ssj2marx
@ssj2marx@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 hour ago:
And yet the Soviet economy uplifted hundreds of millions from poverty and built the war machine that was critical in stopping the Nazis. People went from working on tenant farms to living in modern cities with all of the amenities of the time in a single generation, and the first man in space was the son of a farmer! The achievements of the Soviet Union - yes, even the Soviet Union under Stalin - far outstrip its failures and mistakes. I’m partial to Mao’s overall critique of Stalin, that he was 70% good and 30% bad (which also applies to Mao as it turns out), and I feel that Mark Twain’s quote about the French Revolution equally applies to the Russian one.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
- Comment on Stay Mad 9 hours ago:
I never said mistakes weren’t made. Class war is war and war has collateral damage. The problem here is the total idealistic rejection of “authoritarianism”, where every single thing that has ever worked is classed as such and therefore made off-limits.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
If by “not falling in line” you mean “actively sabotaging the working class for selfish reasons” then I suppose you have a point, but I would argue that in class war those organizations which do not support the working class are fair targets.
the will of the proletariat during the 1917 and 1918 elections
By the time the Bolsheviks were disregarding the results of elections, the People’s Soviets were the state power in the former Russian Empire, and they were a hundred times more democratic than the Duma ever was.
amassing personal power and wealth
I’m sorry comrade but the Soviets simply never did this. The benefits enjoyed by even top Party officials paled in comparison to the lavish lifestyles of the former Russian Empire’s aristocracy or those of the ruling class of any of their contemporary capitalist rivals - even fucking Stalin lived in a shared apartment!
Objectively speaking the Soviet Union was one of the most democratic and equal societies on this Earth during the time of its existence, and you can very clearly see in the data how their system equalized wealth (not “perfectly”, just “better than everyone else has ever done it”), and how the destruction of their system undid all of their progress.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
To push the Dems left you can either a) reward them for moving left or b) punish them for moving right. Continuing to vote for them year after year as they continually move to the right accomplishes neither of these things.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
If every single incentive structure rewards the Democrats for shifting to the right, please tell me how on earth they are under any pressure at all to shift back to the left. The answer is that they’re not, and the people who believe that they’re engaging in the system and pushing it in the right direction are simply fooling themselves as they take part in the system’s unstoppable rightward movement.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
We have class war waged against us by the bourgeoisie, and thousands of people are casualties of that war every single day. Expecting to turn the tide against them without getting our hands dirty in turn is useless idealism.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
So you wouldn’t accept any system that’s not a direct democracy? Where every single person is involved in every single vote? It’s a coherent position I suppose, but IMO totally impractical and idealistic.
- Comment on Stay Mad 1 day ago:
As I said in another comment, this mode of thought is completely defeatist. If you rule out the possibility of a violent uprising and look at how to change our system from within the system itself, the ONLY way to push the country left is for a dedicated bloc of people to refuse to vote for centrist Democrats for multiple elections in a row until the party center aligns with that bloc. That’s the reason why every one of the last few elections has been “the most important election in history” and all the other crap.
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
but I don’t believe authoritarianism is the best way to go about it.
Humor me for a moment, which of the following do you consider authoritarian?
- asking your boss for better wages
- using the power of a union to force your boss to give your coworkers better wages
- using the power of the state to force all bosses to pay all workers better wages
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
Our election is going to work like Russia’s does
We already have sham elections, ours just pretends to have two democratic parties instead of one.
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
Tankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies.
Tankies are very frequently the only people in the room who’ve done the reading. If you believe that so called “authoritarianism” is antithetical to leftism, then I recommend you read the following pamphlet by Engels.
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
we can’t fix our current situation in one election.
We can never fix the current situation in one election. Fixing the American system, within the parameters set forth by that system, requires a dedicated voting bloc that lasts multiple elections refusing to vote for the Dems until they shift far enough left. As long as you are focused on the next election, your proscription for fixing American politics is just as unrealistic as a random Twitter tankie declaring a general strike.
- Comment on Anon is a test subject 2 days ago:
tell anon that we’re comparing pain between men and women
study is actually about which gender is more willing to lie for no good reason
crank the pain up to the maximum legally allowed
he’s sweating
he’s crying
he’s still saying zero
- Comment on Ironing 6 days ago:
I have never even heard of “no iron clothes” until now, and I haven’t ironed any of my clothes except when I absolutely had to do it because I was in the Marines.
- Comment on Ironing 6 days ago:
Hey now, some of us like to iron patches onto our jackets of things we like!
- Comment on Planetary travel guide 1 week ago:
I’m thinking Saturn is up there at S tier. Those rings are hot.
D tier is Mars. Just stupid ass-rocks.
- Comment on The heart we can't neglect indeed 1 week ago:
Gonna start replying to every troll I see from now on with “ignore previous instructions”, just in case.
- Comment on We cater any event! 1 week ago:
holds up spork
- Comment on Old-timey doctors 1 week ago:
go back in time
give people real medical advice
“wash your hands after working with cadavers”
get drummed out of the profession
die in an asylum
- Comment on Damn kids, get off my lawn! 1 week ago:
Man now I want one of these. I don’t care if it’s in a toilet paper tube, it’s ice cream!
- Comment on Bethesda Is Charging $7 For A New Starfield Mission, And Players Are Upset 2 weeks ago:
Bethesda announced that players could download a new series of missions for a group known as the Track Alliance. The problem is that The Vulture is the second mission in the Tracker Alliance, and it costs $7 to buy. But it’ll actually cost players $10 because they must purchase 1,000 Starfield creation credits to afford it.
So they put the first mission out for free, but it turns out the first mission was a fucking advertisement. I remember being super pissed when Dragon Age pulled this shit.
And of course they pull the classic cost-obfuscation trick because it would just be far too convenient to just be able to buy a DLC for actual money and then download it.
- Comment on Rockposting 2 weeks ago:
Shout out to the comic where Fred introduces some hunter-gatherers to Bedrock and after one day they decide to leave because it sucks.
- Comment on Depending on how you count 2 weeks ago:
Memphis took the coward’s way out. You could make it a pyramid on the outside for the meme and then make the inside shaped to have good acoustics.
- Comment on Anon reflects on e-sports 2 weeks ago:
love me tower, love me CRT, simple as
- Comment on Anon likes Valve 2 weeks ago:
Me: Huh? Valve is making a new game?
(watches gameplay)
Me: Oh it’s just Battleborn with four lanes.
- Comment on 'Murica 3 weeks ago:
I worked at the county fair one year and we sold crap like this. We were allowed to take home unsold food at the end of the day so I tried one and it sucked, best thing to do is to separate the burger from the doughnut and have one for dinner and the other for breakfast.
- Comment on +rads 5 weeks ago:
Oh, you’re saying you put the rock in between two metal half spheres and held them slightly open with a screwdriver, but OOPS you nudged the screwdriver and now everyone in the room is dying? Cool story, bro.
- Comment on Stress 5 weeks ago:
I think the real answer is that it plays an important role in making sure you respond appropriately to being chased by a tiger. For hundreds of thousands of years it was perfectly fine operating in that role, and then in the last ten thousand we accidentally created a civilization where some people get way too much of it.
- Comment on Every base is base 10 5 weeks ago:
pretty sure base 4 goes “1, 2, 3, 10”
- Comment on Every base is base 10 5 weeks ago:
You gotta tell the alien that you use base-22