I don’t think it makes sense to classify Socialism as a quantitative measure, but qualitative. If you recall from Politzer’s work, there’s really no such thing as a “pure” system, ergo when deciding if an ideology is Capitalist or Socialist we need to see what it does and what it works towards.
Social Democracy definitely borrows from Socialism and Socialists, certainly in aesthetics and many supporters genuinely believe in Reformism as a tactic (even if I personally think it obviously disproven at this point). However, the basis of Social Democracy is in not only maintaining markets (which are found in Socialist countries as well), but Bourgeois control and the present institutions formed in Bourgeois interests, such as the US 2 party system. Without doing anything to truly assert proletarian control over the economy and leaving the Bourgeoisie uncontested besides the “democratic” institutions they set up and approve of, I don’t consider it truly Socialist.
In a way. If we are being serious, all ideologies are critiques of the present system in some way, even libertarian Capitalists believe in significant critiques of modern Capitalism. What matters more is the manner and character of the changes. In Social Democracy, even if adherents think social safety nets need to be expanded, they don’t typically think we should work towards collectivization and public ownership, and wish to “harness Capitalism.” In addition, the Nordic Countries many seek to replicate only exist via Imperialism, they fund their social safety nets largely through massive IMF loans and other high interest rate forms of exploiting the Global South. It’s like if Chase Bank were a country.
Ok, so essentially a social democracy can be considered leftist if it seeks to overthrow bourgeois hegemony and shift power dynamics in favour of the working class over time is what I’m getting from this? Everything is relative.
On your second point, i agree that bourgeois institutions remain largely intact in social democracies, but what about historical examples like Sweden in the mid-20th century, where labor movements and socialist parties significantly shifted power dynamics in favor of the working class? Couldn’t social democracy, under certain conditions, be seen as a stepping stone toward proletarian control ergo making it leftist? At least if we’re going by Politzer’s view that there are no pure systems.
I also agree that the Nordic model has benefited from imperialism, but this same critique could be applied to the USSR as well who engaged in exploitative practices in its satellite states. Doesn’t this suggest that imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist systems, but rather a feature of powerful states under various ideologies?
Such a Social Democracy isn’t Social Democracy anymore and becomes “Reformist Socialism,” which is historically a failure and theoretically a failure.
Per Sweden, concessions came as a combination of strong labor organization internally, and a successful Socialist neighboring country to look towards. The ruling class made concessions, rather than risk losing control entirely. Such systems have eroded now that the USSR isn’t there anymore, and to adopt Social Democratic tactics without such a neighboring Socialist State has not really worked out.
As for the USSR, it wasn’t Imperialist. It did engage in widespread planning, and certain more populous regions recieved more support and development. However, this was not done for profit, and the goal remained widespread development. If you want to get into Leftist critique of Imperialism, Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism really is necessary reading to understand the basics. If you truly want to see Imperialism and how it evolved over time, a dense and academic but nonetheless fantastic resource is Hudson’s Super Imperialism is great.
I’m not going to address your first claim, because I’m not aware of the context surrounding how reformist socialism is “a failure”.
I’ll skip to your last point and just say i disagree with your framing of the way things happened under the Soviet Union and you are once again defending the Soviet Union’s failed practices to protect ideological purity. Imperialism isn’t only done for profit y’know.
What about cases where resource transfers or forced economic realignments harmed satellite states? For instance, East Germany was heavily exploited post-WWII to pay reparations, which stifled its recovery for years. Wouldn’t the imposition of Soviet control and extraction of resources qualify as imperialist, even if it wasn’t driven by capitalist profit motives?
What about the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? The Soviets responded with military intervention killing thousands. This doesn’t seem any different from what Putin’s doing with Ukraine today.
These same satellite towns were also used as buffer zones to protect against Western aggression. The result? They were dragged into Cold War conflicts they had nothing to do with.
You can provide sources or that try to explain how these actions only served to contribute to development, but that doesn’t take away the practical implications of these actions. I haven’t even mentioned COMECON yet. The USSR was largely imperialist.
Reformist Socialism is disproven in theory by Rosa Luxemburg in Reform or Revolution and in practice by its lack of existence anywhere. The closest was Comrade Allende’s Chile, who got couped within a couple years with US support.
As for Imperialism, it’s important for you to actually understand what Marxists are talking about by referencing Imperialism. Marxists maintain this definition as a valid and useful one because it explains what it is, why it exists, and how to stop it. What you describe later is not the same as this process, you fold a bunch of different subjects in in a way that adds confusion, not clarity.
For the GDR? It made contextual sense, considering the Nazis intentionally waged a war of extermination and genocide against the Soviets, who desparately needed to revover. The US took advantage of Western Europe’s weaker standing to essentially fold them into a subservient status in exchange for monetary support, while the Eastern Front saw 80% of the combat in the entirety of WWII. The scale of devastation of the Soviet Union by the Nazis cannot be understated.
For Hungary? Not sure why you are defending a US-supported fascist counterrevolution where literal Nazis were released from prison by pro-Nazi Hungarians in order to coup the Socialist system. I’ll chalk it up to ignorance, as the idea of a state crushing a counterrevolution can certainly seem dystopian if you don’t know who the “revolutionaries” are or what they wanted. One such leader was Béla Király, you should dig into that Wikipedia article a bit. They try to play down his support for the Nazi regime, of course, but it is what it is.
As for peripheral states being used as “buffers?” Doesn’t hold water. The Cold War is a war of existence for Socialism, and destruction of Socialism for Capitalists. The Soviets repeatedly tried to deescalate, but the US pressed further and further. Listen to historian Dr. Michael Parenti’s 1986 lecture on US/Soviet relations, if nothing else.
Overall, when you call the USSR “Imperialist,” you do so by changing the meaning of the word, exaggerating its impact, and minimizing just how horrifying western Imperialism actually is that makes what you call “Soviet Imperialism” seem laughably kind. You distort it qualitatively and quantitatively because of what I presume to be a lack of research and an intentional desire to not research for fear of becoming sympathetic to Socialists.
Not sure why you are defending a US-supported fascist counterrevolution where literal Nazis were released from prison by pro-Nazi Hungarians
And it’s this kind of one-dimensional analysis of events that keeps me from taking you guys seriously. Like ok, i guess the main goal of all those university students and workers was to put into place a pro-Nazi government rather than advocacy for political reforms and economic autonomy. Yeah bud.
The Cold War is a war of existence for Socialism, and destruction of Socialism for Capitalists.
And yet Warsaw Pact countries were not allowed to pursue independent policies, even when those policies might have strengthened socialism locally. Hmm, what was that about internationalist solidarity again?
lack of research and an intentional desire to not research for fear of becoming sympathetic to Socialists.
Again with this ad hominem. You are well aware of my willingness to acquiesce to defeat when i have been bested in a debate and of my willingness to research upon what i know not of. Your points aren’t convincing enough and only serve to spread your propaganda in the hopes that you net some unaware working class individuals who don’t know any better.
Genuine question, have you ever changed your stance on something on this platform?
It’s not at all “one-dimensional.” Counter-revolution frequently works by trying to organize an appearingly “leftist” revolution, but starting with US funding and fascist leadership. Genuinely, do you think the Nazi leading the anti-soviet counterrevolution had the best intentions at heart? Or that releasing Nazis from prison to help was a good thing for worker’s rights? The same fascists that bound, tortured, and killed the Soviet supporters, prompting the Soviet Union to send in tanks? The same fascists that the peasantry entirely opposed? This was not a popular movement, it was an attempted fascist coup.
Yes, there were absolutely legitimate greivances with the Soviet system. To deny such would be absurd. However, this was not a legitimate revolution by any stretch.
As for the Warsaw pact countries, not sure what you mean by “not being allowed to pursue independent policies.” They had local governments and their own jurisdictions.
As for your own reluctance to read anything that might change your mind, I know you read Elementary Principles of Philosophy. That’s more than most can say. However, I also know you refused to read more than a couple sentences of “Tankies” out of some objection to the monstrocity of Churchill, who had this to say of the Chinese:
I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China — I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.
And this to say of the millions of Bengalis his policies starved to death:
“I hate Indians,” he told the Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” The famine was their own fault, he declared at a war-cabinet meeting, for “breeding like rabbits.”
Or this to say of Palestinians in his support of Zionism:
I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, “The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here.” They had not the right, nor had they the power.
So yes, I do believe you fear sympathy for Socialists if you reflexively defend genocidal monsters like Churchill and avert your eyes from anything that brings that to light. Hopefully those quotations were enough to get my point across, but we can certainly keep going. Churchill was a demon in flesh.
As for my views? Many times. I used to consider myself more of an Anarchist, even denouncing the USSR to an extent I recognize now as counterfactual. You can go back to my earliest comments on this account if you want and see the evolution. What changed was that I bought an eReader and started reading again, including theory and history books, and went fact checking where I could. The fact that you haven’t been able to change my mind doesn’t weaken my willingness to change my mind about subjects.
I have also begun adhering to the notion “no investigation, no right to speak.” I simply do not share any semi-formed opinions I may have if I have not investigated them enough to be truly confident in doing so.
I’ll leave you with a quote from “Tankies:”
The reason we “defend authoritarian dictators” is because we want to defend the accomplishments of really existing socialism, and other people’s false or exaggerated beliefs about those “dictators” almost always get in the way — it’s not tankies but normies [4] who commit the synecdoche of reducing all of really existing socialism to Stalin and Mao. Those accomplishments include raising standards of living, achieving unprecedented income equality, massive gains in women’s rights and the position of women vis-a-vis men, defeating the Nazis, raising life expectancy, ending illiteracy, putting an end to periodic famines, inspiring and providing material aid to decolonizing movements (e.g. Vietnam, China, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Indonesia), which scared the West into conceding civil rights and the welfare state. These were greater strides in the direction of abolishing capitalism than any other society has ever made. These are the gains that are so important to insist on, against the CIA/Trotskyist/ultraleft consensus that the Soviet Union was basically an evil empire and Stalin a deranged butcher.
As for the Warsaw pact countries, not sure what you mean by “not being allowed to pursue independent policies.” They had local governments and their own jurisdictions.
Warsaw Pact countries had local governments yes, but these governments were heavily subordinated to Moscow’s interests. Policies were vetoed by the USSR, and attempts at independence were met with military intervention.
I also know you refused to read more than a couple sentences of “Tankies” out of some objection to the monstrosity of Churchill,
Fwiw, i did end up reading Tankies, and i came out more unconvinced than when i went in. I’m not denying that Churchill was racist and that his colonialist and imperialist actions were harmful, but it feels like you’re trying to downplay the horridness of what the Soviets did when you bring up this stuff. This just runs into whataboutism and bad faith arguments.
Yes, the accomplishments of AES are indeed worth defending, but dismissing all criticisms as CIA propaganda (particularly when it comes to the CCP and Xi Jinping) or Trotskyist exaggerations oversimplifies history. Yes, the USSR’s role in aiding decolonization is admirable, but they still suppressed worker uprisings in its own sphere of influence. You can’t just ask me to ignore this.
Good questions.
I don’t think it makes sense to classify Socialism as a quantitative measure, but qualitative. If you recall from Politzer’s work, there’s really no such thing as a “pure” system, ergo when deciding if an ideology is Capitalist or Socialist we need to see what it does and what it works towards.
Social Democracy definitely borrows from Socialism and Socialists, certainly in aesthetics and many supporters genuinely believe in Reformism as a tactic (even if I personally think it obviously disproven at this point). However, the basis of Social Democracy is in not only maintaining markets (which are found in Socialist countries as well), but Bourgeois control and the present institutions formed in Bourgeois interests, such as the US 2 party system. Without doing anything to truly assert proletarian control over the economy and leaving the Bourgeoisie uncontested besides the “democratic” institutions they set up and approve of, I don’t consider it truly Socialist.
In a way. If we are being serious, all ideologies are critiques of the present system in some way, even libertarian Capitalists believe in significant critiques of modern Capitalism. What matters more is the manner and character of the changes. In Social Democracy, even if adherents think social safety nets need to be expanded, they don’t typically think we should work towards collectivization and public ownership, and wish to “harness Capitalism.” In addition, the Nordic Countries many seek to replicate only exist via Imperialism, they fund their social safety nets largely through massive IMF loans and other high interest rate forms of exploiting the Global South. It’s like if Chase Bank were a country.
Ok, so essentially a social democracy can be considered leftist if it seeks to overthrow bourgeois hegemony and shift power dynamics in favour of the working class over time is what I’m getting from this? Everything is relative.
On your second point, i agree that bourgeois institutions remain largely intact in social democracies, but what about historical examples like Sweden in the mid-20th century, where labor movements and socialist parties significantly shifted power dynamics in favor of the working class? Couldn’t social democracy, under certain conditions, be seen as a stepping stone toward proletarian control ergo making it leftist? At least if we’re going by Politzer’s view that there are no pure systems.
I also agree that the Nordic model has benefited from imperialism, but this same critique could be applied to the USSR as well who engaged in exploitative practices in its satellite states. Doesn’t this suggest that imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist systems, but rather a feature of powerful states under various ideologies?
Such a Social Democracy isn’t Social Democracy anymore and becomes “Reformist Socialism,” which is historically a failure and theoretically a failure.
Per Sweden, concessions came as a combination of strong labor organization internally, and a successful Socialist neighboring country to look towards. The ruling class made concessions, rather than risk losing control entirely. Such systems have eroded now that the USSR isn’t there anymore, and to adopt Social Democratic tactics without such a neighboring Socialist State has not really worked out.
As for the USSR, it wasn’t Imperialist. It did engage in widespread planning, and certain more populous regions recieved more support and development. However, this was not done for profit, and the goal remained widespread development. If you want to get into Leftist critique of Imperialism, Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism really is necessary reading to understand the basics. If you truly want to see Imperialism and how it evolved over time, a dense and academic but nonetheless fantastic resource is Hudson’s Super Imperialism is great.
I’m not going to address your first claim, because I’m not aware of the context surrounding how reformist socialism is “a failure”.
I’ll skip to your last point and just say i disagree with your framing of the way things happened under the Soviet Union and you are once again defending the Soviet Union’s failed practices to protect ideological purity. Imperialism isn’t only done for profit y’know.
What about cases where resource transfers or forced economic realignments harmed satellite states? For instance, East Germany was heavily exploited post-WWII to pay reparations, which stifled its recovery for years. Wouldn’t the imposition of Soviet control and extraction of resources qualify as imperialist, even if it wasn’t driven by capitalist profit motives?
What about the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? The Soviets responded with military intervention killing thousands. This doesn’t seem any different from what Putin’s doing with Ukraine today.
These same satellite towns were also used as buffer zones to protect against Western aggression. The result? They were dragged into Cold War conflicts they had nothing to do with.
You can provide sources or that try to explain how these actions only served to contribute to development, but that doesn’t take away the practical implications of these actions. I haven’t even mentioned COMECON yet. The USSR was largely imperialist.
Reformist Socialism is disproven in theory by Rosa Luxemburg in Reform or Revolution and in practice by its lack of existence anywhere. The closest was Comrade Allende’s Chile, who got couped within a couple years with US support.
As for Imperialism, it’s important for you to actually understand what Marxists are talking about by referencing Imperialism. Marxists maintain this definition as a valid and useful one because it explains what it is, why it exists, and how to stop it. What you describe later is not the same as this process, you fold a bunch of different subjects in in a way that adds confusion, not clarity.
For the GDR? It made contextual sense, considering the Nazis intentionally waged a war of extermination and genocide against the Soviets, who desparately needed to revover. The US took advantage of Western Europe’s weaker standing to essentially fold them into a subservient status in exchange for monetary support, while the Eastern Front saw 80% of the combat in the entirety of WWII. The scale of devastation of the Soviet Union by the Nazis cannot be understated.
For Hungary? Not sure why you are defending a US-supported fascist counterrevolution where literal Nazis were released from prison by pro-Nazi Hungarians in order to coup the Socialist system. I’ll chalk it up to ignorance, as the idea of a state crushing a counterrevolution can certainly seem dystopian if you don’t know who the “revolutionaries” are or what they wanted. One such leader was Béla Király, you should dig into that Wikipedia article a bit. They try to play down his support for the Nazi regime, of course, but it is what it is.
As for peripheral states being used as “buffers?” Doesn’t hold water. The Cold War is a war of existence for Socialism, and destruction of Socialism for Capitalists. The Soviets repeatedly tried to deescalate, but the US pressed further and further. Listen to historian Dr. Michael Parenti’s 1986 lecture on US/Soviet relations, if nothing else.
Overall, when you call the USSR “Imperialist,” you do so by changing the meaning of the word, exaggerating its impact, and minimizing just how horrifying western Imperialism actually is that makes what you call “Soviet Imperialism” seem laughably kind. You distort it qualitatively and quantitatively because of what I presume to be a lack of research and an intentional desire to not research for fear of becoming sympathetic to Socialists.
And it’s this kind of one-dimensional analysis of events that keeps me from taking you guys seriously. Like ok, i guess the main goal of all those university students and workers was to put into place a pro-Nazi government rather than advocacy for political reforms and economic autonomy. Yeah bud.
And yet Warsaw Pact countries were not allowed to pursue independent policies, even when those policies might have strengthened socialism locally. Hmm, what was that about internationalist solidarity again?
Again with this ad hominem. You are well aware of my willingness to acquiesce to defeat when i have been bested in a debate and of my willingness to research upon what i know not of. Your points aren’t convincing enough and only serve to spread your propaganda in the hopes that you net some unaware working class individuals who don’t know any better.
Genuine question, have you ever changed your stance on something on this platform?
It’s not at all “one-dimensional.” Counter-revolution frequently works by trying to organize an appearingly “leftist” revolution, but starting with US funding and fascist leadership. Genuinely, do you think the Nazi leading the anti-soviet counterrevolution had the best intentions at heart? Or that releasing Nazis from prison to help was a good thing for worker’s rights? The same fascists that bound, tortured, and killed the Soviet supporters, prompting the Soviet Union to send in tanks? The same fascists that the peasantry entirely opposed? This was not a popular movement, it was an attempted fascist coup.
Yes, there were absolutely legitimate greivances with the Soviet system. To deny such would be absurd. However, this was not a legitimate revolution by any stretch.
As for the Warsaw pact countries, not sure what you mean by “not being allowed to pursue independent policies.” They had local governments and their own jurisdictions.
As for your own reluctance to read anything that might change your mind, I know you read Elementary Principles of Philosophy. That’s more than most can say. However, I also know you refused to read more than a couple sentences of “Tankies” out of some objection to the monstrocity of Churchill, who had this to say of the Chinese:
And this to say of the millions of Bengalis his policies starved to death:
Or this to say of Palestinians in his support of Zionism:
So yes, I do believe you fear sympathy for Socialists if you reflexively defend genocidal monsters like Churchill and avert your eyes from anything that brings that to light. Hopefully those quotations were enough to get my point across, but we can certainly keep going. Churchill was a demon in flesh.
As for my views? Many times. I used to consider myself more of an Anarchist, even denouncing the USSR to an extent I recognize now as counterfactual. You can go back to my earliest comments on this account if you want and see the evolution. What changed was that I bought an eReader and started reading again, including theory and history books, and went fact checking where I could. The fact that you haven’t been able to change my mind doesn’t weaken my willingness to change my mind about subjects.
I have also begun adhering to the notion “no investigation, no right to speak.” I simply do not share any semi-formed opinions I may have if I have not investigated them enough to be truly confident in doing so.
I’ll leave you with a quote from “Tankies:”
Warsaw Pact countries had local governments yes, but these governments were heavily subordinated to Moscow’s interests. Policies were vetoed by the USSR, and attempts at independence were met with military intervention.
Fwiw, i did end up reading Tankies, and i came out more unconvinced than when i went in. I’m not denying that Churchill was racist and that his colonialist and imperialist actions were harmful, but it feels like you’re trying to downplay the horridness of what the Soviets did when you bring up this stuff. This just runs into whataboutism and bad faith arguments.
Yes, the accomplishments of AES are indeed worth defending, but dismissing all criticisms as CIA propaganda (particularly when it comes to the CCP and Xi Jinping) or Trotskyist exaggerations oversimplifies history. Yes, the USSR’s role in aiding decolonization is admirable, but they still suppressed worker uprisings in its own sphere of influence. You can’t just ask me to ignore this.