******Official politics thread ******

[JurisDictum]

Man, Lavrentiy Beria depiction in The Death of Stalin was hilarious. I love comedy about horrible dictators and regimes.

Soviets were state capitalists. Mao was state capitalist that tried to jump the gun on communism and failed...he died knowing he really fucked up on the GLF and the Cultural revolution.

Worker control over the means of production...that was the primary feature of real socialism...Nothing like that exists to this day. The closest is Germany and Sweden -- who have worker councils that partly control the means of production. But I'm familiar enough to know if the people that sit on these worker councils are actually workers, and it is only 1/3 control.

Workers can't control the means of production when its time to make some steel, or cars, or even T.V.s and microchips. Workers can have control over the means of production when it comes to things like software though, can't they?

Socialism and especially real communism, can't exist until an economy reaches a certain point. That indeed, was the real rational behind most of what Lenin, Stalin, and (for the most part) Mao did. "Let's use this 1 party government Vanguard to fast-forward through history and skip over the United States and Germany."

Mao, after constantly being right in his life and being told by intellectuals, Stalin himself, western capitalists, that he was fucked...was skeptical about this idea that he had to wait on industrialization. Chinese were making huge strides ahead of schedule in their first 5 year plan. So he got high on himself and decided to do the GLF.

Throughout the GLF, pretty much everyone he came into contact with lied. They told him grain was way of schedule, the backyard furnaces were working well etc...They even put on shows by his train as he traveled traveled the country side making it look like there was a fury of production going on all around him.

He began to realize what was going on too late, and then pretty much told everyone to cut the shit.

For some reason, we accuse the guy of killing millions of people because of this. It wasn't that simple. Most of the people he actually killed, were scheming party members that are hard to feel sorry for.* And that's the big western misconception on him.

Stalin on the other hand, purposefully engineered grain shortages for his political enemies. So that's pretty evil I admit. In general, these guys were trying to make their countries as powerful as possible, and were willing to kill to do it. But no one was quite as heartlesss about it as Stalin, the state-capitalist called communist by his political opponents.

* I feel a little sorry for the intellectuals -- some of whom were killed. They were invited to criticize the party...some of these used this as an opportunity to suggest the communist party was illegitimate, and they should adopt western style two-party democracy...You have to ask yourself how intelligent those intellectuals really were to suggest that. Obviously that's not the kind of criticism the knew authoritarian Leninist government was looking for..

Way less people died in Maoist China than GMD China -- and GMD was largely a puppet for landlords and foreign elites. Stalin even supported GMD because he didn't want a competitor in the region. And that is why no one in China misses western style capitalist democracy.

[AzzarTheGod]

Originally Posted by holesum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

this meets my generosity standard for forum pals. im sure ill camwhore plenty when can operate a camera.

i do experience terrible anxiety about the whole thing so would appreciate mercy wrt pronoun harassment. but you're empath enough to see that urself ^^

pokes n emapth

*zooms in*

*scribbles note*

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by JurisDictum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Man, Lavrentiy Beria depiction in The Death of Stalin was hilarious. I love comedy about horrible dictators and regimes.

Soviets were state capitalists. Mao was state capitalist that tried to jump the gun on communism and failed...he died knowing he really fucked up on the GLF and the Cultural revolution.

Worker control over the means of production...that was the primary feature of real socialism...Nothing like that exists to this day. The closest is Germany and Sweden -- who have worker councils that partly control the means of production. But I'm familiar enough to know if the people that sit on these worker councils are actually workers, and it is only 1/3 control.

Workers can't control the means of production when its time to make some steel, or cars, or even T.V.s and microchips. Workers can have control over the means of production when it comes to things like software though, can't they?

Socialism and especially real communism, can't exist until an economy reaches a certain point. That indeed, was the real rational behind most of what Lenin, Stalin, and (for the most part) Mao did. "Let's use this 1 party government Vanguard to fast-forward through history and skip over the United States and Germany."

Mao, after constantly being right in his life and being told by intellectuals, Stalin himself, western capitalists, that he was fucked...was skeptical about this idea that he had to wait on industrialization. Chinese were making huge strides ahead of schedule in their first 5 year plan. So he got high on himself and decided to do the GLF.

Throughout the GLF, pretty much everyone he came into contact with lied. They told him grain was way of schedule, the backyard furnaces were working well etc...They even put on shows by his train as he traveled traveled the country side making it look like there was a fury of production going on all around him.

He began to realize what was going on too late, and then pretty much told everyone to cut the shit.

For some reason, we accuse the guy of killing millions of people because of this. It wasn't that simple. Most of the people he actually killed, were scheming party members that are hard to feel sorry for.* And that's the big western misconception on him.

Stalin on the other hand, purposefully engineered grain shortages for his political enemies. So that's pretty evil I admit. In general, these guys were trying to make their countries as powerful as possible, and were willing to kill to do it. But no one was quite as heartlesss about it as Stalin, the state-capitalist called communist by his political opponents.

* I feel a little sorry for the intellectuals -- some of whom were killed. They were invited to criticize the party...some of these used this as an opportunity to suggest the communist party was illegitimate, and they should adopt western style two-party democracy...You have to ask yourself how intelligent those intellectuals really were to suggest that. Obviously that's not the kind of criticism the knew authoritarian Leninist government was looking for..

Way less people died in Maoist China than GMD China -- and GMD was largely a puppet for landlords and foreign elites. Stalin even supported GMD because he didn't want a competitor in the region. And that is why no one in China misses western style capitalist democracy.

How do you manufacture without resources? Venezuela for example.

[Wonkie]

Originally Posted by holesum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

this meets my generosity standard for forum pals. im sure ill camwhore plenty when can operate a camera.

i do experience terrible anxiety about the whole thing so would appreciate mercy wrt pronoun harassment. but you're empath enough to see that urself ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How do you manufacture without resources? Venezuela for example.

Venezuela is awash with natural resources such as diamonds, bauxite, gold, iron ore, natural gas and petroleum. The GDP of the country is $378.9 billion as of 2011. The country largely depends on oil revenues, which accounts for about 95% of the export value and around 12% of the country's GDP value

What's going on in Venezuela -- is a small elite can simply sell all their natural resources, then pay the military off to suppress the rest of the population while this small group lives in luxury from imported goods. Instead of using that wealth to reinvest into the economy (building industry/infrastructure) and make the country better in the long term.

It's not all that easy though...Because whenever these countries awash with resources finally do try to enter the global economy...the World Bank, IMF etc...insists they persue neo-liberal policies and open their boarders so that foreign corporations can siphon off most the prosperity. Which is why America et al. was kicked out of South America.

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by JurisDictum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What's going on in Venezuela -- is a small elite can simply sell all their natural resources, then pay the military off to suppress the rest of the population while this small group lives in luxury from imported goods. Instead of using that wealth to reinvest into the economy (building industry/infrastructure) and make the country better in the long term.

It's not all that easy though...Because whenever these countries awash with resources finally do try to enter the global economy...the World Bank, IMF etc...insists they persue neo-liberal policies and open their boarders so that foreign corporations can siphon off most the prosperity. Which is why America et al. was kicked out of South America.

Missed the point. The tariffs and quotas on resources limit the supply of the materials needed for manufacturing. What they do have, natural resource wise, isn't allowed to be fully utilized by their socialist revolution. Because of that they have unstable prices, so the citizens suffer, as you pointed out due to their corruption. Communist and socialist regimes do this, why? It's all the same bullshit, and you'll never change it; so why worry now (*Dire Straits "Why Worry" starts to play).

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Missed the point. The tariffs and quotas on resources limit the supply of the materials needed for manufacturing. What they do have, natural resource wise, isn't allowed to be fully utilized by their socialist revolution. Because of that they have unstable prices, so the citizens suffer, as you pointed out due to their corruption. Communist and socialist regimes do this, why? It's all the same bullshit, and you'll never change it; so why worry now (*Dire Straits "Why Worry" starts to play).

So when Putin says Russia is a democracy, you believe him?

They say they are communist to add legimacy to government in a ideological sense. Almost all these countries that have called themselves socialist or communist did not first go throught the capitalist development stage that Marx (who invented the concept) said was necessary.

Also, their governments are authoritarian trade-oriented capitalist governments, not a "dictatorship of the proletariat" where the workers control the means of production.

So you are correct that it is "all the same bullshit". And we aren't much different. There's just more resources floating around, wider disbursement of oligarchs, and just like everywhere, it is difficult to consolidate oligarchic control over the resources all at once. So they go for a kind of boiling frog strategy on that...hence wealth inequality keeps getting worse and we keep getting more of the same.

The key difference between us and them, is many of our industries (resources) require people, sometimes well-paid and educated people -- to extract cash flow from them. Unlike oil and diamond mines which doesn't take hosts of workers and administration (although it still takes some -- and those are the best paid in the country as far as workers go I'm guessing)

[AzzarTheGod]

Originally Posted by JurisDictum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So when Putin says Russia is a democracy, you believe him?

Its just a variation of American democracy.

We did try the no-term limits thing in America I think back in the 30's or 40's but it didn't get off the ground. We do MK ultra puppeteering instead (declassified now, MK was a program to extort and control Congressmen based on sexual habits and sexual preferences in the 1960's and 1970's)

[JurisDictum]

Behind every great leader, there is a diabloically evil secret police man like Lavrentiy Beria or Keng Shang.

This is a Chinese history podcast of Keng Shang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMW5eqCvKsk

It was worth a listen, few ever know who this guy is but he was pretty key to Mao's rise.

[Wonkie]

if you have investments, you're a "globalist enabler"