Genuine question: What’s so fascinating about it? I’ve tried unironically listening to it, but there’s just no melody to latch onto; I wonder how one can enjoy it

Classic case of lemmy liberals moving the goalpost. “They’re only doing good when they’re helping further my agenda” gtfoh with that stuff

The noise genre

This is cringe. Not even because you’re reading Marx, but because you assume the person you’re reading it to is intelligent enough to understand what you’re reading

It does. You just don’t need to give it out to communicate anymore

This guy parties

It should be implemented the way Marx thought it should. If it still cannot be properly carried out after that, then Marxism is flawed.

You speak in vague, non-Marxist idealism like “soft totalitarianism,” when you should already know better having read Politzer.

Very funny. Soft totalitarianism is a term i came up with, am proud of, and will continue to use for the foreseeable future.

I shall dig in the absence of Marxist propaganda and bias thank you

Only because how it should be implemented differs from how it has been implemented. I’m just saying. There’s nothing wrong with Marxism. There’s something wrong with the people who practice it.

State socialism is soft totalitarianism. There is a non-zero chance that any government that utilizes such a path will succumb to totalitarianism. Thereby making it a flawed system

Also, my knowledge of socialist history isn’t too limited. I know enough to know that Stalin didn’t do more for humanity than even the most corrupt of third world country politicians.

You just keep recommending more books I can’t help but laugh. I used to have respect for you, but it has somewhat waned as of the last hour or so. I even finished that Politzer book.

Also, my comparison is based on how ready both sides are to trivialize the atrocities committed by them.

Yet the roadmap of every communist country so far has involved a state and a leader that may or may not have represented the interest of the people. Yeah, it seems like your idols need to go back to the basics

I think I’ll pass. This is like a Nazi coming up to me and suggesting i consider Nazism because it focuses on national and racial pride. Sounds like a good idea on paper right?

That i agree with

We believe that Stalin and Mao were committed socialists who, despite their mistakes, did much more for humanity than most of the bourgeois politicians

And i stopped reading there. I don’t consider causing the deaths of 20 million people to be “doing more for humanity”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Marxism. There’s something wrong with the people that believe it however.

What do you define as state socialism? What sort of Marxism do you practice?

The definitions I’m used to are state socialism - A type of socialism wherein some or many of the means of production are controlled by the state, the state in turn being operated by (or on behalf of) the workers.

Marxism - Based on the ideas of Karl Marx, envisions a classless, stateless society where the means of production are collectively owned and controlled by the people.

The point being that in state socialism, power is generally centralized so the workers do not have direct control over the means of production.

Also, why do you keep defending Stalin? I don’t think Marx would have condoned any of Stalin’s actions. I listed a bunch of atrocities committed by Stalin exercising his totalitarian whims. I guess if the nature of Marxism is to be genocidal, then we can say he didn’t go rogue. But if I’m not mistaken, that isn’t the case. By all standards, he went rogue.

My friend, you’re grossly downplaying the severity of your arguments here, and linking to a CIA document and a hexbear thread 💀 isn’t assisting the argument. That document (and subsequently YOU) severely underestimates the extent of Stalin’s authoritarian control.

Who wrote that document? No really? Talking about how Stalin faced limited external opposition. WELL NO FUCKING SHIT!! BECAUSE HE PURGED ANY OPPOSITION THE SECOND HE HAD THE CHANCE TO!! YOU’D BE OUT OF YOUR MIND TO OPPOSE HIM!!

Also, the document is talking about how he was merely the leader among many. Are you aware that Stalin had absolute control over the NKVD, the military, and the political system? The purges and repression of opposition eliminated any real collective decision-making. His control over the apparatus of power meant that, in practice, his word was final. Khrushchev’s rise to power came after Stalin’s death, in part because of Stalin’s purging of potential rivals—further solidifying that Stalin was more than just “the captain of a team.”

I genuinely can’t believe these takes and it can only be retorted by someone who was in support of the actions of his regime frankly speaking. I don’t know why you can’t be Marxist and condemn the actions of Stalin or all the other authoritarian communist regimes. It’s quite frankly ridiculous that you would offer up these points to me as solid rebuttals. I may not be an expert in sociology or history or political science or whatever, and I may just be a college student who engages in political discourse merely as a hobby, but I refuse to take anyone who downplays the acts of Stalin and his regime, nevertheless in the face glaring contradictions, seriously. I’m sorry buddy. I tried to engage in this discussion with you unbiasedly, but i can’t take it anymore.

I never said Marxism is soft totalitarianism. I said state socialism is soft totalitarianism - a situation where all requirements for a dictatorship have been met; those are two different things. The reason is because if a situation is created where all property, institutions and means of production are government owned there is a non-zero chance of that government going rogue e.g Stalin.

Moreover, why do you believe the LeftValues test to be worse

I never explicitly said it was worse. I’m only saying that it could be a possible reason why your results weren’t congruent.

I will concede that I’m not well versed in socialist history enough to further buttress my points than i already have. However, you contradict yourself saying “Stalin could not simply do whatever he wanted”. This is like saying Hitler wasn’t a bad guy because he didn’t do the killings himself.

We are both aware of the history of the Soviet Union under Stalin (probably you moreso than me, which confuses me as to why you would suggest Stalin couldn’t do whatever he wanted).

Are you suggesting that The Great Purges, The Holodomor influenced by his forced collectivisation, The Gulag system, The Great Terror, The Soviet-Nazi pact, The Katyn Massacre, The Anti-Jewish campaigns and many more atrocities were not examples of Stalin doing whatever he wanted?

I genuinely want to believe that you’re not one of those crazy Marxists bud.

The difference in results does not speak to the ineffectiveness of the political compass test and can be interpreted as the ineffectiveness of the Left Values test alone.

Let’s say you have a country that collectivized too early, and as such growth slows way down. The Means of Production are not ready for it. Is introducing market reforms as Marx and Engels would have it, with the intention of future recollectivization, right or left wing? Does it matter?

Well, that’s sort of a trick question isn’t it? The left-right categorization is less useful because what’s happening is a pragmatic response to economic conditions. Whether this temporary shift is seen as ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ is less important than understanding the broader aim. The political compass might not capture these complexities, but the intention behind the reforms would still be left-wing.

Also, this is just a sidenote, but state socialism is just soft totalitarianism. One of the reasons why I’m against transitional phases that explicitly rely on government action.

To your last points, while it’s true that Stalin did attempt to resign a few times, particularly during moments of crisis or internal conflict, these resignations were never accepted, and this is likely due to his entrenched power and the loyalty he commanded from key figures within the Communist Party. His position was deeply centralized, and while he may have “tried” to step down, he was ultimately not removed from power in any meaningful way.

While these attempts might suggest some level of internal political tension, they don’t negate the fact that Stalin’s overall control and the repressive mechanisms he put in place (like the purges) show a clear trend toward authoritarianism. The failure of democracy within the system (such as the purging of opposition) is what shaped Stalin’s power in a more authoritarian direction.

Similarly with Mao, while he was temporarily sidelined during the Cultural Revolution, his influence still remained powerful in the political structure of China. The system allowed for a bit of power struggle, but the authoritarian nature of the government under Mao and his followers was never fully dismantled until after his death.

These points CANNOT be disputed by you. You cannot deny that many examples of communism are wholly authoritarian, and that it is largely due to the centralisation of power.