt and purge of the bourgeois elements within their government
look how well their legacy is doing
Either of them are infinitely more successful than any leftist movement in the U.S. Dismissing the methods of some of the most recent leftists to have gained real power is absurd.
Losing the URSS and the rest of countries was a disaster
Absolutely; I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. What I'm saying is that -- post-USSR -- we have examples of leftists gaining power through elections.
How anyone can reach this conclusion is beyond me. Bernie -- not even an unusually strong candidate -- was the clear frontrunner in the primary until he got kneecapped by unprecedented (and lucky) Democratic coordination. They're not too strong; eight months ago they were all getting their asses beat by an old man from a state most people forget who had to build a political base from scratch.
its entirely delusional to think Bernie was ever going to win or that real change could come from such a thing
"I lost so that means I never had any chance at winning" = :cope:
Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales have something to say about challenging capital through elections
How many times do we need to repeat this to you to understand? The conditions for revolution in a colonized state and a colonizer state are not the same?
As I've mentioned elsewhere -- to you, in this thread -- no one knows how to create socialism in the imperial core. Writing off electoralism when no one has a surefire answer is ridiculous.
Bruh it ain't happening through elections. We didn't even see a quarter of what the capitalist class could do to stop Bernie and pacify people. Look at the UK, Corbyn was sabotaged by half his own party.
OK, what's your solution? Honestly, I'm all ears, but so far I've seen no other workable idea.
Just keep radicalizing and organizing more people and building consensus. Bernie Sanders has been doing live streams with people from a dozen different organizations and unions since he dropped out. He's got tons of people that trust him and will work with him even if they aren't as left-leaning as he is. That's really good. Most revolutions as far as I'm aware haven't been perfect socialist projects, but included lots of people who joined a movement because they had similar goals or trusted that movement. Having that support doesn't mean he can win an election, but he can win in other ways.
Just keep radicalizing and organizing more people and building consensus.
With the end goal of...?
Most revolutions as far as I’m aware haven’t been perfect socialist projects, but included lots of people who joined a movement because they had similar goals or trusted that movement.
If the goal is a revolution, where will these non-socialist who have similar revolutionary goals come from? A classic example of what you're talking about is a colonial independence movement where communist revolutionaries and non-communist revolutionaries join together for the purpose of evicting the colonial invader. But nothing like that specifically is going to happen in the U.S.
There is no magic bullet, there is no one thing that can lead to a revolution, imperial core or not - it is a multi-pronged approach. The pillars that have to be engaged simultaneously upon which any and every revolution has to rest are:
- Propaganda - word of mouth, social media campaigns, demos, getting into the news with a positive message/spin, viral street art.
- Activism - taking part in social justice protests, helping materially marginalized and vulnerable populations as well as just helping out in the community, training camps, mutual help orgs, political campaigns.
- Establishing communes, co-ops, sanctuary cities and regions where socialist policy is implemented.
- Infiltration and sabotage - getting sleeper agents into positions of power, getting agent provocateurs into hostile structures in order to stage false flag ops and take out those orgs from the inside, whistle blowing.
- Militancy - bank heists, hostage taking for ransom or in order to enforce/prevent certain policy, targeted clandestine mass assassinations (of cops, military personnel, politicians, bourgeoisie), taking over criminal syndicates.
All of the above done in concert build an actual revolutionary front that is able to wrestle power away from the bourgeoisie, as was the case time and again: Russia, Cuba, Greece, Yugoslavia, China, etc. The only other option that had success historically was a military coup by progressive officers. The second is arguably very unlikely if not outright impossible in the imperial core.
or idiot fascists that are easily routed by other world powers.
You're vastly underestimating the danger of a U.S. that goes full fascist.
Yes we know how to create socialism, we have done it dozens of times. we still need capitalism in the core to reach the correct conditions of crisis that it has reached in periphery states - WW2 was an anomaly that reset the clock on capitalism due to mass destruction of capital.
All you are doing is mystifying.
Tell me this, since you say “Marxism is a science, not a dogma - it is open to critique”
Why then, is the critique from your type, your class, always exactly the same reformist idealist pablum? Why are you not even more revolutionary, authoritarian or something else? Why does the revisionist “drift” always gravitate to the right, towards capital - from petty bourgeoise ‘socialists’? Why is the drift never to the left, away from capital, from the poorer and more proletarian socialists?
we have done it dozens of time
Exactly zero times in the imperial core. We had this conversation ten minutes ago in this thread -- why are you just repeating yourself?
38 successful Marxist-Leninist violent revolutions through history.
Only 1 successful non-violent socialist revolution ever, and it happened in a colonial state and later became explicitly Marxist-Leninist.
No but it is your bullshit new synthetic leftist variant that will save the world. The variant your class has been pushing for 200 years without any success whatsoever
38 successful Marxist-Leninist violent revolutions through history.
Again, exactly zero in the imperial core.
GDR is in the imperial core.
I believe that colonized states need to revolt first, cut off the exploited wealth streams to the core and then the core will collapse and revolt.
The core will not revolt first, on its own, while it still has an intact empire.
Our role as internationalist communists in the imperial core is to hinder imperialism and prepare and build up revolutionary (not electotal) organizations to prepare for the collapse.
GDR
Again:
We had this conversation ten minutes ago in this thread – why are you just repeating yourself?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I disregard your points because they are stupid, liberal and wrong. I am repeating mine because they are correct, communist and good and you need it bludgeoned into your thick petty bourgeois reformist skull
You are the one who still believes in electoralism after what we witnessed. Who is the one coping and in denial again?
Non-violent paths to power are only available in colonized nations, where the national bourgeoise will split from the comprador bourgeoise.
In the imperial core there is no split and there is no non-violent path to power. Due to America’s position as hegemon and empire it cannot transition to socialism peacefully.
You say all this as if it's written in stone, but in reality no one knows how to build socialism in the imperial core. We certainly can't afford to ignore the most accessible and most visible levers of power (electoral politics) when we don't have the infrastructure to do anything else.
you say this like we just got dropped in the middle of nowhere with no understanding of class mechanics or history and just make vague obfuscatory statements that further mystify and forestall action
How many socialist movements have succeeded in the imperial core?
Read all the theory you want, but know that people in your same shoes have done that for decades, have tried to act on it, and have all failed. Every single one of them. Most socialist states outside of the imperial core ultimately failed, too. Existing theory should be thoroughly re-evaluated because looking globally there's enormous room for improvement, and looking only at the imperial core it's worked exactly zero times.
Defeatist revisionist nonsense detached from reality and history and the real proletarian movement. I’m really tired of your libbery in every thread, twisting and defanging everything you can touch. People like you have done this since before Marx, you aren’t some new brilliant type of leftist you are the oldest and most failed type.
GDR was an actually existing socialist state in the former imperial core. Ireland got very close. France got very close on several occasions. Italian communists were strong but destroyed by fascist violence and their inability to fight against it adequately. The Spartacus uprising got very close. The closest we ever got were all violent paths to power, and those that failed would have succeeded if the reformists like you got on board instead of betraying the proletarian movement
GDR was an actually existing socialist state in the former imperial core.
You mean the state that was invaded by the USSR, occupied, set up as a satellite state, and that ceased to exist when the USSR ceased to exist?
Ireland got very close.
You mean the formerly-colonized state where today every multinational is setting up an HQ to avoid taxes?
France got very close on several occasions. Italian communists were strong but destroyed
Still not hearing any successes.
Non-violent paths to power are only available in colonized nations, where the national bourgeoise will split from the comprador bourgeoise.
unfortunately mariátegui was correct to point out that there's no relevant national bourgeoisie in countries that were created by colonizers, it's all compradores
so that's not a viable path for places like latin america
There is absolutely relevant national bourgeoise in colonial states, are you even aware of the class composition of the Chinese, Venezuelan or Algerian anti-colonial socialist revolutions for instance? The national bourgeoise played a large role in all of these.
in countries that were created by colonizers
i said this precisely so that you could deduce places like china weren't included
and i have no idea how it is for africa, but the venezuelan bourgeoisie is made of compradores. there will be exceptions obviously, but not enough to constitute a single, separate class
i mentioned mariátegui because he's kind of one of the founders (if not the founder) of latin american marxism (as in marxism specifically targeting latin american material conditions), and his explanation of how our bourgeoisie developed from this colonial origin (as opposed to merely a colonial past like in china) makes them essentially compradores
he gave a good enough sum up in 1929, you can see it here
bear in mind, i'm not glad that this happens to be our case, because it makes everything that much harder for us, so if you find a way to show me mariátegui was wrong it'll make me a little less hopeless. most communists around here agree with him though, because it becomes very obvious when we see the discourse and attitude coming from our capitalists - it's just like mariátegui describes, they lack national identity and always show a profound contempt for our culture and history, and have a weird sort of pride in their subservience to imperial interests, acting like geopolitical PMCs (think PMC liberals sucking off billionaires - they think they're the same kind of people, it's really sad)
i imagine algeria being vastly muslim helped them with this, because it's a clear identifier to contrast against the colonizer's culture
The fall of the warsaw pact and the rise of the EU has been an unmitigated disaster for the human race regardless of if the eastern block remained socialist over the long term.
