The purges were not simply Stalin lashing out. The purges were done by the broader Soviet government, in response to a real threat. The majority of cases simply resulted in an expulsion from government, it wasn’t a naked goal to execute a certain quota of people. There was a real crisis on hand, and the Soviets responded with legal action, those found guilty of treason or other crimes punishable by death (such as murder, severe sexual assault, antisemitism, etc) were sentenced accordingly.

I have no idea what you mean by “ivory tower.” The global south has a far more nuanced perception of Stalin than the west does. My stance on Stalin is a common stance among Marxist-Leninists, that he was more good than bad, especially when measured honestly and accurately against contemporary monsters like Churchill.

And no, it isn’t easy for Neoliberals to “destroy” us communists. When the Red Scare club of Stalin’s black legend is wielded against us, we can do one of the following:

1. Agree with the Red Scare version of Stalin, throwing existing socialist history and victories under the bus to “save face,” which backfires and makes socialism entirely unconvincing, and relies on lying to the working classes just to agree with people that already hate us

2. Accurately appraise Stalin and put him in the correct historical context. Honestly tell people of his successes and mistakes, without flinching. This is the practice that does result in advancement and spreading of communist ideas.

When picking between lying by regurgitaging Red Scare mythos and taking a principled, historically accurate stance, it’s clear that the latter is the only acceptable option. We cannot grow the movement through lies, we need to meet the people honestly, which involves honest engagement with past failures and successes. This does not mean conceding the point to bourgeois historiography.

Essentially, it isn’t the communists giving an honest and accurate account that hurts the movement, it’s the people trying to distance themselves from socialist history and alienating themselves from historical struggle. Experience shows this, which is why Marxism-Leninism is resurging while anti-AES branches of Marxism are faltering.

Here’s the excellent Marketing Socialism by Nia Frome:

When I was a kid I also believed ‘communists should ditch that label, for PR reasons.’ Now I think we make more headway owning it than dishonestly disavowing it. Not least because someone will almost always bring up Stalin no matter what we call ourselves.

Stalin is a powerful trope. His name stands for the perverse emergence of injustice from the overzealous pursuit of justice. It’s dramatic irony, a morality tale about how power corrupts. That mythic trope stands as a barricade for socialism no matter what kind of spin you put on socialism.

The ritual denunciation of Stalin on “the left”:

1. presents a utopia of socialism without antagonism, flatters first-worlders and academics,
2. spares people the unpleasantness of interrogating how their ideas about the past were formed, and
3. makes a virtue of losing and waiting.

First-worlders get to feel better about themselves if they believe that all the socialist revolutions that took place in the third world “weren’t really socialist.” The same goes for denigrating national liberation of ex-colonies as bourgeois, Bonapartist, etc. Intellectuals get to feel more important if they believe really existing socialism “failed” because of faulty ideas. This lends itself to an interpretation of history where ideas are the motive force, and fidelity to the text is paramount. It’s not surprising that they would also trash “developmentalism” as “merely” bringing food security, electricity, literacy, education, industry, healthcare, job security, etc.

What are the crimes normally attributed to Stalin? The show trials, the purges, the gulag, forced collectivization… in other words: state violence. The socialisms that define themselves in opposition to Stalin therefore downplay state violence as much as they can. This yields a socialism that’s just trying to sell itself to people like any other commodity. Disavowing negativity/terror means ignoring that the USSR made the world a better place partly by scaring porkie.

The question of who’s doing violence to whom, and to what end, is the fundamental problem of politics. It’s capitalism’s answer to this question that makes us hate it so much. “Nobody does violence to anybody” sounds good, but it’s not actually a political position. Political positions require charting out a plausible course from where we are now into the glorious future ahead, and that path goes through socialist states. Statehood is (a monopoly on legitimate) violence. Thus, the demonization of Stalin is the demonization of socialist statehood itself.

In other words, pretending our new thing is sui generis and doesn’t have anything to do with “Stalinism” doesn’t actually mean we’ll face different problems, or have better solutions. Stalin faced problems that were generic to socialism. Socialism isn’t just an infinitely malleable brand in need of better marketing, it’s a class project with definite and durable contours. We don’t actually transcend these problems just by calling ourselves something else, just like we don’t transcend capitalism by calling ourselves post-capitalist.

Anticommunism is most efficiently compressed and transmitted as demonization of Stalin, and it stands in the way of Americans joining any possible global left wing project, since it prejudices them against left authority everywhere (but especially overseas). International solidarity requires that we abandon great power chauvinism. Hatred of Stalin reinforces great power chauvinism, therefore defending Stalin weakens it.

If we decline to draw from the entire history of socialism-in-power in favor of utopian socialism or pragmatic liberalism, the range of results we can obtain will be limited to those achieved by utopian socialism (evanescent communes) and pragmatic liberalism (hellworld).

Read the Losurdo text I linked.

Thanks! 🫡

Makes sense, and I understand that.

Wikipedia shows the figure I gave for the purges, not 3.3 million. The deaths in the gulag system should not at all be counted with those related to cracking down on corruption and terrorist organizing (ie the purges), as a huge portion happened during World War II due to starvation. The Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket, and this caused mass famine that hit prisoners the hardest. The soviet prisons were actually fairly progressive for their time, see Russian Justice for that.

The problem with your framing, that we “must never let this happen again,” is that it assumes deliberate malpractice by the Soviets. The purges were a response to real infiltration, corruption, and terrorism, such as the assassination of Kirov. Your characterization of the purges as “soviet rank-maxxing” are absurd and baseless, it was a period of intense paranoia due to the successful assassination of one of the top soviet figures and the discovery of terrorist cells within the Soviet Union. The purges were widely supported by the public, it was not a period of terror.

The deaths in soviet prisons during World War II were causes by the Nazis, not the Soviets. Deaths due to dekulakization, which your Wikipedia article references, are analogous to the deaths of slave owners in the United States. Liberation of the peasants was paid for with the blood of the kulaks, bourgeois semi-slave owners.

There’s also the question of “Stalinism.” Stalinism does not exist outside of specific socioeconomic policies under Stalin, it isn’t an actual ideology. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology, and Stalin’s contributions to it are largely limited to advancements on the national question and linguistics. The bulk comes from Marx and Lenin, and moreso Engels than Stalin.

You were given good answer to all of these questions in that thread. The Marxist position isn’t that “Stalin did nothing wrong,” but that western framing of Stalin is incredibly biased. Your Wikipedia article does this well, it blames Stalin for deaths inflicted by the Nazis, and it capes for semi-slavers, fascists, and terrorists. Stalin of course made mistakes, and there was excess committed under Stalin, there is no doubt of this. However, you take the incorrect stance that Stalin was more bad than good, and do so by also caping for the same semi-slavers and fascists Wikipedia did. This is why historiography is important, and why dispelling the “black myth” around Stalin is important.

I highly recommend Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend. Losurdo cites near exclusively western sources, and explains both why Stalin is so hated, and why Stalin is so loved as well. It’s a history and critique of Stalin’s legend more than the man himself, which is important considering how much the figure is distorted by historiography.

You admit to not knowing the history, maybe take that as a chance to dig into it?

Where are you getting 3.3 million killed in the purges? The number of sentencings to death was ~799,455, and we know many were canceled as the purges went beyond what was expected.

Lemmy was made by communists, seeking to build an alternative to Reddit where communists will not be able to be fully censored. Federation also is similar to how the USSR was federated, and FOSS attracts the left. As such, many areas on Lemmy are going to be pro-CPC (and supportive of socialist states in general).

This isn’t the case on every instance, though. Each instance has its own political leanings, some very anti-China and anti-communist in general. It depends on the moderation, federation practices, and focus of the instance itself.

Communists tend to be pro-African, especially the Alliance of Sahel States.

Energy can be made more efficiently with less waste being given off as heat, and renewable sources can generate less heat and even have a cooling effect on the Earth in some cases. “Degrowth” as a movement is different from cutting largely unnecessary production, like fast fashion, it implies focusing on small scale production with presently capable methods, even if developing technology and using larger scale production can be more green.

I think pretty much all socialists are ecological at the same time these days, so I’m not sure what identifying yourself as a degrowth communist adds, kinda like calling yourself a pro-LGBTQIA+ communist or an anticapitalist communist. Lemmy.ml is more than fine for you, I’d say, many will probably have similar issues with specifically aligning with degrowth as I did though.

You keep claiming that there are “physical limits,” which isn’t a magic spell. Of course there are physical limits, I’m not unaware of it. The problem with degrowth is that in an effort to not spend resources on improving efficiency and developing in a green direction, it counterintuitively costs more to the environment to try to keep present level technology and produce less. You inevitably end up in a Malthusian direction, turning to eco-fascism.

Yes, production of useless waste like fast fashion can and should end. Yes, much of what we produce is wasted and this must be eliminated. This is where I can align with degrowth. However, the idea that we need to work smaller and smaller rather than larger and more efficiently is where the math loses out for Degrowth.

Here’s a handy example. For socialists, replacing cars with solar powered trains dramatically reduces emissions while improving transport and lowering resource cost. Degrowth doesn’t take this position, though. Degrowth tries to lower present output without building onto newer. This is the trap. We can all agree on cutting out the bullshit, but the answer isn’t to try to strip back what we already do.

This is why degrowth leads to ecofascism. With present output and methods, we are unsustainable headed to disaster. People do not want to lower their lifestyles significantly, yet for degrowth to work it needs a population collapse. This leads to Malthusian politics and a desire to eliminate large portions of humanity to live current lifestyles in a more sustainable manner.

The problem is, that doesn’t even work. Killing off huge portions of humanity would still lead to collapse at present technology, without advancing it. People will inevitably advance, and grow again, and this time the world will well and truly end for Humanity.

I do agree that I’m more optimistic, but I also believe I am more realistic.

I’m aware that advancements also elevate living standards. However, your conception of this necessitating destruction of the environment is incorrect, and this is not at all the same as capitalism’s incessant drive towards accumulation. Degrowth as a focus is the wrong approach, advanced technology like developed rail systems actually save the environment more than car-centric infrastructure. We have to advance further to protect the environment, and combine that with climate-focuses approaches, not slow our advancement and stick with small-scale production, which is less environmentally efficient.

Degrowth is a trap. Environmentalist socialism is necessary, and is the actual way to protect and preserve the environment. Socialism will end fast fashion, incessant trinket production, and more that currently only serve to accelerate capital accumulation, while advancing technology that is more environmentally efficient.

It’s really as simple as this.

The “need motive” is not what you think it is. There is not an imperitive to endlessly expand. I am not treating scientific planning like it can bypass thermodynamics, that is a strawman. Profit doesn’t just change distribution, it changes production, because profit needs more sales. This creates new demand that then is fulfilled, this is the basics of why socialist ecology is necessary.

Again, the “need motive” does not have the same endless feedback loop that the profit motive does.

The reason for overproduction is because the profit motive requires the sale of as many commodities as possible. Socialism essentially means we can scientifically plan production and distribution, meaning we aren’t constrained by this any longer. As for the bits you are talking about like fast fashion, planned obsolescence, and the military industrial complex, we aren’t at odds here, these are products of capitalism and the profit motive.

Advancement is not a “culture.” It is a historical process. You are confusing the problems of capitalism to be problems of culture, and not material conditions, which leads to errors in judgment. All environmentalism going forward requires socialism as a basis, which will end overconsumption because the base of overconsumption is overproduction for sale of commodities.

Communist ecology does not ignore the material limits of reality, that’s a strawman. Advancing recycling, renewable materials, renewable energy sources, all of it requires more advanced technology, but can be done in a fashion that does not harm the environment. My point is that degrowth does not work, and actually works against the capabilities of advanced ecology. We need to advance onto socialism as quickly as possible so as to end overconsumption and overproduction, but we should not try to freeze where we are at.

I guess what I am trying to say is that advancement does not mean endless production, and large industry does not mean overproduction and overconsumption.

Developing and advancing does not mean continuing consumerism. The overproduction of cheap plastic goods and planned obsolescence are purely problems of capital, not socialism. We can develop more intelligently, without relying on a system that requires production of endless trinkets at the destruction of the environment. Extraction will not end, sure, but it can be done more intelligently, and it can be minimized.

Historical socialism has faced numerous problems due to lack of development. They didn’t simply develop to compete, but because the basis of socialism is in large industry. We cannot freeze history at a communalist level where we are hunter/gatherers, we have to advance to socialism so that we can actually intelligently solve problems leading to climate change and environmental destruction, rather than having capitalism ensure it is destroyed.

Communist ecology is a wide field, and you’d do well to study it.

Changing from the profit motive to a planned economy dramatically changes how and why human development is steered. Socialism of course will advance production, but it ends consumerism, and having humans over capital means we can decide to have a more harmonious impact on the environment. Profit makes this pretty much impossible, as capital is a control system for accumulation.

I think you’re confusing the profit motive with development. Accumulation of capital is what drives endless expansion and overconsumption. Socialism is necessary to stop that cycle, as rather than profit, suiting the needs of humanity becomes the goal.

Again, no examples provided for natural resources that don’t need to be processed in any way, shape or form, including transport, as the average way to get them. No, it isn’t obvious at all that there are natural resources that involve no processing or transport yet are sold this way on average, and you continue to refuse to provide an example for something so “obvious.” Very unserious.

Regarding Marx on value, you’re confusing how Marx builds up his argument, proceeding from the most basic element upward and outward, and developing a many-sided view, with the totality of the base of his argument. Marx is specifically referencing how prices appear “random” at first, as prices of each commodity is itself different, but that they can all exchange for each other in consistent ratios through the universal commodity, money, and that this all proceeds from how we produce and distribute, ie labor. This naturally also includes natural resources, which themselves have no “value” alone.

In other words, prices are not actually random, despite first appearances, and they all reduce down to their constituent elements, the basic block of value being labor-time as this is the basic input in production from which all else flows. Capitalism is a control system for the distribution of labor, and works to accumulate as much capital as possible.

None of this is based on “assumption,” it’s based on clear observation of how capitalism functions.

You can both produce more efficiently and without excess without stopping advancement.

Not really, we need to advance to make production more green, efficient, and to reduce our impact on the environment.

Progress doesn’t mean the destruction of the environment. You cannot stop the clock. Progress is necessary to stop the destruction, and to take a more harmonious approach. See how China is combatting desertification, and is rapidly electrifying and adopting solar as the biggest new energy source. This is progress.

As for the state protecting the people, this is progressive. Nay, revolutionary. The people take political power in their own hands, and can radically transform the world and better meet their place in it. The wheel of history is pressed forward.

I fear you’re on a pipeline towards eco-fascism. Not saying you’re an eco-fascist, to be clear, but the combination of trying to stop progress while also adopting prop environmental policies can definitely lead people down that road. It’s not a nice road.