8ball
Decolonise colons!
When you say “libertarians”, are you talking about anarchists?
Is the Left Wing more truthful than the Right Wing, and if so, why?
- Thread starter Cloo
- Start date
When you say “libertarians”, are you talking about anarchists?
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
I said 'for want of a better word,' so yes, I suppose so. It's how they seem to describe themselves, although you never tend to meet any in real life.
I didn't mean libertarians of the ultra-capitalist variety, or the conspiracy nutcases etc. I do think the anarchist-communist variety of libertarianism is an honourable tradition, even if it clearly has no chance whatsoever of bringing about the economic and societal changes it purports to seek.
PTK
Paul Kegan
Perhaps the libertarian left needs to be learn to tell jokes like Bernard Manning.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Two of them, and they’re working on a third.
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
Ginger stepchild? JFC.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Oh, go on then.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
You can make excuses and rationalise anything.
But if your regime or the regime you fan boy for uses The declaration of human rights as a tick box of things it’s subjects aren’t allowed. If a regime can’t cope with someone calling out their mistakes,failures or just criticism it’s not a good regime.
Most governments don’t like dissidents but there’s degrees ended up in the scrubs for a few months because you hung off a motorway signpost.
It’s cracking down on complaints.
But it’s not being killed or disappeared.
the British communist party existed the USSR and its many client/ subject states never allowed a Conservative party.
But if your regime or the regime you fan boy for uses The declaration of human rights as a tick box of things it’s subjects aren’t allowed. If a regime can’t cope with someone calling out their mistakes,failures or just criticism it’s not a good regime.
Most governments don’t like dissidents but there’s degrees ended up in the scrubs for a few months because you hung off a motorway signpost.
It’s cracking down on complaints.
But it’s not being killed or disappeared.
the British communist party existed the USSR and its many client/ subject states never allowed a Conservative party.
JimW
支那暗杀团
The tragedy of it here in China is that they did make life better for the vast majority of people, despite the crimes; they even starved fewer people despite the largest policy-induced famine in history. That's why I do find takes like yours Kevbad the Bad a bit short, when you said they had no goals/ends I think it was, as here they were looking to end that structural oppression that had people selling children to survive and the position of women as chattel, and they did that. There was also the notion of creating a strong unified nation state, which given the Japanese invasion and the Cold War international situation, is understandable, even if that again came at great cost to the farming majority and skewed economic priorities. That ought to be taken into account alongside the litany of oppressions and mis-steps; certainly, if you ignore it you'll miss why the regime retains what legitimacy it does despite having used the troops on the people so recently.
The worst of it for me is that what good they achieved was by and large despite the Leninist machinery of control not because of it, hence largely unnecessary even by their own lights, though the earliest and some of the worst violence such as during land reform was also something of a popular bloodletting. Then there's idiocies like the caste-like class categories that blighted so many lives but somehow the relentless political campaigns managed to let Deng survive to come in a wreck it all and the children of the elite float back to the top. The truth about all that needs looking past the lie machines of the current regime here and the hostile historiography elsewhere IMO.
The worst of it for me is that what good they achieved was by and large despite the Leninist machinery of control not because of it, hence largely unnecessary even by their own lights, though the earliest and some of the worst violence such as during land reform was also something of a popular bloodletting. Then there's idiocies like the caste-like class categories that blighted so many lives but somehow the relentless political campaigns managed to let Deng survive to come in a wreck it all and the children of the elite float back to the top. The truth about all that needs looking past the lie machines of the current regime here and the hostile historiography elsewhere IMO.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
I'm not saying that there were never any goals or aims for these totalitarian states, nor that living standards or social systems never improved in any way, but that the relentless violence enacted against all and sundry (at times) served little purpose other than to inculcate fear and obedience into much of the population. It didn't need to happen that way. Even if you think it did, this thread is about truthfulness. I don't see the Chinese Communist Party facing up to any of this stuff in an open, honest way.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Weirdly, I think there probably is a fair bit of honest assessment internally, technocrat style, but they're never going to come out and admit the half of it, though there is also the lingering factional blindness to some of what they did. They used to tolerate a few historical journals where old cadre would write their reminiscences, Yanhuang Chunqiu being the famous one, and in among the special pleading there was a fair bit of insight. Similarly, what you could say in academic circles differed from the propaganda for general consumption. Been a major chill recently though.
As for the violence, as I wrote above, I agree that to a large part it was unnecessary, certainly as time went on, but not sure about your characterisation of the causes and purpose. For many years it was also a playing out of the subsumed violence of the old society they were set on destroying and there's also the popular participation during e.g. the CR years that was not by any means all centrally directed or inspired. read a fantastic novel by Cao Zhenglu that's a fictionalised account of his time in the army during the 'Support the Left' period that he calls 'Lessons in Democracy'. He's interviewed about it here: Monthly Review | Rethinking Is Not Demonizing
likesfish
You can't park here sir
When the Bear Picked Up a Harpoon: What Soviet Whaling Says about the Environment in the Cold War - The Strauss Center
On October 29th, 2014, the Strauss Center and the Clements Center welcomed Dr. Kurk Dorsey at a joint event to discuss the history of Soviet whaling. In his talk, "When the Bear Picked Up a Harpoon: What Soviet Whaling Tells Us about the Environmental History of the Cold War," Dorsey…
www.strausscenter.org
He concluded that technology-driven militarization, a constant drive to commodify resources, and a lack of dissent led to a system in which bad ideas went unchecked and destructive behavior went uncorrectedcharacteristics that ultimately led to its downfall.
The Soviets killed way more whales than they admitted to and continued long after whale products weren't even wanted or needed in the Soviet Union.
If you can't object or raise criticisms really bad things will happen.
It happens in council's that face no real opposition all the time
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Communist Parties existed in what today is termed the global south. The colonised countries were definitely not allowed the 'softer' capitalism you seem to think is natural and not the consequence of temporary ruling class concession.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
From what I've read on the land reform, the committees set up to facilitate peasant grievance and deal with the most egregious of the landlords struggled to control the situation. The harrowing 'speak bitterness' gave poor peasants an outlet for the first time to face their exploiters and express how their cruelty and disregard for their lives had impacted their families. After a while it became a popular, bottom-up explosion of violence that threatened the goverment's class alliance strategy, as the killings crept up to those the Party, in their Leninist thinking, wanted on-side.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
You miss the point.
so called communist regimes never allowed an opposition
So the issue of any means to dissent led to a system in which bad ideas went unchecked and destructive behavior went uncorrected. A dictatorship of the proletariat is still a dictatorship.
so called communist regimes never allowed an opposition
So the issue of any means to dissent led to a system in which bad ideas went unchecked and destructive behavior went uncorrected. A dictatorship of the proletariat is still a dictatorship.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
You miss the point. The conditions they had to operate under where the various aspects of liberal democracy that were lauded by the colonial powers were utterly hollow. They would rather destroy a burgeoning democracy and place power into the hands of a dictatorship so long as that form of government ensures the smooth running of resource extraction and low cost labour.
PTK
Paul Kegan
“Dictatorship of the proletariat” is a reference to the class nature of the state. Under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, such as here in Britain, the state is an instrument of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. This does not mean that there are no freedoms, and under the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be the freedom to express a different point of view. Stalin’ Russia and Mao’s China were not examples of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and indeed the latter did not claim to be.
The four smaller stars on the flag of the People’s Republic of China represent a “four class bloc” that is supposedly the form of state in the “new democracy” in China.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
but even when they got rid of the colonial powers they never produced and democracy rule of law independcence of judiciary a free press or even an effective transfer of power and term limits.
gadaffis green book is a great story but that's all it is
Mugabe became a corrupt murderous thug along with his family
etc etc etc
gadaffis green book is a great story but that's all it is
Mugabe became a corrupt murderous thug along with his family
etc etc etc
PTK
Paul Kegan
Gadaffi was not, and did not claim to be, a Marxist.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Within M-L doctrine the PRC was behind the socialism established in the USSR (as they understood it). The Stalin government understood dictatorship of the proletariat as a temporary state of emergency where the repressive arms of the state will crush those members of classes recently dispossessed of their old-society privileges and power, and who work to resist the 'building of socialism.' It was deemed over by the late 1930s when the government proclaimed socialism had indeed been built.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
he did claim to be a revloutionary and for a time was a hero
The Green Book (Gaddafi) - Wikipedia surprisingly racist
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Yeah, and all that was a complete load of cobblers.
JimW
支那暗杀团
While it's true that it was hard to resist the mass campaigns coming down from the centre, there was actually quite a lot of freedom to criticise day to day working practise in the factories and on the communes, have read numerous memoirs where this happens, and it's another reason why there was later nostalgia for those times, as people felt they counted more than later under the new private bosses (China again, obviously)
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JimW
支那暗杀团
The joke went that they renamed China Reconstructs magazine in the early eighties when someone pointed out thirty years was a long time to be at it. Here the claim it was built by 1978 and now we're modernising IIRC.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Not to them.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
And with that, allow me to heartily recommend Mikhail Bakunin and Richard Warren's "Critique of State Socialism".
A Critique of State Socialism - Mikhail Bakunin and Richard Warren
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
And how would you know what any of them truly believed when they were not able to express themselves freely?
seventh bullet
sovietwave
I've met them and listened to them.
Also, at the top, records of Stalin's own life in power reveal consistency with regard to his private world and that of a Bolshevik. You might not like it, but that's irrelevant.
Also, at the top, records of Stalin's own life in power reveal consistency with regard to his private world and that of a Bolshevik. You might not like it, but that's irrelevant.
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