As are all states. The important distinction between them isn’t the degree by which authority is used, which is largely decided by the conditions a state is in rather than the form of the state itself, but instead is which class controls the state. The USSR was run by the working classes, the US by capitalists.
“Politician” is not a class. The state, in Marxist theory, is not outside of class struggle, but is within it. The CPSU did not concentrate wealth in their hands, in fact they were paid wages akin to highly skilled labor at the highest level. As such, wealth inequality went dramatically down:
This is why the Soviet administrators cared so much about the working claases, they were working class themselves. Starvation was eliminated in the Soviet Union, life expectancy doubled in the first few decades, literacy rates skyrocketed to 99.9%, unemployment and homelessness were both nearly eliminated.
Yes, it’s enormously easy to simply paint the USSR as an exact replica of capitalism and aristocracy in outcome, only different in form. It’s also enormously incorrect, and bears no resemblance to reality. As socialists, we need to actually seek truth from facts, and not coast by on vibes alone.
The Soviet Union indeed had a famine in the 1930s. Is your point that it was deliberate? That’s a popular theory among fascists and used to be popular among liberal historians, but opening the Soviet archives proved the socialists correct, that it was largely caused by weather disaster and some degree of mismanagement. It was also the last famine outside of World War II in the Soviet Union, because by the time of the famine’s end agriculture had been successfully collectivized.
Comments like this make it painfully obvious that someone has not engaged with the actual history, because guess who agreed with you that lip service is not enough? The communists. Life expectancy, infant mortality, nutrition, medical outcomes, literacy, addiction rates, poverty, all of this shit immediately improves drastically in every time and place communists have ever seized power. Often these improvements have come despite nightmarish wartime conditions, such as during the Chinese Revolution when life expectancy shot up despite being in active combat with Imperial Japan after 20 years of civil war. The people of Cuba have created one of the most advanced medical systems on earth despite sixty years of strangulation. The people of the USSR risked their safety to send weapons to uprisings across the world despite needing every bullet themselves for the near century of fascist invasion and expansion that ultimately took thirty million of their lives.
The idea that communists are secretly only pretending to care about other people is the single biggest piece of capitalist projection, and the one most foundational to holding up other myths about communists. Every abuser in history has said all the same things the white empire drills into our heads: this is just how the world is, everyone else is just like me or worse, so there’s no point in looking for better. But in reality, Cuba has no Gates Foundation. Laos has no Mr Beast. Our economic system is the one set up to reward and incentivize exploiting people you pretend to care about, not theirs. To look around at the very specific, grotesque circumstances created by capitalism and attribute it to some universal axiom of human society is what having an imagination trapped by capitalist “realism” looks like.
This attitude of “well everyone is shit” is one of the last layers of refuge before you get to the truth: that we, westerners raised in a culture of advanced imperialism, are specifically and deeply sick, that we have forcibly exported this sickness across our planet and we desperately need drastic mass change and healing before it kills us all.
As are all states. The important distinction between them isn’t the degree by which authority is used, which is largely decided by the conditions a state is in rather than the form of the state itself, but instead is which class controls the state. The USSR was run by the working classes, the US by capitalists.
The USSR was run by politicians. They concentrated wealth and privilege into their hands and those of their supporters in the police and military.
Capitalists, party elites, or hereditary nobility; it makes little difference to the starving.
Putting the words in your country name and paying lip service is not enough.
“Politician” is not a class. The state, in Marxist theory, is not outside of class struggle, but is within it. The CPSU did not concentrate wealth in their hands, in fact they were paid wages akin to highly skilled labor at the highest level. As such, wealth inequality went dramatically down:
This is why the Soviet administrators cared so much about the working claases, they were working class themselves. Starvation was eliminated in the Soviet Union, life expectancy doubled in the first few decades, literacy rates skyrocketed to 99.9%, unemployment and homelessness were both nearly eliminated.
Yes, it’s enormously easy to simply paint the USSR as an exact replica of capitalism and aristocracy in outcome, only different in form. It’s also enormously incorrect, and bears no resemblance to reality. As socialists, we need to actually seek truth from facts, and not coast by on vibes alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
The Soviet Union indeed had a famine in the 1930s. Is your point that it was deliberate? That’s a popular theory among fascists and used to be popular among liberal historians, but opening the Soviet archives proved the socialists correct, that it was largely caused by weather disaster and some degree of mismanagement. It was also the last famine outside of World War II in the Soviet Union, because by the time of the famine’s end agriculture had been successfully collectivized.
I found an authoritarian.
I’m an “authoritarian” for affirming the Marxist theory of the state?
Comments like this make it painfully obvious that someone has not engaged with the actual history, because guess who agreed with you that lip service is not enough? The communists. Life expectancy, infant mortality, nutrition, medical outcomes, literacy, addiction rates, poverty, all of this shit immediately improves drastically in every time and place communists have ever seized power. Often these improvements have come despite nightmarish wartime conditions, such as during the Chinese Revolution when life expectancy shot up despite being in active combat with Imperial Japan after 20 years of civil war. The people of Cuba have created one of the most advanced medical systems on earth despite sixty years of strangulation. The people of the USSR risked their safety to send weapons to uprisings across the world despite needing every bullet themselves for the near century of fascist invasion and expansion that ultimately took thirty million of their lives.
The idea that communists are secretly only pretending to care about other people is the single biggest piece of capitalist projection, and the one most foundational to holding up other myths about communists. Every abuser in history has said all the same things the white empire drills into our heads: this is just how the world is, everyone else is just like me or worse, so there’s no point in looking for better. But in reality, Cuba has no Gates Foundation. Laos has no Mr Beast. Our economic system is the one set up to reward and incentivize exploiting people you pretend to care about, not theirs. To look around at the very specific, grotesque circumstances created by capitalism and attribute it to some universal axiom of human society is what having an imagination trapped by capitalist “realism” looks like.
This attitude of “well everyone is shit” is one of the last layers of refuge before you get to the truth: that we, westerners raised in a culture of advanced imperialism, are specifically and deeply sick, that we have forcibly exported this sickness across our planet and we desperately need drastic mass change and healing before it kills us all.
Exploiting people is inherently rewarding. Blaming capitalism for that is baffling.