Every form of automation is turned against the worker under capitalism.
Comrade, you know a thing or two about economics—please take a look at this video; it’s short. At the end, there are formulas he uses to prove the opposite.
That’s Comrade Semin; Semin promoted him on YouTube. He’s a socialist, too.
It’s really gratifying to see young people in Russia starting to think so progressively. And most importantly, they base their arguments on science rather than Solzhenitsyn’s tall tales or fairy tales about God.
I’m convinced that the politics of common sense and science—which Musk championed before—for some reason—going quiet—will sooner or later prevail over the politics of obscurantism or “popcorn and Coke,” both in Russia and the US.
I listened to Semin recently; he attended an international communist congress in Britain a few years back. He represented the Russian Communist Party there (not the CPRF).
And the main thing is—honestly, Comrade—he used the exact same words I’ve been using for a long time. Their concept of socialism is somewhat abstract; every speaker at the forum said something different—there’s no unified concept, no single clear idea; it’s all very unrefined.
But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham. So, they’re beginning to look for an alternative. Meanwhile, in Russia, the so-called progressive youth are only just starting to soak up the joys of capitalist life, because they didn’t get a chance to enjoy it for 40 years… ))) There’s a lag and some gaps here, too.
It turns out there’s a Marx Library in London; I didn’t know that… ))))
“Marx remains relevant as long as capitalism exists.”
And agree that education needs to change significantly at this point. A lot of education focuses on rote memorization, but what’s really important now is the ability to integrate the available information, evaluate it, and make decisions. Basically, applying dialectical thinking to the world. Also very much agree that USSR education was far better and broader. Becoming an intellectual was basically seen as the way to move up in society. In the west it’s just about making money which creates a very narrow and selfish horizon for people.
A quick side note: In the USSR, children were made to grow up early and shed their illusions, not the other way around.
As for Hollywood movies—if you strip away the sex, violence, and drugs, the vast majority of them are essentially children’s films.
When I got to know American culture better, I was really surprised to learn that adults read comic books… In the USSR, the closest thing to comics was produced only for children who were just learning to read (before starting school). Personally, I was already reading Pushkin and had memorized several poems before I even started school—though I read comics, too.
Comic books, for crying out loud… )))) At age seven, I read H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. I remember staying up all night in fear after reading The Time Machine.
And I’d borrowed the book from a classmate—a friend who had highly recommended it to me…
But why am I telling you this, Comrade? You were just like that yourself once… )))) You saw it all firsthand!
Teaching kids to experiment using computers in school is actually a really good idea. Once they develop the mindset it’s applicable everywhere, and easily transfers to working with the physical world too.
I’ll join Marx and add this: as long as capitalism exists, education will be crap! Because they aren’t raising intellectuals—they’re raising docile workers for their factories. Intellectuals don’t serve their interests; intellectuals think too much and notice too much… and then they say things that are highly inconvenient for the powers that be…
I do think we’ll need to restructure society in significant ways
This is basically what Marx explains in the first volume of The Capital. It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)
And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.
But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham
Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.
And I’m still shocked how nobody actually reads books here. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me. Just like you, I was reading from the young age, cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment. And reading really opened up your imagination, I’m incredibly grateful for growing up in USSR and having developed this habit. Reading a good book is still by far the most enjoyable experience for me.
It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)
In Russia, Marx is inseparable from Lenin.
By the way, listen to the story of how Russian officials, together with their Chinese counterparts, are selling a massive Soviet factory to China for scrap metal. It’s a disgrace!
When Platoshkin exposed this criminal scheme, a local official simply blew up the factory to cover his tracks…
And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.
And once again, capitalism is doing harm—this time, to the advancement of progress.
Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.
As I understand it, during the Iron Curtain era, the only information that reached us from the other side was propaganda. And as I’ve come to realize decades later: Soviet propaganda told 90% the truth about the West, whereas Western propaganda told 90% lies about the USSR.
That is why people in the West are only now beginning to understand what socialism actually is—now that advanced Western capitalism has gone into a tailspin. I remember when I first joined Western forums back in 2015; people’s jaws would drop at the stories I told. At first, they didn’t believe me—they thought I was making it all up! I became very popular very quickly on that first Western forum.
cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment.
Comrade, those are just Western tall tales… )))) Деревянные игрушки, скользкий подоконник, каляска без дна)))
I was never a homebody as a child. There was a sports ground in every courtyard; we played soccer there every day—it was impossible to get me to come home. In the winter, they’d flood the area to make an ice rink, and we’d play hockey. When my parents bought me a computer—a ZX Spectrum—I went wild and started skipping school, but even so, there was always a book on my nightstand; I read every day before bed.
Yeah, that’s the ironic part, it turns out that Soviets didn’t really have to make stuff up about the west while the west had to spin tall tales about evils of communism. I do think that it was a failure of Soviet education system that it failed to make people really understand the problem with capitalism. I remember when I was a kid at school, there was no discussion about it, nobody really gave it any thought. But you look in the west, and indoctrination starts very early on. Not just in schools too, it’s in TV shows, comic books, everything. And we see now just how effective this type of indoctrination is.
And yeah, that’s fair, I meant specifically in terms of media entertainment. I did spend a lot of time outside with my friends as a kid. This is, incidentally, another thing you can’t do in the west. My parents would just let me go out by myself when I was 8 years old without a single worry. I’d go out in the morning, come back lunch, and hang out with friends the rest of the day. That’s how safe things were. That sort of thing would be unthinkable in Canada today.
Yeah, that’s the ironic part, it turns out that Soviets didn’t really have to make stuff up about the west while the west had to spin tall tales about evils of communism. I do think that it was a failure of Soviet education system that it failed to make people really understand the problem with capitalism.
One mistake made in the late USSR was that the public did not take the propaganda seriously.
There were economic problems, yet reports spoke of incredible achievements in socialist construction; in reality, everything was stagnating. The leaders could barely articulate their words… Brezhnev’s final speeches were completely unintelligible; people laughed at him back then just as they laughed at Biden when he rambled. The party leadership had become ossified; the country definitely needed a breath of fresh air at that time. That was precisely what Andropov envisioned when he tasked Ryzhkov and Gorbachev—who were the “young guard” of the party back then, full of fresh thoughts and ideas—with developing the project.
Unfortunately, however, Andropov didn’t live long enough to see it through, and Gorbachev later ruined everything.
By the way, I’ve finally fully grasped the reason why Europe was, until recently, a Garden of Eden.
The EU project—conceived long before the USSR collapsed—was aimed at preventing the emergence of socialism in individual European states. To achieve this, capitalists were forced to spend vast sums out of their own pockets to ensure social well-being for all their citizens. After all, there were very strong socialist movements in France, Italy, and elsewhere at the time. If the people had been living in hardship, they would have elected socialists. Consequently, capitalists were compelled to share with the public—as should happen in a genuine democratic capitalist state.
After the USSR collapsed, there was no longer a need to maintain a high standard of living for the European populace. And so, almost without realizing it, Europe began to slide into the abyss! Capitalists now have a free hand; they can do whatever they please.
And now we come to the main point. It turns out that the collapse of the USSR turned Europe into a garbage dump.
Not just in schools too, it’s in TV shows, comic books, everything. And we see now just how effective this type of indoctrination is.
This is a caricature from a Soviet newspaper from 1955. Absolutely nothing has changed.
And yeah, that’s fair, I meant specifically in terms of media entertainment.
Yes, it was done intentionally to give the child more time for beneficial activities. It was the right approach for the upbringing of young people.
This is, incidentally, another thing you can’t do in the west.
I remember once being in the countryside with my parents, but I had a soccer match on Sunday morning, so I headed back to town in the evening to be ready for the game the next day. My parents stayed behind in the village. When I arrived in town, I realized I had left my apartment keys back in the village—but I had taken the last bus of the day. It was a 15-kilometer trip, and I was only 13 years old. I lived on the edge of town, so I walked out to the main road—it was 10 p.m.—and managed to catch a ride. Strangers drove me all the way back to the village; even though it wasn’t on their way, they dropped me right at my house and wouldn’t take a single penny. I had a few rubles in my pocket and tried to offer them the money, but they flatly refused.
It never even crossed my mind that someone might try to harm me. And my parents didn’t scold me for coming back to the village in the middle of the night instead of staying over at a friend’s place in town—to them, that sort of thing was perfectly normal.
Even now—before the war—I don’t recall any instances of anyone being abducted; children roam the streets freely. But that’s before the war; I don’t know what will happen afterwards—the world has changed.
We talked about this before, lack of a good selection process that allowed people of low competence to get into positions of power and created a bureaucracy which was largely concerned with preserving itself rather than solving problems was the ultimate cause of the decline. Simply telling people everything is great while you’re unable to produce substantive change they can see tangibly deligitimizes the system. And that’s precisely what we see happening in the west today, and why there’s now public disillusionment with liberal democracy.
And you’re absolutely right that Europe has been propped up to prevent genuine socialism from taking hold. The US didn’t pour billions upon billions into rebuilding western Europe after WW2 out of sheer altruism. They used it as a way to deligitimize communism in the east. Look how great Europeans are living, look how much faster things develop under capitalism. That was the whole narrative. This is a great read on the subject incidentally, confirms everything you said http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/046.html
This is a caricature from a Soviet newspaper from 1955. Absolutely nothing has changed.
Yup, that cartoon is ever green, and just as true as the day it was made.
It never even crossed my mind that someone might try to harm me.
Exactly, there were just not thoughts people had back in USSR. It’s destruction was the biggest crime of the 20th century.
We talked about this before, lack of a good selection process that allowed people of low competence to get into positions of power and created a bureaucracy which was largely concerned with preserving itself rather than solving problems was the ultimate cause of the decline.
For some reason, I am convinced that Stalin would have sorted the situation out in a couple of years—it would have become 1937 all over again. Of course, for a long time afterward, people would have talked about how cruel Stalin was…
In essence, the situation in 1987 was the same as in 1937, when the Trotskyists crawled out into the open. And Trotskyists are essentially the same as kulaks and petty property owners.
By the way, I’d like to challenge your point about whether, according to Marx, a transition from feudalism to socialism is possible while bypassing the “agonies of capitalism.”
Yes, in his letter to Vera Zasulich dated March 8, 1881, Karl Marx did indeed allow for the possibility that Russia could transition to socialism by relying on its pre-capitalist institutions, thereby bypassing the capitalist stage.
Marx analyzed the socio-economic situation and concluded that the Russian rural commune (specifically the land-holding commune) could serve as a foothold for social renewal.
Therefore, Stalin acted precisely in accordance with Stalin’s own theory—the NEP in Russia could have been dispensed with! Both Marx and Stalin turned out to be right.
I wonder what Marx would have said about the possibility of building socialism in China. Although I’d probably agree with you: China lacked the necessary foundation to skip over the NEP stage.
China was incredibly backward after the Opium Wars.
Look how great Europeans are living, look how much faster things develop under capitalism.
Trump has finally stirred into action, wanting to make America the way it was 40 years ago, but it is already too late. While Europe and the US were fleecing their own people and dismantling their industries, China was building. We see the result: there is no turning back.
Yup, that cartoon is ever green, and just as true as the day it was made.
Back then, they were just pictures to me; I didn’t take them seriously. But when events started unfolding in Ukraine… can you imagine? I immediately remembered those cartoons—and the scales fell from my eyes.
Exactly, there were just not thoughts people had back in USSR. It’s destruction was the biggest crime of the 20th century.
It’s all down to modern capitalist culture—a lifestyle where everyone is chasing profits and all sorts of sordid amusements. Drugs have also had a massive impact; they’ve poisoned all of Europe and the US. Wherever there are drugs, there is perversion. That’s exactly where that flood of “jolly guys” came from—the ones whose rights I’m suddenly supposed to care about. It’s all the drugs, I assure you!
You know yourself that the whole high-society crowd is hooked on cocaine. It’s very fashionable among them.
I think Stalin was largely correct in what he did, the problem was that he left a system which failed to ensure strong leadership going forward. A stable social system can’t depend on a single strong willed individual being in charge and making the right calls. Continuity of competent governance, especially in time of plenty is the hardest problem to solve in my opinion.
And completely agree, China quietly outplayed the west. A lot of it was inherent in western hubris too. They really thought that theirs was the only way to develop, and they figured that China would have to become like them eventually and they’d fold it in. But it didn’t work out that way. Turns out people with 3000 years of continuous civilization under their belt know a thing or two of their won. Also, don’t know if you saw, but American media has now realized DPRK is doing rather well. https://archive.ph/b9zrS
The west really is starting to look like the final days of the Roman empire now. I expect we’ll start seeing provinces getting cut loose next and imploding economically. The UK looks like it might be the first to pop.
I think Stalin was largely correct in what he did, the problem was that he left a system which failed to ensure strong leadership going forward. A stable social system can’t depend on a single strong willed individual being in charge and making the right calls. Continuity of competent governance, especially in time of plenty is the hardest problem to solve in my opinion.
Yes, this is something Mao did better than Stalin.
I think the reason is that Stalin was much more powerful than his comrades; everything rested on that, on Stalin’s authority. As soon as Stalin was gone, intra-party squabbling began. Everyone was trying to take over. No one was found who could replace Stalin and continue his work. Stalin’s legacy was simply squandered!
Also, don’t know if you saw, but American media has now realized DPRK is doing rather well. https://archive.ph/b9zrS
Yes, I recently discussed this with a Marxist friend of ours here.
For me, if the Wall Street Journal writes something like this, there’s something fishy about it.))))
Just recently they wrote that Kim is machine-gunning his opponents… )))
We definitely need to show this to our Chinese comrade… )))
Yes, I see, the trade turnover between the US and China alone is $700 billion.
The US is dearer to China’s heart than Russia… )))
Ten times more.
In fact: It turns out that China is much more dependent on the US than on Russia.
If you recall the economic crisis of 2008, China experienced it more painfully than the US.
This is what distinguishes China from the USSR, because the USSR wasn’t nearly as dependent on the West as China. No one could threaten the USSR with sanctions and the like, because it was all pointless! There was no such dependence on microchips from Taiwan. You have to admit, if China doesn’t have microchips from Taiwan, they won’t be able to produce competitive products. As far as I know, China doesn’t have such technology yet, because Taiwan has American technology.
Comrade, you know a thing or two about economics—please take a look at this video; it’s short. At the end, there are formulas he uses to prove the opposite.
Do you agree with this?
https://youtu.be/LfRdDwgky0A
That’s Comrade Semin; Semin promoted him on YouTube. He’s a socialist, too.
It’s really gratifying to see young people in Russia starting to think so progressively. And most importantly, they base their arguments on science rather than Solzhenitsyn’s tall tales or fairy tales about God.
I’m convinced that the politics of common sense and science—which Musk championed before—for some reason—going quiet—will sooner or later prevail over the politics of obscurantism or “popcorn and Coke,” both in Russia and the US.
I listened to Semin recently; he attended an international communist congress in Britain a few years back. He represented the Russian Communist Party there (not the CPRF).
And the main thing is—honestly, Comrade—he used the exact same words I’ve been using for a long time. Their concept of socialism is somewhat abstract; every speaker at the forum said something different—there’s no unified concept, no single clear idea; it’s all very unrefined.
But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham. So, they’re beginning to look for an alternative. Meanwhile, in Russia, the so-called progressive youth are only just starting to soak up the joys of capitalist life, because they didn’t get a chance to enjoy it for 40 years… ))) There’s a lag and some gaps here, too.
It turns out there’s a Marx Library in London; I didn’t know that… ))))
“Marx remains relevant as long as capitalism exists.”
https://youtu.be/am-D1MtZ7Xg
A quick side note: In the USSR, children were made to grow up early and shed their illusions, not the other way around.
As for Hollywood movies—if you strip away the sex, violence, and drugs, the vast majority of them are essentially children’s films.
When I got to know American culture better, I was really surprised to learn that adults read comic books… In the USSR, the closest thing to comics was produced only for children who were just learning to read (before starting school). Personally, I was already reading Pushkin and had memorized several poems before I even started school—though I read comics, too.
Comic books, for crying out loud… )))) At age seven, I read H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. I remember staying up all night in fear after reading The Time Machine.
And I’d borrowed the book from a classmate—a friend who had highly recommended it to me…
But why am I telling you this, Comrade? You were just like that yourself once… )))) You saw it all firsthand!
I’ll join Marx and add this: as long as capitalism exists, education will be crap! Because they aren’t raising intellectuals—they’re raising docile workers for their factories. Intellectuals don’t serve their interests; intellectuals think too much and notice too much… and then they say things that are highly inconvenient for the powers that be…
I’m afraid restructuring won’t be enough.
This is basically what Marx explains in the first volume of The Capital. It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)
And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.
Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.
And I’m still shocked how nobody actually reads books here. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me. Just like you, I was reading from the young age, cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment. And reading really opened up your imagination, I’m incredibly grateful for growing up in USSR and having developed this habit. Reading a good book is still by far the most enjoyable experience for me.
incidentally https://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202512/17/content_WS6941fa8bc6d00ca5f9a08243.html
In Russia, Marx is inseparable from Lenin.
By the way, listen to the story of how Russian officials, together with their Chinese counterparts, are selling a massive Soviet factory to China for scrap metal. It’s a disgrace!
When Platoshkin exposed this criminal scheme, a local official simply blew up the factory to cover his tracks…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qsA-IegBgcg
And once again, capitalism is doing harm—this time, to the advancement of progress.
As I understand it, during the Iron Curtain era, the only information that reached us from the other side was propaganda. And as I’ve come to realize decades later: Soviet propaganda told 90% the truth about the West, whereas Western propaganda told 90% lies about the USSR.
That is why people in the West are only now beginning to understand what socialism actually is—now that advanced Western capitalism has gone into a tailspin. I remember when I first joined Western forums back in 2015; people’s jaws would drop at the stories I told. At first, they didn’t believe me—they thought I was making it all up! I became very popular very quickly on that first Western forum.
Comrade, those are just Western tall tales… )))) Деревянные игрушки, скользкий подоконник, каляска без дна))) I was never a homebody as a child. There was a sports ground in every courtyard; we played soccer there every day—it was impossible to get me to come home. In the winter, they’d flood the area to make an ice rink, and we’d play hockey. When my parents bought me a computer—a ZX Spectrum—I went wild and started skipping school, but even so, there was always a book on my nightstand; I read every day before bed.
Yeah, that’s the ironic part, it turns out that Soviets didn’t really have to make stuff up about the west while the west had to spin tall tales about evils of communism. I do think that it was a failure of Soviet education system that it failed to make people really understand the problem with capitalism. I remember when I was a kid at school, there was no discussion about it, nobody really gave it any thought. But you look in the west, and indoctrination starts very early on. Not just in schools too, it’s in TV shows, comic books, everything. And we see now just how effective this type of indoctrination is.
And yeah, that’s fair, I meant specifically in terms of media entertainment. I did spend a lot of time outside with my friends as a kid. This is, incidentally, another thing you can’t do in the west. My parents would just let me go out by myself when I was 8 years old without a single worry. I’d go out in the morning, come back lunch, and hang out with friends the rest of the day. That’s how safe things were. That sort of thing would be unthinkable in Canada today.
One mistake made in the late USSR was that the public did not take the propaganda seriously.
There were economic problems, yet reports spoke of incredible achievements in socialist construction; in reality, everything was stagnating. The leaders could barely articulate their words… Brezhnev’s final speeches were completely unintelligible; people laughed at him back then just as they laughed at Biden when he rambled. The party leadership had become ossified; the country definitely needed a breath of fresh air at that time. That was precisely what Andropov envisioned when he tasked Ryzhkov and Gorbachev—who were the “young guard” of the party back then, full of fresh thoughts and ideas—with developing the project.
Unfortunately, however, Andropov didn’t live long enough to see it through, and Gorbachev later ruined everything.
By the way, I’ve finally fully grasped the reason why Europe was, until recently, a Garden of Eden.
The EU project—conceived long before the USSR collapsed—was aimed at preventing the emergence of socialism in individual European states. To achieve this, capitalists were forced to spend vast sums out of their own pockets to ensure social well-being for all their citizens. After all, there were very strong socialist movements in France, Italy, and elsewhere at the time. If the people had been living in hardship, they would have elected socialists. Consequently, capitalists were compelled to share with the public—as should happen in a genuine democratic capitalist state.
After the USSR collapsed, there was no longer a need to maintain a high standard of living for the European populace. And so, almost without realizing it, Europe began to slide into the abyss! Capitalists now have a free hand; they can do whatever they please.
And now we come to the main point. It turns out that the collapse of the USSR turned Europe into a garbage dump.
This is a caricature from a Soviet newspaper from 1955. Absolutely nothing has changed.
Yes, it was done intentionally to give the child more time for beneficial activities. It was the right approach for the upbringing of young people.
I remember once being in the countryside with my parents, but I had a soccer match on Sunday morning, so I headed back to town in the evening to be ready for the game the next day. My parents stayed behind in the village. When I arrived in town, I realized I had left my apartment keys back in the village—but I had taken the last bus of the day. It was a 15-kilometer trip, and I was only 13 years old. I lived on the edge of town, so I walked out to the main road—it was 10 p.m.—and managed to catch a ride. Strangers drove me all the way back to the village; even though it wasn’t on their way, they dropped me right at my house and wouldn’t take a single penny. I had a few rubles in my pocket and tried to offer them the money, but they flatly refused.
It never even crossed my mind that someone might try to harm me. And my parents didn’t scold me for coming back to the village in the middle of the night instead of staying over at a friend’s place in town—to them, that sort of thing was perfectly normal.
Even now—before the war—I don’t recall any instances of anyone being abducted; children roam the streets freely. But that’s before the war; I don’t know what will happen afterwards—the world has changed.
We talked about this before, lack of a good selection process that allowed people of low competence to get into positions of power and created a bureaucracy which was largely concerned with preserving itself rather than solving problems was the ultimate cause of the decline. Simply telling people everything is great while you’re unable to produce substantive change they can see tangibly deligitimizes the system. And that’s precisely what we see happening in the west today, and why there’s now public disillusionment with liberal democracy.
And you’re absolutely right that Europe has been propped up to prevent genuine socialism from taking hold. The US didn’t pour billions upon billions into rebuilding western Europe after WW2 out of sheer altruism. They used it as a way to deligitimize communism in the east. Look how great Europeans are living, look how much faster things develop under capitalism. That was the whole narrative. This is a great read on the subject incidentally, confirms everything you said http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/046.html
Yup, that cartoon is ever green, and just as true as the day it was made.
Exactly, there were just not thoughts people had back in USSR. It’s destruction was the biggest crime of the 20th century.
For some reason, I am convinced that Stalin would have sorted the situation out in a couple of years—it would have become 1937 all over again. Of course, for a long time afterward, people would have talked about how cruel Stalin was…
In essence, the situation in 1987 was the same as in 1937, when the Trotskyists crawled out into the open. And Trotskyists are essentially the same as kulaks and petty property owners.
By the way, I’d like to challenge your point about whether, according to Marx, a transition from feudalism to socialism is possible while bypassing the “agonies of capitalism.”
Yes, in his letter to Vera Zasulich dated March 8, 1881, Karl Marx did indeed allow for the possibility that Russia could transition to socialism by relying on its pre-capitalist institutions, thereby bypassing the capitalist stage.
Marx analyzed the socio-economic situation and concluded that the Russian rural commune (specifically the land-holding commune) could serve as a foothold for social renewal.
https://revarchiv.narod.ru/marxeng/tom19/marx_zasulitch.html
Therefore, Stalin acted precisely in accordance with Stalin’s own theory—the NEP in Russia could have been dispensed with! Both Marx and Stalin turned out to be right.
I wonder what Marx would have said about the possibility of building socialism in China. Although I’d probably agree with you: China lacked the necessary foundation to skip over the NEP stage.
China was incredibly backward after the Opium Wars.
Trump has finally stirred into action, wanting to make America the way it was 40 years ago, but it is already too late. While Europe and the US were fleecing their own people and dismantling their industries, China was building. We see the result: there is no turning back.
Back then, they were just pictures to me; I didn’t take them seriously. But when events started unfolding in Ukraine… can you imagine? I immediately remembered those cartoons—and the scales fell from my eyes.
It’s all down to modern capitalist culture—a lifestyle where everyone is chasing profits and all sorts of sordid amusements. Drugs have also had a massive impact; they’ve poisoned all of Europe and the US. Wherever there are drugs, there is perversion. That’s exactly where that flood of “jolly guys” came from—the ones whose rights I’m suddenly supposed to care about. It’s all the drugs, I assure you!
You know yourself that the whole high-society crowd is hooked on cocaine. It’s very fashionable among them.
I think Stalin was largely correct in what he did, the problem was that he left a system which failed to ensure strong leadership going forward. A stable social system can’t depend on a single strong willed individual being in charge and making the right calls. Continuity of competent governance, especially in time of plenty is the hardest problem to solve in my opinion.
And completely agree, China quietly outplayed the west. A lot of it was inherent in western hubris too. They really thought that theirs was the only way to develop, and they figured that China would have to become like them eventually and they’d fold it in. But it didn’t work out that way. Turns out people with 3000 years of continuous civilization under their belt know a thing or two of their won. Also, don’t know if you saw, but American media has now realized DPRK is doing rather well. https://archive.ph/b9zrS
The west really is starting to look like the final days of the Roman empire now. I expect we’ll start seeing provinces getting cut loose next and imploding economically. The UK looks like it might be the first to pop.
oh and just ran across this https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202605/19/WS6a0c0718a310d6866eb4976d.html
Yes, this is something Mao did better than Stalin.
I think the reason is that Stalin was much more powerful than his comrades; everything rested on that, on Stalin’s authority. As soon as Stalin was gone, intra-party squabbling began. Everyone was trying to take over. No one was found who could replace Stalin and continue his work. Stalin’s legacy was simply squandered!
Yes, I recently discussed this with a Marxist friend of ours here.
For me, if the Wall Street Journal writes something like this, there’s something fishy about it.))))
Just recently they wrote that Kim is machine-gunning his opponents… )))
We definitely need to show this to our Chinese comrade… )))
Yes, I see, the trade turnover between the US and China alone is $700 billion.
The US is dearer to China’s heart than Russia… )))
Ten times more.
In fact: It turns out that China is much more dependent on the US than on Russia.
If you recall the economic crisis of 2008, China experienced it more painfully than the US.
This is what distinguishes China from the USSR, because the USSR wasn’t nearly as dependent on the West as China. No one could threaten the USSR with sanctions and the like, because it was all pointless! There was no such dependence on microchips from Taiwan. You have to admit, if China doesn’t have microchips from Taiwan, they won’t be able to produce competitive products. As far as I know, China doesn’t have such technology yet, because Taiwan has American technology.