Schmoo

I regret bringing politics into this joke thread, so I'm gonna go with your take on Star Wars being better under Disney than George Lucas.

Eh, I'd rather not dig up old comments and incite people to start attacking them. I was just making an offhanded comment because I've noticed them around a lot with some pretty uninformed takes that rubbed me the wrong way. Probably shouldn't have said anything.

You've been lucky enough not to see their political takes.

Yes, because it's not enough. It's possible to acknowledge good work while also criticizing the ways that it falls short, otherwise we risk cheering for the drop-in-the-bucket charity that doesn't challenge the status quo and credulously thinking our problems are being solved when more needs to be done.

People definitely go overboard with their criticisms, but there are legitimate criticisms to be made. While his philanthropy is objectively good and makes a positive difference in people's lives, it does nothing to address the systemic causes of the problems he highlights.

His content is also completely apolitical, which rubs people the wrong way when he covers topics a lot of people see as inherently political like extreme poverty, homelessness, and healthcare.

They're leaving out that philanthropy is a big part of his videos. Sometimes it's game show style where the winner(s) get huge rewards and sometimes it's direct charity like the "I built 100 houses" video. People watch them because they're often feelgood stories.

It can be a bit controversial as well because people who are more politically engaged often get frustrated by charity when they believe the problem the charity purports to solve is systemic. Whenever he posts philanthropy videos it triggers a huge shitstorm on Twitter of people expressing that frustration and a bunch of people coming to his defense.

The Bolsheviks and the Communist Party were not the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia predated the USSR, and was a cultural term for engineers, mental leaders, and other "educated" classes. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was made up of various members, not exclusively Intelligentsia. In fact, the close-link to the bourgeoisie that pre-Revolution Intelligentsia had caused distrust towards the Intelligentsia.

I'll concede on this point, the communist party and intelligentsia aren't necessarily equivalent, though the intelligentsia did make up the largest organized bloc within the party.

This does not make the CPSU a class, nor does iy mean it was not democratic. The US functions in much the same way, outside of fringe areas where third parties win.

Party membership in the US is open to all US citizens with some exceptions. Some states even have open primaries allowing non-party members to vote. This system is flawed and is in some ways a facade since the parties are not legally required to hold primaries, but this particular element of the US political system is more democratic than the Soviet system.

CPSU members make up a privileged class because they occupy a higher position in a state sanctioned social hierarchy. It represents a controlled social stratification, enacted ostensibly for the common good. I see this as a sort of paternalistic distrust of the proletariat as a whole by a subset of it.

Yes, Marxism has never stated that people cannot have it better or worse. Anarchists seek full-horizontalism, while Marxists seek Central Planning.

I'll note here that Anarchism doesn't necessarily state that people cannot have it better or worse either. Anarchism primarily positions itself as opposition to the centralization of power which can lead to social stratification, but differences in standard of living are allowable insofar as it is not a condition imposed upon one by another.

Even at the peak of disparity in the USSR, the top wages were far, far closer than under the Tsars or under the current Russian Federation, and the Workers enjoyed higher democratic participation with more generous social safety nets, like totally free healthcare and education.

The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely progressive for its time, and would even be considered progressive today, despite the issues they faced internally and externally.

I am in full agreement here, though I would argue that this was achieved at a cost to personal freedoms (i.e. censorship and political persecution). Innocents were harmed in order to preserve the centralization of power in the hands of the communist party. I won't go so far as to say the evils outweighed the good that was done, only that they were not necessary and ultimately led to contradiction and collapse.

The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they're right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the "intelligentsia." Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.

At its' highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.

I'm speedrunning this shit.

The hate largely comes from the side of anarchists who refuse to work with MLs and spend their time trying to discredit the accomplishments of existing socialist states.

You have been discrediting the accomplishments of anarchists while I have been acknowledging the accomplishments of marxists.

While the left bickers, the right is rapidly growing in power in vast majority of western countries.

I agree, but remember this conversation was started because you were insinuating that anarchists never accomplished anything.

This is getting repetitive and we're just talking past each other so let's just agree to disagree about the USSR. I just want to make the point - which I hope we can agree on - that the revolution wouldn't have been successful without political pluralism within the ranks, and no future revolution will either. Dismissing the contributions of anarchists will only harm your cause.

What I'm pointing out is that all ideologies compete with others. That's the reality of the world. If Anarchists are not able to defend the way they want to organize society then their ideology ends up being trampled by others. That's the world we live in. Calling this victim blaming doesn't change the material reality of the world.

The Bolsheviks' had the ill-gotten might to push their agenda, but might does not make right. The Bolsheviks lied to and used the anarchists to achieve what they did, but anarchists have learned from their past mistakes and will prove you wrong.

USSR existed under siege from global capitalism throughout its whole existence, and that was the reason it was organized the way it was.

Capitalist aggression did not make necessary the regressive views on social issues and science the USSR had (which resulted in famine), nor the widespread corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency of state officials. You cannot simply excuse all flaws of the USSR by blaming global capitalism.