"Don't worry guys, the Vanguard(tm) will totally let us skip the whole 'bourgeois democracy' phase of things and definitely not devolve into a fascist state capitalist regime"
"Don't worry guys, the Vanguard(tm) will totally let us skip the whole 'bourgeois democracy' phase of things and definitely not devolve into a fascist state capitalist regime"
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"fascism is when classless society without exploitation of surplus value, when no mythical past of greatness of the nation, when no ethnonationalism, when women's rights and when equal political representation among different ethnicities, when promoting internationalist solidarity, and when greatest union membership in the history of humanity"
How about instead of, as a self-proclaimed leftist, you stop wasting time making sectionalist memes and you focus on actually productive discussion?
It's not sectionalism to call out crypto-fascists larping as leftists
"it's not sectionalism when I don't like that flavour of leftism"
"Leftism is when you play apologist for a fascist regime because it painted itself red."
10/10, no notes
Anti-communist tries to define the USSR as fascist without violating Umberto Eco's 14 signs of fascism or twisting them through mental gymnastics or making up ahistorical facts to prove their point challenge: impossible
spoiler
- The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
Check.
- The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
Check.
- The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
Check.
- Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
Definite check.
- Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
Check.
- Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
One of the few unambiguous 'no's.
- The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
Definite check.
- The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Definite check.
- Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Definite check.
- Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Questionable. I could make some arguments here, but we'll be generous and say no.
- Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
Definite check.
- Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
Check.
- Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
Definite check.
- Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
Definite check.
But hey, why take my word for it? Why not ask Umberto Eco about Stalinism?
Mein Kampf is a manifesto of a complete political program. Nazism had a theory of racism and of the Aryan chosen people, a precise notion of degenerate art, entartete Kunst, a philosophy of the will to power and of the Ubermensch. Nazism was decidedly anti-Christian and neo-pagan, while Stalin’s Diamat (the official version of Soviet Marxism) was blatantly materialistic and atheistic. If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.
There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art. If the Nazi architect was Albert Speer, there was no more room for Mies van der Rohe. Similarly, under Stalin’s rule, if Lamarck was right there was no room for Darwin. In Italy there were certainly fascist architects but close to their pseudo-Coliseums were many new buildings inspired by the modern rationalism of Gropius.
A couple criticisms. The cult of tradition and The USSR rejecting modernity? That's clearly not true. From art to science, Soviet principles were about not just rejecting the old ways but completely wiping them away. Mao took it to the extent of having the youth go around and cut the hair of elders who sported traditional fashion.
Secondly, Nazi as anti Christian was a post war invention to hide Christian complicity in Nazism and the Holocaust. Christians ran the Nazi schools. Hitler's speech's were straight from Martin Luther's book, "On the Jews and their Lies." In the private Table Talk interviews, Hitler talked about his dream of creating a German Christian church exactly like England has the Church of England. He didn't want to destroy Christianity. He believed he was saving it just like England had done. That private interview was intentionally edited and mistranslated after the war to portray Hitler as anti Christian.
A couple criticisms. The cult of tradition and The USSR rejecting modernity? That’s clearly not true. From art to science, Soviet principles were about not just rejecting the old ways but completely wiping them away. Mao took it to the extent of having the youth go around and cut the hair of elders who sported traditional fashion.
Soviets made a big show of being modern, but were positively moribund in traditional artistic mediums, and rejected many modern scientific ideas as bourgeois regardless of evidence. The realms in which the Sovs were most anti-traditionalist were that of new artistic mediums (with Soviets being pioneers in film, a medium that only barely and technically predates the Soviet Union in a serious sense) and in traditions that were rooted to institutions of society they didn't control, as all totalitarian states.
Secondly, Nazi as anti Christian was a post war invention to hide Christian complicity in Nazism and the Holocaust. Christians ran the Nazi schools. Hitler’s speech’s were straight from Martin Luther’s book, “On the Jews and their Lies.” In the private Table Talk interviews, Hitler talked about his dream of creating a German Christian church exactly like England has the church of England. He didn’t want to destroy Christianity. He believes he was saving it just like England had done. That private interview was intentionally edited and mistranslated after the war to portray Hitler as anti Christian.
Anti-traditional Christian, if you prefer. Nazism's position on Christianity was markedly different than, say, fascist Italy, or the clericalist fascist regimes Germany allied itself with, and the strong neo-pagan current in Nazism is not something that you would find prominent in other contemporary major fascist movements. It's fair for Umberto Eco to single it out.
It's fair for Umberto Eco to single it out.
There is a huge difference between Nazis putting Christian ministers in positions of power and Hitler calling himself a Christian warrior and Soviets wiping religion out except for a short period when Stalin reopened the church during WW2. Eco stated the discredited idea that Nazis weren't Christians.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state
“fascism is when classless society without exploitation of surplus value, when no mythical past of greatness of the nation, when no ethnonationalism, when women’s rights and when equal political representation among different ethnicities, when promoting internationalist solidarity, and when greatest union membership in the history of humanity”
Rich. If anyone is wondering, this is what MLs genuinely believe about the Soviet Union and China.
How about instead of, as a self-proclaimed leftist, you stop wasting time making sectionalist memes and you focus on actually productive discussion?
Like explaining basic concepts of Marxism to MLs? No thank you.
this is what MLs genuinely believe about the Soviet Union
Please explain how there were exploitation of surplus value, a mythical past of greatness, ethnonationalism in the USSR, and how womens rights weren't categorically forwarded to world-pioneer levels, tell us the percentages of representation in the party of different ethnicities, tell us how the USSR's ideas weren't based on internationalist solidarity, and tell me one country with more union members than the former USSR.
I know you're not going to answer to any of these questions seriously and you're gonna dismiss it with "lol u are fash", just pointing out you haven't done and won't do any research on the topic because you've been brainwashed by leftist anti-communism.
Please explain how there were exploitation of surplus value,
Insane that you think the workers weren't exploited for the surplus value they created in the USSR. I guess the holsum state apparatus just took what value the workers produced and then very conveniently gave them the amount it was worth in incredibly shitty housing, bread lines, and police repression.
a mythical past of greatness, ethnonationalism in the USSR,
Denying ethnonationalism and an obsession with a great and mythical past in the USSR. Rich.
Great Patriotic War was never mythologized, no cult of personality with Lenin or Stalin, no mass deportations and genocides of ethnicities inconvenient to the Russian majority -
Oh. Wait. That's right.
and how womens rights weren’t categorically forwarded to world-pioneer levels, tell us the percentages of representation in the party of different ethnicities,
Women's rights were world pioneer levels in the USSR. Hah. Maybe in the 20s.
tell us how the USSR’s ideas weren’t based on internationalist solidarity,
Internationalist solidarity is when you run a colonial empire, and the more colonial it is, the more solidarity you express.
and tell me one country with more union members than the former USSR.
What good is a union that doesn't even have the right (or ability) to strike? But sure, tell me more about how striking workers getting gunned down is actually union power.
I know you’re not going to answer to any of these questions seriously and you’re gonna dismiss it with “lol u are fash”, just pointing out you haven’t done and won’t do any research on the topic because you’ve been brainwashed by leftist anti-communism.
Oh no.
Not leftist anti-Stalinism.
Insane that you think the workers weren't exploited for the surplus value they created in the USSR. I guess the holsum state apparatus just took what value the workers produced
You trying to justify that a society can exist without any degree of bureaucracy, and somehow the existence of administrative personnel earning normal wages totally means that there's an oppressive class and an exploited one.
and then very conveniently gave them the amount it was worth in incredibly shitty housing, bread lines
Hahaha oh god no, "communism is when bread line and your house is ugly". We're at peak lib levels here. Bread lines were nonexistent in the USSR after WW2 until Perestroika, but sure buddy, you've done your research.
no mass deportations and genocides of ethnicities inconvenient to the Russian majority
you run a colonial empire
You're a fucking joke. You can possibly make the argument of forced deportations of Crimean Tatars, but that's literally the only case of anything remotely like an attack to a given ethnicity that you can conjure. Saying that there was anything remotely resembling genocide in the USSR is ahistorical anti-communist bullshit. Again proving you haven't read a fucking history book not written by libs. Oh, the russian majority, adoring a Georgian as a statesman and leaving as his successor a Ukrainian! There hasn't been a single state on earth less oppressive towards local ethnicities than the USSR. Education being offered by law in the regional language of the republics, written publications in the local language exceeding that of Russian in most republics, celebration of local customs and traditions (go to Uzbekistan and tell me how Russified they are), equal access to education, healthcare, similar salaries between republics and ethnicities, vast investment in industrial development of all regions... You have no fucking idea what colonialism is.
Women's rights were world pioneer levels in the USSR. Hah. Maybe in the 20s
By the 70s, there were more engineer women in the USSR than in the rest of the world together. You can't at that period find comparable numbers of women in justice, in higher positions at education, as doctors, or as any highly regarded position in society in literally any other country of the world, not even those that had been industrialised for 150 years longer than the USSR. Widely available canteens and restaurants so the burden of cooking won't fall on women. Widely available kindergartens so that the burden of upbringing children won't fall on women. Again with the fucking ahistorical bullshit. Claiming that the USSR was the most feminist nation of its time is simply a historical fact if you look at any fucking statistic on the topic, which you clearly haven't done.
What good is a union that doesn't even have the right (or ability) to strike?
Controlling important aspects of production. Enforcing workplace safety regulation. Organizing educational activities for workers by workers, and training for higher positions. Providing access to doctors and medical revisions. Providing access to affordable housing. Choosing representatives to make their demands. Electing higher positions within the workplace. Providing announcement boards and periodical publications with complaints and remarks of workers for everyone in the workplace to read. Again, proving you haven't read a fucking book. I'll flip the question: if unions were useless, why was the USSR factually the country with the highest number of unionized workers? Did Stalin personally go to everyone's house and put a gun to their head to join the union or what?
Not leftist anti-Stalinism
Nuanced anti-Stalinism is actually good, I'm not Stalinist by any means. The great terror was absolutely horrendous, unnecessary, and accomplished nothing. But the extent of the analysis of Stalinism being "this happened because Stalin bad" isn't Marxist, it's lazy and peak lib.
70% cherry picking here. Uzbekistan is the way it is because of its remoteness and lack of exploitable natural resources not because of some state level benevolence. Look at what the Soviets did to Kazakhstan (RIP Aral Sea)…no matter how you spin it there is a huge chasm between the ideals of the USSR and the way its leaders exercised their power and authority.
Look at what the Soviets did to Kazakhstan
Poor fucking Kazakhstan, the country in central Asia with the highest human development index and quality of life by a huge fucking margin. You guys are a joke.
You trying to justify that a society can exist without any degree of bureaucracy, and somehow the existence of administrative personnel earning normal wages totally means that there’s an oppressive class and an exploited one.
lol
Figured you wouldn't even try to respond to the arguments seriously. That might involve critical thought, which is dangerous to the party line, right?
Saying that there was anything remotely resembling genocide in the USSR is ahistorical anti-communist bullshit.
"When you murder tens-to-hundreds of thousands of a given ethnicity, and deport an even larger number (a practice known as ethnic cleansing and generally considered a key piece of genocide) when attempting to reshape ethnic borders to your liking, it's nothing even remotely resembling genocide."
Least genocidal tankie.
Thank you for not responding to all parts of my comment when I bring actual fucking data that you can't contest because you haven't read a book.
"When you murder tens-to-hundreds of thousands of a given ethnicity, and deport an even larger number (a practice known as ethnic cleansing and generally considered a key piece of genocide) when attempting to reshape ethnic borders to your liking, it's nothing even remotely resembling genocide."
When you don't discriminate or target by ethnicity because of paranoia during the unjustifiable Big Terror, when there's no previous incidents against a given ethnicity and no later attempts to hurt a given ethnicity, then no, you can't call it genocide, I'm sorry. You can condemn the big terror for what it was, but you can't call it genocidal because there was no continuous attempt against any given nationality.
When you don’t discriminate or target by ethnicity
Jesus Christ. And you accuse me of not reading. Come back after you've read a bit about Stalinist era massacres instead of tankie hagiography glossing over the details of the NKVD hunting down people with Polish surnames to execute.
exploitation of surplus value
Ignore the surplus. Value was taken away from those who needed it (example case holomodor)
ethnonationalism in the USSR
Especially in occupied areas, non-russians were treated as 2nd class citizens and partially eradicated (insert "go to gulag" -meme. See also: genocide)
how womens rights weren't categorically forwarded to world-pioneer levels
So quick online search already shows you that it had nothing to do with equality between the men and women, but about better abusing women's labor. Just like in a capitalist society
Below a lazy Wikipedia quote:
Though the prevailing Soviet ideology stressed total gender equality, and many Soviet women held jobs and advanced degrees, they did not participate in core political roles and institutions.[24][25] Above the middle levels, political and economic leaders were overwhelmingly male[citation needed]. While propaganda claimed, accurately, that more women sat in the Supreme Soviet than in most democratic countries' legislative bodies combined, only two women, Yekaterina Furtseva and (in its last year of existence) Galina Semyonova, were ever members of the party's Politburo, arguably the most important component of country's government
tell us how the USSR's ideas weren't based on internationalist solidarity,
Your ideas don't mean a shit if your actions don't reflect it.
tell me one country with more union members than the former USSR
The unions were led and controlled by the communist party, which was also on control of everything else. That's like naming Musk the leader of trade union at Tesla
Ignore the surplus
Spoken like a true Marxist
Value was taken away from those who needed it (example case holomodor)
You're telling me that the first attempt in history at collectivisation of land wasn't perfect? Damn, communism destroyed. Fyi, land collectivisation was carried out by poor farmers, and they were so bloody and excessive against Kulaks that the party had to go and impose limits on how many people were declared Kulak per region. Holodomor was a tragedy as a result of a poor first attempt in history at land collectivisation, not an intended extraction of value of workers from a given place at a given time, as proven by the fact that when land collectivisation ended, nothing like that ever happened again.
Especially in occupied areas, non-russians were treated as 2nd class citizens and partially eradicated (insert "go to gulag" -meme. See also: genocide)
The Stalinist terror can and should be condemned. It was senseless, excessive, cruel, inhumane, and worst of all, unfounded and pointless. But trying to add racial/ethnical undertones to it is ahistorical. It happened to Russians and Georgians and Armenians and Uzbeki alike.
So quick online search already shows you that it had nothing to do with equality between the men and women, but about better abusing women's labor. Just like in a capitalist society
Sure, that's why women would retire at 55 compared to 60 years old for men. That's why there were widely available restaurants and canteens in cities and food service in workplaces to relieve women from the burden of cooking. That's why there was a wide availability of kindergarten to rid women of the burden of child rearing. But oh yeah, you did a quick online search, which totally proves that feminism in the USSR was actually not true feminism somehow!
While propaganda claimed, accurately, that more women sat in the Supreme Soviet than in most democratic countries' legislative bodies combined
So wait, you're telling me, that the country with more women in the Supreme Soviet than in basically the rest of the worlds' legislative bodies combined, wasn't pioneer in feminism? I'm not saying it was feminist to 2024 standards, or that it was perfect, but it was by FAR the most progressive country on earth at the time.
Your ideas don't mean a shit if your actions don't reflect it
The USSR was the only country to sell weapons to republican Spain (I'm Spanish) in their struggle against fascism. They provided immense help to China in its early industrial development through technological exchange and sending experts to their economy, as they did with most other socialist countries at the time. The USSR was a beacon of internationalism in an otherwise capitalist hellhole of a planet. Key note in internationalism, the USSR itself had an incredible national diversity between its republics, with most people in central Asian republics not even speaking Russian after 7 decades of USSR. Industrial development being boosted in the poorest republics such as Central Asia, equal access to medicine and healthcare in all republics, education being provided in the local language of the republics... Fuck me if that's not internationalist solidarity as opposed to nationalism.
The unions were led and controlled by the communist party
If unions were so bad and useless, but voluntary to join, why was the USSR the country with the highest unionization rate? The myth of "they were controlled by the communist party" is, well, just a myth. Some things that Unions did: Controlling important aspects of production. Enforcing workplace safety regulation. Organizing educational activities for workers by workers, and training for higher positions. Providing access to doctors and medical revisions. Providing access to affordable housing. Choosing representatives to make their demands. Electing higher positions within the workplace. Providing announcement boards and periodical publications with complaints and remarks of workers for everyone in the workplace to read.
classless society without exploitation of surplus value
To quote your daddy Engels (from a wholly different context, but it fits):
These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
greatest union membership in the history of humanity
And that "union" was better to agree with the party, or else...
That actually matches with what the Nazis did to unions.