Has anyone encountered someone from a country that has had socialist in the past falling for propaganda.
I have a couple friends who know I'm a ML and its difficult to try to discuss communism around them because of how they fall for the anti red propaganda.
I can discuss the issues with them but they often dismiss everything at themselves being an authority on the subject as I do not live in a post socialist society. I ususally write them off as impossible to enter reasonable discussions with and also I focus mostly on the people within my region to agitate. But occasionally they're a mutual friend or are in the vicinity of the discussion and return to the same old things.
Unnecessary but relevant story:
There was even an incident with a German I met at a party. I talked for a bit about normal stuff and mentioned how hard living was for me in my country because of capitalism and he shut me down not wanting to talk about politics which ofc I respect its a party. But later when I was discussing the feminist progress in socialist countries have accomplished and their impact on our country and culture with a professor I was totally chattin up(she wrote her final thesis on a similar matter), they came over and interrupted the conversation with their own opinions on the matter. Mostly referring to the history in Berlin of which ofc they hands personally experienced. Thankfully this didnt ruin the vibe and us socialists got social lmao.
But Its something I have encountered repeatedly and I'm not sure how to approach it. Especially as someone from a imperial country.
社会主義採用してた国の人とプロパガンダ信じるのがありますか？ 少し友達に僕はMLだを知ってます。プロパガンダひっかかるので、辺で共産主義について話は難しです。
あの人とよく話せますけど、よく僕の意見は無視されますよ。あの人にとって、あの人は共産主義について権威振舞いますよ。あの人とちゃんと話無理と思いますて, 同国人とに焦点変わります。しかし、よくあの人辺がいますて、よく僕の話に遮ります。どうしようかな
[Edit: lmao I misclicked or something into the wrong community ty for the replies tho]
The large majority of post-soviet citizens regret its fall.
Well, I appreciate the attempt to engage in conversation by throwing someone else’s biased work at me, but there’s a number of problems with this article. Not the sources, though. I will say that these opinion polls are reliable as opinion polls. There’s just a lot more happening.
This article sounds great to anyone that’s never talked to a single person that lived under a socialist government listed here about the actual day-to-day of life, or the countries that they neglected to mention.
First off, nostalgia is classically an unreliable metric for all humans. A guy that loved the Tito era for entirely sexist and exploitative reasons explained it to me like this: “You know why everyone says they liked it back when Tito was around? We’re old. Back then, our dicks worked and we were strong and the girls were pretty!” Gross, but he has a point.
Not that you can have reliable polling from the socialist era to compare. Literally – people couldn’t trust the government enough to give their honest opinion. Most people were afraid they would will suffer at the hands of the government if they give their opinions. Sounds swell. (https://yorktowninstitute.org/purposeless-polls-how-soviet-citizens-rebelled-against-a-regime-that-rejected-open-communication/)
Nostalgia is generally not accepted as an accurate form of analysis of the past or assessment of the present because humans tend to only remember the good times. Called “Rosy Retrospection" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection). And that nostalgia is triggered by the unhappiness of the present – not that there wasn’t unhappiness back then, too. Just that people ignore that part. (https://allaboutpsychology.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-nostalgia-why-everything)
Personally, all the Tito- and Stalin-loving people I’ve met have been the most racist, conservative fuckers alive in any of these countries listed. The ones that say ,“the gays ruined Eurovision.” That’s a direct quote from a former co-worker that loved Tito so much because it was a dictatorship of personality that her parents aligned with (another word for this: corruption and preferential treatment). My partner and I say “the gays ruined Eurovision” sarcastically now when watching Eurovision because of her.
Hungary – case in point. The same proportion of people that put Victor fucking Orban in office are selling you on Ye Olde Socialism? Are you kidding me? My friend, it’s not a 1:1 relationship of “socialism was lovely and everything was great” and “old crusty fucks know what they’re talking about.” Holy shit – did you not even remember Orban existed and is Trump’s bestie?
Let’s look at the glaring omission: Albania. And use the same exact source as the Serbia survey, Balkan Insight. As it turns out, a lot of people in Albania didn’t enjoy socialism because Enver Hoxha turned it up to 11. It was North Korea levels of brutal. So when some people who simply don’t hate that era, it pisses off the people that suffered immensely under socialism.
https://balkaninsight.com/2016/12/12/albania-struggles-to-fight-the-root-of-communism-nostalgia-12-09-2016/btj/
perfect quote:
Oh, look – another connection between the far-right and nostalgia for the socialist era. Hmm….
Speaking of Albanians, you know who else didn’t love the socialist era and Tito? Albanians (and many other ethnicities) in Yugoslavia. The problem with socialism is its authoritarian structure lends itself perfectly to ethnic cleansing and marginalization. Albanians in Yugoslavia were more or less forbidden from participating in the economy. The Albanian reputation for sketchy shit is because on one side of the border Hoxha made life hell, and people that escaped had to hustle to survive outside of the regular economy.
All that Serbian nostalgia seems nice and lovely to you? Those Serbians also want to take back Kosovo and get rid of the Muslim population entirely. Remember? They fucking TRIED that already once. Did you forget a literal genocide in Yugoslavia as it collapsed? Ah yes, because we forget the bad things with nostalgia.
Let’s also look at how “Communist” Tito really was. Answer: Not very
Stalin and Tito got into a big fight because while Tito kept the word “socialist” in the name of the country, be liberalized the economy a lot. Which pissed Stalin off. It was the only thing that kept Yugoslavia from collapsing into an economic travesty that even the USSR couldn’t pull out of itself. https://schoolworkhelper.net/tito-stalin-dispute-1948-timeline-analysis-significance/
Part of this was economic relations between Yugoslavia and non-aligned movement countries in Africa. (https://afrinz.ru/en/2024/04/titos-african-diplomacy-how-yugoslavia-conquered-the-continent/) Tito engaged in trade – something not very socialist, right? Because he needed to to prop up the country's economy. It’s a hard truth, but still a truth.
The result was that Bulgaria, Albania, and the USSR all saw Yugoslavia as something between threat and pariah. Albania built thousands of bunkers on its border with Yugoslavia as a jobs program utilizing Chinese cement imports, and used Yugoslavia’s “non-socialist” economic policies as a reason to paint them as a threat.
But doesn’t Bulgaria rank high on the nostalgia list? Sure, and it’s because joining the EU led to inflation and young people going to Germany for work. But shit – Bulgaria’s roads are nice. It’s not all bad.
Speaking of bad, the old guy that grounded the Tito love explained to me once why the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians didn’t get along back then or today. When this old guy was 18, he would get some blue jeans and like $20 in Yugo dinars and go into Bulgaria in his Yugo with some records and a full tank of gas. He would trade the jeans and records for Bulgarian Lev, and spend the weekend with sex workers and pretty much exploiting economic disparity at every angle. This is the nostalgia you think is so valid – people from one socialist country going to another that had it worse off and exploiting the people. Same thing the Russians did to Ukraine and Georgia.
I’m not saying that everything is nice in the post-European socialist world. It’s not. But accepting wistful nostalgia as honest truth is entirely foolish. Do I trust old white guys that loved the Jim Crow South to give me an honest assessment of the time and place as well? Fuck no. And because humans are humans, that’s a lot of what you’ll get.
But don't take my word for it. Try reading books from people who recall the absurdly fucked up times.
Most books set in the USSR by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Secondhand Time — Svetlana Alexievich
Anything by Ismail Kadare
Gabriela Adameşteanu — Wasted Morning
The Truth That Killed - The Diary of Georgi Markov (killed by Bulgarian Secret Service for talking about life in soviet Bulgaria)
--Have you ever noticed how few books there are by people who just fucking loved living under any of these regimes? --
Now downvote away out of spite because I didn’t say you were right. It’s OK, I expected it all along.
The rise in the far-right in post-socialist countries is due to the systematic eradication of the left. These now capitalist countries are not democratic in any way, and their systems have largely been dominated by western finance capital.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathizer, and was arrested as such. His fiction is based on the folklore of the gulag system, and archival evidence and historical texts paint a much clearer picture of the soviet prison system. He's essentially Yeonmi Park but for the USSR.
Here's a real quote:
From an excellent thread going over his many ideological failings:
His own wife called the Gulag Archipelago "folklore," why on Earth are you listening to a rabid anti-semite and fiction author over actual historical evidence?
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Death rates spiked:
And wealth disparity skyrocketed alongside the newly impoverished majority:
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism and reintroduction of capitalism, and this is why the large majority of post-soviet citizens regret its fall. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries.
When you look at the US Empire and western Europe as having higher quality of life than the USSR, you are looking at the benefits of imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism and wishing the USSR also practiced this, instead of helping liberate colonies and the global south. Russia in particular was a semi-feudal backwater in 1917, and made it to space 5 decades later. The USSR was not the picture of wealth, but was for its time the picture of development and rapid progress.
The USSR was stable by the time it dissolved, it was dissolved from the top-down. It did not fail horribly, it was killed by a corrupt wing that had taken hold since Khruschev. It remained socialist until the very end, but by no means was it an inevitable failure, and modern socialist states have learned from it.
So you reference studies of several countries, and now it's all "the Soviet Union was an idyllic Paradise" and 1 author is a dick. Ignore 95% of what I said with 2,000 words of Soviet fangirl copy pasta?
Explain to me in detail WHY the far right is leaning on socialist-era nostalgia. Please.
Simple, fascism always glorifies the past, but tries to twist it into a point of national pride rather than socialist pride, combined with the fact that the left was thoroughly de-rooted. I didn't debunk literally every author, because the first one I saw was a Nazi and a fiction writer. I also gave you many books written by people living in the USSR giving a positive overview of the experience, something you said is rare.
Right. You've got it.
The economic system means nothing for the nostalgia to work. The nostalgia is not for socialism. It was for anything else.
Anything. Not socialism specifically. Anything else.
So why lean so hard on a misunderstanding of those surveys you admit yourself is wrong?
Regretting the fall of the USSR and stating that they live worse lives economically than under socialism doesn't make them all fascists. There's a collective yearning for a time when life was better, that doesn't make every one of them fascist, and the fact that fascists try to take advantage of this fact to gain power does not mean that socialism was secretly worse. I demonstrated numerous ways how the dissolution of socialism was disastrous to back this up, which you called "fangirling" (which itself is misogynistic and misgendering) and unrelated.
"Better" can also be defined as simply not going through the total collapse of one's country. Stability, not economic power, has value. Humans do a lot to maintain homeostasis and low risk living. It's a looooong timeline to unfuck a country. Generations, in fact. Not limited to post-Soviet bloc counties either. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, the US after the Civil War, Germany, Italy, Spain, Iraq. Take your pick.
How many East Germans "regretted" the collapse of the Nazi regime simply because their currency ceased to buy them food?
Stop thinking that an economic model of governance solves or causes all problems. Humans cause problems. They'll use any economic model to show you how easy it is to fuck it up.
This is just you turning a blind eye to the very real fact that the reason metrics collapsed with the adoption of capitalism and the dissolution of socialism is because critical safety nets were destroyed, disparity skyrocketed, and profit became king. I didn't give you hard evidence of the successes of socialism for no reason, but to definitively point out why socialism's absence and capitalism's presence has been disastrous. Because this is inconvenient for you, you just try to shift it to a general "human problem," even though the socialist system worked well up until the very end.
Is the absence of socialism capitalism? Is the absence of capitalism socialism?
I'm asking you to take a higher level philosophical view of being tied to defending a human-made economic model.
Why even waste the energy? Never mind the fact that socialism requires authoritarianism as the starting point. You don't even have many models of success to point to. Have even half of counties that tried socialism survived? It's not much different than wearing a Confederate flag on your shirt and shouting "The South Will Rise Again!" Even China went to a hybrid system. Why spend you limited life defending a proven mediocre idea?
You don't want countries to chose for themselves based on their own priorities? You really think you have it all figured out and should force it on everyone?
No. Capitalism is a mode of production and distribution where private ownership is the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalist class in control of the state. Socialisn is a mode of production and distribution where public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. Feudalism is neither socialism nor capitalism, as an example of absence of both.
All views are baked in our philosophy, whether we are aware of it or not. Everyone is a "philosopher," based on their own values and experiences shaping how they view the world and their place in it. I follow dialectical materialism, which is how I view the world and attempt to understand it.
My energy isn't wasted, in my opinion, because I've created many comrades that otherwise may not have come around to socialism.
All societies since primitive communism have been class societies, and thus all societies rely on the authority of the state to represent the ruling class. Capitalism requires the authoritarianism of capitalists over the working classes, socialism is superior to capitalism in that it is the authoritarianism of workers over capitalists, landlords, and fascists. Only once all class has been abolished through socialism into communism will the state wither away, leaving classless society devoid of such talk of "authoritarianism."
This is nonsense, the confederacy was a slave-driven economy that lasted 4 years on its own. Socialism in Europe lasted nearly a century, and today we still have the PRC, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, and Cuba. China is not a "hybrid system," it's a socialist market economy. The backbone of the economy is in strong State Owned Enterprises, with marketization filling in the gaps left behind by the publicly owned commanding heights of the economy.
Socialism is the opposite of a "proven mediocre idea," it has worked every time it has been implemented in achieving its broad aims. The largest ecomomy in the world by PPP is socialist, and the PRC shows no signs of this slowing down. The 21st century will be driven by decay of imperialism and the rise of socialism.
I agree with self-determination, I also believe that based on the facts at hand, capitalism is at the end of its existence and socialism remains the only path forward. I advocate for the formation of revolutionary parties to grow working class movements and establish socialism, not for tiny adventurist cells to try to coup governments. Establishing socialism only works with popular support.
OK. Well I see that encouraging freedom of thought with you is, itself, a waste of time.
You mention a lack of poverty - as defined by an authoritarian regime that defines both who is poor as well as who can talk about it. Same with citing surveys of subjective experience that is objectively questionable at best as your only reference of people that enjoyed living under socialism.
This is a list of one-party states. Not countries practicing socialism.
Vietnam and the DPRK are client states of China so that political class Boomers can stick it to each other using 60-year-old political stances. Cuba is a client state of Russia for the same reasons. Or maybe it's socialism in that Gazprom sales to Europe used to keep the power running in Havana.
I do want to say, I genuinely feel sorry for the people of Cuba. An entire nation used as leverage so that a few old guys can thumb their nose at a few other old guys. Every Cuban (not Miami Cubans, doctors across Africa) I've ever met was really quite nice. Weird Spanish and some definite clothing...choices... but they didn't talk up Cuba's success. It's natural beauty, sure.
This is very much not the case. Basic bartering in a village where one farmer sells grain or sheep cheese dispels the notion that the a "worker class" is powerless without socialism.
I know a guy that grew up in Moldova as part of the USSR. Tons of stories of all the side hustles his parents had to survive. He gave me an avoska bag, which is one of the greatest things ever. His mother taught him "always carry one, you never know when you'll see someone selling bread!" His family would make and trade vodka and wine to construction workers so they could get things like wood or cement to fix their house.
Socialism can't even prevent capitalism from occurring because socialism is inherently a blunt tool intended to control the fine-details of human life. It is incompatible with human dignity. I'm not saying anything else is - but don't for a minute think your brand of authoritarianism really changes much other than who wields power over workers.
You don't actually believe this, do you?
How many suicides from the Chinese-authorized Foxconn building due to low wages and brutal working conditions? Who, exactly, did those workers have authority over? The state? Apple? The political class in China? The landlords they still need to pay with those low wages? Answer: they had authority over no one and nothing. Not even to cry for help. So they fucking killed themselves to end it all. And it's not changed.
Seriously - you're going to tell me that China is a successful model of socialism when it's developed a middle class over the last 20 years to help propagate state-run businesses that exploit workers on behalf of capitalist companies? It's not making class go away, it's making MORE classes! It's entrenching political class stratification and menial workers that serve them. Mao murdered a million landlords - but there's still landlords in China, my friend. It's just that the current landlords are part of the CCP.
China is the largest sponsor of capitalism and classism in the world. It's economic model relies on capitalism entirely, at a global scale. It's kind of funny you don't or won't see that. This is China's success? Gaslight yourself all you want. No country listed in your 5 survivors is even marching towards some golden dawn where class ceases to exist. It's a laughable claim.
My friend, thanks for the chat, but whew....please, I beg you, go visit any of places where socialism failed and find out why. Five countries still doing it and literally dozens of failures. I've been to 17 countries that once tried socialism, and I always ask about it. Always a lively conversation with people!
Is it really so superior if the failure rate is more than 90%?
Buddy...for real. You're into super fail sauce like this? Is it just to piss off your parents or something? It's like Marxist-Leninist folks and Flat Earthers share some attribute about ignoring obvious evidence. I've never been so sold on the idea that socialism is maybe the silliest, worst thing people have ever tried. We can do better. It's just time for something new, right?
Here - go find a failed socialist country near you and check it out:
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Estonia, half of Germany, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Armenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, any former Yugoslavian country, Mongolia, Benin, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Guinea, Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Mali, Algeria, Madagascar, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Yemen, Iraq, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Zimbabwe. I'm sure I'm missing a couple.
Have a nice day! (should I say "Have my nice day" because it's socialism? I did work at making it nice, after all.)
Genuinely curious what this means, considering I came to my own conclusions after researching this topic heavily. You encouraged nothing.
All states are "authoritarian" in that all states represent a ruling class, yet you seem to only call states where the working classes have power "authoritarian regimes." You never elaborate further. I gave many books and primary sources going far more into detail, yet you laser-focus on the nostalgia polling. Dishonesty on your part.
All of these countries have public ownership as the principal aspect, with the working classes in control of the state. Having a single party does not go against that, it strengthens them. Further, the PRC has 8 political parties in addition to the CPC, and the DPRK has 2 additional parties beyond the WPK, none have the influence of the CPC nor WPK because both are more popularly supported.
This is pure chauvanism, socialist countries having favorable ties does not mean smaller ones are "client states."
Personal anecdote doesn't actually trump the fact that Cuba's socialist system has delivered incredible results, including in healthcare, despite the intense embargo.
This isn't how modern capitalism functions, lmao. Capitalism isn't simply trade, it's an entire economic system backed by a tyrannical state to oppress workers. The existence of individual petite bourgeois worker-owners does not negate the dominance of megacorps and dictatorial states of capital.
China is lower on the suicide rate scale than the US Empire and much of western Europe. This is why facts and statistics matter, not just how you personally feel.
There is no such thing as a "political class" either. The state is the representative of the ruling class in society, not its own unique and distinct class. Classes are relations with definite counterparts, like peasant/lord, worker/capitalist. The state does not exist outside of class struggle.
Again, more bullshit. China is not creating new classes, you're misrepresenting what class even is to begin with, thinking it's related to income. There is no "middle-income class" nor "political class." What has happened is the dramatic uplifting of the working classes, including a renewed focus on eradicating the rural/urban divide within the working classes.
More bullshit. The PRC's economy is driven by public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, with private ownership as secondary. The existence of private property and markets does not make a system capitalist if those elements form secondary aspects of the overall economy. Further, again, the class character of the state is proletarian. As markets centralize, private ownership is folded into the public sector and increasing degrees of public control are added. This is how socialism is built, on the basis of developed industry.
Not all countries are the same size, haha. The PRC alone has 1.4 billion people, and again, anecdote doesn't replace facts and statistics. Socialism worked better than modern capitalism does in Eastern Europe, if you purely look at the fact that socialism dissolved without looking at how and why, and dogmatically assuming this is the case for any socialist state, you're torturing your understanding of statistical analysis.
The one in this conversation ignoring obvious evidence has been yourself, along with relying on anecdote and hearsay in place of facts and statistics. When you do bring up stats, it's in a way that reveals a vulgar understanding of correlation and causation, betraying your own points.
Checking out the devastation of capitalism to countries that by and large were far stronger under socialism only affirms my points. Further, Burkina Faso, for example, is currently going through a nationalist revolution drawing on its Marxist past, upholding Sankara. You even threw in semi-feudal anti-communists like Cambodia under Pol Pot to pad out your numbers, but it betrays you by pointing out that you're willing to lie just to prove a point.
I have no idea what your joke means, and given your love of lying, smearing me, and generally avoiding grappling with concrete reality, I'd say you failed at being nice if that was your goal.