Communism

"The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done

away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression ,

new forms of struggle in place of the old ones." - Karl Marx^[1]

Communism is a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

As a system of government, a communist state controls the means of production and distributes wealth equally among the population. In theory, it sounds great, but in practice it stifles innovation and destroys incentives to work. It also gives an advantage to government workers, and human nature being what it is, they usually become corrupt and take all the wealth for themselves.

Cuba, was once a prosperous country, the jewel of the Spanish empire in the Americas until 1898, and then a free and independent state where personal liberty flourished until the Cuban Revolution. Since then the government has tightly curtailed free speech and the economy has collapsed into grinding poverty for the vast majority of Cubans. Dissidents are jailed and repression is the way of life.

A compendium serving to provide quick access to resources and responses that refute typical liberal bullshit.[edit]

Note: Although some of the sources provided are sectarian, this document itself is intentionally written from a pansocialist point of view. Please keep it that way. (Go to the link at the bottom for the sources)

Communism killed 100–600 million[edit]

The claim comes in part from a piece called The Black Book of Communism, a work of sensationalist and apparently profascist tripe originally slapped together by professing ‘leftists’ to promote the status quo. The statistic was made using loose qualifications, such as millions of nonexistent Chinese babies being considered ‘victims’, relinquished households probably being considered ‘deaths’ (partially due to bureaucratic technicalities, most likely), and some automobile accidents being considered the fault of socialism. Many of the subtotals are not widely accepted by historians. The statistic also includes many socialists, such as Soviet soldiers and civilians who, of course, learnt about socialism in either schools or on their own. Add this to the fact that most of the victims weren’t straight white cismen either, and normally the statistic would become almost worthless for white liberals, which is why they don’t care about Africans, Asians, indigenous Americans, or aboriginal Australians dying. Here is what two of the authors said of the work:

‘Jean-Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth reproach Stéphane Courtois considering ‘the criminal dimension as one of the proper ones of the communist system’s set’, he writes in his text. ‘This results in taking away the phenomenon’s historic character’, claims Jean-Louis Margolin. ‘Even if the communist breeding ground can lead to mass crimes, the line between theory and practice is not evident, contrary to what Stéphane Courtois says.’ Disputing the ‘approximations’, ‘contradictions’, and ‘clumsinesses that make sense’, the two authors reproach Stéphane Courtois’s ‘obsession to reach one hundred million deaths’.’

Margolin and Werth furthermore rebuked Courtois in an article published in Le Monde, stating that they disagreed with his vitriolic introduction and its obvious political agenda. Margolin and Werth both rightfully disavowed the book, recognizing that Courtois was obsessed with reaching a body count of a hundred million and consequently leading to careless and biased ‘scholarship’. Courtois also composed the book’s introduction in secret, refusing to regurgitate it for his other contributors. They both rejected Courtois’s equivalence of German Fascism with Communism, with Werth correctly telling Le Monde that ‘death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union.’

Maybe somebody should arrest them for ‘genocide denial’. Indeed, the book itself technically listed 94 million rather than 100 million as popularly claimed.

In addition, people’s warriors have refuted Black Book so strongly that Harvard University Press’ Mark Kramer in particular had to admit that it contained remedial mathematic errors. (Note that they are noticeably sectarian and overly skeptical of some famines, but that aside their response is okay.)

Morgan Visser’s own take on the book.

A very common variation of this claim is that Stalin or Máo killed more people than Adolf Shitler. Independent investigation indicates otherwise.

But arguably the ultimate refutation is that even if this statistic were accurate, the profit motive can be traced to far, far more deaths. In fact, approximately one hundred million human deaths can be attributed to profit within five years alone; approximately eighteen million humans die yearly from poverty‐related causes. The details and contexts do vary, but the underlying cause, profit‐making, is still there. Even a Soviet system would cause less fatalities.

One calculation that goes up to March 2018. Just since the end of the Cold War, at least 414 million people died purely from the normal operation of capitalism; the consequences of it.

Peter’s take on the matter (who has since become a rightist).

Paul Treanor (a statist) has estimated that the market has killed ‘hundreds of millions of people. More than all wars, and more than the impact of a one-kilometre meteorite.’

Late Victorian Holocausts, a book about some of the millions of victims of 19th-century imperialism. Excluded from it though is detailed information on the Irish potato famine and how it related capitalism.

One response from the Soviet Union critic Noam Chomsky:

‘[S]uppose [that] we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable half. We therefore conclude that in India the ‘democratic capitalist experiment’ since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the ‘colossal, wholly failed…experiment’ of ‘Communism’ everywhere since 1917[.]’

See also: the death toll of anticommunism.

The Nazis were socialists, communists or leftists[edit]

Antisocialists typically make two claims in support of their accusation, namely: the fact that ‘Nazi’ is an abbreviation of ‘National Socialist’ and, to a less extent, that they were somehow against private property or against business. The first claim can be easily nullified by reminding them of misnomers: Rhode Island is not an island (it’s a state on a continent), the Italian Social Republic was not a republic (it was a collaborationist state), the Revolutionary Government Junta wasn’t revolutionary (it was conservative), and Democratic Kampuchea wasn’t democratic (it was autocratic), for example. As for why they chose such a misleading name at all, the book Why Hitler? explains:

‘Meanwhile on February 20, 1920, the German Workers’ Party switched its name to the [more euphemistic] National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeitpartei, called the N.S.D.A.P. for short). Hitler did not like the addition of the term ‘Socialist’ but acquiesced because the executive committee thought that it might be helpful in attracting workers from the left‐wing.’

Antisocialists’ next claim, however, requires citations.

Scientific paper documenting privatization in Fascist Germany. Indeed, the term ‘privatization’ itself was coined to refer to Fascist Germany’s economic reforms, which were almost the modern’s world first, even predating Chile’s and Britain’s. Only Fascist Italy precedes Fascist Germany in this. There are more yet cases of Fascist privatization; as,

‘In 1936/37 the anticommunists’ capital of the Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and Dresdner Bank was resold to private shareholders; consequently the state representatives withdrew from the boards of these banks. Likewise in 1936 the anticommunists vended their shares of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, and the armed conflict changed nothing with regard to this attitude. In 1940 the anticommunists privatized the Genshagen aeroplane engine plant that Daimler-Benz operated; Daimler-Benz bought the majority of shares that the anticommunists held earlier than they wished to. However Reich Aviation Ministry urged the business and was afraid that the anticommunists might offer the deal to another firm. Later in the armed conflict the anticommunists actively tried to privatize as many Montan GmbH companies as possible (albeit with little success).’

Shitler concerning private property. In May of 1930 he spewed at his neighbour Max Amann ‘What right do these people have to demand a share of property or even in administration? […] The employer who accepts the responsibility for production also gives the workpeople their means of livelihood. Our greatest industrialists are not concerned with the acquisition of wealth or with good living, but, above all else, with responsibility and power. They have worked their way to the top by their own abilities, and this proof of their capacity — a capacity only displayed by a higher race — gives them the right to lead.’ In 1935, he spewed ‘National Socialists [read: Fascists] see in private property a higher level of human economic development that according to the differences in performance controls the management of what has been accomplished enabling and guaranteeing the advantage of a higher standard of living for everyone. Bolshevism destroys not only private property but also private initiative and the readiness to shoulder responsibility.’ In 1938 he would reiterate that he approves of property and rejects Marxism.

And interestingly, this anti‐Semite later had not one but multiple redefinitions of socialism, none of which anarchists and communists ever touted. For example, a hypernationalist one (unconcerned with economy):

‘Whoever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of the nation; whoever has understood our great national anthem, “Deutschland ueber Alles,” to mean that nothing in the wide world surpasses in his eyes this Germany, people and land — that man is a Socialist.’

An almost childlike simplification:

‘Socialism! What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism.’

And this convoluted inaccuracy, wherein he also spewed that he was reclaiming socialism:

‘Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists. Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.’

(And note how none of these mentions anything about ‘big government’, ‘redistribution of wealth’, ‘state interference’, or some such thing, likewise redefinitions that modern rightists give. The somewhat relevant ‘certain lands in common’ bit may imply redistribution, but when they reimplemented this we have no idea; it seems totally arbitrary given the promotion of privatisation anyway. These redefinitions however are consistent with the anticommunist, anti‐anarchist, and class‐collaborationist reconceptions of socialism that the European right invented, one of which called Marxism ‘the capitalism of the working class’ and accused Marx of wishing to merely substitute capital’s right to private profit with ‘the worker’s right to private profit.’)

He is commonly misquoted as saying ‘We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions,’ which is in fact a quote by Strasser.

While the party itself initially had limited support from corporations, they did not have to wait long for Yankee businessmen to support them. Ford, IBM, and others were happy to do business with them, even if it meant exterminating entire ethnicities. Sweden built some of its wealth on supplying the Reich’s war effort with scarce essential resources (such as iron ore) for weapons, arguably prolonging the conflict by one year [1], [2] (and since 2009 they still haven’t learned their lesson). Likewise, social capital was crucial to the Fascists’ success. One particularly influential capitalist, Gustav Krupp, strongly supported the German Fascists throughout his life.

Some have asserted that, even though private property wasn’t abolished, their economic regulations alone suffice as proof of their socialism. The fact of the matter however is that the regulations were never intended to appease or empower the lower classes; rather, the upper classes instituted them for the sake of their militarily driven economy, much like the U.K. and the U.S.A. did during wartime: they had to maximize efficiency with a central authority. The argument furthermore overlooks the fact that while regulatory activity was extensive, firms still preserved a good deal of their autonomy even under the Third Reich; they valued freedom of contract. Considering that no socialists advocate business regulations as a long‐term strategy (if in any term at all), such an argument is irrelevant anyway.

Even the ‘nationalisations’ that they introduced were limited. They were only of ‘Jewish’ businesses and land to later be vended to private investors:

‘Since the N.S.D.A.P. stands on the platform of private ownership it happens that the passage ‘gratuitous expropriation’ concerns only the creation of legal opportunities to expropriate (if needed) land which has been illegally acquired or is not administered from the viewpoint of the national welfare. This is aimed mostly against the Jewish land‐speculation businesses.’

Some claim that the German Fascists were positively influenced by Marxism. This is false. Some claim that they were friendly with the far‐left. This is false too; anticapitalists were the first sent to die in concentration camps. The Strasserists, the closest that the party had to a ‘leftist’ faction, were soon purged. The first books that the German Fascists burned were those of the scientific socialists Karl Marx and Karl Kautsky. (See Hans‐Wolfgang Strätz, Die studentische „Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist“ im Frühjahr 1933, pages 347–353.) The Fascists hated the Soviets and the Spanish Republicans. Far from having a leftist support base, many of Fascism’s supporters were ultranationalists, conservatives, industrialists, and other antisocialists, including Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Antisocialists sometimes insinuate that the Fascists’ own violent antisocialism is unimportant or irrelevant since sectarianism between socialists has sometimes been violent too. This is a false equivalence. For starters, there is no record of the Bolsheviki issuing mass arrests or executions of other socialists, let alone just because they were socialists. Nobody arrested the critics of Lenin during or after their attendance of Kropotkin’s funeral, nor did any of the Soviets treat the disillusioned Emma Goldman worse than the U.S. did. The Black Army eventually faced persecution not because of their anarchist tendencies but because of their anti‐Bolshevism and other controversial decisions. (Beforehand they were on good terms.) Permanent revolutionaries faced persecution far more due to the Fascist meddling at that time rather than due to having alternative socialist theories. (Beforehand the Soviet government tolerated them up until about the eve of the second world war.) Even in the worst of times, executions were rare and imprisonment was relatively brief. This is all in stark contrast to the Fascists, who, shortly after having won institutional power, had all socialists either imprisoned for long periods (Antonio Gramsci) or executed (Pietro Ferrero) because of their socialism.

Some (e.g. Ben Shapiro) have falsely asserted that the main, if not only, disagreement between the communists and the Fascists was that the former were internationalist, whereas the latter were ultranationalist. Not only is there no historical evidence to support this, but it is pretty clear from the quotations above that there were far more disagreements, and far more serious ones, than the national question. It is furthermore absurd to imagine that these two sides would have been driven to mutual, violent hatred over this difference alone. Consider the case of Antonio Gramsci, who was sympathetic to the idea of national liberation, and Amadeo Bordiga, who likely would have considered the very concept of ‘national liberation’ to be oxymoronic. These were both socialists who were divided on the issue, and yet they remained good friends regardless. The German Fascists and the Italian Fascists incidentally were theirselves divided on the importance of race, yet as we all know they would remain faithful allies during wartime and elsewhen.

Some (e.g. Richard Pipes) have claimed that the N.S.D.A.P. took their inspiration for concentration camps from the GULAG, but there is no documented evidence to support this unlikely rumour. On the other hand, there is evidence that the N.S.D.A.P. borrowed their practices from the European‐Americans and other colonists. In contrast, recently declassified documents show that the GULAG functioned quite differently from a concentration camp, and would have been a terribly inefficient model for the anticommunists to copy.

Another point that antisocialists refer to is quoting this passage that the propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary during the 1920s:

‘It would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism.’

This ignores the fact that Goebbels had different political opinions back then. For example:

‘[He] simply records in this private and unedited diary his disgust at Shitler’s reactionary views on every major point of policy—restitution to the German princes, the sacrality of private property, the destruction of Bolshevism, Italy & Britain as Germany’s allies, the old twenty‐five‐point programme still the best, and so on. ‘I am flabbergasted,’ he writes. ‘What a Hitler! A reactionary! Astonishingly clumsy and unsure of himself… Brief answer by Strasser. Ach Gott, can we cope with these folks down here? A mere half‐hour’s discussion after this four‐hour speech and summarizing. I cannot get out a word. I am quite flabbergasted. We drove to the station. Strasser is almost demented with rage… I feel like crying… That was one of the greatest disappointments of my life. I can no longer believe in Hitler! This is the most terrific thing. My faith is shattered and I feel shattered.’’

And now, here’re quotes that he spewed when they were later in power:

‘The details about the murder of priests and rape of nuns that we received are totally incredible and indescribable. It is the Führer’s historical merit that is acknowledged to him by the whole world, to have erected a wall against the onrush of Bolshevism on German’s eastern borders, and thus clearly to have risen as a terminator of this craze in Europe in its conflict with the subversive forces of destruction, of anarchy.’

Source (at the 5:29 mark). Further proof is this transcription, where Goebbels said that he was actually ‘defending’ the West from Bolshevism. In addition:

‘That is a direct threat to the existence of every European power. No one should believe that Bolshevism would stop at the borders of the Reich, were it to be victorious. The goal of its aggressive policies and wars is the Bolshevization of every land and people in the world. In the face of such undeniable intentions, we are not impressed by paper declarations from the Kremlin or guarantees from London or Washington. We know that we are dealing in the East with an infernal political devilishness that does not recognize the norms governing relations between people and nations. When for example the English Lord Beaverbrook says that Europe must be given over to the Soviets or when the leading American Jewish journalist Brown cynically adds that a Bolshevization of Europe might solve all of the continent’s problems, we know what they have in mind. The European powers are facing the most critical question. The West is in danger. It makes no difference whether or not their governments and intellectuals realize it or not.’

Goebbels is also recorded as having released a wealthy capitalist by the name of Günther Quandt after he was imprisoned for tax evasion (like A.H. should have been). Indeed, the Fascists in general practised policies of terrific wealth accumulation:

‘SS commanders and other anticommunist officials amassed personal fortunes by plundering conquered territories and stealing from concentration camp inmates and other political victims. Huge amounts were made from secretly owned, well connected businesses, and from contracting out camp slave labour to industrial firms like I.G. Farben and Krupp. […] [Shitler] expropriated art works from the public domain, stole enormous sums from Fascist party coffers, and invented a new concept, the ‘personality right,’ that enabled him to charge a small fee for every postage stamp with his picture on it, a venture that made him hundreds of millions of marks. […] During his entire tenure in office he got special rulings from the German tax office that allowed him to avoid paying income or property taxes. He had a motor pool of limousines, private apartments, country homes, a vast staff of servants, and a majestic estate in the Alps.’

Further evidence.

Arguably the least uncompelling evidence is that the Fascists and Soviets temporarily agreed not to assault each other. This ignores the fact that the Soviets did so only after failing to secure an alliance with Britain and France, that the fash also signed agreements with other countries even earlier than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (including Japan early on), and that there were Fascists (Alfred Rosenberg) and socialists (Trotsky) who opposed such measures even at the time. Whether the agreement was necessary is still a matter of dispute, but if nothing else, a less irrational interpretation is that it was a necessary evil in order for the Soviets to defend themselves since they were catching up with modernity and could not risk going to war early, as opposed to implicit conclusions such as ‘they were evil’ or ‘they didn’t care.’ The Fascists did not even have any agreement with the Soviets to ‘partition’ Poland, nor did the U.S.S.R. really ‘invade’ Poland. The Polish government itself declared martial law against the German Fascists when they invaded in September 1st, 1939, but it did not do the same for the U.S.S.R. In fact the Polish marshal E. Rydz-Smigly ordered Poles not to engage the Soviets in military actions (only in the event of disarming Polish units by them). Another frequently ignored inconvenience is that, as mentioned earlier, the Soviets were actually interested in allying with the British and the French early on, but both rejected them. On the eve of the second world war, foreign minister of the Soviet Union, Maxim Litvinov, went to the Western powers and called for an alliance with England, the United States, and France against the Third Reich; that should the Fascists assault Czechoslovakia or any other state, these powers would unite to contain them. The Western powers refused these overtures from the Soviet Union. As Herman Wouk said:

‘Lord, how the British have been asking for this! An alliance with Russia was their one chance to stop Germany. They had years in which to do it. All of Stalin’s fear of Germany and the [Fascists] was on their side. And what did they do? Dawdle, fuss, flirt with Hitler, and give away Czechoslovakia. Finally, finally, they sent some minor politicians on a slow boat to see Stalin. When Hitler decided to gamble on this alliance, he shot his foreign minister to Moscow on a special plane with powers to sign a deal. And that’s why we’re within inches of a world war.’

Even this passage is a bit of an understatement. Britain in particular was initially happy to work with the Fascists and even cooperated in ruining Czechoslovakia. To quote Michael Parenti’s Make‐Believe Media:

‘[T]he U.S.S.R. [had] strenuous opposition to Munich, […] willingness to stand by Czechoslovakia, and […] Moscow was repeatedly rebuffed by Great Britain and France when it tried to form an antifascist alliance with them. […] The British did more than dawdle and flirt with Hitler. They actively allied themselves with him in the dismantling of Czechoslovakia. They ignored Stalin and strung him along, hoping ultimately to isolate the Soviet Union and set it up for an invasion by Fascist Germany—which indeed happened. Having witnessed how Fascism wiped out the socialist left within Germany, Chamberlain and the other western collaborators hoped that Hitler might do the same to Russia. Indeed, the plan almost worked. At least 85% of the fighting in the European war took place on the Eastern front. The Soviets emerged victorious only after suffering horrendous losses.’

In the book Molotov Remembers, there is a section about Molotov’s tenure as head diplomat of the U.S.S.R., and he talks about how after they had signed the nonaggression pact with Fascist Germany, they instantly started preparing for the conflict that they knew was coming between them. He also talks about how after returning to Moscow from Berlin, he and Stalin would spend time behind closed doors mocking or insulting Shitler and other Fascists. See also: a discussion of the events that led up to the Molotov‐Ribbentrop Pact.

Occasionally antisocialists accuse the Soviets of having considered joining the Axis. There are no primary sources to confirm this rumour. One author referenced Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, D, ii, but this is merely an internal note from a member of a German delegation dated September 3, 1938. (In fact the entire volume is about 1937–1938, not 1940.) Another writer referenced AMVnR, PRETI/ 1 / 3 pap.1 op.2sh pop.1 l.7, report by D. Shishmanov, general secretary of the Bulgarian FM, 25 Nov. 1940: a report by a Bulgarian diplomat, available only in an archive, and without further source. Another (presumably) made reference to The Incompatible Allies, page 323: no relevant information here either. (The closest is Stalin sending Molotov to Berlin ‘so that further development of the relationship between the two countries could be discussed.’) Another reference that a few authors use is Nazi-Soviet Relations: the closest line that supports this is presumably ‘[…] the Italian Ambassador to Matsuoka as to whether at the conversation between Matsuoka and Stalin the relations of the Soviet Union with the Axis had been taken up, Matsuoka answered that Stalin had told him that he was a convinced adherent of the Axis and an opponent [Gegner] of England and America.’ If this is verifiable then it appears to be no more than a third‐party source; worth little more than hearsay.

And as we all know, the Fascists would soon break their agreement with the Soviet Union and launch the largest invasion ever recorded: against them. The anticommunist military commanders were caught up in the ideological character of this conflict and were involved in its implementation as willing participants. For example, before and during the invasion, Reich troops were heavily indoctrinated with anti‐Bolshevik, anti‐Semitic, and anti‐Slavic ideology through many forms of media. Following this invasion the Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target folks whom they described as ‘Jewish Bolshevik subhumans’, the ‘Red beast’, the ‘Mongol hordes’, and the ‘Asiatic flood’. Anticommunist propaganda portrayed the conflict as an ideological one between German Fascism and ‘Jewish Bolshevism’. The Führer ordered the Einsatzgruppen to execute all Soviet functionaries who were ‘less valuable Asiatics, [Roma] and Jews’. Anticommunist army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the ‘partisan struggle’. The main guideline for anticommunist troops was ‘Where there’s a partisan, there’s a Jew, and where there’s a Jew, there’s a partisan,’ or more succinctly ‘The partisan is where the Jew is.’ Simply put, many anticommunist troops viewed the warfare in Fascist terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as less than human. Seven out of every ten Reich soldiers who died in the second world war died on the Eastern Front. The scale of fighting was enormous; the battles of Kursk, Stalingrad, that of Berlin (featuring two million anticommunist soldiers against 3.5 million Soviets)—there was simply nothing like it that occurred on the Western Front. The losses were stupendous: the Soviet Union emerged victorious but only after being critically weakened; only after losing not only most of its industries west of the Urals but well over twenty million people.

With the overwhelming evidence in the way, it is reasonable to conclude that any anticapitalism was just empty popularism. In other words, the word ‘Socialism’ was nothing more than a marketing tactic. ‘Everyone who says this nonsense that the Nazis were socialist or that fascism is somehow socialist because big government, needs to read this book.’

See also: this German’s video response to Steven Crowder and other capitalists concerning this subject (which shares about half of the content here, almost sufficing as an audiobook).

Pol Pot was a communist[edit]

Pol Pot’s lack of socialism is best demonstrated in this (state socialist’s) polemic. He was not only not a socialist; he was an anticommunist as well, both implicitly and explicitly, from deliberately murdering the proletariat to rejecting socialist concepts verbally. Almost no socialists have any praise for him or the Khmer Rouge, save for addressing agricultural devastation (thanks again, Washington) by importing food from the P.R.C. and—if your standards are low enough—for doing disappointingly compared to the far more murdersome Anglo imperialists. Their ‘success’ can be attributed to their vulgar utilitarianism: dishonestly appealing to the local under classes and the P.R.C., but also to the Anglo imperialists. He did claim to have read Marx, but he never confirmed that he agreed with him.

Further information (likewise from a state socialist’s perspective) can be located here.

All humans are naturally lazy, greedy, violent, blah blah blah[edit]

‘A cumulation of scientific evidence shows that their societies were not characterized by competition, inequality and oppression. These things are, rather, the product of history, and of rather recent history. The evidence comes from archaeological findings about patterns of human behaviour worldwide until only about five millennia ago, and from anthropological studies of societies in different parts of the world which remained organized along similar lines until the 19th and earlier part of the 20th century. […] Lee echoes the phrase used by Frederich Engels in the 1880s to describe this state of affairs, ‘primitive communism’. The point is of enormous importance. Our species (modern humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens) is over one hundred millennia old. For 95 percent of this time it has not been characterized at all by many of the forms of behaviour ascribed to ‘human nature’ today. We have nothing built into our biology that makes present-day societies the way that they are & our predicament as we face a new millennium cannot be blamed on it.’

The tendency to hoard is a reaction to insufficiency. The tendency towards laziness is a reaction to too much work, too plightful work, and generally people lacking control over their work. Capitalist apologists typically claim that without money or at least some other form of material reward, few if any would labour. This is false, and contrary to modern research. For instance, one of their most overused examples is janitorial labour; cleaning up disgusting messes. Nonetheless, the reward, while not an object, should be obvious: the environment becomes cleaner and easier to use. The task is sometimes neglected under capitalism because some guests assume that they are disallowed from doing so, or they lack the instruments to solve it. Under world socialism, cleanup tasks could be the responsibility of all folks rather than a few specialists.

Besides, with all of the troubles that capitalism causes, are a few dirty jobs truly good enough reasons to keep it?

Communists are just as vile, if not worse, than fascists and white nationalists[edit]

Briefly put: neither white supremacy, nor misogyny, nor heterosexism, nor cissexism, nor any other form of discrimination is central to the establishment of socialism. Most socialists (but not all—more on that later) reject such discriminations. Certainly there are few socialists, especially today, who make such nuisances primary components of their politics. Nonetheless, many socialists—it is true—have argued that it can be acceptable to use violence or even lethal force against their small but powerful minority of oppressors: the upper classes and their loyalest henchmen, but it is also possible (if improbable) to have a bloodless revolution: the upper classes could surrender or allow their wealth to be seized, since class is merely a societal trait into which one is born, rather than a trait that is biologically inherited. Indeed, this reflects the October Revolution, which had surprisingly little violence, and so did the February events in Czechoslovakia.

Many notable socialists were women, humans of colour, or both, and they frequently spoke out against both white supremacy and misogyny. Similarly, many socialists both historically and presently have been nonheterosexual; as, Emma Goldman, Oscar Wilde, Magnus Hirschfeld, Harry Whyte, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Harry Hay, Judith Butler, TQILA, and others. Indeed, the connexion between minorities and socialism is an old one. Engels explicitly opposed anti‐Semitism, Lenin openly spoke out against anti‐Semitism, and to the surprise of some, Joseph Stalin did as well and acted accordingly! There have also been many Ukrainian anarchists (not all of course but still many) who fought aggressively against anti‐Semitism.

Unfortunately, not all socialists have spotless records. For example, after anticommunists incited ethnic tensions in the East and manipulated the nations into collaboration, the Kremlin was unfortunately forced to relocate most of them (except for the veterans) elsewhere, and at least a thousand of them (unintentionally) perished, but even so these actions would not fit the official criteria for genocide; documented evidence shows that Soviet authorities themselves allowed these people to return home. Likewise, the Red Army’s men carnally abused thousands of people, but the other Soviets shot many of the abusers. Guevara in his youth was a white supremacist, but he became more antiracist in the later decades of his life. Castro also discriminated against nonheterosexuals and incarcerated them, but he later felt deep regret over his misdeeds and tried to make reparations for them in later decades. Some, such as Stalin and Durruti, unfortunately never had such awakenings, but many serious socialists still feel that they erred tremendously there and would not force anybody to forgive them for those injustices.

Nonetheless, there is still a minority of socialists who play down the importance of inherited traits and characteristics, and tend to shrug off accusations of discrimination. Such individuals are formally called ‘class reductionists’ due to their frequent emphasis on class in defence of their misbehaviour. Less politely, they’re also called ‘brocialists’ or specifically ‘manarchists’. The extreme end of the spectrum contains so‐called third‐positionists, who explicitly attempt to connect their anticapitalism to their disgusting prejudices. Another camp is the trans‐exclusionists or so‐called ‘gender critics’ who sometimes appeal to anticapitalism in favour of their cissexism. These groups are despised by intersectionalists (that’s us!) and sometimes considered little better than the alt‐right.

Notable socialists include but are not limited to: Albert Einstein, Alexandra Kollontai, Angela Davis, Bill Haywood, Charlie Chaplin, David Rovics, Eugene V. Debs, Frida Kahlo, He Zhen, Helen Keller, Howard Zinn, Hélder Câmara, H.G. Wells, Jean‐Paul Sartre, Leila Kahled, Malala Yousafzai, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Orwell (for some of his life at least), Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Rosa Luxemburg, Stephen William Bragg, Thomas Sankara, Víctor Jara, Woody Guthrie, CNT‐FAI, the IWW, and the other socialists mentioned in this section. In addition, the labour & civil rights activist César Chávez, whilst he did deny being communist, still advocated a movement that resembles perhaps most closely (libertarian) communism:

‘I guess that I have an ideology, but it probably cannot be described in terms of any political or economic system. But I think that some power has to come to farm workers and the poor so that they can manage their lives. I don’t care what system that it be; it is not going to work if they don’t have power.’ (Paraphrased; emphasis added. It may also be worth mentioning that Chávez was influenced by the socialist Eugene V. Debs.)

Aside from our interest in equity, some of us (such as Mandela) have also campaigned for prison reform, and some of us have been fixing up streets, giving away food and medicine, making the streets safer for the homeless, healing people gratis, providing abortions gratis, establishing housing cooperatives, organizing thousands of landless peasants, empowering agriculturalists, supporting miners, creating entertainment and luxuries for others, constructing shelters for others, and more. There is an Argentinian factory called FaSinPat which is managed and operated by the proletariat, subsequently improving conditions there. They have provided a tile floor for a café in Hotel Bauen, likewise proletarian‐controlled. In the 1980s, 784 Cubans travelled to Grenada, some being construction workers, medical personnel, diplomatic personnel, teachers, and a little military personnel. They constructed a new, all‐weather, 24‐hour aeroport with a 10,000 foot runway for jumbo jets carrying tourists; they constructed new port facilities for banana boats; and they opened many free health clinics. Fidel Castro said this in Monthly Review’s June 1995 issue:

‘The [Cuban] revolution has sent teachers, doctors, and workers to dozens of Third World countries without charging a penny. It shed its own blood fighting colonialism, fighting apartheid, and fascism. […] At one point we had 25,000 Third World students studying on scholarships. We still have many scholarship students from Africa and other countries. In addition, our country has treated more children [13,000] who were victims of the Chernobyl tragedy than all other countries put together. […] [We are] the country with the most teachers per capita of all countries in the world, including developed countries. The country with the most doctors per capita of all countries [one for every 214 inhabitants]. The country with the most art instructors per capita of all countries in the world. The country with the most sports instructors in the world. That gives you an idea of the effort involved. A country where life expectancy is more than 75 years.’

Similarly over a decade later, they would become the most important supporter to the Haitians after the 2010 earthquake, and provided the most important medical support to western Africa during the Ebola outbreak.

The psycho‐endocrinologist Aron Belkin, a pioneer of Soviet research into sexual reassignment, carried out operations without conducting any psychological testing or employing any other type of psychological expertise (not because he didn’t will it; the republic simply lacked literate psychologists or approved tests to assist him at that time). Similarly, today the Republic of Cuba offers genital reconstructions gratis, and in 2017 the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela officially recognised people’s right to change their names and correct their genders. Earlier during the same year, the Bolivarian Republic also legally recognised a youth with two mothers.

A significant number of Africans came to the Soviet Union and they were generally well treated there, especially in comparison to the pre‐Soviet era, the post‐Soviet one, and North America (as even the obnoxiously antisocialist Radio Free Europe admits, and as the anti‐Bolshevik Russia Beyond has confirmed repeatedly). The Soviets theirselves were frequently outspoken against both colonialism and white supremacy. That is not to say that things couldn’t have been better though; in particular depictions of Africans theirselves could sometimes be rather exotified or primitive (sometimes thanks to naïvely using the West for research); representation needed improvement. But overall, they still treated Africans much better in comparison to other industrialised countries.

The Red Army liberated the Roma from Fascist concentration camps, and in many people’s democracies (such as the Hungarian People’s Republic, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the Socialist Republic of Romania) living conditions for the Roma improved; they gained housing, welfare, healthcare, employment, and gradually certain social rights. Nonetheless, things still could have been much better: the nomadic lifestyles were (still) not tolerated and sometimes the Roma and their culture were overlooked or neglected. The locals’ prejudices against them most likely never fully faded away either. Ultimately however, this era was arguably the best for the Roma (since the introduction of neoliberalism didn’t exactly help with their problems).

Each of the planned economies endeavoured to establish a system of social insurance benefits on a very broad base (far beyond what would ordinarily be considered corresponding to its level of economic development generally). They provided a closely integrated and complete single system for the provision of succour for all disabilities (Transitional Economic Systems, page 237). The cost of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic’s system in particular were to be high, nearly 18% of payroll, contribution rates being 10% for old age and disability, 1% for accidents and 6.8% for illness (Ibid., page 241).

See also §11 for contributions by people in prosocialist regions and territories.

Capitalism has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty[edit]

The claim is supported only thanks to repeatedly redefining ‘poverty’ and diminishing the methods for reducing it. Not only has global poverty not been shrinking, but by some measures, poverty has actually become worse. (Further data.) Oxfam for example has discovered that in many countries wage inequality has increased and that the share of labour compensation in GDP has declined because profits have increased more rapidly than wages. Anarchists in particular have likewise responded thoroughly to the claim that neoliberalism has been decreasing poverty. Only by using a variety of rhetorical tricks, strange economic logic (adding a millionaire to a homeless family would mean that their ‘average income’ increased), and outright distortions, can capitalist intellectuals claim that their economy has reduced poverty. It has not.

Closely related to this myth is that capitalism or specifically neoliberalism has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty: credible only if merely adding more millionaires counts as ‘poverty reduction’; as the anarchist FAQ previously linked stated: inequality actually increased in China (and India) during the 1990s. As of 2015, Hong Kong in particular has a rather interesting way of showing their prosperity: massive income disparity, low wages, hundreds of thousands of citizens living on rooftop slums and subdivided flats, and Oxfam has estimated that the poverty rate amongst those 65 years and older is at 40%. Contrary to popular misbelief, Hong Kong does not have an ungoverned economy, but it certainly doesn’t have a socialist one either. Their business sector has always been highly influential, and the local government has collaborated with them frequently. The profit‐cutting concessions to the masses there, such as public healthcare, were granted only on behalf of the lower classes; they were not the demands of ‘generous’ or ‘ingenious’ entrepreneurs.

Liberal, capitalist governments do not (intentionally) harm their own citizens[edit]

Even ignoring the most obvious exception of the death penalty, this is incorrect. There are many examples of the U.S. government in particular intentionally killing folks at home.

Decades ago the U.S. tested stimulants (biological weapons) on folks who were unwittingly exposed. They also tested them on military applicants (such as Rollins Edwards) based on their ethnicity. (Aside from being unrequested, drafts were the law back then, making any evasion almost impossible.) The practice is actually quite old and is almost certainly occurring to this day. Further examples.

More. (Courtesy of this NSFW(!) resource.)

In addition, there is evidence of the feds consciously targeting racial, sexual, and gender minorities. Oft‐times, while officials may not have explicitly ordered abuse, they are aware that it is happening yet do nothing about it. (If they somehow haven’t learnt about them already, they could certainly look at reports about the poisoning in Flint, Michigan, or the abuses under the prison system.) But why would they ignore the abuses occurring? The answer is that addressing them would be unprofitable in both the short term and the long term: that is how it is relevant to capitalism.

Finally, there is the issue of political liberty, which was historically denied to socialists (as during the 1970s in Illinois), and continues to this day. Arrests are not simply limited to damaging (cheap) property, but other ‘offences’ such as obstructing a shitty pipeline, protesting police brutality, being a vocal Cuban communist, being a prominent, effective charity organizer for Palestine, protesting the President at the wrong place and the wrong time, and more! Even the antisocialist Human Rights Watch has documented numerous domestic offences for which the U.S. government is responsible.

These are just some internal examples. See here for a comprehensive timeline of U.S. atrocities.

The U.K. government in particular has a history of abusing segments of its own population; as, abusing the protesters of an unpopular tax reform, abusing miners who went on strike, and in 1985 abusing hundreds of attendants (including pregnant ones and ones holding infants) at a harmless festival that violated a high court order.

In 1918, the Canadian government outlawed labour organizations (most notably the IWW) and imprisoned their members, often in internment camps. From 1937 to 1957, the Québécois government criminalized promotion of communism and anything perceived as such. In late 1945, Canada’s Prime Minister referred to a supposed Soviet spy ring as an excuse to suspend citizens’ civil liberties, and the oppression lasted for the rest of the 1940s. Outside of the outright political repression, Canadian officials have been coercing indigenous humans into undergoing sterilisations even as late as the 2010s.

According to Blackshirts and Reds, the Yeltsin government—which helped impose neoliberalism on Russia—forcibly dissolved the Russian parliament along with the country’s every other elected representative body, including both municipal and regional councils. They discontinued Russia’s Constitutional Court and launched an armed assault upon the parliament, executing hundreds resisters and demonstrators. (Thousands more were jailed sans charges or trials, and hundreds of elected officials were placed under investigation.) The neoliberal régime’s Omon troops repeatedly assaulted leftist demonstrators and pickets in Moscow as well as other Russian cities. Parliamentary deputy Andrei Aidzerdzis (an Independent) and deputy Valentin Martemyanov (a Communist), who both vigorously opposed the Yeltsin government, became victims of political homicides, as did the journalist Dmitri Kholodov, whom somebody killed in 1994 for probing corruption in ‘high places’. Further information.

Since the 1900s, the Swedish state forcibly sterilized dozens of thousands of people—most of them women and girls. The practice declined in the 1970s, but it was not fully abolished; they coerced scores of transpeople into undergoing the process as well. The government has expressed regret for their programme and has tried to compensate the surviving victims, but with limited success, and in any case Sweden remained a ‘model democracy’ for that entire period. Likewise, from the 1940s to the 1960s, the Swedish state committed thousands of lobotomies (all without the victims’ permission). In 2009, the Swedish state undid many of their concessions to the lower classes, and today they overlook companies (like H&M) who still employ child labour in Eurasia. Since the 2010s Swedish officials have been oppressing people infected with HIV. Norwegian officials have been fining, evicting, and forcibly deporting sex workers, often without warning. In both Norway and Sweden, the Sámi populations have suffered state‐sanctioned theft of their resources, forced assimilations, sterilizations, segregations, evictions, and other nuisances. In recent decades the governments have likewise tried to compensate them somewhat, but these compensations have been inadequately enforced. During the 1940s, Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson and other Swedish social democrats forcibly imprisoned thousands of communists, other antifascists, and certain foreigners in internment camps. (Unsurprisingly, Hansson exclaimed ‘Sweden for Swedes! Swedes for Sweden!’ back in 1924.) In 1941, Prime Minister Erik Scavenius and other Danish social liberals agreed to cooperate with the Third Reich. They prohibited communist parties, imprisoned hundreds of socialists and suspected communists, and signed the Anti‐Comintern Pact. Today, Danish police injure and occasionally kill anarchists in Copenhagen.

Socialism has no popular support[edit]

Over half of youths have a positive view of socialism, and a poll from September 2018 found similar results. Now, within the left there have been pessimistic interpretations, namely that by ‘socialism’ they probably mean reformism, and by capitalism they merely mean neoliberalism. Nonetheless, others feel that this is still an improvement; the reformists could readily be driven to the far‐left, as was the case for some supporters of the reformist Bernie Sanders.

A poll from 2017 indicated that 75% of Venezuelans support socialism. Support for PSUV itself increased in 2017 from 27% to 35%, a humble number but also the highest one among the electoral options. The Bolivarian project remains popular even in spite of the current crisis.

Amongst North Korean defectors, approval for Chairman Kim Jong‐Un is actually above fifty percent.

The overwhelming majority of Soviets were against the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and today many ex‐Soviets miss both the U.S.S.R. and Joseph Stalin and feel that the dissolution did more harm than good, a view that has remained fairly consistent over the decades (such as in 2016 and 2019). (Why?) Many Tajikistanis likewise miss the U.S.S.R.

As reported (and predictably explained away by) the antisocialist New York Times in 2009, many Bulgarians still feel nostalgic for the Soviet era and are dissatisfied with the neoliberal one.

Similarly, a poll from 2009 found many supporters from outside the Eastern Bloc. While the West mostly considered the dissolution to be positive, they also found that many Egyptians, Pakistanis, Indians, and even Indonesians felt that the dissolution was more harmful than anything else. Similarly, many Indonesians have respect for the DPRK.

During the short twentieth century, Jerome Davis visited the Baltics and found that most, if not all of the workers and peasants there preferred being part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (whereas the middle and upper classes freely voiced their objections to him), and everybody that he met (even the upper classes) still preferred the Soviet Republics over the Fascist occupation. (It should also be mentioned that all three of the Baltic states had briefly formed pro‐Bolshevist governments during the Russian Civil War until they were overrun by European imperialists; one could argue that the Soviets were simply restoring what had existed before the anticommunists’ coups.) Similarly, General Krivoshein described the great joy with which Brest’s Belorussian proletariat greeted the Soviet forces as they approached the city.

Concerning the Republic of Cuba in particular, here is what some antisocialist officials had to say (in private, and see page 7):

‘A political vulnerability of the [government] lies in the person of Castro himself. It is not clear whether [it] could continue to operate for long without him. There is no question that the bureaucracy operates relatively freely and probably makes decisions without consulting Castro. However, it is equally certain that the Castro personality and his appeal to the Cuban people is an important element in maintaining popular support for the [government].’

Page 5 of this document states that ex‐president Jimmy Carter was interested in clandestinely supplying explosives to Cubans in order to commit terrorist attacks against the government, saying that it is not a difficult technical operation, but ‘the people have shown no inclination to use such materials despite many exile claims to the contrary.’ Another example from a State Department memo in 1960, which admits that the U.S. shouldn’t really intervene militarily (something proven practically shortly thereafter thanks to the Bay of Pigs invasion) but rather by economic means, as ‘The majority of Cubans support Castro.’

Majority of East Germans do not prefer capitalism. (Even sexual relations were better.)

Many Romanians like communism and miss the Socialist Republic of Romania. This was true in 1999, true again in 2013, and even supported by direct interviews with some modern Romanians.

Examples of prosocialist politicians gaining popularity even in the 1990s.

Further statistics here and here. (On a minor note, while it doesn’t exactly count as ‘support’, most British citizens would at least prefer communism over fascism.)

Is it simply misplaced nostalgia? Perhaps, but in any event the preference does not look good for liberalism: where illiberal republics, even with their flaws, are still preferable to the neoliberalism dominant today.

Most or all socialists are strongly in favour of gun control[edit]

Karl Marx, Eugene Debs, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton on the topic of firearm ownership. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the manufacture, possession, and trade of explosives or ammunition, in addition to the storage of most firearms, could all be done so long as the user had a permit.

‘Other illiberal republics like the former Yugoslavia and nationalist states like Libya guaranteed widespread gun ownership. In the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact countries, military-grade education that included the assembly and use of guns was mandatory for all students in middle school onward, according to Joseph S. Roucek’s October 1960 article, ‘Special Features of USSR’s Secondary Education’.’

In the 1960s, socialist Prime Minister Enver Hoxha said this:

‘All our people are armed in the full meaning of the word. Every Albanian city-dweller or villager, has his weapon at home. Our army itself, the army of a soldier people, is ready at any moment to strike at any enemy or coalition of enemies. The youth, too, have risen to their feet. Combat readiness does not in any way interfere with our work of socialist construction. On the contrary, it has given a greater boost to the development of the economy and culture in our country.’

The socialist chair Máo Zédōng famously stated that ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ This has sometimes been cited as his impetus for supposedly disarming the public, but the People’s Republic of China had no firearm regulations. He was praising firearms.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans own firearms. The Republic of Cuba’s constitution itself states that all citizens have the right to struggle through all means, included armed ones, against anybody who tries to overthrow the political, social, and economic order. Indeed, Castro ordered that all proletarians (including women) be armed for the defence of their home. The government began a programme of armament to the entire Cuban populace and training it in basic military tactics.

The DPRK’s constitution states that ‘The State shall implement the line of self-reliant defense, the import of which is to train the army to be a cadre army, modernize the army, arm all the people and fortify the country on the basis of equipping the army and the people politically and ideologically.’

Most people in socialist states are constantly starving or are malnourished, and it’s because of socialism[edit]

It is true that many illiberal republics experienced famines, but rarely are all of the causes closely examined. For example, the Ukrainian one of the 1930s probably cannot be traced to any single cause, but overall it was neither exclusively nor even fundamentally induced by artificial means: awful weather and pestilence were a few factors, but it didn’t help that many of the landowners were protesting Soviet collectivization by destroying their crops [1], [2] and generally making a mess of the place. Nonetheless, like the one in the People’s Republic of China, perhaps some responsibility should be given to—yes—the authorities or central planners (though these flaws are amendable within the socialist context). What is remarkable about these places however is that although they did experience some famines after they were revolutionized, the socialists also stopped the series of famines that the countries were experiencing long before they were revolutionized, with no thanks to the capitalists. For example, after 1947 the Soviet Union experienced no more famines, but even before then they distributed famine relief to the Uk.S.S.R. in the 1920s and the 1930s. No surprise since Stalin was consistently very sympathetic to the landless and poor peasants, and many landless peasants supported his administration. Likewise, China saw no more famines after 1961. (And even this last one was not their worst. Recent research indicates that the toll was almost certainly closer to four million or five million: worrisome statistics regardless, but clearly not ones that antisocialists would like.)

Evidence elsewhere reconfirms that it is usually (though not always) capitalists rather than socialists who cause food deficiencies. The Republic of Chile experienced resistance from the bourgeoisie, who withheld food in protest of the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende; they even paid truckers to simply stop labouring. The case is similar in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In Korea, imperialists intentionally destroyed as much land as they could to impede agricultural efforts. In Malaysia, anticommunists poisoned the crops of socialists. In the German Democratic Republic, imperialists deliberately poisoned livestock. Anticommunists consciously initiated famines in the invaded Soviet territories. In Vietnam, imperialists deliberately targeted cultivated land and poisoned crops. In the 1980s, the capitalist West imposed sanctions on the Polish People’s Republic, worsening their food situation. In the Socialist Republic of Romania’s case, part of the reason for insufficient food was that the government spent much of its money on paying all of their foreign debts; trying to become independent. The Republic of Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea experienced food crises in part only after antisocialism destroyed their allies (in the DPRK’s case natural disasters were also major contributors). Rather than donating the food that they waste constantly, neoimperialists sought to punish these republics for their lack of ideological conformity, so they obstructed them and their imports. We must not overlook, however, the factors that cannot be blamed on capitalism: the natural and climatic conditions of agriculture of the Soviet Union in particular were both severe and unstable; no other major country faced such serious issues in overcoming the negative influence on agricultural production. For example, agroclimatologists estimated that on average the conditions were 2–2.5 times worse than those in the U.S.A. Generally over sixty per cent of the country’s territory was periodically plagued with droughts and other unfavourable weather influences. At the same time that zone normally accounted for approximately seventy‐five per cent of grain deliveries.

Ultimately however, the people’s democracies were not in a perpetual state of famine as capitalists tiresomely imply. For example, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has their own cuisine like the Soviet Union did; many illustrations of foods exist from the Soviet era, and so do recordings from the People’s Republic of China during the short twentieth century. In May 1945 the Soviets distributed scores of tons of food to the Berlin populace. In 1947 the Soviets also successfully prevented a famine from occurring in Poland. They as well as their allies also prevented one in Czechoslovakia [3], and later would do the same for North Korea too. Unsurprisingly, annual grain production in the Kwangtung Province increased. By 1976 the average caloric intake of the Soviet population was 3,300. Similarly, a 1983 report discovered that Soviets and U.S. citizens ate about the same amount of food quotidianly, but the Soviet diet may have be more nutritious; they put the daily caloric intake at 3,280. A lengthier report can be found here. (If the C.I.A. is writing something positive about their enemies, then it was likely never meant for public announcements.) The Republic of Cuba has been a world leader in organic farming for a while now. All Cuban citizens are legally entitled to food. The German Democratic Republic had their own foods, such as Spreewald pickles, Mocha Fix, Schnittchen, and Schnitzel, amongst others. Albanians were fed mutton, garlic soup, sea trout, salami, shish qebab, apricots, &c. Quote:

‘[The People’s Socialist Republic of] Albania is among the European countries with least arable land per head of population. Nevertheless, by relying on the cooperativist order, the ever increasing needs of consumption, industry and export for bread grain and other agricultural and livestock products are ever better fulfilled in conformity with the requirements of the socio-economic development of the country.’

Soviet cooperatives in the 1920s were quite important to the economy; they produced butter, sugar beets, eggs, grain, and other goods for the people; agricultural cooperatives had millions of members. After World War II ended, the Soviet Union had a positive population growth for the remainder of their existence. From 1949 to the late 1960s the consumption of meat, dairy, eggs, fish, sugar, tea, and alcohol all rose in the Polish People’s Republic, the GDR, and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The Republic of Chile’s beef and bread consumption increased by 15% from 1971 to 1972. They also initiated a programme to provide every Chilean child with a half‐litre of milk daily. (See Roger Morris’s Through the Looking Glass in Chile.) In 1973 Chilean socialists went out on the street, loading goods with their bare hands, struggling so that the their towns did not go short on food. Some of the carriers (who supported Salvador Allende) organized convoys to distribute food in the provinces. The population also developed a family supply system that they called ‘the people’s basket’. The People’s Republic of China became food‐sufficient by the late 1970s, and today they are the second least food‐wasting country in existence; they are making good progress in addressing the malnutrition issues that do exist in some rural areas. During the Sandinista period the Nicaraguan socialists initiated a food programme: every Nicaraguan child had a ration of beans and rice so that the entire country, no matter how poor it was, was being fed; the Republic of Nicaragua’s staple foods consumption increased 30%. (See Alexander Sukhostat, Nicaragua—Defending the Revolution, Political Affairs, December 1981, pages 28–35; Collins, What Difference Could a Revolution Make?) In both the Polish People’s Republic and the Soviet Union, the states refused to raise bread prices, thus a loaf cost only a few pennies, even less than animal feed (which amusingly encouraged farmers to purchase bread over the feed). Grenada’s New JEWEL Movement distributed free milk and other foodstuffs to the needy; they leased unused land in order to establish farm cooperatives and sought to turn agriculture away from their cash‐crop exports in exchange for self‐sufficient food production instead (as documented by Michael Massing in February of 1984). A report published by the UNDP indicated a steep increase in the number of calories available for Venezuelans between the late 1990s and 2010. The Food and Agriculture Organization gave the republic a special commendation in 2013 for the socialists’ exemplary work reducing malnourishment. The same organization also noted that the number of undernourished Venezuelans was 2.8 million between 1990 and 1992, rose to 3.8 million between 2000 and 2002, but fell to a statistically insignificant number by 2010 to 2012. They likewise calculated that there were 3,020 calories available per person daily in Venezuela, a figure much larger than the 1,800 per person daily that it recommends as a minimum and far larger than the one of under 1,800 available in 1999. (This achievement is admittedly due in some part to their sale of oil, but it is a fine example of rational distribution nonetheless.) Venezuelan communes are expanding small‐scale urban agriculture to help with their homeland’s current food situation, and 70% of the food consumed in Venezuelan houses today is a product of small‐scale family agriculture. Havana has a good number of food providers, and many of them have their organic urban agriculture to thank for that. U.N. statistics (pgs. 79–102) note that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea vastly outperforms the Republic of Korea’s production of corn, wheat, soybeans, potatoes, apples, cotton, & hemp, and, unsurprisingly, they have been reducing malnourishment consistently this century.

Concerning the Ukrainian Free Territory (written from an anarchocommunist perspective):

‘By late 1917, in the area around Hulyai Pole ‘the toiling masses proceeded […] to consolidate their revolution. The little factories functioned […] under the control of the workers. The estates were split up […] among the peasants […] a certain number of agricultural communes were formed.’ […] agricultural communes ‘were in most cases organised by peasants, though sometimes their composition was a mixture of peasants and work[ers]. Their organisation was based on equality and solidarity of the members. All members of these communes — both men and women — applied themselves willingly to their tasks, whether in the field or the household.’ […] people were given the personal space [that] they desired, so ‘any members of the commune who wanted to cook separately for themselves and their children, or to take food from the communal kitchens and eat it in their own quarters, met with no objection from the other members.’ The management of each commune ‘was conducted by a general meeting of all its members.’’

(Nonetheless, it is perhaps only fair to admit that in spite of their adequate functionality, these collectives had limited popularity in Ukraine. Details—in part from a neo‐Bolshevist’s critical perspective—can be read here. Early cooperative farms in the People’s Republic of Mozambique faced similar challenges. See A Difficult Road, chapter 4 for more.)

Concerning the Spanish revolution of the 1930s:

‘Many of these peasants, together with the C.N.T., organised collectives, pooling their land, animals, tools, chickens, grain, fertiliser, and even their harvested crops. […] In Montblanc the collective dug up the old useless vines and planted new vineyards. The land, improved by modern cultivation with tractors, yielded much bigger and better crops. […] In many places I observed plants growing in the shade of the orange trees. ‘What is this?,’ I asked. I learned that the Levant peasants (famous for their ingenuity) have abundantly planted potatoes among the orange groves. The peasants demonstrate more intelligence than all the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture combined. They do more than just plant potatoes. Throughout the whole region of the Levant, wherever the soil is suitable, they grow crops. They take advantage of the four month fallow period in the rice fields. Had the Minister of Agriculture followed the example of these peasants throughout the Republican zone, the bread shortage problem would have been overcome in a few months.’ (These rural collectives also supplied food to front‐line troops!)

Michael Parenti, in his book Inventing Reality, had this to say about the U.S.S.R. of the early 1980s:

‘The corporate media has made U.S. grain exports to the Soviet Union the most highly publicized international sales agreement in history. Western Europe annually imports far more grain than does the U.S.S.R., but of course no one in the corporate media or the government accuses West Germany or Benilux countries of being unable to feed their own populace. In contrast, every Soviet grain deal with the United States is front page news, a tiresome reminder to the Yankee public of the allegedly superior productivity of Yankee agribusiness & the ‘failure’ of collectivism. The truth is something else.

Today the Soviets produce more than enough grain to feed theirselves. They import foreign grain to help feed their livestock & thereby increase their meat & dairy consumption. (This is seen in both the East & West as an ‘improved’ diet, even though there is evidence suggesting that a high meat & dairy intake is not necessarily the best diet.) It takes between seven & fourteen pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. And that is the cause of the Soviet ‘grain shortage.’ In actuality, per capita meat consumption in the U.S.S.R. has doubled in the last two decades & exceeds such countries as Norway, Italy, Greece, Spain, Japan, & Israel. Milk production has jumped almost sixty percent in two decades so that today the U.S.S.R. is by far the largest milk-producing country in the world. According to the 1982 C.I.A. report on the Soviet economy, ‘The Soviet Union remains basically self‐sufficient with respect to food.’ These are the accomplishments of an agrarian labour force that decreased from 42% in 1960 to 20% in 1980, working in a country where over 90% of the land is either too arid or too frigid for farming.’ (Source.)

A detailed Western report from 1985 concerning agricultural output. Pages 100–106 deal specifically with the agriculture in the Eastern Bloc. Quote:

‘In the past two decades gains in crop and livestock production and meat consumption have been impressive. […] The Eastern Bloc accounts for a significant share of world production of wheat, rye, barley, oats, potatoes, sunflowerseed, and sugar beets. The U.S.S.R. is the world’s largest producer of potatoes, barley, rye, oats, sunflowerseed and sugar beets. It is second in wheat production and roughly equal with the United States in second place in cotton production.’

Data from the World Health Organization as of 2017 indicate that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam all have a malnutrition rate of less than 2.00. This was also true in 2016. Similarly, as of 2018 the Global Hunger Index has rated the Republic of Cuba and the People’s Republic of China as ‘low’ on their index, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Republic of Nicaragua, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam scored ‘moderate’. (Admittedly, they did confusingly score the DPRK as ‘serious’, but the reasons for this are probably complicated…)

Concerning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as of 2017:

‘International sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea appear to be biting their civilian economy more than in the past, arousing concerns that the country’s historically precarious food supply, which has also been adversely affected by dry weather this spring, is jeopardised. However, the context matters. Food production in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has grown remarkably over the past few years; even if food production declines a bit, it may not be disastrous. Moreover, estimates by U.N. agencies, which are generally regarded as authoritative, tend to overstate how much food distribution by the state really matters. Although the evidence is far from conclusive, current market prices do not indicate that a food crisis or emergency is presently at hand.’

So were there food deficiencies or empty shelves in the Eastern Bloc & alibi? There were empty shelves there and then, yes, but that does not necessarily mean that the citizens were all famished; refrigerators were often well stocked even if the stores theirselves were not. Hunger had not been, and was not in later decades, a part of the Soviet scene. As Dr. Kenneth Gray, the White House’s top expert on Soviet agriculture, said in his testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress ‘…the food shortages in the USSR are occurring at fairly respectable levels of consumption.’ The causes for empty shelves furthermore are fairly complex and cannot simply be reduced to a lack of capitalism. For example, many managers made the seemingly logical but ultimately erroneously assumption that productive labourers ought to be given grander workloads while relatively unproductive labourers should receive lighter workloads, unintentionally encouraging many to work lightly. Another instance is the Polish People’s Republic during the 1970s, where the prices of food were artificially reduced to low prices, partially in commitment to egalitarian principles but also by worker demand. Both consumption and production rose, but not in equilibrium. The Polish People’s Republic’s main exports were food and coal, but later the balance turned negative; cash stopped flowing in, the debt became overwhelming, the Polish economy was obliged to export even more for payments, and then food deficiencies and rationing occurred. A black market and extra civil unrest naturally followed, though neither helped with the problem. In the end though, these territories were not constantly suffering severe levels of malnutrition. (One has to wonder how the citizens maintained their high lifespans and average physiques as they waited in long queues only to presumably receive absolutely nothing.)

Socialism has not and never will work[edit]

The response depends on whom you ask, as many of us define socialism differently.

Some socialists insist that socialism must, by definition, abolish the law of value (‘the mutual exchangeability of products of equal social labour’), abolish (generalised) commodity production, and extinguish capital (in other words, negate capitalism); arguably many of the communes, republics, and other projects might fall short of those qualifications. There are furthermore some who insist that it be a global phenomenon like capitalism is today, a criterion under which they’d all certainly fall short. But world socialism is possible because the dominant economic model has been replaced numerous times: for a while it was chattel slavery, and then it was feudalism, something which has actually persisted longer than capitalism has. While it is difficult to accurately predict when we have all finally had enough of capitalism, the fact of the matter is that society does mutate, both on small scales and sometimes on large ones. Other sceptics insist that capitalism is eternal due to our ‘biology’, in which case, see objection four again. There are furthermore arguments that planned economics would be far too cumbersome for individuals or collectives to handle. It is highly disputable that such blissfully unaware arguments would apply at all, and they furthermore ignore the immense use that modern technology already offers to a planning process. It has more‐or‐less already been tested in an illiberal republic but with primitive computers, e.g.:

‘What Soviet economic planners resorted to was running smaller spreadsheets. They handled only a few thousand key products and ran these through their mainframe computers as linear programmes: for these the equations [could] be solved. This explains one of the strengths of the Soviet economy: it did well on certain key projects like the space programme which can be given priority in the planning process, but there [was] just not the computer power available to apply the same techniques more widely.’

A more relaxed definition of socialism is that it can exist on a smaller scale, in which case, there are plenty of examples, from Burkina Faso, Grenada, Catalonia, the Paris Commune, the Hungarian Commune, Seychelles, Shinmin Prefecture, the Zapatistas, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Rojava or Free Territory. The brief lifespans of many of these is not, as capitalists typically imply, purely the result of internal collapse, but from capitalist corruption.

Rojava’s socialist movement—even in spite of the embargoes and other nuisances that imperialists have imposed on them, and their (limited) tolerance for privatization and Yankee intervention—has massively increased gender equality, ethnic equality, healthcare access, education access, autonomy, political democracy, harnessed the local resources largely for use rather than profit, and more. They have greatly improved and modernized their region in many ways.

Grenada’s New JEWEL Movement made grade school and secondary education gratis for all, a first in the territory’s history. They also distributed materials for home improvement to the needy, saw unemployment dropped dramatically from 49% to 14% in three years, took measures in support of equal pay and equal legal status for women, and saw cultural and sports programmes set up for youths, all of this in addition to the healthcare and food mentioned earlier. (See Michael Massing’s Grenada Before and After written in Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.)

Spain improved dramatically from the socialist revolution of the 1930s. The benefits are numerous: labourers in both agricultural and industrial sectors continued production effectively and devoid of any hierarchy involved; working conditions and output were both improved; healthcare became gratis; education was increased; gender equality started to flourish in part thanks to Mujeres Libres; and living standards in general improved, all done in spite of the anticommunist aggression. Catalonia’s anarchist movement created not only a defence industry from almost nothing, but also improved working conditions and innovated with new techniques and processes. They demonstrated that self‐management is possible, that it allows a massive increase in innovation and new ideas, and that the constructive powers of people inspired by an ideal can transform society. In Barcelona for example, the labourers ran the trains, cinemas, factories, department stores, and even greyhound tracks. The trade unions managed food supplies; union lorries drove out to the villages with goods to trade for food. Barter (rather than purchasing) sustained the region for the first weeks of the Civil War. In some cases money successfully fell into disuse; people could do shopping with vouchers that local committees issued.

The Indian state Kerala, where the actions of popular organizations and mass movements have gained important victories over the last four or so decades against political and economic oppression, has generated a level of social development better than that found in most of the other superexploited (‘third world’) countries and accomplished without any external investments. As of the 1990s the literacy there is widespread, the birth and death rates are lower than those in the rest of India, the public health services are superior, the under‐age labourers are fewer, the nutritional levels are higher with thanks to a publicly subsidized food rationing programme, women have more enlightened legal support and educational programmes, and finally some social security protections for the proletariat and for the destitute and physically disabled. The Kerala proletariat radically altered a complex and exploitative economy of agrarian relations and gained important victories against the more horrid forms of caste oppression. All of this was accomplished in spite of low income, low resources, some persistent poverty, and no special sources of wealth; it is with thanks to socialist organization and political struggle that has affected large numbers of citizens that the state’s democracy was electrified. [1], [2]

Finally, there are places such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People’s Republic of China, repetitively referenced as ‘failures of socialism’. The reality is that even these homelands were still vast improvements compared to the previous states of affairs: the People’s Republic of China had briefer working hours (especially compared to the 2000s), higher literacy rates, higher and better life expectancies, democratic communes, and a greater population (so much so that experts have predicted that India would have benefited far more from adopting the P.R.C.’s route). The same is true for the Soviet Union, and there were other accomplishments: the numerous achievements in the space race (which influenced U.S. science) including the first, albeit unmanned, mission to the moon, the first modern mobile phone (previous mobiles were usually restricted to vehicles and occasionally some suitcases), rapid industrialization thanks to their prioritization of use‐value (an important socialist principle), an elaborate system of underground transit, the Bezostaia crop, other inventions, the highest number of doctors per capita in the world (in fact the highest physician‐patient ratio in the world), an elaborate democracy, and all historians concur that nobody but the Soviet Union deserves most of the credit for ending the Third Reich. Healthcare, shelter, transport, water, education, and many foods were either very cheap or gratis. Education improved. Economic equality, while imperfect, was still much better, including for single mothers. Unemployment decreased severely and economic growth continued for seven decades (statistically unemployment is often put at 0%, but this is likely a slight exaggeration reliant on the Soviets’ definition). During the Great Depression, many people consciously sought refuge in the U.S.S.R. (at least for a while). Poverty decreased massively. In 1920, when the first plan of electrification was drawn up, there were ten district power stations in the Soviet Union with a total power production of 253,000 kilowatts. In 1935, there were already ninety‐five of these stations with a total power of 4,345,000 kilowatts. A decade earlier, the Soviet Union stood eleventh in the production of electro-energy; she was second only to Germany and the United States. During the fiscal year 1927–1928 production of electrical energy in the Soviet Union amounted to 3,000,000,000 kilowatt hours, triple the antebellum figure. (Lenin hisself noted that ‘Communism = Soviet power + electrification.’) The Soviets prioritised nuclear power (which strained the environment less than conventional power). In their key goal of electricity the Soviets were already doing better by 1990 than the leading European capitalist nations a quarter century later.

Contrary to popular belief, dissent was not overwhelmingly restricted, not even during the 1930s and 1940s. With a few exceptions (the People’s Soc. Rep. of Albania, the Soc. Rep. of Romania, and the R.S.F.S.R. from 1936–1955), abortions were freely permitted; in fact the R.S.F.S.R. was the first country to fully deregulate the procedure. Lobotomy was prohibited as early as 1950 in the Soviet Union. Soviet physicians vaccinated millions of people (against cholera) in the early 1920s alone; they likewise made improvements in public services such as waterworks and sanitation. They not only vaccinated their citizens but also fed them, educated them about hygiene, and maintained the (prerevolutionary) administrative structure and system of emergency response. Since 1955, the Soviets used a lyophilized rabies vaccine extensively. The vaccine was developed by Likhachev. They vaccinated millions of people against measles in the 1970s. Anti‐rabies aid was fully decentralized and inoculation against rabies was carried out by a wide network of institutions for prevention and treatment. Soviet scientist Mikhail Chumakov organized the first industrial production and mass use of oral poliovirus vaccine from Dr. Albert Sabin’s strains. [1], [2] After successful clinical trials conducted in the Soviet Union that left polio virtually wiped out with no safety issues, it soon became the vaccine of choice in the West. In 1958 the Soviet Union proposed to the World Health Assembly that the World Health Organization undertake a global eradication programme of smallpox, which was approved in 1959. Within a decade a number of countries embarked on mass vaccination campaigns, and the People’s Republic of China (among several other countries) successfully eliminated the disease. The Soviets likewise gladly participated in the eradication of smallpox including in the Aral. The Scientific Research Institute of Oncology and Medical Radiology of the Ministry of Health of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic pioneered the operation involving the transplantation of the left adrenal with the right adrenalectomy in people with advanced breast carcinoma. They demonstrated that objective remission in 70% of patients. The DPRK has immunized much of their population from diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.

On December 22, 1982, both the Supreme Soviet and the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party unanimously approved a nuclear arms freeze resolution (almost identical to the version that had been passed by numerous municipalities and states throughout the United States). They also (unsuccessfully) plead to the U.S.A. for a prohibition on nuclear testing, and for damn good reason too. The Soviets had less of a military arms buildup than the U.S.A. The Eastern Bloc and its allies were the forerunners in opposing African colonisation and specifically the South African Apartheid. Largely as planned, the status of women improved greatly (even if imperfectly); the proportion of Soviet women engineers in 1980 was 58% for instance, and they achieved suffrage before the U.S. did. The Red Chinese made similar progress.

The People’s Republic of Mozambique enjoyed higher literacy rates, mass vaccinations, a more democratic education, agricultural advancements, a (much) less hierarchal administration, and more. The Republic of Cuba, which benefited in many ways from the revolution (including great education, a solid democracy, higher lifespans, lower infant mortality, less poverty), full electrification, and more, is famous for its number of medical professionals, causing some people to return there and seek their medical training there. (Even the antisocialist Bloomberg placed the Republic of Cuba’s healthcare above the U.S.’s, and the antisocialist New York Times has confirmed that U.S. students do travel there to seek medical training.) Unsurprisingly, their scientists were the first to introduce a vaccine for lung cancer, and Time reported that they have eliminated the transmission of HIV through pregnancies as well. Both they and the People’s Republic of China have distributed 933 tons of medicine to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania increased literacy, electricity, gender equality, employment, healthcare access, abolished taxation, and supported Indonesian socialists. The Socialist Republic of Romania, in spite of their tolerance for imperialism and prioritization of Western debts (which they eventually paid off), transitioned from a monarchofascist state to a prosocialist republic, which strongly improved healthcare, eradicated illiteracy, and employed more educators. Between 1960 and 1980 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had one of the most vigorous growth rates, along with medical care and education gratis, a guaranteed right to an income, one‐month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90%, a life expectancy of 7.2 decades, in addition to its inexpensive public transport, housing, and utilities—in a mostly publicly owned, market‐socialist economy—for its multi‐ethnic citizenry. As late as 1990, better than 60% of the total labour force was in the public sector, much of it self‐managed. Croats, Serbs, and others lived together in relative contentment, experiencing quotidian friendships throughout the regions before May 1991. The Red Chinese abolished serfdom in Tibet, the many crushing taxes, the compulsory religious observance, in addition to severely reducing the unemployment, beggary, and hierarchy, while constructing new projects such as secular schools, running water and electrical systems in the region. In 2011, they freed twenty‐four thousand abducted women and children.

Ethiopian socialists emancipated serfs after defeating an anticommunist monarch in the 1970s. They dug wells, purchased machinery for the people, constructed schools and health clinics, provided women and others with the means of self‐defence, formed massive peasant organizations that assumed the tasks of dividing the land, constructed dams and irrigation ditches, distributed both fertilizer and improved seeds, established marketing cooperatives, and rose farm production by 10%. Due to the National Work Campaign for Development Through Cooperation, some 4,377,900 functional literacy books were published in various regions; over two hundred medical clinics were established; peasants were taught the elementary rules of hygiene, diet and child care; mass vaccinations were carried out against tuberculosis and small pox; and nearly half a million cattle were inoculated against animal disease. The German Democratic Republic compared better to West Germany in many respects. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has benefited greatly from its socialist movement; their communes have been very successful for example. The list goes on. Even the number of famines was decreasing; the Uk.S.S.R.’s one from the early 1930s was Ukraine’s last famine, and it, like the Chinese famine, was stopped with no thanks to the capitalists. The disasters were not intentional as capitalists tiresomely suggest and never substantiate; Máo, Stalin, and others were not in denial that they made mistakes.

Concerning Stalin and the Indians:

“Soon after Indian independence in 1947, the country was faced with an alarming shortage of food grain. The Indian government urgently requested both USA and USSR to send in food aid. While, the American officials were working on the modalities for food grain aid, working out its terms and conditions, when the Indian request reached Kremlin, USSR, Stalin immediately ordered a food-grain laden ship that was already on its way to a different destination, to change course and go to India. A top Kremlin official intervened saying that documents are yet to be completed and signed, to which Stalin said ‘Documents can wait, hunger cannot.’” (Indian diplomat, P. Ratnam disclosed the above conversation to a group of journalists at the Indian Embassy in Moscow in 1950. See Mazdoor Bigul archive, December, 2005.)

The Unknown Cultural Revolution, written by somebody who lived in the People’s Republic of China at the time, goes into detail about the positive effects of education reform, agricultural and industrial progress, and political empowerment brought by the Cultural Revolution (especially in rural areas).

Some antisocialists assert that a socialist economy would be just as pollutive—if not worse—than a capitalist one. Indeed, pollution and irresponsible use of the environment (such as the Aral Sea’s desiccation) were very significant issues in the late U.S.S.R.; Is the Red Flag Flying? mentions the internal disputes over them, but such problems can frequently be traced back to the immense pressure to compete and defend against capitalist aggression; they are by no means structural to socialist theory. For example, as early as 1845 Marx would recognise the damage that capitalist industry was causing the earth’s rivers, and later Vladimir Lenin would inspire many ecosocialists in the U.S.S.R. Song of the Forest documents how the Soviet environment was treated during Stalin’s lifetime, and mentions specifically the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature that he spearheaded. Socialists have also massively benefited the Rojavan environment, and the ‘[Republic of] Cuba’s successful models of sustainable development — in areas of food, housing and health — are now being widely replicated throughout Latin America.’ Over 73% of the DPRK’s electricity comes from clean sources and the Republic of Cuba is slowly catching up with them. (In contrast, only about 2% of South Korea’s energy comes from renewable sources.) Reuters did a report (in their typical, obnoxious antisocialist fashion) on solar panels in the DPRK.

The Republic of Cuba also has the best response system in the Caribbean, with less than a hundred deaths in the past decade or so. They have successfully evacuated up to 1.5 million people and weathered the most catastrophic hurricanes to date. ‘Each residential block has somebody assigned to take a census on who is being evacuated to which shelter, with special attention paid to the elderly and pregnant people, and as efforts are organized locally, compliance is increased.’ A big part of the Cuban resilience to hurricanes and similar extreme weather (compared to other Caribbean nations) is also that they have not cut down all their forests; it is a conscious decision to keep forests up as that keeps the force of winds down. (Comparatively: other islands get devastated as they have done more deforestation.) The Global Footprint Network has likewise evaluated the Republic of Cuba as being ecologically sustainable (in contrast to the U.S.A.). They have 30.6% forest coverage due to their reforestation programme for example.

A complex 2017 analysis of politics and economics in the DPRK. Quote:

‘Prior to the revolution, land was concentrated in the hands of an astonishingly small Japanese elite. The Worker’s Party undertook a gradual but steady process of converting private land ownership into cooperative organizations. Beginning with the process of post-war reconstruction in 1953, only 1.2% of peasant households were organized as cooperatives, which encompassed a mere .6% of total acreage. By August of 1958, 100% of peasant households were converted into cooperatives, encompassing 100% of total acreage.’

For more information: a very exhaustive reading list. See here for more. Also worth noting is that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea abolished taxation in the 1970s and they have experienced respectable economic growth even despite droughts and sanctions.

A 2016 analysis of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which notes that both ‘inflation and unemployment were both considerably lower during’ the first years of the Chávez administration. Among other features:

‘The government has taken a series of actions that could be characterized as “socialistic,” although many of these measures are more accurately described as social democratic. Under Chávez the government significantly increased spending on healthcare, education, and social services. Access to food, housing, and basic utilities was partially decommodified through state subsidies and price controls. This led to dramatic reductions in poverty, inequality, and child malnutrition, major increases in school and university enrollments, and a quadrupling of the number of pensioners.’

A complex 2017 analysis of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Quote:

‘Venezuela is now the country in the region with the lowest inequality level (measured by the Gini Coefficient) having reduced inequality by 54%, poverty by 44%. Poverty has been reduced from 70.8% in 1996 to 21% in 2010. Extreme poverty was reduced from 40% in 1996 to a very low level of 7.3% in 2010. About 20 million people have benefited from anti-poverty programs, called Misiones. Up to now, 2.1 million elders have received old-age pensions — that is 66% of the population while only 387,000 received pensions before the revolution.’

Further sources on the U.S.S.R. See also this exhaustive list of reading materials concerning the U.S.S.R. Finally: a very exhaustive list of resources concerning state socialism in general.

The accomplishments of socialists are rarely mentioned along with their mistakes. Often they are dismissed as either unimportant or uninteresting (they are neither), or sometimes only done in spite of their socialism (which is false). The reason usually given for dismissal is simply that they did not last long enough, but as mentioned earlier, the causes were never entirely internal, as one can see in the German Democratic Republic for one example.

‘[E]very socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.’

If anything, it is remarkable that socialists have accomplished so much in spite of their challenges, whereas capitalism’s tendency to erase competition is further proof of its corruption.

To paraphrase Michael Parenti:

‘[State socialism] in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, brought land reform, and human services; a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or never since witnessed in human history[.] [State socialism] transformed desperately poor countries into societies in which everyone had adequate food, shelter, medical care, and education… and some of us who come from poor families, who carry around the hidden injuries of class, are very impressed—are very, very impressed by these achievements, and are not willing to dismiss them as ‘economistic’. To say that socialism doesn’t ‘work’ is to overlook the fact that it did work and that it worked for hundreds of millions of people.’

References[edit]

Collectivized from old.reddit.com/r/shitliberalssay/wiki (Communists despise liberals)

↑ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf