My problem with certain Socialists (regarding BadMouseProductions, TheFinnishBolshevik, etc.)
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
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I do realize socialism is used as a catch-all term but in this video I am specifically targeting Western Marxists, who I find inconsistent in their thinking and devout so much energy to things that make their ideology unpopular. As you all know I am not a communist but I am willing to debate people in a rational way. Some may highlight some inconsistencies in my own thinking, but before you comment, let me address this. I am arguing that Marxists are selective in picking which regimes they legitimize based on the amount of contemporary evidence they deem worthy. The reason many don't criticize the Soviet Union is because journalistic ventures were much more restricted than in places like in Venezuela, and obviously the advent of new technologies has made it much harder to limit the movement of information. That being said, there is Soviet archival information, interviews, and statistical inconsistencies that bring to light some of the more illiberal moments of the regime. I just think the narrative is very prone to confirmation bias or subjectivity and I truly think this stems from the fact that Marxist tried branding itself as scientific- albeit being a political theory and an economic theory.
My arguments go this way:
- Marxists in the West tend to be selective in which regimes they consider Marxist.
- Marxists in the West try too hard to legitimize everything about Marxist regimes (Mao, Stalin, etc).
- Marxists in the West apply an 'indirect consequence' approach to analyzing other regimes, however they do not apply the same thinking to Marxist regimes. (For example, alcoholism and housing shortages did exist in the Soviet Union)
These are very generalized points of course, but I couldn't help but to post this because I noticed that socialists from former Yugoslavia seem to have a much more honest and objective approach. This could be because of the Tito-Stalin split however China also split with the Soviets in 1960's, so I don't think that warrants the discrediting of their perspective.
I hope you all take this as an active and engaging debate, rather than slander. I am simply voicing something that has bothered me a little. Please feel free to comment your thoughts.
Also, I don't consider myself socialist as I do not buy into the historically materialist analysis of history, however I do believe in a combination of a free market with integral welfare structures.
[Sources]
www.radio.cz/e...
My various books...
The rise and fall of the Soviet Union by Richard Sakwa (Pravda)
www.spiegel.de/...
www.telegraph.... (I don't really like the Telegraph which is why I varied my sources)
The rest is simply my gathered knowledge from doing history videos
[Images]
commons.wikime...
It's funny that you called the Finnish Bolshevik a meme when this is liberal academic memeing at its finest
liberal academic meming lol okay. Go back to your Stalinist fanboy.
Blitz Of The Reich if you can debunk Finn bols work on the Moscow trials etc please step forward. Or fuck off and sit in a corner somewhere being a bland milquetoast political lightweight
@@BlitzOfTheReich but he has evidence that stalin is innocent
@@JohnKobaRuddy you are right
@@BlitzOfTheReich so you are Socialist?
i never seen someone debunk the finnish bolshevik...and no, we ML do not idealize those regimes,but we wont stand for lies about them,like the holomodor being a man made famine or everyone in the moscow trials being innocent or uprisings in the warsaw pact being democratic and pacifist
💪
Nehuen Carbonel Exactly.
I agree with not tolerating the lies but there are no man made famines.
"Regimes"
@@laurioho2041 Bengali Famine
Everything you said in this video can be equally applied to capitalists who talk endlessly about “corporate” or “crony” capitalism. The fact is that the ussr was a socialist country that was formed under a situation of literally constant attack and existential threat by capitalism which started with much much more in terms of power and resources. You have an issue not with how marxists define Marxism but with the contextual analysis people apply to what Marxism is or is not. There is no singular example of a perfect socialist development model because all are formed under specific circumstances. So people can argue about whether the ussr was socialist or not exactly but we can definitely say major elements of their economies were indeed socialist. You make the assumption that everyone isn’t writes off Stalin without any kind of contextual or historical analysis. If you have a problem with marxists then do a discussion video with them. If you had the balls to actual carefully study Marxism you’d probably become a Marxist the biggest obstacle is just misinformation misunderstanding and distortion of Marxist ideas
Sure things can be applied to Capitalism but the problem is that some Socialists pin indirect consequences on Capitalism and don't do the same to Socialist regimes, because they seem to view Capitalism as some primordial entity that exists everywhere. It so flawed. I am not arguing about which regime is socialist and which is not. I am arguing that people need to stop legitimizing every single regime that is part of a certain ideology.
' If you have a problem with marxists then do a discussion video with them. If you had the balls to actual carefully study Marxism you’d probably become a Marxist the biggest obstacle is just misinformation misunderstanding and distortion of Marxist ideas'
Oh please. Coming from the high horse acting like I am clueless. I spend much of my time reading on the Marxist philosophy and Lenin's writings. I am sorry to tell you but I do not believe in it and do not subscribe to it. That doesn't mean I have some lack of consciousness. See this is the problem with many Marxists, you guys think you have it completely figured out and that everyone else is wholly ignorant of real life.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Capitalism is the dominant system in the world and has been so for a while. It absolutely influences and affects everything in the socio-economico-political sphere, especially movements which seek to abolish it. What are you on about?
@@Varkhal218 How can you quantify capitalism? My problem with your analysis is that it ignores the socio-political, weather, geography, and so many other things.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Please clarify.
@@BlitzOfTheReich You have very clearly not spent much of your time reading Marx, and especially Lenin. They're not acting like they have "everything figured out" lmao. You are just obviously talking out of your ass a lot. "I've read countless books" my booty lol, you can't even distinguish between ML(M) and a "left" anti communist (aka the "radical left" people saying those "evil authoritarian dictatorships", like the USSR, PRC, Cuba, so on and so forth, weren't real socialism). No investigation, no right to speak.
Imo, Blackshirts and Reds by Parenti would be great for you to read (along with everyone!). It's very easy to read, and short.
Then: Wage, Labour, and Capital - Marx, On Authority - Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Engels, Dialectical and Historical Materialism - Stalin, Lenin's big 5, Settlers - Sakai. And research any historical context that you don't fully understand while reading. You read that shit, and come back and do a critique of this video, and let's see what's changed
Also: www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/
I'm sorry for being so snarky, but this video is fraught with inaccuracies and run-of-the-mill capitalist propaganda
You can apply the same arguments to capitalism.
"Marxists in the West tend to be selective in which regimes they consider Marxist." --Blitz Of The Reich
- Capitalists in the West tend to be selective about what they consider Capitalist. If it doesn't suit their narrative then it is corporatism...
"Marxists in the West try too hard to legitimize everything about Marxist regimes (Mao, Stalin, etc)." --Blitz Of The Reich
- Capitalists in the West try too hard to legitimize everything about Capitalism and the free market. They argue for less restrictions + less taxes but when a crash happens, the standard response is still that we need more free markets. Another thing is that the definition of a free market also change as well. Sometimes the free market is defined as a large group of producers / businesses that are constantly competing , but I have also debated free market advocates that claimed that monopolies where a good thing since the free market let them exist... Seriously... WTF!!!
And let's not forget how capitalism supports global wars and shit. But I guess that is just the symptoms of corporatism (not true capitalism).
"- Marxists in the West apply an 'indirect consequence' approach to analyzing other regimes, however they do not apply the same thinking to Marxist regimes."
--Blitz Of The Reich
This is to some extend a fair point. However. There are also other variables to think about. For one: The basic idears of Marxism, Capitalism and socialism are very different. Marxism and socialism in their basic form is trying to distribute resources more equally. While value in Capitalism is up for graps for any business who is willing to work for it using every tactik available. So the end goal of capitalism is to form a global monopoly, thereby maximizing profits. The end goal of Marxism / socialsm on the other hand is for resources to be distributed equally on a global scale.
Simply put:
- The indirect consequence of capitalism is that value will be collected and controlled by a small group (which is essentially a form of neo-feudalism).
- The indirect consequence of socialism / marxism is that resources will get distributed more equally and that workers / society control and own the means of production (so a more democratic and equal society / workforce).
Also:
Let's not forget that Russia and China where behind on a bunch of varables, they where in wars + the US was pretty isolated from the things that happend in Europe and Asia
The big problem of your argument is that the basic idea of "redistribution" can't greate a fraction of the overall wealth capitalism creates for everyone, even if there's a small group with a lot of power. There's also power groups on real socialism, on the other hand.
@@MrAlepedroza Not true my dear friend,
You see Marxism's basic idea is to redistribute the wealth by creating a fairer environment for the
Workers. It heavily emphasises on the stolen value of labour by the capitalist class, I guess he forgot to mention. The value of labour which is stolen from the workers.....which is called profit. It does not exempt from taking profit for the collective benefit of all the workers of the production unit and redistribution of the profit according to the value of their labour.. The equality comes when the specialisation of the lower end jobs like carpenters becomes nearly equal to engineers by introducing better tech, then they almost have the same pay because due to specialisation the quality of work that they have done. Now, another major factor is labour time, and this also affects pay, ie labour time being directly proportional to pay. So socialism, tries increase the quality of work done by all fields to a higher and equal level this similarity in pay. However this is not all, a person is payed for the quality and quantity of his/her work done but is payed the original value of his labour.
You might ask, then what does the distributer, advertiser, etc. Get from this? Their fair share of their work, based on labour time , quality and quantity is paid.
The problems comes with capitalists is not taking their fair share, but making a lot more money (ie value of the labour of the worker which is stolen).
Then under socialism, there exists something called as the "democracy at the work place", an example would be a worker cooperative. Real life example (Amul)
I would like to know your opinion, dear sir.
@@MrAlepedroza
The capitalist system can't even create jobs ffs...
late stage capitalism is not neo-feudalism.
@@MrAlepedroza
"The big problem of your argument is that the basic idea of "redistribution" can't greate a fraction of the overall wealth capitalism creates for everyone" - Jesus fucking Christ, that's the most stupid argument I've heard this evening.
>qualifications
>involvement with the Israeli government
okay buddy...
for the sake of transparency, I do not lie to my viewers.
Blitz Of The Reich I was just kidding around lol
I figured. :-)
¡Viva la Revolución y el Che! ¡Viva el socialismo! ¡Yo soy Fidel! 🇨🇺☭
So it's not that your against Socialism, just every time that it's been put into practice? I and Finnish Bolsheivk both have many crits of the USSR, PRC, DPRK and many more but to some degree at least at times do sensear socialist projects not deserve support and criticism?
Also you criticise that C person is the the West i:é the imperialist core, well it would make th criticism that you would tear down every socialist project while being a socialist because you want this imperialist privilege to continue.
Poverty is not an indirect effect of capitalism.
Equating socialism and fascism. lol
I think some of your criticisms are correct, especially towards western self identified socialists.
The problem with abstract legitimizing/justifying is that people think its some kind of necessity or something that is relevant when its not. Basically such kind of talk can be summarized to people arguing that something isnt X because its abstractly bad or good, where X is whatever stands for abstract good and evil in their ideologies (free market, socialism, reforms, etc). This is why i dont follow any ideologies and i am trying to stop people from perceiving marxism/leninism as ideology.
From genuine marxist perspective things shouldnt be supported or opposed because they can be described as good/bad, for example genuine marxist would support capitalism in cases when its progressive, in fact Marx himself supported capitalist changes in those places that feudalism and slavery still existed, even though he himself described many characteristics of capitalism that can be called immoral. After all, the whole reason why capitalism will be replaced with socialism is not because its worse or better, not because people will see how its bad and the alternative is good in abstract sense, and not because few intellectuals will come up with a better idea. This is a mechanistic view which is not marxist.
Capitalism will change to socialism due to its internal class contradictions and inability to sustain itself. If you look at this reason you wont see any "good" or "bad", this is just a materialism where nothing is good or bad, it just happens due to material conditions. Unless you will religiously interpret proletarians as inherently good people and capitalists as inherently bad, but thats not marxism.
An example of such conflict between idealist and materialist view can be primitive communism and slavery. Marxist would say that slavery is a progressive change from primitive society, even though it brings massive inequality and slavery is in general percieved as highly immoral. Thats because slavery allows society to develop further and eventually become better (in terms of living standarts, material production and etc) than both, slavery and primitive communism. Where different idealists would probably argue with each other if primitive communism was better because it had equality and no ownership of human by human or if slavery was better because of all art and culture that was allowed to exist, or something similar.
Something similar can be said about historical socialist states. Consequences of contradictions of capitalism (states of proletarian dictatorship and socialism) arent caused or determined by any abstract good/evil, which is why they dont have any "responsibility" to follow abstract ideal of good in order to be justified to be dotp or socialism. Proletarian state can be bureacratic, have high division between its population on physical workers and mental; can sometimes be ruthless even towards part of its ruling proletarian class (the same way bourgeois or feudal states can be ruthless towards part of their own ruling class). Things like this wont disqualify this as dotp/socialism, and will always be determined by the material circumstances certain proletarian state exists in.
I think this is sort of similar to peasant rebellions which are still not clearly accepted as good or bad in modern society, and tonns of arguments can be made about how they were rather good or bad. The main difference between peasant rebellions and proletarian revolutions (from marxist POV, of course), is that the second has potential to develop into classless society where the first does not. This crucial difference isnt any abstract good or evil either, you literally cannot describe it as such because the last thing proletarian and peasant think about when they rebell is if decades later their actions will cause classless society or not.
Also i think you are wrong at what you said about venezuela. There are of course socialists who define everything with abstract justifications and they disqualify whatever as not real socialism because they just think it wasnt good enough, but this is simply not the case with venezuela because it literally has a capitalist economy. Its not some sort of "good/bad" switch, you will see many socialists supporting venezuela despite it not being economically socialist. And i am 99% sure badmouse didnt mean to disqualify venezuela from "justified" category by calling it capitalist, he just pointed out a real characteristic of venezuela. Its kind of similar to how most of self proclaimed marxists would support USSR in 1920s despite the fact that NEP was a capitalist economy.
Well Chavez went around and shut down private businesses , there are literal clips of him shouting confiscated or something like that in Spanish on Venezuelan streets so he definitely wasn't in favour of a market economy and he also maintained a lot of protectionist measures which restricted free trade , the Venezuelan regime is a kind of populist regime but not socialist or "capitalist".
@@tungsten_core As I said in my comment *the Venezuelan regime isneither socialist nor "capitalist" but is populist*
@@tungsten_core In economics there are the following distinctions - *command economy , market economy , mixed economy and traditional economy* socialist or "capitalist" are terms used and invented due to political science not economics , so don't use that damn black/white distinction if your talking in economic view . Chavez leaned towards a command economy .
Socialism and capitalism aren't real distinctions in economics as I see it because this distinction fails to distinguish many kinds economic systems like that proposed by fascism , which is neither socialist nor capitalist (some people in the left call it capitalist while some in the right call it socialist , I can go on and on about why it is neither but let's keep this short by asking Giovanni Gentile on what it is because as per him it's neither but instead mixed) , but by the standards of economics it's considered to be a mixed economy. A populist like Chavez does popular stunts by seizing private assets and shutting down private businesses and turning them all into state assets , that's command economy , restricting free trade , being anti private investments , protectionism aren't traits of a market or in your words "capitalist" system . In fact the term "capitalism" is a slur word used by Marx and other Marxists to describe Market Economy , it was only in the 20th century that everything became Socialism vs Capitalism .
@@tungsten_core Yes , I was subjective there ,but my point still stands there capitalism and socialism aren't distinctions in economics , in reality what you're actually describing are market economy and command economy , the hardline self proclaimed communists fall in the command economy side of things , while classical liberals and conservatives fall in the market economy side of things , fascists fall under neither of these camps instead they follow mixed economy ( as for Nazi Germany , it wasn't a market economy , we can see this in Hitler's beliefs of Autarky which led to him regulating trade ,these beliefs are further shown during wartime when they start seizing private assets of foreign companies like Ford) because that's what the "Philosopher of Fascism" Giovanni Gentile says us (even Blitz of the Reich made a video about whether fascism is socialist or capitalist and he too came with the same conclusion as I did i.e it's neither), fascism hates Liberalism and Socialism alike so it follows a middle ground in economics.
You aren't a traditional Marxist I see , you are one of those who interpret Marx and use his worldview to look around the world , and use it as a mechanism to understand the world instead of proposing a violent revolution like Lenin and Engels. I would like to say that the two opposing views which you said , should instead of "idealist or materialist" be "idealist or pragmatic" because the opposite of materialism is spiritualism as I see it , but you yourself are making a subjective argument ( If I'm correct) as what you're indirectly implying is that "my interpretation of Marx is the right interpretation of Marx" , you need to first justify that stance before proceeding.
And yes I don't agree with Marx on many things is that because I am in staunch support of free market economics I don't know .
your criticisms fall short here we socialist (marxists) apply by the Hegelian idea that the world has many contradictions and we need to solve these antagonisms ,you said that we fall into black and white argument well no because here we acknowledge for example that without capitalism we wouldn't have socialism etc.
we also think that our ideology isn't perfect either.for badmouse tho you need to understand that he despises leninism and he is an anarchist.
the soviet union was not perfect in any way i still have criticism of that country but country's material conditions forced it to be dictator like.
btw this comment here is not to hate on you and i still love your channel.
I understand that BadMouse despises Leninism which is why I didn't have as much issue with him. What I had an issue with him is that he tried painting bad socialism as not being socialist at all. I lived in Venezuela and can tell you first hand it is wrong. Remember, you are speaking to a philosopher as well although Hegel isn't my strong suit. ;)
To modernize an ideology and to evolve it you must first identify things that are wrong within it.
And don't worry I am very happy to engage people and appreciate your comments.
@@BlitzOfTheReich no venezuela is not socialist at all it may have very social democratic things but 70% of the industry is in private hands ,you said you lived there if you did, did you witness any collectivization of industries and giving it to the workers to control it?
show me how venezuela was socialist. the country only export was oil ,it imported food rather than producing internally .
so please consider the fact that venezuela is not socialist pls don't become like PragerU
Look at the revenue of the largest Oil company PDVSA, and look at its total assets. This company alone is 10% of GDP taking into account nominal GDP ($96 billion?). This is not considering the fact that oil is subsidized, it has one of the worse private property rates in the world, an the government owns plenty of other companies.
'so please consider the fact that venezuela is not socialist pls don't become like PragerU'
I am sorry but I actually lived in Venezuela for years and saw it with my own face. I have family in the government and know how it operates. With government sponsored gangs attacking people, expropriations, shortages, having to become a party member to get ahead, etc.
@@BlitzOfTheReich sources to your claims pls
Would you like a Tito Gang membership?
I''ll pass but thank you.
@Harry Lagom Yes I understand. I guess I was saying IF I had to chose a regime which regime would I choose?
@@BlitzOfTheReich putting fascists in the Barbara pot was the most based thing he has done
There is a hell of a difference between Whatabboutism & responding to a one sided death toll of various dissimilar regimes, conviently & erroneously grouped together as "socialist" by proponents of various propetarian systems. I get accused of doing it even when I first acknowledge deaths, offer highly specific failings, propose alternatives - then & only then, start laying out the atrocities of propetearians. When Necrometrics is resorted to, comparisons are a valid response.
Until such time as workers have control of the means of production at the workplace level up, we are dealing with various critiques of management following sub optimal to downright perverse incentives. Be that making just making left boots to produce more absolute numbers of units, or building more housing when there is more empty homes than homeless. Or sacking workers & making the remaining workforce work harder.
If you want to test a theory, you need criteria & a methodology. Whilst the social sciences do not provide particularly controllable conditions for which we can construct experiments, let alone repeat experiments to confirm findings, you can still make observations & have them criqued somewhat similarly to peer review.
The Trotskyist strain of thought referred to the Soviet Union as a Degenerated Workers State. Contrary to your insistence, It didn't just dismiss it as "OOPS, that doesn't count." State Capitalists aside, the Soviet Union was recognised as not Captalist, but not the Dictatorship of the Proletariat either....because the workers were not in charge. Yet you apparently see a problem in this.
Tankies aside, socialists are very interested in the pitfalls of both taking power & not. Your approach insists upon grouping Apple's & Oranges, rotten or not, regardless of the objectives or growing conditions the farmer has to work with at the time. All without burdening yourself with the need to demonstrate the continuous link between output & ideology which you ultimately think we should criticise.
'State Capitalists aside, the Soviet Union was recognised as not Captalist, but not the Dictatorship of the Proletariat either....because the workers were not in charge. Yet you apparently see a problem in this.'
Of course but the problem is Marxism is viewed as an almost evolutionary timeline of transition, however I feel many socialists just like cherry picking specific points of that timeline as being 'truly Marxist'.
I've also burdened myself by creating a lot of content on the different facets of collectivization, etc.
@@BlitzOfTheReich I have seen some of those vids - it's been awhile though. Did you compare Cooperatives with both Propertarian Management & enforced Collectivisativisation? From memory you just compared privately owned with state run farms.
I expect comparing existing privately owned farms with newly created state run farms, inexperienced workforce & management to boot - as an apples & oranges comparison. Maybe there is serious historical research on this, but I have yet to see it.
So hell yeah you took on a burden. However you didn't even try to demonstrate a link between output & ideology. You assumed, or let the audience make that connection for themselves, based on group X calls itself "Communist", therefore their actions must be "Communist". How does that logic go when you acknowledge the New Economic Plan period, which as you know Stalin supported prior to Collectivisation? Does that make Market Economics "Communist" too?
This dude delete comments who don't support his trash right wing ideology.
You still need to provide evidence.
robbe de Boer I do that in my other videos.
@@BlitzOfTheReich okay but you didn't provide any in relation to the context of this video.
@@BlitzOfTheReich
Bitch on a Trike
@@FundFreedom The fish to give a like.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Are you an op? Would you be honest?
I would like to hear your analysis of why Russians and surrounding peoples would so heavily favor a repressive socialist state to begin with. And, why the various peoples were amazingly helpful in toppling the Russian Orthodox Church. I have always thought it had to do hundreds of years peasantry and serfdom at 80% of the population. My thoughts on this ... there was deep seeded alienation and hatred among the serfs, which is pretty standard .
The simple answer is that the Russian Empire was completely autocratic and the few times that it tried to modernize and liberalize were not enough to quell dissent.
@@BlitzOfTheReichcause the people chose socialism, not a liberal capitalist autocracy
@@Frogs2005Even the people who were forced to accept it accepted it!
I have to say I'm a socialist and I hate tankies. They just deny all the things that Stalin and Mao did as western propaganda. The finnishbolshivek guy strait up denied holomodor, saying that it was an accident or something. I'm like a minute in so I'll continue watching.
Feel free. It's honestly a breathe of fresh air to hear that because in the West a lot of Socialists subscribe to the tankie mentality. I don't want to say I hate them, but I still liked this message.
Tankie's are correct. The very word "tankie" is just a slur. Stalin and Mao simply aren't guilty of most of what they've been accused of. Holodomor is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of a Nazi LIE taken seriously in the West due to the Cold War. Anticommunism and the Cold War in general are and were German propaganda, and guess what?! YOU FELL FOR IT! Don't feel bad, you're not alone unfortunately.
@@Wobbothe3rd Sorry but I live in Central Europe, in countries where I know people who lived under the Warsaw pact; they don't like it.
Wobbo don’t you think you are a victim of communist lies and anti capitalist propaganda as you seem so confident that the holodmor and the horrors committed by stalin and Mao are anti communist or German propaganda?
I honestly prefer tankies to anarchists. Tankies have a Pretty decent understanding of our conditions but instead of trying to find new solutions to our problems they go ahead and try and use a dated solution and are dogmatic af
Whataboutism is normal everybody does it...
yes but the extent that they do it is unnecessary when they pride themselves on their 'scientific approach'.
Whataboutism doesn't exist. People should simply judge right and wrong by a SINGLE STANDARD thinking critically and objectively. People use "whataboutism" as a SLUR whenever people try to use analogies or comparisons in political arguments. There isn't actually anything wrong with using comparisons or analogies, as such. Of course in reality most people have massive ideological "loyalty" to their home nation/country, so the slur tends to work (ie its VERY DIFFICULT and even PAINFUL to actually judge al of human history with a single standard, most people WANT to believe that their "home" is "special!).
That's pretty meta
@@Wobbothe3rd how is comparing relatively anything objective?
Blitz Of The Reich here’s a simple example.
American: “The Gulag system was unjust! It’s very existence erases anything good the Soviet government did!”
Russian/Chinese person: “The USA has more people in prison than any other society on Earth, not just as a proportion of population but in absolute terms, RIGHT NOW! Does that fact cancel out what is good in USA’s society?!”
American: THATS WHATABOUTISM!!!
See how stupid that is? There isn’t anything wrong with what the hypothetical Russian/Chinese person said at all. The fact that the USA has a massive prison population is a perfectly relevant point if one tries to make the argument that jailing people is unjust!
Whataboutism is just a slur, comparisons and analogies are completely legitimate ways of making arguments. Obviously one can critique any particular argument on its merits, or distinguish analogies, but when you use the word “whataboutism” you’re implying that either a) analogies and comparisons are illegitimate AS SUCH or b) a nation in question is “special” or “exceptional” and cannot be compared to any other society. And that’s a very real and relevant example btw, lots of people in the USA don’t realize how utterly nonsensical and hypocritical they are when they demonize other countries as “authoritarian.” If the USA justice system isn’t “authoritarian” than the word has no real meaning except to demonize other governments (and imo that’s all it really is).
If you dont believe in historical materialism you dont believe in reality.
prove it.
I've always felt like that the USSR was about as "good" or "bad" as the United States at the time. Both global powers asserted themselves in the image of being "The better society, a more just society." while both committed many horrific crimes against humanity, and also supported other nations that had committed crimes against humanity. Now that the USSR has been gone for about 3 decades, it only left the United States, and look how things are going now as it only shifted further and further to the right.
The United States is the greatest evil of our time, but nobody wants to admit it.
Sorry but the USSR has by far a worse human rights track record, and to use clandestine US operations as a whataboutism is dishonest.
Blitz Of The Reich wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. The USSR has a worse human rights record 😂. Dude tf you on lol, the USSR didn’t drop billions of tons of chemicals on a poor nation in Southeast Asia killing a minimum 3 million civilians. Destroying millions of acres of land permanently and causing birth defects in that population to this day. The USSR didn’t illegally invade Iraq killing a minimum 250,000 civilians. The USSR didn’t impose crippling sanctions on food and medicine in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Iraq, and Venezuela killing a minimum 10,000,000 civilians. The USSR didn’t fund torturers and terrorist in Latin America which killed hundreds of thousands of in innocents civilians, using torture methods which even nazis would call inhumane(read up on the contras or Pinochet raping nuns with dogs). The USSR didn’t fund the genocidal pol pot government which went in to kill millions of Cambodians. The USSR didn’t fund the genocidal Indonesia government who went around the country killing every suspected communist resulting in 500,000 deaths minimum and then later committed an ethic genocide in East Timor killing 250,000 minimum. I could go on all day the USSR has nowhere near a tract record that bad lol
@@BlitzOfTheReich Well, no, if you are going to condemn the USSR for authoritarianism, and murder you have to condemn the US as well, and actually this is the problem with being so anglophile not to see that the critique that is made usually about the USSR and China is basically a lot like the critique someone could make about britain and US governments throughout history
@@BlitzOfTheReich Its absolute propaganda.
@@BlitzOfTheReich how can we be using a whataboutism when the activity is to literally compare the US and the USSR? I think you've gotten so used to throwing that term around anytime you don't wanna address the horrific crimes of the US, that you forgot that in this instance we're literally comparing the USSR TO the US. Shows that it's like a go to reflex for you in debates, which is lame.
And you're insanely wrong anyways.
Abortion became legal in Britain in 1967 and 1973 un the U.S. You need to take the world moral climate into account before criticising a country's policy towards something which didn't become legal elsewhere until some four decades later.
I'm form Yugloslavia. After the war people were very much pro Russian. Russians liberated the country and took Belgrade street by street inbstead of aerially bombing it as the Allies did...knocking down buildings and leaving Nazis intact.
Of course many people are benevolent to Tito's 'regime' because it was the best period the country ever had.. There were no rich people but everyone had enough. No unemployment, everyone was housed and people living in flats were given plots of land outside their town on which they built weekend houses and grew fruit.
Tito wanted to remain outside of the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavs who spoke for Russia were imprisoned. Anti Soviet propaganda was prevalent. The war generation was not however convinced but since then the younger generation has looked to the West encouraged by it's capitalists who want to maintain their ability to rip off the system, as they have in the rest of eastern Europe and now Russia.
How's your free market capitalism working out for your as corporations make a mockery of governments and taxes, push working wages inexorably down when matched to the cost of living and push us to a climate abyss by pushing aggressive, mindless consumerism?
Sorry but even if the moral climate surrounding abortion was radically different in the world, the US had that as one of the few true social achievements. Western countries had many other things that just made them moralistically superior to the Soviet regime. If you want to cry foul on capitalism but not on the Soviets then you are the problem. The Soviet Union suffered intense housing shortages and wage crunches itself you know.
@@BlitzOfTheReich You were talking about Stalin making or keeping abortion illegal in the 1930's as being one of Stalin's social failings. Abortion remained illegal in the U.S until 1973 and 1967 in Britain.......you must not have fully read what I have written in my previous post. You were comparing 1930's Russia to 1970's U.S and U.K.......(ooh just about to correct the U.K date in my previous post.......abortion became legal in the U.K in 1967 not 1867!).
As for housing shortages. I'm sure they had less of a housing shortage than they had in Tsarist Russia when nobles lived in big houses and had many of them. In Yugoslavia they divided rich fella's houses into flats.
You're also talking about a country who's almost sole exports were oil grain and timber, 90% agrarian with about that amount of literacy having to transform itself into an industrial super power in the space of 13 years after losing three million in a world war and three million more in a combined civil war and invasion. As it was they were about a year behind when Hitler attacked in 1941 by which time the Japanese had attacked them already.
In the 1920's and 30's Western powers had colonies whose people they used as slave labour and whose lands they plundered, while the U.S had their Negros living in shanty towns and ghettos, paying paid slave wages and suffering segregation amidst all that wealth.......I guess that's not what you meant by more moral.
One more thing about the housing shortage in the USSR......how many homeless were there, how many people living under bridges.
In Yugoslavia people made their own houses, if not with bricks, then with mud and earth....wattling is the medieval term for it. Such houses as the one my grandparents lived in are still standing in towns and villages today.
How many unemployed were there in the USSR?
I was trying to make the point that some socialists like parading around the social justice cause and fail to see that Stalin was extremely conservative. In the US as it is a federation some states already legalized abortion prior to 1973 but it was simply an example of Stalin. I clearly read what you posted, but I cannot respect the fact that you are trying to justify an abhorrent regime.
'As for housing shortages. I'm sure they had less of a housing shortage than they had in Tsarist Russia when nobles lived in big houses and had many of them. In Yugoslavia they divided rich fella's houses into flats.'
When in my videos do I defend Tzarist Russia? I thought it was very bad although after serfdom peasants were allowed to purchase their land through periodic payments and nobles actually had increased bankruptcies because of previous mortgages. What happens after you divide 'the rich fellas' place? How do you determine the demand to build more housing?
'You're also talking about a country who's almost sole exports were oil grain and timber, 90% agrarian with about that amount of literacy having to transform itself into an industrial super power in the space of 13 years after losing three million in a world war and three million more in a combined civil war and invasion. As it was they were about a year behind when Hitler attacked in 1941 by which time the Japanese had attacked them already.'
Actually pre-1913 productivity per acre wasn't reached until the late 1950's and per hectare wasn't reached until the early 60's. To blame it all on conflict and war is so simple minded and flies in the face of reason. In the 1930's Stalin thought it a good idea to make a nomadic people like the Kazakhs into sedentary people and subsequently they lost most of their livestock.
'In the 1920's and 30's Western powers had colonies whose people they used as slave labour and whose lands they plundered, while the U.S had their Negros living in shanty towns and ghettos, paying paid slave wages and suffering segregation amidst all that wealth.......I guess that's not what you meant by more moral.'
And these aspects were challenged democratically and were removed. In the Soviet Union laws were imposed by military might. Big difference. Especially since the whole aspect regarding black people was found in the South not the Northern United States (which didn't have Jim Crow laws).
'One more thing about the housing shortage in the USSR......how many homeless were there, how many people living under bridges.In Yugoslavia people made their own houses, if not with bricks, then with mud and earth....wattling is the medieval term for it. Such houses as the one my grandparents lived in are still standing in towns and villages today.
How many unemployed were there in the USSR?'
www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ljfhy/were_there_homeless_people_in_the_ussr/
Speak to any person who lived in that time or read the book 'Soviet Women' and you will see the housing situation in the USSR was terrible and created a situation of homelessness. As I said entire families lived in one bedroom apartments which obviously meant strained relations and chance for homelessness. Having an entire family of 8 living in a room together without privacy is nearly as good as being homeless. Plus in the first half of the 20th century Soviet cities were known for being overrun with orphans.
www.jstor.org/stable/151744?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Like for God sake homelessness was made a criminal offense in the Soviet Union.
jamestown.org/program/the-problem-of-homelessness-is-growing-in-russia/
Instead of looking at the unemployment (which was artificially manipulated. Even Soviet economists thought it) look at the increase in income levels and you will see it left much to be desired. G Khanin did a study on it in the 1980's.
@@BlitzOfTheReich My dear friend I'm going to go point by point with you and I see you're going to go with personal accounts, but on the issue of orphans I would say that 'overrun' with orphans is a curious term, but by basic knowledge it's not difficult to see why such a situation would occur. World War 1 & the foreign backed White counter revolution caused around 11 million deaths. There was a famine in the 20's who's 5 million death estimate may or may not be included as a part of the civil war losses, but famines were a feature of Russian history cause in a large part by climatic conditions and exacerbated by a fragile infrastructure, particularly the lack of good roads in such a vast territory.
Then there is the famine of 1931-32 of which estimated losses vary wildly from 4 to 11 million, the highest estimate given by famous anti-Soviet historian Robert Conquest (surprise surprise!). Even though the famine effected large parts of the USSR the Ukraine independence movement made the Ukrainian losses a criminal issue calling it Holodomor which makes it sound their personal Holocaust.
Then of course we have World War 2 which took 27 million USSR lives. So I imagine there were quite a few children who lost their families. As for homelessness, the devastation of the three wars the the Russian Empire and the USSR were involved in would have destroyed quite a few buildings, being sanctioned by the rest of the world didn't help much, so for a country so devastated and so heavily sanctioned I think they did pretty well. Life expectancy went up to 67 by the 1950's from around 30 pre 1917. My aunt and uncle took a tour of the USSR in the 1970's with their own car for a month in which they were free to go everywhere and saw no poverty in villages or streets. My mother went to Moscow in the 1980's and saw a beautiful clean city with no homeless people.
Walk around central London and you'll see plenty of people bedding down for the night in sleeping bags and I know what you find under bridges in the U.S. There are half a million homeless people in the U.S 40% of which are employed but are registered homeless many living in tent cities at this minute.
Historian Grover Furr is worth a read, he speaks Russian and a couple of other Slavic languages plus French and German. He has debunked Robert Conquest's very long book The Great Terror by sourcing all his sources back to the original documents and reading through everything...something which took Furr a couple of years to do.....it's possible to get his bibliography online and he also has a book called Blood Lies which is a debunking of Snyder's book Blood Lands.
The social reforms in the West you are talking about came as a direct result of the socialist and communist movements inspired world wide but in America and Europe too. It caused Western governments that they had to give something to their people to compete. Universal health care and free education and a welfare state were the results..........see Roosevelt's New Deal and what he said to America's wealthy.......in effect that he's going to tax them because if he doesn't give the people something they're going to simply take it.
You don't ask yourself why the South was allowed to have Jim Crow laws so many decades after the abolition of slavery and right into the modern era. The North didn't have Jim Crow but schools were largely segregated, Negros and Hispanics were on the bottom rung of the ladder and formed the majority of the prison population which is now by the way the biggest prison population in number and per capita in the world even greater than China's who has 4 times the population..............in fact the staggering statistic is that the U.S who houses 5% of the world's population has 25% of the world's prison population.
Please don't quote whole sections of what I've written if you reply, because it makes me read some of it thinking you have written something along with it.
I'll leave you with this word from former Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell....Colonel Larry Wilkerson, watch from 4.42...........ua-cam.com/video/3Yvuapn5jEc/v-deo.html
6:53 for cringe
Just curious do you think capitalists criticize socialism and communism regimes with arguments. But also like you said don’t apply there own logic to capitalism?
I think many capitalists fall for the same notions in the video but I find it to be more of a trend with left wingers.
"Fascism is honest" (c) Blitz Analysis
8:30
Did I accidently click on a PragerU video?
Yes, every video that is remotely critical of socialism is automatically a PragerU video.
Mao was good for China overall.
"The soviet regime" . You call yourself a socialist?
"rather than calling people I disgree with fascist" ? Interesting. Why are you peddling that type of false narrative? That seems suspiciously right-wing
I would say that largely protecting certain regimes and using "what aboutisms" is a waste of time and counter beneficial to actually defending or discussing an ideology because pretty much any regime or leading cohort can be bad no matter the ideology. I think it is far more beneficial to discuss ideologies on their principles, ideas, and values and how those things could be implemented and what consequences that would have. People who defend certain ideologies by discussing them based upon regimes or discussing them in a black and white fashion kind of neglects the more complicated and nuanced power dynamics that are behind how regimes, governments and states function and how people utilize ideology in the shaping of these things and how people use ideology to exert certain types of power.
Essentially I am trying to say that discussing or defending ideologies in that way is counter beneficial to having an educated evaluation of the values, principles and ideas behind these ideologies and implementing ways to benefit people.
Actually I disagree even though I defend communism. Ideology cannot and should not be separated for material practice, for the better OR the worse. If communism ACTUALLY DID lead to mass murder, starvation, etc. as the anticommunists claim, then it would be PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE to interrogate communist ideology as the source of the problem, at least partially. Just as liberal/capitalist ideology indeed has a lot to do with what's wrong with the world today. It's precisely because so many of the allegations against communism are NOT true or exaggerations, that I've concluded that anticommunism ITSELF is ideological and political. Again, there's nothing wrong with analogies or comparisons AS SUCH, hence the term "whataboutism" is just a stupid slur. I do agree with your last sentence, though, definitely.
@@Wobbothe3rd The thing is that I'm not entirely agreeing with him, I am more so just saying that I think that discussing an ideology as an ideology and ways for that yo be implemented should be separated from talking about ideology in practice because they are vastly different things.
How is it that you as a Czech social democrat have the YT handle "Blitz of the Reich"?^^
I am not Czech, I'm American. I've always liked using shock value in my names and channels. It doesn't help that I used to have a German military marching channel when I was younger but again it was just a name that stuck. I really don't understand the fuss. I'm Jewish on my moms side and don't runaway from talking about history.
I think you disregarding the malnutrition argument is off. Even with all of the executions etc the overwhelming amount of death people considered caused by communism was from poor management of resources. But why is poor management of resources count as death in one system and not in another one?
Edit: I think my bad writing kind of made you miss the point
Exactly! Why introduce such a rigid thought process to capitalist regimes but not communist regimes. It makes no sense to me.
@Nuclear Confusion I noticed but by that logic it is inconsistent because Capitalist criticisms of Communism is based on direct consequences like collectivization and executions. Communists seem bent on introducing so many indirect consequences to boost the death toll. For example 'more people die in capitalist countries due to obesity, therefore that is directly attributed to capitalism', whereas the same line of thinking doesn't apply the other way. So it is not me being one sided, it is actually you. How can you precisely calculate the death toll of an economic system with such over-confidence? How can you even ascribe those deaths to that system. It just feels you are engaging in 'correlation = causation' without analyzing the 'why'.
So countries which produce food for 1st world have famines because the profit motive goes where money are is less problematic for you than kulaks who refuse to see the grains because they want to make more profit from the starving people? I don't think any person with a drop of moral would pick greedy people over starving masses, if we are to talk about morals.
Ya know the first world is highly protective of food imports and usually produces things locally. The EU + Nafta are such large markets that they can sustain food production wholly within. This is a reason why such a large portion (around 40%) of the EU's budget is direct at subsidizing farmers via the common agricultural policy. How is it that this is contradicting your whole idea that the 3rd world feeds the 1st?
'>Communists seem bent on introducing so many indirect consequences to boost the death toll.'
Profit motives. Oh brother. What a simplistic view on geopolitics. Not every war is fought over money or influenced by the business class. There are so many other factors at play such as balance of power, etc. For example the Soviets did the molotov-ribbentrop pact to create a Buffer zone between them and Germany.
Regarding the J&J talcum powder that is disputed. The fact that they were able to go to trial and have law suits shows the system works. In the Soviet Union nothing would be able to contradict the official position unless you wanted to get arrested. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-27/johnson-johnson-jnj-talcum-powder-suits-not-backed-by-science
It's not even correlation, it's mostly an estimation based on real facts. We see the causation, we aren't sure about the number, but we know that is in hundreds of millions that's for certain!
The communists say that, they know what they are saying, based on scientific analysis of the capitalist system; but people dismiss everything Marx said based on rumors and ad hominem arguments and they deny the crimes committed by capitalist system based on the vague idea of how they feel the system runs.
I am so sorry to break it to you but Marxist theory is not scientific at all. It is an economic + political system that has gotten things wrong as well. Such as the lack of revolutionary power after WW1. It wasn't even fixed on whether the Russians could skip from an agrarian directly to a socialist society.
No, you are literally an imbecile!
I was going to respond in kind in full but I am not going to give you the time of day if you proceed to directly insult me. The EU-28 has a near trade balance and much of its agricultural supply is covered by its own member states because it has a large enough internal market. We never spoke about the IMF or WTO which do assist richer countries than poorer countries because of the litigation costs for enforcing trade rules. This means that whatever the ideology, each country has an advantage vs any poorer countries.
You proceed to call me an imbecile even when I show you my sources but you expect me to believe rinky dinky sources that look like they were made in the 90's?
'Here you are projection more that you know literally 0 about marxism. I asked you when the whole TIK shitshow happen to provide quotes from Lenin and Marx to back up your claims, yet you said, you are going to send them when you arrive at home, tho I pointed out that you have marxists.org which would help you, yet you stopped replying to me.'
I did post Marx's and Lennin's letters. It's not my fault you don't read your notifications. Go read Richard Sakwa's 'history of the Soviet Union' if you want to see them yourself. Again, you haven't refuted how Marx got the post WW1 situation wrong and love pedlding insults. I am so happy you wasted your time writing this paragraph. :)
But isn't that what Bad Mouse did? If death from hunger counts murder in communist countries then why not in capitalist countries? Not being able to afford food is a direct consequence of the capitalist system need to maximize profit though. Along with the throwing out of still usable food and paying farmers to not farm to keep prices high.
Engaging with Mao and Stalin as theorists doesn’t justify their missteps
2 minutes in and I can already tell this guy is going to waffle absolute nonsense
look elsewhere.
If you point out the failures of the free market (2008 housing crisis for example) to libertarians they will argue that it wasn't "true" capitalism at work, because the government was involved in this way or that. Utopian ideologies cannot survive in the messy realities of human society.
Libertarians are practically a meme on the right.
Well the crisis was really the workings of banks. The US federal reserve did have regulatory oversight however the amount of credit they provided vs interest rates indicates a tighter monetary policy. Hence the idea that the government was careless is a bit overstretched since they did increase interest rates in order to control the economy. The problem is the leveraging of financial products like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations which contributed to a massive lack of liquidity across banks. Banks were essentially transferring risk to each other in a cycle via CDS's and Banks were also backing really bad investments via CDO's.
The failures, or weakness, of the free market that have some force as an argument with me are about people being left behind when wealth is being created. Market downturns like the crisis of 2008 could only be considered a system failure in a system that promises never to have a downturn, which the free market certainly doesnt.
@@dm0065 The problem is the purist libertarian/communist ideologies don't take into account the complexities of modern financial institutions. When Marx was around, we didn't have these sophisticated financial instruments that simply impede common sense. How can we use a 150 year old doctrine to explain the flaws of very modern financial instruments? We need something new.
Honestly this is why I like your channel you have a decent understanding of the ideas that you criticise and understand the limitations of your own worldview. You have a thing which is lacking in our modern world "nuance"
I wasn't like that before, but that being said I can still be quite critical and concrete in things that I say. For example, I think Stalin was a monster. :) So people shouldn't mistake nuance for a lack of a position. I just try to open debate in a polite and respectable way. :)
Read Paul Cockshott please. Recommend
thank you for the recommendation
If you got a beef about Stalin or mao try Hoxha a good success story raised literacy from 14% to 90% in one generation , the population doubled and homelessness was wiped out stood against the revisionist Soviet Union and NATO
Ummm yes I do. Where are you getting these statistics? You know literacy increased in the West without having to resort to mass killings? In addition I feel like that is the only benefit that his regime offered, according to you.
Blitz Of The Reich the OG post is correct, those are facts. The tsarist regime’s and other pre-revolutionary regimes had a terrible record on education their own populations. How you feel about the poster’s opinion doesn’t matter.
@@Wobbothe3rd well actually it depends on the Czarist ruler as well the Soviet ruler.
School Principal: "Soo how's your kindergarten doing Ms Puff?"
Ms Puff: "Splendid sir, I'll have you know that all of them now are able write and read fluently"
School Principal: "Good lord, some fine achievement you have right there. I can't wait to see all 50 of them in graduation day next week"
Ms Puff: "Well ....., more like 10 of them"
Your decision to uphold capitalism has very real consequences. You are upholding a system that is premised on and can only be sustained through imperialism, (settler-)colonialism, genocide, an insatiable desire to expand, and poverty. There is no alternative to capitalism but socialism; MLs will make multiple arguments: (1) primary sources and archival data do not substantiate your claims, but rather support a narrative that is pro-socialism (even if they may sometimes expose things that are worthy of critique), (2) both capitalism and socialism are premised on violence, but the violence we employ is ultimately liberatory and emancipatory, and (3) your methodology for both studying history and understanding ideologies/philosophies is exceptionally poor: you fail to understand the Marxist understanding of fascism, straw-manned or misunderstood BadMouse’s analysis of Venezuela, and you denounce FinBol as a mere apologist without actually highlighting his alleged methodological errors (you only claim to be more experienced with Russian history: a poorly made argument which proves nothing). Also, no ML makes the claim that socialist experiments have been perfect, in fact, Marxist-Leninists defend the USSR against false myths in an attempt to create and establish a more nuanced, truthful, and useful critique of its shortcomings, failures, and often it’s overreactions to material conditions.
Social democracy, more like... an attempt at resolving the contradictions of capitalism through the creation of an expansive welfare state that can only be funded through an increase in imperialistic actions in the global south and is constantly under threat of being sabotaged, subverted, or dismantled by neoliberal elites (the gains of social democracy can only be kept through employing violence or subverting democratic mechanisms). Your ideas will always be reactionary in essence, tantamount to what fascism’s role in capitalism is, as you delay the inevitable: the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ state.
'...the violence we employ is ultimately liberatory and emancipatory...' well, then I have to say that you have never actually lived in a communist country. I was born in Hungary in '75. I didn't see liberated people. Scared people a lot. A thin layer of elite controling everything in a police state. And Hungary, the 'Happiest Barrack' had a relatively soft regime by then.
is this why Khrushchev was so obsessed with American farms and American corn? As shown by your pro pic?
The fuck are you on about. The only thing you need for capitalism is volutary interaction. You want something, I buy it. It doesn't need imperialism etc.
If you fucks don't hold all the failed regimes accountable for socialism then why should we hold capitalism accountable for imperialism?
^ imperialism is such a catch all word people use, but don't explain.
@Alany Walany
The main reason why Estonia and Hungary and all ex-communist countries are doing relatively bad right now is communism itself. Such a shock takes decades to repair. Both physicaly and mentaly. Old reflexes, connections, attitude towards power, still immature civil control, highly manipulated press, populism. The list goes on... And they pretty much all rooted in the communist past. I can hardly imagine anything more devestating than decades of communism.
I'm not saying Hungary is not democratic. It is. It is heading to the right direction, but '45-'90 were not just simply lost decades in terms of development. It left vacuum. Loss of continuity in every nations(cultures) life it touched. It's a gaping hole. No wonder these cultures feeling somewhat lost. The XX. century was a disaster. In many levels.
Any thoughts on Guildism?
I don't think I've heard but I will definitely do my research and do something involving this.
@@BlitzOfTheReich would love to see a video on it :D
@@JoeSkylynx ;) it may or may not come
@@BlitzOfTheReich it is certainly an interesting set of theories to say the least. It even has it's own set of left wing, right wing, and center style politics. Guild Socialism, Gremialismo, and Liberal Guildism.
What's really odd is that some people claim that Guildism in general is more of a right-wing socialism of sorts. As it relies on creating a better working class, while still maintaining a capitalistic system.
I’m still confused what socialism is. Can you explain it in a digestible way?
honestly it's confusing because they all disagree with each other. some say it is about democratizing the means of production. I do not have one of my political books in front of me but if I could state it in a way, 'socialism is a response to the negative affects of industrialization and possibly hyper individualism, that seeks to eliminate the problem of resource scarcity through collective decision making'. That is one way I can put it but I know many people will not be happy with that. It can also be seen as 'a perspective that history is linear in its economic development, and it will inevitably lead to a post-scarcity society where material wealth becomes meaningless'.
I find that the more I learn about politics, the less I understand. I have tried for the past few years to try to understand a coherent political perspective and nothing really makes sense in the rivalries that so many differing opinions people have. It’s nothing against your explanation, but these political buzz words like “liberal”, “socialist”, and “conservative” are so bastardized.
Socialism means collective control over production in society - ie. DEMOCRACY. Choosing to end the practice of slavery, choosing to enact minimum wage laws, regulating the use of credit, preventing child labor, and so on are all examples of "socialist" political goals - and are all perfectly legitimate democratic demands. Most "democracies" are really just dictatorships of the rich, both historically and today. Even ancient Athens (the first known democracy) had extremes of inequality, and even in those times smart philosophers (Aristotle) remarked that the fundamental economic inequalities prevented genuine "democracy."
@@frederickthegreatpodcast382 You bring me an intriguing idea. I should do a video explaining all these buzz words!
Property is collective through government. It is a egalitarian command economy. At least from what I know...
Communism would be when the property is collective directly. But it is self refuting anyway...
Fascism is not collectivistic.
My views on the USSR have changed considerably since last year.
how so? I would like to learn more.
Aren’t you a libertarian socialist. I’d assumed you have a pretty bad opinion of it
no. He did an interview with someone where he pretty much tried to contextualize the Soviet Union as having to deal with unique consequences, thus legitimizing it.
The USSR was a shit hole every socialist country that has popped up and that will pop up is a shit hole
Am, no.
You cant judge history with modern "morals" that la dishonest.
You can understand what happened, by learning the historical context and then point out the good or bad.
Action-Reaction
you’re a liberal lol
Any responses from the Finnishbolshivek?
I think you have good critiques of the western left but generally disagree with your overall sentiment
I guess this vid will be like "Oh StaLIn AtE HunDredS oF MillIonS of ChilDren!1!1" and "OHhh FRee MaRKEtS anD HumAn rIGhT Of FRee SpEeeCH!1!". Right?! Hmmm, unfortunately it is...
well I am unsure of your reaction but I have given evidence of many of his blunders and atrocities.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Ban of abortions? Atrocity? When everywhere else in the world it was banned and even soviet were first to legalize it? I have not heard anything else on human rights abuses and atrocities?! Maybe freedom of speech actually and free press?! Also, don't you think that judging entire Soviet Union history with an only one period is not ok? Like saying that USA is still slavery cause there was slavery there long ago. Maybe you also could mean free market absence then I don't think it is a blunder. Not all people enjoy it. Most countries don't like it cause they can't stand competition and are just obliged to be totally open free markets because then they will be deprived of necessary resources and technologies.
@@ascendedbro1828 So genocide and concentration camps in Siberia aren't human rights abuses in communist eyes? Great. One more reason to hate you guys.
I meant by generally looking at my videos. I've made far too much content for you to tell me that I have no points.
@@BimBam69526 Since when there were concentration camps and genocide in SU?! I can say a lot of bullshit about Trump cause I don't like him for example "Trump killed millions of Hillary supporters and made concentrations camps for them". But it will be just it - bullshit!
I think anarcho-communism (and/or Natural Law Resource Based Economy) addresses this issue. That is communism should be build from bottom up, not from top down, that's how you solve the possibility of communist idea (or any idea) to be used for establishing authoritarian regimes.
Yes but the problem is I do see some serious issues on the lack of incentives in anarchism that are better addressed under capitalism.
Blitz Of The Reich,
I don't know what in particular you have in mind, but there are plenty of incentives better than "I must go to the job I hate because otherwise I'll quite quickly end up homeless and starving" or "I want to be filthy rich", those kind of "incentives".
We know, from studies, money as incentive for creative labor is actually detrimental.
We know competition element is detrimental in one solving a problem/doing a job.
And we know that being such doesn't make one happy, what makes us happy are different things, like doing what we love, being connected with our community, etc.
But I simply disagree with this in the European context. There are so many tax incentives and social safety nets to negate this.
Blitz Of The Reich,
Until those safety nets, weak as they are, during the next big economic crisis won't be there anymore. And Europe is just a part of the world, nobody negates things are (slightly, in my view, just enough for the population to not revolt, not yet anyway) better in Europe than in the rest of the world.
Anyway, I guess things have to get even worse than they are right now, for more people to start smelling that there's something wrong with how the current monetary system works.
@@MaximC
1)Before agriculture, most people hate hunting and gathering. But they would straight up starve to death if they dont
2)Before the industrial revolution, most people hate farming. But they would have to compete with predator animals if they go back to 1)
3)During the industrial revolution, most people hate mining coal. But they could either do that or return to 1) But wait, farming require much less people now thanks to 2)
4)During the neocon age, most people hate sitting in an office pushing paper around. But they could either do that or literally nothing function and return to 2) But wait, industries require much less people or much more skilled labor now thanks to 3)
5)During the supply chain age, most people hate sitting in front of the computer. But they could either do that or high speed just-in-time global trade literally stop and everyone go back to 3) But wait,...
6)During the automation age, most people hate lying on the couch receiving welfare check or under it more PC name "universal basic income". How about returning to 4)? You got the idea
"The means of productions" never stop advancing because most of us humans have a simple incentive: easier living in more surplus. And each time it changes, the structure of jobs also changes. Some fields need more, some field need less, some fields die, another fields are born... None of your utopian society can change that basic human incentive, none of your utopian fantasy can stop technological progress (well, unless you want general global living standard to get worse) Nothing can create more jobs everybody love because 1) that make the economic machine unproductive and thus work against people's living standard. 2)people love A LOT of thing both productive and unproductive. But without inhibition mechanism (in the capitalistic world: income), most have no qualm go for the unproductive (entertainment, drug, food...) over productive (work, creative, management...) 3) the "love" doesnt come from thin air, it also come from your upbringing, your environment and projection of the job market. See: how many adolescents want to works in IT because of their exposure to electronic devices and the marketing push of software giants who are always short on actualy high skilled labors 4)most people are mediocre to bad at the productive activities they love (just look at deviantart or random pieace of code on github) and grow really slowly.
As a latín American leftist i can't never understant marxist defending dictatorships(mostly because here we found the leftist movement in a fight against dictatorships)
Thanks for your input al nuance is welcome
@@marka.1770 lol no that never works
Where are you from? I'm Venezuelan-American.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Chile
Ah I see. what do you think of Allende and Pinochet? I can surely guess but just curious.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Allende was on the right track of reform, nationalizing our natural resources and expanding tje national industry, he msotlu took long proyects that have been already there by the Center coalición, he should have prepares ti the opositon More and try to aproach tje u.s. More so they didn't boicot his goberment but Nixon is a crook so he would have probably do it anyways.
Gold intentions well meaning but not enought knowlege to play them well enought. He deserved better
Pinochet on the other hand Is a dictator who ruin the economy of tje country and was a tool of the chicago boys and their free market experiments, the persecución of any chilean regarless of political afilation was Real and most victims werent even left but Center or non afilated.
He sold the future of the country and we are still trying to recoger our education, healthcare, pensions,etc throught reform from his free market nightmare that makes horrible the life of many here throught reform and changing his laws
Pls ignore the dislikes. Don t let them stop you from doing what you gotta do. There are just some people who are unwilling to consider rational thoughts :)
I am not disheartened. I actually expected much worse and was happy to see such a positive response from everyone (socialists included, of course).
Blitz Of The Reich ok that’s good and keep up the good work :)
:) thanks for being supportive.
Blitz Of The Reich no problem comrade
I do not think you have a full understanding of the leftist critique of soviet "communism". objectively we can all agree they were not socialist and far from communism, however it was still an attempt of the ideology. The USSR is frequently boogiemanned and to combat this rhetorically Badmouse made his video about capitalism's deathtoll, not as a tit for tat but rather to refute the non argument that we shouldn't attempt socialism as so many people died under it. Also it is disingenuous to call the deaths under capitalism described in bad mouse's video as not directly causal, as he does argue it is directly causal and includes the directly caused deaths of "socialist" regimes in his death toll.
'he USSR is frequently boogiemanned and to combat this rhetorically Badmouse made his video about capitalism's deathtoll, not as a tit for tat but rather to refute the non argument that we shouldn't attempt socialism as so many people died under it.'
I am unsure if I agree with this because in past videos he did justify the countries existence because it had extenuating circumstances due to lack of industry. Justifying a failed project and saying we should strive for socialism are two very different things.
@@BlitzOfTheReich they are two different things, however he specifically argues that the reason for the failure was not a result of socialism (which it did not achieve), and socialism is a superior system due to the contradictions in capitalism that would be solved in communism/socialism.
chatnoir1224, 'Up with the Soviets; Down with the Bolsheviki!'
I sense a Krondstadt traitor ;) jk
Anarchist-Sympathizer, actually. SALUD!
;) you sound like a socialist revolutionary now
Thanks for the comeback. We could go on and on with this. ;-) Ahh...Politics...
I'd prefer SR's than Bolshybuddies.
Sorry to burst your bubble but even high end youtube drama is about as interesting as a bar of soap. Stick to creating interesting content that grows your channel instead of throwing your weight around with that impressive 7K subscribers you got there.
This isn't meant to be drama or anything which is why I specifically stated it in the video and in the comments. Criticizing other UA-camrs for having indefensible positions is okay with me. It is needed. I do not care how many subscribers I have vs. how many they have, there is no point in producing academic content if I don't use it.
I'd argue that a lot of the Whataboutism comes from the common approach to criticising socialists done by right-wingers.
That is:
Bad things - this is socialism.
Good things - this is capitalism.
(I'm sure you've heard the breadline and starvation memes one too many times already.)
This approach easily devolves the discussion into whataboutism and lack of progress, even if one can provide more valid counter-arguments, like the aforementioned memes.
When it comes to the "not true socialism", there is partial merit to that argument. Socialist circles are extremely sectarian due to past gripes most often. Just mention Makhno in a group of MLs, Trots and Anarchists(assuming the former two didn't castrate each other already) and get some popcorn.
A lot of those sides have their own ideas on socialism which leads to dismissal of others as "state-capitalism", "welfare-capitalism", " market-"socialism" " or what not.
The other approach to that is the dismissal of criticisms of former socialist states as "not true socialism", for example LibSoc Rants's response to PJW'd video on capitalism. Half the time he just dismisses states as not socialist, therefore dodging a bullet. Easy way out, but lazy. That one is more of a meme than seriously used as a lot of people have grown sick of it, from both sides of the argument.
In regards to FinBol, I'd disagree on his dishonesty, although if you have a detailed list somewhere explaining his dishonesties I'd love to check it out.
Perhaps you should consider contacting him? He has a Discord server where I just shared your video, so I presume he'll see it soon enough. Would be quite interesting to see you two discuss, as both of you are quite civil and knowledgeable, which is rarely seen on the interwebs.
Sorry for the wall of text, I tried to organise it a bit, although it's kinda inpractical with the small Android screen :)
Sure but those are only hard line American right wingers like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder. Do you think most Europeans think like that? Let alone Canadians? I understand your perspectives but factually speaking, having spoken to academics who lived in the Soviet Union, former Warsaw pact states, and reading countless secondary and primary resources, many of Finbols positions are simply nonsense. I don't mind discussing with him but I cannot discuss with someone who simply disregards evidence as petit bourgeois.
@@BlitzOfTheReich Why you didn't take, let's say two examples, of Finbols nonsense and incorporate that into a video like this one?
That would be constructive and maybe interesting.
I have to say that I'm not familiar with his videos nor with that other guy, I have watched only one completely (about their civil war) but this is just an empty talk.
No offense, but I think your friend is either ignorant or dishonest in stating that the Berlin Wall is "not as bad" as the US-Mexican border
1. I'm willing to bet that there's fewer instances of the US' "Grenztruppen" actually gunning down illegal immigrants compared, and even if it isn't the case, there's no official order from the top giving the border guards shoot to kill order if anything else fails.
2. Despite the official rhetoric of being an "anti fascist barrier" or it being just your average border, the existence minefields, anti vehicle trenches, and even sentry guns, all of which points to the east rather the west shows that the Wall was built with the main intent of preventing its own citizens from defecting by any means necessary.
3. Unlike the US and Mexico nowadays, your average Warsaw Pact bloke is unlikely to go abroad especially into the West, but the fact that they kept on challenging the wall and most of them wasn't bringing drugs or wasn't fleeing gang violance or a warzone is quite telling
yep you hit the nail in the head.
Got a like from Marshal Rokossovsky himself :)
ayyy ;)
Going to watch some videos from thefinnishsocialist just cause im also finnish to see what i think 🤔 (ill be coming back to this comment after that)
sure thing and feel free to revise
still waiting
@@yuzhe6054 really 😂i just thought he is a punikki nothing more
So?
@@VocalBear213 just a commie 🤷
I feel sad watching all these people with actually good intentions and motivations say shit like this. Western anti-communist propaganda working good... Well of course it does, I mean the capitalists own everything, entertainment, education, the media etc. We gotta step the anti-reporting up, comrades. This shit has got to stop...
@Кот Доступа well i cant really speculate on any good grounds, but it could be the case for many of these people. I dont really think this particular guy is actually in the propaganda "business" though, he's probably just a usual stupid no politica western propaganda victim. Still shouldnt excuse his bs because of that, but oh well.
please keep running your mouth
@@BlitzOfTheReich and you keep being totally irrelevant to every revolutionary movement. Im not even ml and i cant stand your infantile criticisms of 'certain socialists'.
@@BlitzOfTheReich shut up facist. Like seriously conservatives make lefter arguments than you like saying USSR did WORSE things than USA. Bullshit.
@BotR: Italian fascism was historically not totalitarian though. Mussolini would've wanted it to be, but unlike himself, Italian society was not (contra)revolutionary and he never succeeded in making it so. He wasn't an angel, but certainly not a devil either. As far as I know he only prohibited one art exposition during all those years in power, for example. I also take issue with you connecting the marxist term "collectivism" to fascism, something centrists (liberals/republicucks) tend to do whenever someone isn't an ultra-individualist and when that person realizes nobody is an island unto themselves. Fun fact: national socialist Germany never had to build a wall or fences to prevent its own people from leaving, unlike communist countries. Now why would that be? Food for thought!
I mean I would agree with the first part of his regime but the problem is some of the components of fascism and the new fascist man require the individual to disregard all of their interests for those of the collective and the state. In order to achieve this sort of power disparity a cult of personality is needed and thus a totalitarian model.
@@BlitzOfTheReich you're wrong. I'm a marxist, not a fascist. Still the best italian historians agree on the fact that was not technically a totalian regime. Monarchy was indeed always present, so fascists couldn't shape society fully as they wanted. In fact when monarchy decided that fascism was supposed to be over, it was over.
Socialism is based
I like the video.... but you HAVE to equate "indirect" results of capitalism to "direct" results of socialism, because the whole ideology of capitalism is naturalizing a social order that is in fact a choice and pretending that our hands are clean when people are priced out of things they need. The fact that the food and housing and medication in capitalist countries (some) isn't being distributed by the government doesn't make deficiencies in those areas less capitalist - it's actually what makes them capitalist.
Also, in the face of imperialism, sanctions abroad, and climate change, it seems like a stretch in the big picture to support capitalism. But I don't know what's going on in this world.
lol had this argument even myself about the evils of capitalism in the 3. world and how communism will solve problems like world hunger. Sure buddy things are getting better over the world but let´s just try another system whit the best examples.
E-D-G-E
Thank you for being optimistic,constructive,and reasonable when it comes to approaching these types of arguments. It warms my heart to see good content creators like you. c:
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@@BlitzOfTheReich So you think that our liberal democracy is a real democracy where the rich hold most of the power. How sad and naive.
The problem with Socialism is that many socialists are kind compassionate intelligent well meaning soft spoken human beings. And so get Easily steamrolled and sidelined by loud batshit mental bipolar lunatics with a narcissistic personality disorder who want to take over the group/ideology and declare themselves supreme leader.
And if you dare become brave enough to speak out against them you'll simply be ostracized or punished. Happens to socialism happens to christianity happens to a lot of these compassionate movements.
Which is why you socialists need to hold stoicism and self discipline as your top most tenets.
That way if an over emotional lunatic tries to hijack your movement, you can easily kick them to the curb.
It's quite true, I think, URSS periods etc. are romanticized too much.
The truth is, we don't actually need to try and embellish previous "communist experiments", to see perfectly well that we need to keep working on that direction, away from the currently used monetary system and/or capitalism.
well I am not a post capitalist, but I do appreciate anybody trying to correct past mistakes, regardless of ideological differences.
1:35 USSR wasn't autocratic but okay...
in a way it could be autocratic
@@BlitzOfTheReich What does that even mean? "In a way it could be..." It either was or it wasn't like.
Explain how a democratic society is "autocratic".
democratic society? oh boy I know who I'm dealing with.
@@BlitzOfTheReich what happened to that 'listen to other people's reasonings' facist.
This entire video is confirmation bias, argument from authority, and anecdotes. Good job?
Thank you papa!
As a Finnish socialist we don't claim TheFinnishBolshevik as our own lol.
Vihdoinkin näen jonkun toisen suomalaisen joka on tätä mieltä.
I partially agree with you since you make some good points but a lot of your points are awful and hypocritical.
bruh
Not a big fan of whataboutism, but I don't think that's always what people are doing when they make these kinds of comparisons. Whataboutism is when you try to defend one actor from criticism by pointing out hypocrisy on the part of the critic, but you can just as well point out such hypocrisies not to defend one actor, but to say that people should condemn both. I'd say this is the difference between someone like TheFinnishBolshevik and BadMouse (who was previously an Anarchist who condemned Socialist states as much as Capitalist ones, though his ideology has changed in more recent years). When people like FinnBol point out that the death toll of Capitalism (as calculated based on deaths due to lack of medical care, food, water, and shelter) is higher than that attributed to Socialism, they do so to argue that, since State Socialism was less deadly, we should employ that system in place of Capitalism. When BadMouse talked about the death toll of Capitalism being higher than that of State Socialist countries, meanwhile, he was making the argument that, if you think the death toll under State Socialism justifies condemning the system, you should feel the same about the death toll under Capitalism, and therefore agree with moving to a different system (at the time, Anarcho-Communism, though I don't know what he'd argue for nowadays). In the former case, it's about ignoring the bad side of State Socialism, while in the latter case, it's about making people realize that the current system is no less deadly than dictatorships of the past just because the violence is less direct, not to argue that we should enact dictatorships instead, but to argue against casual acceptance of the system.
Yes, but their definitions of capitalism are catchall and vague terms. It is done on purpose in order to skew numbers. I mean look at my channel. Not a fan of communism, but I don't go running about trying to tally up socialist deaths because that is mighty simplistic.
I'm amazed by your ability to keep impartial and pragmatic stance when giving an analysis of the tangled web of deceit modern day socialiasts spin to justify clearly bad things, like overwhelmingly bad things.
not all socialists but a lot of them do.
I was going to capslock true but you are true the current variation/version of capitalism is shit but the various variations/versions of marxist/marxian socialism/lower-phase marxist/marxian communism with marxist/marxian communism/higher-phase marxist/marxian communism in mind failed abysmally as applied under both the federal/national/unitary government of the union of soviet socialist republics (U.S.S.R) and the federal/national/unitary government of china I'm sympathetic/semi-emphatical to either both or either centre-left to left-wing progressive/so-called socialistic and/or marxoid/keynesian social democratic liberal/libertarian/conservative capitalist but I am a realist-and-practical person in that to interchange/conflate/synonymise either both or either centre-left to left-wing progressives/so-called socialistics and/or marxoid/keynesian social democratic liberal/libertarian/conservative capitalism with marxist/marxian socialism/lower-phase marxist/marxian communism with marxist/marxian communism/higher-phase marxist/marxian communism in mind shows not tells but shows how politically-legally-economically ignorant you are which works in favor of right-wing/rightist conservative capitalists who are generally the big business owners-and-organisers and medium-sized business owners-and-organisers and they're generally zillionaires such as multi-millionaires billionaires multi-billionaires and emerging trillionaires not nillionaires and not millionaires
Daniel ... I wish I had 1/2 of the seriousness you place of everything... I would have done better in school, at job ... probably with people... I find I have been taking an admiring look, an extra focus, on those folks that tend to be strident and focused.
man thank you for such a compliment but don't put yourself down like that!
SocDems get the knife too
depends which ones ;)
@@BlitzOfTheReich ok, now that's based
I am the based God after all.
jesus christ this is terrible
how? my criticisms are philosophically valid.
Finbol and badmouse clearly gave empirical evidence in the defense of socialist “regimes” and even showed the sources in their descriptions. And neither of them glorified Stalin, Lenin,etc, they definitely have their own criticisms. Also how was your “arguments” “philosophically valid”, you sounded like tik lmao
@@dlvtars901 no they don't. they selectively pick authors who don't even agree with them. Bad mouse doesn't even really use research papers. He mainly argues from a philosophical pov. Finnishbol definitely glorifies Stalin hardcore. So by that logic, anyone who opposes Stalinism is like TIK? That's ridiculous.
Blitz Of The Reich what do you mean? How are books and websites taking their source directly from Soviet archives, classified documents,etc not credible sources? And yes, finbol have selected right wing authors(like his reference to Snyder in one of his video). Finbol has also criticized the soviet union for being authoritarian in a few of his videos(otherwise I wouldn’t even be saying this). TIK uses ancap arguments and have been absolutely destroyed in a video by DemocraticSocialist01, so no, you don’t have to see Stalin as god to be an incompetent person as tik, as ansyns, socdems, demsocs and other leftists have already provided credible and constructive criticisms to the ussr, china, etc, which was widely accepted by Marxist Leninists(or “Stalinists” if you will”
@@dlvtars901 It's not that the books are wrong, it's that FinBol looks at specific quotes and extracts that seemingly support his conclusions even though the authors do not do so. If we are to use the Soviet Archives and make them credible then we need to accept that the Katyn massacre was a Soviet atrocity. I have gotten into arguments with Finbol; his analysis is much more ideological than you think. He invited, for example, Grover Furr, who isn't even a historian by trade and someone who has been routinely debunked. Why do you keep mentioning TIK when I am not him, nor do I agree with everything he says? Most of my videos criticize and analyze the Soviet Union using a wide range of sources. Just compare my source lists to Finbol. He max uses like 3-4 sources in his videos. It should be 10 at the very minimum. So in this regard TIK is still much more credible than him.
I believe all leftists should watch this video. You naturally get the classic “but muh USSR” comments on the internet and I don’t think socialist creators answer this question as well as they can (like this video explains). I’m nowhere near an economist but I still think it’s important to know why socialism/capitalism appears in certain countries or not, based on historical and cultural reasons outside of the economic ideas itself. When you’re arguing about the USSR, you aren’t really arguing about socialism as a whole. Using death tolls and pure economics makes it easy to shift the conversation and for propoganda to arise. We must first look at communist countries and see if they achieved what they wanted to achieve and if they made the country any better.
Also economics is hard
I'm not left wing but yes this was my point in this video. The fact that so many people have missed the point shows the tribalism that has formed.
@@BlitzOfTheReich are you a fascist?
What is ur ethnicity?
Hispanic-Jewish-Arabic-Italian-Turkish-Greek-etc.
Blitz Of The Reich absolute *MUTT*
I forgot to also say African and English. My genes are the best of them all. No sickness. Just smartness. ;)
Well you sure look the part
anarchopac also criticized TheFinishBolshevik.
Anyway, I prefer anarcho-communist youtubers like NonCompete, anarchopac, Peter Coffin, Thought Slime, than those who focus on past regimes.
Nuclear Confusion,
What do you mean?
Nuclear Confusion,
Funny, you're the second individual under this video to focus on the individual rather than focusing on the ideas discussed.
Nuclear Confusion,
In any case, I proposed anarchopac's videos, not every his/her trait of character.
I hope the others I mentioned you don't find sneaky.
Nuclear Confusion,
I see.
Well I guess I have found some common ground with....erm...communis-- I can't say the word. :P
If I'm entirely honest, I think there your video is semi flawed, but you did teach me to be a bit more cautious and while I still "like" the finnish bolshevik, I will be a bit more suspicious from now on so thanks for that
every human being is flawed to a certain degree. but I implore suspicion.
Get in VC
Some criticisms:
1. You say that deaths due to malnutrition and poverty are "indirect", at the very least needs justifying as to how you can dismiss that so flippantly. Slavoj Zizek's works on structural violence would be a good place to start for you to learn more
2. The point of that argument is precisely to point out how "x killed y people" is flawed, from it's inconsistent and ideologically driven definitions of what counts(that you yourself engage in), to the fact that it offers no frame of reference.
2. Most socialists and indeed many marxists do not look favourably on the soviet union, probably the most prominent marxists today like Richard Wolffe and Zizek stress the importance of marxists learning from the failures of the soviet union
3.Stop acting like every socialist is a tankie, literally everyone else hates them and it doesn't do well to critique the left if you don't actually understand it
4. Non-tankies trying foster a more critical understanding than "commulism killed a bajillion people" is not whataboutism or denial
5. Stop acting like all socialists are marxists, or make it explicit that you are not talking about democratic socialists(as in not socdem), anarchists, and so on
6. "most of the deaths were due to [the] elements" again how do you not understand structural violence? Setting up a border such that people have to go through a desert to cross it(and then destroying water caches to top it off) is violence
7. Again, "indirect" what the fuck are you talking about? Homelessness and poverty are a direct result of capitalism
1. I dismiss it so flippantly because some factions of malnutrition and poverty do not directly result from government policy. For example, if you are going to look me in the eye and say the Holodomor was caused by weather, then why can't we apply that logic elsewhere? Obviously, I do not here, but my point revolves around the fact that Marxists simply think everything outside of Marxism is capitalism, even heretical variants of Marxism. Capitalists criticize Marxism based on direct consequences. Both sides can criticize based on indirect causes but there are too many variables to maintain accuracy, and besides, Marxists have to worry about both the direct and indirect consequences of their ideology which would probably mount to more casualties than under capitalism. IE: the fact that Marxists only really give indirect criticisms of capitalism shows the disparity in the implementation of each ideology.
2. How does it point things out? Again, if someone pulls a trigger and kills you are they not a direct cause leading to your death?
3. many Marxists don't like the Soviet Union but they peg it as an even competitor for suffering with the West which in some ways legitimizes it. You can criticize the West sharply without resorting to an even hand on both.
4. Look at the comments section and you will see loads who are posting tankie comments or trying to provide an even hand in comparing both ideologies.
5. In the comments and in the video I clarified that I was specifically talking about Marxists and did not mention it but I also include democratic socialists.
6. That is insanely pseudo analytical non sense that was brought up by social science. Social science is not a hard science where you can make up these laws that try to explain things. There is much more fluidity and nuance involved. Based on your criteria can we not say the exact same for the Soviets, who even went through much more coercive measures (mine fields, walls) in order to deter people. It is not a countries fault that its border is a desert.
7. 'Again, "indirect" what the fuck are you talking about? Homelessness and poverty are a direct result of capitalism'
Bs. In Scotland every homeless person is entitled to temporary accommodation whilst they seek permanent accommodation for you. Yet we still have homelessness. Homelessness and housing shortages also did exist in the Soviet Union too. scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice_topics/renting_rights/council_housing_association_and_housing_co-op_tenancies/your_rights_in_temporary_accommodation
6. In addition to this point It would seem contradictory of me to explain political theory whilst bashing social science. What I mean is that social sciences usefulness stems from its ability to give a qualitative dimension to things whereas you seem to be using structural violence as an almost eternal quantitative law that will always happen. Hard scientific things have a much higher predictive power than soft sciences, but soft sciences reveal perspective and flavor much better.
@@BlitzOfTheReich
If you charge money for a thing then the consequence of that is you are okay with people not being able to access that thing, homelessness is therefore a fundamental feature of housing as a commodity, this is not indirect, this is a fundamental feature of commodity production which is one of the defining features of capitalism.
"It is not a countries fault that its border is a desert."
no but enforcing that border(and again, sabotaging water caches), and denying them safe means of travel is, all borders are enforced through violence. There is no functional difference between switching the tracks towards a person in a trolley problem and standing idly by while the trolley rolls towards a person.
If Holodomor is a direct consequence of Communism, and the ideology take 100% of the blame, are the Great Famine in Ireland and the Bengal Famine in India not the direct result of capitalism?
(not making any statements there, just trying to point out how these ideas are not applied consistently by it's users)
So let's take the Holodomor(or really any famine) as an example for why saying "x killed y people" is bad.
- To what extent was it caused by environmental factors
- To what extent was it the result of Stalin's policy
- To what extent were the policies malicious or a well intentioned failure
- To what extent was that policy reflective of ML ideology
- Is this more or less than what would be expected under different economic systems like market capitalism
Unless you can answer all those questions with certainty then it offers little in the way of understanding the Soviet Union, and understanding the Soviet Union so that everyone(not just Marxists) can learn from it, it actively undermines the critical understanding of history
Some more broader points about "x killed y people"
- Does an increase in life expectancy or standard of living factor in? (China for instance had an increase in life expectancy that colonial-rule India did not)
- Do deaths of soldiers in war count? If so what wars? (some source for how many people communism has killed include the deaths of Nazi soldiers in WW2 for example)
This applies just as much to using it against capitalism or against capitalist countries
"Marxists simply think everything outside of Marxism is capitalism"
What do you mean by that? Liberal capitalism is literally everywhere, so what other system do you think they are ignoring. Marxists like Richard Wolff have spoken well of Rojava, so it's not like they are denying that there are other forms of socialist organization.
I'm a communist and i agree with your points (specifically the ones in the comments. For example, many youtube marxists defend the cultural revolution, while i think it was absolutely vile and indefensible)
I am quite anti-communist but I always respect humans that call out injustices (on both sides).
why tf did a nazi like this
The person that posted that number about those crossing the US-Mexican border vs those crossing the Berlin Wall is a kind of dishonest. Because about 90% of that number are those who have died trying to get into the US vs those who have died trying to get out of Eastern Germany.
Yes but even then, it is not considering that the US-Mexico border is one of the most inhospitable borders of the world.
@@BlitzOfTheReich www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/17/us-border-patrol-sabotage-aid-migrants-mexico-arizona
Sorry to write multiple comments, I comment as I go.
About ideology =/= science. True, but we can avoid ideologies by working on solving our technical problems, by basing our economic system on the scientific method. That's why I like very much Natural Law Resource Based Economy (although I would say that the fact that ideologies are not science, doesn't mean that they have equal merit. And plus, we are able to judge an ideology by using the scientific method, even though they are not based in science originally).
this is absolutely true. I would highly appreciate solving the technical problems via the scientific method, however I do think ideology can be useful in introducing a philosophical humanistic side to economics. I feel we rely too much on empiricism for economics. For example : higher GDP per capita = higher quality of life. We need to focus on where we invest in our economies and how that uplifts the human spirit.
Blitz Of The Reich,
Well, that's exactly what NLRBE (and/or anarcho-communist) "ideology" is for me - understanding first that the current system is simply unfair, but actually even more than that - to understand that the unfairness that it produces is not just a philosophical one, but a very real one, empirically verifiable (Richard Wilkinson's studies), and that's where these "ideologies" are not really ideologies, but rather ideas based in science more than anything.
Basing our judgement of how well we are doing on GDP (and such) *is not empirical* though, it's just a part of the dogma based monetary system we currently use (because we (still) *believe* in it), a system now completely decoupled from life sequence of value. And that's exactly why GDP might grow, while the state of human well being/happiness decreases, because it's not based on the scientific method but on a dogma/religion in a sense, in a very concrete sense.
Health (psychological and physical) of a human society must not (because it cannot) be based on GDP, the state of the stock market, economic growth, unemployment levels or employment levels or any other commonly referenced economic attribute used to claim that society is “improving” or “growing”.
Instead, we need to base our societal health on things that actually matter such as: rates of disease, poverty, social capital - trust, conflicts, corruption, planetary depletion, pollution, murder rates, life expectancy, educational performance, imprisonment rates, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, etc. Needless to say, it's not what the currently used "economic" system uses as the indicators of societal well being. To use a metaphor: a cancer has different indicators of its health, than the body that that cancer affects.
So, in conclusion, your last sentence is very true, but, from your sentence before it, I can see you hold an assumption that GDP and such indicators *are empirical* - nope, they are simply not.
(If you want to hear more about it, I can link specific materials that discuss/explain this aspect.)
I have not had time to read everything but I do think GDP is empirical as it is just the value of all products produces in a year. However nominal GDP distorts because it takes into account the dollar value which might depreciate the value of domestic goods. GDP by purchasing power parity fixes that but focuses too much on domestic markets, thus distorting and elevating countries which rely on imports since it's based on their local currency. For example if a country has a very weak currency but the cost of living is relatively cheap than it's GDP might be over inflated, not considering the cash flows to and from the country.
I do believe both have their limitations but they are empirical once you study the reasons why they are used.
The problem is that they are raw numbers that cannot account for the happiness of a country.
Blitz Of The Reich,
GDP is "empirical" only in the context of the "economic" system it works in. That is, it's not a scientifically empirical indicator of human well-being. It is only an indicator of the health of that "economic" system, not of the health of a human society (and that's precisely why there are "anomalies", say in US, like "GDP/economy is growing every year" yet the cost of life nearly doubled since 1960s, and so forth). If tomorrow US to produce 1 trillion of fidget spinners, GDP will be so high, but the real question how that "growth" would have helped the people? The hungry, the homeless, the poor? Wouldn't producing more homes, food, meeting needs be more useful than producing 1 trillion of fidget spinners? And that's exactly what the spending on military industrial complex is, that's exactly what what this whole "economic" system does - basically producing shit for the sake of producing it, for the sake of profits, meeting human needs are secondary now (if even secondary). That's money sequence of value being decoupled from the life sequence of value being (not sure where these terms originate from, I've heard them for the first time in the documentary Zeitgeist Moving Forward).
These things, to use a parallel, are as empirical as indicators of a character's state of health in a video game to the physical world outside that game, to the real world that is. One might call them empirical *inside that game,* not outside of it.
As you yourself concluded - these indicators don't measure the actual level of well-being/happiness in a human society, and basing an economic system on other than those level of happiness (and ecological sustainability) is exactly going against empirical evidence of what we now know is empirically better for a human society.
I'm curious, have you ever researched Peter Joseph's presentations/analyses, The Zeitgeist Movement, The second and third Zeitgeist films, Richard Wilkinson's studies, Scott Noble's documentaries (especially Peter's analyses and Zeitgeist Addendum and Zeitgeist Moving)?
You seem confused with the difference between socialism and communism. France is socialist at heart but that doesn't make it a communist country in any way, the Soviet Union under Stalin was communist, not very socialist in practice tho ( at least not in the modern sens of what socialism means ). Good video anyway ;)
No I am not. Socialism in the French context is simply an incorrect way of describing the status quo and how people think. People who are 'socialist' in the West generally do not support a transition to communism like in the historical materialist sense. They support a capitalist system with certain checks. Think about it. Modern socialism was narrowed down by the historical materialism of Marxism which provided off shoots of legal Marxism and Marxist Leninism. Many Western socialists are actually the descendants of the legal Marxist camp which first evolved into old social democracy and then modern social democracy. France is a Social Democracy. The reason Marx is canon is because he was truly the first to narrow down the definition and theory surrounding socialism. After all, it was originally just a response to the negative consequences of industrialization.
You should thank papa Stalin fot inviting your nation to be part of winners of WW2.
@@mstislawaaoo733 Actually the real danger for post ww2 France was an American takeover, fortunatly de Gaulle and others convinced them it was a bad idea.
I am not here to debate nor refute something you said. Debating, in my experience, is a really bad way of understanding eachother.
My point is:
I am a communist, and as such, I disagree with various points you explore, nontheless, I agree with some. Yes, I like TheFinBol, but it is not just because he is also a communist, but holds a perspective that is fairly uncommon and helps me to undertand ourselves as an International Community.
I won't point out when I think you don't understand our views, because it won't really help. But I would like to say that some ideas are misunderstood, wrongly conveyed or misrepresented. Don't take this personal or ideological, is just a flaw of the Human itself.
And just to finish this comment:
I am Mexican, I live in Mexico, talking about the Mx-US Border is already quite delicate, and I do not think you have the full context to disregard it (neither do I, to be clear), as really bad stuff happens there. Yes, whataboutism is bad in excess, but it is still worth as an argumentative tool sometimes, we try to diseminate propaganda after all.
While I'm not a communist, I am starting to lean more to the moderate socialist lately, and I see the USSR and CCP as things to learn from, what not to do in the future, I heavily dislike totalitarianism, I much prefer northern European socialism
I think Nordic socialism is highly inefficient. I really do like the Western European and Eastern European models.
@@BlitzOfTheReich the Scandinavian countries economics are based more on raw resources like iron or oil, so that makes the Nordic socialism work well for them (until the run out of resources) the western European kind is better suited for the United States though, as they are far more manufacturer and consumer based economies, something we already have
well Western economies are more service based.
Hi, cool video i saw some comments and in those commetns you try to argue with communist please dont bother they will not understand what are you saying they live in Narnia everyday in a bubble of sorts like those that dit claim that Chile is worst country in latin america when facts on gdp per capita, ppp, child birth, eocd data, word bank etc etc show other wise. i am from poland we were one socialist i waited hours for food sometimes there was any toilet paper no man it was a luxery etc etc but now in capitalist poland is far better not perfect but better i wish you luck bro with content.
Dekuju! I don't take all of the comments seriously. I currently live in the Czech Republic so I definitely understand the impact of communism on this country.
I always avoid this socialists, communist, capitalist, whatever talk due to how utterly screwed up the subject is with words being thrown around here and there
well look at the comments section...
@@BlitzOfTheReich also damn did something explode in this video?
no, why? :P
Even though I enjoy lot of the content made by leftist youtubers I have to say that thefinnishbolshevik is extremely dishonest about history especially regarding Finland. For example in one of his videos about Finnish-Soviet wars Finbol made some pretty absurd comments about Finnish goverment preceding Winter War. He claimed that it was fascistic by its nature even though the goverment was made of centrist/centre-left parties. He also failed to mention that the goverment even tried to ban the actual fascist party IKL (Patriotic People's Movement) in 1938. It is true that in the year 1930 anti-communist laws were introduced but these laws were opposed by the same social-democrats Finbol calls fascists. I'm also from Finland and even though I don't like overtly exaggerated claims made by some anti-communists about how evil Soviet Union was Finbol goes way too far in his Soviet/Stalin apologia.
Well the extremes always accuse others of being the opposite extreme. Their perception of ideology is warped.
Can you give evidence lol? And social democrats are fascists lol
Do more of this type of videos!
thanks! they seem to stir up attention.
#ScandinavianSocialismIsRussianPropaganda
shiiiiiiet
I am Totalitarian kind of guy i prefer stalinist communism because of its rejection of Subversive and degenerate behavior and its understanding of the nationalist issue!
But i belive in Putins conservetive big tent style governence aswell considering totaliterian goverments like North korea usually get their asses sanctioned...
other sucessuful goverment types like the ones in israel the US and Singapour have their positives...But i feel like stalin and Putin offer the most balanced of Political systems!
I just don't get how you can like Stalin. Sure his regime did advance industry, but at a huge unnecessary cost. He also re instituted abortion. That being said I would like you to elaborate please.
@@BlitzOfTheReich He did what he thought was right based on Marxist and Leninist teching this was never done before even lenin was forced to reverse course when things didnt go as planned!
Stalin had the will and the authority to achive the needed breakthrought and his ability to mobolize the country and make it strong at its darkest hour!
@@BlitzOfTheReich Watch his speech in 1941:
ua-cam.com/video/poOZFKoEx9c/v-deo.html
@@command_unit7792 How is abortion answered in Marxist-Leninism? What the hell?
@@BlitzOfTheReich They had a housing and overpopulation during the soviet period...
"Of you try socialism and you fail, you're not a socialist."
But Venezuela really isn't socialist never was.
It's less socialist than china.
most of its revenue derives from a nationalized sector.
Blitz Of The Reich
Are you telling me the private sector isn't making any revenue?
@@killmemadame7046 sure but the private sector also made revenue in the Soviet Union? What's your point? The vast majority of revneue is public.
@@killmemadame7046 16% of the GDP is pretty much in petroleum by itself which is purely a government en devour. However, much of PDVSA's revenue also goes to government programs. The government has 51% of the countries food storage capacity. The government controls up to around 30% of all bank deposits through its banks. Citgo is also a foreign petrol company owned by the Venezuelan government which provides even more. They also have CANTV. People need to stop basing things off on the proportion of government workers and need to base things on revenue.
Blitz Of The Reich the national revenue is greater which means that the private sector is doing worse.
The amount of workers is what matters to average people because average people don't care about how much the guys at the top are getting they care about their chances of finding employment.
Hello Blitz of The Reich, can you make a video about the myth of "general winter" or 'russian winter" ? many people think that soviet union won because of the winter
Yes I will do this eventually, but this is a pretty basic premise when people come into my channel. I already assume viewers already know this yet I got some backlash for my Moscow video. So yes I will do it.
@@BlitzOfTheReich
For the "general winter", look this article thenewsrep.com/100295/brief-history-waging-war-russia-winter/
And Thank you, there is so many cold war myth on the red army, look www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/operation-barbarossa-9-popular-myths-busted/ , for example the red army was an army of "rapists" , the myth of "2 millions of german women who were rape by the russians ect", that sad that so many people believe that, and nobody know that wehrmacht mass rape soviet women too, it would be cool, if you could debunk some myths on the eastern front, like TIK has already done
Yes although I must admit there were rapes that the Red Army did commit late in the war, however I do not use it as a whataboutism. Because if that is the case the Soviet atrocities pale in comparison to what the Germans did in the beginning of the war.
Maybe look a little deeper into “Stalin apologists.” When things are viewed in the context of civil war and imperialist encirclement, there’s little to apologize for tbh
I was going to capslock true but you are true the current variation/version of capitalism is shit but the various variations/versions of marxist/marxian socialism/lower-phase marxist/marxian communism with marxist/marxian communism/higher-phase marxist/marxian communism in mind failed abysmally as applied under both the federal/national/unitary government of the union of soviet socialist republics (U.S.S.R) and the federal/national/unitary government of china I'm sympathetic/semi-emphatical to either both or either centre-left to left-wing progressive/so-called socialistic and/or marxoid/keynesian social democratic liberal/libertarian/conservative capitalist but I am a realist-and-practical person in that to interchange/conflate/synonymise either both or either centre-left to left-wing progressives/so-called socialistics and/or marxoid/keynesian social democratic liberal/libertarian/conservative capitalism with marxist/marxian socialism/lower-phase marxist/marxian communism with marxist/marxian communism/higher-phase marxist/marxian communism in mind shows not tells but shows how politically-legally-economically ignorant you are which works in favor of right-wing/rightist conservative capitalists who are generally the big business owners-and-organisers and medium-sized business owners-and-organisers and they're generally zillionaires such as multi-millionaires billionaires multi-billionaires and emerging trillionaires not nillionaires and not millionaires
The variation/version of marxist/marxian socialism/lower-phase marxist/marxian communism with marxist/marxian communism/higher-phase marxist/marxian communism in mind as practically applied in both the landmass/political geography/jurisdiction of the union of the soviet socialist republics (U.S.S.R) and the people's republic of china (P.R.C) by both the federal/national/unitary government of the union of soviet socialist republics (U.S.S.R) and the federal/national/unitary government of china respectively has been referred to as generic red fascism by detractors defectors dissidents and the like similar but distinct from original generic white fascism as applied in fascist italy fascist/national socialist (N.S) germany and francoist/falangist spain if you understand red in the context of red terror and if you understand white in the context of white terror and the horseshoe theory notes a perculiar similarity between the left-wing/leftist and right-wing/rightist such as authoritarianism/totalitarianism-and-militantism/militarism which is a sign-and-symptom of each-and-every segment of society dominated by blue-collar personalities-and-psychologies/mind-set's
Your critiques were pretty invalid
robbe de Boer explain yourself
@@BlitzOfTheReich first: you call a criticism of the USSR as bad for woman's rights under Stalin. This is absolutely true and we never denie this, we criticise this.
@@BlitzOfTheReich the thing with the deaths under capitalism is that these critiques of poverty malnutrition and sickness are all aplied to socialist Republics but not to capitalist ones. It is meant as: if you judge us like this then you should apply it yourself. If this is done we see that socialism is better.
Defending China and the USSR is logical as it is what we want and what is good. It is the opposite of black and white thinking it is saying maby Stalin didn't kill 100 million people or maby Mao didn't kill 300 billion people.
The warsaw pack was logical right? (Don't know to much about it) it was a response to NATO.
12:30 there's literally contradictory evidence about the holdomor in academia look up on wiki called the Holdomor question
Just regarding the point about marxists "selectively choosing" whether a country is considered socialist or not... I mean I would say, yes. Obviously almost, I would think it holds true that we must be selective in determining which ideas put into practice can be considered socialist or marxist. That is to say, we must judge this by critical observation and by applying the marxian methods and criteria for what socialism means. The opposite, not being selective, would basically mean just accepting whatever the popular imagination holds. Deciding that the USSR under Stalin was socialist because that's what it called itself, or that Canada is socialist because that's what your country's politicians call it, isn't gonna work. That's why we need to be selective about where we use terms like socialist or marxist when describing ideas either put into practice or those yet only theoretical.
That's fallacious because in principle no government can perfectly execute its respective ideology. There were some fundamental flaws in implementation that need to be approached to then be corrected. Using the whole "it's not Marxian" mantra is akin to stating "it's not Capitalist".
@@BlitzOfTheReich No, that's of course true. But the point is not to base it on strict adherence to an ideology, how flawlessly the government can put into place it's vision of the future. It comes before that, in the structure of the whole society. That's where supposedly socialist states born of revolution have a greater proof of burden then explicitly capitalist states that socialist parties manage to reach positions of power in. A socialist society, like a democratic or theocratic or necrocratic society, needs to fill specific definitions in order to be called that. This isn't som dogma that needs to guide the actions of the nation at every turn, it's just a fact of how words work. If it doesn't, then saying it's socialist means nothing, and doesn't say anything about it's nature. Consequently, there can be no such thing as a non-democratic socialist society, or one in which the dominant form of economic production is through private ownership. Then, when we're talking about "marxist" or "marxian". Yeah, those words probably aren't most intended to be used in the same sort of way as socialist or communist. Being that they are describing a school of thought, a scientific approach to theory and a specific way of thinking, rather than just a kind of societal category like socialism, it's probably misusing it on my part to call any nation marxian.
These youtubers must be taken to a stadium so they can learn thier lesson
In the video, I am specifically referring to the Marxist camp of socialism and generally any that is trying to enter the 'transition' phase of socialism. I am a social democrat in the contemporary sense. Also already got disliked even though the person didn't watch the full video.
*It has also come to my attention that I made a mistake commenting on another video regarding abortion. I thought abortion was banned from 1936 onward but it seems that there was a law in 1955 that lifted it. I am not really familiar with abortion laws but do know a bit about abortion statistics in general.
If you would like to support the vitality of this channel please consider supporting me through patreon, paypal, or amazon. Thanks! www.patreon.com/blitzofthereich
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"Marxists in the West tend to be selective in which regimes they consider Marxist.
"
I agree, but that actually hurts your argument. The West as a whole is very racist and tends to vastly overfocus on Soviet Russia (as opposed to Vietnam, Cuba, Korea, and China - all communist and all massive successes on their own). If anything, if Westerners paid more critical attention to Asia and Africa, Communism would look EVEN BETTER and anti communist arguments would be EVEN WEAKER. But unfortunately people on both sides of the argument think only white Europeans matter. Including yes, many Western Marxists.
"Marxists in the West try too hard to legitimize everything about Marxist regimes (Mao, Stalin, etc)."
You're incorrect about factual allegations against Marxist regimes. They simply are not guilty of the things they've been accused of, period. In general, most of the allegations come from bad scholarship from Treaty of Versailles countries that gets laundered though German and British propaganda. Holodomor is a perfect example, and it's a LIE. During the Cold War and today Westerners believe all sorts of exaggerations and FLAT-OUT LIES about the outside world in general (and not only communist countries!). Especially in the USA which is a particularly insular culture, so much of the reporting on other nations is fascist propaganda. There's a massive "regime change" industry dedicated to almost every other country constantly demonizing that country and calling for the destruction of it's current government (again, not just communist countries, but literally any govt the USA isn't aligned with). Also most people in the USA are immigrants, and immigrants tend to want to forget, downplay, or demonize the country they left. People do this for social gain in their new home, and to psychologically "justify" their choice to move. Even the pilgrims did this in colonial times, and there were a lot of lies and distortions among Americans about the outside world even then!
"Marxists in the West apply an 'indirect consequence' approach to analyzing other regimes, however they do not apply the same thinking to Marxist regimes. (For example, alcoholism and housing shortages did exist in the Soviet Union)"
I don't think anybody denies that there was housing shortages under Stalin, or alcoholism, or any number of serious social problems in Soviet Russia. The point is you CAN'T apply the "indirect consequence" approach in a socialist country because housing, and other social issues are explicitly made the direct responsibility of the government! In capitalist liberal democracies the massive amounts of death, despair and depression aren't directly the political responsibility of the government, so pointing out how many die is seen as "indirect consequence," but that very label is just ideological. The social consequences of policy must be objectively measured, period, no matter what label the government is given. EVERY objectively observable consequence of social policy is "direct," communist, capitalist, or whatever else.
Broadly speaking the Marxists have got it right. China/Vietnam/Cuba are literally the only countries on Earth that have reduced poverty over the past century instead of making it worse. That isn't hyperbole, it's LITERALLY true by the most bourgeois measures you could come up with. The transition to capitalism in Russia has been so socially disastrous that it would literally be seen as genocide if it was done by an outside power (i.e. mortality rates and quality of life have dropped so much that there actually are literally less Russians alive than before). The problems that Marx set out to revolutionize against still exist - imperialist and capitalist exploitation. So far, only Marxist approaches have done anything at all to stop these evils. The end of WW2 did not end aggressive war. UK/USA and the broad NATO coalition continue to attack other nations to exploit their resources. It's that simple.
@@Wobbothe3rd
For me negating those crimes is on par with negating the holocaust.
@@thrawn9115 You are a Nazi apologist to think that the holocaust is equal to a famine.
See? I can just portray you as a Nazi apologist too and be done with it without any argument.
@@LinLinvy I apologize but as a Jewish person I do absolutely think denying the famine is on par with denying the Holocaust. You can deny the ethnic specifications of it and save face (that Stalin targeted Ukrainians because they were Ukrainians), but you cannot deny that the famine was solely due to Soviet miscalculations and exacerbated by Stalin's dogmatic prioritization of cities. That he wanted to 'stamp the peasantry' much like how the Bolsheviks did in the Russian civil war (war communism, etc). Virtually all historians agree on this facet. To deny its gravity and forsake it to natural weather conditions, is on par with saying the Holocaust was just the result of a typhoid epidemic (like Styxhexenhammer666 states). It ignores the flaws of these regimes which itself is idealistic and dishonest, therefore negating victims the comfort of solidarity.
@@BlitzOfTheReich I don't deny the famine . Heck i don't even make any arguments for or against the famine. Please read my comment again.
So what if you are a Jewish person? Just because your race are the victim of holocaust, doesn't makes you arguments stronger or something. I'm not a racist guy who think that a certain group of people opinions higher than others. I'm Chinese so I can just deny China's famine in the 50s people must accept it at fact? (And no, I don't deny it it was just an example)
"Solely due to Soviet miscalculation". Yeah forget the fact certain group of people ( the Kulaks) literally burn their own farm and kill hundred of thousands of livestock to "protest" against the collectivisation.
It's dishonest to just ignore some certain historical facts. Even if it's true the famine occurred solely due to Soviets miscalculation , you are trying to make a systematic genocide looks the same as some miscalculated economic plan. Literal Holocaust apologist.
I'm gonna do whattaboutism here (i don't care what you think), so Churchill did holocaust to the Bengali because he creates the Bengal famine? And he even makes racist remarks to Indian people. It will go on and on until the term genocide doesn't mean anything anymore. Also, it's dishonest to only point out famine that occurred under communist rule as a "sistematic genocide", while never held the same standard to non-communist one.