Is the Left Wing more truthful than the Right Wing, and if so, why?
- Thread starter Cloo
- Start date
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
I dunno if Ngô Văn and Tạ Thu Thâu saw it that way. Although looking it up now I learn that Tạ Thu Thâu got a few streets named after him, which is sort of funny in an incredibly bleak way, like how the FBI does Martin Luther King memorial posts.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Destruction of the Opression.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Sounds like capitalism.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
On a more serious note, Kev, you need to get out of your comfort zone with the Cold Warrior airport literature takes on Communist history. Don't worry, you aren't going to mutate into some fleshy David Cronenbergesque hammer and sickle-shaped creature if you veer off the script written post-WWII, which looks rather quaint these days.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
You'll have to translate that into English if you want a response from me at all. Of course you might not be bothered, fair enough, but an attempt at conversation might be appreciated.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
The kind of dishonesty that annoys me the most is the ideology policing that goes on with both sides. To be a conservative in the US, you have to hate vegetables, love meat, and think that Hunter Biden is somehow relevant. Liberals have to do the opposite. It's the idea that to be loyal to "your side" you have to embrace other ideas that may or may not have anything to do with politics. It's both intellectually lazy and intellectually dishonest.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
You have a very narrow, ideologically skewed understanding of what you say you 'know a bit' about. It's Anti-Communist Bingo from the middle of the last century.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Can't be bothered to reply to you just now. If you're lucky I'll get round to it tomorrow. But don't lose any sleep.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Well, without bigging myself up too much, I think I have a fairly human understanding of Russian Communism. Not being too keen on firing squads, prison camps, slave labour, colonialism, genocide, arbitrary murders, violent deportations, wanton cruelty, forced deliberate targeted famines, collaboration with Nazi Germany, cultural destruction, ecological damage, participation in nuclear arms race, denial of freedom of speech, police states, censorship, invasion of neighbouring states, racism, brainwashing, conscription, one party states, corruption, suppression of free trades unions and strikes, and a few other things. And an absence of humour and humanity in the hierarchy of the party and state.
All this stuff began right at the very start with the Red Terror and Civil War, and continued through the anti-Cossack campaigns, the anti-Kulak campaigns, the Purges, the forced deportations of national minorities, forced collectivisation of the peasantry and so on. The worst excesses were over by the 1950's, but by then any idealism was long gone and the dead hand of bureaucracy ruled.
Not everything was awful everywhere in the Soviet Union, of course, but there was nothing there for anyone else elsewhere in the world to aspire to. Not once they had seen past the propaganda.
There's no Cold War origin to any of this criticism. It's not a script from WW2 or after. It's just an honest look at the monstrosity of Soviet Communism. If it was any good at all why did everyone in the USSR and old Eastern bloc chuck it away so darn quick. OK what happened next wasn't much cop, but that's a different conversation.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
The Soviet Union wasn't a Communist society and never claimed to be. There's a misconception around the role of the state as the Marxist-Leninists saw it. The Leninist innovation of there being a transitional process through which a limited form of socialism (as they understood it) could be established, became in part what detractors of Stalin saw as a betrayal of left internationalism, and his unoriginal 'socialism in one country.' Even to the M-Ls, full stateless communism could only be realised once capitalism was superceded in its entirety across the surface of the earth.
And what does a human understanding of its history (or any history for that matter?) mean exactly? The above didn't exist in a vacuum, in which disembodied ideas were put into practice and not formed out of the actual conditions people found themselves in. You don't have to be an M-L to know that it's nonsense to say nobody else followed the example or sought to change their societies according to how they understood the Soviet Union to be. It mobilised millions across the world, and similar to hit mouse countering my point with a couple of dead Vietnamese Trots, he didn't know I was referring to the campaign of ruthless violence from the late 1950s launched as a response to actual state terror by a guillotine-weilding regime propped up by the US. The southern Communists were bitterly resentful at being held back from resuming armed struggle following Geneva, seen as they were targeted for elimination, but once Hanoi finally sanctioned it, the gloves were off.
It was deliberate US meddling to prevent any peaceful national-democratic process while internally hunting down any who opposed them, that led to that situation, and the Communist fightback was so successful against the US puppet that within a few years they sent half a million troops. But there's nothing romantic about revolution. It isn't plucky, morally clean underdogs heroically fighting the bad guys. It's going to the landlord's homestead in the middle of the night and cutting his throat or taking his head off in front of his family, it's abducting the wife of a police informant, shooting her and dumping the body in a public place. It's throwing grenades at an army checkpoint, knowing that people other than soldiers are going to be ripped to shreds too.
And any atrocity, including genocide, has been used in the name of anti-socialism and communism since WWII. What were they supposed to do, just let themselves be exterminated? Be nice to their oppressors? Of course we can talk like this from a position of relative privilege and comfort. All the icky, terribly compromised behaviour of subjectively passionate people fighting for control of the means to exist, as a matter of survival, isn't something we have to contend with to the extent that those in the global south have had to.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Blah blah... tankie shite... blah blah...
Marxist-LeninismTM has been one of the biggest obstacles to workers' emancipation... that and social democracy of Labourism ans assorted "Socialist" Parties around the world.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Sigh.
Humberto
Well-Known Member
That post is an embarrasment. The man's a brainwashed dinosaur.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Calling somebody a 'Tankie' is embarrassing.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
If it quacks like a duck...
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Oh dear. It's as juvenile as me saying you're objectively on the side of the Diem regime for hunting down and killing Communists, which I hope you're not. Because that would make the removal of obstacles to real worker emancipation quite disturbing. Similar with Suharto in 1965. Quite a few Commnists, an entire party of them in fact, among the two million.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
No. Do you acknowledge that the Soviet Union, the Leninist party form and political organisation have, whether you like it or not, been a huge influence worldwide in the last century, in forming movements and governments, and which the leading Western capitalist powers have done their utmost to undermine and destroy? I mean, this shouldn't need saying. Jesus Christ.
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
It probably does. Even here.
You have an advantage in being well read on these topics and you're able to get across the knowledge you have accrued over the years. Unfortunately, not everyone is as learned as you are.
That's a compliment, btw!
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Yes, it was a huge influence in forming movements. It was also pretty good at crushing any movements that didn't toe the line. Yes the Western capitalist powers did their utmost to undermine and destroy the state capitalist powers. Yes, we know the Western capitalist powers were the baddies. But the influence of the Soviet Union was a millstone round the neck of the global workers' movement for most of the 20th century, and that the shadow it casts today helps to make it nigh impossible to establish a viable mass workers' movement, especially in the lands where it had the most influence. This shouldn't need saying, even here.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Your post contains so much whataboutery. I was talking primarily above about the Soviet Union and its empire. You then go on to talk about elsewhere in the world after WW2. I never said that nobody was ever inspired by the USSR, but that they shouldn't have been, because the 'socialist' society that had been created there was rotten, corrupt and barbaric from the start. It got worse under Stalin and then settled down a bit into a bureaucratic, authoritarian stasis. The mass murders, atrocities and genocides committed in the Soviet Union were ordered from on high by a Party which had collectively decided that individual human life was of no consequence, that Moscow was always right, that the Russian empire needed to be preserved at all costs. If the southern Communists you refer to had known more, had had the chance to talk to, say, Ingrian Finns or Volga Germans or Kola Norwegians, they might have been a bit more careful about who they made friends with.
This thread is about the Left's truthfulness. Well, there's telling the truth, telling lies, getting things wrong and suchlike. But there's also choosing not to look at unpleasant facts.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
What follows from answering yes to that, though? I mean, do you acknowledge that Henry Kissinger has, whether you like it or not, been a huge influence worldwide in the last century?
As has already come up in this thread, those southern Communists had already played an active role in wiping out the rest of the revolutionary movement in Vietnam. As far as I can understand it, seventh bullet's attitude on that point seems to be that, because the colonial powers in Vietnam were brutal and ruthless, therefore it was necessary to brutally execute other revolutionaries fighting against the same colonial powers (and, indeed, had done so more consistently during the Popular Front period when the Soviet Union was ordering antifascist unity with democratic France).
Cloo , I would say that this thread encapsulates why your question is more complicated than it first appears. There are two aspects to this. First, what is truth? Very little that we define as “truth” comes down to an objective fact that can be cross-referenced to an objective record. Mostly, what we have is interpretation and subjective understanding of events that were experienced differently by different people in different contexts. So on this thread, you see people arguing about the interpretation of events and revolutions in different countries and at different times and all think that they are telling the truth. It’s easy to point to Donald Trump and the things he says as being objectively false. It’s less straightforward to look at the debate around Hunter Biden’s laptop, and draw such clear distinctions about truth and falsehood.
Second, the way that people make sense of the world is not just dependant on a series of objective statements. Events are interpreted and reinterpreted using the sociocultural tools that are available to the individual doing the interpreting. The consequences of this are complex and manifold but I can give one example. Moral foundations theory suggests that people make sense of the world using an ideology that is constructed from five or six fundamental moral dimensions. Classic liberals typically focus on only a couple of these dimensions. Specifically, they almost exclusively care about fairness and liberty. These are the dimensions to which a positivist version of truth most adheres. In other words, there is a singular objective truth that can be measured and is needed in order to draw comparisons between versions of reality to facilitate equality and freedom. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to care equally about the other three or four dimensions. These are (depending on who you talk to): sanctity, authority, care and loyalty. if you make sense of the world through a frame of sanctity or of loyalty, then the nature of what constitutes truth is more complex, subjective, and depends on who is expressing that truth. For example, to a religious fundamentalist, the ultimate source of truth is their religious text. Where so-called reality contradicts the religious text, it is the perspective on reality that is wrong, not the religion. Where loyalty is your defining frame, it is the need to be consistent with those you are loyal to that matters most and this will colour what are you understand truth to be. These differences in moral framework prevents meaningful communication between those who do not share the same ideology. So the liberal shouts “false!” or “lie!”. But the conservative does not see that. They see consistency and adherence to a greater meaning. Meanwhile, from the conservative perspective, it is the liberal who fails to understand truth. The liberal is too focused on granular piece-by-piece fact-checking to the detriment of a coherent way of understanding the world that allows for sanctity, loyalty and authority.
Second, the way that people make sense of the world is not just dependant on a series of objective statements. Events are interpreted and reinterpreted using the sociocultural tools that are available to the individual doing the interpreting. The consequences of this are complex and manifold but I can give one example. Moral foundations theory suggests that people make sense of the world using an ideology that is constructed from five or six fundamental moral dimensions. Classic liberals typically focus on only a couple of these dimensions. Specifically, they almost exclusively care about fairness and liberty. These are the dimensions to which a positivist version of truth most adheres. In other words, there is a singular objective truth that can be measured and is needed in order to draw comparisons between versions of reality to facilitate equality and freedom. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to care equally about the other three or four dimensions. These are (depending on who you talk to): sanctity, authority, care and loyalty. if you make sense of the world through a frame of sanctity or of loyalty, then the nature of what constitutes truth is more complex, subjective, and depends on who is expressing that truth. For example, to a religious fundamentalist, the ultimate source of truth is their religious text. Where so-called reality contradicts the religious text, it is the perspective on reality that is wrong, not the religion. Where loyalty is your defining frame, it is the need to be consistent with those you are loyal to that matters most and this will colour what are you understand truth to be. These differences in moral framework prevents meaningful communication between those who do not share the same ideology. So the liberal shouts “false!” or “lie!”. But the conservative does not see that. They see consistency and adherence to a greater meaning. Meanwhile, from the conservative perspective, it is the liberal who fails to understand truth. The liberal is too focused on granular piece-by-piece fact-checking to the detriment of a coherent way of understanding the world that allows for sanctity, loyalty and authority.
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8ball
Maximum Facepalm
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8ball
Maximum Facepalm
About three or four years ago, for what it’s worth. But there has been a lot of (US) development on the ideas since him, particularly in recent years on (US) conservative versus liberal understandings of the world and the implications for a political common ground. It’s a useful framework to understand why the idea of “truth” is not straightforward. There are many others, though.Jonathan Haidt this week?
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Defending themselves fine.
Killing anyone who opposes the regime not so sure. If you are filling a mass grave outside of a disaster you are probably a bad guy.
8ball
Maximum Facepalm
seventh bullet
sovietwave
I am not an M-L, Tankie, Stalinist, whatever. I'm of the view that authoritarian forces from the left, especially when acting on behalf of the working class, should be treated with suspicion if not outright opposition. Despite what I think of their politics personally I still try and see from their point of view (it doesn't mean I am adopting it as my own), how they operated, why they operated in such ways, and the local and wider contexts which informed their decisions.
Marxist-Leninists have been explicit in their authoritarianism, and have had no tolerance for any popular political tendency they can't control for their own ends. They have had particular frameworks, devised by the USSR, either rigidly applied or local innovative adaptations, through which to understand the reality of their particular situations and then act upon them. Taking over, neutralising or destroying the organisations of political rivals was a part of that. In partitioned Vietnam's case they did have to be ruthless, for their very survival. Whether or not you think they deserved to survive is neither here nor there. Within the Marxist-Leninist political tradition of the ICP, and using both the Soviet and Chinese doctrines internalised and adapted to local conditions, they acted as they saw fit to ensure their survival, and then seek to win political control of the country from their enemies.
Kev brought up the USSR firstly, then I used a related political movement in another country to illustrate the compromising realities of revolution, where eventually my violence has to defeat their violence. The horrific actions of the Vietnamese I used weren't born out of nothing, they aren't unique to Communists, although how they understood them may differ. At one point in a revolution where anarchists really do have to fight to survive from attacks by the authoritarian forces of the left and right, does a firing squad become a justifiable course of action? When do several killings in hasty circumstances become a terrible necessity? When does something done in a situation of shifting or skewed senses of morality become excessive?
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