tora42

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odinsnotwearingmakeup:

I know I’m That Guy™ , but it is possible to advocate for social reform without sweeping under the rug the very real tragedies and human rights violations that have existed under communist regimes

I get that this doesn’t fit your edgelord communist aesthetic but it costs $0 to reblog this and let your followers know you aren’t advocating to repeat the mistakes of the past

so I understand that this post is coming from a place, but communists are constantly accused of advocating for and defending regimes of the past to the point where any post uttering anything remotely to do with communism turns the thread into a whirling shitstorm about how communists are x apologists with 0 discussion about the topic at hand. and i can tell you that politely informing them that you aren’t a “tankie” or whatever doesn’t fucking work. communists are consistently the ones explaining their individual relationships with past regimes and acknowledging the horrors that occurred, the problem is that people don’t want communists to speak frankly and objectively

(what is most often deemed “sweeping under the rug”)

about these horrors. they want them to self-flagellate and distance themselves from the movement.

so when i see posts like this that purposely lump all communists in with “fringe” communists that are like often actual fascists, its like… hello?? this very broad association came from where exactly?

A really cool and nuanced conversation for learning what was and wasn’t anti communist propaganda

“Stalin: A Marxist-Leninist Perspective” from Revolutionary Left Radio by Revolutionary Left Radio on Apple Podcasts

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutionary-left-radio/id1218054701?mt=2&i=1000422130394

As a very leftist person from an actual post-communist country, as opposed to a trendy American millenial, let me say straight away that communism is a noble idea in theory, that I understand where modern Western communists are coming from and that I don’t expect anyone to self-flagellate. Having said that, I must stress three things:

1) While the communist movement in the 19th and 20th century was driven by noble ideals and great intellectuals, once the actual revolution happened these ideals were instantly twisted and warped in the service of the party machine, while the intellectuals were either imprisoned, killed or swallowed by the party. This is more or less what happens in all revolutions and it will happen again if you start a revolution.

2) Communist regimes have inflicted indescribable suffering on my people and many peoples of Eastern Europe and Asia. Untold lives were destroyed and ended, people tortured and disappeared and beaten into submission. All we got at the end of it was a number of ineffective, gray, economically underdeveloped and cruel regimes which collapsed in quick succession because of their economic insufficiency. Workers’ protests in Poland began in 1980, but they were brutally subdued and a military dictatorship introduced for ten years to prolong the failing regime artificially. In case of China, the regime stayed communist only in name, while in practice adopting aggressive capitalist strategies to enrich the ruling class mainly. And we all know about North Korea.

3) To a person from a post-communist regime hearing Western people talk about giving communism another chance etc. is like listetning to people saying: “Mussolini had the right idea, let’s give that fascism another go”. This insults my people, all post-communist peoples and insults the memory of the millions killed and destroyed by communist regimes around the world. Please, think about this and stop advocating murderous regimes just because they’re trendy. Please understand that the “fringe communists” you’re talking about were in fact the mainstream in actual communist regimes and would be again, you would be drowned out and removed.

Nobody who knows shit about social revolutions actually wants one. Nobody.

Some elements of communism as a political system are good. Almost all of it is noble. But put it into state-wide top-down practice and millions of people suffer and die, and they do so with horrifying reliability. Starved, displaced, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, murdered. Millions. Those weren’t oopsies. Those weren’t a few bad apples. That’s fucking history, and it’s happened too many times to be a series of isolated, unconnected events.

Capitalism as practiced is a brutal, dysfunctional system that grinds people down into nothing. We need to find another way of doing things. But we also need to be very clear-eyed about communism’s record. Out of – yes – respect for the countless dead if nothing else.

If y’all want another hideously brutal example that too many people don’t know anything about: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. Learn about it.

Side note: a lot of what this is really about has to do with the many many many downsides of very fast and very radical social reform, and expecting people to just kind of spontaneously become different people in order to fit into your shiny new utopian system. And what happens when they don’t? What do you do with the people who won’t behave? This is a question that every society has to answer, and the higher the expectations and the greater the sense of social paranoia, the more horrible the answer becomes.

Right or left, authoritarianism is authoritarianism.