Why We Fought to Defend the USSR

[The One and Only...]

Zhukov, when a country goes BANKRUPT, it tends to get worse before it gets better.

Are you so sure that life was better in the Soviet Union for the common people? Or was it just those in the military?

Heck, Russia was better BEFORE the Soviet Union. It was a lot more agrarian, but the only reason it was industrialized was to increase military capacity.

Why is South Korea so much better off than North Korea? Why is America so much better than China? Why is China getting better as its market is becoming more free? These are all questions I could be asking you.

[Protoclown]

There was a really funny guy who opened for him too. His name was Reno something or other. I wish I could remember his last name.

[Zhukov]

You have a system that changed, but the corrupt officials stayed in power. They simply warped the new system to suit them better.

Yes! Capitalism is just a tool for them! Just like every other Bourgeois cunt! By using Capitalism they are better off, while the workers are worse of! Do you see it? They are better off, the workers are worse off! Under stalinism they exploited, but under capitalism they can just go nuts! You cant blame the misery of entire generations on just corrupt officials by themselves.

I honestly couldn't tell you. Do you think it has to do with the economic system, or a country that is completly fucked up and had been for close to 500 years?

I could! FROM THE ARTICLE:

"A Demographic Holocaust
In the Soviet Union, the entire population-children in school, adults at work-were required to undergo annual screenings for diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). But as a Russian journalist commented in Izvestia (16 April 2002): “The universal preventative examinations that were regarded as one of the great achievements of Soviet medicine died along with Soviet medicine itself.”
The number of HIV cases in Russia last year was estimated to be between one and two million. A recent study by the World Bank projected that by 2020, up to 10 percent of Russia’s rapidly shrinking population would be infected [I apologise, I stated the wrong facts on this one]. Primarily spread in Russia via drug users’ dirty needles, a growing avenue for the spread of HIV/AIDS has since become prostitution. By 1999, 14 percent of prostitutes in Moscow were infected. The helpless age (10 to 14) of some of the prostitutes and the piggish johns who pay extra for unprotected sex guarantee its continuing rapid spread.
As much as poverty and drugs, a major factor behind the explosion of AIDS in Russia is the reactionary ideological filth pushed in place of health education. There is an explosion of HIV/AIDS in Irkutsk, a main Siberian city on the Afghan drug route. But the chairman of the province’s Committee on Youth Policy rails against the “moral degeneration” of “‘safe’ sex and sex education classes.” The Russian Orthodox church campaigns against the use of condoms; fascists march against their use to promote Russian procreation. In fact, they are promoting the extermination of the Russian people.
Most ominously, the AIDS epidemic is intersecting a TB epidemic. One medical specialist warns: “When the HIV epidemic hits the pool of latent TB infections, there’s going to be an explosion of MDR-TB [Multiple Drug Resistant TB]. TB and HIV are like gasoline and a match.” Studies now find TB in 70 percent of Russia’s homeless, 20 to 30 percent of the prison population and 40 percent of refugees from the war in Chechnya and other areas. Soviet prisons were plenty brutal, but they were not hothouses for plagues. Now each year 30,000 former prisoners with active TB and 10,000 with MDR-TB are being released into the general population with little or no medical follow-up."

"This massive economic and social immiseration has combined with the destruction of the public health system. Tuberculosis (TB), which had been effectively eradicated in the Soviet Union, has returned as a scourge of Russia’s poor. Recent estimates put the number of Russians with TB at 88 per 100,000, compared to a rate of 4 to 10 per 100,000 in West Europe and America. The number of those infected with HIV/AIDS is increasing faster in Russia and Ukraine than anywhere else in the world."

Fucked up? Don't be so simple.

Thats been happening for a long time. It really has nothing to do with this particular conversation.

But there was a lull in the killing for a bit!... Why was that?!
FROM THE ARTICLE:

"Chechnya and Other Nationalist Bloodbaths
We’ve talked about what the return to the capitalist profit system has brought. The other major catastrophe has been the reimposition of bourgeois nation-states across the territory of the former USSR.
Here it’s necessary to emphasize that the Bolsheviks came to power by championing the struggles of the scores of nationalities trapped in what Lenin called the tsarist “prison house of peoples.” This was an integral part of the Bolsheviks’ struggle for world socialist revolution leading to a communist society in which the rise of international productive forces brings about the dissolution of all nation-states. The Bolsheviks could not have won influence over Russia’s multinational working class, to say nothing of the urban petty bourgeoisie and rural peasant masses, without being the best champions of the just causes of the oppressed Polish, Ukrainian, Baltic, Caucasian and Central Asian peoples. This proletarian internationalism was reflected in the composition of the Bolshevik Central Committee: Lenin was a Russian, Trotsky a Jew, Dzerzhinsky a Pole, Shaumyan an Armenian, Stalin a Georgian, Stuchka a Latvian, and so on.
The nascent Kremlin bureaucracy demonstrated its first alien political impulses through the Russian-centered apparat’s chauvinist disregard for the rights of minority peoples. Lenin launched his final political struggle in late 1922-early 1923 against Stalin’s bureaucratic abuse of the Caucasian peoples. As the degeneration of the Soviet workers state deepened, the bureaucratic caste went further toward Great Russian chauvinism as a political-ideological glue for its brittle rule.
But even this was held in check by the need to preserve the USSR as a vast multinational state. In marked contrast to capitalism, the centrally planned collectivized economy made possible an allocation of resources which brought about a relative equality between the various national republics making up the USSR. This resulted in the rapid socio-economic and cultural development of the most backward peoples of the former tsarist empire (e.g., in Central Asia) and also eased historic national tensions (e.g., in the Caucasus).
The progress of the Tajik people in Soviet Central Asia, in contrast to their ethnic counterparts across the border in Afghanistan, is only the most striking example. In the Caucasus, centuries-old blood feuds among the patchwork of geographically interpenetrated peoples were for the first time abated through the struggle to root out the sheiks, Cossack atamans, landlords and mullahs, and to establish a new life based on economic modernization and rising living standards. At the same time, Soviet industrial development created a historically new pattern of ethnic interpenetration, this time of proletarian populations in industrial and mining centers across the USSR. Workers of different nationalities frequently intermarried. They and their children began to no longer think of themselves as Ukrainian or Armenian but rather as Soviet.
The forces of capitalist counterrevolution-from Russia and Ukraine to the Caucasus and Central Asia-have used nationalism (often linked to religion) as their main political-ideological battering ram. The capitalist law of the jungle dictates that each capitalist state must have one dominant nationality. All the historic ethnic patchworks which had begun to weave together into a common Soviet pattern were now torn asunder. Over a hundred armed national, ethnic and religious conflicts have erupted across the former Soviet bloc, bringing death and destruction to millions.
By far the biggest bloodbath brought on by the capitalist counterrevolution in the former USSR is in Chechnya. Yeltsin’s colonial-style invasion in 1994 was about asserting the Kremlin’s role as regional cop in the Caucasus and gaining control of the Caspian Sea oil fields. The Chechens were also to be made an example of because of their special history of heroic wars in the 19th century against the Russian tsarist conquest of the Caucasus.
The ICL forces in Russia at the time called for the military defeat of Yeltsin’s colonial-style invasion without giving any political support to the bourgeois-nationalist regimes of Dudayev, and later Maskhadov, in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital. We called for the right of the Chechen people to decide their own fate, explaining the roots of the war in the capitalist counterrevolution. We also raised the urgent need to defend the peoples of the Caucasus, Central Asia and all non-Slavic foreigners against racist pogroms and police persecution throughout Russia.
Yeltsin’s invasion completely destroyed Grozny. But the Russian army was still militarily defeated by the Chechen forces. In 1996, Moscow accepted an armistice which gave Chechnya de facto independence. Then, in the winter of 1999, new Russian prime minister and soon-to-be president Vladimir Putin launched a second war against Chechnya. In part this was intended to spike the plans of the various bourgeois-nationalist regimes in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, acting in concert with Western oil companies, to build new oil pipelines which would exclude Russia. The second Chechen war was also an attempt to divert popular outrage in Russia and a sense of national humiliation provoked by the U.S./NATO terror bombing of Serbia, a historic Russian ally, earlier that year. Putin ran for president by reasserting Russia’s military “power” through a renewed genocidal onslaught against Chechnya. In response the ICL called for the military defense of Chechnya’s hard-won independence against Russia.
This war is still going on, and it is a ghastly picture of the barbarism capitalism has brought to the Caucasus. Whereas in Afghanistan in 1979-89 the Soviet Red Army’s presence made possible the beginnings of a modern urban infrastructure with universities, hospitals and factories built along Soviet lines, Putin’s Russian army in Chechnya has now reduced virtually every single city and town there to rubble! Russian forces have to date killed over 100,000 Chechens, that is 10 percent of the population.

Dead parents?

A smart reply! Dead parents? one would think so, but no!
AGAIN WITH THE ARTICLE:

"The Brutal Oppression of Youth and Women
The overall degradation of Russia’s populace is compounded by the special oppression of youth and women. A leading Russian pediatrician estimates that only 5 to 10 percent of children are healthy. Child malnutrition is now the norm, and by 1999 from 15 to 45 percent of children in the Russian Federation under the age of 15, depending on the province, were diagnosed as mentally retarded. As of last year, there were an estimated several million “orphans” in Russia-more than were left in the wake of World War II! These orphans’ parents are mostly still alive; they were abandoned. The character of Russia’s orphanages can be measured in the fact that one-third of those who grow up in them become alcoholics and 10 percent commit suicide within a year of leaving.
But only a third of Russia’s castaway children are even in orphanages. The others live in cellars, attics, abandoned houses and in larger cities by seeking shelter from the cold in sewer systems. Such youth are a modern-day reappearance on the Russian landscape of the bezprizorniky. These were the packs of wild children who emerged from the ruins of World War I and the Russian Civil War, preying in gangs on the towns and descending like wild dogs on rural villages. In 1921, the Soviet government formed a commission headed by the Bolshevik leader Feliks Dzerzhinsky to spearhead a nationwide campaign which saved several million bezprizorniky, giving them full lives as Soviet citizens. This chapter of Soviet power and the saving of the bezprizorniky remain a point of pride to this day.
Contrast this to what capitalist counterrevolution in Russia and the other former Soviet republics offers its castaway children. Petty theft by boys in Kyrgyzstan is punished by up to half a year in prison, often in solitary confinement, with no education or even parental visits. In Georgia, “repeat offender” youth can be jailed up to three years without any trial. And what does it mean for a youth to be in the general prison population? It means rape and other sexual assaults. This unspeakable barbarity is made worse by the level of AIDS among prisoners.
In 1993 Women and Revolution published an extensive article titled “From East Berlin to Tashkent: Capitalist Counterrevolution Tramples on Women.” Today I will limit myself to something new that has proliferated in the decade since that article was published, the international sex trade. From Russia alone it is estimated that 160,000 women each year are trafficked to Europe and Asia. They are drawn by ads offering work, or simply kidnapped. Once delivered, their passports are taken from them and they are terrorized into submission. The profits from this sex slavery out of Russia match even those of its drug business-about $7 billion annually. The women and girls are sold several times over, each time upping their buy-out ransom. A particularly horrific example came to light late last year when Swedish police questioned a 13-year-old Russian girl who reported being kept in a locked van as a sex slave for two years, driven by Russian pimps from one city in Europe to another."

1) Several people will contest your point.

More will defend it.

2) It doesn't matter what kind of economy was implemented. If they tried another form of Marxism, the corrupt officials who never left power would have still found away to come out better in it.

Another form of "marxism"? What do you mean? like... Juche?
camacazio put what needed to be done nice and simply. Trotsky and others have put it forward a little more in depth. Either way, it would have been nice, and it is what the ICL was striving for.

[Zhukov]

Didn't see other posts...

Italian Stereotype:

I seem to recall the old Soviet system being on the brink of collapse until Gorbachev took office. Do you think the U.S.S.R. could have survived another Brehznev, Andropov, or Chernenko?

"brink of collapse" can only decribe the USSR after Gorbys agrarian reforms, but yes, the USSR was falling well short of its averages and the USA in just about everything. "Stagnation" started to happen with Nikita in the 60's - and even more so wiht Brehznev (who immediately blamed Khrushchev for the past failings). The agrarian reforms were intended to undermine the collective farms and promote private farming. They seized up, and Gorbochov blamed Brezhnev. There was the purging of the old guard, Glasnost, Peestroika etc - but really, if the USSR had maintained its average growth rate of 10 percent (or something) it would have been enough to prevent the break-up. All that would have been necessary was to reach at least the average rates of growth attained by the West at this time, which I think was 3 percent (probably around that). Given the potential of the planned economy, this should have been easily possible. In fact, such a target is far below the real possibilities, as the 1950s and 1960s show. Yet, shamefully the bureaucracy was incapable even of reaching this miserable target - because they were useless. So, yes - the USSR could have survived another Brehznev, Andropov, or Chernenko for the simple fact that they only had to hold on, instead of making things worse. But maybe they could have survived only one of them


One and Only:

Zhukov, when a country goes BANKRUPT, it tends to get worse before it gets better.

First of all, what are you comparing it too? And the USSR hardly went "BANKRUPT". Second, when will we see the progress? You wont see guaranteed education, health, employment etc under the Russian capitalists.

"According to a September-October 1998 study sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency, only 50 percent of Russian adults were employed and only a quarter of the so-called “employed” got paid with any regularity."

What do Russian unemployed have to look forward too? In the USSR it was full employment, in the USA there is an army of unemployed.
There are other examples.

Are you so sure that life was better in the Soviet Union for the common people? Or was it just those in the military?

Yes, sure. But you sound like you have something up your sleeve! Enlighten me, please.

Heck, Russia was better BEFORE the Soviet Union. It was a lot more agrarian, but the only reason it was industrialized was to increase military capacity.

Ignorance of the highest capacity. If you have read the original article, I might consider posting a rebuttal.

Why is South Korea so much better off than North Korea?

Because it is run by a extremely warped stalinist beuracracy ho relied on the USSR to feed the people. "Socialism in one country" does not work. But you also forget that in 1985 DPRK was the 20th richest country in the world. Also, you forget that it wass not through the good graces of the capitalists or the "superiority" of the capitalist system that has won the Western world its better living standards. It is through the hard won militant struggles of communists, socialists and unionists that finally forced the ruling class to smarten up and distribute the wealth a little bit more evenly throughout the system. Once the threat of full scale labour revolts in the mid-late 1800s and early 1900s did the working class finally gain its labour rights, and with labour rights rose the standard of living amongst the masses.

Why is America so much better than China?

Ditto. If you want me to go into great depths about the bankruptcy of "Socialism in one country", I can. However, even I would rather be a worker in North America and be exploited by American big business, it is far better than being a worker in Asia and being exploited by American big business. China has opened it's bedsheets to let capitalists jump into bed to rape the victories of the Chinese revolution. I don't know alot about China in depth. I doubt you do either. I do know that a new elite is emerging, and I do know that severeal towns are literaly Ghost Towns with such high unemployment. So I am in doubt that the majority of workers in China are better off.

These are all questions I could be asking you.

But you wont, becasue you dont want to burden me with China and DPRK while this thread is about the USSR.

[El Blanco]

in the USA there is an army of unemployed.

What? Are you high? If we hit 10% unemployment, it is a national crisis. While job growth has been stagnant for a while, we fall well short of an army of unemployment.

As for the rest of your post, its going to take me a few days to give you detailed retort, so for now, I'll just point out how you keep missing what I am saying.

the problem is not the particular economic system employed by Russia. Its the people in charge.

[Protoclown]

It was Collier. Reno Collier. Damn funny man.

[The One and Only...]

First of all, what are you comparing it too? And the USSR hardly went "BANKRUPT". Second, when will we see the progress? You wont see guaranteed education, health, employment etc under the Russian capitalists.

"According to a September-October 1998 study sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency, only 50 percent of Russian adults were employed and only a quarter of the so-called “employed” got paid with any regularity."

What do Russian unemployed have to look forward too? In the USSR it was full employment, in the USA there is an army of unemployed.
There are other examples.

The Soviet Union went bankrupt during the Cold War. That is why it collapsed.

Nothing is guarunteed under a pure, free market. That is, in many ways, the incentive to work. All that aside, I'm no market anarchist. I think basic education should be guarunteed, for example. The fact that Russia doesn't have it does not prove that capitalism did not work for Russia. They should have just maintained a public education system.

50% of Russian adults, eh? Could it be that, perhaps, the women are not working there? Could the lack of any regularity in payments be the fault of the police for not enforcing laws against fraud?

Army of unemployed? Yeah, right. Entitlement programs and the minimum wage have led to greater unemployment than the free market has. You aren't even considering retirees and those who willingly don't work, like strikers, or lazy-ass mofos who live on food stamps.

Yes, sure. But you sound like you have something up your sleeve! Enlighten me, please.

Do I really need to find a paper to tell you that the people were better off under the Czars?

Ignorance of the highest capacity. If you have read the original article, I might consider posting a rebuttal.

Care to inform me?

Because it is run by a extremely warped stalinist beuracracy ho relied on the USSR to feed the people. "Socialism in one country" does not work. But you also forget that in 1985 DPRK was the 20th richest country in the world. Also, you forget that it wass not through the good graces of the capitalists or the "superiority" of the capitalist system that has won the Western world its better living standards. It is through the hard won militant struggles of communists, socialists and unionists that finally forced the ruling class to smarten up and distribute the wealth a little bit more evenly throughout the system. Once the threat of full scale labour revolts in the mid-late 1800s and early 1900s did the working class finally gain its labour rights, and with labour rights rose the standard of living amongst the masses.

It was the industrial revolution that raised living standards in the Western world the fastest.

Ditto. If you want me to go into great depths about the bankruptcy of "Socialism in one country", I can. However, even I would rather be a worker in North America and be exploited by American big business, it is far better than being a worker in Asia and being exploited by American big business. China has opened it's bedsheets to let capitalists jump into bed to rape the victories of the Chinese revolution. I don't know alot about China in depth. I doubt you do either. I do know that a new elite is emerging, and I do know that severeal towns are literaly Ghost Towns with such high unemployment. So I am in doubt that the majority of workers in China are better off.

I find that hilarious. China's living standards have only increased since the move towards capitalism. That is why they have continued the movement.

For all you talk about using one country as an example, you sure do focus on the SU. Tell me: which, proportionally, has a better track record - capitalism or socialism?

[El Blanco]

Originally Posted by Protoclown

It was Collier. Reno Collier. Damn funny man.

Ever see the amazing Jonathen back in the day, before he got "family friendly"? Fucking awesome.

[Zhukov]

The Soviet Union went bankrupt during the Cold War.

Did not.

Nothing is guarunteed under a pure, free market. That is, in many ways, the incentive to work. All that aside, I'm no market anarchist. I think basic education should be guarunteed, for example. The fact that Russia doesn't have it does not prove that capitalism did not work for Russia. They should have just maintained a public education system.

Sure, slip that "Incentive" shit in... You are going to have to attack the incentive of work under socialsm/communism if you want to be relevant. Hey, was it you that started that thread about how the entire education system should be completely privatised? Just asking. Besides, Russia does have 'Public' education. It is just that children and young adults have no way to guarantee that they get any education, let alone good education.

50% of Russian adults, eh? Could it be that, perhaps, the women are not working there?

Could be that women aren't working, but how is that an excuse? Women had the same opportunities as men in the USSR, they worked too. Now what? The Feminist movemet in Russia has gone back 100 years. Afghanistan too, and every ex-soviet country.

Could the lack of any regularity in payments be the fault of the police for not enforcing laws against fraud?

Again, whose fault is this? Who runs the police? Police were super corupt under the stainists,they are just as corupt now. Should they be enforcing laws? Of course. Should they have too? No. Society is truly rotting when you have to get police in to make bosses pay workers.

People should be paid. People were paid under the stalinists, the 'freedom' loving Russian capitalists can't even do this; they aren't as well trained as their US counterparts. The Russian Capitalists are truly un-fit to rule.

Army of unemployed? Yeah, right. Entitlement programs and the minimum wage have led to greater unemployment than the free market has.

Err.. The USSR had 100% employment for 90% of th time. (And nearly reached 0 taxes, too!)

You aren't even considering retirees and those who willingly don't work, like strikers, or lazy-ass mofos who live on food stamps.

I didn't think retirees were counted as unemployed, but if they are, ten you aren't even considering that most retirees are dead now (this comes with the extreme poverty. The ave age limit used to be around 75, after the counterrevolution it dropped to 45 before rising to 50/60 - I am not sure of the exact numbers.) and the ones that are still alive have had to go back into the wokforce to survive. Strikers not willing to work? why you little shit, this makes me really angry. I would love to see you work in a a mine someday. Regrdless, strikers are still cosidered employed until they are fired, and this has little importance to Russia since people don't strike there. It was baned under the Stalinsts - so people aren't used to doing it. Also, becasue of the high unemployment there are plenty of scab workers to take over from a striker, and a worker does not want to be replaced. Since ex-Soviet workers are lucky to be paid, they dont want to push their luck by demanding more. What I find funny is that you have the idea that Russia is some kind of welfare state - you may seem to think that greedy welfare queens and dole bludgers are ruining the capitalist dream, but how could anyone survive by relying on the Russian state? Russia does not have any "lazy mofos living off food stamps". People are dying from malnutrition - not lazing aound "living off the taxpayers".

Do I really need to find a paper to tell you that the people were better off under the Czars?

You could at least give it a go, if you dont mind. I need you to if I want to fulfill my next promise...

Care to inform me?

My sentence was meant to have a on the end... I need you to give a fact or a point before I can give a rebuttal.

It was the industrial revolution that raised living standards in the Western world the fastest.

No shit. Hey, lets have another industrial revolution! Oh wait...

By the way: "but the only reason it was industrialized was to increase military capacity. Yeah, industrialisation happenend in the USSR only to make weapons, while in the west it was only to make people healthy, educated and happy.

Without the labour struggles children would still be working in mines. The period directly after the industrial revolutions would be considered a violation of human rights by todays standards. Like I said: the capitalists don't want higher wages, they don't want shorter hours, they don't want to give an inch to the working class - you have to fight them for it.

I find that hilarious. China's living standards have only increased since the move towards capitalism. That is why they have continued the movement.

Yeah, I hear life was peaches and cream before the revolution. But, may I ask you who "They" are? "They" who are 'continuing the movement', that is. Are "They" the workers? Or are the orchestrators of the 'movement' the CCP? IF you say the CCP, then I heartily agree with you - the only reason they are continuing to increase the capitalist reforms are to improve their lives. Are you also saying that the only reason Judas-Gorby thew the USSR to the dogs was because it would improve the living standards of the USSR? If so - please refer to the original article of the thread and refute the points made.

For all you talk about using one country as an example, you sure do focus on the SU.

Eh? What do you mean? All my talk of using one country as an example? Huh? Do you mean that I have said somewhere that one should not focus on a single country so much?

Tell me: which, proportionally, has a better track record - capitalism or socialism?

OH MAN, GOOD QUESTION! How can I get out of answering this one? I have to say Capialism! Because it is the truth! But I do't want to! I am stuffed!

EDIT:SO what is the unemployment rate in the US? 6%? Population? 300mill? http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/units.html

[The One and Only...]

Okay, let's cut to the crap here:

The Soviet Union did go bankrupt. That is an empirical truth.

The reason capitalism hasn't worked in Russia is because it has taken too long to introduce the enforcement of property rights. Land is, for the most part, leased to farmers, which kills investment and mortgage opportunities. Restrictions are placed on what farmers can do to such land. In addition to such "land socialism", Russia has severe business regulations and trade controls. Russia is hardly a system of "capitalism."

However, a few ex-SU countries have succeeded where others failed. One such example is Estonia. Estonia eliminated all tariffs and introduced property rights. The benefits? Estonia boasts an annual growth rate of around 5%, an increased life expectancy, lowered infant mortality rate, and generally higher standard of living, among other good news. In fact, the Estonian economy has rebounded so effectively that it may be inducted into the EU.

You talk about the industrialization of the SU as though it were a second industrial revolution, but this is simply not the case. The industrial revolution involved the development of new techonologies - the SU's contribution to technology was minimal, if any outside of Sputnik. Most of the SU's technology had, particularly in the military, already been developed by foreign countries. Second, the industrial revolution drastically increased living standards, while most studies suggest that it declined during Soviet industrialization.

Anything else?

[camacazio]

I agree fully. Russia's current problems mostly lie within the mass control of the Russian mafia, though. The SU's technological advances were not nearly as impressive as the US's, though they did manage to make a few decent things, but it was mostly in space. Most of the technological developments throughout the cold war were mostly due to competition with the SU, so indirectly they did cause plenty of advancements.

Russia has always been a screwed up place. It's difficult to expect much from them.

[ziggytrix]

[El Blanco]

EDIT:SO what is the unemployment rate in the US? 6%? Population? 300mill? http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/units.html

Maybe I'm just really stupid, but you are really going to have to walk me through what that link has to do with the statement that preceded it.

[Zhukov]

Okay, let's cut to the crap here

I agree. Your post is total crap.

The Soviet Union did go bankrupt.

Did not.

Russia not capitalist? Oh, it might not fall under your lassaiz-faire dream land capitalism, but the capitalists are in charge of Russia.

Anything else?

Well while I find a list of Soviet scientific ahievments, and magic up some problems in Estonia, why don't you actually show me how life under the Tsar was worse than life under Stalin.

Maybe I'm just really stupid, but you are really going to have to walk me through what that link has to do with the statement that preceded it.

Well I said that there was "an army of unemployed" in the US. Acording to that site, an army is 100-150 000 men. If I am wrong, I concede that I am a moron, but acroding to me, 6% (the uneployment rate of the US) of 300 000 000 (the population) is 180 000, more than an army. Your post doesn't bode well for my confidence, though.

[El Blanco]

An army is also a well trained combat unit. Also, I don't think there is a field marshal or general of the unemployed.

But, are you so desperate in the face of overwhelming evidence that contradicts your point (I think you have even forgotten what that was) that you see the need to argue semantics? Even that you can't win with.

Russia not capitalist? Oh, it might not fall under your lassaiz-faire dream land capitalism, but the capitalists are in charge of Russia.

Then Russia has been capitalist since 1917, because the people running it now are the the people who came out of the system that was in place before 1991.

[The One and Only...]

Zhukov, do you actually know what capitalism is?

[Zhukov]

You aren't saying that it is not a army of unemployed because it doesn't have a general?

I am not reduced to arguing about numbers, who was it that originally challenged me? It was you, blanco, who's only contribution was to argue about my use of the word 'army'. What did you want me to do? Did you want me to say "Yes, you are right El Blanco, there is not an army of unemployed in the USA. This is obvious, as they don't have uniforms or guns. I am 'high'."

I haven't forgotten the original point. I noted a few times the irelevnce of some posts. Just like every other argument on communism, it gets thrown back to "Communism doesn't work", and people not happy about specific points - ie the USA's unemployment figures. Which are the same size as an army, by the way.

What is the "overwhelming evidence" that contradicts my points? Is it your brilliant "the same people are in charge"? I was willing to go along with this, but it's absurd. Your points contriadict. If it is the same people in charge, why would things get worse or better? You need to read up on the revolution, and find out what was established in those early years. Those who took power in 1917 are in no way the same as those who are running the show today.

Do you think you have me on the run? That I am desperate? You have barely contributed anything, Blanco, and OAOs last argument is that I don't know what capitalism is. I'd ask him, but his answer would contain things like "free market" "lassaiz-faire" "economic freedom" and maybe even "the USA is not really capitalist". You should be reading the original article like you said, and posting a detailed argument.

OAO, show me how Russia was better off under the Tsar. I feel this is still important.

Also, while my points are forgotten one by one, and you skip my many questions and reply with "Do you even know what capitalism is", I still think you can manage to tell me what this means OAO:

For all you talk about using one country as an example, you sure do focus on the SU.

[El Blanco]

You aren't saying that it is not a army of unemployed because it doesn't have a general?

Because they are not a fighting force by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, if you want to claim that you are not using the literal meaning, then your numbers go straight to hell. When most people use the loose interpretation, they generally mean an overwhelming number. <2 million isn't overwhelm ing anything. Especially when you are trying to imply that this is somehow proof that the US is in an economic collapse.

If it is the same people in charge, why would things get worse or better?

Because, a lot of the people in charge now ran the KGB or Soviet military units. When communism fell, they were the only ones with any real muscle and capitol (thanks to some out of country bank accounts and a black market that was made profitable by the old system).

Unfortunatly, these men were able to aquire more wealth and power, not through contributing to society like a capitalistic system dictates, but through bullying tactics and brute force. They made their own perverted form of capitalism just as they did with Marxism.

Seriously, its not capitalism that failed Russia, its the Russians.

Just look at it. How many other capitalist countries have collapsed so horribly as Russia? Then again, its not like she was on her feet prior to that.

Now, if you want a more drawn out, verbose answer, tough. I'm very curt and direct. Long posts with large words that don't actually fit the context aren't my modus operandi.

Its not that I wouldn't like to write a long, deeply researched thesis to counter every point and article you scrounge up. I was very good at it in college. Its just that with work and such taking up most of my time, I tend to just shoot from the hip and break down arguments based on logic, candid observations and Occum's Razor (did I spell that right?).


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[Zhukov]

'Army' is hardly a long word. I'm sorry if I confused anyone by using it.

It hardly matters though.

I can't speak for OAO, but I don't think it takes as much time as you imply to post a long post, and if you don't want to, then don't say you will. :/

My original point was: The Ex soviet union is worse now than a decade and a half ago. The point of change was the counter-revolution. Regardless of who was in charge, regardless of what 'political system' was supressing the people, and regardless of the backwardsness - Russia is worse now, and it would have been better had it not 'changed'. We can agree to this, right?

Long posts with large words that don't actually fit the context aren't my modus operandi.

Modus operandi is a big word.

[El Blanco]

Russia is worse now

I agree with that.

and it would have been better had it not 'changed'.

I don't know about that. Countries don't collapse if they are in the black.

Think about it, why did the people feel this "change" was necassery?

Modus operandi is a big word.

Two words actually, and they fit the context.

[Zhukov]

I don't know about that. Countries don't collapse if they are in the black.

No one is saying that the USSR wasn't in trouble, it most definatly was. I don't think the USSR could have lasted long in it's current state, a few years maybe. This wouldn't have been too hard for the Party to achieve. Unfortunatley for Russia, they couldn't, and they jumped ship, throwing away all that had been achieved at the same time as they threw out the old decaying structure of government. I beleive it was "change" in the wrong directon.

If you agree that Russia is worse now, then surely it must be 'in the black' too? Or are you just refering to living conditions as opposed to the ecnomy?

Think about it, why did the people feel this "change" was necassery?

Well, most people didn't get much of a say in it. Despite there being alot of people on the streets at the time, there was nver any democracy in the event. That isn't to say that people wouldn't have wanted to throw out the "communists"

Two words actually, and they fit the context.

[El Blanco]

If you agree that Russia is worse now, then surely it must be 'in the black' too?

In the black is a positive statement. We would use "in the red" to refer to Russia's current state.

The whole point I've been trying to make is that its not capitalism that is killing the Russians. Its the free-for-all that happened after the fall of communism.

In fact, I would almost say that Russia is actually moving closer to fuedalism than capitalism.

[Zhukov]

In the black is a positive statement. We would use "in the red" to refer to Russia's current state.

Yeah... whoops

In fact, I would almost say that Russia is actually moving closer to fuedalism than capitalism.

Well I've heard someonelse say that, and I woud like to hear your reasons why.

[The_Rorschach]

I'll field this one if I may. I haven't had the luxory of time to dedicate to fact-based posts, so I've been quipping lazily for a few months now. . .But I have oodles of time tonight, so I'm going to take that out on you

First, we need to clear the air a bit, set our dogmatically induced knee-jerk reactions to the Communist question aside for a moment, and admit to a few less than savoury suspicions. For instance, the simplistic assumption that Capitalism, the CIA or the Cold War was the ultimate death of the Soviet Republic is frivolous, fanciful and clearly false. The seeds of disatisfaction, and the eventually dissolution, were sown by the system itself -The governmental system, not the economic methodology. The most asute observations I have read regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union were those of Szelényi, Eyal and Townsley in their combined work "Russia: Capitalism without Captialists", who attributed the civic discontent with Communism to the feudalistic influences (the unquestionable loyalty to political patrons and requisite faith in the socialist world-view being very much reminisent of the logic behind the feudal ranking system).

Now, looking at it thusly, one cannot help but see that the problem is not Capitalism itself, its Capitalism as instituted by non-Capitalists. By men whom were formally managers of Communist-based corporate strategies finding themselves in radically different economic settings than those they had spent a lifetime learning to manipulate, so it is a question not of economic captial but cultural capital - A reference I don't expect you to understand OAO, unless you are familiar with the sociological perspective.

Historically, it is quite clear that the sudden introduction of open industry coupled with monetarism led to the general impovervishment of the British blue-collar working class during the Industrial Revolution, inspiring an unprecedented scale of failures amongst the proprietors of lower-level private market venues. Likewise in Russia we see similar trends now where, according to the above mentioned authors : "The poor have become poorer, {and} the most striking development of post-communism is that the not-so-poor have become poor, too." It is right and natural, for Capitalism is not a magical cure inducing economic salvation, its presence will not rectify years of stagnant beauocratic entanglement no more than prayers offered up to Milton Friedman will bless business ventures.

Boris Kagarlitsky, a former Communist dissident and leader of the non-Communist socialist opposition to Boris Yeltsin once said: "It's ridiculous to think that Russia could build a US-style system in a few years, or ever. What we have got is a version of peripheral capitalism, in which all the driving forces are from outside. Instead of gradually accumulating capital and building up national industry as, say, the US did, Russia has been disaccumulating capital.

"It's incredible that Western leaders now affect shock over the corruption and dysfunctional economics that took root in Russia. After all, just a little while ago, the Russian elite who did this were hailed as heroes of reform and warriors of democracy in the West.

"Where did all the money go? Don't look for it in Russia."

Well, I'm sure the above hasn't satisfied all the concerns over the Communist question, so provided below is a link which explains more fully some of the things which I have only touched on (which, may I add, I was surprised and delighted to find already on the net as I did not have them readily available to reference or type ):

Russia's Broken 'Wheel Of Ideologies'
http://archive.tol.cz/transitions/wheel1.html

[camacazio]

Didn't somebody already say that?

Either way, yeah, that's how I see it. As with all things, the bigger the task, the more gradual the change needs to be. The massive blob that was the soviet union needed much more than a quick military pull-out and a collapse of it's bureaucratic mess. Unfortunately, the process of change has already been initiated--the immediate shift--so going back and trying to suggest alternatives is entirely unhelpful. There needs to be a good solid year of political reform dismantling some parts of the bureaucracy and structuring other parts--in an attempt to reduce the maze-like red tape set up reminiscent of the SU but also to try to build up a system of government that is new-deal like, but better suited to the Russian people's needs.

Reform is difficult because of scandal, mafia, and difficult government function. I don't know how to get around these things, though, and right now no one can garner the kind of necessary power for the kind of necessary swift action that is needed by still remaining within the bounds of the quicky-government they have.