this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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There's a paraphrased quote by John Steinbeck that I've frequently seen that comes to mind
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
Socialism never took root in America because people who tried to organize got shot.
Apart from some worker cooperatives socialism never took root anywhere.
Humans could never support actual real socialism. We are corrupt dicks and would always figure out a way to exploit it for personal gain. Some form of hybrid system involving some degree of greed(capitalism) will probably always be required.
Love these unironic self reports
When has socialism ever worked?
When it killed fascists
When has it killed fascists without being backed by capitalism?
When has capitalism killed fascists without being backed by socialism, under a government that is the closest America has ever been to being a social democracy?
Especially compared to its preferred modus operandi, supporting the fascists and assassinating union organizers.
The easy answer there is World War Two started 1 September 1939 and the soviets got involved 17 September of that year.
Now I’m sure you’ll answer my question, right?
I don't consider "rat fucking the Spanish Republic, unlike the socialists" and "getting absolutely bodied in Poland and France" to be "killing fascists," but yes, I did, twice now.
I'll give you this though.
It was ultimately a capitalist that killed Hitler.
Kind of rude but thanks for the answer.
What years were Poland and France?
1939-1940.
The period of 1940-1941 saw the monarchists hide on their island, refusing to move troops from their imperial holdings to defend their supposed allies in Yugoslavia, Norway, Denmark, and Greece, except in the form of token expeditionary forces who were completely ineffective.
They, of course, could not actually remove the standing troops from most of their colonial holdings, as it would almost certainly result in a popular revolt, with good cause, as demonstrated by the Bengal Famine of 1943, not to be confused with the similar in purpose and cause Bengal Famine of 1770.
But the capitalists were already involved in the war at that point?
The ones with a hereditary ruling class and an openly genocidal empire did indeed lose every land battle during this time while struggling to defeat a 3rd rate navy in the Mediterranean.
If you want to call that "killing fascists," knock yourself out, just don't ask yourself what you would call the British Empire if it existed today.
We'll also, for the sake of your argument, completely ignore the Second Sino Japanese War that had been going on since 1937.
Didn’t Nazi Germany start off helping the Chinese before they switch sides and fought with the Japanese in that war?
It's very complicated. Germany wanted a three way alliance between Germany, China, and Japan, starting with all parties joining the Anti-Comintern Pact, but Chiang Kai-Shek refused to join a pact with Japan while they held Chinese territory from the First Sino Japanese War.
The Nazis tried to modernize the KMT forces so they could chase Mao's tattered and at the time thoroughly spanked army into their mountain hideouts, but the KMT was, quite frankly, a clusterfuck of corrupt nepotism hires so it didn't really work out.
The KMT losing Nanjing pretty much immediately following the outbreak of war firmly ended any further cooperation, as Germany's goal was gaining access to resources and it seemed like Japan would get them all in short order anyways.
However, Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao, and most of their allied warlords, set aside their differences to try and repel the Japanese invasion, and rolled most of their armies into the NRA, which funnily enough was originally organized with Soviet aid in the 1920s to help defeat the leftover Qing warlords, and were able to stall out the Japanese in the interior.
It was still an absolute clusterfuck, and China in total lost over 22 million citizens to combat, famine, and outright genocide from the IJA, while inflicting 2.5+ million Japanese casualties (the majority of the losses Japan suffered in WW2 btw), but at least initially the KMT and Communist forces cooperated, with the KMT receiving aid from America and the Maoists receiving aid from the Soviets.
Man that’s a lot of words to say ‘yes the Chinese were backed by capitalists.’
Yes, backed by capitalists and socialists, against capitalists.
From 1937-1945.
With the rampant corruption and incompetence from the KMT causing them to lose soldiers at a 5 to 1 ratio against the Japanese, in home territory, despite having a somewhat modern army three times the size of Japan's.
This was my point in case you forgot.
1: The various leftist resistance groups in occupied territories
2: The Catalonian anarchists and Spanish Republic after the liberals abandoned it.
3: The Maoists after the alliance with the KMT broke down
Since you "forgot."
And that's just the WW2 era. Afterwards, there was nearly a century of rat fucking "liberals" supporting fascists in South America, Vietnam, and Korea, while socialists fought them.
But, hey at least one of those kind of worked out, right?
Hum I would disagree.
First of all worker coops are pretty much everywhere. I could go to college for free and have healthcare because socialists who organized large scale strikes (they sometime then proceed to get shot by operation gladio). And then, quite a lot of country still pretend to be socialists. Oftentime with very real mutualities who actually helps people.
I hate homework too, but the post and title really got me amped to say:
Think back to what your teachers taught. Maybe not 100% universal, but teachers #1 job is to get you to question. Why do most people end up reading Steinbeck? Mice and men, Huck Finn, Gatsby maybe. Frigging to kill a mocking bird pushed on them by a high school teacher. They got yelled at for letting kids read Harry Potter.
The good ones pushed you to be better and realize self worth. Hell, in the US, teachers for a decade have been putting up with parents that are so. pissed. off. because your math is too hard for them (math is math!!). And the bullshit "all I learned was mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!" Science is blasphemy at its finest. You weren't supposed to memorize content, nobody remembers the content from middle school. You remember the processes. Here's how to explore the unknown.
If this wasn't your experience, I'm sorry. There's more but this is too long now
Schooling in the 80s was still very much training us to sit still and follow the routine. Because we were all going to be happy worker bees for a living. And our classes had 30+ kids and one teacher for most of elementary school.
I’m not sure it has really changed much in most of America, especially since standardized testing became the norm and led to “teaching to the test” in many classroooms. I have since realized I had a couple teachers along the way who encouraged questioning your preconceived notions, 7 and 8 grade jr high science teachers specifically, and a metal shop teacher who they eliminated the year I would have taken it in exchange for a computer based “synergy” class.
This was pretty much my answer to a German expat who candidly asked: "WTF is up with the schools here?" I angrily answered in line with the above.
GP is correct in that school should be about learning how to learn and think critically. And there are elements of that still in play, but it's not the focus, and it's not evenly distributed.
Teachers are still in and ruled over by the system. Still waiting for a better way to feed information to (now 40 per teacher) middle school kids. I dunno if you've asked any teachers, but they DESPISE standardized testing and having 40 kids and zero parent support. They don't control any of that.
~~(The Adventures of) Huckleberry Finn was Samuel Clemons, AKA Mark Twain, and is the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.~~
NM just realized that none of the later books you listed were Steinbeck