• MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world
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    10 小时前

    I gave you evidence…and you ignored it. I can provide additional evidence beyond ‘54, if you acknowledge those archives.

    You believe Marxism allows for the billionaire and political classes in China that control the means of production? Bold.

    You don’t “own” Marxism, btw. Most Marxists I know at least acknowledge and criticize the very large problems in the USSR and China. I mean…I also could be considered a Marxist…but I consider myself a post-Marxist because he’s been improved on. I also think we can do better than Marx the man as a foundation - don’t get me started on Lenin, lol. The weird thing is I like Stalin (but Che all the way).

    This isn’t zero sum: I’m not saying either is all bad because they have kleptocrats and billionaires. We haven’t even broached the topic of what I think about the USSR and China as a whole (because you’re so hung up on denying their systematic problems in favour of focusing on the positives?) in contrast to what we see in the western democracies (for example) you’re typing as if i condemn them and I prefer the USA, or something…not a thing.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      10 小时前

      Yes, you indeed linked a US Federally funded liberal historian that is paid to present a certain view of the USSR. If you want sources on the socialist economy of the USSR, and how it was run, here are some great ones:

      1. Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union Today

      2. Soviet Democracy

      3. Russian Justice

      4. This Soviet World

      5. Blackshirts and Reds

      All much better sources.

      I don’t own Marxism, correct. I also study it a great deal, organize in real life with a communist party. I do acknowledge real faults with the USSR and PRC, but I don’t acknowledge fake ones. You should read the essay I linked called China Has Billionaires, it explains China’s position as an early socialist economy and its process of gradually collectivizing production and distribution. The class that controls the state and holds the principle aspects of the economy in China is the proletariat, as it was in the USSR, as it is in Cuba.

      You defining Cuba as more correctly socialist because its rich people are poorer is what I mean by you being anti-Marxist, this poverty fetishism isn’t Marxist in the slightest.

      • MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world
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        4 小时前

        That’s a ridiculous way to frame a public university employee…but I’m just going to declare an impasse and drop it if we can’t agree on facts.

        Talk about virtue signalling and purity testing, yikes. Still, thank you for the conversation, I will admit I’m a little amused at you trying to “out socialist” me, but I don’t feel I need to list my credentials in return…I’m comfortable with how militantly virulent I am on the subject of socialism ;)

        Like I said: put two leftists together, and they’ll find a way to argue. I’ve been guilty of it too…it is what it is.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          4 小时前

          Not just any public university employee:

          Financial support for this research was provided by a number of foundations and organizations, including the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER), the Archives and Library of the Hoover Institution for War and Peace at Stanford University, the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Open Society Archive (Budapest). His first book was Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929 (2004).

          There’s a concerted effort within western academia to keep demonizing socialism, and funding is one of the ways the state keeps that going. I provided more than plenty sources given an alternative view. None of this is about me trying to “out-socialist” you, nor virtue signal nor purity test. It’s about trying to come to a consistent understanding grounded in reality, from a proletarian point of view, rather than accepting liberal framing of socialism.