this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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If your only metric for success is how long something lasts, then an even more successful leftist project is the Republic of Venice. If you're thinking "But the republic of Venice isn't leftist!" yes, that's my point.
I guess you've never heard of trade unions, or you're under some insane impression that they're illegitimate (typical of ML sophistry, so I wouldn't be surprised). The teamsters have existed since 1903 and in that time have demonstrated themselves to be resistant to corruption, able to recover from corruption after it takes hold, positively affected the working conditions of workers that interact with every sector and industry in an entire country and they've never committed a genocide, nor betrayed Anarchists in a war against fascism. Frankly, MLs ain't got a thing on teamsters.
longevity aint the only metric. in fact socialist economies are pretty well estabilished to be the fastest growing and provides the quickest growth to quality of life. china's growth has been unprecedented for a reason, the ussr was similar.
and saying MLs think trade unions are illegitimate is a big strawman. they are literally central to our strategy for revolution & democracy.
Yeah, because that's what happens when a society weighed down by decades of stunted development due to mismanagement industrializes; a brief period of rapid growth as the economy catches up to the rest of the world. Incidentally, this period of rapid growth was then followed by a long period of stagnation and decline, with some sectors reaching or occasionally exceeding parity with the United States while others lagged behind. Leninism's unique contributions to the prosperity of Russia is vastly overstated.
It's true that China has fared far better than the remains of the USSR, but even the CCP is starting to falter from the rot of corruption. China's infrastructure and housing are literally falling to pieces under a reign of state capitalism; construction firms are selling houses of sand because people are purchasing property as a form of investment. Considering that China is the most successful Leninist experiment, and the PRC has existed for less than a century, the record is rather abysmal.
Then why did Lenin abolish them? I'm glad you think highly of trade unions, but if you didn't, you'd be neither the first, second, nor third ML that I've conversed with who said they were bourgeois institutions that preserved capitalism. Putting that aside, Lenin also clearly didn't think much about democracy either, since he overthrew the duly-elected menshiviks.
yes, this is precisely the point of bothering to free ourselves with a painful and dangerous revolution, and a big part of why socialism is desireable. no capitalists making decisions solely for themselves.
this one is simply untrue. they overbuilt housing and infrastructure on purpose. now that they have and excess of it, recently redirected their economy away from real estate, they literally massively divested and popped the bubble recently to focus on manufacturing instead. i also don't expect every socialist country to be perfect and never make mistakes, even if this one ain't it.
this sounds like the usual western media smearing of china, be careful about it since we are in the middle of a cold war.
soviets remained a thing before and throughout the entire existence of the USSR, again they are central to the ML strategy and democracy.
> MLism isn't a good example of socialism.
"Ah, but have you considered that capitalism is bad?"
The October Revolution had 0 deaths on either side. It worked because the government fell to pieces instantly and there was no resistance.
I'm marking that down on my bingo card.
"No, making empty houses was all a part of Daddy Xi's 7D Chess game!" 🤣
This sounds like tankie media lionizing China. Be careful of that, because literally all of them have always been entirely unreliable.
Wow, I didn't realize the USSR ended in 1919. I'll have to tell my friends.
Wow, I never realized that fascists playing "we're socialists actually" stepping directly on worker's necks was required. I always thought it was incidental.
MLs aren't socialists. You are not a socialist. Marx specifically warned against people who would use revolutionary language to subvert and infiltrate, and that's tankie creeps like you.
Its the only real example my dude, ive implied its the biggest reason its the movement im in, but ill say it explicitly now. i keep having to repeat things wont be perfect from the get go, if your expectation is perfection or nothing then you will get nothing. i'm not advocating for countries be exactly like china or russia either.
I never said it didnt. You are purposefully misinterpreting me at this point.
thats only true if you consider the beggining of the revolution. look up who funded the white army and why. also look at revolutions literally anywhere else they were tried instead of cherrypicking and you will see an opposite trend.
china themselves said they would before they did (look up their 5yr plans btw, they frequently achieve their goals), and to much lesser extent western analysts. not "tankie media".
i have no reason to believe your western bullshit over them on matters pertaining to chinese internal affairs, when you yourself is parroting the 'infrastructure made of sand' crap
you are the one doing that. ive seen you present zero solutions or alternatives so far, and lies and misrepresentations about the ones we have. you cant consider yourself a socialist if you are an anti-communist who hates literally all socialist experiments ever tried, and repeat the western red scare propaganda about every country that ever tried it.
ML lifted maybe a couple of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and improved living conditions to hundreds of millions more, those are historical facts that even non-fascist neoliberals ive listened to avoid disputing. you could also present better ideas instead of criticizing something you don't seem to understand nor have the curiosity to learn about. kindly go fuck yourself.
honestly at this point i have no reason to talk to you any further, you are turning a debate of ideas into name-calling. i love talking about politics, but this ain't happening here anymore.