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leftism is bestism
(quokk.au)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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I’m “collectivize the farms and factories” left, and even I recognize that it’s a hell of a lot easier to get to the second state from the first state than from where we are now.
While that's true, I think by positioning ourselves at the 2nd state, it allows us to "negotiate" our way down to getting the 1st state. Its kind of like haggling. If you start at the more extreme position, opposition will (in an ideal scenario) try to find a middle ground to agree on. And that middle ground would look like the 1st state. It's a way of combatting the ratcheting effect.
Are you aware of how many people starved when farms were collectivized in the Soviet Union?
The Kolkhoz system in the Soviet Union is really not to dissimilar to modern farming practices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz
The system of petty/peasant farming is over. Successful farms are already "collectivized", and hire farmhands to do the work.
https://www.epi.org/blog/how-many-farmworkers-are-employed-in-the-united-states/
WTF are you talking about? Undocumented immigrants are the peasant class of the USA. Are you so out of touch you don't know who harvests the food you eat?
Proletarians work for a wage, peasants do not. The undocumented immigrants on USA farms are proletarians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant
Your main claim was that, the Soviet Union "collective" farming system caused famine; but in reality it was just the conversion from traditional feudal peasant farming to modern capitalist farming, entirely orchestrated by the state.
Modern farms are already "collectivized" and so your claim does not hold water or is at best accurate but completely irrelevant to the modern day.
Well you're a pedantic one aren't you? Undocumented immigrants don't have the rights of a citizen and therefore are a lower class. They work in the agricultural sector for the landowner while having no rights. That's a peasant to me, but go a head and continue be pedantic about everything to avoid having any new thoughts.
It is possible to improve on the methods and priorities of previous attempts.
The problem with the previous attempts was prioritizing ideology over real life problems. Doesn't sound like socialists are capable of understanding why that's a problem because they believe that conforming to ideology will magically solve all problems. Just like they believed that in the Soviet Union... which is what caused the famines.
It was actually not the case, the USSR was the most materialist and least idealist country. The 1929 collectivization drive was kicked together with the first 5-year economic plan of the Soviet Union, which drove a growth of 10%+ in economic output YEARLY during the following decade. This was a necessary preparation measure against the constant threat of external invasion for the sin of being communist, as demonstrated during the Russian Civil War when the Reds were invaded by England, France, the USA, Italy, France and Germany, all of whom helped the Whites in hopes of restoring absolutist monarchy and the Russian Empire. Stalin famously gave a speech in 1931 saying that the USSR was 50-100 years behind in industrialization and they had 10 years to make up for it or they would be crushed. 10 years later, Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
If it hadn't been for the industrial boom made possible by the rapid collectivization of agriculture, the Soviets would have lost to the Nazis, leading to the extermination of tens of millions of Eastern Europeans according to the Generalplan Ost, ideologically very similar to the contemporary genocide of Palestinians by Isn'treal as an attempt of settler colonialism. Additionally, the industrialization led to the total elimination of famine in a formerly backwater feudal Russian Empire, raising the life expectancy from about 30 years in the 1920s to 60+ years by 1955.
There were mistakes and failures in the collectivization policy which led to a degree of unnecessary suffering, but these weren't due to idealism, Marxist-Leninists are fundamentally materialist in their analysis which is the polar opposite of idealism, they were the consequence of lack of knowledge and of hurries to do the first successful complete collectivization of land of a nation in human history.
I didn't know socialists were GDP-obsessed neoliberals here, socialism is good because it outpaces capitalism in GDP growth? How nice.
And five years before that, Stalin was collaborating with the Nazis. Strange.
And at the same Stalin was deporting millions as part of his policy of russification. Do you apologize for all the other Allied Powers war crimes during WW2 as well? Critical support to FDR and the USA war machine?
Socialism is when the government does stuff
So you're saying it's fine that 8 million people starved because ideological bullshit goals were achieved? Fucking commie Marie Antoinette over here. Let them eat ideology!
Not because ideological goals were achieved. If you read my comment you'll see I'm concerned with material outcomes. Eliminating Nazism saved tens of millions of lives. Industrializing the Soviet Union eliminated hunger and gave universal healthcare, saving tens of millions of lives. Compare the life expectancy of the USSR in 1929 with that of Brazil 1929 (countries with similar level of development) and you'll see that the rapid industrialization by the 1970s had led to such massive improvements of life expectancy that tens of millions of lives were saved in comparison with Brazil, no other country industrialized so quickly up to that point in history. I care about saving tens of millions of lives, yes, and you're also inflating the number of deaths from starvation
This is a fallacy. You're assuming only socialism in Russia could've lead to the defeat of the Nazis. I'm explaining the Nazis were stupid (as all fascists are) and their defeat was inevitable, but you're completely what I'm saying. You're also ignoring that fact that socialism is not required for a country to industrialize.
This is something like the anthropic principle. Just because it went A -> B -> C doesn't mean it's not possible to get to C any other way. Socialism is not a requirement for industrialization and socialism is not a requirement for defeating fascism. It's just a flawed system that a lot of people starved under.
Are you aware of how many tens of millions of people were saved from Nazi genocide thanks to the industrialization that underpinned the collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union?
Are you aware that many other countries industrialized without collectivizing farms? That's not at all a requirement for industrialization and doesn't have anything to do with the Nazis stupidly entering into a two front war because of the general incompetence that goes hand and hand with fascism.
Yes, the other countries at the time who had industrialized had done so through slavery (USA) or colonialism (UK, France, Germany, Japan), all of which killed tens of millions more than collectivization failures ever did.
Nazis are stupid, but don't diminish the Soviet war effort. 80% of dead Nazi soldiers died in the Eastern Front, and it costed the lives of 25 million Soviet heroes to achieve this.
Fuck the Soviets. The reason we went to war is because the Nazis invaded Poland, and the Soviets were complicit in that. Just because Hitler was a dumbass and attacked the Soviet Union doesn't mean we owe that fucked up government anything. I respect the soldiers that fought despite the fact they had that asshole Stalin oppressing them, but I have no respect for the Soviet Union or Stalin because of the events of WWII, and neither should you.
I do wish the left broadly could unify under the idea that we need to make incremental progress.
A lot of people on this very site think there's going to be a glorious people's revolution any day now. I could spend hours describing how unrealistic that fantasy is, but I think more people rather live with their indulgent fantasies than go out and plant trees that they will never sit in the shade of.
That's literally been the last century + of western politics, and uh we've all seen how that's turning out.
I wish centrists could unify under the idea that we need to make a complete and total overhaul. That they could recognize that the climate alone will kill us if we don't do, let alone the fascists and capitalists at our back.
The label we're gathering under is progressives, it's mostly leftists but you leave the praxis at home and recognize that no one is going to read a pamphlet
Turns out, when you have good messaging, most people are on board with the practical changes we could make today. Mumdani is a rockstar at it
The Zohran Mamdani campaign has peeled the curtain back from American politics and exposed how much of it has been kayfabe all along. And the people writing the scripts are not happy about it.
I hope it continues, while I know he will win, I hope he also succeeds against the ringmasters and production executives who have manufactured our reality.
I don't think it's kayfabe so much as a bunch of consultant brained fucktards desperately grasping at power, but also having no idea why they're doing this anymore
But Mumdani has shown us that the people really are desperate for leftism. They want what we want, they just need crisp and simple messaging
Oh man am I ever with you. I’m absolutely an idealist, I agree with the OP’s sentiment. But I will absolutely support anyone with any ideology that gets us closer. Small steps are easier to take, this bullshit that everyone thinks we need the perfect candidate with the one weird trick.
See what that got us. I have no goddamned idea where to go from here. I’ll support any ham sandwich that drags us in the right direction.
I forget about this colloquialism, but find it a good description for how I try to be day to day
Welcome back Karl Kautsky. Excited for World War 1?
Well the only people who are talking about stopping at one state are the centrists arguing we must 'compromise' and accept the top only.
I fully support going to both..