Even earlier than this, we should look at the communist manifesto and the activities/hopes of the Communist League in Germany. In 1848, Germany was a semiperipheral state which had yet to have a bourgeois revolution. The communist league policy with regards to German socialist revolution is remarkably similar to the bolshevik stance on Russian socialist revolution, i.e. only completeable if a core power (France in this case) also has a socialist revolution

Subreddit was banned June 29th/30th of 2020 iirc. December 2019 might have been when we were quarantined

Jesus would join Hamas

real bastille storming hours

Same here in Canada re: military budget and military recruitment ads (targeted too e.g. at natives)

This is fairly obvious and not something hidden at all.

Never said it was hidden.

The CPC has no desire to inflame tensions on the world stage or to close off the economy, and they say this openly.

Exactly the point I made.

On the other hand, de-dollarisation I’d an explicitly stated goal. There have been multiple tests of moves that could lead to de-dollarisation. The infrastructure for it is already being built and used.

They literally torpedoed Brazil and Russia’s attempt at that lol. They dont wanna make their reserves of USD less valuable. They wont even use the USD they have to smash 3rd world debt. They want to maintain the stable international order.

The question of growth vs degrowth as a method for climate transition is tactical and defining the “green growth” strategy as “not socialism by definition” is presumptuous.

Economies focussed on growth for its own sake are capitalist economies. Marx explicitly says in the manifesto that a) communism is possible now (i.e. with 1848 productive forces) and b) that a defining characteristic of bourgeois society is the constant growth. In Capital, he laid out why it is capital demands constant growth. In his drafts to Zasulich, he says communism will recreate the stability of the primitive communes (no internal drive to growth) on a higher level.

The only reason for any marxist post 1848 to call for growing the productive forces is the need to develop military capabilities to defend against the imperialist cancer hellbent on destroying every ecosystem. Stalin and Deng understood this—Khrushchev and his ilk do not.

Besides the theoretical piece, on a practical level we are beyond fucked if we keep failing to decrease absolute emissions. We are already at 1.5C. There is no room tactically or theoretically for green growth. It is, at best a piece of tape put on a crumbling building to reassure everyone that everything’s fine so there’s no need to fundamentally change anything. And CO2 emissions are merely one of the ecocatastrophes.

Every solar panel and EV that China exports is a little bit less carbon dioxide released from what would have been fossil fuels.

Only if you restrict your analysis to “gas car vs electric car” in a vaccuum that ignores: what was used to mine the lithium, steel, aluminium, gold, copper, etc (fossil fuels); what was used to smelt, weld, etcetc it all (fossil fuels!); what was used to transport all the parts and finished products (fossil fuels!) and so forth. Dont take my word for it, here’s a paper by a marxist you can read that goes pretty exhaustively into how ungreen “green” tech is: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/alternautas/article/view/1451/1205

And if that transportation/energy wouldn’t have been produced otherwise (such as in the global south), it is still a gain if improvements in the quality of life are achieved.

Improvements in the quality of life of who? Certainly not the people forced at gunpoint off their land by “leftist” governments to make way for mines using 760,000 litres of groundwater per second and dumping the toxic waste into their lands, waters and airs? The citydwelling labour aristocrats with legal status and formal employment see (marginal) improvements in QoL; the costs are literally dumped on the heads of the slumdwelling proletariat.

The focus on “build productive forces to improve quality of life and increase our consumerism to western levels to show the superiority of socialism” was Khrushchev’s thing, btw.

The tariff war isn’t even over

No one said it was; just that evidently China isnt interested in taking the opportunity to do anything besides angle for a bigger slice of the imperial pie.

I have not looked into this specifically, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was technological work in china towards gradually reducing such damage.

Lol. To quote Marx, “ignorance has not yet helped anyone.” As someone who does look into this: no, they seem to be poisoned by the same unquestioned faith in “innovation” as you are.

It was a typo. No need to be obtuse and accuse me of “great Russian chauvinism”.

I accused you of participating in it intentionally or otherwise by referring to the whole soviet population as russian (or by forgetting nonrussians existed). This is objectively a reflection of the “rah go russia” stance stalin took post-1930 and esp post-1941. If i made a typo and accidentally said something chauvinistic, i’d say “thanks for the correction comrade” rather than complaining about being accused of chauvinism.

There are few people here who would tell you that rapid industrialisation doesn’t have ecological and social consequences. What appears tenous as best is your assertion that rapid industrialisation paved the way for reaction to take root in the USSR, while ignoring the losses incurred by the party during WW2.

No one (besides you) is denying both played a role. Mindless copying of western industry sowed the seeds; ww2 paved over and allowed only the corniest of weeds to come up.

Now it certainly may be the case that some of the reaction in the latter years come from the “fordist” practices of the USSR during its early years, but this is the case with literally all societies.

Lol fordism and taylorism were imported to the USSR by the state (including western managerial experts!) only after the revolution. Go read lenin and krupskaya’s praise of Taylorism. These practices were only expanded and built upon, even after the west abandoned them as too pro-worker.

The economic situation of earlier generations creates specific mentalities within them that they carry on until they die. Thereby creating inertia in thinking.

By that logic, the USSR should have been more feudal and less taylor-fordist. The weight of all dead generations weighs on the minds of the living—but material conditions, the actual economic relations, are far more influential.

Your proposed mechanism does not explain why the CPSU couldn’t adapt to changing times.

And your proposed mechanism gives primacy to ideas and fails to explain social change at all. “My” (rly Molotov’s) proposed mechanism does explain these things, tho i didnt make it explicit bc failure to course correct wsnt the topic of the discussion. I wrote:

Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs were the fruits of reaction, and they didnt plant themselves. This planting occurres at all levels of the Union over those two decades as party members needed to be good at fulfilling the economic growth quotas without asking too many questions about social harms and/or whether fordism is socialism.

It should be fairly obvious that when all levels of the union are staffed by Khrushchevites further falls into reactionaryism and revisionism are difficult to impossible to prevent. Not bc ideas have inertia, but bc many party bosses (including the top boss cornman) had bad takes and could just deny people with good takes (like molotov) entry to the party.

Stalin’s attempts to unplant these seeds were (sadly) too little and too late and so the rot progressed.

Certain factions in the CPC have this view, but there was an ideological struggle in the CPC a little bit before Xi became president precisely around this issue, and Xi’s victorious faction has made significant efforts in curbing liberalism.

Comrade, Xi was the right winger in the struggle vs Bo Xilai. Bo Xilai was no more Marxist than Lasalle. Xi is no more Marxist than Lasalle. Both are social democrats (derogatory). Xi’s “leftism” has been “more equitable distribution of wealth within China” not “restructure the economy for decoupling and greater tensions with the Yanks.”

Their actions are no longer consistent with a Marxist party doing an NEP style programme. Frankly I think they fell into social democracy with Hu, going from “productive forces to beat imperialism” to “productive forces that will eventually inevitably mechanically transform into communism when we outproduce the yanks”—if anyone post-Deng even held the former view (i would say Jiang did, but it was under him that China stopped being self-sufficient wrt rice so, lol, he wasnt planning on conflict either).

Molotov’s memoirs have some very good examinations of how this mindset took hold in the soviet leadership; China today is subject to even more pressures in that direction than the soviets were.

This isnt even mentioning their consistent advocacy of so-called green growth instead of, y’know, not producing so much shit for the west and/or pushing for more mining, more water usage, etc, to produce “”“green”“” cars with materials plundered from around the world. Oh hey, the tarriffs woulda been excellent for reducing useless production of dollarstore trash. Oh well. At the moment, at least China isnt the one keeping conditions ripe for extraction and exploitation in other global south countries but their corporations take full advantage and neither the government or party seems to care about the ecological and social harms inherent to industrial mining.

I think it’s kinda crazy to accuse the Stalin administration of being concerned solely with enacting some “capitalism action plan”.

I dont think it’s “crazy” at all, both because calling things you disagree with “crazy” is ableist as fuck and bc its a correct take.

And while the USSR during this time was certainly very focused on increasing economic growth as rapidly as possible, this was absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of the Russian revolution (and the Russian people).

You mean “soviet peoples” right? Or are you (un)intentionally participating in the Great Russian chauvinism that Stalin began embracing post-1930? Otherwise I 100% agree with you that the growth was necessary. But “the growth wasnt necessary” isnt what Samotsvety said so you’re arguing with the choir and/or a strawcomrade.

The real seed of reaction was sown by Krushchev and the failure of the CPSU during that era of filling the loss of high quality and young party cadres in the aftermath of WW2.

Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs were the fruits of reaction, and they didnt plant themselves. This planting occurres at all levels of the Union over those two decades as party members needed to be good at fulfilling the economic growth quotas without asking too many questions about social harms and/or whether fordism is socialism. If you opposed rapid pace industrialisation, you were kicked out of the party for violating demcent. People who were halfhearted about it all were replaced with true believers in growth who could make growth happen faster, people who were fine with the deaths that always result from industrialisation.

Which, again so you dont misunderstand me, was a necessary tactic but one that had unexpected and negative consequences that marxism demands we not ignore just bc it makes us sad.

The result: people in the party throughout the union began to believe in the tactics of economic growth, fordism, etc, as principles in and of themselves rather than temporary tactical necessities—these people didnt spontaneously appear and take high seats of power when Khrushchev took over: they were put there (again, understandably) by Stalin’s government (which included Khrushchev).

It’s absolutely amazing, especially for the first 3 seasons. It starts tapering off in quality from s4 bc of exec meddling though. Still GOOD, but doesn’t quite reach the heights of the earlier seasons (s5 is the worst of 'em)

Lies and slander! Turtles are wokists, at least in 2003.

In the 2003 version of TMNT, the Turtles’ only human friends besides April and Casey are

There’s also another episode

In another episode, the gang

Less related to the turtles politics, but there’s also an ep of 2003 turtles where

Tolkien agrees with you!

(as a (shockingly anticolonial) bit, but still!)

History proved Stalin right here, as is often the case. The regional governments fucked over the USSR MASSIVELY throughout its existence largely out of individual self interest and corruption

It should be mentioned that such local identities werent (and have never, to my knowledge) been abandoned without force either directly, like France’s eradication of local languages and dialects; liberal educations’ destruction of the lower class cultures or indirectly like by threatening people with the “natural” processes of eviction and/or starvation if they refuse to leave their home areas; by forcing kids into education, often away from home developed by global north thinktanks only applicable to (very limited) specialist jobs in the cities

i’m not sure if there’s any better copies existing online unfortunately, i pulled the quote from the copy on internet archive

But it was in his intercourse with children that Marx was perhaps most charming. Surely never did children have a more delightful playfellow. My earliest recollection of him is when I was about three years old, and “Mohr” (the old home name will slip out) was carrying me on his shoulder round our small garden in Grafton Terrace, and putting convolvulus flowers in my brown curls. Mohr was admittedly a splendid horse.

-Eleanor Marx, “A Few Stray Notes on Karl Marx” in Reminiscences of Marx and Engels p.250

as someone who still masks, its beyond depressing to see half my family and friends written off even by communists as “acceptable losses.”

like even, basically all the communists ime, online and offline, are antimaskers. They might say or think that they aren’t but in practice, they are antimaskers. They refuse to wear masks; they go to restaurants (and invite others); they host superspreading home parties and go to concerts and to dance classes and clubs and bars and on and on with not a single thought for their own health, much less those with weaker immune systems–and if any of this is brought up they look offended, like it’s YOUR fault there’s a plague and YOURE in the wrong for not wanting to die or spread death to ur family.

Antimaskers won.

damn to think that image has haunted my dreams for over four years now

oh huh something I was reading a book about recently. In addition to everyone else’s excellent comments I wanna point to James Harris’ The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System because it completely upends the traditional scholarship of the purges.

Here is a libgen link to it: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E10CBD3C52CDF7D5D258AC666D67FAB6

I’m gonna copy the description from libgen to emphasize I’m not editorializing when i sing the book’s praises:

Political histories of the Soviet Union have portrayed a powerful Kremlin leadership whose will was passively implemented by regional Party officials and institutions. Drawing on his research in recently opened archives in Moscow and the Urals—a vast territory that is a vital center of the Russian mining and metallurgy industries—James R. Harris overturns this view. He argues here that the regions have for centuries had strong identities and interests and that they cumulatively exerted a significant influence on Soviet policy-making and on the evolution of the Soviet system.After tracing the development of local interests prior to the Revolution, Harris demonstrates that a desperate need for capital investment caused the Urals and other Soviet regions to press Moscow to increase the investment and production targets of the first five year plan. He provides conclusive evidence that local leaders established the pace for carrying out such radical policies as breakneck industrialization and the construction of forced labor camps. When the production targets could not be met, regional officials falsified data and blamed “saboteurs” for their shortfalls. Harris argues that such deception contributed to the personal and suspicious nature of Stalin’s rule and to the beginning of his onslaught on the Party apparatus.Most of the region’s communist leaders were executed during the Great Terror of 1936–38. In his conclusion, Harris measures the impact of their interests on the collapse of the communist system, and the fate of reform under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

In very dry, academic writing, with constant, painstaking reference to the archival sources, Harris lays out facts building to his conclusion that there was a massive USSR wide conspiracy, and as the NKVD was sent in to uncover it the conspirators covered it up harder (including using the non-violent purges to purge non-corrupt officials, scientists, managers, workers). The conspirators systemically distorted production potential of their territory; repeatedly, in several different regions, leaders encouraged overestimation of the quantity of ore, and often the quality of ore deposits. Some of the copper and coal they claimed would be the basis of soviet industry literally couldn’t even be used for industrial production. Hundreds of millions of rubles were wasted on facilities, and the conspirators covered it up harder (for example, scientists who disagreed with inflated guesses were–purged by the clique!). This conspiracy wasn’t a Nazi plot, or a trotskyist plot, or an SR plot, or a tsarist plot–all of this was done to cover up regional authorities’ incompetence and corruption (which dated back to literally 1917).

This excerpt from the conclusion is a good summary of his conclusions:

I would only add that by “not permitted to cite “objective reasons” for economic problems” Harris means "they had lied so, so much over the last 15 years that when Stalin ordered for much lower, more reasonable (based on the numbers central had) quotas but demanded absolute fullfilment of them, the regional authorities still couldn’t meet quotas and explaining why would reveal their conspiracy.

Another highlight was the financial commisariat giving the gulags less than 10% of the money the centre ordered them to (it took years for the centre to find out, thousands died). Yet another highlight was the Ukrainian regional authorities (which ofc , death to him, was high up in) using central orders for dekulakization to eradicate any peasants they felt unruly (they made a profitable partnership with the ural factory managers who needed forced labour). Similarly, regional authorities used coercion in collectivization even in periods when the centre was repeatedly ordering them not to.

an apple slice a week keeps the fall-wasps happy too