/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Mucho texto

>Despite being a center-left liberal
Stopped reading there.

Jesting aside, no such thing as a non-authoritarian state. In fact, the USA is even more authoritarian, housing the largest prison population on Earth and has invaded, bombed, and embargoed more soreveign nations than any other government since WW2. Your conception of the USSR is likely biased by CIA propaganda. It's a fact that USSR could've been more democratic like Cuba and China are today, and they had a fair share of challenges (due to suffering constant warmongering from the West) and a few oopsies in public policy, however, they were in fact quite alright. The USSR lifted millions out of misery and developed most of Russia's current industrial base. They went from a semi-feudal shithole to launching man to space in 50 years. Citizens in the USSR had more freedom in their personal lives than the average american or british person has today.
I could point you to a few texts if you're open-minded and would like to have your ideological positions challenged. In good faith, of course.

>tankies
>Stalinists
What do those words even mean? I always see them thrown around but they are never substantiated. Let's move past the buzzwords and discuss actual politics and history.

I believe in anarchist views, but I don't like to attach myself to labels such as anarchist for this reason. The labels of "socialist" and "communist" has been so jarred by the destructive natures of state capitalist dictatorships and Western propaganda, its reduced these terms to memes of their first iteration. For instance, in America, many Americans would believe in the ideas proposed by socialist leaders and thinkers, but when you attach that spooky "socialist" term at the front, they instantly lose all interest and think you're bat shit crazy. It's why I prefer to work with mutual aid groups instead of out right "anarchist" blocks. I know it's a meme on this site that we do praxis irl, but I genuinely feel that volunteering with groups that run cooperatives and feed the needy and share resources and politics is must more effective than a political party. I'm a big fan of lefty unity for this reason- I don't really give a shit about identity politics, or historical socialist activists or whatever, I just want an increased quality of life and more direct action in daily life- And if socialists that accomplish that, then sure, but I've yet to find a political party that doesn't just do shit like soup kitchens or whatever like once a year to appeal to hearts and minds and shit. If you're just a mutual aid group, and you lose the whole asthethics of leftism and whatnot while still preaching those values, you'll get much more mainstream attention.

>>1821016
link these texts, as much as i've seen, i always thought the Soviet Union was a bureaucratic state, willing to change my mind however

>>1821061
>state capitalist dictatorships
Absolutely, that's absolutely correct and the perfect descriptor of all these fake 'leninist' regimes which were closer to being closeted liberal democracies than communists in the first place. It's the reason revisionism could manifest itself and transition them back into pure liberal democracies and market economies after just a few decades, they had no auto-immune response to that.

>>1821085
yeah nah

>>1820975
>I think the people with USSR sympathies aren't so bad except for the literal Stalinists.
The way I've come to look at it, the October Revolution was like the French Revolution. (Or the Müntzer Rebellion and its armed revolt against the Catholic Church and feudal authority.) It's less common for people to have strong opinions about Napoleon today but some of Stalin's fans can seem like real Napoleon freaks in the late 19th century while his memory among other people was just completely villainous. It's really fascinating though. When I read about the Bolsheviks, I'll see something some ruthlessly disciplined thing they did given the exigencies of civil war and think, oh, that makes sense, there were totally valid reasons for that. You can't help but be impressed with that. But there are a lot of things like that which also contained the cells which would eventually be its undoing. Like the essence of the thing is in the contradictions.

Stalin seemed to place an utmost importance on survival and I think now a lot of things he did can be justified only to that extent. But, like, one of the problems with the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe is that they were installed by the Soviet military after World War II, and the new governments were taken over by people who had been living in the USSR in exile and were "naturally selected" during the purges to have certain qualities adapted to a Stalinist system in survival mode. But basically a lot of people felt like they were living under occupation.

These are just things I'm thinking about lately. I've come to believe many Stalinists on the internet are more like anti-anti-communists who develop their positions and takes on history mainly by arguing with anti-communists (who usually have ill-informed views on it themselves). Whatever is the easiest way to win the argument. They're not really getting into the history as much as mining it for ammunition and which confirms what they already wanted to believe, and that can turn into a intellectual prison house or like Plato's cave with these arguments being a kind of shadowplay.