Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
There’s nothing wrong with opposing slur usage. You’re misrepresenting my argument. A white guy singing a rap song and mentioning the ‘n-word’ wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—give me or anyone much pause, as opposed to a random white guy (or even a black person for that matter) using the word insultingly on an airplane. Interpretijg the two scenarios as the same is metaphysical and anti-dialectical.
Other than the politzer book and blackshirts and reds, I’ve read the manifesto, socialism utopian and scientific, dialectical and historical materialism, critique of the gotha pogramme, foundations of leninism, what is to be done?, imperialism the highest stage, right of nations to self determination, reform or revolution, and so many other pamphlets/articles by Lenin i can’t recount.
Because liberals and fascists push the theory doesn’t mean it is not true.
This is actually not true. The article i linked shows that the Soviets refused Ukrainian communist party requests for famine relief, and purged those same leaders as being counter-revolutionary.
Back when we last discussed slurs, you had said that opposing their usage itself was idealist, and that we give words power by caring about it. I still disagree with using slurs no matter the context, but this is an advancement on your prior position, or at minimum an advancement in your communication as such.
As for what you’ve read, pretty good start! I mean that genuinely. The State and Revolution, The Tax in Kind, and of course Capital are all good places to go next. The Tax in Kind is directly related to the background of the 1930s famine, so it’s helpful immediately, though do keep in mind terminology has advanced since it was written to be clearer.
Returning to the 1930s famine, as I showed above the Central Committee was kept in the dark by the Ukrainian communists as to the famine. They tried to save face by telling the Central Committee that everything was fine and under control, but this was not the case. Drought, flooding, and kulaks burning their crops and killing their livestock as protest against collectivization had destroyed output, and the soviets were still exporting grain in order to trade for industrial equipment with the west (which is what the west wanted in exchange for industrial equipment).
Upon learning the truth of how bad it was getting, the Central Committee was furious. The officials responsible in Ukraine were held accountable, hundreds of tractors and other farming equipment was directed to Ukraine, as well as ~17 million poods (~14ish kg/pood) of grain were redirected towards Ukraine. The Central Committee had been deciding policy based on the reports they were recieving, and these reports were falsified to protect the Ukrainian communist party leadership.
Had famine been the goal, no aid would have been given at all, or perhaps token aid. Sending hundreds of millions of kg of grain to Ukraine is no petty tribute, and punishing Ukrainian party leaders that lied and facilitated famine was the correct course of action for such treason. Counter-revolutionary is correct! They had put their own skin above the peasantry.
In all of this, there was absolutely no reason to have intentionally created a famine. The USSR needed grain for industrial equipment and to feed its people, it would not have sabotaged output deliberately. On top of this, there was existing accusations of the soviets overly supporting Ukrainian national identity, Lenin had given them the Donbass region and in an effort to overturn the Tsar’s oppression the soviets highly valued national identity and self-determination.
There is no real evidence of deliberate starvation or creation of famine. All that exists is evidence of tragedy, weather adversity, class conflict between kulaks and the peasantry, and mismanagement in part by the Ukrainian communists and in part caused by disinformation fed to the Central Committee, which changed how they treated Ukraine. Again, they needed grain for industrialization, which they saw as necessary for defense (and this was proven correct as the rapid industrialization in the 20s and 30s is what enabled soviet victory over the Nazis in the 40s).
That was not my argument. Revisit the thread
Although i haven’t read The tax in kind, I’ve read other literature about the NEP. I’ve also studied a fair bit on the history and politics of the USSR from the October revolution till Lenin’s death. I decided to postpone reading Capital until I finish university—even then, I’ll probably still delay further because it is very difficult.
Ukraine was still a net exporter of grain despite the aid. They also had to meet quotas else they wouldn’t receive aid.
Additionally, if there WAS aid, why were there still peasants attempting to flee Ukraine? The CC directives ordered all departures from Ukraine to be prevented further corroborating the genocide point.
Even if we give the USSR all the benefit of the doubt, there were still calls within the party warning how dangerous forced collectivisation would be. War communism proved you couldn’t forcibly collectivise grain without major consequences. Bukharin, all too fervent in his warnings about the famine, was purged. He would later be proven correct. I’ll never understand die-hard Stalin defenders.
I already explained how the soviets needed to export grain to gain industrial equipment, this industrial equipment was used to help boost agricultural output. It was a balancing act forced by low levels of development. The genocide point has no evidence, just suspicions. Peasants were attempting to flee because famine still existed, but had there been mass flight of the peasantry agriculture would have collapsed and famine would have spread. That’s why the famine was ended as quickly as it was.
You can absolutely find arguments against collectivization in the Bolsheviks. It remains true that collectivization was necessary, and the fact that it was completed when it was enabled the communists to beat the Nazis. What remains are the 2 real problems:
Drought and flooding severely damaged production, along with kulaks resisting collectivization by burning crops and killing livestock. This was out of the soviet’s hands.
Deliberate hiding of real conditions by Ukrainian communists. Even if we blame the Ukrainain communist leadership in particular, this was ultimately a failure on the part of the communists ocerall.
Collectivization was necessary, and did achieve its end goals, but at far greater a cost than necessary due to a combination of adverse weather and mismanagement. What it was not was genocide, as there was no desire to inflict famine nor a reason to.
Bukharin wasn’t purged for warning against collectivization (and even if he succeeded, the soviets likely would have been wiped out in World War II due to a delay in industrialization), he was purged for being part of a plot to overthrow the CPSU. I’m not a “die-hard Stalin defender,” I am trying to accurately convey what happened. Stalin made many mistakes, we can even see that here in how collectivization was handled. What we cannot see is genocidal intent from Stalin nor the rest of the Central Committee.
If you want an actual critique of Stalin by a communist using near exclusively western sources, Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend. Stalin made numerous mistakes, and committed great crimes, such as re-criminalizing homosexuality and supporting the Nakba. At the same time, he was not a genocidal monster as the west portrays him as, and was in fact much better than contemporaries like Churchill.
Alright pal. This discussion is going in the usual discussion, which is nowhere. I don’t know why I came back to this platform