The terror of having needs met!

are you talking about USA and ICE? but they dont have free housing there

Do you think concocting a cartoonish strawman is very convincing for the people who are increasingly sympathetic to socialism and communism?

we have neocons on lemmy now?

For the people who these houses were built for, absolute poverty, devastation, and squalor preceded mass-produced housing. World War II was incredibly devastating in Europe, leaving millions without a home at all. The communists took on the enormous task of meeting this monumental need, and did so enormously well.

For the unhoused, a solid apartment with basic necessities and the ability to keep out the rain and cold is often the difference between life and death. Communism saved millions of lives.

Show much freedom thanks to Reagan… 🙄

Do you think good and evil are meaningful explanations for the outcomes of societies, or do you think the underlying mode of production and distribution is a better indicator of who prospers and who suffers in a given society?

I don't think people got Your sarcasm.

Okay how this account is no banned yet?

That doesn't answer my question. What decides who prospers and who suffers? Good and evil, or the way a society produces and distributes?

In the socialist bloc, the lives of the working classes, the industrial workers and peasants, were enormously uplifted. Like the example above, housing was a high priority for socialist states, who used a mass housing campaign on a scale unprecedented in history. Life expectancy in Russia doubled in the span of a couple decades from the low 30s. Literacy rates also skyrocketed to 99.9%, when in some regions native languages weren't even alphabetized. All of these are examples of the gains of socialism.

If the workers generally won out, who suffered as compared to before? The aristocracy, nobility, landlords, and capitalists did. On an unprecedented scale, their prior places of privledge were ruthlessly attacked, their armies killed, and those who resisted were rather mercilessly gunned down. Their property was appropriated for the new ruling class, the working class.

My point here is that societies are not good or evil. What determines who benefits most in society is largely what class dominates society and runs it in their own interest. The socialist countries are exceptional not because they are morally just, but because the ruling class for the first time in history was also the majority of society, rather than a tiny minority.

Is one those tourist trap museums like the Bansky one that are in every city in Europe?

I am not arguing from a position of a supernatural good and evil, but from the simple basis that I support the working classes, who form the broad majority. The Czech Republic, with the rest of the socialist bloc, represented the working classes, while the US supports a tiny number of imperialist capitalists above all else.

As for copy-paste, I did no such thing. I'll own up to it being propaganda, in that I am nakedly a communist trying to convince people of the necessity to move on to socialism, but that doesn't mean what I said is incorrect. You can read, I also believe you can answer my questions.

Not being allowed to plunder Africa and Asia is not suffering.

The problem is that it worked in the US for many decades. It's the ghost of the capitalist powers fear mongering away to prevent citizens from taking control of their own labor.

It’s you who are deciding what’s happening now in the USA is evil and what happened in the Czech Republic was good.

Firstly, the only way that you can claim that what was going on in Czechoslovakia was worse than what is going on now, is it you think that people in Czechoslovakia were treated worse than the people that NATO holds under colonial subjugation, invades, and genocides.
Secondly, let's be honest, people in Czechoslovakia had some of the highest living standards on the planet. If you disagree, do please explain how much worse their lives were than, for example, those of the people forced to live in bantustans.

oh god, another englightened centrist who's actually just a fucking nazi. where do these breed?

I thought it was obvious sarcasm as well until I read their followup comments

They are trying to be utilitarian but refusing to ignore the suffering in system A. Very frustrating

Yep, which is why we have to organize!

That's why a bunch of people were excited for the Soviets to come, because they were excited to be liberated from the Nazis! Now, the Soviets also sucked, so yeah, in fact they were bastards as well. Beating up the Nazis is good but doesn't give you a free ticket for commuting horrific crimes. Building apartments is not really one of those crimes though. It's really not so crazy to hate both Nazis and Soviets

It’s really not so crazy to hate both Nazis and Soviets

Putting the Soviets and Nazis on the same level is plainly ridiculous to the point that in many cases it constitutes a form of holocaust denial(or trivialisation).

What "horrific crimes" did the soviets commit? Free healthcare and education? You're making it seem like they were equivalent to the Nazis.

Mostly in the US and Europe, but they export them

Nazi.world at it again

We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it

is the museum being sarcastic ?

It’s really not so crazy to hate both Nazis and Soviets

HORSESHOE THEORY LET'S GO BABYYYYYYYY

What “horrific crimes” did the soviets commit?

Guaranteed housing. It genocided the landlords.

This. Equating purges, holomodor whatever with the literal holocaust (that western leaders like Churchill were ignoring when first told of hitlers plans) is straight up a form of holocaust trivialization, to me it’s a form of holocaust denial. People don’t often equate the war crimes of the Japanese empire with the Nazis like they do with Soviets for some reason (that some reason being that Japan mainly carried out their crimes against China, also a socialist country at the time)

The term Holomodor was coined in the late 1980s by Banderite fascists for the specific purpose of equivalating the early 1930s famine with the Holocaust. That’s why one shouldn’t propagate the term’s usage.

Thanks. Idek how to spell it. I may be not be formally educated but I am American so I have an excuse

Hating two things is not the same as putting them at the same level, and I mean to do no such thing. I don't think you would claim that hating a lesser evil in addition to a grater evil is an example of trivialisation.

I'm not sure if my phrasing was unclear or if that many people actually consider hating two things with equating them. Either way, I did not mean to equate them, just to state the reasonability of hating both!

The horrific crime at the top of my mind when writing my comment was the Katyn massacre.

not really, czechia has even banned communism in some sort, they are heavily anti communist country.

good and evil is a childs way to infer the world.

And yeah communists mostly killed reactionaries, landlords, nazis, etc

Katyn is interesting because the method of execution was widespread among the Nazis and unheard of among the soviets, NKVD included, and that German ammo was found on the gravesite, with manufacturing dates indicating that the soviets could not have committed the massacre. The Nazis "find" the site and then the narrative crops up that the soviets committed it, but the evidence found points to the Nazis.

Personally, I can't think hating the first worker state is reasonable, especially not in the same breath as one of the most extremely genocidal bourgeois dictatorships in history. Even if the Soviets were responsible for Katyn, there is still such a wide gulf between the two. The Soviets were ultimately a progressive force around the world.

Hating two things is not the same as putting them at the same level

True at the most basic level in the same vein of saying 2 things can be bad. Yes it is possible for 2 things to be bad but no one who ever says this ever means it in that way it is nothing but thought terminating cliche if not expanded upon. The same is true here leaving out the other major ideological power of the time leads the framing to the implication that it sits above the other 2 evils (who are then equatable in comparison).

and I mean to do no such thing

Even if you didn't mean to the way you chose to frame your comment clearly implies some level of equation between the soviet nondescript horrific crimes and the Nazis in comparison the the capitalist powers who are absent from your comment.

I don’t think you would claim that hating a lesser evil in addition to a grater evil is an example of trivialisation.

Again on a base level this is true but in the framing of your comment there is clearly a level of equation (even if unintentional).

If you want to see how free housing could be terrifying, read Manna by the late great Marshall Brain.

Thinking, for no reason, about the Wikipedia page for the Korean War where it says that massacres were committed by both sides. As evidence for this, it cited some DPRK killing at a hospital during the war (~100 dead) with the Bodo League Massacre carried out by the South Korean dictatorship that kicked off the war in the first place (~60,000-200,000 dead).

But you know, the smart thing to do is to hate both sides for their violent ways.

Liberal false consciousness is fucking pernicious.

I'm well aware of the disagreements about who's responsible, my impression was very much that the evidence points towards the Soviets, but I won't pretend to be knowledgeable enough to argue it with you.

Excuse me for bringing up both the Nazis and the Soviets in the same breath, I'm sure you see how follows from the premise of the original meme. I don't want to downplay any progressive effects on the world that the Soviets have, for me good simply does not cancel out evil but coexists confusingly alongside it. The Soviets have done enough bad for me to hate the whole even if there's plenty of good in there, and I don't blame other people or nationals of invaded countries for doing the same.

It's not about good and evil, it's about what class benefitted. There's no such thing as "good" or "evil," that's not how the locomotive of history moves forward. Instead, history progresses alongside the class struggle. The reason I defend the Soviet Union, and so many socialists do as well, is because it is the first socialist state where workers became the new ruling class. I don't pretend the Soviet Union was perfect, but I don't hide my intention to support the working classes taking control the way the soviets did.

Put simply, the Soviet Union made the lives of their own workers and peasants much better, and supported national liberation movements the world over as well.

Not to mention the Jeju Island Massacre and the later Gwangju Massacre. The workers in the ROK have what they do manage to have despite the chaebol and US semi-colonization through incredibly bloody resistance struggles and militant trade unionism. The DPRK already won much of that simply by not being in the colonized half of Korea.

no one who ever says this ever means it in that way

I enjoy how my very existence is counter-proof, but I do appreciate that you we're exaggerating and I shouldn't interpret you quite that literally.

I get that you call it thought-terminating, I understand that you would want a more detailed explanation from me, and sorry for not bothering to give one. My goal is not to argue with you, you have not convinced me that I have equated the two and I am not ready to spend the time to convince you of the opposite, I just want to say that I don't identify with the accusation.