You must disapprove of Capitalism to a greater degree than Socialism, then, because Capitalism oppresses the working class, who far outnumber the Capitalists. All systems oppress political opponents, what matters is which class is uplifted and which is oppressed, until class is eliminated as a concept. Moreover, the USSR wasn’t a dictatorshio, but a democracy, you can read Soviet Democacy for more on how the Soviet model worked. It’s even listed as a source on the Wikipedia article for Soviet Democracy, so that should pass your bias checks.

Only trusting western, mainstream sources that are generally friendly to the Capitalist order is pretty low in terms of standards. Purely trusting biased sources isn’t a good thing.

Moreover, the basic facts weren’t wrong, I pointed out how Britannica intentionally leaves out key details, and emotionally charges the facts it does represent. You’re only getting a small portion of the overall history and are deliberately refusing to look into actual sources, just summaries from biased individuals.

Why don’t you want to read October, by China Mieville? As far as I know it’s seen as very in-depth and well-sourced, the worst you would be doing is getting a better understanding of events.

All of that still doesn’t address that Socialism was by far better for Russia than Tsarism or Capitalism, life expectancies doubled, democratic control was dramatically expanded, literacy rates went from low 30s to 99.9%, famine was ended, and disparity was lowered while GDP raised dramatically and consistently. Even if we ignored the events of the Revolution, the working class won out dramatically.

Russia is a Capitalist country, quite similar to the US in that regard. The fact that few people own the most doesn’t mean it isn’t a Capitalist economy driven by private ownership.

I think it does. Capitalism at a higher stage is still Capitalism, even if some of the characteristics change.

The US is at a much higher and more developed form of Capitalism, also called “late-stage” Capitalism. This is a part of Capitalist development.

What do you think a system that has managed to achieve “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” would look like? Are you just imagining a Utopia and thinking it wouldn’t work? Marxists agree, imagining a Utopia and trying to build it is a failure in analysis of reality, hence why Marxism rejected Utopian model building. Read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific if you want to see what Marxists actually believe.

The main thing you are arguing is that your preconceived notion of Communism that you appear to have extrapolated from a single phrase doesn’t account for imperfect behavior, but you aren’t arguing against what Communists actually want, just what you think they want.

Yes, that is certainly an anticommunist take on the Revolution, and it leaves out key details like the Socialist Revolutionaries having a major party split right before the election, as well as that the working class had largely abandoned the constituent assembly, as well as the nature of Soviet Democracy, which is what allowed the workers to elect the bolsheviks in the first place. You also see nonsense words like “totalitarianism” as well.

You would do better to read the book October by China Mieville than you would reading a UK-based encyclopedia with a vested interest in anticommunism. Rather, what you originally complained about, ie not believing there to be anticommunist institutions impacting education and popular media, is fully on display.

Finally, it also fails to mention that the Workers did not want to continue Capitalism, the Provisional Government had to be overthrown in the first place anyways. The Socialist Revolutionaries were also wanting to do that until the major party split, where the right-wing faction retained the name.

There’s a lot wrong, and a lot out of order.

The Bolsheviks did not incite revolution, the brutal Tsars did, along with World War I. The Bolsheviks were a revolutionary party and were organizing the working class into worker councils called Soviets, and had created a second government alongside the liberal government.

During the events leading up to the October revolution, the liberal government had been essentially abandoned by the workers, and the Tsar was already were more of a figure head. The Bolsheviks won the Soviet elections, and lost the liberal elections, though the workers largely didn’t care about that government, and the party that won happened to have had a major realignment shortly before the election yet the workers did not all know about that (pre-internet).

After the elections, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, along with the Soviets, stormed the Tsar and ousted him and the Liberal government that was more vestigial than anything else. Then came the Russian Civil War, the invasion from a dozen Capitalist countries to try to reinstate the Tsar, then the NEP (a market-focused economy temporarily for uplifting the productive forces), then Lenin’s unfortunate death.

All in all, you’re generally wrong with what you wrote, not only the order but also the character of events, and I don’t think Wikipedia is going to be enough to know what actually happened. Again, I suggest reading Blackshirts and Reds.

Socialism (and Communism, ie the future post-Socialist global mode of production) are both democratic. Are you using “Democracy” as a stand-in term for Capitalism? What do you believe “Democracy” means? Moreover, why do you think Socialism is “easier to hack?”

Secondly, I genuinely don’t know what you mean by Communism requiring everyone to “act in good faith.” There’s laws and government in Communism, as well as democratic control and civil protections.

I think, more than anything, it would benefit you greatly to take a look at what Communists believe. Up in the parent comment I have a list of reading you can check out, if you’d like. I think you’ll find it difficult to understand and talk about Communism if you don’t first take a look at what Communists believe in the first place.

Oh, thanks! I’ll move over there. Appreicate it!

I just use the mobile browser. I use Mull for that.

Delete the app 🤷

The Soviet system lasted nearly a full century, and worked very well for the vast majority of its existence. If someone wants to make the claim that collapse is inevitable just because the USSR was dissolved, they need to do the legwork to prove it as such. We can discuss what went right and what went wrong in the USSR, including how and why it dissolved, but without legwork assertions like “collapse was inevitable” can be ignored and not taken seriously as there’s nothing to take seriously.

As for scarcity of resources, that’s something that can actually be addressed, but I want to clear up the rest of that paragraph first. For 1, I never said the USSR was “optimal,” and no Marxist believes it to have been a perfect wonderland, just a much better system with its own flaws, albeit lesser flaws. For 2, social services aren’t a bad thing, especially not in a system that saw by far the most devastation from World War II. The fact is, addressing hunger was a priority for the Socialist system as full employment was one of the benefits and necessities for that form of economy, unlike Capitalism, so even if we assume everyone acted selfishly there was no need for a “reserve army of labor.”

Now to actually address scarcity of resources. The fundamental issue with the Soviet system and resource gathering was that it could not depend on international trade for anything. The Capitalist countries all made deliberate choices to provide unstable or unfavorable trade with the Socialists, so they had to develop all of their resources internally, even ones scarce in the regions controlled by the Socialists. Even then, GDP growth was some of the highest in the world while wealth disparity some of the lowest. Further, much of the economy was spent on millitary research and development in order to keep the US at bay.

As for your final paragraph, I don’t think we actually disagree here, though I imagine your “socially conscious democracy” is different from what you think the Marxist-Leninist states look like. Surviving Imperialism as the highest form of Capitalism requires, above all, an end to the US Empire as the world’s greatest Imperialist power, and an uplifiting of the Global South. We can’t move beyond Capitalism globally while the US Empire still functions the way it does, by “dollar recycling” off of all the other countries and owning 800 millitary bases globally to keep the Dollar standard going.

By and large, Socialism was an incredible improvement compared to the Tsarist system, though not some fairytale perfect wonderland, and Socialism was far better than current Capitalism is in the Russian Federation. 7 million excess deaths occured from the transition from Socialism to Capitalism, as the previous safety nets were dissolved or sold off at bargain prices to foreign Capitalists.

The Bolshevik revolution was positive, suffering was dramatically reduced with its implementation, not increased. With Socialism came a dramatic and sustained improvement in worker’s rights, equality of the sexes, a doubling of life expectancies, an end to famine, incredible scientific achievement in a country that began the century as an underdeveloped agrarian backwater, and a democratization of society in a way that far supercedes the former Tsarist system and the future Capitalist system in the Russian Federation.

I don’t know what you mean by “to this day,” to this day Russia is now Capitalist, it hasn’t been Socialist since the beginning of the 90’s. If you want a nuanced critique of the USSR, Blackshirts and Reds is a good option, it’s the second item in my reading list if you want a link.

Moreover, Russia transitioned to Socialism when Russia was a feudal backwater and the US was transitioning to the world superpower, it was always far behind in world power and yet did a better job of maximizing resource usage in favor of the Workers, despite the US’s Imperialism.

No problem! If you want to learn more, I recommend starting with Operation Gladio.

It isn’t some far-fetched conspiracy to understand that the Red Scare exists, it’s rather historical fact. Anticommunism is US policy, and this extends to education.

Secondly, the Bolshevik revolution was positive, I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds. With Socialism came a dramatic and sustained improvement in worker’s rights, equality of the sexes, a doubling of life expectancies, an end to famine, incredible scientific achievement in a country that began the century as an underdeveloped agrarian backwater, and a democratization of society in a way that far supercedes the former Tsarist system and the future Capitalist system in the Russian Federation.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to answer if I can or point you in a better direction to search on your own.

If you want to make sense of the current political moment, and why electoral politics under capitalism can never, and will never, serve anyone but the wealthy capitalists, look no further than the most influential political theorist of the 20th century: Vladimir Lenin. A thread.

I highly recommend reading this thread. If you want an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, I made one you can check out here.

To be fair, Marx is traditionally taught in a manner that distorts or coopts his messaging, blunting the practical and replacing with an anti-Marxist idealism. Marx is taught in the US in this manner as well. Simply assigning reading doesn’t make one a Communist, especially if accompanied by bourgeois messaging. This applies doubly to the Manifesto, which is more of a pamphlet meant to energize the workers than an actual explanation of Marxist theory (which can admittedly be far more dry, even if I personally like reading and studying it).

I did put a lot of effort into curating it, and am quite proud of the results. Several comrades helped me put it together as well, their efforts shouldn’t go forgotten. That post has a couple hundred upvotes currently, if a tiny fraction of those people actually use it then it’s all worth it.

If you want to make sense of the current political moment, and why electoral politics under capitalism can never, and will never, serve anyone but the wealthy capitalists, look no further than the most influential political theorist of the 20th century: Vladimir Lenin. A thread.

I highly recommend reading this thread. If you want an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, I made one you can check out here.