Karl Barks posted:

you're going to get a bunch of different takes on this but here's mine. yes there were periods like that - the 50s-60s were prosperous, much like they were in the United States though not to the same degree. the USSR was laser focused on heavy industry and related industries, so their consumer goods were a lot worse. they did make attempts at improving them (especially after kruschev's visit to the US in the 50s) but never really managed to succeed. people were provided housing, healthcare, and education tho, and unemployment was "officially" 0.

depending on who you ask, the malaise really started to set in in the early 70s and was exacerbated by the oil crisis (actually.. also like the United States). I think the USSR was probably toast by the late 70s and Gorbachev's changes wouldn't have fixed anything regardless. if you're a dead serious communist, you probably blame kruschev's "revisionism", and that the USSR was doomed the moment Stalin died.

having said all that, the USSR's growth rate in the late 70s and 80s was like 2%, so not far off from our current predicament.

GalacticAcid posted:

Phenomenal essay by Daniel Finn on Portuguese politics, in particular on how the Portuguese Communist Party and the anarchist / Trotskyist Left Bloc exert pressure on the Socialists and build militant power - Luso-Anomalies, New Left Review.

It’s from summer 2017 so if anybody can direct me to something on this topic that’s more up to date that would be grand.

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

looking forward to him coming down to DC this weekend

GalacticAcid posted:

rudatron posted:

you may think i'm a creep threatening people on the internet, but have no fear - i've always been a creep

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/997122368551075840?s=19

rudatron posted:

The US is already a done deal, the future is China vs. India.

han-supremacist state capitalism versus...whatever the gently caress india is gonna be in 50 years.

the 'new cold war' thing will probably get a pig push in US domestic politics, as liberals confuse intensifying class war as 'lack of unity'/'political polarization'. but it won't stick.

the USSR was perpetually surrounded by the US & its allies, which the US was able to maintain due to its greater economic strength

but the tables have turned. If china gets a couple of other major countries in it's corner, the US won't be able to afford to contain it. So if it pulls a 'new cold war', everything it tries will explode in its face, and embarrass it.

it won't be a 'punch for punch' narrative, but 'old man US flails helpless against the great diplomatic wall of china'.

Infernot posted:

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/asia/india-maoist-rebels-villagers/index.html

Search around and you'll find more articles documenting rape, murder, and extortion from Maoists in India. They've killed more civilians than police or officials from the Indian government. I think they pose more of a threat to the people they (hopefully) want to protect and bring into their group than capital right now. Hell, even the Bolsheviks, who I admire, didn't pose much of a threat to capital at any point in their run before things settled into the USSR. Why do you have to make this an "us vs them" ordeal and pigeonhole yourself into defending terrible groups and politics?

Infernot posted:

https://twitter.com/itsmikebivins/status/1013184384654929920

Big thread from yesterday's counter-protest in Portland

Jose posted:

also lmao

https://twitter.com/RacismFactory/status/1013610709752733696

rudatron posted:

Kaczynski was a reactionary douchebag. Strasser was a nazi. Are you trolling me?

Kurnugia posted:

well, aside from armenia, georgia, estonia, latvia, lithuania and moldova.

Karl Barks posted:

Both yes and no we're votes to end the USSR, the yes vote just meant staying in a confederation. Every SSR voted in favor, but (okay I had to Google this part) the ones listed above boycotted the referendum

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

https://twitter.com/JustinSayfie/status/1036953704157642755?s=19

I'm really getting tired of mattt bruenig's poo poo

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

slashie/tb destroyed postgarden, after she got lf kicked off of wddp. she was friends with the main admin who let her run her struggle sessions endlessly until people were being run off the forum for the most mundane poo poo. eventually she harassed some teenager so much for not liking anime (not liking anime was a sign of racism or something) that he had a mental breakdown and the forum finally turned on her, and the admin rather than ban her shut down the forum. it was incredibly dumb poo poo.

at that point though the only good thread was the economic meltdown thread.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

R. Guyovich posted:

it's a parody post of a long rambling tirade by someone who bought the lettuce dog fb page.

Frog Act posted:

there was a period both before and after WW2 where the Soviets channeled money into Weimar/West German film to produce Communist propaganda films that had actual narratives. I watched a bunch in a film class I took with an old leftist and they’re exactly the type of films I wish were still being made. they had an explicit, left-wing message while simultaneously being well-made and written films

my favorite example is “Mother Krause’s Journey Into Happiness” about living in the interwar Berlin slums

Frog Act posted:

we argued about the cultural revolution and forced industrialization and I told them I was doing a history MA and that was when they told me I had bourgeois consciousness from the Liberal brainwashing machine that is university and stopped talking to me, so we didn’t get to that point

it was sort of funny in the sense that they self evidently had not read any Marx or even secondary Marxists like Lukàcs or Luxembourg or probably even Mao himself outside of “Combat Liberalism”, and so for them Maoism was probably more of a theological thing than a political one

Autism Sneaks posted:

that's a moot point because it's gonna take guns pointed at those doe-eyed peasants just to get them to stop doing capitalism and environmental degredation, might as well make them read a dictionary and some Marx while they're at it

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3788502

praxis is posting right-wing authoritarians in this thread

Serf posted:

i appreciate the poster going "venezuela is like if the supreme court was to start curtailing the efforts of the other two branches and making it so they can't pass laws" when new york literally just repealed their ban on conversion therapy out of fear that it would be struck down by the supreme court lmao

Kchama posted:

Sadly not even SA is immune from chemical weapons truthers. I see people shrieking about Brown Moses way too much as a result.

mila kunis posted:

where do people go for leftist perspectives on geopolitics/random countries and whats going on there. like if i wanted to know whats up in for eg, armenia, whats my options. jacobin?

quote:

In a speech he delivered to the parliament shortly before he was elected prime minister Pashinyan stated that he was “beyond ideology.” In reality, the pledges of his government have shown the new regime to be firmly within the tradition of European liberalism: promising free, fair, and transparent elections, alongside the dismantling of corrupt state structures and economic monopolies and their replacement with meritocratic institutions and market mechanisms.