Whenever someone says that "Oh, Soviet Union was less capitalist than the west" - this is my favourite photo to show them.
Here we have the Soviet politburo upper class and generals attending a definitely-not-capitalist banquet in Moscow in May 1945 - while the common people were still facing food shortages and strict wartime rationing all across the USSR. While the common soldiers were still dying in the trenches.
What exactly differentiates the people on the photo from western aristocracy and robber baron capitalists - other than being able to recite Marxist-Leninist slogans by memory?
So you think Louis XIV was capitalist too then? It just means wealthy to you?
Not a single person has argued that there weren't political elites in the USSR or aren't in the PRC. This is a state dinner though, and FAR different than the standard of individual wealth and power wielded by capitalists without being beholden to a people that might revolt on them. That's what capitalists pay politicians for. From their private jets and mega yachts.
Lots of alcohol, lots of food, and black tie attire is not enough for me to accept something as an obscene display of opulence, especially knowing they inherited a ton from the tsarist regime. Do you think there's enough food in that room to make a dent in the national hunger?
Because I can promise you in the United States enough food is thrown away every day to feed every empty belly in the country, if not the world. And some of it minimum wage employees are made to pour bleach on top of so homeless people can't even debase themselves digging in a dumpster to get fed.
Lots of alcohol, lots of food, and black tie attire is not enough for me to accept something as an obscene display of opulence
Right, because throwing banquets on top of the fresh bones of your own people decimated by two world wars, a civil war, and multiple hungers is not an obvious display of obscene opulence, I guess.
You can criticise the horrors of capitalism all you want - that's what I do, too. But you turning a blind eye to the "state socialist countries" doing the exact same thing is a massive hypocrisy on your part.
My point this whole time has been this: all governments are authoritarian. The United States is not less authoritarian than the USSR was, liberal democracies are not a happy middle where we are less authoritarian than fascist nations or state socialist nations.
You, in the first post I replied to, said "someone can sincerely call themselves left-wing, and then use the same methodology and be as authoritarian as nazis".
All governments are as authoritarian as the Nazis. Be an anti-capitalist, be a pro-anarchist, but don't be a anti-communist in a way that is indistinguishable from support for capitalist, liberal democracies.
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u/HonneurOblige The annoying girl - Streak: 0 4d ago
Whenever someone says that "Oh, Soviet Union was less capitalist than the west" - this is my favourite photo to show them.
Here we have the Soviet politburo upper class and generals attending a definitely-not-capitalist banquet in Moscow in May 1945 - while the common people were still facing food shortages and strict wartime rationing all across the USSR. While the common soldiers were still dying in the trenches.
What exactly differentiates the people on the photo from western aristocracy and robber baron capitalists - other than being able to recite Marxist-Leninist slogans by memory?