Recently learned about Tankies, leftist subgroup who think old communist empires are awesome.

Deleted member 3093 · Jan 3, 2021

Matt said:
Considering you started your involvement in this thread by calling me a genocide denier, yeah, I'm really not interested in talking to you.

I didn't call you a genocide denier? I said, in reply to you claiming someone was downplaying genocide, that you had downplayed genocide as well. But that's beside the point, like, being uninterested in talking to me is cool, I'm not a very interesting person to talk to anyway. But I mean, it seems like you became uninterested when I pointed out a factual inaccuracy in your post, not when I caused you offense.

Deleted member 43 · Jan 3, 2021

A.By said:
I didn't call you a genocide denier? I said, in reply to you claiming someone was downplaying genocide, that you had downplayed genocide as well. But that's beside the point, like, being uninterested in talking to me is cool, I'm not a very interesting person to talk to anyway. But I mean, it seems like you became uninterested when I pointed out a factual inaccuracy in your post, not when I caused you offense.

Whatever you say.

Deleted member 3093 · Jan 3, 2021

Matt said:
Whatever you say man.

Please don't misgender me

Deleted member 43 · Jan 3, 2021

A.By said:
Please don't misgender me

Of course, my apologies.

Reckheim · Jan 3, 2021

What has IBM got to do with the Soviets invading Poland and being a Military Ally with Nazi's?

Can't they both be evil?

Deleted member 5127 · Jan 3, 2021

The left has its weird subgroups as well, some people still don't realise that astonishingly.

mentok15 · Jan 3, 2021

Goodstyle said:
There was a big thing that happened the other year where the European Parliament fully blamed the USSR and Nazi Germany as equal causes of WW2.

The End of Anti-Fascism

The European Parliament has condemned communism as equivalent to Nazism. Based on a fantasy reading of history, the motion smears all “radicalism” as “totalitarian” — and dismisses the moral superiority of those who fought fascism.

www.jacobinmag.com

Here's the actual document:

JOINT MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe | RC-B9-0097/2019/REV1 | European Parliament

JOINT MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION pursuant to Rule 132(2) and (4) of the Rules of Procedure replacing the following motions: B9-0097/2019 (PPE) B9-098/2019 (ECR) B9-0099/2019 (S&D) B9-0100/2019 (Renew) on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe (2019/2819(RSP)) Michael...

www.europarl.europa.eu

It seems to be more about how the war initially started and what happened after, and the condemnation of totalitarianism. It could be read as both have equal cause, but not necessarily. There is a difference between what started the war, the invasion of Poland, and the causes that lead up to it. It's pretty clear the rise of naziism in Germany was the cause.
This also doesn't dispute that the western powers still could have done more to prevent the rise of nazi Germany. They should have confronted them when they reentered the Rhineland.

Thales Targaryen said:
The left has its weird subgroups as well, some people still don't realise that astonishingly.

People seem to have the need to defend what they perceive as their in-group. Doesn't matter what it is.

svacina · Jan 3, 2021

I see we are at the "America is bad so you cant complain about the Soviets" stage of the evening.

Lidl · Jan 3, 2021

Goodstyle said:
I recently read a lot about Soviet History and Stalin in particular, and I got a lot to say about the whole tankie thing.

They are a politically irrelevant group of people. Unlike Fascism, Communism is dead and gone. Fascism is based on feelings and emotion, it will always exist because there will always be racism and human selfishness. Communism is a system of running a society that fundamentally does not work in the long run, and it took a century, but the whole world basically came to understand this.

I will say this in Tankies' defense, there are a lot of lies around communist regimes in the past that people just willingly repeat uncritically. Here are some examples.

* Holodomor. This is literally a Nazi talking point meant to reduce the significance of the Holocaust by suggesting the "Jewish" Bolsheviks committed a worse offense. Don't believe me on the Nazi basis for this myth? Look up Lazar Kaganovich on twitter, it should be obvious soon what it's really all about.

There was a famine in the Soviet Union during the process of collectivization, it hit the Ukraine and Kazakhstan particularly hard (Kazaks got it the worse, losing 1/4 of their population). But this was not an intentional genocide engineered by Stalin specifically to kill the Ukrainian people like so many people believe to this day. It was horrific and tragic side effect of an unprecedented attempt to modernize a country under a socialist system within an insanely quick timeframe, enforced by violence and responded with by class warfare. I can go on with this, but the TLDR: The Soviet famine is not the equivalent of the Holocaust, and if you think it is, that's literal Nazi propaganda working on you.

* Stalin was the moral equivalent of Hitler

Not true. Hitler instigated world war 2 and caused far more deaths. People underestimate how evil Hitler was, weirdly enough. He didn't just murder 6 million Jews, he launched a genocidal war on the Soviet Union and caused 27 million deaths. His armies didn't feed POWs and were tasked with killing everyone and everything they could find. It was a complete war of destruction, the ultimate goal was to destroy the Slavic people and replace them with Germans, similar to what Americans did to the Native Americans. Had Stalin lost World War 2, countless more people would have died, we're talking in the hundreds of millions. So no, it is very good that Hitler lost.

Now here's some things I don't understand about Tankies and their defense of Stalin and other figures like him.

Stalin murdered almost all the old Bolsheviks. The key figures in the October Revolution, most of them died horrific, tragic deaths. Communists who were loyal to the cause and Stalin, as well as those who weren't. How do you justify these deaths in your mind? Sokolnikov was promised mercy in exchange for false confessions, and he was killed anyways. Bukharin, a close friend of Stalin's, a guy who supported him in his political battle with Trotsky, begged for his life to the man that was like a father to him, and he was executed anyways. These killings were not necessary, none of these people threatened his power, it was all part of an insane project to eliminate the "bourgeois" (elite government employees), and replace them with young strivers, and to break the will of his inner circle and become and absolute ruler.

Tankies like to say that this was the doing of Yezhov, but that is literal Stalin propaganda, Yezhov acted at the behest of Stalin and was killed for his trouble. Whatever you think of Stalin's role in the movement of history (he was the single most significant figure in the 20th century), you should know that he was a demonic personality. A true sociopath who made the lives of a lot of innocent people, including communists, a lot worse.

The same can be said for Mao, who actually did kill an absurd amount of people with his misrule. Deng Xiaoping wasn't the death of socialism in China, it was Mao, and the fact that tankies stan a rotten bastard like him is darkly hilarious.

Tankies exist because communist leaders are the most lied about people in history. The CIA lies about them, and they themselves lie about their own records constantly. Ultimately though, they don't matter in the real world, because Communism is over. It's really that simple, as crude as that sounds,

I am aware that some of this may have already been addressed. But I will do too.

Great
This thread brought to light how the term was coined and we also found out that this term historically referred to leftists who stuck by the Soviet Union even after its crushing of the Hungarian revolution, thus people who considered violence a necessary evil. Some leftist circles who thought that this was a valid opinion to hold also ended up forming terrorist organizations to continue the revolution. Hence although Western tankies may be seen as trolls right now, they can easily produce the same results as in the past
Is defending hardline tankie positions really different from being a tankie?
How relevant is it that Nazis tend to co-opt the topic or use it in a false equivalence? What difference does it make? This doesn't invalidate it. It's like you'd completely ignore the fact that George Soros got richer by betting against the pound because Nazis co-opted this narrative into their Soros conspiracy theories. No, I'm not going to look up Lazar Kaganovich on twitter.
First and foremost: There is legitimate disagreement about the issue, sure. And it will most likely continue since Russia is currently engaging in historic revisionism and thus will never permit access to the relevant archives. You, however chose one side of the story similar to how nationalist Turks postulate that the Armenian genocide was actually just a necessary relocation of ethnicities aligned to Russia.
Non-Nazis normally don't engage in equating Holocaust to other genocides. Neither to the Armenian genocide nor to Holodomor. So I'm not sure why you bring it up here. It's not like tankies are only disliked by Nazis.
No one disputes the fact that Soviet Union was facing multiple famines. The question is why the hardest hit areas in that famine ended up being where the Soviet Union was facing pushback and rebellions and which at the same time had a high agricultural output (wheat in Ukraine, meat in Kazakhstan)? Subsequently the dead populations in these areas were conveniently replaced by ethnic Russians.
It's kind of sickening how you take this one-sided positions in light of this, almost as if you were in fact a tankie
Stalin and Hilter being morally equivalent is actually a position often taken in right wing circles and given for how many deaths Stalin is responsible for, is debatable, at least to some degree
Duh to "Hitler instigated world war 2".
Possibly the dumbest statement ever made on this forum: "People underestimate how evil Hitler was" followed by possibly the most self-evident statement ever made on this forum "it is very good that Hitler lost."
First of all Stalin didn't fight the war alone and Russia would fall without Western help (look up lend lease). Then there is the whole issue of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and the ensuing friendship treaty, economic treaties, the occupation of half of Poland, Gestapo–NKVD conferences, Stalin's extradition of German communists. The depth of their relationship actually calls into question the position tankies often take that it was just ruse by Stalin to attack Hitler at some point in the future
Ok
Yes, it's almost like he's a ruthless, murderous maniac, isn't it?
Ok, sure
You seem to dislike tankies, but still take some of their hardline positions. Kind of weird.
Maybe, but that doesn't matter in case of Stalin. Tankies do matter as I explained above.

Edited due to typos or for clarity.

dabig2 · Jan 3, 2021

svacina said:
I see we are at the "America is bad so you cant complain about the Soviets" stage of the evening.

Yeah, that's not what it's about.

It is pretty hard not to get into the topic of "whataboutism" given that some of the atrocities these communist countries committed is taken as fact as being tied to socialism itself.
So leftists always get forced to talk about Soviet gulags or Mao's Great Leap when they're arguing for things like M4A or free housing or when black people ask not to get murdered by their fascist police.

Why doesn't the Indonesia 1965 genocide come into play when it comes to talking about the capitalist system and how it seeks to dominate and institute bloodshed to achieve its aims of growing itself?

What the United States Did in Indonesia

A trove of recently released documents confirms that Washington’s role in the country’s 1965 massacre was part of a bigger Cold War strategy.

www.theatlantic.com

This week, the non-profit National Security Archive, along with the National Declassification Center, published a batch of U.S. diplomatic cables covering that dark period. While the newly declassified documents further illustrated the horror of Indonesia's 1965 mass murder, they also confirmed that U.S. authorities backed Suharto's purge. Perhaps even more striking:

As the documents show, U.S. officials knew most of his victims were entirely innocent. U.S. embassy officials even received updates on the executions and offered help to suppress media coverage. While crucial documents that could provide insight into U.S. and Indonesian activities at the time are still lacking, the broad outlines of the atrocity and America's role are there for anyone who cares to look them up.

It probably got up into a million or more murders, and the oppression and subjugation and apologia lasts to the day. We really only know of some of these details because Obama decided to declassify the documents on his way out, after 60 years of the USA helping with the coverup long after assisting with the genocide.

We talk of oppression via soviet union and that's apparently an indictment on all socialism for all time. But the same isn't given for countries like the USA or UK, proud and dominant global capitalist superpowers, who each have destabilized the entire world at least a couple times over the last 150 years for the purposes of advancing their capitalist hegemonies. These are countries that like Soviet Russia constantly engage in decades long cover-ups of their own atrocities.

But when you mention the world "socialism" as something you'd like your country to try, Stalin's gulags gets mentioned, and leftists have to answer for 100 years of history of whether you agree or not with every decision made by the formerly agrarian countries attempting to shortcut communism.

But the same is never asked or expected of capitalist systems though, despite still grinding bodies to dust under exploitation and murder. It's always just a few bad apples here.

Chairman Yang · Jan 3, 2021

dabig2 said:
But the same is never asked or expected of capitalist systems though, despite still grinding bodies to dust under exploitation and murder. It's always just a few bad apples here.

It's often asked by leftists. But it rings hollow because it's obvious that the failure rate of capitalist countries is vastly lower than communist ones. It's not a "few bad apples" situation, true, but capitalist countries have some success stories, while communist countries have...none? Or at least vastly fewer.

The way this has been addressed by tankies is either saying the bad communist countries weren't actually bad, or like the tweet in the article, claiming hilarious stuff like Finland is actually evil.

dabig2 · Jan 3, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
It's often asked by leftists. But it rings hollow because it's obvious that the failure rate of capitalist countries is vastly lower than communist ones. It's not a "few bad apples" situation, true, but capitalist countries have some success stories, while communist countries have...none? Or at least vastly fewer.

The way this has been addressed by tankies is either saying the bad communist countries weren't actually bad, or like the tweet in the article, claiming hilarious stuff like Finland is actually evil.

I'm not sure that matters to the dead and oppressed at the hands of the absolute maniacal capitalist countries running out there today that at least it was done by a system that has a couple of successes in history. That argument rings especially hollow to me that we can't call out capitalism because the nordic countries, products of a capitalist colonial period, exist.

And we can't talk about the success or failure of socialist countries without again talking about USA's brutal oppression. I think Allende's Chile had a chance among others, but we know what happened there...

Chairman Yang · Jan 3, 2021

dabig2 said:
I'm not sure that matters to the dead and oppressed at the hands of the absolute maniacal capitalist countries running out there today that at least it was done by a system that has a couple of successes in history. That argument rings especially hollow to me that we can't call out capitalism because the nordic countries, products of a capitalist colonial period, exist.

People can call out capitalism all they want. But no one should be surprised when others aren't convinced that systems with a 0% success rate are held up as superior to systems with a higher-than-zero success rate. And there are far more successes than just the Nordic countries.

It may not matter to the dead and oppressed, but it sure as hell matters to anyone living happily under capitalism.

dabig2 said:
And we can't talk about the success or failure of socialist countries without again talking about USA's brutal oppression. I think Allende's Chile had a chance among others, but we know what happened there...

If a system that's been present in dozens of countries, and under the frequent protection of a superpower or other friendly powers, can't cite a single success because of external opposition, that system is probably worthless. External (and internal) opposition will always exist, and any useful system has to be able to operate despite that. And by "operate" I don't mean use totalitarianism.

I doubt Allende would have been any more successful than the rest of the similar Latin American leaders. And his record before his removal didn't inspire confidence. But yes, it's possible he had a chance. But that hypothetical success is a slim thing to base hopes on, isn't it?

Pandaman · Jan 3, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
It's often asked by leftists. But it rings hollow because it's obvious that the failure rate of capitalist countries is vastly lower than communist ones. It's not a "few bad apples" situation, true, but capitalist countries have some success stories, while communist countries have...none? Or at least vastly fewer.

The way this has been addressed by tankies is either saying the bad communist countries weren't actually bad, or like the tweet in the article, claiming hilarious stuff like Finland is actually evil.

see, this is the problem with libs because you guys are brain poisoned into being incapable of grappling with your imperialism. What is a capitalist 'success story', what is this country that pulled itself up by it's bootstraps without offshoring exploitation. It's not Finland that's for sure. You guys think that because a country isn't involved in the suppression of the global south to the extent large actors like the US/UK are/were, that those countries are not themselves imperialists even though they profiteer directly from it. You think you can point to a country like South Korea, which managed to shrug off the yoke of a economically poor manufacturing economy as a success story, but you're not solving poverty, you're just changing the name of the victim. [you also really like to ignore that rarely if ever is it capitalist grit and hard work uplifting these nations but rather the geopolitical needs of wealthier nations who bankroll the project]

But whatever, you're not literally doing Gulags so I guess that makes you not bad guys. That's apparently the bar you need to clear, if you can abstract away all your problems then delusional libs will always go to bat for you. Finland one of the largest waste producers in the world per capita? No problem, ship that trash to south America! Finland sure is great with their environmental protection regulations, I mean, sure their large electronic R&D industry is inextricably bound to disastrous rare earth mining operations world wide, some of which definitely involve slave labour, but you see, those thing's aren't within the borders of Finland, so Finland gets a pass, even though they sure do profit off of it. Life sure is simple with liberal cognitive dissonance. Finland the good guys, let's have a whole world of Finland's even though that's literally impossible under capitalism.

Chairman Yang · Jan 3, 2021

Pandaman said:
see, this is the problem with libs because you guys are brain poisoned into being incapable of grappling with your imperialism. What is a capitalist 'success story', what is this country that pulled itself up by it's bootstraps without offshoring exploitation. It's not Finland that's for sure. You guys think that because a country isn't involved in the suppression of the global south to the extent large actors like the US/UK are/were, that those countries are not themselves imperialists even though they profiteer directly from it. You think you can point to a country like South Korea, which managed to shrug off the yoke of a economically poor manufacturing economy as a success story, but you're not solving poverty, you're just changing the name of the victim. [you also really like to ignore that rarely if ever is it capitalist grit and hard work uplifting these nations but rather the geopolitical needs of wealthier nations who bankroll the project]

But whatever, you're not literally doing Gulags so I guess that makes you not bad guys. That's apparently the bar you need to clear, if you can abstract away all your problems then delusional libs will always go to bat for you. Finland one of the largest waste producers in the world per capita? No problem, ship that trash to south America! Finland sure is great with their environmental protection regulations, I mean, sure their large electronic R&D industry is inextricably bound to disastrous rare earth mining operations world wide, some of which definitely involve slave labour, but you see, those thing's aren't within the borders of Finland, so Finland gets a pass, even though they sure do profit off of it. Life sure is simple with liberal cognitive dissonance. Finland the good guys, let's have a whole world of Finland's even though that's literally impossible under capitalism.

"Offshoring exploitation" makes no sense as a concept. Resources are required for an economy, yes. That's true regardless of whether it's a capitalist economy or historically, an even more wasteful and destructive planned economy. Countries use trade to get these resources. There's nothing inherently "imperialistic" or "exploitative" about that, although both of those can, and often do, happen. They've both happened extensively with communist systems, incidentally.

Yes, no gulags are better than gulags and make liberal capitalist systems better than communist ones.

Yes, South Korea literally did solve most of its poverty through not being like its northern neighbour and didn't just "change the name of the victim" (whatever that means).

No, Finland is not evil despite your hilariously tame criticisms. Communist China was completely fine harvesting rare earths, and more-capitalist, much richer modern China is freely deciding to continue harvesting them. I assure you Finland is not bullying them to do so.

Goodstyle · Jan 3, 2021

Lidl said:
Stalin and Hilter being morally equivalent is actually a position often taken in right wing circles and given for how many deaths Stalin is responsible for, is debatable, at least to some degree

Duh to "Hitler instigated world war 2".
Possibly the dumbest statement ever made on this forum: "People underestimate how evil Hitler was" followed by possibly the most self-evident statement ever made on this forum "it is very good that Hitler lost."

That's kind of what I'm talking about, I'm sorry you didn't understand my point. If you think there's even a debate between Hitler and Stalin in terms of moral equivalency, you are underestimating how evil Hitler was. Look up Generalplan Ost.

Also, I know what lend-lease is! I mentioned it in this thread well before you. And the bit about the Hungarian revolution... that didn't refute my point about Communist regimes being dead in the modern world. Where are the evil communist great powers today? Come on. Honestly there was a lot wrong with your post, but I'm gonna focus on the biggest thing...

You didn't provide a shred of evidence on the matter of the famine. You take this condescending moral tone, do personal attacks, and your only defense for having zero evidence is to say "Those dirty Russians are hiding the evidence". There is a wealth of archival documentation detailing the sheer numerousness of their atrocities with signatures and everything. There is nothing on the intentionality of a famine genocide, in fact there is the opposite. Panic at the idea that a famine was happening at all, nothing close to indicating "it was all according to plan".

I'm not expressing a fringe opinion, that is the consensus among serious historians. I am literally citing the most reputable person in the field when it comes to this, a Pulitzer prize nominated researcher and historian. You are literally trafficking in conspiracies and have the gall to be smug about it.

First and foremost: There is legitimate disagreement about the issue, sure. And it will most likely continue since Russia is currently engaging in historic revisionism and thus will never permit access to the relevant archives.

This is a conspiracy theory and makes zero sense if you understand anything about how archiving works. It also reveals a lot about you and where you're coming from in your argument. It can't just be that the evidence doesn't support your point, it's that it must be wrong just because. We are talking about a conspiracy to intentionally starve a vital region in a nation, there would be countless documents about it, it would be impossible to hide in its entirety. They're not all in the same filing cabinet, it's a huge deluge of information on different things that has to be manually sorted through. Your argument is that anti-communist historians are actually tankies and that the Russian government somehow hid every shred of documentation on a famine genocide but also forgot to do so for every other atrocity they've committed. Please.

I am once again asking angry people in this thread to read a book. Or at least read the relevant part from the article I posted.

dabig2 · Jan 3, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
People can call out capitalism all they want. But no one should be surprised when others aren't convinced that systems with a 0% success rate are held up as superior to systems with a higher-than-zero success rate. And there are far more successes than just the Nordic countries.

It may not matter to the dead and oppressed, but it sure as hell matters to anyone living happily under capitalism.

If a system that's been present in dozens of countries, and under the frequent protection of a superpower or other friendly powers, can't cite a single success because of external opposition, that system is probably worthless. External (and internal) opposition will always exist, and any useful system has to be able to operate despite that. And by "operate" I don't mean use totalitarianism.

I doubt Allende would have been any more successful than the rest of the similar Latin American leaders. And his record before his removal didn't inspire confidence. But yes, it's possible he had a chance. But that hypothetical success is a slim thing to base hopes on, isn't it?

This is insane, this is literally the argument for those capitalists upholding slavery in the 1800s. "It sure as hell matters to anyone living happily under capitalism?" How about the hundreds of millions of those suffering under capitalism. Why don't they get a say if they want to change the system?

And no, I wouldn't even call capitalism a success. It succeeds at exploitation and global murder and it's wrapped itself around the globe like a snake, but that does not make it a success. Capitalism has let big oil and gas literally destroy the planet while reshaping continents. Is that success because people own what - a fridge in an impoverished neighborhood. We produce enough food and resources to eliminate poverty today, but capitalism isn't interested in that.

Capitalism's only success is increasing the profits of its private shareholders as the planet around it burns. Yeah, socialist countries weren't able to get implemented during the 20th century in isolated spots and mostly because they were agrarian countries leaving out of their colonial periods or feudal rule, but their failures doesn't mean that capitalism is a success.

Thordinson · Jan 3, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
Yes, no gulags are better than gulags and make liberal capitalist systems better than communist ones.

I want to point out that America has gulags. Federal prisoners are forced to work and prisoners are forced to work in many states as well. Immigrant detention centers have coerced people detained into working. If by gulag you mean forced labor camp, that is.

Deleted member 7130 · Jan 4, 2021

Thordinson said:
I want to point out that America has gulags. Federal prisoners are forced to work and prisoners are forced to work in many states as well. Immigrant detention centers have coerced people detained into working. If by gulag you mean forced labor camp, that is.

Also worth mentioning the uniquely atrocious Gitmo and private prisons in the US. Even outside of forced labor, these things are abhorrent. And let's not forget the US houses almost 1/4 of the world's prison population. So by scale and by the level of inhumanity the US has things on lock.

Ionic · Jan 4, 2021

Thordinson said:
I want to point out that America has gulags. Federal prisoners are forced to work and prisoners are forced to work in many states as well. Immigrant detention centers have coerced people detained into working. If by gulag you mean forced labor camp, that is.

This is very true. It's also worth mentioning that in the US Constitution slavery is not mentioned by name until the 13th Amendment which rather than just being a blanket ban explicitly states slavery and indentured servitude are okay as long as the subject has been convicted of a crime. The US essentially has gulags codified into its most sacred legal document.

The United States Constitution 13th Amendment Section 1 said:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

That "except" is a nasty, nasty thing. And of course the 13th Amendment isn't all bark either. Other posters have already pointed out that nearly a quarter of the planet's prison population is in the US. I can assure anybody reading this post that this is not because America is full of bad hombres. It's also worth mentioning that even with the galaxy sized loophole that allows modern slavery via this Amendment, you can still see people forced into performing labor without even having yet been convicted.

I feel like I'm in some kind of fever dream while reading some posts in this thread. There are posters condemning tankies for downplaying or denying forced labor or exploitative atrocities under various Communist rules immediately thereafter justifying or denying forced labor and atrocities in modern capitalist liberal democracies. Do we have a word for the neoliberal equivalent of a tankie yet?

Chairman Yang · Jan 4, 2021

dabig2 said:
This is insane, this is literally the argument for those capitalists upholding slavery in the 1800s. "It sure as hell matters to anyone living happily under capitalism?" How about the hundreds of millions of those suffering under capitalism. Why don't they get a say if they want to change the system?

They do get a say (at least in democracies). But are they justified in demanding a system with a record of dramatically worse failure than capitalism?

I don't understand your slavery analogy. I guess it would apply if countries that abolished slavery all sunk into totalitarianism and economic ruin.

dabig2 said:
And no, I wouldn't even call capitalism a success. It succeeds at exploitation and global murder and it's wrapped itself around the globe like a snake, but that does not make it a success. Capitalism has let big oil and gas literally destroy the planet while reshaping continents. Is that success because people own what - a fridge in an impoverished neighborhood. We produce enough food and resources to eliminate poverty today, but capitalism isn't interested in that.

Every communist country with oil and gas has produced as much oil as they can and sold it on the global market. The Soviet economy was heavily reliant on it and was okay with selling to the evil capitalists. I don't understand why resource extraction is considered a capitalist problem.

You're right, "capitalism" isn't interested in solving hunger, and in fact isn't interested in anything. That's up to people to solve if they want to, through the political system of their choice (or the political system imposed on them). So far, communist systems have made the hunger problem vastly worse than capitalist ones. Countries like China that have become more capitalist have reduced mass starvation.

dabig2 said:
Capitalism's only success is increasing the profits of its private shareholders as the planet around it burns. Yeah, socialist countries weren't able to get implemented during the 20th century in isolated spots and mostly because they were agrarian countries leaving out of their colonial periods or feudal rule, but their failures doesn't mean that capitalism is a success.

Also the success of moving hundreds of millions out of poverty and literally starvation, improving living standards for most of the rest, removing some governments from totalitarianism and in some cases reducing political repression, and opening up to the rest of the world economically and culturally. If you want to compare rates of poverty alleviation between capitalist and non-capitalist systems, go ahead, but you're not doing that. You're literally just ignoring the experience and data of big swathes of the world.

Chairman Yang · Jan 4, 2021

Thordinson said:
I want to point out that America has gulags. Federal prisoners are forced to work and prisoners are forced to work in many states as well. Immigrant detention centers have coerced people detained into working. If by gulag you mean forced labor camp, that is.

Why is America a stand-in for all capitalist systems? Yes, the country is dysfunctional (although I think equating Soviet gulags to American prisons is pretty silly). As I said earlier, the difference is that capitalism has some successes on this front, and communism doesn't.

Chairman Yang · Jan 4, 2021

Ionic said:
I feel like I'm in some kind of fever dream while reading some posts in this thread. There are posters condemning tankies for downplaying or denying forced labor or exploitative atrocities under various Communist rules immediately thereafter justifying or denying forced labor and atrocities in modern capitalist liberal democracies. Do we have a word for the neoliberal equivalent of a tankie yet?

Could you point me to the posts where people denied forced labour or atrocities in capitalist systems?

I'm pretty sure the word that leftists use for the neoliberal equivalent of a tankie is "neoliberal", given that they practically consider the word a slur.

Hoot · Jan 4, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
They do get a say (at least in democracies). But are they justified in demanding a system with a record of dramatically worse failure than capitalism?

I don't understand your slavery analogy. I guess it would apply if countries that abolished slavery all sunk into totalitarianism and economic ruin.

What the fuck is this. They are absolutely justified to demand a system that has systematically (and STILL DOES) brutalized and serverd everyone BUT them. The argument of "but it gave them a voice" is indeed some fucking ex-slave owner bullshit. What the fuck

rras1994 · Jan 4, 2021

Geez, are people really seeing my question as downplaying Native American genocide? Killing and enslaving a civilisation that had already been brought to its knees is morally worse, not better. And it feels weird that it's being even brought up in this thread. Sorry Matt for asking you a question in the other thread, I didn't think it would ever be used to say you downplayed genocide.

Chairman Yang · Jan 4, 2021

Hoot said:
What the fuck is this. They are absolutely justified to demand a system that has systematically (and STILL DOES) brutalized and serverd everyone BUT them. The argument of "but it gave them a voice" is indeed some fucking ex-slave owner bullshit. What the fuck

No, oppressed people shouldn't expect a warm reception if they want to pursue even more oppression. Spare me your "slave owner" BS. Where are your complaints over any communist slavery in North Korea? Nowhere, because to you slavery or any atrocity is ok as long as it sticks it to capitalism.

Thordinson · Jan 4, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
Why is America a stand-in for all capitalist systems? Yes, the country is dysfunctional (although I think equating Soviet gulags to American prisons is pretty silly). As I said earlier, the difference is that capitalism has some successes on this front, and communism doesn't.

I'm mentioning America because you said capitalist countries don't have gulags. America is a capitalist country with gulags. As I said, if you mean forced labor camps then it's not silly to equate the two when many prisoners are forced into labor. Immigrants held at immigrant detention centers, not yet convicted of any crime, are forced into labor as well.

Now, if I'm misinterpreting what you meant, then I apologize.

Chairman Yang · Jan 4, 2021

Thordinson said:
I'm mentioning America because you said capitalist countries don't have gulags. America is a capitalist country with gulags. As I said, if you mean forced labor camps then it's not silly to equate the two when many prisoners are forced into labor. Immigrants held at immigrant detention centers, not yet convicted of any crime, are forced into labor as well.

Now, if I'm misinterpreting what you meant, then I apologize.

Yes, I didn't intend to imply all capitalist systems have no gulags. But my wording was bad and your interpretation was completely valid given what I wrote. Apologies from my end.

In general, every crime of communist countries has been committed by capitalist countries as well. The difference is that it hasn't been all capitalist countries. They're better in comparison, but still bad, and like democracy, better than the known alternatives.

Deleted member 7082 · Jan 4, 2021

I see we are at the "well, not every capitalist country" phase of the debate. Kudos to those who have dragged libs that close to reality from where we started, at least.

Chairman Yang · Jan 4, 2021

Megatherium said:
I see we are at the "well, not every capitalist country" phase of the debate. Kudos to those who have dragged libs that close to reality from where we started, at least.

No one's dragged libs anywhere. I've had this position pretty consistently from the time I started posting on the Internet, let alone this thread. I'm not American, I wasn't born in America, and I'm happy to acknowledge the faults of America or any other capitalist country. That doesn't mean I'm going to embrace an even worse system.

dabig2 · Jan 4, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
They do get a say (at least in democracies). But are they justified in demanding a system with a record of dramatically worse failure than capitalism?

I don't understand your slavery analogy. I guess it would apply if countries that abolished slavery all sunk into totalitarianism and economic ruin.

Point is just because a system exists and rolls on, doesn't make that system good. Slavery existed under capitalism for years - and still does - as capitalism relies on brutal exploitation of labor. If a system is built on blood and maintained by it, then the entire system deserves to be called out. And maybe it's a bad idea to continuing to live in a system whose only intention is to boost the profits of private shareholders while then giving such a system a powerful military to enforce that hegemony.

Chairman Yang said:
Every communist country with oil and gas has produced as much oil as they can and sold it on the global market. The Soviet economy was heavily reliant on it and was okay with selling to the evil capitalists. I don't understand why resource extraction is considered a capitalist problem.

Yeah dude, we live in a society and all that. Soviets extracted wealth from the planet to keep up in the global capitalist trade for decades, but what I'm talking about with capitalism letting oil & gas companies criminally wreck this planet and cover it up for decades to protect profit is on a different level of harm and intention.

The destruction of this planet for private profit will be capitalism's last endearing gift to the world. But fret not citizens of the world, at least the Nordic countries have an OK capitalist system for their 99% white population.

Chairman Yang said:
You're right, "capitalism" isn't interested in solving hunger, and in fact isn't interested in anything. That's up to people to solve if they want to, through the political system of their choice (or the political system imposed on them). So far, communist systems have made the hunger problem vastly worse than capitalist ones. Countries like China that have become more capitalist have reduced mass starvation.

Also the success of moving hundreds of millions out of poverty and literally starvation, improving living standards for most of the rest, removing some governments from totalitarianism and in some cases reducing political repression, and opening up to the rest of the world economically and culturally. If you want to compare rates of poverty alleviation between capitalist and non-capitalist systems, go ahead, but you're not doing that. You're literally just ignoring the experience and data of big swathes of the world.

And the Soviets went from a feudal economy of mostly agrarian farmers to a global superpower in a pretty short time. What happened when that entire bloc went to capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union?

Don't get me wrong, or Marx here, capitalism has yielded an incredible bounty.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

Marx knew that capitalism can produce and advance society. That was the plan. But it will always be unequal and exploitative to the point that eventually the workers would then rise up and seize the means to better distribute capitalism's bounty more equitably among the public.

List me the countries that tried to do socialism and tell me of their economic systems, industrialization, and output right before they tried to enact socialism. And again, big bad America was at its baddest during the 20th century, so you always have to take into account external actors like that when any of these poorer countries try to implement socialism.

And good on China for poverty reduction, though a lot that I'd ascribe to their socialist state program policies, not the capitalist ones. Though with poverty reduction came a lot of wealth inequality, and that's something I do blame their capitalist policies for.

Deleted member 4346 · Jan 4, 2021

Megatherium said:
I see we are at the "well, not every capitalist country" phase of the debate. Kudos to those who have dragged libs that close to reality from where we started, at least.

Even capitalist countries that don't have forced labor camps still benefit from forced labor and horrific exploitation in the Global South. There are no capitalist countries that have their hands clean, not even in recent history, that I'm aware of. And it's particularly baffling to see people in here, carrying water for capitalism's atrocities and praising its supposed successes, after a year where we saw a raging pandemic run roughshod over the capitalist West, hundreds of thousands of American lives sacrificed to feed the free market and restart the economy, and we are amidst global climate change fueled by overproduction and overconsumption, which will kill millions and probably displace billions.

I gotta give credit to dabig2 and others for being so patient in these threads.

Reckheim · Jan 4, 2021

Apharmd said:
I gotta give credit to dabig2 and others for being so patient in these threads.

hard to engage in conversation when you have people comparing Gulags to the American prison system unironically.

To many people that experienced communist or post communist societies; this is not a conversation worth having on this forum.

Deleted member 4346 · Jan 4, 2021

Reckheim said:
hard to engage in conversation when you have people comparing Gulags to the American prison system unironically.

To many people that experienced communist or post communist societies; this is not a conversation worth having on this forum.

... the American prison system is legalized forced-labor targeted at ethnic minorities and rife with abuse, exploitation, inhumane treatment up to and including torture, etc. What is your issue with the comparison specifically?

Reckheim · Jan 4, 2021

Apharmd said:
... the American prison system is legalized forced-labor targeted at ethnic minorities and rife with abuse, exploitation, inhumane treatment up to and including torture, etc. What is your issue with the comparison specifically?

Deleted member 4346 · Jan 4, 2021

Reckheim said:

Yes, those are extremely high mortality rates, higher than US prisons.

Thordinson · Jan 4, 2021

Reckheim said:

What other word would be better to use for a system that targets ethnic minorities, forces millions to do labor, and kills thousands every year? I don't know what other word to use and if my use of gulag is offensive, forgive me.

svacina · Jan 4, 2021

Thordinson said:
if my use of gulag is offensive, forgive me.

No, I don't think I will.

Thordinson · Jan 4, 2021

svacina said:
No, I don't think I will.

That's fair. I won't use it in the future.

Reckheim · Jan 4, 2021

Thordinson said:
What other word would be better to use for a system that targets ethnic minorities, forces millions to do labor, and kills thousands every year? I don't know what other word to use and if my use of gulag is offensive, forgive me.

Call it what it is. 'American Prison System'.

It doesn't need to be compared to anything. Everyone knows how bad it is.

Serpens007 · Jan 4, 2021

Matt said:
A border dispute does not change the fact they agreed to simultaneously invade and conquer Poland together.

It does not change the fact that the Nazi war machine would not have been able to function without Soviet supplies, which they continued to supply up until the moment Germany invaded.

It does not change the fact that the USSR helped Germany rebuild their military from locations within Russia.

You are ignoring basic facts.

I think that, not just you, but a lot of times when looking at historic events as big as the whole World Wars period sometimes we overlook many things.

The Nazis and the USSR were destined to collide, in the first place. This was so much a given that the Allies also tried to get a pact with the USSR during the Nazi appeasement phase of the pre-war. The only problem is that the USSR wanted Poland and continue restoring the parts of the Russian Empire that emancipated after WWI, and since the allies conceded already land to Nazi Germany, the USSR was not going to concede not taking Poland. The USSR signed the pact with the country that conceded what they wanted: Nazi Germany. It wasn't, in any talk, among the Allies, USSR, Nazi Germany, in whatever combination one may think, about ideological consensus. This is why whataboutism between the countries about who allied with who, for that time, it's pretty meaningless if you think about this away from the "black or white" perspective. We, knowing what the Nazis did, or the USSR did, or any involved country did, have a lot of hindsight and have another perspective about alliances, and I don't really think at that time the politicians were thinking in the same way, or believed that what ended happening would happen. Remember people even agreed to an Olympics in Nazi Germany, which they used for propaganda to keep a good image with the world and it actually worked even.

So yeah, the USSR and the Nazis signed a Non-aggression pact. Because they knew they couldn't fight a war on more than one front. You see, they all knew they would collide, by "they" I mean all major powers involved. France was an even bigger force than Germany, ready from the start, the fact that later they were defeated is another story, but France was very much prepared for war against Nazi Germany. France and the British Empire just set a moment on which it would happen: the invasion of Poland. But even this was not that important for the allies. Remember the Phony War phase? France and the British Empire got to actual war once France was invaded, the declaration of war after Poland was more about honoring their pact. The British Empire even invaded and occupied neutral Iceland, and was just beated by Nazi Germany in occupying Norway by a couple of days. So invading neutral countries really isn't moral grounds in this context.

I don't think the Allies wanted alliances with the USSR, or the other way around, because of them being "good guys", the fear of confrontation because of ideology was always there. They were common threats to each other. And that's the bigger thing. The inevitable war between the USSR and the Nazis was set on an ideological term, with or without pact. As some sort of confrontation between the western powers and the USSR, mainly stopped because of Nuclear disaster fear. It's easy to get this lost when dealing with the non-agression pact, historically speaking, it was them buying time before going to war with each other. Weirdly enough, Stalin did believe that Hitler would honor the document, despite everyone telling him, even the British Empire supplying information from the Enigma machines, that they would be invaded. But I digress.

Ultimately, Nazi Germany did invade, and the command from Hitler was to be ruthless, because it was ideological war above all else.

This is why Tankies aren't "right wing". Tankies are Stalinist, they defend Stalin, thinking that since his plans actually got the USSR to be a what it became, starting from an agrarian country, all the horrors were either justified (because, in tankie perspective, material history indicated that they were needed) or just imperial propaganda. A lot of tankies defend China or any left authoritarian country because they see the same justifications.

The problem with equating Nazis to Communism based on what Stalin did is that it really overlooks that Communism wasn't owned by Stalin or the USSR. I don't think anyone can tell a Eastern European that they don't know what they talk about. The horrors of the USSR, specially the Stalin era, are very much historic fact. But Communism did took very different approaches in different places in the world. I can speak for myself, here in Chile, anti-communist sentiment, the idea of stopping the "Horrors of Communism in Europe", with a good chunk of help from the US, very much allowed thousands of people being murdered, tortured, kids to be kidnapped from their family, and a whole another can of horrors. Yeah, body count is low by comparison, but do we really want to start counting horrors as a way of measuring who's worse? Do we really want to relativice human rights so much?

Nazism, as an ideology, is violent and racist from the very foundation. That's the biggest difference and why is wrong to equate it with Communism. Again, I cannot deny the horrors lived by others, I can speak for myself saying that Communists here are very much moderate and democratic, except when under Pinochet.

julia crawford · Jan 4, 2021

Going to be honest here my only contact with tankies was by realizing a ton of them watched girls und panzer.

Hektor · Jan 4, 2021

John Kowalski said:
girls und panzer.

One of the all time greatest

Thordinson · Jan 4, 2021

Reckheim said:
Call it what it is. 'American Prison System'.

It doesn't need to be compared to anything. Everyone knows how bad it is.

Gotcha. I won't make the same mistake again.

Chairman Yang · Jan 7, 2021

dabig2 said:
Point is just because a system exists and rolls on, doesn't make that system good. Slavery existed under capitalism for years - and still does - as capitalism relies on brutal exploitation of labor. If a system is built on blood and maintained by it, then the entire system deserves to be called out. And maybe it's a bad idea to continuing to live in a system whose only intention is to boost the profits of private shareholders while then giving such a system a powerful military to enforce that hegemony.

Yes, bad systems like capitalism should be called out. That's not my issue. My problem is calling for their replacement by systems we know are vastly worse. That's not trying to make things better. It's basically just raw "burn it all down" instinct.

dabig2 said:
Yeah dude, we live in a society and all that. Soviets extracted wealth from the planet to keep up in the global capitalist trade for decades, but what I'm talking about with capitalism letting oil & gas companies criminally wreck this planet and cover it up for decades to protect profit is on a different level of harm and intention.

The destruction of this planet for private profit will be capitalism's last endearing gift to the world. But fret not citizens of the world, at least the Nordic countries have an OK capitalist system for their 99% white population.

People want resources, including oil and gas, to make things. They are going to want those things regardless of the economic system. People in communist countries want those things too, and historically, those communist governments have not held back from extracting resources. They've just done it with less public oversight and vastly worse efficiency, meaning they have worse environmental impact relative to their production.

Want to solve the environmental impact? Switching to communism won't help even a little bit. It'll make things worse. People don't want to restrain their consumption enough. Maybe the only ways are massive government initiatives or technology, both of which are done under capitalism.

dabig2 said:
And the Soviets went from a feudal economy of mostly agrarian farmers to a global superpower in a pretty short time. What happened when that entire bloc went to capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union?

Initial chaos as the transition was handled horribly--but despite that, they're STILL better off now economically and, for the most part, politically. There's a good reason none of these countries have backslid into communism despite their admittedly horrible governments and despite some nostalgia for the old days. People there think communism is worse.

dabig2 said:
Don't get me wrong, or Marx here, capitalism has yielded an incredible bounty.

Marx knew that capitalism can produce and advance society. That was the plan. But it will always be unequal and exploitative to the point that eventually the workers would then rise up and seize the means to better distribute capitalism's bounty more equitably among the public.

List me the countries that tried to do socialism and tell me of their economic systems, industrialization, and output right before they tried to enact socialism. And again, big bad America was at its baddest during the 20th century, so you always have to take into account external actors like that when any of these poorer countries try to implement socialism.

And good on China for poverty reduction, though a lot that I'd ascribe to their socialist state program policies, not the capitalist ones. Though with poverty reduction came a lot of wealth inequality, and that's something I do blame their capitalist policies for.

I'm glad you and Marx agree that for raw productive potential, capitalism has yet to be beat. Yes, it does bring stark inequality. So solve that inequality without destroying the productive potential (and civil society, and basic freedoms)! There are a million potential fruitful directions to go in. Build off of Singapore's government housing. Learn from Scandinavian countries. Reduce starvation to basically nothing like nearly every middle-income capitalist country. Try UBI! Why the hell do people push for known horrible systems instead of trying the stuff that already works, or trying new stuff that has a chance of working? It boggles the mind.

I think virtually every Chinese person would gladly, gratefully accept wealth inequality in order to not return to their past where everyone was equal because everyone was poor. And those social policies were crap without the economy provided by the shift to capitalism.

Chairman Yang · Jan 7, 2021

Apharmd said:
Even capitalist countries that don't have forced labor camps still benefit from forced labor and horrific exploitation in the Global South. There are no capitalist countries that have their hands clean, not even in recent history, that I'm aware of. And it's particularly baffling to see people in here, carrying water for capitalism's atrocities and praising its supposed successes, after a year where we saw a raging pandemic run roughshod over the capitalist West, hundreds of thousands of American lives sacrificed to feed the free market and restart the economy, and we are amidst global climate change fueled by overproduction and overconsumption, which will kill millions and probably displace billions.

I gotta give credit to dabig2 and others for being so patient in these threads.

Plenty of capitalist countries handled the pandemic well. What are you talking about? You really do fulfill the stereotype of being unable to view the world through any lense except America.

Wow, you're so very patient, arguing for totalitarian dictatorships with horrible outcomes, and having to face minor pushback outside of your bubble and make actual arguments. Poor, poor tankie.

Deleted member 7082 · Jan 7, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
Wow, you're so very patient, arguing for totalitarian dictatorships

Liar.

Poor, poor tankie

10 pages in and you don't know what a tankie is.

saturnineCarrier · Jan 7, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
Plenty of capitalist countries handled the pandemic well. What are you talking about? You really do fulfill the stereotype of being unable to view the world through any lense except America.

dude, you're one to talk about stereotypes.

putting a disclaimer at the top of your post saying "bad systems like capitalism should be called out" means nothing if you're going to judge it with extenuating circumstances for all its faults while simultaneously blasting countries claiming communism for any and all fuckups, even imaginary ones apparently.

ThereAreFourNaan · Jan 7, 2021

Serpens007 said:
But even this was not that important for the allies. Remember the Phony War phase? France and the British Empire got to actual war once France was invaded, the declaration of war after Poland was more about honoring their pact.

I just wanted to comment on this bit here. The declaration of war was not "just" about honoring a pact, they were eager to stop the Germans from expanding further. They did not attack immediately for two reasons - one, because the French were operating with extremely conservative mindsets based on a strongly defensive military philosophy (insufficient doctrinal and organizational reforms since WW1), and two because they understood time to be on their side. The French army was large, although not as well equipped as it would have liked to have been, while the British army was very small but extremely well equipped. The longer they could stonewall the Germans, the more favourable the balance of forces would become, what with the British and French both being global empires able to tap large reserves of resources and manpower from overseas.

It's probably true that if they planned a big assault to coincide with the opening days of the war they might have made some good progress into the Rhineland, but on the other hand they were not in a position to rapidly exploit breakthroughs and relentlessly push like the Germans were. Then again, if we're dealing just with hindsight, you could probably instantly reverse the course of WWII just by slightly repositioning a few French divisions in May 1940. Suddenly the German spearhead gets bogged down, the BEF and French forces gain extra time to withdraw from the low countries, and it becomes an attritional war which the Germans are woefully unprepared for. Nazis crushed by Q4 1942, the Italians probably sit the war out.

Terrell · Jan 7, 2021

Chairman Yang said:
Yes, bad systems like capitalism should be called out. That's not my issue.

Considering you've argued against taxation of the wealthy and in favour of free-market solutions at the expense of taxation (which is essentially anarcho-capitalist talking points) before and in fact regularly go into threads to talk down to people calling out capitalism, you'll forgive me for not believing that you don't take issue there.

Chairman Yang said:
Initial chaos as the transition was handled horribly--but despite that, they're STILL better off now economically and, for the most part, politically. There's a good reason none of these countries have backslid into communism despite their admittedly horrible governments and despite some nostalgia for the old days. People there think communism is worse.

Pretty sure it has a lot more to do with the fact that they ditched the communism but kept the authoritarianism and/or corruption intact.
After all, if we're going to argue about how terrible those things are in suppressing the will of the people, perhaps it should stand to reason that the continued presence of these ills after the end of communism would explain why it never came back when the only thing that changed was that the authoritarianism and corruption gave the new ruling classes more money to stuff their pockets with under capitalism, yes?

Chairman Yang said:
I'm glad you and Marx agree that for raw productive potential, capitalism has yet to be beat. Yes, it does bring stark inequality. So solve that inequality without destroying the productive potential (and civil society, and basic freedoms)! There are a million potential fruitful directions to go in. Build off of Singapore's government housing. Learn from Scandinavian countries. Reduce starvation to basically nothing like nearly every middle-income capitalist country. Try UBI! Why the hell do people push for known horrible systems instead of trying the stuff that already works, or trying new stuff that has a chance of working? It boggles the mind.

I've mentioned it elsewhere, including in prior discussion with you, but even in places with broad support, UBI keeps getting struck down and is a pipe dream that will never come to fruition under capitalism. We've been trying for 50 years now.

Also, Singapore's public housing system was implemented right before and immediately after independence and the political factors in play to develop it are frankly no longer possible to duplicate in places like the United States; that ship has long since sailed and even Singaporean leadership acknowledges this point very explicitly.

Chairman Yang said:
I think virtually every Chinese person would gladly, gratefully accept wealth inequality in order to not return to their past where everyone was equal because everyone was poor. And those social policies were crap without the economy provided by the shift to capitalism.

That's a lot of mouths to put words into all at once. Perhaps it's best to let them speak for themselves on that matter instead of assuming the position of almost every person in the most populated country in the world. But you do you.

Chairman Yang said:
Plenty of capitalist countries handled the pandemic well. What are you talking about? You really do fulfill the stereotype of being unable to view the world through any lense except America.

I think that depends entirely on your definition of "well", as well as what the after-effects will be when the bills come due.

Recently learned about Tankies, leftist subgroup who think old communist empires are awesome.

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