please read some parenti

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      20·
      6 months ago

      It’s infuriating considering that it’s in the first goddamn sentence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

      Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.

      If those libs could read they’d be very upset.

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        6 months ago

        Words mean what they’re used to mean. Even the word “government” is wildly different between Europe and the US. We flip out over headlines like the government of Belgium has collapsed! and it’s only as much of a kerfuffle as the House trying to elect a Speaker.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          6 months ago

          If ever there was a real world example of Newspeak, it is how—thanks to class war and three red scares—the working class no longer even has a word for socialism. So now welfare capitalists like Bernie Sanders call themselves socialist despite never calling for the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. It’s an amazing achievement of the capitalist class’ propaganda machine.

    • BachenBenno@feddit.de
      1232·
      6 months ago

      What’s wrong with the DPRK? The only source that life there is terrible are defector’s testimonies, which contradict each other on a daily basis and where the worst, most emotional stories are rewarded with fame and money. Often it’s the only way to make ends meats for them. If you come to the south from the north you are a nobody.

      Furthermore, the DPRK has never threatened anyone. They have a 100% literacy rate (literally on the CIA website) and every citizen is guaranteed free healthcare, free education and a place to live. They use all of their arible land for food production but because of the sanctions and their mountainous terrain sometimes they have scarcities, but no one is starving. Their constitution is full of human and political rights and social gurantees.

      And to proof that I don’t shill for any country calling itself socialist, I don’t like China at all (while still thinking that they are at least better for the world than the US).

      And of course there are things to criticize the DPRK for, like the lack of LGBT rights and their weapons exports and hackergroups. But considering the sanctions (that even China upholds) they are in very dier need of foreign currency.

      I would also encourage everybody to study the history of Korea.

      • RivalarrivalEnglish
        206·
        6 months ago

        The only source that life there is terrible are defector’s testimonies, which contradict each other on a daily basis and where the worst, most emotional stories are rewarded with fame and money.

        There are other sources.

        For example:

        • BachenBenno@feddit.de
          99·
          6 months ago

          They turn most of their lights off at night to preserve power. They don’t really have energy resources themselves and it is very difficult for them to get foreign currencies. They are still a poor country but considering that they are the most sanctioned country in the history of sanctions they are doing about at well as they can.

          • RivalarrivalEnglish
            95·
            6 months ago

            That might be their real problem. I mean, everywhere else on the planet, the value of menial labor greatly exceeds the cost of the lighting a human needs to be able to work. If they are, indeed, only providing lighting during daylight hours, they are only utilizing 1/3 to 1/2 of the industrial capacity they have invested in. They bought a tractor plant, but because they won’t turn on the lights, it’s production is far short of its capacity.

            For want of a lightbulb, the production was lost. For want of production, farming equipment was lost. For want of farming equipment, the harvest was lost. For want of a harvest, the people were lost.

            If the value of electricity to run a lightbulb so greatly exceeds the value of human labor, I would expect that they would have human powered generators to convert low-value human labor into high-value lighting, so that other laborers would have the light they need to produce.

            • BachenBenno@feddit.de
              41·
              6 months ago

              First, factory lights only account for a small fraction of the power consumed and second people sleep at night. And third, it doesn’t matter what the electricity costs if you don’t have enough coal/oil/gas.

              • RivalarrivalEnglish
                33·
                6 months ago

                The DPRK has no shortage of coal. It’s one of their export products. They currently produce 35 million tons a year, and only burn 10 million.

                While not commonly used in the rest of the world due to abundant oil and gas supplies, coal liquefaction and gasification are relatively simple and proven technologies. Having coal provides a (somewhat dirty) source of gas and liquid fuels, if utilized for that purpose.

                Apparently, electricity is considerably more valuable in DPRK than the opportunity cost of shutting down the entire country overnight. I would think that the factories producing tractors and equipment for converting non-arable land into cropland would be a sufficiently high enough priority to justify burning some excess coal, but apparently not.

      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
        104·
        6 months ago

        Their average height is much lower than people from South Korea. The most likely cause is malnutrition. When malnutrition affects even the military, your civilians aren’t doing well.

        If you’re looking for sources, there are plenty of links should you search for “north korean vs south korean height”. The difference is pretty dramatic for 75 years of isolation.

      • я не из калининграда@lemmy.mlOP
        716·
        6 months ago

        thank you, comrade!

        one thing i might add is the fact that most if not all of the propagated lies about the dprk are projection. sexual slavery was a thing the american occupation forces engaged in massively and south korean dictator pak chong-hui was killed during a dinner party with a underage concubine present. later, haircut policing was a thing in the south during the 1980s under chon tu-hwan. the most prominent korean defector, pak yon-mi is a white supremacist btw.

        i believe that the whole hacking thing is massively exaggerated by western media as part of their whole “the enemy is both weak and strong”-strategy. it is both a way to engineer further fear mongering against korea, as well as to mask their own incompetence. but even if im wrong and they are indeed from the dprk, i still find them quite based and funny tbh.

        do you happen to have any resources on the lgbt situation within the county? i would love to educate myself on the topic.

        i also slightly disagree with you on china. they never seized being a socialist state, but have sadly become revisionist since deng. that doesnt make them any less worthy of critical support though.

          • я не из калининграда@lemmy.mlOP
            34·
            6 months ago

            hey, idk why you got removed, you were talking about an interesting topic.

            i obviously didnt watch the stream, since i dont have so much free time on my hands, but having read the comments i believe to have more or less gotten the gist of what they are saying. its the usual talking points.

            this old r/genzedong thread does imho a great job on providing evidence that china does in fact not fit lenins criteria for a imperialist nation, even if one were to assume that it has a capitalist economy. (cw coarse language though)

  • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
    4311·
    6 months ago

    Man im pretty socialist who lives in ex east germany with my parents actually being parz of that time and i gotta tell you, with what i hear from them, it was horrible

    • Bakzik [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      324·
      6 months ago

      “Throughout Eastern Europe and the former USSR, many people grudgingly admitted that conditions were better under communism (New York Times, 3/30/95). Pro-capitalist Angela Stent, of George- town University, allows that “most people are worse off than they were under Communism . . . . The quality of life has deteriorated with the spread of crime and the disappearance of the social safety net” (New York Times, 12/20/93). An East German steelworker is quoted as saying “I do not know if there is a future for me, and I’m not too hopeful. The fact is, I lived better under Communism” (New York Times, 3/3/91). An elderly Polish woman, reduced to one Red Cross meal a day: “I´m not Red but I have to say life for poor people was better before … Now things are good for businessmen but not for us poor” (New York Times, 3/17/91). One East German woman commented that the West German womens movement was only beginning to fight for “what we already had here… We took it for granted because of the socialist system. Now we realize what we [lost]” (Los Angeles Times, 8/6/91).” Michael Parenti - “Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism”.

      parenti

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        192·
        6 months ago

        See also:

        A new book by Kristen Ghodsee, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that women have better sex under socialism.

        If that sounds strange to you, consider this: A survey of East and West Germans after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women (the socialist side of Germany during the Cold War) had twice as many orgasms as Western women.

        What in the world accounts for such a wide gap?

        According to Ghodsee, it’s about social safety nets. If, she argues, you build a society that supports women and doesn’t punish them for having children or devalue their labor, it turns out they’ll be happier and have better sex.

        But it doesn’t matter how many studies or surveys or policy differences you point to – some guy always has an old relative whose story outweighs everything.

      • pingveno@lemmy.ml
        1·
        6 months ago

        What exactly are these quotes supposed to prove? This was what, a few months or a few years after reunification? Any social change that large is going to cause some turbulence. And of course Parenti has an agenda, so he wouldn’t include someone lauding their new experience.

    • я не из калининграда@lemmy.mlOP
      3342·
      6 months ago

      ahhh yes… horrible as in:

      • guaranteed housing and employment
      • a non-discriminatory education system
      • 0% unemployment
      • low taxes
      • an actually functional railway network
      • a highly developed health care system that didn’t discriminate on basis of class
      • guaranteed childcare
      • womens rights way more advanced than in western germany at the time
      • and most importantly no fascists in government

      and no, i dont wanna say that there were no deficiencies, but it is rather obvious to me that it was quite the opposite of “horrible”!

      also, what the hell do you mean by “pretty socialist”?

      • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
        3815·
        6 months ago

        Ah yes the oh so good DDR with exciting features such as

        • no freedom of movement

        • constant shortage of any goods

        • being a dictatorship

        • (contrary to your first point) a housing shortage

        • a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

        • political pressure

        • control over the media

        • the fucking stasi

        And what i mean by pretty socialist is: everyone gets equal opportunities no matter what race, religion, gender, political views, etc. I want that chad - who just lost all his belongings - has the same chance to live a fulfilled live as elon musk has. I abhorr the fact that there are billionaire’s or even just millionaire’s while other people have to choose between paying rent or eating, and those people not even being in the worst situation compared to others.

        I want almost, but not completely, communism

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          231·
          6 months ago

          Love how you counter concrete, material facts like “guaranteed housing, employment, and childcare” with fact-free scare mongering like “political pressure” and “control over the media.”

          There’s never any analysis about what this shit really means. “The fucking stasi” gets thrown out there like “the boogeyman” without even a thought towards how the U.S. security state violently repressed a nationwide movement against police violence in 2020, or how right now that same security state is violently repressing people protesting the genocide we’re supplying. You’re supposed to belive the stasi is the worst thing possible without ever digging into how it functioned, and certainly without asking how it compared to other states.

        • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          211·
          6 months ago

          no freedom of movement

          Source?

          • constant shortage of any goods

          Think about why this might be, Friend. Really think hard about it. What large geopolitical things were happening at the time?

          • being a dictatorship

          Yes, of the proletariat

          • (contrary to your first point) a housing shortage

          Again, source? Also, wondering what you think happened before East Germany existed that might have contributed to this. Surely this changed over time

          • a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

          Because people working 3 jobs under capitalism have so much free time? What does this even mean?

          • political pressure

          Again, what does this mean? All Political cultures and institutions exert pressures on their population… That’s how politics works.

          • control over the media

          I’ll agree that the siege mentality of much of former socialism led to a lack of press freedom, which was ultimately detrimental, but again… Why might this have been?

          • the fucking stasi

          Quick, name the West German secret police!

          Let’s assume for a minute that everything you’ve said is entirely true. If we’re to be thoughtful about this. East Germany was a historically poorer, agrarian, region of Germany, much less industrialized, artificially lopped off from the west (not by the USSR, btw, who wanted a unified, nonaligned Germany, like the allies had done with Austria), it was heavily sanctioned, had been bombed to shit, much like the rest of Europe, but was made to pay the USSR reparations, that it wasn’t as capable of paying, as a unified Germany would have been. The USSR even dismantled entire east German factories and shipped them back to rebuild their own industrial base.

          How do you expect any country to not come out of that with considerable problems?

          And the GDR did have considerable problems. I think you and I would disagree on what those problems were, but in the broad strokes, that much we can agree on.

          But I would contend that, even with that in mind, East Germany ended up being a much more positive socialist experiment in many respects then say, Romania, which suffered a much more severe centralization of power, and cult of personality issues, then East Germany did.

          In fact, looking at the makeup of the East German Parliament and its mass organizations, there was a much greater degree of representation of various social cleavages then in some other Eastern Bloc states.

          While you could say argue that this was only ‘on paper’, that really depends on what period of East German history you’re looking at, as the electoral system was altered a handful of times.

          Regardless though, this was an expression of the fact that East Germany had a more open Political culture due to its institutions being establisehed as part of an intended nonaligned, unified, German state. And due to the fact that it had received the socializing effects of industrial capitalism that gave it things like an incredibly progressive Queer movement, that other Eastern Bloc states, which were formerly feudal backwaters, hadn’t developed.

          Tl;Dr - this shit is a lot more complicated than listing off bullet points for “why East Germany was Evil”, That I was taught in the 7th grade.

        • я не из калининграда@lemmy.mlOP
          2010·
          6 months ago

          im sorry but you seem to have been fed quite a few western myths about the gdr. you seem to be arguing in good faith though, so lets examine:

          no freedom of movement

          this is just plain wrong. tourism was possible and encouraged not only within the country, but also to fellow socialist states like czechoslovakia and hungary, as well as, albeit to a lesser extent the soviet union. such trips were enjoyed by virtually the entire population thanks to guaranteed vacation time.

          constant shortage of goods

          shortages were only a thing in the immediate aftermath of ww2, as well as during the 1980s. in the second case they were caused by the economic liberalization enacted at the time due to western pressure, as well as the general deterioration of conditions in the eastern block at the time, which happened for similar reasons. during the late 60s and 70s per capita consumption was more or less equal to the west.

          being a dictatorship

          every state is necessarily a dictatorship, as this is important for class preservation. just as liberal states will mercilessly crush revolutionary elements, so must socialist societies crush counterrevolutionary ones. please read engels on authority to understand this point better. it is a short read and very eye opening.

          a housing shortage

          any source on this claim? the only periods i can imagine this to be the case is in the beginning due to war era destruction and the end due to crisis.

          a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

          this is in fact a valid point. a solution for this could have been found within the socialist system though.

          political pressure

          already answered previously in the point about “dictatorship”.

          control over the media

          “All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.”

          – v. i. lenin

          the fucking stasi

          the mfs was necessary due to the constant threat of counterrevolution going out from west germany. but its reach and capabilities are much overblown in western propaganda nowadays. in fact, the east spent much less on its intelligence apparatus than the frg while still managing to have a lower crime rate.

          the goals you stated are extremely noble and i do in fact agree with every single one of them. you are being idealist though, which means that you absolutely need to read theory, especially lenin. a good reading list can be found here. if you would educate yourself properly you could become a great contribution to the communist movement.

      • Tiltinyall@beehaw.org
        105·
        6 months ago

        My family escaped to West Germany shortly after the war. They escaped starvation and joblessness. You are wrong.

          • irmoz@reddthat.com
            2·
            6 months ago

            An actually ideologically socialist government wouldn’t have made them feel the need to flee, and would have done better picking up the pieces

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
        14·
        6 months ago

        … would you be happy in prison, on the basis that there’s food and housing and you can take correspondence courses?

        • and most importantly no fascists in government

        Like it matters what color the Secret Police’s armbands are. But hey, your kids will be taken care of! Even if… something happens to you.

    • Sailing7@lemmy.ml
      105·
      6 months ago

      I fear I gotta move to a different instance. I’m also a lefty but gawd damn I will never try to justify the stuff some dudes on this instance do.

      • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        210·
        6 months ago

        Его поинт в том что социализм это не только исковерканный марксистско-ленинистский брэйн рот жёстко социально репрессивных стран как бест корея, полно и анархистов и соц демократов которые так же зовут себя социалистами но они не будут симпить за Ким Чин Ина, лол

        • я не из калининграда@lemmy.mlOP
          511·
          6 months ago

          во-первых, социал-демократы ни в коем случае не являются социалистами, они обычно даже не претендуют на это. их истинная лояльность была достаточно продемонстрирована тем фактом, что меньшевики встали на сторону белых, а германский спд приказал фрайкорпусу (будущему ss) убивать спартакистов. анархисты, с другой стороны, представляют собой большую группу различных типов людей, из которых только часть претендует на социализм (синдикалисты, анкомы итд).

          однако все это не имеет никакого значения, поскольку эти группы никогда не смогли добиться ни хрена. все их начинания провалились весьма плачевно, например, в испании. в отличие от мл, которые действительно смогли улучшить жизнь людей, поскольку они понимали, что репрессивные меры абсолютно необходимы для выживания государства. просто посмотри, как быстро соцблок превратился в абсолютно дерьмовую ситуацию, в которой мы находимся сегодня, после того как горби сделал то, что он сделал.

          о кндр достаточно хорошо известно, что ложь, распространяемая западными сми, в основном является лишь проекцией того, что исторически делалось в оккупированной южной корее. почитай на эту тему книгу “патриоты, предатели и империи” стивена гованса. даже если ты все равно хочешь быть против северокорейского правительства, именно в этом и заключается критическая часть критической поддержки.

          • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            31·
            6 months ago

            Это делюжон жёсткий, даже базовые факты не правильны, не только в соц блоке и так уже все убого было, но и то что социалистические государства с их жёсткими репрессиями ради выживания государства (оч по Марксу, ахуенно прям) улучшили жизнь это очень спорно, и в Украине и в Испании анархисты добились намного более конкретного прогресса в плане строения социализма и коллективизации чем СССР не говоря уж там про ДПРК.

            Меншьивики с белыми просто сделали альянс из того что у них не было даже шанса против большевиков без этого, по этой логике я могу про молотов-риббентроп так же говорить что из этого следует то что Сталин и Гитлер идеологически сходились.

            Соц дем не обязательно имеет ввиду нородскую модель, и абсолютно так же социализм.

            Я не говорю что в совке всем совсем всегда было плохо, и более того я все равно топю за революцию так как в империи жизнь была ещё хуже, но с того что я вижу (хоть я и не особо начитана а этом плане, спс за рекомендацию) тут намного более поддержки чем критики.

            Edit: I do love how even though we’re on opposite sides of this discussion we are both downvoted for speaking Russian. Lol. Lmao even.

      • ChiefSinner@lemm.ee
        85·
        6 months ago

        The US is included in my list too with the Native American genocide for what its worth lol. But people tend to forget that Soviet Russia and Communist China killed millions of their own people. They should not be praised or imitated. We should learn from the horrible mistakes of the past.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          6 months ago

          By millions murdered, you don’t mean people who died in the last famine in China after centuries of famines, and you don’t mean the last famine in the region that became the USSR after centuries of famines, right? Famines that happened during or soon after the bloody revolutions overthrowing the tsars and emperors, under which the previous famines occurred?

          • ChiefSinner@lemm.ee
            34·
            6 months ago

            I mean in the boxer revolution and the millions that died in gulags in USSR because of famine and the government selecting people at random to starve to death in labor camps.

            • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
              7·
              6 months ago

              The boxer rebellion was 50 years before the Chinese Communist Revolution. The CIA’s own unclassified reports show what people in gulags were fed. Why would they choose people at random? That would be dumb. Nazis, kulaks, other prisoners of the revolutionary war, and common criminals were in gulags.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  3·
                  6 months ago

                  Bruh, they literally picked people from bread lines and threw them into the gulag.

                  [citation needed]
                  Do you even think critically about the cold war propaganda we were fed? Why would you pick people out of bread lines and put them into gulags to feed them there? That would mean you’d have to build more gulags and get people to staff them. Why would you do that unless you’re a cartoon villain? It makes no sense.

                  Not to mention the majority of clergy for just being christian clergy.

                  I have no great love for clergy, especially when they side with tsars against a worker revolution.

            • emidio@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              2·
              6 months ago

              Lemme just unload very blurry memories of junior high school class and add numbers with “millions”, that sounds like enough work to not give 1 minute of my time to actually know anything about the USSR or China

              • ChiefSinner@lemm.ee
                11·
                6 months ago

                Why don’t you read up on the USSR and read peoples actual experiences with it. Yeah there weren’t millions in the boxer revolution, but tbh the forced abortion 2 kid thing probably puts them into millions category

    • я не из калининграда@lemmy.mlOP
      929·
      6 months ago

      libertarian “socialists” are a deeply idealist tendency that didnt manage to get anything done ever. the only thing they do is criticize actually existing socialist projects, mostly using state department talking points. the concept of critical support is unknown to them and the only revolutions they like are the ones that fail. they are puppets in the hands of the cia.