According to him, the country’s economy “hit rock bottom” in the first quarter, which could lead to a crisis.
Zyuganov also suggested that the situation this fall could resemble the events of 1917, when the communists came to power.
Video with English subtitles available here: https://bsky.app/profile/antongerashchenko.bsky.social/post/3mk3d7tu6m22v
The USSR’s treatment of eastern Europe was characterized by a net outflow of resources from the USSR to the Warsaw Pact, and within the USSR from the RFSFR to the other SSRs. In fact, a large part of the dissolution of the USSR was that Russian nationalists didn’t want to share that wealth. This was very, very different from capitalist imperialism in which wealth is extracted from the periphery.
Once again, I ask you what libertarian socialists have ever achieved. Have they ever acted as a geopolitical counterbalance to the US? Did they beat the nazis? Did they ever raise the literacy rates and raise the workers and peasants out of poverty? No, because they’ve only ever controlled a small region within one country during a civil war, and usually ended up losing. Come back to me with some concrete achievements, otherwise you’re just a useful idiot for imperialism.
Litterally yes, not just in Spain, but also in Korea & Ukraine then the MLs betrayed them and gave the farms back to the owners, because authoritarian “socialism” only exists to replace capitalist oppression with state regulated capitalist oppression, because it’s more paletable to the capitalist class, that’s why they’re happy to collaborate with them, to put down any sort of independent worker movement.
anarchism and ML are opposing ideology. Why anarchist need support of ML states to survive?
ML state literally won biggest war of human history, built a country from ground up that rivaled and stalled most powerful countries in history, made humongous gains in human development like literacy, life expectancy, women rights, science, tech, literature, sports and much more for the while it existed.
Anarchist should do their own work (even tho I know anarchism is a moralist ideology not scientific so it wont work and wont change lives of people).
Lol, it’s kind of sad that MLs, cling to the glory of developmentalism that came from overthrowing fuedal regimes (which pretty much any regime that overthrows fuedalism sees), instead of actually improving worker power in the decades during which the authoritarian regimes you simp for actually existed.
A war that would have been much quicker if the MLs hadn’t killed all their best generals and failed to invade Finland 🤣 or if Stalin wasn’t buddies with Hitler because it allowed the USSR to invade Poland.
And also a war that wouldn’t have been won without enormous help from peaky liberals.
Yeah just pretend Russia wasn’t a great power before the US even existed because it makes the USSR look better and you wonder why everyone always laughs at MLs ridiculously twisted version of history.
Anarchists did, only to be shot in the back by MLs, Spain, Korea, Ukraine, always the same, anarchists fight for freedom alongside so called “communists” only for the communists to turn on them before defeating the racists.
LMFAO how many times does the immortal science of MLism have to fail to progress beyond creating authoritarian shitholes, before you scientifically conclude that it’s a failed approach?
I would be interested in the example in Korea in particular, I had never heard of this.
There isn’t a lot of readily available info on as it was crushed by 2 repressive regimes, and the CCP isn’t exactly welcoming to historians interested in a freer society within their borders that “socialists” and the Japanese empire both worked to crush.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Association_in_Manchuria?wprov=sfla1
This is quite interesting, and since there’s so little information available we can only speculate as to why the Korean Communists assassinated their leadership.
I’m afraid this does reinforce my point that Anarchist experiments tend to only arise locally in chaotic situations - in this case manchuria during the Chinese warlord era - and then get crushed. In wartime, Marxist-Leninist centralization and discipline tends to make for more resiliency, hence the Chinese and Korean communists surviving the war and going on to take power.
Do you think Korean communist took power?
Do you think they still have power (despite writing communism out of their constitution)?
I don’t think the success of a Korean warlord that paid lip service to communism in order to get aid from the communist block, was much of a victory for the working class.
And while Mao was more genuine in his attempt to build a socialist socialist, I don’t think modern day china with it’s ban on unions is in any way more socialist than any other capitalist nation, especially not ones where workers enjoy secotral bargaining.
Neither Korea or China are perfect, but they both survived. Was Kim Il Sung a real ideological communist or just an opportunist? He’s dead, so we can’t ask him, but living standards in the North were higher than in the South under his rule, there was free healthcare. Private capital still seems to have little power in North Korea, and the power of capital is curtailed in China as well. Whether or not they can be called socialist is up for debate, but they’re certainly closer to socialism than any Western democracies.
As far as democracy goes, we’ll take China as an example. You wouldn’t call them a democracy, but they’re much more responsive to the needs and interests of the people than any western democracy. What’s better, a single-party state that acts in the interests of the people, or a democratic state that completely ignores them?
How is a state where workers can’t organize more socialist than one where workers can?
Lol, there is no public healthcare, no free childcare, you have to pay to go to high school, no unions, I don’t see how you can claim they are more responsive to people’s needs than states that y-know respond to people’s needs?
In a socialist state like China before Dengism or the USSR, how would unions work? Under capitalism unions are fantastic, but if you have a socialist economy, an independent union is essentially bargaining with all of society. A union with a lot of leverage, such as dockworkers, could extract inordinate concessions from the rest of society, not the capitalists. They would become a resented labour aristocracy. Now, I don’t think this holds in post-Deng China, but from my understanding there is a fair amount of labour organizing going on there. For instance, a few years ago an American business owner owed a bunch of back pay to his Chinese employees, and they suspected he was about to lay everyone off and close the factory without paying them, so they took his ass captive. They trapped him in his office and the police didn’t raise a finger to free him. Fat chance in hell that you’d see that in any western country.
As for public healthcare, there is, it’s just not completely free. The cost is very low, however, and the same goes for high shool. They just recently expanded affordable public childcare as well. Their recent anti-poverty program was also very successful.
To take a step back, I think you aren’t correctly understanding why western countries have/had a social safety net and toleration of unions. A lot of it was due to the struggle of the domestic labour movement, yes, but a big part of it was also the threat of the Soviet Union - with a prominent alternative to capitalism, they had extra incentive to keep the domestic working class placated. In short, they bought us off by sharing some of the spoils of imperialism. However, with falling rates of profit and the continual drive to increase profit, they’ve been progressively dialing it back in successive rounds of austerity, while letting wages stagnate compared to the cost of living. These social programs are only going to degrade and be dismantled over time.
How is this distinguished from post-Deng China? On one hand, China does not have a global empire to extract profits from, so the steadily increasing standard of living for their working class is a result of their successful economic program rather than them paying off the working class with a share of the plunder. The increase has not been equal, with the standard of living in cities increasing more rapidly than in rural areas, and with the bourgeoisie getting richer faster than the proletariat, but it is nevertheless a general increase across all of society, while the western pseudo-democracies are seeing exponential enrichment for the ruling class combined with stagnation in the middle and worsening conditions for the working class.
The main reason, however, is that capital is not in control of China. Capital is allowed to exist, and has a seat at the table, but it is constrained by the state. If capitalists cross certain lines, if they get too corrupt, act against the national interest, or act egregiously against the interests of society, they are dealt with very harshly, up to and including execution. Jack Ma got too big for his britches and thought he could freely criticize the state banks and financial regulators, claiming that they were stifling innovation. The state made it quite clear who was in charge, and Ma disappeared from public life for about 6 months. China has billionaires, yes, but they keep them on a fairly tight leash, and they routinely execute them.
Once again, they aren’t perfect and I have plenty of criticisms, but they’re doing so much better than any western country, where capital is unconstrained, operates with impunity, and is stripping the copper wire from the walls to chase profits. It’s basically incomparable. Chinese people, having seen concrete and rapid increases to their standard of living, are optimistic hopeful for the future, while we in the west see only doom and worsening conditions.