Of course, the Dems are experts at theater.

Simply admitting it does not mean you don’t have to correct. This was a fillibuster in name only, no bill was protested. This is theatrical at best.

The US isn’t really undercutting them, but propping up systems it can control, like the IMF and NATO.

The problem is that the US Empire has a massively outsized influence over these multinational organizations, they serve to legitimize and facilitate Empire more than solve problems.

Neither can I, seems more to me that they are lashing out because their preferred side lost World War II.

You’ll be shocked to learn that this German Anti-Communist is also a defender of Zionism and a denier of Palestinian genocide.

People in power are not necessarily your enemies either, by virtue of being “in power.” Administration is a necessity in maintaining a large and complex society with intricate production methods and staggering scales of logistics. There will always be a need for administration, of some sort.

The fact that you and your wife work incredibly hard for your family is a byproduct of a highly unequitable distribution of the products of labor. Making labor equitable and more socialized as production gets more complex increases the output and minimizes the number of over or underworked people. We can move to universal 4 day work weeks or even 3 day eventually, by making labor more equitable and socializing the outputs of labor.

That’s why arguing for gender roles, ie a portion of society to perform unpaid domestic labor, is the wrong way to view labor. Domestic labor should be paid labor from the social fund, and childcare should be free at point of service so that this burden of labor is more equitably spread.

Keep peddling debunked Black Book of Communism mythology, I guess.

No, not really

Thanks!

Doing my best as a baby ML 🫡

Always love and appreciate your comments, comrade!

I am aware of the Soviet Union expelling fascists and Tsarists from the party, and punishing those found corrupt, criminals, or had been members of the White Army. I am aware of the GULAG administration that formed the early Soviet prison system, read Russian Justice for more on how that functioned. I am aware of the famine in the 1930s. I have read these articles, as pretty much every Western Communist has had to, these are not “gotchas.”

The real truth of the matter is that the western anti-Communist “Left” that denounces the USSR and every real attempt at building Socialism plays into the hands of the US Empire. The Soviet Union was a massive victory for the working class, the first real Socialist state in history, and with it came dramatic improvements in key life metrics and working class dignity.

1. Life expectancy doubled.

2. The economy was democratized, following the method of Soviet Democracy

3. Wealth inequality shrank, while economic growth boomed:

4. Large expansions in social safety nets were made, such as free and high quality education and healthcare.

5. Housing rates skyrocketed, and literacy rates over tripled to 99.9%.

6. Food security was achieved in a country that was always food insecure.

7. The Red Army defeated the Nazis, with 80% of the combat of World War II on the Eastern Front.

8. The Soviet Union supported countless liberation movements, such as in Cuba, Algeria, and more.

And many, many more achievements. People who denounce the USSR maintain unstated approval for the other Great Power, the United States, which without the USSR would have been entirely unopposed. The US, which committed Imperialist slaughter and even genocide in Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Angola, Palestine, and many, many more countries, was opposed primarily by the Soviets.

The Soviet Union was by no means perfect, nobody asserts that, but to claim that the Soviet Union did “more harm than good to the Leftist movement” is ludicrous. This is the sentiment of Western Chauvanists that don’t want to support Socialism unless they are the ones who acheive it. Jones Maonel was spot on in Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, but not Real Revolution.

You should read Dr. Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, or at the very least the sections on “Left” Anti-Communism.

I think you should use your experiences in Azerbaijan as a push to confront some of your biases, and re-examine your understanding of Socialism in the Soviet Union. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t “totalitarian” by any stretch either. The benefits of the Socialist economic structure are pined for precisely because they worked, and did so for the common people. There are improvements that can and have been made in other Socialist countries, but these improvements would not have been possible without the brave Soviet people pioneering Socialism as it exists in the real world.

…liberal?

Removing gender roles in order to more equitably distribute the workload is progressive. You can remove morality from that equation and it still works, ergo it is absolutely something we should support and there are no reasons to perpetuate backwards gender roles.

To be fair, I did not disengage from this comment string, so I’ll give one last response.

The reason I say this conversation is unproductive is because you regularly take the least-charitable interpretation of what I say, like when you falsely claim I said ending famine was “purely a result of their economic system.” This kind of bad-faith and dishonest argumentative style makes any kind of productive conversation difficult, except that it exposes the kind of bad-faith argumentative style you have in general to more people.

To directly compare the United States at the turn of the 20th century, a developing Capitalist power that had already been the beneficiary of centuries of slavery and settler-colonialism, and the genocide that comes with them, to Russia emerging from a backwards, largely agrarian and underdeveloped feudal system, and China, a backwards, agrarian country which was coming from a century of colonization and eventually decades of Civil War, requires more than a little critical analysis. A better comparison would be to countries that had similar levels of development and went the Capitalist road, not the emerging superpower.

With the above clarification in mind, why did life expectancy grow in the US over that time period, and why did it grow in Russia and China? In the case of the US, it had a long period of peace, no wars on its lands, had industrialized and become a rising global power, and a new Empire, plundering the rest of the Americas. This rise in total wealth, combined with FDR’s expansion in Social Safety Nets as a measure to protect against rising Left-wing organization (a process Western Europe would also follow, in an attempt to provide what the USSR was providing in the form of Social Services so as to not have a copycat revolution), led to the rise of life expectancy. Medicine improved, as did technology, as they always will with industrialization, yet the US required a far longer time in far more generous circumstances.

In Russia and China, we see constant sanctions, no colonies to plunder, and the brutal task of industrialization that led to a drop in life expectancy in Capitalist countries like Britain. Technology and science weren’t being freely shared with them, either, nor was medicine. Instead, much of the advancements from these countries were inwardly driven, through direct efforts to industrialize. They still faced problems, such as the 1930s famine in the USSR, and the Great Chinese Famine in China (the drop you keep pretending I am unaware of as you pretend my point about ending famine is that Russia and China pushed the Socialism button and all famine was immediately gone).

However, the process of industrialization in these countries was focused on the working class, not on private business, and as a consequence we see large rises in life expectancy at a far faster rate and without the usual drop in Capitalist countries that even managed to avoid famine, like the British Empire, whose working class often had life expectancies in the 20s during its industrialization. Socialism was important because it allowed industrialization in a faster time period without the extreme excesses or even outright slavery in Capitalist countries, all without the tools of Imperialism employed by Western Europe and the US (as well as Japan, later).

I think there could have been an opportunity to have an actual discussion with you, but your insistence on making up claims of mine I have never made and your permanent bad-faith readings of my comments made that impossible, and unproductive. From moving the goalposts constantly (such as dropping the question of Imperialism when you tried to make it about landmass, and not Imperialism itself as an economic process) to the bad-faith readings, there’s really nothing productive here, unless you count the internet points you get from misrepresenting my points to your right-wing pals on MWoG (from someone who made a post about bullying on the fediverse, no less).

And with that, I disengage.

Sure, fuck em, but it would be mutual disrespect of the ceasefire deal. It is best for all parties that a peace deal be made.

And with that, I’m disengaging, like I said I would.

They even have a compilation for Feb 2022. I’m not going to defend the source to the death, my point is that there are numerous sources on both sides of the conflict that have reported on Ukraine shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk. I’m not a fan of BBC or CNN either, but also used them (and which you ignored, even the Human Rights Watch source).

I’ll respond to your other comment as well, and then I’m disengaging. This is going nowhere, and you’re only here to try to provoke responses, so this isn’t productive for either of us.

I’m not even sure what you’re trying to do here anymore, I have given you everything from pro-Russian sources to anti-Russian sources, and seemingly none of them satisfy you. What’s the point? I have stated that I want a peace deal ASAP, which is what Ukrainian people want as well. What is it that you want?

My theory is that you don’t actually care what I say, and are permanently and deliberatley trying to take the least charitable interpretation of what I say. I’d say sabotaging peace deals and violating agreements is a bad thing, sure. If Russia did that, then that’s bad. I have no problem with saying that, Russia is a brutal Capitalist regime that has fallen far from it’s Soviet roots.

At the same time, I can also say that if you actually cared to have an honest conversation, you wouldn’t be trying to take the worst possible interpretation of what I say on purpose.