freagle

Good effort. I think you don’t have a robust understanding of the history of the movement for communism, but generally we occupy similar positions.

Where I would first push back is on this position you have that not only had there never been communism but that every communist party must prove that they were trying and failed.

Communism, as Engels wrote, is the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes. It’s not to be understood as a goal, or a system of government. It’s not something people implement, or choose. It’s a movement with a specific understanding of the world arrived at through analysis which dictates a specific direction and set of abstract objectives.

Socialism, as Lenin wrote, is the attempt to build a state according to Communism, that is to say, according to the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes.

Socialism, therefore, is fundamentally an attempt to build something that literally no one has ever seen before, has never succeeded at, does not have known recipe, does not have known ingredients, and for which we do not have empirical data.

Central planning, as far as the analysis of class society is concerned, is a requirement for developing a state along the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes. Central planning is not equivalent with socialism, as fascism also uses central planning, but the use of central planning, as far as human beings have determined, is a necessity for creating the conditions for ending class society.

So the great things that the USSR achieved was because of the movement for communism overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a socialist state. That is to say they took control of a state that was currently in a feudal/capitalist transition and then they set about eliminating the last remaining feudalist elements and then eliminating what capitalist elements they could (like private property and anarchy of the markets). Having been the first ever group to attempt such a thing, they were operating with vague theories and no empirical evidence of what not to do. And, despite all the great things they did achieve, they failed to maintain the movement for communism.

A great example of this is with China’s embrace of capitalism and the subsequent raising up of hundreds of millions of people living in poverty.

This is a pro-capitalist framing. The more nuanced reality is that prior to adopting capitalist techniques for resource allocation and distribution, China was outpacing most industrialized countries in poverty alleviation and increasing quality of life. This was “easy” because China was coming from the poorest position in the world, so even modest absolute gains were massive relative gains. But they achieved massive poverty alleviation without capitalism.

They adopted capitalism not because they wanted to alleviate more poverty, but because there are problems that central planning is currently not sufficiently advanced enough to address. Central planning and markets are just tools for solving problems. China had an advantage over the USSR - it could learn from the mistakes of the USSR. One of those mistakes was using central planning when it was not up to the task. Another of those mistakes was the establishment of hardline isolationist trading bloc. Chinese communists analyzed these behaviors and found they led to outcomes that threatened the movement for communism, but they also did not abandon central planning, for that too would threaten the movement from communism. So they apply central planning insofar as it is necessary, sufficient, and advantageous to do so, and they allow markets insofar as they are effective and advantageous to do so.

I don’t want to totally disparage countries attempting to create communism, even if they failed miserably.

There’s only 2 that failed - the USSR and Yugoslavia. The rest are still operating.

There is no doubt that the US and other countries did everything they could to sabotage communism.

Generally the US is the reason why revolutions fail, but not why socialist states revert to capitalism. Both USSR and Yugoslavia failed the movement for communism long before they were destroyed. If the Cuban communist party loses control of the state, that one we can firmly blame the US for. But the US usually kills movements before they take over the state. I mean, they invaded Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cuba, and many others in an attempt to kill the movement for communism before it could establish control.

And then, as for your reference to oligarchies, which seems directed at communist states, really the main one I can think of is late stage USSR. After Kruschev took office he started by changing the national conversation away from its revolutionary past, then accumulated more wealth into the state as a way of solving hard economic problems but without any strong controls in place, which led to massive corruption that could not be stopped which led to the empowerment of a new oligarchy who then liberalized the economy, which led to massive poverty, and then they attempted to join the West and become an imperial partner, until they finally dismantled the project and the oligarchs emerged.

Other than that.

Stalin was a poor laborer son of a poor laborer from a national ethnicity that was considered dirty and stupid. He died owning basically nothing and without any money to pass on to anyone.

Chinese business tycoons aren’t able to buy elections and they can lose everything including their lives if they try to do anything that would change the balance of power.

There is no wealth in Cuba or North Korea to be hoarded because the countries can barely function on the international markets with the sanctions and thus there’s no mechanism to accumulate capital through trade and domestically it’s not like they can become robber barons and then take over government through political parties.

I wouldn’t consider Vietnam or Laos to be oligarchies. Their inequality is slightly worse than the most advanced European nations but still better than Bulgaria and Lithuania.

That’s all I got for now. Let me know what you think.

Yeah, if you’re going to cherry pick to maintain your fairy tale, I’m not gonna keep putting in effort to communicate with you.

You really do not understand what a concession is, do you. Let me say it another way: if voting changed anything, it would be illegal. If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it. The only reason they let us do it is because they have insulated their power from us. And again, this goes all the way back to founding. The founders were very clear that the masses cannot govern themselves and a democracy would be terrible for business, so they had to create elaborate systems like the electoral college and the bicameral legislature to create a buffer between their power and our will. Voting is conceded to us precisely because it costs them nothing to give it to us.

But what legacy do people who don’t believe in the ballot box have in preventing any of those things?

Exactly the same legacy as people who do. You are making a distinction that has no potency. What legacy do red-headed people have in preventing or causing these things? None. Red hair has no impact on these things. Same as voting. Again, the research over the last 30 years showed this. Popular opinion has literally no effect on federal policy. The government operates according to a logic that mostly ignores public opinion entirely (except rhetorically) and the only time it actually adapts to public opinion is when that public opinion is expressed in a way that threatens profits or operations.

This criticism only makes sense if abstaining from elections somehow did anything by itself

That’s not true at all. That’s like saying criticizing rain dancing makes no sense because not dancing doesn’t do anything by itself. Do you see how silly that sounds? Criticizing voting as impotent doesn’t need not voting to somehow be potent for it to make sense.

these actions aren’t mutually exclusive with voting

Nor are they mutually exclusive with praying or animal sacrifice.

Not voting doesn’t stop any of the bipartisan while, but it alleviates the partisan ones, like women having access to healthcare or trans people being allowed to exist.

I hate to break it to you, but the Democrats are collaborators in creating these problems. They had trifecta control over the government 3 times and refused to codify abortion. Why? Because voting doesn’t matter. People are more upset about The Kennedy Center than about Hillary Clinton laughing at a video of a 70-year old man sodomized by a blade by partisans that her State Department managed under the Obama administration’s continuance of the destruction of African resistance to American empire as part of Bush and Powell’s program falling 9/11.

The Democrats can’t help you. They can’t save your friends. They can’t protect people. Because structurally, they have no incentive to and every time people think they can vote a couple of reps in, they prove time and again that they have been holding party discipline and allow another few Ds to support the agenda of the Rs. It always happens, it’s been happening. And the best you can come up with is blaming the voters.

That’s just not how power works. You are arguing from your steadfast belief in a myth, a fantasy that was handed to you by the very people who you think you are fighting against.

If an outcome doesn’t change based on a choice, that outcome isn’t a useful criteria in making the choice.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is literally the argument. You have arrived.

So liberal democracies promised universal rights and utopia. Instead each Liberal state produced between 100 and 150 years of abject poverty, massive wars, and domestic repression of labor movements with the military or paramilitary police.

Communism promised universal rights and utopia. Instead they produced about 10 - 30 years of major famines and poverty and displacement and then after that initial period eliminated abject poverty while speed running industrialization without creating a class of robber barons that ran the government.

Fascism was defeated in its objective of destroying the world’s first workers’ state. The US and UK supported the rise of the Third Reich and Germany fielded the most powerful military ever fielded at that time. The USSR lost 7M people fighting all the way across Europe to sack Berlin and end the Nazi project. And for that, they will never be forgiven.

You’ve got more patience and skill than I do, Cowbee. OP’s moral framework feels impenetrable

Wow you are really not beating the Nazi comparisons, are you?

Wow. It’s like we’re successfully organizing and having an impact?

You can’t have it both ways friend. Either our path is impotent and we are small and unorganized or we actually have significant effects on the world and our strategies are working.

The people who believe in the ballot box have a legacy of 800k dead annually from bi-partisan sanctions, the largest criminal justice system by a factor of three, the most racially biased criminal justice system in the world, active maintenance of the domestic colonial genocide regime, active maintenance of the Israeli colonial genocide regime, domestic surveillance replete with sex pest cops stalking women, lynchings by cops and by white supremacists, 247 years of war, millions dead from wars of choice and aggression, and countless other atrocities and systems of unending oppression that both parties develop, maintain, advance, and protect.

Thank you for your effort in organizing the vote.

Well don’t give them the concession they want

Nope. You’re still not hearing the critique. Voting is a concession that the power elite give to the people. They really don’t care what people want but they know that if they didn’t allow voting they would have a rebellion to deal with. So voting is a concession they make to us. And they do it because it’s something they can control to ensure it doesn’t actually effect their class interests, even if the masses manage to organize and vote harder, because they know that if you can convince people voting is what matters they can reduce the chances of a rebellion.

DSA has NYC to show for their efforts.

Yeah, I mean. That’s how concessions work. Small victories that in a few locations that symbolically work to make people feel like progress is possible. We can see the history of how these things have worked both in the US and all across Latin America - social democracy emerges to absorb the anger of the masses, some concessions are made, and then a right-wing backlash inevitably reverses it all because the structure is still built by and for the power elite. The only way to address this is dismantling the structure entirely and rebuilding it. Mamdani getting elected is a nice symbolic victory and it will make some people’s lives better for a few years. Hell, he may even make a couple of long term beneficial changes. But the power stays the same.

You don’t have anyone to take to the streets or staying power.

Yeah, I mean, that’s what organizing is for and that’s why the US had two purges of leftists, outlawed communist organizing, huge propaganda campaigns, bipartisan media manipulation, and we are now entering into a third purge with both parties supporting it including putting people into prison with 70-year sentences for free speech.

Vote mongering groups have staying before because they don’t get disrupted violently by a bi-partisan coalition. Actually effective organizing has to put in a lot more effort to stay around long enough without being purged.

Voting is Maggie Simpson’s steering wheel in the car - symbolic and powerless.

So… it will be opposed… I rest my case

No. You’re still not hearing the criticism. Voting is impotent. It doesn’t have to be opposed because it’s structurally powerless. That’s why Princeton’s research showed that popular opinion, regardless of which power divisions between parties, has no measurable impact on legislation. Because doesn’t matter and never has. The parties do what they want and voting is the symbolic concession that makes people feel like the reason politicians are bad is because the voters failed.

No one is saying the voting will be resisted. We’re saying voting has never mattered in the history of the USA. It was designed that way by the founders. Mass movements are structurally incapable of changing the US via the ballot box by design.

You should be proud of that btw; its the kind of leftist movement J. Edgar Hoover wanted to see. One apathetic about voting and without meaningful organization.

It’s very important to understand how organizing works. Organizing for voting is wasted organizing. There are plenty of ways to organize that have nothing to do with voting and that organizing has far and away more impact because voting is impotent. And when more people become aware of the impotence of voting, alternative actions becomes the conversation. Voting is not a gateway drug to direct action. It’s a distraction from it.

Really? That’s your take away? That the reason we shouldn’t vote is because there will be opposition? Either you’re rage baiting in bad faith, lack reading comprehension, or are so wracked by cognitive dissonance you cannot process the criticism.

The criticism has been, for decades now, that the Democrats are collaborators with fascists, they are enablers of fascists, and they are, in fact, mask-on fascists. That’s the critique.

Obama won. We didn’t have a problem with “there will be opposition”. And then he expanded DHS and ICE massively, deported record numbers of people, and appointed Tom Homan to run the decorations. Trump used Homan in both terms to deport less people than both Obama/Biden and Biden/Harris, and he used the framework that Obama/Biden put in place. Biden took office between those terms. He had intimate knowledge of what he and Obama did to expand the departments, and yet all he did for 4 years was choose different priorities for the department. No attempts at all to prevent a future Republican from doing exactly what we knew they would do.

Bush 2 and his military advisors planned to destroy 7 countries, among them Libya and Iran. Bush didn’t get around to Libya, so Obama/Biden with Clinton at the State Dept did Libya. Because they are collaborating on the same plan with the same atrocities for the same reasons.

And this goes back as far as memory will take us. Even before the realignment that we got today, Republic and Democrats collaborated to manage the civil rights crisis, maintain the power system, and build out systems to disenfranchise Black people (collaboratively) after they passed the civil rights act (collaboratively).

No one is saying “ooo, we can’t vote because they’ll oppose us”. We’re saying that voting is the system that the power elite hands us to make sure we feel like we have a say because if they didn’t do that then we’d riot.

Voting is Maggie Simpson’s steering wheel in the car - symbolic and powerless.

The only thing that will work and has ever worked is rebellion.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/09/21/congress/jared-golden-mike-lawler-endorsement-01086087

Democrat Golden is endorsing the GOP’s Lawler in his battleground district in upstate New York.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/6063798-golden-perez-gop-bills-advance/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64897233

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/09/01/congress/dems-defect-on-socialism-01061046

https://foxx.house.gov/news/email/show.aspx?ID=ZJBPWOTQTJALJRZ4HC7K6AT5NA

Yes indeed. Here we go again. Trying to explain to someone with zero imagination and the moral framework of a 12 year old reading YA novels that in fact the Democrats have been collaborating with the Republicans for many many decades in the maintenance of the empire, the racialized mass incarceration, the slave labor, the killing of pregnant mothers around the world via sanctions, the destruction of the planet, the protection of the worst criminals in the history of the world, and continuous genocide and mass murder.

Voting in Ds also enables Rs, and we have no shortage of examples.

This is why no one thinks you’re convincing. Because if you fundamentally believe this is the best we got, you have nothing offer, and the fact that you can’t see that means our only options are to fight you and ignore you, and when you insist on spreading your position on social media, you must be fought

Can you imagine not even bothering to plan your first strike on a country that your military has deemed too powerful to attack for some time?

Can you imagine abandoning your old planning techniques for a totally novel technique and getting the exact same results of bombing civilians directly?

Can you imagine claiming it was a targeting error and then double tapping it?

This is incredible reporting

Yeah, you can. But you can also just focus on the thing that has always worked and will always work which is interest convergence. We must make politicians suffer for going the wrong way and benefit from going the right way. Civil Rights was passed by a bi-partisan coalition because they knew if they didn’t things would get much much worse for them, not at the ballot box, on the street. Women got suffrage without voting. Labor had to fight literal paramilitary combat to get us weekends. That’s how it works. Sure, vote. But don’t waste so much time on it and certainly don’t waste time trying to convince people to vote or convince people that “blue no matter who” is moral or that “sign up to be a Democrat, add your name to their roster and then vote in their convoluted and rat fucked primary system”. Let people vote their conscience and focus on raising their consciousness.

I love that people think it’s a genocide denial to say that there is literally no evidence of genocide in Xinjiang. The UN has never classified it as a genocide. The population is increasing. The average household income is increasing. Muslim observers from a dozen countries have been approved the situation.

Do you deny the genocide in Leeds is an actual genocide?

I am definitely going to kick that football this time

I hate to tell you this, but Democrats are the palatable Nazis. It was a Democrat that started NATO with Nazi officers. It was a Democrat that saved 10k from Nuremberg. It was a Democrat that decided to kill a million Koreans, a million Vietnamese, to make Laos the most bombed country in the world, to destroy Libya (the most prosperous country in Africa). Democrats are Nazis with the mask on. Republicans are Nazis with the mask off. You think Pelosi doesn’t know the Republicans are Nazis? But she’s still gonna say we need a strong Republican party? You think Biden didn’t know the Republicans are Nazis, but he didn’t do anything to stop them or even slow them down? He had the fucking full Epstein Files. He chose to sit on them.

They’re all fucking Nazis and they have been Nazis since the founding from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to James Madison to FDR and Truman to Bush and Clinton to Biden and Trump. All Nazis, all genocidaires, all mass murderers, all racists, all responsible for millions dead.

Or black people or immigrants or Libyans or Haitians, or ffs Iranians