Read/watch these in order:
Edit: I love the instantaneous downvote, fast enough that I know they didn't properly go through a single resource.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2022
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Based on only the titles, the 3rd and 4th are the only ones that actually approach the given question. I think that's why the comment isn't well-received. Are the others really necessary, or optional additional reading/watching? The first just makes a horrible clickbait impression from the dumb mocking thumbnail and bragging title, it feels like self-assurance rather than convincing an audience. I don't think it's an effective way to introduce skeptical people.
The reason I'm saying only the titles is, quite frankly, I'm not motivated to go through that list if I'm the OP asking a question. I have limited time.
Are the others really necessary, or optional additional reading/watching?
The main question was why is Marxism still a thing. I don't see why posting information about why socialism/Marxism is preferred by many is unnecessary. You also need to know the cause of social problems under capitalism and how socialism would address them before tackling real world examples. Otherwise it's like explaining why food that sit too long in the pan burns to someone that doesn't know how heat works.
The first just makes a horrible clickbait impression from the dumb mocking thumbnail and bragging title, it feels like self-assurance rather than convincing an audience.
If you actually watched it, it's a detailed overview and defense of a published and peer reviewed paper. Therefore, scientific.
The reason I’m saying only the titles is, quite frankly, I’m not motivated to go through that list if I’m the OP asking a question. I have limited time.
Surprise surprise, the issue of capitalism vs socialism is extremely vast. It affects every single part of human life and society. People spend their entire lives researching it. So even the most basic explanation is bound to be kind of long.
If you're serious about getting an answer to your questions, you need to spend time doing research. There is absolutely no way to trim down an answer to "why Marxism" into anything resembling bite sized. In the same sense of you can't teach the theory of relativity in five minutes, you can't teach the political theory of capitalism vs socialism in five minutes either.
Finally, a short answer leaves little to no room for supporting evidence or citations. I feel that if I had posted something like that, you'd be (rightfully) complaining that I just made claims and none of them are backed up.
If you actually watched it,
And that's the problem: I didn't want to watch it. And I agree with it.
There's more to rhetoric and convincing people than merely being correct and well-cited. Those are important, and I love those, but understanding your audience is critical if you want them to even begin reading, let alone continue.
I personally believe that a good approach is to post the shorter material that directly answers their written arguments in the body of the post (like the "USSR failed" and "mass murderer" points) and then say the rest, like "to understand the other reasons why people support Marxism, see these:".
There is absolutely no way to trim down an answer to “why Marxism” into anything resembling bite sized.
The image you posted in https://lemmy.ml/post/218208/comment/150132 gives an excellent counter-argument to this claim.
It doesn't go into depth, it leaves that for later now that you have their interest. You've provided the introduction at the beginning of the book, a quick snippet of the benefits the USSR brought to its people and the impacts of taking it away. They didn't need to read Capital Vol. 1-3 to understand that 0% unemployment was achieved. And now that they see that, you have their interest, and your links come into play with a more in-depth explanation of why Marxism was responsible for this and able to help achieve it.
And that’s the problem: I didn’t want to watch it. And I agree with it.
I do get what you mean, so point taken there, even though I still believe in consuming a piece of media in its entirety before coming to a conclusion.
A huge part of this problem I think is also the culture surrounding informative pieces in general. I highly doubt "a review and defense of X paper on the economic effectiveness of socialism" will get even a fraction of the views. It's so bad that even actual academic papers are making things like "visual abstracts" (infographics) and stuff because otherwise people, including other researchers don't get interested in reading it. Apparently reading a one-paragraph text-only abstract is too much to ask now.
The image you posted in https://lemmy.ml/post/218208/comment/150132 gives an excellent counter-argument to this claim.
That post was also downvoted to hell, even more than the "link dump". I suspect because people just assumed that it's all BS even though sources are found at the bottom. I mention this because I see this happen every time, particularly on places like Reddit. Something like this:
[Thesis of claim that goes against the grain] [excellent expansion of the comment with reputable citations]
-100 points
Okay paid shill.
10000000 points
This is why I'm hesitant to use this format.
Yeah, it's a terrible thing how marketing techniques have found their way into research, especially when they should be the most motivated to tolerate dryiness.
That post was also downvoted to hell
+12 / -4 isn't really down, but yes you're right that the 'link dump' is being better received. Point taken, I was a bit quick to bite.
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Why not point to Cuba? Despite 75 years of brutal sanctions, Cuba has a more equitable education and healthcare system than the USA.
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Citation needed? They can be found here as well as more context and info: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/a404a8bb9dc0cb717c66e500a000c1ab26b39f51/capitalism_doesnt_work.md
My favorite trope is people getting upset when you present them with basic facts that don't fit the narrative they've become attached to.
I don't usually get worked up about downvotes, either here or on Reddit, but if someone is presenting researched, reasonable, cited points in a debate, either refute their claims head on or leave them alone! Downvoting while saying nothing is a sign that you either didn't read their points at all or have nothing to say against it.
"You're wrong", "you're stupid", and "you're a paid communist/Chinese/whatever shill" are not valid arguments. As they say in elementary school: "How do you know?" and "Show your work."
Completely agree, people aren't downvoting some opinion they disagree with. They just don't like the facts they're being presented.
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Let's not sugar coat the Soviet Union, though. While it had its upsides, it was riddled with corruption and brutally oppressive towards its own people. Dissent that it is considered healthy in the West was grounds for imprisonment there. This is not some fiction cooked up by the West, but a reality acknowledged by modern Russia itself (with some irony, given the sanitized political/media landscape).
We can discuss the validity of those claims all day, but I think the fact that the majority of people who lived through the USSR want it back, and think things have gotten worse after the transition of capitalism speaks volumes.
Source on the claim that most people from those countries want it back?
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US today has a higher incarceration rate than USSR did under Stalin, but do go on.
US has a higher incarceration rate then any developed country. And...most of those jailed are poor and committed non violent crimes..just to add to your statement.
US basically legalized slavery. This is the same logic as legalizing bribes in form of lobbying and then claiming that you have low corruption.
Yeah, and that's awful, but US prisons aren't full of political prisoners.
I agree, but that doesn't refute this answer in the context of the original question.
Stalin's reign (and other USSR leaders) objectively had many benefits to the people, despite its flaws, and the switch to a capitalist economy afterward has resulted in massive issues. Even thought that's only one interpretation of Marxism ("Marxist-Leninism"), that enough is a reason for many people to support it.
Well that's the thing, I'm not sure blaming it all on capitalism is appropriate. Also, many of the claims are incorrect or misleading.
- Life expectancy: this article traces the drop in life expectancy to before the collapse, and speculates that it was related to anti-alcohol abuse campaigns. The claim about 1991 is also a temporary one, since they have recovered life expectancy numbers.
- Calories: This article seems to apply here. The metrics didn't look at food consumed, but rather production, imports, and exports. There's a shadow factor that comes into play. The Soviet Union had more spoilage than the US due to inferior storage facilities, so many of those calories went to waste instead of to waist. It's also a potatoes-to-beef comparison: the Soviet diet was much heavier in potatoes and grains, while the US could afford to raise cattle.
- Nazi Germany: I don't want to diminish the losses suffered by the people of the Soviet Union during WW2, but to credit this contribution to communism ignores something incredibly important: the Lend-Lease Act. This underpinned much of the industrial capacity behind WW2, especially in the European theater where the US had limited presence. And while Soviet Russia played an outsized role, to say it "save the world from Nazi Germany" is nearly as bad as those who focus on the US to the exclusion of other countries.
- Ended racial inequality: This is just not even wrong. There was significant state enforced mistreatment of many ethnic minorities, particularly under Stalin but extending to after his death.
- Ended gender inequality: While history doesn't quite match this claim, they did make very significant strides towards gender equality.
- zero homelessness: It was incomplete, and done in the clumsiest way possible. People were required to have a house, and just kinda shoveled into housing. Moving was made difficult by the requirement that citizens find a person to swap with. House hunting sucks when you're just trying to find the right house. Now imagine that you also have to find a person who wants your house, and the Internet isn't a thing yet.
This source does a direct rebuttal of three points from a green text version of this image. This image does not contain one of the claims, but the other two are:
- Second fastest growing economy of 20th century (after Japan): Sounds pretty good, right? The problem is that the statistics were carefully manipulated. They picked a point in time where the Soviet Union was making rapid advancements by simply adopting technology invented by those dirty capitalists, often with the help of those capitalists. Growth slowed after that, but the statistics cut off in the 70's when the growth slowed but far before the USSR dissolved.
- zero unemployment: This one uses funny math. The actual numbers are more or less in line with the US. The USSR also avoided publishing any reliable figures.
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I was wondering why Marxism was still a thing
Capitalism is still a thing, and continues to hurt people. Marx had insightful critiques of Capitalism.
this placed seemed to be filled with Marxists. So, why?
The site was built by communists
Do today’s Marxists think that USSR did something wrong?
Most do, but some are insane and will defend literally anything in the name of communism.
I would really have to try hard to find a community that would admire Hitler but apparently admiring Stalin, another mass murder seems to be perfectly fine!
Yes, it is abhorrent, but in reality there are plenty of people who admire Hitler too. You might just not be familiar with those communities.
To answer your question broadly, Marxism is mainly a critique of capitalism, and Marx wrote very little about the specifics of how its replacement should function. So I don't think it is reasonable to blame the horrors of Stalin on Marxism. Marx was pro-democracy and pro-freedom, not pro-totalitarianism.
A more accurate term for what you are describing might be Marxism-Leninism, which was the ideology of the USSR. People abbreviate it to ML.
Stalin was imperfect and made mistakes, but I agree with Deng that he was 70% right and 30% wrong which is worlds better than any liberal democratic leaders in the entire history of the imperial core.
Didn’t the fall of USSR teach us anything?
Of course it teaches us things, but why do you think that the fall of the USSR implies a critical failure of Marxism altogether? Many capitalist countries have fallen, does that alone mean capitalism was a failure and shouldn't be a thing?
will they do anything different than the dictators of the soviet union?
They likely would not only choose to act differently based on lessons learned, but they would have to. Each country is in different conditions. The USSR was formed at the end of WWI from a monarchy and had its capital city invaded in WWII, lost approximately 20-25 million people in the war, and later faced decades of antagonism from Europe and the world nuclear superpower USA (who were almost untouched by WWII) through the Cold War, among a myriad of other rather unique factors.
My point being, the way they acted and decisions they made weren't some universally applicable comparison. They had a unique country, unique culture, a unique set of enemies and a unique set of leaders to approach a different set of challenges. There are lessons to be learnt that can be applied to other places. China's communist party has to act differently based on their challenges and developed their own application of Marxist ideas, North Korea's Juche ideology has a different interpretation based on their situation, etc..
Another point to mention is that the USSR, for much of its existence, adopted the ideology of Marxism-Leninism (which was actually developed by Stalin, not Lenin, based on his understanding of orthodox Marxism and of Leninism). So there are likely to be issues with Marxism-Leninism which aren't inherent in Marxism.
Also, some here seem to admire Stalin
Well, he did lead the country that crushed the Nazi invasion of Europe, helped bring a war-torn nation into a world superpower, and other benefits to much of the citizens there, considering what the country was like before.
I personally don't admire Stalin, there were lots of things he did that I think were horrible. However, his reign did bring many benefits that even former USSR citizens admire.
I would really have to try hard to find a community that would admire Hitler
I can find 10 in 2 minutes. They certainly exist, it's just that most mainstream platforms kick off the communities that admire him, because they tend to be edgelords, obnoxiously racist people who make other users uncomfortable, or merely a reputational risk that hurts a company's profits.
edit: grammar
They likely would not only choose to act differently based on lessons learned, but they would have to.
Why? Why would they have to act differently? What would force this to be so? What if, for instance, they considered that the projected failure of their state 100 years after the founding to just be the price of utopia, and did everything the same way? What if they considered it a fluke, some extremely slight random chance that toppled their government? Like, I dunno, the misspoken utterings of a dumbass East German propaganda minister who should have kept his mouth shut or better yet "lost his job" a year prior?
There's no reason to suppose they'd have to do things differently. It might even be unreasonable to think they would, given human nature and our propensity for trying the same thing over and over, hoping that it will work "this time".
Why would they have to act differently? What would force this to be so?
For one, material conditions. They don't have the same resources, the same society, the same enemies, the same trade options, the same existing infrastructure, the same social expectations, etc.. 1917 Russia is not the same as 2022 Portugal, not even close. In fact, it can be argued that if they did act the same, it would violate Marxism, "a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation". It's not some static formula.
What if, for instance, they considered that the projected failure of their state 100 years after the founding to just be the price of utopia, and did everything the same way? What if they considered it a fluke, some extremely slight random chance that toppled their government?
Then they'd be laughed at, and hopefully ignored by any organization that takes itself seriously. There are people like that you can find online, and I don't see them getting popular in organizations or their online communities.
It might even be unreasonable to think they would
Absolutely not. Look at how capitalism has changed since its inception. Even today there are clearly distinct forms, such as comparing the Nordic Model to USA's current economy. They clearly didn't just do the same thing. They had different conditions, difference social values, different pressures from rival economies, different capacity for invading other countries, all which visibly influence how their economic systems and social governance developed.
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Honest question...did USSR fail because communism is bad...or did a very influential, wealthy and powerful country go out of it's way to make sure the USSR failed and then say..."look, it didn't work for them!" Or did it fail because the USSR lost its way, or, just maybe if failed due to a combination of both.
Food for thought.
I think it's more than just "a [...] country", it was most of Europe as well as the USA!
And it might be a good time to mention things like United States involvement in regime change (Wikpedia). It's not an isolated issue, it's a strategy.
or did a very influential, wealthy and powerful country go out of it’s way to make sure the USSR failed and then say…“look, it didn’t work for them!”
I get what you're saying, but the US was mostly a geopolitically irrelevant country before WW2 (which was the event that really put them on the world stage), and by then the USSR had already existed for more than two decades, with little positive results to show. That was also the era of Holodomor and other such atrocities perpetrated by Stalin. You may argue that Stalin was not a true communist and more of a thinly veiled imperialist (and psychopath), and I agree, but many modern communists won't agree with that sentiment and will still defend Stalin's actions.
Did you just say USSR had little positive results to show in its first two decades?
I believe so, am I wrong? Do note that I'm talking about results for the people themselves, I understand that the country industrialized fairly efficiently in the 20's, but at the expense of a lot of suffering for minority groups mostly (Russians were the ones really favored, making it sort of an elitist/pseudo-fascist regime in a sense) and with little to show in terms of wealth distribution for the proletariat, which is, in essence, the goal of communism, is it not? An elite class centered around Stalin still prevailed and retained a lot of wealth, they merely traded the imperial elite for a new class of elites...
Yes, you are very deeply wrong. You can read about some of the immediate improvements in quality of life and life expectancy as a result of the revolution here. Claiming that Russia traded an imperial elite for another class of elites shows your lack of knowledge of the subject. One of the direct results of the revolution was that means of production were put towards the needs of the majority, and this is what resulted in the improvements I list in the link above.
You do raise some interesting points. I'll admit I do have some bias (same as most westerners, probably) towards conflating Russia/Eastern Europe's current situation with being the result of communism directly when it's more likely that it's a result of a communist country not being able to directly adopt a capitalist system without turmoil.
I am still skeptical of USSR's regime in the matter of individual freedoms (which Karl Marx did not want to infringe on, distinguishing between private property and personal property AFAIK) and human rights, which I greatly value, but I'll admit I was wrong regarding scientific/industrial/societal progress, even under Stalin.
The thing to keep in mind is that communist states have never been allowed to develop peacefully. Every communist and socialist experiment has been under threat from the global capitalist system that has far greater resources available to it. This creates a selection bias where only militant regimes survive because other ones are simply destroyed as was seen in Chile. Parenti has a great article discussing this that I recommend reading.
Ah yes, totally, the Chilean socialist regime falling due to US interference was a tragedy and a butchery, we can both agree on that.
Note that I do respect Lenin's ideals somewhat, even though he never lived long enough to put them into practice and I do respect some policies enacted by later communist leaders, such as Khrushchev's housing plans, it's Stalin that I take offense to, mostly. And while you might argue that later leaders had their wings "cut" by the Cold War and US interference, I don't think you can really make that argument for pre-WW2/Stalin-era USSR.
I don't see how you wouldn't be able to make that argument for pre-WW2 period. This was the most turbulent time when the revolution just happened, and western capitalist nations invaded Russia in 1918 to try and run a counter revolution. Russia was a backwards agrarian society that was far behind the west technologically. Stalin transformed it into an industrial powerhouse making an equivalent of a century of progress under capitalism in the west. This progress and industrialization is what allowed USSR to stand up to the nazi invasion.
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Frankly, this is an absurd line of argument. Communists in Russia tried doing something that's never ever been done before, and they didn't get it perfect the first time around. Saying that we shouldn't keep trying seems a little odd to me.
USSR collapse doesn't say anything about validity of Marxism. Capitalist states collapse all the time, and states with every type of government known to man have collapsed over time.
What needs to be asked is whether USSR worked for the people who lived there when it was around, and how that compares to the alternatives. USSR did quite well in that regard by ensuring everyone had food, housing, education, healthcare, and work. Plenty of research on USSR shows that it did a good job ensuring that needs of the majority were met. Some details here for those interested.
Today, China is a state governed by the Communist party where Marxism-Leninism is the official state ideology. 87.6% of young Chinese identify with Marxism, and the party has 95 million members. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
China does massive investments in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century and built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet. Chinese system also results in high social mobility unlike western capitalist alternatives.
Finally, plenty of people in the west admire Churchill who is responsible for genocide on a scale of the holocaust in India. So, not sure how people admiring Stalin is any different from that. US is also responsible for far greater atrocities than Stalin. The country is literally built on genocide with US settlers doing to the native population of North America precisely what Hitler aimed to do. In fact, nazis were directly inspired by US race laws, but even they found them to be too extreme initially:
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First of all. Do you know anything of Marxism, like, read any actual theory or something explained by Marxists beyond your liberal surroundings where a huge propagandistic war has been happening against anything that threats plutocracy since before WWII?
Do you know the history about how and why did the USSR was dismantled, by whom and how many people was against its dissolution?
Do you also are conscious that the USSR weren't the only socialist countries, and that we still have Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, China, etc?
Considering the events in Ukraine, were people are cheering Azov Batalion and the pre-/WWII figure of Bandera without any remorse nor shame... Do you really think that it's the case were Hitler is worse seen than Stalin?
And regarding Stalin. Don't you know about what Operation Mockingbird and Cointelpro is? And that the data of Stalin killing millions started directly with the hands of Goebbles?
This are just small tips. I don't want you to simply say something, but to you to practice honesty, without any fear, with your own critical thinking, for different markplaces so you can maybe understand why a group of "almost" history-fanatics are into an apparent "bad" ideology.
Also, there's the Lemmygrad forum of "communism101" if you want to aks directly, tho.
But I think that what I say is enough to start.
If you want, I can give you a link towards those alleged atrocities made by socialists.
Do you really think that it’s the case were Hitler is worse seen than Stalin?
Errrrrrr yes. Except in neo-nazi circles, Hitler is the devil whereas Stalin is just seen as a dictator like any other. For example, most people who criticize Stalin in the west have no clue about the anti-muslim genocides committed in the USSR, or that "leftist" was a term coined by Lenin for actual communists fighting against his dictatorship... and that's a shame especially in a day and age where "islamo-leftist" (at least in France) is a frequent slur just like "judeo-bolshevik" was in the 1930/40s.
We have so much to deconstruct and learn to understand oppression in its many forms.
Stalin literally re-legalized religion, including Islam, and religions are ideologies not fucking people, or are you going to say that people have their religion ingrained in their blood or some other orientalist shit?
And no, Lenin talked about how anticommunist leftism was like an infantile disorder because how contradictory is.
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why are you ideologically inept "leftists" so bad at dialectical materialism?
Thanks for a nice ad-hominem attack showing you have nothing interesting to contribute to the debate
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Very good question! It's important to understand that materialist analysis (although it's evolved over time since being formalized by Marx) is still very important for social struggles: marxian economy is what's being taught to economists for them to understand how to maximize "surplus value" (i.e. better exploit workers). There's also been serious analysis of non-reproductive work (house chores, conversational work, etc) from feminist circles.
Also, marxism is not a unified doctrine. Marxism-leninism, maoism and stalinism (among others) are authoritarian ideologies which don't accept dissent. But Marx himself had some anti-authoritarian critiques later in his life, and many people who identify as marxists don't side (especially not uncritically) with authoritarian regimes.
Didn’t the fall of USSR teach us anything? Do today’s Marxists think that USSR did something wrong?
hell yes. especially since the collapse of the USSR, anti-authoritarian marxism (libertarian communism) is on the rise, and except on niche internet forums like Lemmy it's hard to find Lenin/Stalin apologists in real-world struggles.
Don't hesitate if you have more detailed questions. I could also ask some marxist comrades for some good resources if you like.
"authoritarian" please. Can you read Engels "About authoritarianism"?
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Literally all major communist movements in the third world are marxist leninist and are positive about stalin
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