Capitalism is the root of evil : memes

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 weeks ago

Soviet propaganda is a good thing, and it's on the mark here. Socialism is necessary and Capitalism is clearly on the downhill.

[-] pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 8 points 2 weeks ago

Soviet propaganda is a good thing

Was the USSR good?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 weeks ago

Yes.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

yeah gulags were really great and the world needs more of them

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

The Soviet prison system varied quite a bit, some with open visitation and no outer walls. They varied quite dramatically in conditions, but many were fairly progressive for the time. I recommend reading Russian Justice.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

yeah gulags were great, really progressive.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

Read the book.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

ofc not

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

Okay 👍

[-] Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think so, relatively.
Weren't they better than the Tsarist rule?

Like, public healthcare, education and other policies leading to high literacy rates, longer lifespans, low infant and mother mortality etc.

And if we compare them to the other major powers at the time, aren't they better than those since they made progress without colonies?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 weeks ago

You're spot on. Those who uphold the USSR as an overall force for good don't think it was a magical utopia, but look at the hard metrics and see that, unlike Western powers, ultimately played a liberatory role globally and a progressive role domestically. Looking at geopolitical conflicts, they were almost always on the "correct" side, the one siding against colonialism, Nazism, and more.

[-] pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 1 points 2 weeks ago

Siding against colonialism: I guess its not colonialism when you're colonialising your neighbouring countries and using your military to keep them in line / end liberation movements by force?

Siding against national socialism: At first they collaborated to take Poland together, and they made a deal to not attack each other. Only after Hitler broke that deal and attacked, forcing them to fight them, the USSR turned against Nazi-Germany.

... and more?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago

The USSR never colonized anyone. Further, it supported movements in Cuba, Angola, Algeria, China, Vietnam, Korea, Palestine, and more.

As for Poland, rather than let the genocidal Nazis take all of Poland, the Soviets stopped them from taking all of it. We see the difference in treatment when the Nazis exterminated Polish people and the Soviets did not.

The USSR never sided with the Nazis. They hated each other. The liberal democracies of Europe made similar agreements with Hitler before the USSR, and shot down Stalin's suggestions of an anti-fascist alliance. Furthermore, US industrialists were directly inspired by Fascist Germany and Italy to carry out the failed Business Plot against FDR. The USA also paid reparations to German industrialists for their destroyed property after the war was over (Yes, even German industrialists who used Holocaust slave labor, like Krupp).

1933 - UK, France, Italy - The four powers pact

1934 - Poland - Hitler-Pilsudski Pact

1935 - UK - Anglo-German Naval agreement

1936 - Japan - Anti-Comintern pact

1938 - September - UK - German-British Non Aggression Pact (Munich Agreement )

1938 - December - France - German-French Non Aggression Pact

1939 - March - Romania - German Romanian Economical Treaty

1939 - March - Lithuania - Non aggression ultimatum

1939 - May - Italy - Pact of Steel (Friendship and Alliance)

1939 - May - Denmark - Non aggression pact

1939 - June - Estonia - non aggression pact

1939 - July - Latvia - non aggression pact

1939 - August - USSR - Molotov-Ribbentrop Non Aggression pact - the only ones libs care about

Stalin with regards to this said:

"Indeed, it would be ridiculous and stupid to close our eyes to the capitalist encirclement and think that our external enemies, the fascists, for example, will not, if the opportunity arises, make an attempt at an attack upon the USSR. Only blind braggarts or masked enemies who desire to lull the vigilance of our people can think like that."

Even the US state department confirmed Stalin's rationale for a pact with Hitler

"The Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany after the British and French rejected Soviet offers to establish a military alliance against Germany"

CIA declassifies its dealings with ex nazis

Stalin 'planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact'

How the Allied multinationals supplied Nazi Germany throughout World War II

[-] Edie@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Stalin ‘planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact’

As if they were ever going to.

The Cold War & Its Origins, Vol. I, Denna F. Flemming, 1961, Chapter V:

Final Procrastination. This explicit warning did not increase the tempo in London. It was not until July 31 that Chamberlain finally announced the naming of a military mission to Moscow, to arrange the concrete terms of the proposed alliance. Molotov had named his top military men to negotiate, but instead of Lord Gort and General Gamelin the British-French delegation was headed by an obscure British Admiral, Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, and by a French General of comparable obscurity. Nor did this mission fly to Moscow as fast as planes could take it, to concert measures with desperate speed against the pitiable crucifixion of Poland which was boiling up on the horizon. While the sands were running out for Poland by the minute, the Allied mission took a slow Baltic boat, on August 5, and did not reach Moscow until August 11. Then it transpired, once again, that these men had no power to conclude an agreement.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

Of course they wouldn't, they wanted the Soviets and Nazis to take each other out.

[-] Edie@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Why then had the Munich men refused all through the Spring and Summer to accept the only terms for an alliance with Russia which could mean anything to Russia? It was, says [F. L.] Schuman, because “all preferred the destruction of Poland to the Soviet defence of Poland. All hoped that the sequence would be a German-Soviet war over the spoils.” Is this a too stern judgment? It fits Ambassador Henderson, who told Hitler, on August 23, that he preferred a German-Soviet agreement to an Anglo-Soviet agreement

Ibid.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

Of course, liberals always get furious when this is pointed out.

Great job with Comlib, by the way!

[-] Edie@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

As between Germany and Poland the settlement is just enough. The Germans were responsible for the death of some eight million Polish citizens. They killed 700,000 in Warsaw alone. Poland had a higher percentage of human losses than any other participant in World War II. The Germans did their best to murder the Polish nation and to enslave the remnant permanently. They used every device of sadistic cruelty to torture and degrade the Polish people. The Dark Side of the Moon, the Polish book of horrors in Russia, is a record of much heartlessness and inhumanity, of callousness to suffering and ruthless exaction of labor, but it contains little of deliberate, sadistic cruelty. Odd Nansen, the son of Fridtjof Nansen, has left a full record of his eternity spent in German prisons, including Sachsenhausen, in his diary From Day to Day.^55^ It contains many instances of “the purest sadism, of a craving for the sight of pain, the display of power, the exercise of hate.”^56^ I do not find in The Dark Side of the Moon any such record of calculated bestiality and deliberate depravity. It was left to the Germans to exterminate races in wholesale fashion, including multitudes of little children, by starvation, cremation and other methods, after suffering every kind of indignity.^57^
Polish industry was wrecked, her soils, forests and livestock gravely depleted, her transportation system ruined “beyond belief”; her schools, public buildings of every kind, private dwellings and business houses were damaged beyond use in huge numbers. If ever a people deserved restitution at the hands of their destroyers, it was the Poles.

Ibid., chapter IX

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

It's heartbreaking to read.

[-] Edie@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

How do I get libs to read this fucking tankie.

There was general agreement that a most remarkable national revival began in Poland during the first three years after Germany’s defeat. In the summer of 1948 John Gunther visited Warsaw and was astonished at what he saw. He reported the “massive energy and zip” the Poles had put into the rebuilding of Warsaw. He spoke of “electric animation and effervescence.” Warsaw was the liveliest capital in Europe. Food was cheap, good and plentiful. The people were rebuilding the city almost entirely with hand tools, with very few of the great machines we use so plentifully, but every Pole he met was “almost bursting with hope.”
This was by no means due solely to the character of the Government. Indeed, most Poles hated Russia. He did not see in Warsaw a single Red flag, a photograph of Stalin or a Russian soldier. There were few signs of overt pressure on the people. An American who bitterly hated the regime told him that there was no arbitrary use of the police power, no concentration camps or terrorism. The Poles were building for the future. They did not expect another war to tear down their city again.

Ibid.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

Sadly, I find book recommendations usually work better for leftists than libs. I wonder why...

[-] culprit@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 weeks ago

It's either socialism or barbarism. That's why we are back here again.

[-] storm 4 points 2 weeks ago

And unfortunately, USSR falls smack damn on the barbarism side of that divide

[-] AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

you're just mad they stopped the holocaust

[-] storm 1 points 2 weeks ago

...how could that possibly be your takeaway from what I said? I literally never even compared them to the Nazis, just said they weren't socialist enough

[-] AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

reading between the lines

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

Indisputably the opposite, the Soviet Union was the first big Socialist state.

[-] culprit@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

According to American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Kristen Ghodsee, efforts to institutionalize the "double genocide thesis", or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust (race murder) and the victims of communism (class murder), in particular the push at the beginning of the 2007–2008 financial crisis for commemoration of the latter in Europe, can be seen as the response by economic and political elites to fears of a leftist resurgence in the face of devastated economies and extreme social inequalities in both the Eastern and Western worlds as the result of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism. She says that any discussion of the achievements by Communist states, including literacy, education, women's rights, and social security is usually silenced, and any discourse on the subject of communism is focused almost exclusively on Joseph Stalin's crimes and the "double genocide thesis", an intellectual paradigm summed up as such: "1) any move towards redistribution and away from a completely free market is seen as communist; 2) anything communist inevitably leads to class murder; and 3) class murder is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust." By linking all leftist and socialist ideals to the excesses of Stalinism, Ghodsee posits that the elites hope to discredit and marginalize all political ideologies that could "threaten the primacy of private property and free markets".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory#Memory_politics_and_the_Holocaust_in_Eastern_Europe

[-] storm 1 points 2 weeks ago

I should have clarified that I'm not against socialism, just the hierarchy of states. We should instead pursue more egalitarian socialist expressions like social ecology or kinds of anarchy.

[-] culprit@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

making the perfect the enemy of the good

this is you rn

socialism >> communism is a evolving process, but every time it starts growing and developing, capital asserts itself to dominate and destroy it

the only Actually Existing Socialisms today have nuclear deterrents to avoid this fate, they also have to develop counter-intelligence defenses because just nuclear weapons are not enough to protect from all the myriad threats that capital engages in towards anti-socialist >> anti-communist goals

if you can not understand this material reality of history, and use it to analyze the struggle for liberation in this world, you are lost

[-] person1@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

[removed by mod]

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

The portrayal of the Communists and Nazis as "twin evils" exaggerates the sins of the Communists in quantity and quality, while minimizing the sins of the Nazis in quantity and quality, in order to show them as relatively equal problems. In other words, its Nazi apologia, and historical revisionism. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

The Nazis executed the Communists, Socialists, gay people, trans people, disabled people, Jewish people, Slavic people, and many, many more. It wasn't simple opposition, it was a racially supremacist ideology.

The Communists executed Tsarists, fascists, and terrorists to the state. They did not create a systematic industrialized murder machine like the Nazis did in order to keep up with how many people they needed to kill.

Memes

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