https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/evilmalware.html

Money is simply the ability to command labor-power. Money is an abstraction for what is in actuality class society, Financial reform around money and taxes cannot change the nature of class society. They are obfuscations designed to distract you.

You have false nostalgia for a time you weren’t even alive as things have always been shit for working people especially in the United States.

Everyone I know works more than 40 hours a week because its not enough to live on. Overtime is barely doled out and “benefits” account for either expensive PPOs or slightly cheaper HMOs (which suck, fyi). And I live in a state with strong labor protections. In all of the country its entirely possible to work more than 40 hours a week and not receive any overtime pay at all. Or be misclassified, or be subject to illegal wage theft.

All that changed is the worst jobs got sent overseas and a certain section of careers for the college educated exist that provides some semblance of “good benefits and good hours”.

grandfathers busted heads, and got their own heads busted, fighting corporate goons in the streets - and WINNING!

No one won anything. The massive militant strike actions in the USA in the early 20th century usually were losses. Wins tended to be pyrrhic, with the company cleaning house a couple months later or simply reversing the won benefits.

Things were brought to a head by the depression. The solution was simple, the most militant leaders were arrested, reforms were done to buy off the less militant, and the anger was channeled into marching all of us off to war (with the support of the non-militant collaborationist unions, of course).

but I’ll say it again: your analysis of socialism fails because it relies on “one-drop” analysis.

All of the “socialist countries” that you defend, do not just have “one-drop” of capitalism. They inevitably reproduce and enfranchise the capitalist social relationship in all aspects of their production, and their populations are dependent on the market to survive. Whether that is done by state planners or private capitalists, the exploitation of the proletariat class continues, in fact following the laws of capitalism, like the continuous immiseration of the proletariat and the inevitable necessity of imperialism under Capitalism.

A socialist economy cannot just will the productive forces to levels where public ownership is the most effective, I agree, but I disagree that that means that an underdeveloped country cannot retain ownership of the large firms and key industries, gradually appropriating capital with respect to its development. It’s like using fire for heating, keeping it in check by controlling the environment and all inputs, fuel, etc, and gradually replacing it with electrified heating as time goes on and you get the tech for it.

Why do your “socialist countries” not appropriate capital then? Why do they inevitably concede to private ownership, or even under the “state run monopolies” continue the capitalist social relation?

I fundamentally cannot agree with treating socialism itself as some unique mode of production

Even if we concede that, Capitalist social relationships and Socialist social relationships will coexist under a Dictatorship of The Proletariat, your “socialist countries” do not even attempt this, bar the revision of defining “state ownership” as a socialist social relationship. Yet, a number of countries you would consider “capitalist” practice(d) state ownership.

Which reveals your ideology for what it truly is, Capitalism with red paint, essentially, social democracy. If socialism is not a mode of production, what is it? An ideology. Agitated for in bourgeoisie parliaments as ethical capitalism with red flag characteristics. What would be the end of a “Socialist State” to you? When they change the flag color? If the “Communist Party” changes its name to the “Capitalist Party”? You have no material conception of what Socialism and Capitalism is, which is why it collapses into idealism to the extent you even refuse to accept that Socialism is an independent mode of production in of itself.

Capitalism is a historical progression

Progressive =/= better. The Capitalist social relation inevitably reproduces itself across the globe because of the social forces. Not because it is an improvement.

Therefore, this expansion of productive powers in capitalism in theory leads to better life quality, less socially necessary labor time to provide for everyone, less mortality given how we can now produce things like insulin in complex labs, etc.

Regardless of the debate that these modern conceptions can be attributed entirely to a change in the mode of production rather then simply the inevitable progression of humanities technological knowledge, Marx actually argued Capitalism inevitably immiserates the proletariat rather than advancing quality of life.

You try to hedge this by saying “in theory”, yet not even in theory. It is a lie of the bourgeoisie the proletarian slavery is an improvement over peasant slavery. In theory, Capitalism is simply the reproduction of the capitalist social relationship and the replacement of the nobility class with the new bourgeoisie class.

Btw, comparison between feudal peasantry and proletariat is flawed - peasants were based in countryside and essentially were the middle class of it

The comparison is not to equalize the proletariat and peasantry in their relationship to the means of production, but in the demographic comparison for who is the majority of the planet. In Feudal times, peasants, including serfs make up the majority of people. And serfs are decidedly not middle class. Peasants were an exploited class under feudalism, duped by the bourgeoisie to support the inevitable capitalist revolution that would “improve their quality of life”, only to find themselves alienated industrial laborers and at the bottom of class society once again.

You claim Trump is the more genocidal candidate, yet he has seemingly put a stop to the Genocide. Curious.

Yes, exactly. One major party generally keeps their brutal oppression overseas, the other increases overseas oppression and also turns the trillion dollar military against the citizenry.

Ah yes, the Dems who definitely did not deport more people then the republicans and have been singing the song of “build the wall” since the 2000s? The “Secure Fence Act”? The dems who have always funded the police and increased their militarization. Those dems, who don’t “turn the military against the citizenry?”

the other increases overseas oppression

Really? Obama didn’t increase our engagement in Afghanistan? Didn’t bomb weddings? Biden didn’t commit a Genocide? Obama didn’t intervene in Libya? I don’t know what Dems you’re talking about, but the ones I know commit crimes, overseas and domestic.

“electoral influence” to choose what billionaires will continue to fund a 1 trillion dollar military and the brutal repression of the citizenry? wow. thats certainly too bad.

That it would force USA to negotiations about the oil embargo

Again, Japan was backed into a corner with the embargo. They thought that Pearl Harbor wouldn’t start a war. So the answer to your question (at least with Japan), is that “they didn’t”.

No, not really. Previous large scale wars were civil wars, or, wars of imperialism to carve up other countries for the imperialist powers.

There is some exceptions, but WW1/WW2 is really the first major war between imperialist powers “inter-imperialist war”. WW1 and WW2 are human atrocities that are not comparable to any other war.

Japan was agitated into the war by the USA oil embargo that definitely wasn’t a way by the “peace loving and isolationist” USA to force Japan into attacking first

FDRs top planners already knew Japan was planning to attack and clearly wanted a war with Japan, they just knew they couldnt sell this to an isolationist public unless Japan attacked first

Sorry I don’t really get excited for Bernie “Bomb the Browns and Close The Borders” Sanders

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/252270-sanders-i-wouldnt-end-drone-program/

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/5209792-sanders-recognizes-trump-effort-on-border-fentanyl-nobody-thinks-illegal-immigration-is-appropriate/

Industrial output wasn’t important because number go up, it was important because it allowed the USSR to become the nation manufacturing most tractors by the late 30s, and it allowed the manufacturing of the rifles, tanks, planes, munitions and artillery that enabled the defeat of Nazism.

Critical support to FDR and the AFL and their joint venture of industrial policy to massively increase the United States industrial base to defeat the nazis?

If you still, after learning that, believe that the Soviets “collaborated with Nazism”, you simply have an anticommunist agenda, because that statement represents the opposite of what really happened in the 1930s Europe.

They literally worked together to carve up Poland and signed a Mutual Defense Pact with each other while the USSR supplied the Nazi regime with raw materials as part of their trade agreements. Everything else you’ve talked about is just Realpolitik.

The USSR was amazingly progressive in terms of diversity and respect of nationalities for its time, which is why each republic had the right to determine its own official language (see Ukrainian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Estonian, etc.), most books and newspapers in those republic were printed in the official language, people had a right to an education in their own language, and while Russian was encouraged as a língua franca, it was not generally imposed instead of smaller local languages.

I don’t disagree. Lenin was right about The National Question and the Soviet policy of Korenizatsiia (a theory of Stalins creation) was good. I will give you that, BUT Stalin reversed all of this with his mass deporations and genocide of Ukranians with the cultivation of the Soviet-Russian National Identity culminating in the inter-imperialist literally termed “Great Patriotic War”!

Please go through your comment history and tell me how many comments you have making it a point to talk about western power war crimes not as a tool to shit on the Soviet Union, but to actually criticise them.

4/15 of my comments are literally about criticizing a western powers crimes (although, not for WW2)!

Socialism is famously when you get almost total land redistribution among peasants in collective farms, yes, I don’t even see your point here.

Land reform is a petty-bourgeoisie demand culminating in the recreation of the capitalist social relation and the destruction of the Peasant class. Many capitalist countries have undergone the same transformation, just without the level of state interference and control the Soviet Union had. Just because the state manages the farms does not mean it is not capitalism as the fundamental mechanism of capital accumulation remains.

The 1929 collectivization drive was kicked together with the first 5-year economic plan of the Soviet Union, which drove a growth of 10%+ in economic output YEARLY during the following decade.

I didn’t know socialists were GDP-obsessed neoliberals here, socialism is good because it outpaces capitalism in GDP growth? How nice.

and they had 10 years to make up for it or they would be crushed. 10 years later, Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.

And five years before that, Stalin was collaborating with the Nazis. Strange.

If it hadn’t been for the industrial boom made possible by the rapid collectivization of agriculture, the Soviets would have lost to the Nazis, leading to the extermination of tens of millions of Eastern Europeans according to the Generalplan Ost, ideologically

And at the same Stalin was deporting millions as part of his policy of russification. Do you apologize for all the other Allied Powers war crimes during WW2 as well? Critical support to FDR and the USA war machine?

they were the consequence of lack of knowledge and of hurries to do the first successful complete collectivization of land of a nation in human history.

Socialism is when the government does stuff

Proletarians work for a wage, peasants do not. The undocumented immigrants on USA farms are proletarians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant

Your main claim was that, the Soviet Union “collective” farming system caused famine; but in reality it was just the conversion from traditional feudal peasant farming to modern capitalist farming, entirely orchestrated by the state.

Modern farms are already “collectivized” and so your claim does not hold water or is at best accurate but completely irrelevant to the modern day.

The Democratic Party is the insidious great apologizer for Capital. The Democrat Party funds the wars, were the original kings of “mass deportation”, and have been the architects of numerous an austerity policy that has betrayed and immiserated the working class.

The Democratic Party is the more advanced villain, as they wrap their rhetoric in the language of moralism to make them immune to criticism from more “left wing” moralizers. Which is why many are stuck arguing to death in petty fights with the rhetoric of reform and moralism of the Left Wing of Capital while the republicans are more openly evil who are easy to dismiss and not argue with.

Only through recognizing both the Democratic and Republican party as institutions of class control will you ever make progress.