This doesn’t stand materialist scrutiny. You don’t get an authoritarian state directed by a bunch of egotistic bureaucrats, and simultaneously the lowest wealth inequality in history in the region, guaranteed housing and the elimination of unemployment, the defeat of nazism, global support of anti imperialism such as in Vietnam or essentially all of Africa and Latin America, free education to the highest level, and high quality affordable public transit.
In my point of view calling yourself a socialist and not being able to criticise the blatantly anti-democratic and imperial power the USSR became is weird.
Socialism (in my view of it) necessarily requires democratic structures at work as well as government.
Despite the USSR’s positives (all countries have them) let’s not pretend like they had a good template we should emulate (on governance and voting, that is).
Without democracy, you’re basically hoping the people in charge are benevolent. But then when they’re inevitably not at some point, you have no way to peacefully remove them.
Next minute you’ll be telling me China is a democracy just because they elect people the the National People’s Congress. (Another country, with many positives, which is not a democracy).
And please do not confuse my criticism of notionally socialist states (China is definitely not), with implicit praise of the “democracy” in the United States, what they have is barely democracy.
My statement isn’t that the USSR was perfect, it is that all of the material benefits listed above must come from material reasons. You would not expect a government based on a set of self-serving antidemocratic bureaucrats to result in such benefits, because when that’s the form of governance it ends up more towards things like Saudi Arabia.
What’s more feasible, that Soviet Citizens got lucky with Lenin, then Stalin, then Khruschyov and then Brezhnev, or that there were actually democratic means of exerting popular power other than electoralism?
Why do you call the USSR “imperial” power? It never engaged in colonialism or economic exploitation of the global south, quite the opposite. What was imperialist about it?
Regarding China, I would argue they’re more democratic than the west based on the outcomes of governance and on the satisfaction of citizens with their government.
Anti-leftism is an all consuming, load-bearing pillar of fascism. Since .ml is tangentially leftist aligned…
litewally im in the anti-bad guy good guys cwub, if you’we not in the anti-bad guy good guy cwub ur litewally a bad guy
Edit: in before the guy who originally made this joke is litewally a bad guy. Ok, I don’t know him, it is just a relevant joke
Authoritarians are not leftists LMAO
“Marx and Engles weren’t leftists” ok.
You’re right. The people who spent all of 2024 demanding unquestioning devotion to genocide supporters are not leftists.
The left/right axis is separate from the libertarian/authoritarian axis.
The USSR was an leftist authoritarian state.
This doesn’t stand materialist scrutiny. You don’t get an authoritarian state directed by a bunch of egotistic bureaucrats, and simultaneously the lowest wealth inequality in history in the region, guaranteed housing and the elimination of unemployment, the defeat of nazism, global support of anti imperialism such as in Vietnam or essentially all of Africa and Latin America, free education to the highest level, and high quality affordable public transit.
In my point of view calling yourself a socialist and not being able to criticise the blatantly anti-democratic and imperial power the USSR became is weird.
Socialism (in my view of it) necessarily requires democratic structures at work as well as government.
Despite the USSR’s positives (all countries have them) let’s not pretend like they had a good template we should emulate (on governance and voting, that is).
Without democracy, you’re basically hoping the people in charge are benevolent. But then when they’re inevitably not at some point, you have no way to peacefully remove them.
Next minute you’ll be telling me China is a democracy just because they elect people the the National People’s Congress. (Another country, with many positives, which is not a democracy).
And please do not confuse my criticism of notionally socialist states (China is definitely not), with implicit praise of the “democracy” in the United States, what they have is barely democracy.
My statement isn’t that the USSR was perfect, it is that all of the material benefits listed above must come from material reasons. You would not expect a government based on a set of self-serving antidemocratic bureaucrats to result in such benefits, because when that’s the form of governance it ends up more towards things like Saudi Arabia.
What’s more feasible, that Soviet Citizens got lucky with Lenin, then Stalin, then Khruschyov and then Brezhnev, or that there were actually democratic means of exerting popular power other than electoralism?
Why do you call the USSR “imperial” power? It never engaged in colonialism or economic exploitation of the global south, quite the opposite. What was imperialist about it?
Regarding China, I would argue they’re more democratic than the west based on the outcomes of governance and on the satisfaction of citizens with their government.