[Ukraine] EU: Nice minister, shame if something were to happen...

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] EU: Nice minister, shame if something were to happen...

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KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

I'm reminded of an old joke that goes the Communists lied about what Communism was going to be like, unfortunately they told the truth about Capitalism

# ? Nov 30, 2023 16:29

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# ? May 26, 2024 06:54

crepeface: Nov 5, 2004; r*p*f*c*

comedyblissoption posted:

this is the flimsy apologist angle you are going to see going forward for this topic.

were there any more details on the ukranian negotiator that was killed by ukraine other than inviting the audience to fill in the blanks and tug their collar?

jan 2023:

crepeface posted:

also lol i just saw this

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-sbu-responsible-killing-banker-russian-intelligence/32235780.html

quote:
KYIV -- Ukrainian security agents were responsible for killing a Ukrainian banker who reportedly served as a crucial information conduit and negotiator with Russia in the run-up to last year's invasion, a top intelligence official said.

The comments, made by General Kyrylo Budanov in an interview with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, add further to the mystery surrounding the killing of Denys Kiryeyev, who was reportedly honored for his work four months after his death.

Budanov, who heads Ukraine's military intelligence agency, said "he believes the facts" and that Kiryeyev, who was a full-time employee of the agency, was killed by the Security Service of Ukraine, widely known as the SBU. Budanov did not say how long Kiryeyev had worked for the agency.

The agents killed Kiryeyev in an SBU car as they "conducted an operation" against him, he said.

"It's a fact that he was killed in that car by these operatives," Budanov, whose agency is known as the GUR, said in a January 21 phone interview.

Asked specifically if SBU agents killed "a Ukrainian hero," he told RFE/RL: "This is absolutely true."

Budanov's comments came three days after a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story that examined the work of Kiryeyev, who had been employed for several Western banks and had developed ties with powerful businessmen in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk who had strong connections to Russia.

even RFERL says ukraine killed their own negotiator. of course they don't delve into why he was killed beyond a vague "WSJ says he was being investigated by the SBU for passing along info!" but it still more than what i expected

# ? Nov 30, 2023 16:36

crepeface: Nov 5, 2004; r*p*f*c*

VoicesCanBe posted:

I think we can say that "Boris Johnson scuttled the peace deal" is established history at this point. It's beyond refutation. Russian, Ukranian, and third party sources have all confirmed it.

from the c-spam UK thread in june 2023:

quote:

I'm gonna use all my powers of media literacy to hold off on believing that until we get more than a video of Putin holding papers.

Party Boat posted:

He has in his hand a piece of paper, eh?

# ? Nov 30, 2023 16:37

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

sharing info is literally what negotiators do

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:00

VoicesCanBe: Jul 1, 2023; "Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

comedyblissoption posted:

this is the flimsy apologist angle you are going to see going forward for this topic.

were there any more details on the ukranian negotiator that was killed by ukraine other than inviting the audience to fill in the blanks and tug their collar?

None of those "refutations" undermine Ivan's argument whatsoever.

"The deal had risks" lmao no loving poo poo what major peace deal doesn't have "risks"?

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:20

VoicesCanBe: Jul 1, 2023; "Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

KomradeX posted:

I'm reminded of an old joke that goes the Communists lied about what Communism was going to be like, unfortunately they told the truth about Capitalism

Another joke along the same lines from 90s Russia: Capitalism did in 5 years what Communism couldn't do in 70 - make Communism look good.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:22

samogonka: Nov 5, 2016

Ukrainska Pravda published an article back in April 2022 directly stating that Johnson had caused the peace talks to collapse. It said that he had told Zelensky that there would be no security guarantees if they made peace. This was all in the open right after the peace talks stopped.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:33

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

yes I remember we all talked about it when it happened

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:33

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

the theory at the time was Boris was gunning to be made head of Nato but I guess that wasn�t quite right

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:34

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

samogonka posted:

Ukrainska Pravda published an article back in April 2022 directly stating that Johnson had caused the peace talks to collapse. It said that he had told Zelensky that there would be no security guarantees if they made peace. This was all in the open right after the peace talks stopped.

one of the western media outlets also reported this at the time as a puff piece for johnson

there were a lot of doubters still, but now we have a bunch of first hand confirming accounts from heads of state and the negotiators themselves making it irrefutable

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:40

VoicesCanBe: Jul 1, 2023; "Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

samogonka posted:

Ukrainska Pravda published an article back in April 2022 directly stating that Johnson had caused the peace talks to collapse. It said that he had told Zelensky that there would be no security guarantees if they made peace. This was all in the open right after the peace talks stopped.

I remember reading this article

It of course spun this as a positive

VoicesCanBe has issued a correction as of 17:51 on Nov 30, 2023

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:46

slave to my cravings: Mar 1, 2007; Got my mind on doritos and doritos on my mind.

there were no risks to continuing the war

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:52

Organ Fiend: May 21, 2007; custom title

dead gay comedy forums posted:

idk about you guys but it drove me seriously mad reading for the first time about what people thought it would happen after liberalization

"oh what do you mean I have to pay... 'rent' ? And wait, there's no office of employment? But how am I going to get a job? I have to be... 'hired'?"

holy loving poo poo

poo poo like this makes me feel all pessimistic and black pilled about the long term sustainability of a socialist state.

Like, say you manage to have a revolution and establish a perfect socialist state. Even with perfect education, you'll still eventually reach the point where your leaders have no experiential knowledge of what things were like before the revolution. I.e. how *bad* a capitalist system is, what "rent" and "unemployment" mean, as in the quote above. Your citizens won't know *why* the system they're in is so important or how *bad* it is everywhere else. Brezhnev was born in 1908. Gorbachev was born in 1931.

How do you get around this? How do you not get defeated by your own success?

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:54

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

you can point to the dissolution of the soviet union as a case example of getting owned

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:57

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

even the west uses the derogatory euphemism shock therapy to refer to the massive degradation of quality of life and does not dispute it lol

# ? Nov 30, 2023 17:59

Officer Sandvich: Feb 14, 2010

Putin debunks his own propaganda by disarming Russia�s NATO borders

quote:

For the past twenty-one months, Vladimir Putin has consistently blamed NATO for provoking the invasion of Ukraine. According to the Kremlin dictator, years of NATO expansion posed an escalating security threat to Russia that eventually left the country with no choice but to defend itself. This NATO narrative has proven far more persuasive among international audiences than Russia�s more outlandish propaganda about �Ukrainian Nazis� and �Western Satanists.� However, it is now being debunked by Russia�s own actions. From Norway in the Arctic north to Kaliningrad in the west, Russia is making a mockery of Putin�s claims by dramatically reducing its military presence along the country�s borders with the NATO Alliance. If Putin genuinely believed NATO posed a threat to Russia, would he voluntarily disarm his entire front line?

This rather obvious flaw in the Kremlin�s logic was thrust into the spotlight on November 26 when Britain�s Ministry of Defense reported that Russia had likely withdrawn vital air defense systems from its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad to cover mounting losses in Ukraine. Many saw this as a particularly significant development as Kaliningrad is Russia�s most westerly outpost and is bordered on three sides by NATO member states. If Russian leaders were remotely serious about the possibility of a military confrontation with NATO, Kaliningrad is the last place they would want to leave undefended.

The weakening of Kaliningrad�s air defenses is the latest in a series of steps that have revealed the reality behind Moscow�s frequent anti-NATO rhetoric. The first major indication that Russia was being less than honest about its NATO fears came in May 2022, when Sweden and Finland announced plans to abandon decades of neutrality and join the Alliance. Just a few months earlier, the Kremlin had paraded its NATO grievances in a bid to justify the bloodiest European invasion since World War II. In stark contrast, Russia now responded to the news from Stockholm and Helsinki with a shrug.

The complete lack of concern on display in Moscow was all the more remarkable given the fact that Finnish NATO accession would more than double Russia�s existing border with the Alliance, while Swedish membership would transform the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Nevertheless, Putin insisted Russia had �no problem� with this dramatic transformation of the geopolitical landscape in Northern Europe. He actively sought to downplay the issue, declining even to deploy the dark arts of Russian hybrid warfare or otherwise attempt to interfere in the accession process.

The Kremlin response to NATO�s recent Nordic expansion has extended beyond mere indifference. In the eighteen months since Finland�s announcement of impending NATO membership, Moscow has actively demilitarized the Finnish frontier and withdrawn the bulk of its troops away from the border zone for redeployment to the killing fields of Ukraine. Speaking in August 2023, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen confirmed that the border area was now �pretty empty� of Russian troops. �If we were a threat, they would certainly not have moved their troops away, even in a situation where they are engaged somewhere else,� she noted.

A similar process has been underway since February 2022 on Russia�s nearby border with NATO member Norway. Norwegian army chief General Eirik Kristoffersen revealed in September 2023 that Russia had withdrawn approximately 80% of its troops from the border zone. �Vladimir Putin knows very well that NATO is not a threat against Russia,� commented Kristoffersen. �If he believed we were threatening Russia, he couldn�t have moved all his troops to Ukraine.�

Putin�s readiness to demilitarize his country�s borders with neighboring NATO members is damning evidence that the decision to invade Ukraine had nothing to do with an alleged NATO threat to Russia itself. This does not mean his attacks on the Alliance are entirely insincere, of course. The vitriol Putin frequently displays toward NATO is real enough, but it does not reflect any legitimate security concerns. Instead, Putin resents NATO because it thwarts his revanchist agenda and prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors in the traditional manner. In other words, NATO presents no danger whatsoever to Russian national security, but it does pose a very serious threat to Russian imperialism.

This has long been apparent to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, who clamored to join NATO following the fall of the USSR precisely because they sought protection against what was widely seen as the inevitable revival of Russian aggression. Indeed, while Putin equates NATO enlargement with Western expansionism, the post-1991 growth of the Alliance was in fact almost exclusively driven by fear of Russia among the many countries queuing up to join. Their concerns were shaped by decades and in some cases centuries of brutal subjugation at the hands of the Russian Empire in its Tsarist and Soviet forms. If Russians want somebody to blame for the current NATO presence on their doorstep, they would be well advised to look in the mirror.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has now confirmed that these earlier fears of resurgent Russian imperialism were more than justified. Putin himself has openly compared the current invasion to Russian Tsar Peter the Great�s eighteenth century wars of imperial conquest, and has referred to occupied Ukrainian regions as �historical Russian lands.� He routinely denies Ukraine�s right to exist, while insisting Ukrainians are Russians (�one people�). Meanwhile, incitement to genocide has become completely normalized on Russian state television, with Russian soldiers in Ukraine acting on this genocidal rhetoric. The entire NATO narrative has served as a convenient smokescreen for what is a classic campaign of colonial conquest to destroy independent Ukraine.

The Kremlin knows very well that it has nothing to fear from NATO, and is evidently comfortable leaving its borders with the Alliance unguarded. Despite his anti-NATO posturing, Putin is actually motivated by a rising sense of alarm over the emergence of a democratic Ukraine, which he sees as an existential threat to his own authoritarian regime and a hated symbol of Russia�s post-1991 retreat from empire. As Ukraine has gradually slipped further and further away from the Kremlin orbit during Putin�s reign, his responses have become increasingly extreme, evolving from political interference in the 2000s to escalating military aggression since 2014. We have now reached the stage of open genocide.

With the invasion of Ukraine set to enter a third year, too many Western commentators and politicians are still laboring under the delusion that some kind of compromise with the Kremlin remains possible. This assumes the invasion of Ukraine is a conventional war with limited geopolitical objectives, which is clearly not the case. Instead, Putin is a messianic leader convinced of his own historic mission, who has staked everything on the destruction of the Ukrainian state and the reversal of Russia�s Cold War defeat. By pointing the finger of blame at NATO, Putin has sought to distract attention from this chilling reality, but a brief look at Russia�s recently demilitarized NATO borders should be enough to dismiss such claims.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:03

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Kremlin very clearly not concerned about NATO as it keeps blowing up NATO weapons stockpiles in Ukraine.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:05

Best Friends: Nov 4, 2011

VoicesCanBe posted:

I remember reading this article

It of course spun this as a positive

at the time saying there should be a peace deal anywhere in the west was a sign of being a putinist agent. Everyone loved having a good war to talk about, Russians were dying, and then as now no one in the west cares about Ukrainian lives.

opinion is slowly turning against the war not because of the costs to Ukrainian society but because Russia has improved their position and it�s becoming harder and harder to pretend that Russia is moments from collapse.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:06

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

Officer Sandvich posted:

Putin debunks his own propaganda by disarming Russia�s NATO borders

I love that things like strategic nuclear weapons systems, ABMs, etc evidently don't enter into their calculus of what Russia is trying to deter.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:09

Organ Fiend: May 21, 2007; custom title

comedyblissoption posted:

you can point to the dissolution of the soviet union as a case example of getting owned

"Gorby just liberalized wrong. Besides [capitalist empire of the present] isn't as bad as the US was, and paying a little for housing and healthcare can't be that bad"

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:24

Officer Sandvich: Feb 14, 2010

samogonka posted:

Ukrainska Pravda published an article back in April 2022 directly stating that Johnson had caused the peace talks to collapse. It said that he had told Zelensky that there would be no security guarantees if they made peace. This was all in the open right after the peace talks stopped.

Possibility of talks between Zelenskyy and Putin came to a halt after Johnson�s visit - UP sources

quote:

The second "obstacle" to agreements with the Russians arrived in Kyiv on 9 April."

Details: According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.

The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.

And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.

Johnson�s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to "press him."

Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end".

PM call with President Macron: 6 May 2022

quote:

The Prime Minister updated on his visit to Kyiv last month and shared his conviction that Ukraine would win, supported with the right level of defensive military assistance. He urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin�s false narrative for the invasion, but stressed that this was a decision for the Ukrainian government.

The World Putin Wants

quote:

According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.

The Grinding War in Ukraine Could Have Ended a Long Time Ago

quote:

According to Bennett, as early as the second Saturday of the war, or a little less than a week and a half into the war, both Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin made major concessions: Putin, by giving up on the goals of the �demilitarization� of Ukraine and its �denazification� � meaning, as Bennett interpreted it, regime change � and Zelensky by giving up on pursuing NATO membership.

Calling both leaders �pragmatic,� Bennett says that over the course of negotiations, he �was under the impression that both sides very much want[ed] a ceasefire� and gave the odds of any deal holding at 50-50. Over a �marathon of drafts,� he claims, seventeen draft agreements were prepared. But �they blocked it, and I thought [they were] wrong,� Bennett says, referring to the Western powers backing Ukraine.

�I have one claim,� Bennett told the interviewer. �I claim there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire.� When the interviewer asks if he means �had they not curbed it,� he replies with a nod.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:24

supersnowman: Oct 3, 2012

Majorian posted:

I love that things like strategic nuclear weapons systems, ABMs, etc evidently don't enter into their calculus of what Russia is trying to deter.

I really don't know why they think Russia don't expect slow grinding combat allowing them time to bring reinforcement if combat opens in Karelia and Murmansk oblast...

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:35

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Organ Fiend posted:

How do you get around this? How do you not get defeated by your own success?

Honestly I think it has far more to do about the shortcomings of cultural policy and economic constraints of trade here. I don't think it was a matter of becoming ignorant (and personally I feel this is a prejudice of liberal moralism, a reactionary twitch reflex), people wanted the USSR to keep going, after all; it was a matter of fundamental deception, of misunderstanding what was being proposed by liberalization and how that prestige was executed. People got conned.

The reason of getting mad there that I mentioned was from the people who should have known better getting tricked, lmao

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:44

WoodrowSkillson: Feb 24, 2005; *Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

my own cynical take is that human greed is so omnipresent that the mechanisms/temptation of capitalism will never be fully excised and that any successful socialist state will need some kind of legacy private sector to redirect the greedy and ambitious from political power. everyone should have healthcare, UBI, and safe shelter. however some dickheads will always try and get as much power and influence and wealth as they can. So allow some kind of private enterprise around commodities that are not essential. that way the people that just cannot be satisfied with a life of safety and health and freedom to pursue their passions will have an outlet in the form of working for some lovely corp that makes dirtbikes or sports cars or watches. that will also exist to address the concern brought up that people laterally had forgotten what some of those mechanisms look like.

this belongs in another thread though so we should probably keep it focused on the subject at hand

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:57

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

isn�t that what China does

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:58

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

Organ Fiend posted:

poo poo like this makes me feel all pessimistic and black pilled about the long term sustainability of a socialist state.

Like, say you manage to have a revolution and establish a perfect socialist state. Even with perfect education, you'll still eventually reach the point where your leaders have no experiential knowledge of what things were like before the revolution. I.e. how *bad* a capitalist system is, what "rent" and "unemployment" mean, as in the quote above. Your citizens won't know *why* the system they're in is so important or how *bad* it is everywhere else. Brezhnev was born in 1908. Gorbachev was born in 1931.

How do you get around this? How do you not get defeated by your own success?

The question can be rephrased as 'how do we stop people from thinking access to jeans and burger is all there is to life' and then you have the answer. Make sure people have something to live for, something greater than themselves. It's uncomfortable to talk about but essentially man is an animal and left to their base desires they're just going to trend towards burger thinking. In the west we're already here. We fill our lives with pointless poo poo and can't even be assed to cook anymore so we get burger delivered. This, according to neoliberalism, is the perfect system and cannot be improved upon.

Which is all to say: Education about the human condition. Make people aware of their own desires vs the bigger picture. Make sure they understand that not having the same choice of burgers is worth it to have health care and social safety nets. If after all this, they still want burger, then i guess there's no hope for humanity. Or at least white people.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 18:58

Phigs: Jan 23, 2019

Regarde Aduck posted:

The question can be rephrased as 'how do we stop people from thinking access to jeans and burger is all there is to life' and then you have the answer. Make sure people have something to live for, something greater than themselves. It's uncomfortable to talk about but essentially man is an animal and left to their base desires they're just going to trend towards burger thinking. In the west we're already here. We fill our lives with pointless poo poo and can't even be assed to cook anymore so we get burger delivered. This, according to neoliberalism, is the perfect system and cannot be improved upon.

Which is all to say: Education about the human condition. Make people aware of their own desires vs the bigger picture. Make sure they understand that not having the same choice of burgers is worth it to have health care and social safety nets. If after all this, they still want burger, then i guess there's no hope for humanity. Or at least white people.

I think the Marxist rejection of spirituality and idealism was ultimately a big problem for the Soviet experiment. I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead. Communism should have been infused with more of a religious flavor; been less about material circumstances and more about the spiritual unification of humanity without the barriers of class or market competition. If communism is just no rent and a guaranteed job vs bananas and Levis then it's always vulnerable to greed. Anyone who thinks they could win in that equation is incentivized to shoot for it. Capitalism needs to be seen as primarily a rejection of community and humanity and spirituality.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 19:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Regarde Aduck posted:

The question can be rephrased as 'how do we stop people from thinking access to jeans and burger is all there is to life' and then you have the answer. Make sure people have something to live for, something greater than themselves.

Phigs posted:

I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead.

I'm not saying y'all are wrong or even that I fundamentally disagree, but it's certainly interesting the parallels in sentiment with the intelligentsia from Chapter 9:

quote:

The existing system was unrealistic, and its most glaring failure of realism lay in its attitude towards the workers, whom it treated as robots or at best a �labour resource�. Reformers were strongly critical of this tendency to dehumanise the workers and regard them as work-performing objects. Human beings were not machines. They did not work well unless stimulated, and yet, unlike machines, they were capable, once stimulated, of showing initiative and being creative. �A machine will never replace human beings in the process of economic creativity�, Alexander Birman insisted.3 A system concerned only with what could be got out of the workers lost sight of the whole purpose of a socialist economy, which was not production for production�s sake but satisfying people�s material and spiritual needs, including those of the workers. The focus of attention at the workplace should therefore, Birman argued, be not so much the work done as the workers who did it. �To what extent can they fulfil their dreams, wishes and plans, which of course are not limited to smelting more iron or making more shoes?�4 If the workers were seen not as an undifferentiated mass of task-performers but, rather, as individuals with needs and aspirations of their own, then they would find their work more satisfying and would do it better.

The suggestion that workers had individual and group interests distinct from those of society as a whole was, however, highly contentious. The official view was that this was a society without antagonistic social relationships or serious internal divisions or conflicts of any kind, that it was a society united in its aspirations and becoming ever-more homogeneous. These conditions allowed the state to do what no capitalist state could � to define a general social interest, an interest that embraced the entire population. This interest the party represented and fully satisfied through its policies. Much of this analysis the reformers readily accepted. The socialisation of the means of production was an immense advance � without that, socialism would be unthinkable.5 Socialism�s great advantage over capitalism was that by abolishing private ownership of the means of production it had created the potential for a single, non-conflictual social interest. The restructuring of property relationships was, however, not enough by itself to remove all significant social division and conflict. The reality was less neat and more complicated than the orthodox schema suggested. Conflicting classes indeed no longer existed in the Soviet Union, but the country still had distinct social groups, each with its own interests, and these in turn were made up of individuals with their own needs and motivations.

Serious thinking about the importance of groups and interests within socialist society had been stimulated by Ota Sik, whose The Economy, Interests, Politics had been published in the Soviet Union in 1964. 6 Sik argued that workers think and act not only as a class but also, and above all, as individuals living in a particular social milieu. Only an economic system that took account of these individual interests could be effective. And it was only through their individual interests that workers would, in time, come to an awareness of their common interests. These views were fiercely combated by traditionalists, for whom any suggestion that Soviet society was less than a monolith, and that groups within it had interests of their own, was heresy.7 The reformers nevertheless persisted. Their view, they were convinced, reflected the reality, was the key to revitalising the economy, was intrinsically socialist, and presented no threat whatsoever to the party. The revival of sociology, after years of being banned, indicated that they were making progress. And it was a sociologist, V. Shubkin, who, in 1965, put their case most explicitly: �within classes there exist definite social groups, the differences between which are created not by forms of ownership of the means of production but by such factors as profession, level of qualification, education and income.�8 Unless these groups were taken into account, Shubkin suggested, unless their needs, tastes, attitudes, and motives for acting as they did were given some attention, the concrete economic problems of the country could not be solved.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:00

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Correct, CSPAM is a forum for a bunch of intellectualist libs.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:02

Slavvy: Dec 11, 2012

Phigs posted:

I think the Marxist rejection of spirituality and idealism was ultimately a big problem for the Soviet experiment. I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead. Communism should have been infused with more of a religious flavor; been less about material circumstances and more about the spiritual unification of humanity without the barriers of class or market competition. If communism is just no rent and a guaranteed job vs bananas and Levis then it's always vulnerable to greed. Anyone who thinks they could win in that equation is incentivized to shoot for it. Capitalism needs to be seen as primarily a rejection of community and humanity and spirituality.

This is what I've concluded as well

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:07

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

Phigs posted:

I think the Marxist rejection of spirituality and idealism was ultimately a big problem for the Soviet experiment. I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead. Communism should have been infused with more of a religious flavor; been less about material circumstances and more about the spiritual unification of humanity without the barriers of class or market competition. If communism is just no rent and a guaranteed job vs bananas and Levis then it's always vulnerable to greed. Anyone who thinks they could win in that equation is incentivized to shoot for it. Capitalism needs to be seen as primarily a rejection of community and humanity and spirituality.

been saying this

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:13

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

if the access to treats is a threat to socialism, then a good first step to counteract that problem would be to engineer a world economic system where the actual physical production of treats is entirely dependent on socialist countries

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:21

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

Cerebral Bore posted:

if the access to treats is a threat to socialism, then a good first step to counteract that problem would be to engineer a world economic system where the actual physical production of treats is entirely dependent on socialist countries

lol, lMao

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:22

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

madame secretary season 2 episode 20 some terrorist group is being terroristy so madame secretary is trying to negotiate an alliance with russia to destroy them once and for all but the main sticking point is nato expansion the russian foreign minister wants us to stop expanding nato for ten years which is unacceptable eventually she settles for five

now for those of you whove forgotten my previous recaps in this universe ukraine has already been partitioned into east and west halves in part because west ukraine tried to trick us into starting world war three so the question begged but not addressed here is who in circa 2016 we would even want to ask to join nato nevertheless that the russians would ask for such a thing is still clearly being treated as unreasonable where are the russians getting these crazy ideas that were looking for random excuses to destabilize their government

elsewhere in the story the russians are not allowing madame secretarys husbands student turned dead spys sister to recover his body and are going to send her to a gulag because if she were to do so then everyone would know that he was executed as a spy and as we all know theres nothing the russians would consider to be a greater public relations disaster than everyone learning that the united states has been trying to recruit international exchange students as spies

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:34

Slavvy: Dec 11, 2012

Are these posts the price we have to pay to have FF around? Like some kind of karmic balance thing where for every wall of text about colonial artillerymen homosex there has to be a wall of text about some idiotic tv show nobody gives a gently caress about

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:43

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Phigs posted:

I think the Marxist rejection of spirituality and idealism was ultimately a big problem for the Soviet experiment. I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead. Communism should have been infused with more of a religious flavor; been less about material circumstances and more about the spiritual unification of humanity without the barriers of class or market competition. If communism is just no rent and a guaranteed job vs bananas and Levis then it's always vulnerable to greed. Anyone who thinks they could win in that equation is incentivized to shoot for it. Capitalism needs to be seen as primarily a rejection of community and humanity and spirituality.

I�ve been saying this

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:43

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

Phigs posted:

I think the Marxist rejection of spirituality and idealism was ultimately a big problem for the Soviet experiment. I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead. Communism should have been infused with more of a religious flavor; been less about material circumstances and more about the spiritual unification of humanity without the barriers of class or market competition. If communism is just no rent and a guaranteed job vs bananas and Levis then it's always vulnerable to greed. Anyone who thinks they could win in that equation is incentivized to shoot for it. Capitalism needs to be seen as primarily a rejection of community and humanity and spirituality.

you can't be a materialist and an idealist, they are polar opposites

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:44

Spergin Morlock: Aug 8, 2009

Some Guy TT posted:

elsewhere in the story the russians are not allowing madame secretarys husbands student turned dead spys sister to recover his body and are going to send her to a gulag because if she were to do so then everyone would know that he was executed as a spy and as we all know theres nothing the russians would consider to be a greater public relations disaster than everyone learning that the united states has been trying to recruit international exchange students as spies

every country that gets exchange students does this lol

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:44

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

read marx, read capital, read the grundrisse, abandon plato

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:45

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# ? May 26, 2024 06:54

tristeham: Jul 31, 2022

Phigs posted:

I think the Marxist rejection of spirituality and idealism was ultimately a big problem for the Soviet experiment. I've been thinking for a while that concentration on the "worker" is a big mistake ultimately and that the focus should have been on humanity instead. Communism should have been infused with more of a religious flavor; been less about material circumstances and more about the spiritual unification of humanity without the barriers of class or market competition. If communism is just no rent and a guaranteed job vs bananas and Levis then it's always vulnerable to greed. Anyone who thinks they could win in that equation is incentivized to shoot for it. Capitalism needs to be seen as primarily a rejection of community and humanity and spirituality.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 20:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] EU: Nice minister, shame if something were to happen...

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