I’d believe it if I were a bystander, povoq is doing this extremely well if he wants to validate my points uncontested. As funny as it would be, I am not secretly a solarpunk admin.
Edit: Edie is clearly joking, for whoever is downvoting it. Edie isn’t actually accusing me of making an alt to argue with.
Nah, history is written by both winners and losers. What’s important is historical accuracy, and which class’s perspective and outlook is being presented. Equating socialist historiography with bourgeois historiography is a false equivalence.
No worries, I just find it funny sometimes. I don’t actually take it seriously.
I have read historically accurate accounts, though you define historical accuracy by it not being written by anyone succeeding. I’ve also asked for sources, and you haven’t brought any beyond linking the anarchist library.
Revolution requires organizing, revolution is the establishment of proletarian power. None of my logic has been circular, and what you describe has not happened in socialist states. The working classes run socialist states, and parties have never declared themselves a ruling class, nor have they been one de facto.
Nothing I have said is historically inaccurate. The Bolsheviks opposed cadets, mensheviks, and other groups that wished to retain the Tsar’s colonies, wanted to prolong the war, and opposed Soviet power. The Soviets were a connected system, itself a state. Overthrowing the provisional government and solidifying the Soviet state as the only state does not oppose their purpose in the slightest, and it was a decision democratically approved.
MLs organizing have established numerous socialist states, and have effectively organized anti-imperialist and decolonial movements around the world. I never said what I do on Lemmy is “organizing,” that would be absurd.
As for vanguards, no, they are based on the idea that each class produces its own intellectuals, and therefore organizing them and bringing the working classes up theoretically and uniting in an all-sided political struggle is the way to establish socialism. Monarchism is entirely different, and was based on divine right with no accountability.
Seems like a cop-out, but whatever helps you sleep at night, I suppose.
Why would the Soviets overthrowing the capitalist government “invalidate the very idea they stood for?” The Soviets stood for worker and peasant power. They succeeded in establishing that very concept and turning it into concrete political reality. As for the idea of the Bolsheviks “purging people,” you are referring to the ensuing Civil War, where the workers and peasants joined the Bolsheviks and the Red Army. Even anarchists largely joined the Red Army to fight off the Whites.
None of this was ad-hominem. I did not say your claims were wrong because you have an aristocratic viewpoint, I explained your aristocratic attitude and how that impacts potential org-work. Revolution is definitely praxis, and I’m not sure what you mean by “armchair communist,” I organize in real life.
I never claimed Bolsheviks and Soviets were synonymous, only that both the soviet government and provisional government existed in a dual state, and that the Soviets stood opposed to the provisional government. The Soviet government did back the Bolsheviks, and eventually came to be entirely Bolshevik.
Monopolizing state power in the hands of the working classes is putting the working classes in power. The state is not outside of class struggle, but within it, and arises from it. None of my logic has been circular.
As for your strategy, you reveal your utter disdain for actual organizing work when you claim you would be “doing my research for me.” I am openly inviting you to share what you think are good ideas, and instead you insult me. This attitude is aristocratic, the workers are not good enough for your knowledge, they just have to trust whatever it is you say, and if they don’t, they are not worthy.
I never claimed to be your boss, nor am I a part of a vanguard party, as no party can declare itself as such. If you do org work in real life, I suggest you try to actually engage with those who disagree with you, or else you’ll have an extremely difficult time gaining new members.
The voting regions absolutely show the modern division in Ukraine, between the Banderites and the Donbass region. The political lines did not change, the governments did. The government of Ukraine itself is far-right, even if the parties are not the same as the coup.
As for China, I very clearly explained how it is a socialist market economy. The working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. This has had enormously positive results, and as time goes on marketization is shrinking in favor of more planned economy. See Cheng Enfu:
Your refusal to grasp the key differences between capitalism and socialism turn you to logical pretzels.
Nope, no historical inaccuracies. You’re referring to the Right-SRs, who had recently split from the Left-SRs. The rural socialists banded together with the Bolsheviks in a coalition. You’re also ignoring that the workers and peasants already saw the provisional government as illegitimate, backing the Soviets. The anarchists may have had what they believed were good ideas, but the proletariat and peasantry largely disagreed and agreed with the socialists, who coalesced around the Bolsheviks.
Stalin, by his own admission, added very, very little to Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is, at its core, laid out by Marx and Lenin. If you mean any retrospective analysis is “post-hoc justification,” then this is absurd as retrospection must be post-hoc. If you mean most arguments in general are post-hoc, then you’re ignoring the core of Marxism-Leninism that predates socialist states.
I’ve been arguing in good faith the entire time, asking you over and over for actual arguments and reading, and you respond with insult. Are you aware of how this presents to onlookers? Do you think you’re winning over others?
In socialist states, ownership and control is held in the hands of the proletariat. Delegation and administration is built up precisely due to the necessity of administrative labor, this does not make salaried administrators a separate owner class. Teachers and principals are both proletarian, even if the form of labor is different, even if the pay is different, because they share the same class interests and relations to the means of production and distribution.
What makes a society socialist is proletarian control of the state, and public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy. Plain and simple. Calling entirely different economic systems capitalist as a means to discredit socialism is a subjectivist argument, it doesn’t get us any closer to the truth.
As for me “disagreeing with historical fact,” I’d love an explanation of how I do that. You do seem to admit to trying to convince me, so perhaps you could play ball and actually give me some examples, arguments, and literature? I’m utterly uninterested in subjectivist declarations devoid of any actual substance, without actual examples and arguments I couldn’t even be convinced by you if I wanted to be.
You did not provide arguments, you provided categorical declarations without backing them up or contextualizing them. Do you not see how enormously unproductive this is for bringing someone over to your side? Asserting that I simply “don’t understand” your supposed arguments is also not going to hold any water, everyone can see plain as day that I have carefully responded exactly to what you’ve been declaring.
As for materialism being disproven, again, you don’t explain how or why, you just say that it has been, and reference “a hundred plus years of literature” without giving any examples, or explaining how it’s supposedly wrong. Who are you trying to convince? Even for the sake of hypothetical, even if it was wrong, if your goal was to convince anyone of your argument, you’ve given them absolutely nothing to go off of to see if you’re correct. All you’ve done is legitimize Marx, Lenin, and myself with this level of logic.
As for Lenin’s theory, you still haven’t actually attacked it. You made the claim that it was all post-hoc, and when this was proven false, you deflected. This is just running away from the argument.
I ask you again: for what purpose are you commenting? Is this how you try to gain comrades in real life? Do you even try to do so?
Class is a relation to ownership of the means of production, not a job. This is the definition of class. Administrators that receive salaries for their labor and share equal ownership with the rest of the working classes are by definition working class. Simply saying that they aren’t does not actually disprove this, at minimum you need to explain why the Marxist understanding of class, class interest, and the state is wrong.
I find it funny that you admit that socialism is entirely different from capitalism, and thus reduce socialism to “equalism” rather than a system with proletarian control of the state and public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy. Disparity between administrators in socialism and the rest of the working classes is far smaller than the immense appropriation of surplus value by capitalists, precisely because the mechanisms are entirely different.
Finally, again, the USSR was not capitalist, and Lenin was not a counter-revolutionary. If your only argument that Lenin was a counter-revolutionary is because he established a socialist state and overthrew a capitalist one, then I’m not sure who you’re trying to convince. Anyone can see that that’s clearly silly, and you haven’t provided a coherent explanation for your views behind class and capitalism.
Not quite. You can find data like this, but the length of time isn’t nearly as long, and only really accounts for the Xi Jinping era, and is missing the data on the bottom 50%. I’m sure the data is out there, but I don’t have any on hand.