Where's your evidence of that?

Sorry to break to you but we are all libs here.

You're right it's way more cruel and arbitrary

Alan Turing invented computing and helped defeat the nazis, but Britain still chemically castrated him for being gay. This is the baseline of government interference you've been raised to believe is normal or at least explainable, and you are attacking a country whose human rights record is way, way better than that.

My point isn't that class isn't a major force, but that it's just one of them. And that within equivalent or similar class characters there is wildly different ways in which state power is used, and that the ways it intrudes upon lives and the severity of its punishments for many are among the most important issues.

States absolutely arbitrarily enact violence. Sure they tend to have some argument as to why they do it, often religion or ideology, but sometimes the king is just mad.

Denmark is an imperial state, absolutely, but compare them to other imperial states in how they treat their population. Compare them to Georgist England where they would hang people for petty crimes and had a philosophy of no mercy. Both countries are imperialist, Christian, constitutional monarchies with a capitalist economic system. Hell, a lot of European "enlightenment" beliefs on rights and such were ideas they were given by the Iriqouian peoples.

Compare the interregium puritan rule of the UK and later putitan governments in the Americas to the monarchical rule following it. Circumstances decide who can come to power and what they can do while being tolerated, circumstances which includes the population's philosophy on what rulers can and should do and tolerate, as well as rulers' ability to use propaganda and violence to stop revolts from succeeding. Castro all but says this when talking about how machismo led to state repression of homosexuality.

It's difficult for an impoverished nation that's subject to colonial powers to have a libertine approach to civil liberty and a penal system focused on rehabilitation. Noble when attempted, but outside forces love to step in and stop that shit. But, they can always go above and beyond on it, form alliances with religious regressives (who may or may not constitute a clerical class), etc. Or they can do only what they're pressured to do. Those in open resistance have choices too. Chiapas or ISIS, both resisted US global capitalist hegemony. There's no reason beyond ideology why Iran can't embrace feminist equality like Cuba did. And within the imperial cores the population and leadership alone have these conversations.

Philosophy of governance amongst the population and government have very real impact. Because sometimes the working class demands you deal with the witch problem and stop people from sinning and other times they demand you stop capital punishment and minimize state interference in the private lives of citizens.

That is a level of government interference I use as a classic example of why the west isn't fucking good enough. Alongside plenty of other abuses of power against my people by capitalist imperial states.

The USSR I have issues with a lot they did predominantly in the Stalinist era, but I consider their dissolution to be a great tragedy for the global working class.

If you're saying I'm being too harsh in criticizing late 20th century Iraq's government however I think we're going to be unable to come to a meaningful place of agreement here. You see, I've been consistently anti torture, both for my country and others. Do love their commitment to literacy though.

I'm not defending any modern nation, but most have policies I wish more would adopt.

Comments like this make it painfully obvious that someone has not engaged with the actual history, because guess who agreed with you that lip service is not enough? The communists. Life expectancy, infant mortality, nutrition, medical outcomes, literacy, addiction rates, poverty, all of this shit immediately improves drastically in every time and place communists have ever seized power. Often these improvements have come despite nightmarish wartime conditions, such as during the Chinese Revolution when life expectancy shot up despite being in active combat with Imperial Japan after 20 years of civil war. The people of Cuba have created one of the most advanced medical systems on earth despite sixty years of strangulation. The people of the USSR risked their safety to send weapons to uprisings across the world despite needing every bullet themselves for the near century of fascist invasion and expansion that ultimately took thirty million of their lives.

The idea that communists are secretly only pretending to care about other people is the single biggest piece of capitalist projection, and the one most foundational to holding up other myths about communists. Every abuser in history has said all the same things the white empire drills into our heads: this is just how the world is, everyone else is just like me or worse, so there's no point in looking for better. But in reality, Cuba has no Gates Foundation. Laos has no Mr Beast. Our economic system is the one set up to reward and incentivize exploiting people you pretend to care about, not theirs. To look around at the very specific, grotesque circumstances created by capitalism and attribute it to some universal axiom of human society is what having an imagination trapped by capitalist "realism" looks like.

This attitude of "well everyone is shit" is one of the last layers of refuge before you get to the truth: that we, westerners raised in a culture of advanced imperialism, are specifically and deeply sick, that we have forcibly exported this sickness across our planet and we desperately need drastic mass change and healing before it kills us all.

Funny fact about Joseph Stalin. He escaped from the gulags five or six times in a ten year period.

I'm not reducing all of state implement to class, after all, I said such a view would be entirely reductive. However, when it comes to what is actionable, it's clear that it's most important to install the working class as the ruler of society. From then on, reforms in the socialist state, and quests for sovereignty, can help develop the society more and more.

As for "arbitrary" violence, I really don't think this is an acceptable explanation. What can appear arbitrary is in actual fact a clear extension of the class makeup of society. Georgist England hanging peasants for no reason is an example of the class makeup of society being driven by the aristocracy. The victims and winners are decided by class makeup, the way society is treated is more based on the form of society, which tends to improve with development.

Because Iraq and Denmark are famously socialist, never having exploited anyone.

Which anarchist society wasn't authoritarian? Name specific examples.

• [ ] I trust everything the US tells me about their primary enemies.
• [ ] I hate everything the US stands for.

You can only select one box, not both.

Great link.

Did anyone read it before posting this Mossad-psyop image? 80% of those "incarcerated" were on probation!

what the fuck are you talking about lmao

woow, so much better, and how does the probation system work? How does it especially work for low-income workers and especially black people?

It's a picture praising Stalin in socialism instance...

Do you think Karl Marx was an Israeli psyop or something? Lenin?

Probation means not incarcerated, not unbiased.

No

Then why are Marxists supporting the Soviet Union somehow Mossad?

I don't see Stalin in the picture, but either way, most socialists worldwide support Stalin.

No Stalin in the picture and how does that mean it's Mossad linked??

Stalin ruled the USSR in 1950

Stalin ruled the USSR in 1950

What are you getting at?

Stalin was General Secretary of the CPSU, sure, but the Soviet Union was collectively run. The idea that the flag of the USSR is synonymous with Stalin is liberal Great Man Theory.

Marxism is a critique of capitalism. You have to define what you mean when you use to describe the USSR

Stalinism and Socialism are distinct

The USSR was not collectively run. Lenin crushed the Soviets (worker's councils)

Marxism is more than a critique of capitalism, it's also a revolutionary current in socialism, and a world outlook philosophically. You are calling us here "Mossad" for supporting the Soviet Union.

There is no Stalinism, where do you get this idea? And again, how is this Mossad-linked propaganda?

No? The Soviets formed the basis of the democratic structure of the Soviet Union. The USSR had some of the highest rates of democratic participation in the entire world.

Ohh now I remember you. You're that chauvinistic racist and warmonger who wants healthcare for everyone in Amerika at the expense of the the global south's exploitation.

For masquerading as socialists, not for supporting the USSR

The Bolsheviks dissolved the workers councils in 1918. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

Theres is in fact, Stalinism (you), which seeks to discredit socialism, ideologically consistent with the Mossads aims

Is Bernie Sanders a true socialist? Are the Scandinavian countries true socialist countries?

Mossad does aim to dismantle communism and socialist projects. Problem is... Bernie Sanders and all the political groups in Amerika are not socialist LMAO.

Social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism.

Again, the soviets formed the basis of democracy in the Soviet Union, hence the name. You can read the book I linked, or see this explanation from Anna Louise Strong:

The basic unit for government is the working institution, the factory or office; in rural districts it is the village. Deputies are chosen to the local government, the village or city soviet.[25] The basis of representation and size of the local soviet depends on the size of the community: Gulin village, whose election I visited, has one deputy for every forty voters and a village soviet of thirteen members. Moscow city elects one deputy for fifteen hundred voters and has more than two thousand members in its city soviet. These local deputies meet soon after election to form the new government. They divide among themselves the various departments, which range from the five sections of Gulin village—farming, livestock, culture, roads and finance—to twenty-eight sections, each with over forty deputies, through which Moscow city does business. Besides the more commonly known functions, these local governments own and manage local industry, which in a large city like Moscow includes many municipally owned factories, the street-cars, subway, lights, water, and housing. They receive revenue from public properties, but their budgets may also be augmented by taxes and state loans. Some cities actually bring in revenue—it will be remembered that they get all the house rents; others need help from the higher governments.

On these local governments is built up the whole structure of central government.[26] Local soviets elect deputies to a congress of soviets; the township congress elects to the province, and so on up to the All-Union Congress of Soviets, the highest body in the country. Each of these congresses elects its executive committee and the heads of its various departments; for the highest government these are the great Commissariats of heavy and light industry, finance, health, and so forth. Local departments are both horizontally and vertically controlled, by local governments and by the corresponding department in the higher government. Thus a township health department is responsible both to the township executive committee and to the provincial health department. If orders clash, if a local soviet takes the hospital for some other use, its health department appeals to the provincial health department which brings pressure on the local soviet through the provincial government in the interests of public health.

The greater part of this intricate yet unified system of government is carried on by unpaid work. Elected deputies, whether to village or the All-Union Congress, receive no salaries of office. They draw their usual wages from the factory or institution which sends them and in which they keep on working, except insofar as they may be “released from production” for the needs of government; this varies with the importance of the work they do. There is thus no hard and fast line between the citizen and the man in office. Deputies are a link between the collective life of the factory and the larger collective life of the country. Any worker may approach them conveniently any day in their place of work to ask about the fulfillment of instructions given by the voters. They may be recalled by their constituents at any time simply through a factory meeting.

If voters thus constantly call on their deputies, the deputies are equally entitled to call on the voters for help in carrying out the election program they have voted. A deputy is no substitute for the people, no ruler; he is the representative who organizes them in their own tasks of voluntary government work. Millions of citizens take active part in the sections of the government—housing commissions, school commissions, taxing commissions, labor inspection and so on. Those who develop a taste for running public affairs will be chosen at some election for more continuous and responsible work. Those who specialize in some field, such as health, courts, housing, may be sent on pay for some months or years of study and become full-time civil servants in these departments.

The growth of democracy in the Soviet Union thus depends directly on the extent to which citizens can be interested in taking part in operations of government. This interest is in part assured by the fact that government is so clearly the direct organizing of all aspects of the citizen’s life. In a million matters the citizens give direct instructions during the election. They order the increase of school-houses or sound films, the improvement in the quality of bread, the increase of retail stores, the transport of goods in big cities by night; they demand the breaking-up of housing trusts into smaller co-operatives, or the introduction of a less specialized education in the schools. All of these were part of some 48,000 instructions issued directly by Moscow voters to their city government, which reported within three months on the fulfillment of many hundred demands and on the disposition made of all. When instructions clash, as when some citizens want an odorous industrial plant removed from their neighborhood while others want it to stay, commissions are formed which try to satisfy not merely the majority, but as nearly as possible everybody, not through a showing of hands in opposition, but through various adjustments to the suggestions made by all. Capitalist ownership of private property limits the citizen’s participation, in government to an approval or rejection—expressed in conflict—of general policies. Socialist ownership causes government policies to grow directly and naturally from the correlated demands of millions of people, all of whom are interested in improving the country’s wealth.

Regarding Kronstadt, it was a reactionary counter-revolt that stood to seriously damage the wartime efforts of the Red Army. Stepan Petrichenko, leader of the revolt, fled and joined the white army.

How are we masquerading as socialists? Shouldn't socialists support socialism?

What is your point?

You're the one acting inappropriately, not me.

Present your evidence for that

Dang. What that was in reply to, got removed. I don't remember what it was (and failed to find what it was in the modlog systems ~ remind me, how do I get to see what was removed?).

Now I'm wondering if I misinterpreted something serious as satirical or vice versa. And even wondering if my reply there could likewise get misinterpreted. IIRC, either way, that image, what it depicts, still stands... remarking on the deranged insanity of being wistful for war.

... One of these days this war's going to be over.

Reserve army of slave labour