DataWithBangs☭🇵🇸

PITIFUL! I have to instruct people on not liking the US military, the greatest force of destruction on this planet earth? Why y’all insist on being so damn remedial.

They just let any white boy with money do "journalism"

Lenin and children at one of the early “New Year Tree” events, 1919 or 1920

Comrades! I see lots of you pics of Lenin and Stalin near decorated spruces. These are often captioned as “Christmas” but it’s a religious holiday Bolsheviks absolutely did not celebrate. Instead the celebrations depict New Year celebrations— commonly known as «Ёлка» — New Year tree.

It may he taken as a rule that so long as Bolsheviks keep contacts with the broad masses of the people, they will be invincib1e. And, contrariwise, it is sufficient for Bolsheviks to break away from the masses and lose contact with them, to become covered with bureaucratic rash, for them to lose all their strength and become converted into nonentities.

What does it mean -- to lead correctly? This does not at all mean sitting in one's office and compiling instructions. To lead correctly means: First, to find a correct solution of the question. But a correct solution cannot be found unless account is taken of the experience of the masses, who test the results of our leadership on their own backs. Second, to organize the operation of the correct solution which, however, cannot be done without direct aid from the masses. Third, to organize a check on the fulfilment of this decision. which, again, cannot be done without the direct aid of the masses. We leaders see things, events and people from one side only; I would say, from above. Our field of vision, consequently, is more or less limited. The masses, on the contrary, see things, events and people from another side; I would say, from below. Their field of vision, consequently, is also in a certain degree limited. To receive a correct solution to the question these two experiences must be united. Only in such a case will the leadership be correct.

i'm crashing out over this. i can't... a century of anti-communist propaganda. destroyed in a few paragraphs.

www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37....

6. Lenin taught us not only to teach the masses, but also to learn from them. What does this mean? It means, first, that we leaders must not become conceited; and we must understand that if we are members of the Central Committee or are People's Commissars, this does not mean that we possess all the knowledge for giving correct leadership. An official position by itself does not provide knowledge and experience. This is still more tha case in respect to a title. This means, second, that our experience alone, the experience of leaders, is insufficient to give correct leadership; that, consequently, it is necessary that one's experience, the experience of leaders, be supplimented by the experience of the masses, by the experience of the rank-and-file Party members, by the experience of the working class, by the experience of the people.

...

Some comrades think that people can only be checked up on from above, when the leaders check up on subordinates, on the results of their work. This is not true. Check-up from above is necessary, of course, as one of the effective measures for verifying people and checking up the fulfilment of tasks. But verification from above does not exhaust by far the whole business of verification. There is still another kind of verification, the check-up from below, in which the masses, the subordinates, verify the leaders, point out their mistakes, and show the way of correcting them. This kind of verification is one of the most effective methods of checking up on people. page 48 The rank-and-file members verify their leaders at meetings of active Party workers, at conferences and congresses, by listening to their reports, by criticizing defects, and finally by electing or not electing some or other leading comrades to the leading Party organs. Precise operation of democratic centralism in the Party as demanded by our Party statutes, unconditional electiveness of Party organs, the right to put forward and to withdraw candidates, the secret ballot and freedom of criticism and self-criticism -- all these and similar measures must be carred into life, in order to facilitate the check-up on, and control over, the leaders of the Party by the rank-and-file Party members.

wow Stalin promoting bottom-up democracy and criticism of party leaders?? sure doesn't sound like what you would expect huh?

i swear to god the best cure for anti-Stalinism is just reading literally anything that he actully wrote. The cartoon villain caricature painted by enemies of communism is so outlandishly bullshit that it cannot survive any contact with reality! The reality that Stalin was a fucking amazing leader!!

meanwhile you read anything written by bourgeois state leaders (including Eisenhower) and they're like "we need to starve 30 million Indians", "the jews are a nefarious menace", "black people aren't even people", its insane!!

it shatters it on several fronts: that Stalin himself ordered the harshness and famines, that Stalin had total control over everything that happened, that Stalin was an idiot who couldn't see the negative effects of forced collectivization. its all fucking bullshit!! i hate anti-communists so much!!

one of the biggest things people criticize Stalin for is the collectivization efforts. but then it turns out it was just over-zealous local party orgs and the CC (which Stalin was on) had to put out specific criticism to these orgs and make sure they followed it? it totally shatters the accusations.

i swear to god the best cure for anti-Stalinism is just reading literally anything that he actully wrote. The cartoon villain caricature painted by enemies of communism is so outlandishly bullshit that it cannot survive any contact with reality! The reality that Stalin was a fucking amazing leader!!

Let us take, as one example, our mistakes connected with the building up of the collective farms. You remember, I imagine, the year 1930, when our Party comrades thought of solving the very complicated question of transferring the peasantry to the building of collective farms in some three to four months, and when the Central Committee of the Party found itself compelled to put a check upon comrades who were being carried away. This was one of the most dangerous periods in the life of our Party. The mistake lay in this: that our Party comrades forgot the voluntary character of the building of collective farms, forgot that the peasants must not be transferred to the collective farm path by administrative pressure, forgot that the building of collective farms required not several months, but several years of careful and well-planned work. They forgot all this, and did not want to admit their mistakes. You remember, I imagine, that the directions of the Central Committee regarding dizziness from success, and that our comrades in the localities should not leap ahead, ignoring the actual state of affairs, were met with hostility. But this did not prevent the Central Committee from going against the stream, and turning our Party comrades onto the right road. Well, then?

I can't believe this, Stalin criticizing his comrades for... being too harsh in collectivizing the peasants? Acknowledging that collectivization had to happen voluntarily and not by administrative pressure?

Almost like the caricature of Stalin is total bullshit!!

www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37....

Albuquerque’s Mayor Said Arrests Were “Not the Solution” to Homelessness. Yet Jail Bookings Have Skyrocketed. Under Tim Keller’s leadership, the city has increasingly criminalized conduct associated with homelessness, causing a growing number of people on the streets to be arrested and jailed.

Just 3 months ago, a NM mayor said, “you simply cannot arrest your way out of” homelessness. But that’s exactly what his admin is trying to do.

Arresting people for sitting on a sidewalk–basically just existing while homeless–doesn't make anyone safer.

my theory is that the dem consulting establishment wanted to try a mamdani-like who was squarely in their pocket, found one, tried to float him, and of course he was a terrible guy because the dem consulting establishment is full of stupid people, like crypto guys and matt yglesiases

I went to my stylist and said "make me look like a glob of hair you pulled out of the shower drain".

lets see we have the anti-Hasan radlibs vs anti-Gavin commies vs. anti-Hasan commies vs. pro-Hasan commies vs. the pro-Gavin blue MAGA vs. the anti-Gavin radlibs vs. the pro-Gavin radlibs vs ... i need someone to diagram this out for me

Mamdani can say he's a socialist all he wants. He used the popular rhetoric to get elected to power. He is effectively the same as every liberal before him, trying to work within the system, but the purpose of a system is what it does.

These people genuinely think they are going to reform capitalism and then a socialist gets in office and they are like wait I can’t do anything at all about the cops what kinda snail pace do you expect to reform capitalism to socialism at. We are going to die bro

i'll never understand how u can think Trotsky is sincere given Lenin's criticisms of him. there would have to be a huge fundamental change to show that Trotsky stopped a lifetime of vacillation and prevaricating. which is then disproven by him doing the exact same shit after Stalin came into power.

But Trotsky “deals with” history only in order to evade concrete questions and to invent a justification, or a semblance of justification, for the present-day opportunists! “Actually, all trends,” he writes, “employ the same methods of struggle and organisation.” “The outcries about the liberal danger in our working-class movement are simply a crude and sectarian travesty of reality.” (No. 1, pp. 5 and 35.) This is a very clear and very vehement, defence of the liquidators.

i cannot believe he actually wrote that what the fuck🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮

well duh i didn't say its an invincible and unfailing system. that would be idealism. but its a pretty good system!

its not about idealism its about like "we got a bunch of workers with advanced class consciousness in a party and they all talked it out and decided this is what we should do". yeah democracy can be made to mean anything but socialist, proletarian democracy is a good way to make decisions!!!

bitdizzy covered it but i can expand a bit. the dictatorship of the proletariat lasts until capitalism is no longer dominant. until socialism is hegemonic. only then imo can the state really begin to wither away.

You need the United States empire to collapse because an apartheid ex-chattel slaver capitalist empire that avoided devastation from the TWO world wars caused by capitalist depravity is a map game meme anomaly because the demiurge is a massive, massive douche hole. The United States *IS* capitalism.

what some see as "authoritarianism" others see as "acting according to the will and interests of working people, as democratically decided by said working people"

Trotsky is very fond of using, with the learned air of the expert, pompous and high-sounding phrases to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky. Since “numerous advanced workers” become “active agents” of a political and Party line which does not conform to Trotsky’s line, Trotsky settles the question unhesitatingly, out of hand: these advanced workers are “in a state of utter political bewilderment”, whereas he, Trotsky, is evidently “in a state” of political firmness and clarity, and keeps to the right line!... And this very same Trotsky, beating his breast, fulminates against factionalism, parochialism, and the efforts of intellectuals to impose their will on the workers! Reading things like these, one cannot help asking oneself: is it from a lunatic asylum that such voices come?

lmfao Lenin basically crashing out over Trotsky

Trotsky WAS the doctrinal factionalist. He supported the liquidators (a clearly liberal and ineffective trend) by attacking everyone against the liquidators (i.e. Lenin and the Bolsheviks) as splitters and factionalists. But he never outright defends the liquidationism on its merits. So annoying!!

If our attitude towards liquidationism is wrong in theory, in principle, then Trotsky should say so straightforwardly, and state definitely, without equivocation, why he thinks it is wrong. But Trotsky has been evading this extremely important point for years. If our attitude towards liquidationism has been proved wrong in practice, by the experience of the movement, then this experience should be analysed; but Trotsky fails to do this either. “Numerous advanced workers,” he admits, “become active agents of a split” (read: active agents of the Pravdist line, tactics, system and organisation). What is the cause of the deplorable fact, which, as Trotsky admits, is confirmed by experience, that the advanced workers, the numerous advanced workers at that, stand for Pravda? It is the “utter political bewilderment” of these advanced workers, answers Trotsky. Needless to say, this explanation is highly flattering to Trotsky, to all five groups abroad, and to the liquidators.

bro please whyyyy. he's just so annoying. all this over "liquidationism", a faction that wanted to completely eliminate all illegal parts of the party, obviously the dumbest most liberal shit ever. why can't he just be fucking honest about his position.