[Atlantis]

This all seems like a lot of right wing hurt feels ...

It seems on the contrary, that this is all about left-wing butt-hurt of people adhering to an outdated ideology who can't get over the fact that it just did not work.

I know many old communists now in their 60s and 70s who went to study or live in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and who are now disillusioned old people torn between the grandiose Marxist dreams of their youth and the bitter disappointment of the real socialism they went through. What a way to waste one's life! Don't do it.

To criticize socialism for not working as well as capitalism because four countries where socialists took over that had not previously had shoes as a common object failed to live up to the most powerful countries the Earth had ever seen constantly attacking them is pretty weak tea.

Probably more people lived under some form of socialism regime 30 or 40 years ago than under purely capitalist regimes. If these countries failed to reach sufficient influence, it is simply because the socialist system failed to produce strong economies. That is not something you can blame on capitalism. China was able to develop rapidly under a quasi-capitalist regime once it shed its socialist yoke.

If socialism is constrained to a national scale you will get something that is functionally fascist if not ideologically fascist. So the DDR would be national socialism in practice if not in theory. The USSR for not having the whole world under its dominion basically had to be imperial socialist in order advance towards that goal.

The term "fascism" can of course have a very broad meaning, signifying almost everything one may disapprove of. But there may be some relation between highly isolationist and nationalist regimes like North Korea or Spain under Franco and a political trend akin to fascism. This should give food for thought about some of the isolationist policies currently making the rounds to radically stop all migration at the national frontier.

Immigrants bring more hands to be taxed but also more mouths to feed, they may have desirable skills, property or knowledge or have diseases or be afflicted with toxic ideas or be a security risk in some other way.

Migration can be more than a zero-sum game. Poor or chaotic countries are poor and chaotic because of their history or their current socioeconomic conditions and not because their people are inferior. In other words, if these same people migrate into a well-oiled socioeconomic system with a highly performing industry, they will be more productive than they would otherwise be. Thus, there is a net-gain. It all boils down to how migration is controlled and immigrants are integrated.

Atlantis' cookie cut liberalism makes me cringe. "We invited workers but humans came". That is so cute Atlantis, maybe we can make that into a bedtime song for our children.

I mostly don't read your posts because other than personal insults there rarely seems to be any contents.

As to the phrase I rendered (for information purpose only), it is the general theme under which guest workers in Germany (Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, etc.) were accepted as residents with full rights into German society even though they initially came on a temporary working visa. I did NOT invent it. But there is obviously nothing anybody can do about your constant distortions other then to keep ignoring them.

[Rugoz]

To criticize socialism for not working as well as capitalism because four countries where socialists took over that had not previously had shoes as a common object failed to live up to the most powerful countries the Earth had ever seen constantly attacking them is pretty weak tea.

And blaming it all on the evil West is also weak tea.

As somebody who speaks German I have read enough stories about how life was in the DDR. Saying that the economy worked it just plain silly.

[Decky]

Well then how do we explain East Germany's strict immigration laws?

Guest workers in the DDR were only allowed to stay for a period of up to three years.

Pretty easily explained PI. Socialism is a system where the working class own the means of production distribution and exchange. It is not (as you are dishonestly calming) defined by a support for immigration and never has been.

Why would a socialist want high immigration? It lowers wages and weakens trade union. It is the right that loves immigration as right wing politicians are servants of big business and immigration serves the needs of business.

There are a lot of posters here I would expect such a cheap argument from and up until now you were not one of them.

[hartmut]

EAST GERMANY - A LEFT FASCIST STATE?

The DDR was ostensibly a socialist country based on Marxism-Leninism. However it was also very nationalistic. Most of the propaganda looked like something from a fascist state.

They had minimal immigration.

How did communists produce such a country?

The DDR (GDR) was “ostensibly” a lot of sorts of things.
First of all, it pretended to be a democracy, even a highly developed model of that desirable progress,
proceeding on a illuminated path of ultimate freedom, without unjust borders and restrictions.
That sounds a bit crazy, and so it was,
also in different other aspects.

There are similarities in the appearance of propaganda, which are not only to be found in the function of propaganda itself,
but and in a wide field of overlapping elements.
“ostensibly” hits the target.

To turn on this point: “However it was also very nationalistic.”
It was not. (same to be said about immigration)
Vice versa, internationalism was praised in high tunes, and nationalism castigated as a major source of the world's evil.

Here I support Goon, who gives a valuable hint: therms should not be mixed up.
viewtopic.php?p=14712802#p14712802

Fascism and Communism do not gravitate on the same center point of ideology.
Never the less, there is little doubt about vast areas of resemblance in compared acting and basic ideas.

But: If you take both in the same pot, you will miss a great deal of the story.
.. and it would be a pity.

[The Immortal Goon]

If socialism is constrained to a national scale you will get something that is functionally fascist if not ideologically fascist.

As has been previously pointed out by users better than me, this is to define fascism and socialism both in some zany way that makes both terms utterly meaningless.

It seems on the contrary, that this is all about left-wing butt-hurt of people adhering to an outdated ideology who can't get over the fact that it did not work.

Seeing how this thread started as a criticism of communists, has mostly been rightwingers whining about about socialism, and a very nice set of tears rolling about me having had lunch with an Indian once, I think it's safe to say that your butt probably hurts a lot right now. Trying to say that ours does is plainly laughable

Just so everyone knows, I went and had lunch with someone from Nepal today, a non-Christian brown immigrant. We ate at a Mexican restaurant where it's commonly known that there are illegals working. It was all very nice.

Probably more people lived under some form of socialism regime 30 or 40 years ago than under purely capitalist regimes. If these countries failed to reach sufficient influence, it is simply because the socialist system failed to produce strong economies.

It's really a brain tease to figure out why isolated countries that started out with populations of mostly peasants that reject capitalism and are surrounded by hostile imperialists may have not been better at creating strong capitalist economies.

I guess with your iron logic, we should just stop capitalism because the Munster Commune didn't work out and Cromwell didn't keep his system going.

After all, they failed to produce the strong economies that feudalism had going for them!

And blaming it all on the evil West is also weak tea.

If I meet someone that does so, I'll pass this post on!

[Atlantis]

Just so everyone knows, I went and had lunch with someone from Nepal today, a non-Christian brown immigrant. We ate at a Mexican restaurant where it's commonly known that there are illegals working. It was all very nice.

Having been a migrant all my life, I applaud everybody supporting refugees and even illegal immigrants, even though I don't understand why one would make such a show of having had a lunch with a foreigner. I couldn't think of anything more ordinary to do. In my country, 8 million people have volunteered to help refugees, spending their own time and money (or even sharing their own flat) for foreigners they have never met before, without making a show of it.

Nevertheless, in the context of the real socialism, which is what we are talking about here, the Central Committee would have to severely censure such an act of personal spite by comrade IG. The Gulag would be the least you have to expect. The communist party cannot have its authority undermined by the romantic bourgeois sentiment of counter-revolutionaries like comrade IG. In the real world, the Soviet Union would not have survived even a single year if it had not cracked down hard on such counter-revolutionaries.

It's really a brain tease to figure out why isolated countries that started out with populations of mostly peasants that reject capitalism and are surrounded by hostile imperialists may have not been better at creating strong capitalist economies.

You keep on repeating the same things. I haven't previously replied because it just doesn't make any sense and it is not at all clear what you could possibly mean.

Russia, like most of Eastern Europe, had been integral part of European culture for centuries when the communists took over. Russia had industries, state of the art technology and excellent scientists. East Germany was more developed and industrialized than West Germany. Czechoslovakia and other parts of Eastern Europe were highly developed. Even Poland and the Ukraine were well developed. That development stagnated under communist rule. China has strong cultural traditions that allowed the country to develop rapidly and challenge even the US once it had thrown off the yoke of socialism.

You don't have a leg to stand on. And just for the record, I'm certainly not a conservative. I'm a realist who believes in achieving social justice in the real world and not in culturing a narcissistic notion of a never to be communist paradise, while enjoying the ill-gotten fruit of imperialism.

The pride of Socialism out of reach to most ordinary workers.


The product of the Western market economy most ordinary workers can afford.

[Albert]

^
Way to compare a car make model from the the 60-70 to that of modernity.

Also urban development in communist societies was designed with intention that people will rely on public transportation for majority of their travels, rather then private transport. Hence why you do not have suburban sprawl in eastern Europe like you had in west, especially north America. (Such sprawl is really only possible with considerable private transport development.) Or mega highways and such things.

Also this is why you do not have skyscrapers because urban planners thought they were unnecessary. Cities in eastern Europe were planned by people with different mentality.

My grandfather for example owned a car, but he rarely used it. He would use public transport for work and all basic needs were a short walk away.

Just so everyone knows, I went and had lunch with someone from Nepal today, a non-Christian brown immigrant. We ate at a Mexican restaurant where it's commonly known that there are illegals working. It was all very nice.

Way to support capitalism that has ruined labour market and impoverished the proletariat. Also ruining social cohesion and communal tranquility with it. Keep the "spirit of revolution" alive! And walking the walk instead of talking it.

[Atlantis]

Way to compare a car make model from the the 60-70 to that of modernity.

Trabis never changed. That is what is meant by stagnant development in the socialist economies. But even a 60s Western car was hugely superior to the Trabi as it was manufactured until the 90s and is still in use today.

[Albert]

The way I see it, communist societies did lag behind technologically that is true, yet how much is it a fault of command economy rather due to isolation is unclear to me. Let us say we isolated Americas for 50 odd years. Missing interaction with rest of the world, will it fall behind like eastern Europe had have? I assume so.

Also you have to consider that communist economy did not have to constantly make a profit for never satisfied greed of its investors. Hence in that economy there is no need for producing a new car model every few years. The economy also did not produce distinction between cars for the rich and for the volk. As essentially both type of vehicles are a hunck of metal meant to transport you on the streets. Yet one is sold for a higher price then another. This is something you get with market economy, where people make large profits on vanity and pride.

I'm not a fan of Communism but I believe there are things they did that were right.

[Decky]

Lagged behind technologically eh? Remind me which country when from being an agricultural backwater to putting the first man into space in a handful of decades?

[Rich]

Lagged behind technologically eh? Remind me which country when from being an agricultural backwater to putting the first man into space in a handful of decades?

I assume that you are referring to the industrial super power, Tsarist Russia that produced more steel than France and Austrio-hungry combined. In a way it was Russian development that caused the first world war. The Germans were rightly terrified of the growing power industrial power of Russia in alliance with expansionist France. The Germans knew they had to act sooner rather than later. Even so they were too late. The industrial might of Tsarist Russia meant that Germany the world's second industrial power and first land military power failed to defeat Russia on the battle field and had to resort to sending in the traitor Lenin, his pockets stuffed with German Gold.

Lenin delivered his side of the bargain at Brest Litosk.

[Decky]

You are smoking something particularly strong today.

[Albert]

That is what I mostly read as well. Russian Empire at the time was well on its way to industrialize. In 1890s it had developed domestic heavy industry and machine manufacturing. Attracting large peasants migration to its cities and urbanization. With it it brought social upheaval like what happened in England and Germany decades ago. This is one of the reasons why communism was attractive for many people at the time.

Communism in effect made industrialization, ironically, all the more difficult processes for Russia. With unnecessary heavy handed approach of Stalin. Plus they actually messed up agriculture with their communist idealism and did more worse then good in some economic sectors. Where Stalins agrarian reforms brought on femine. Similarly what "The Great Leap Forward" in China had done. (Or how Liberal free market idealism messed up managing the "Potato Plague" in Ireland.)

Communist being the victors of Russian Revolution injected their interpretation into history of Russian Empire. It is in their interest to portray it as a hopelessly backward economic state. Yet I believe in reality it was not exactly that.

[The Immortal Goon]

Having been a migrant all my life, I applaud everybody supporting refugees and even illegal immigrants, even though I don't understand why one would make such a show of having had a lunch with a foreigner. I couldn't think of anything more ordinary to do. In my country, 8 million people have volunteered to help refugees, spending their own time and money (or even sharing their own flat) for foreigners they have never met before, without making a show of it.

As you've seen already, there are people in the thread that see my mundane actions as edgy and dangerous. So I'll keep doing them so they'll keep furiously shaking their fists at the empty skies.

In the main, it's an absurdity to say that Czarist Russia or post Opium War China were modern wonders of innovation. They themselves at the time claimed that they were completely backward. Russia made a lot of steel? Sure, look how much of thenfucking planet it covered too. It still couldn't deliver on literacy, shoes, distribution of food, or even the secret of how taxes work.

I don't know what any of ye want to read in this thread. There's nothing really specific to respond to that a cursory glance at anything remotely historical. If ye just want to lob out half-baked insults at something ye don't seem to understand at all, that's fine I guess, but you look dumb doing it. If you want something specific, you can ask.

[SolarCross]

If socialism is constrained to a national scale you will get something that is functionally fascist if not ideologically fascist.

As has been previously pointed out by users better than me, this is to define fascism and socialism both in some zany way that makes both terms utterly meaningless.

I wasn't defining anything just saying that a nominally socialist government behaves and attempts to make a society that functions a lot like a nominally fascist government. Though I guess that is a little unfair on the fascists, it isn't like Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy were nearly as nasty as the DDR or the USSR for example. Given the choice I know which one I'd prefer. Hitler's Germany was pretty okay too in comparison unless you happen to be jewish of course..

[Rugoz]

The way I see it, communist societies did lag behind technologically that is true, yet how much is it a fault of command economy rather due to isolation is unclear to me. Let us say we isolated Americas for 50 odd years. Missing interaction with rest of the world, will it fall behind like eastern Europe had have? I assume so.

I would add: Shortage of basic goods, long waiting times, low quality, little variety (apart from Western imports). There's also the fact that Soviet enterprises were not competitive on the world market. Faced with world market prices most of the Soviet industry was operating at negative value added (meaning the inputs were worth more than the output).

As for the isolation. It was largely self-imposed. Western Europe was happy to sell their advanced machinery to the Soviets in exchange for commodities. The US was never an important trade partner for Russia and it still isn't today.

Also urban development in communist societies was designed with intention that people will rely on public transportation for majority of their travels, rather then private transport.

Have you seen communist urban development with your own eyes? Hint: It's ugly.

I say that as somebody who doesn't own a car and lives in the country with the largest number of passenger train kilometers traveled per capita.

[Political Interest]

It is really quite fascinating that communism in the east produced this:

It looks so conservative and traditional. I cannot explain it.

Western Marxists are nothing like this at all.

[Potemkin]

It looks so conservative and traditional. I cannot explain it.

Marxism is not Anarchism, PI. In fact, it's not even 1960s-type liberal permissiveness. Marxism originated as a critique of 19th century capitalism, but it was therefore also a product of 19th century capitalism. Even the Bolshevik leaders who founded the Soviet state (which in turn founded the GDR) were themselves men of the 19th century, and possessed many of the moral and social values and assumptions of the 19th century. Social and moral conservatism among revolutionary Marxists of the pre-1960s era should therefore not be surprising.

[Political Interest]

Marxism is not Anarchism, PI. In fact, it's not even 1960s-type liberal permissiveness. Marxism originated as a critique of 19th century capitalism, but it was therefore also a product of 19th century capitalism. Even the Bolshevik leaders who founded the Soviet state (which in turn founded the GDR) were themselves men of the 19th century, and possessed many of the moral and social values and assumptions of the 19th century. Social and moral conservatism among revolutionary Marxists of the pre-1960s era should therefore not be surprising.

But the Marxism of today in Western countries looks like complete anarchism. In fact it has degenerated into nothing but Third Worldism. Most Marxists in the United States have no faith in the good of their own people. They doubt that they can create a socialist state so they instead work to undermine their own societies. Whenever you see any of the leftist rallies in America it is nothing but an advocacy for ethnic communalism or the rights of sexual minorities.

Socialism in the east looked beautiful and fulfilling. It united the people as one and brought them to a glorious future. It was the unity of all humanity under the red flag.

Real existing socialism in the east was this:

And what is socialism in the West? Just this:

[The Immortal Goon]

I wasn't defining anything just saying that a nominally socialist government behaves and attempts to make a society that functions a lot like a nominally fascist government. Though I guess that is a little unfair on the fascists, it isn't like Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy were nearly as nasty as the DDR or the USSR for example. Given the choice I know which one I'd prefer. Hitler's Germany was pretty okay too in comparison unless you happen to be jewish of course..

What a vague and insightful post! Let me try one without trying to define words or concepts:

Edwardian England behaves and attempts to make a society that functions a lot like the Ancient Egyption Middle Kingdom.

The Myng Dynesty behaves and attempts to make a society that functions a lot like a nominally Lakota society.

With these useless statements void of any of those pesky definitions, let me follow up with how they prove my ideology is right, as long as we marginalize the pesky Jew.

I can certainly see the appeal in posting like this. You don't need to actually know anything, and everything confirms your feelings instead of objective fact.

This thread delivers!

So far as @political interest, sure, the Cold War, Red Scares, lazy discourse, and lax definitions that fill this thread up has done an excellent job of stifling the specter haunting Europe. But that is changing, and will change, as the world changes.

You have a pet issue where you want the state to hug you and tell you how proud it is of you for being born. That was never really one of Marx's concerns.

The second post in I explained to you about Eastern Germany, and you continue on with regret that there aren't more ethnic hugs involved in communist theory. Potemkin tried to explain some of the development, and the answer is you want more hugs.

Maybe you're barking up the wrong tree as we, as an ideology, are not interested in watching people prostate themselves as victims and beg for people to tell them what special snowflakes they must be for having been born.