AFancyQuestionMark posted:

But he sort of did, by saying "70% right, 30% wrong" and eliminating the Gang of Four and Hua he did essentially the same as the Secret Speech and removing the Anti-Party Group. It's a difference in degree not in kind.

Enjoy posted:

are you saying that there is some essentially nazi trait that flares up in a proportion of all humans and has to be violently purged because that's a completely anti-materialist take

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

But he sort of did, by saying "70% right, 30% wrong" and eliminating the Gang of Four and Hua he did essentially the same as the Secret Speech and removing the Anti-Party Group. It's a difference in degree not in kind.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

yeah but he largely pinned the excess on Lin bao and the Gang of Four and never wholly repudiated Mao like Khrushchev did to Stalin, hence why mao’s portrait remained hanging across the country whereas the Soviets tried to scrub Stalin away. also one of deng’s four cardinal principles was continuing to uphold Mao Zedong though

Raskolnikov38 posted:

deng didn’t throw Mao and the party’s historical legitimacy under the bus

Orange Devil posted:

It is said that, just before the Sino-Soviet split, Nikita Khrushchev had a tense meeting with Zhou Enlai at which he told the latter that he now understood the problem. “I am the son of coal miners,” he said. “You are the descendant of feudal mandarins. We have nothing in common.” “Perhaps we do,” murmured his Chinese antagonist. “What?” blustered Khrushchev. “We are,” responded Zhou, “both traitors to our class.”

fanfic insert posted:

fanfic insert posted:

KomradeX posted:

It is funny that Mao being 70/30 is treated as obvious propaganda by liberals when its merely the recognition that leaders are fallible without destroying what he stood for

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

People here say Gorbachev and cos decision were influenced by liberal idealism and had he and his cohort been purged and ideologically disciplined leaders been in place, the USSR wouldn't have fallen apart.

slave to my cravings posted:

Obama was 70% good 30% bad

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

alright, if you insist I can try dual thread drifting for a bit.

People here say Gorbachev and cos decision were influenced by liberal idealism and had he and his cohort been purged and ideologically disciplined leaders been in place, the USSR wouldn't have fallen apart.

But why is it that at that particular historical moment, so many liberal-influenced leaders were in charge in so many eastern block nations? Why were they able to rise and not the hardliners? Isn't it because of the economic pressure and internal changes in class composition?

Raskolnikov38 posted:

there were actually a lot of hardliners in charge of the soviet bloc in the 70s and 80s, poland, romania, and east germany remained hardliner to the bitter end. the rise of liberalism and reformism in the soviet bloc imo largely stems from two things. firstly, these governments were imposed on the nations of eastern europe by the soviet union after ww2 and therefore had lots of legitimacy issues in their eyes of citizenship for their entire existence. however, with the backing of the soviet union and the red army, hardliners were able to keep their hands on the tillers of state until the deaths of brezhnev and andropov. gorby comes to power and starts throwing legitimacy and power to the reformers across the soviet bloc while making it clear to the hardliners that he isn't going to lift a finger to save them (although brezhnev was the one to refuse to send the red army in to back up jaruzelski in poland). liberals and reformers were thus able to gradually wrest control of the states away from the communists and/or ferment national resistance to communist rule. the collapse of communism in other countries however spelled the end of the hardliner regimes who were economically and politically dependent on the bloc for their continued existence

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Well for the purposes of clarifying things, the texts I was trained in, and still keep hard copies near my desk are:

Bottomore's A Dictionary of Marxist Thought,
Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory by Callinicos,
Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Cornforth,
Doran's Theology and the Dialectics of History,
New Dialectics and Political Economy, by Albritton and Simoulidis ,
Values, Objectivity, and Explanation in Historiography by Førland,
Ideas and Methodologies in Historical Research by Luarsabishvili (recent)
The Rise and Fall of Culture History by Lyman,
Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence by Bellmen,
Gramsci’s Laboratory: Philosophy, History and Politics by Bianchi,
Cadeddu's A Companion to Antonio Gramsci: Essays on History and Theories of History, Politics and Historiography,
Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World by Erdcamp,
A Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,
The Material of World History by Chen,
Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation by Banaji,
Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World by Zucchetti and Cimino,

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

also, relatedly, do people agree that the charges of trotskyist/leftist/rightist espionage, industrial sabotage and etc. that were presented at the big 30s moscow trials were trumped up? because that's kind of an important dimension to this discussion imo

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

also, relatedly, do people agree that the charges of trotskyist/leftist/rightist espionage, industrial sabotage and etc. that were presented at the big 30s moscow trials were trumped up? because that's kind of an important dimension to this discussion imo

gradenko_2000 posted:

I'm not trying to riff on AFancyQuestionMark but it's adorable to think that a discussion on Stalinist purges would be considered horrendously off-topic in a thread that's had derails over the Romanian campaign of 1916, British colonial homosex, and the definition of air superiority vis-a-vis air supremacy.

euphronius posted:

don’t forget the analysis of politics as religion in Roman North Africa (my favorite so far )

DaysBefore posted:

lol lib

quote:

‼️🇺🇦🏴‍☠️ Right Sector Nazi Brigade disbanded after fleeing from positions in Chasov Yar

▪️ Today, the AFU ground forces essentially admitted that: "The consequences of the loss of positions by our unit and the exposure of the flanks of other brigades and battalions are considered lost lives, a change in the situation not in favour of the AFU," the AFU said in a statement.

▪️ Earlier it was reported that another reason discovered during the inspection was problems within the brigade. The directorate encouraged hazing and strictly separated the backbone of the brigade (made up of members of the Nazi Right Sector) from young recruits.

▪️ The latter were called "pixelated", disadvantaged in every way, and sent first to the positions from which they had fled.

▪️ During Zaluzhny's time, the Nazis of the "Ukrainian Volunteer Corps" (later reformed into the 67th separate mechanised brigade) retained some autonomy and had the support of the General Staff, but everything changed with the appointment of Syrskyy as head of the AFU.

t.me/ukraine_watch

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

yeah but why did the hardliners need to wrestle for power? what made liberals so appealing in comparison? that's where the major economic pressures and class composition factors come in, and that's the actual root cause imo

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I was probed when Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean came up, but you just jogged my memory that Ancient Rome and the Construction of Modern Homosexual Identities, Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity, and Oscar Wilde’s Aesthetic Education: The Oxford Classical Curriculum really tie everything together.

Americans take note: the key to an empire on which the sun never sets is channeling the power of barely repressed homosexuality.

The problem is that Matt Schlapp, Marcus Bachmann, and Lindsey Graham don't have the right stuff. They had potential, sure, but it was misused and they were miseducated. First, Bachmann and Graham studied psychology (I wonder why...) instead of something that would invigorate them. For Schlapp, it was just about impossible to find out what his BA from Notre Dame was in, but it appears to have been "History and Government". That's a boilerplate Young Republican education. The folly of misspent youth! These men could have been your American Gordons.

Schlapp went to graduate school for Public Policy, Bachmann for "Community Counseling", and then a PhD with "a concentration in clinical psychology." Graham got a JD. They are, in other words, boring conservatives with a dull as dishwater education, that tamps down their queenish tendencies instead of bringing them to the fore.

To really get an empire builder, a Rhodes, a Gordon, a James Brooke, you need something more theatrical,







They didn't have the proper education to cultivate the qualities that could make them great men, and they didn't have a queen they could use as a socially acceptable substitute for love for a woman, so it all falls so flat. Observe:








Now, suppose that these Americans, instead of studying psychology and "history and government", had to put on a "theatrical production in the Grecian style" their freshmen year for the upperclassmen? Might that have pushed them further along the path to greatness? Suppose that instead of reading some boring bullshit policy whatever, or law, or, in Bachmann's case,

"his thesis at CBN University was titled 'Child Care Dilemma,' and concluded that full-time, nonparental day care 'may increase the insecurity' of children younger than 18 months. It incorporated a biblical perspective and included quotations from Scripture."

They had instead studied, real literature, like Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of The Greek Anthology:

"Elegiac lyrics celebrating the love of boys, which the translator terms Puerilities , comprise most of the twelfth book of The Greek Anthology . That book, the so-called Musa Puerilis, is brilliantly translated in this, the first complete verse version in English. It is a delightful eroticopia of short poems by great and lesser-known Greek poets, spanning hundreds of years, from ancient times to the late Christian era."

Which, if it wasn't clear, could have sparked an ambition for something greater than tax cuts and utility privatization in these men:

XLIII CALLIMACHUS
Little I care for your popular cyclical poem:
Such thoroughfares I thoroughly despise.
So I detest a boy who makes himself common,
Nor do I drink from public water supplies.
Yes, you are handsome, Lysanias, terribly handsome.
“And someone else’s!” instantly Echo replies.

Would Lindsey Graham think only of giving Republican donors public utilities if he had read this instead of law? Or, when hearing "public water supplies", would he sink away into sweet reverie, returning determined to win the love of some Lysanias or Ganymede by serving the American empire in the burning sands?

Conversely, would Schlapp be so desirous for wars in the Middle East, that separate men from their young companions, had he been versed in the Illiad?:

Return to me directly you have swept the Trojans from the ships.
Even if thundering Zeus offers an opportunity of winning glory for
yourself, you mustn’t take it. You must not make war without me
against these warlike Trojans—you will only reduce my glory . . . Ah
Father Zeus, Athena and Apollo, I pray that not one Trojan may get
away alive, not one, and not a Greek either, but we two [dual]
survive the massacre and unfasten Troy’s holy battlements alone.

Finally, would Bachmann devote all of his effort to the study of suppressed urges, if, say, he was familiar with the story of Achilles and Troilus?

From Davidson's The Greeks and Greek Love,

"The basic story is a simple one, but very neat and tidy. Troilus is an underage Boy. He takes a horse and goes to fetch water at a fountain house outside the city walls. Achilles is waiting for him... Although the details of where and how he actually kills the boy are variable, one feature is fixed: Troilus is on horseback and Achilles runs him down on foot... Indeed it seems from one image that he cut the boy’s head off and waved it in the face of his brothers... Out of all Achilles’ exploits at Troy, Clitias has chosen to picture this one, not glorious at all, but a feat that has the advantage of showing to a viewer the unique quality the poets never tire of celebrating: Achilles’ phenomenal speed... It is also the feat that will lead to his death, for Clitias has shown Apollo watching in some agitation... Either the crime itself, or the fact that Achilles took the boy to the sanctuary of Apollo, or even killed him on Apollo’s altar is what finally led to Achilles’ death, according to one prominent tradition... And it was an outraged Apollo who guided the arrow that would kill him... All terribly neat... Achilles’ most amazing ability, his speed, is precisely what undoes him, and when Apollo shoots him, where does the arrow pierce him? In the foot... This is a detail well established at an early date... Later mythographers did not really grasp its significance and told stories about the ankle as Achilles’ only point of vulnerability, something that Homer and the earlier poets do not mention... Achilles is certainly not invulnerable—that’s why his mother goes to so much trouble to get him a piece of armor—but the symbolic significance of Achilles, “swift in foot,” being fatally wounded in the foot needs no further explanation... The arrow guided by Apollo quite literally pins the fastest man on the planet to the ground, it stops him dead... "



"There is irony then in the fact that on each handle of the Francois Vase Achilles’ corpse is carried from the battlefield at a run... His own legs quite useless to him now, he depends on those of Ajax, the Quick and the Dead... The story that Achilles was in love with Troilus is told first in the second century sc in the impossibly obscure and allegorical prophetic “monodrama” of Cassandra (Alexandra), “quite the most repellent poem to survive from antiquity,” composed in iambic trimeters and ascribed to the Hellenistic poet Lycophron... The prophetess is apostrophizing, addressing now her little brother, young Troilus, whom she sees in strange visions of the future: “Lion-cub you, who shot the wild dragon with fire-bearing love-charm of arrows, and wouldn’t let go of smitten him, holding him in snares inescapable, for a scant loveless time, yourself untouched by the man you had subjected, you will bloody your father’s altar cut off at the head.” “Untouched,” literally “unwounded,” i.e., unattracted to Achilles, is a play on the paradox of the “captor” “captivated”; it could easily be read more graphically, “unpenetrated.”... An ancient reader offered some helpful notes in the margin of the text: Troilus had taken refuge in the sanctuary to escape Achilles’ advances... Unable to get him to come out, Achilles goes in and kills him... A commentator on Virgil’s Aeneid adds more detail: “Led on by his love for Troilus, Achilles held out to him some doves, of which the boy was very fond, but as he reached out to take them, he was captured by Achilles and died in his arms.” This is all very late, but the abduction, the doves, and hence probably the love motif appear in paintings of the scene as early as the sixth century... I think it would be impossible for a Greek, knowing Achilles’ tendencies and seeing an image of him as a Stripling chasing down a Boy, not to adduce an erdtikos motivation... "



My belief, I hope you agree, is that we cannot make the American less warlike. As with Achilles, these urges are deeply rooted. We can, however, direct those urges (and others) to some higher purpose. We can use our Schlapps, Grahams, and Bachmanns as arrows in our quiver. Rather than directing their energy towards banal projects, like Quiverfull, given the right education, we can point them in the right direction and let them loose. As Davidson says,

"It is this duality that makes Achilles the Greekest of heroes, loving his own side as much as he hates the enemy, a perfect inspiration for all Greek hoplite warriors, lovingly devoted to those alongside and nursing equal hate for those ranged opposite: the enemy, the Other, the Barbarian. Perhaps when they thought of Achilles it would not seem as strange to the Spartans and the Cretans as it does to us to offer sacrifice to Eros before going into battle."

Make America Grecian Again.

slave to my cravings posted:

Obama was 70% good 30% bad

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

so were they real? did bukharin and trotsky lie to me? i just want to know

Leandros posted:

loving hell how much more grim can this conflict get. Is there something to be said about the complete despair inducing a lack of dopamine that gambling can compensate for?
e: or it being induced by the complete 180 of high stakes front warfare to sitting in barracks I suppose

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

"It is this duality that makes Achilles the Greekest of heroes, loving his own side as much as he hates the enemy, a perfect inspiration for all Greek hoplite warriors, lovingly devoted to those alongside and nursing equal hate for those ranged opposite: the enemy, the Other, the Barbarian. Perhaps when they thought of Achilles it would not seem as strange to the Spartans and the Cretans as it does to us to offer sacrifice to Eros before going into battle."

Make America Grecian Again.

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

Maybe I am an idiot and Great Man Stalin really was the crucial factor, but idk, the evolution of actual USSR state policy was a result of experimentation and adjustment to conditions of the ground, brought about by collective planning by the government bureaucracy. There wasn't really any great unifying theory dictated plan imposed from top down. It was my understanding that collectivization, private ownership and markets came in and out of favor multiple times as a response to organic developments

mila kunis posted:

its not Great Man theory. boiling down a continental sized state to "one guy" is loving stupid. stalin represented a portion of soviet society that was committed to building socialism and his getting to be the leader was reflective of that. gorbachev represented a portion of soviet society that was committed to liberalizing the USSR and his leadership is representative of that.

January 6 Survivor posted:

quote:

don't give a gently caress, I say I want (Ha-ha)
I don't give gently caress, your sanctions didn't make troubles for us
I don't give gently caress, I have the import substitution is loving well
I don't give a gently caress, Russia is our Homeland, I know

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

so were they real? did bukharin and trotsky lie to me? i just want to know

Raskolnikov38 posted:

its important to remember that cspam is first and foremost a shitposting forum but yes there was no trotiskyist sabotage ring of millions of people operating in the ussr. that said trotsky did keep contacts with high profile soviet politicians and leaders after his exile so there were definitely some breadcrumbs around to prevent the whole thing from being entirely fantasy