Political Memes

Yes, I want what the Soviet Union claimed they wanted not what they got.

The original USSR was predicated on peaceful coexistence with European neighbors. Lenin's climb to power came on the back of an enormous anti-war movement, protesting the catastrophic loss of life during WW1.

What they got, instead, was a western sponsored counter-revolution via the White Terror, followed by a decade of border wars, and climaxing in a Second World War thanks to an unprompted invasion by Germany. By the time the wars were over and a lasting (abet tense) peace had been brokered with western nations, the Khrushchev Era of the USSR largely was this.

Workers soviets prospered immensely during the 60s and 70s. The Soviet block finally got to taste the fruits of the industrial revolution, complete with cheap nuclear power and high speed mass transit and surplus agricultural produce thanks to industrial fertilizers. Quality of life in the USSR easily rivaled western peers in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. And their exports spared populations from Bangladesh to Cuba to Cambodia to Korea from engineered famines.

I’m saying that over centralization in the hands of a single party has done more harm to communism than MLs would like to believe.

I would argue feuding partisan factions in western states have done more to harm than anything a unified worker's government has ever inflicted.

What good is a two-party system when each party claims the other is going to end democracy if their rival wins?

one could argue that the Russian revolution failed after they beat back the white army when the Bolsheviks killed all the communists, because killing communists is all the USSR ever really did, except the one time it killed communists by grinding Nazis into a fine icy paste with them, which admittedly was pretty cool.

one could also argue that theres math about centralization that shows you necessarily get worse information to a central source, even with 0 inefficiency, because physical limits and compression and junk, and that a highly centralized body literally cannot make good decisions on purpose at that kind of scale. but then the tankies would stop cuddling their body pillows long enough to threaten to kill you.