And this all falls away when you accept every country does an imperialism if it has the ability to do so. The Aral Sea didn’t dry itself, people didn’t deport themselves, languages got erased by the state and cultural repression was a tenet of the USSR.
Imperialism is not an action to be committed on a whim, in the eyes of communists, but relevantly is a stage in capitalist development. As bank and industrial capital consolidate and monopolize, they form finance capital, which seeks to expand internationally and thus the economy shifts from focusing on commodity export to capital export. This is a material system, with definite material causes, not something to be engaged upon at a whim.
The idea that countries would simply be evil if they had the opportunity to is an idealist argument, not a materialist one, and thus is anti-scientific. This is closer to a religious look on life than a scientific one.
Further, as we are placing the Soviet Union in its actual, historical context, nationalities were protected, languages that were never written were alphabetized, and the right of secession was protected. Tremendous development happened, and ethnic minorities were culturally protected and celebrated. There were instances of population transfer, and this by modern standards would be considered barbaric. However, this practice was enormously common among capitalist peers like the UK and US, and neither of them had the same level of thought and care placed into respecting and uplifting various ethnicities.
The only conclusion here is that you either are entirely unfamiliar with the true severity of repressions committed by the west, and therefore the shift to the positive direction as compared to their peers, or are entirely unfamiliar with the sheer care and uplifting that did go on when it comes to ethnic minority rights in the USSR, despite failures like population transfer.
This is why we are pointing out that you do not take a scientific approach to history.
Countries routinely prove given the economic and military power, they will do imperialism in some way or another whether warfare or economic or something else entirely. But sure whatever you want. I’m kind of tired of talking to you because as I stated before, you don’t want to discuss or be open, you just want to be right and state the USSR is the best or something. Please find other people to talk to I have no interest in continuing this charade with you defending an objectively terrible place that gave birth to an even worse place.
Evil is a moral idea, not a material process. That’s my point.
Either way, I have an interest in defending points that were actually made, not the horrendous fantasy you made up, nor the idealism you are spouting. Nobody is making you do this, you have every opportunity to approach the conversation from a point of good-faith, but instead you have shifted goalposts and made quasi-fascist points surrounding culture.
Morals are not the same as material processes. Simply saying “evil” as a reason for something is not a scientific answer for the behavior of societies.
They aren’t, parts of social issues are hence the plethora of social sciences. You can’t objectively quantify the squishy human bits you can just narrow down the effect of the squishy stuff by quantifying what is objective.
There is no social science. There are social studies, social research and sciences that touch on society but no all encompassing social science because most of society isn’t objectively testable.
So murder is fine, most of the world doesn’t agree murder is morally wrong. Correct?
They are opinions, they aren’t weightless, and they aren’t ambiguous there are a few almost no one disagrees with because their obviousness is so outrageously apparent.
Your slavery example doesn’t work because slavery was and is always immoral, simply overlooking that fact for profit only reinforces my point.
What’s fine mean? You’re just using it as a standin for “good” or “acceptable” which again, has no meaning without a subject. Fine for what? Good or acceptable for who?
most of the world doesn’t agree murder is morally wrong
What?
Your slavery example doesn’t work because slavery was and is always immoral
Then why, for hundreds of years, was it considered so moral in America that it took an entire war to change it? Because most people individually all just happened to lack this obvious, natural morality? Or is it because ideas of morality are made up, arise from material conditions, and are systemically reproduced in a society? That they were able to create a system of moral justifications that excused them in their own minds for supporting slavery, just like liberals today have a system of moral justifications that excuse them in their own minds for supporting the Gaza genocide?
You seem to think that “right and wrong” exist in some pure elemental form somewhere out in the universe, the way carbon and potassium do, some baseline that human actions can be measured against. They don’t. Right and wrong are figments of the human imagination, and only by accepting them for the shadows that they are can we stop chasing them in circles and finally begin to think in useful, concrete, scientific terms.
They’re not weightless, made up stuff, opinion sure, weightless not so much hence prison and societal normatives we wouldn’t imprison people for moral failings if they were weightless.
I’m kind of tired of talking to you because as I stated before, you don’t want to discuss or be open, you just want to be right and state the USSR is the best or something.
Whatever, Cowbee has been very open and responsive and all you do is talk in circles, misinterpret Cowbee’s posts in bad faith and then be insulting.
Okay looking at your posts in your profile, you’re someone who hates Russia A LOT, calls DPRK the “Kim regime” and China “China’s single party” like it’s a horrible evil dictatorship.
So basically you were in fact arguing in bad faith from the start while having your bias influences by your fascist, chauvinistic white supremacy. A fucking liberal.
He literally just argued work camps were more progressive than western prison practices. Which were also work camps in many places, and also not work camps in other places. I am not being insulting, I am being insulted. And now dogpiled in an attempt to overwhelm. I have nothing to prove, history stands. Many people here will realize how fucking silly it is to argue the USSR was a progressive place.
Not every Soviet prison was a labor camp, and many of them were open-air prisons, with weekend visitation, etc. The cartoonist idea of the gulag is a fantasy that did not exist. Meanwhile, the west had concentration camps in the Congo, India, etc.
The simple fact was that across the soviet justice system, conditions were both enormously better than the Tsarist system, and comparatively better than the majority of capitalist countries, especially if we count western concentration camps in the colonies that Hitler later recreated in Europe. I believe in prison abolition in the long run, but I’m also a communist, I view history as a process and not as a static snapshot. The soviets deliberately tried to make a more humane system, and did so, even if they would be seen as backwards today.
But that’s just not true. People were wrongly imprisoned because of the state’s personal goals, the same as the Tsarist system the only better part was the lack of funds and policing power Tsarist Russia had to support their desire to imprison and control the population. People were still imprisoned base on their sexuality, the religious identity and their progressive movements. That’s not progressive.
Nobody is arguing pro western motives here, I don’t know why you want to stick to that soo fucking hard. It literally damages every argument you make. Learn to criticize the USSR on it’s own actions and stop bringing up the west in every single argument you make it literally weakens it every time. You think across the ENTIRE WEST every prison was wayyy worse than in the USSR? Because that’s just not true, the idea of a gulag is definitely made overly cartoonish but being sent to a Siberian labor camp and people dying in these labor camps is absolutely real dude. They did not try to make a more humane system, maybe some people did but some people tried to make more humane prison systems in the west too. Because again, for the like 5th fucking time it is not a this or that argument, a lot of this is cultural global shifts in human rights. Everyone across the world was realizing the need for change. You’re making an ass out of yourself trying to push this east vs west thing sooo fucking hard.
And this all falls away when you accept every country does an imperialism if it has the ability to do so. The Aral Sea didn’t dry itself, people didn’t deport themselves, languages got erased by the state and cultural repression was a tenet of the USSR.
Imperialism is not an action to be committed on a whim, in the eyes of communists, but relevantly is a stage in capitalist development. As bank and industrial capital consolidate and monopolize, they form finance capital, which seeks to expand internationally and thus the economy shifts from focusing on commodity export to capital export. This is a material system, with definite material causes, not something to be engaged upon at a whim.
The idea that countries would simply be evil if they had the opportunity to is an idealist argument, not a materialist one, and thus is anti-scientific. This is closer to a religious look on life than a scientific one.
Further, as we are placing the Soviet Union in its actual, historical context, nationalities were protected, languages that were never written were alphabetized, and the right of secession was protected. Tremendous development happened, and ethnic minorities were culturally protected and celebrated. There were instances of population transfer, and this by modern standards would be considered barbaric. However, this practice was enormously common among capitalist peers like the UK and US, and neither of them had the same level of thought and care placed into respecting and uplifting various ethnicities.
The only conclusion here is that you either are entirely unfamiliar with the true severity of repressions committed by the west, and therefore the shift to the positive direction as compared to their peers, or are entirely unfamiliar with the sheer care and uplifting that did go on when it comes to ethnic minority rights in the USSR, despite failures like population transfer.
This is why we are pointing out that you do not take a scientific approach to history.
Evil is an opinion we can’t actually weigh.
Countries routinely prove given the economic and military power, they will do imperialism in some way or another whether warfare or economic or something else entirely. But sure whatever you want. I’m kind of tired of talking to you because as I stated before, you don’t want to discuss or be open, you just want to be right and state the USSR is the best or something. Please find other people to talk to I have no interest in continuing this charade with you defending an objectively terrible place that gave birth to an even worse place.
Evil is a moral idea, not a material process. That’s my point.
Either way, I have an interest in defending points that were actually made, not the horrendous fantasy you made up, nor the idealism you are spouting. Nobody is making you do this, you have every opportunity to approach the conversation from a point of good-faith, but instead you have shifted goalposts and made quasi-fascist points surrounding culture.
Morals have weight homie, hand waving away immoral acts by saying they’re just opinions is obtuse at best.
Morals are not the same as material processes. Simply saying “evil” as a reason for something is not a scientific answer for the behavior of societies.
It’s also not an excuse, it doesn’t need to be scientific since societal issues aren’t scientific and there is no legitimate social sciences.
Hahahahaha holy shit
They aren’t, parts of social issues are hence the plethora of social sciences. You can’t objectively quantify the squishy human bits you can just narrow down the effect of the squishy stuff by quantifying what is objective.
Stemlords should be forced to study social sciences.
Neat?
Why is social science not legitimate?
There is no social science. There are social studies, social research and sciences that touch on society but no all encompassing social science because most of society isn’t objectively testable.
Morals are weightless and made up homie, for half of American history it was “wrong” to free a slave
So murder is fine, most of the world doesn’t agree murder is morally wrong. Correct?
They are opinions, they aren’t weightless, and they aren’t ambiguous there are a few almost no one disagrees with because their obviousness is so outrageously apparent.
Your slavery example doesn’t work because slavery was and is always immoral, simply overlooking that fact for profit only reinforces my point.
What’s fine mean? You’re just using it as a standin for “good” or “acceptable” which again, has no meaning without a subject. Fine for what? Good or acceptable for who?
What?
Then why, for hundreds of years, was it considered so moral in America that it took an entire war to change it? Because most people individually all just happened to lack this obvious, natural morality? Or is it because ideas of morality are made up, arise from material conditions, and are systemically reproduced in a society? That they were able to create a system of moral justifications that excused them in their own minds for supporting slavery, just like liberals today have a system of moral justifications that excuse them in their own minds for supporting the Gaza genocide?
You seem to think that “right and wrong” exist in some pure elemental form somewhere out in the universe, the way carbon and potassium do, some baseline that human actions can be measured against. They don’t. Right and wrong are figments of the human imagination, and only by accepting them for the shadows that they are can we stop chasing them in circles and finally begin to think in useful, concrete, scientific terms.
They’re not weightless, made up stuff, opinion sure, weightless not so much hence prison and societal normatives we wouldn’t imprison people for moral failings if they were weightless.
Whatever, Cowbee has been very open and responsive and all you do is talk in circles, misinterpret Cowbee’s posts in bad faith and then be insulting.
Okay looking at your posts in your profile, you’re someone who hates Russia A LOT, calls DPRK the “Kim regime” and China “China’s single party” like it’s a horrible evil dictatorship.
So basically you were in fact arguing in bad faith from the start while having your bias influences by your fascist, chauvinistic white supremacy. A fucking liberal.
He literally just argued work camps were more progressive than western prison practices. Which were also work camps in many places, and also not work camps in other places. I am not being insulting, I am being insulted. And now dogpiled in an attempt to overwhelm. I have nothing to prove, history stands. Many people here will realize how fucking silly it is to argue the USSR was a progressive place.
Not every Soviet prison was a labor camp, and many of them were open-air prisons, with weekend visitation, etc. The cartoonist idea of the gulag is a fantasy that did not exist. Meanwhile, the west had concentration camps in the Congo, India, etc.
I never said a gulag, I laughed at how silly it is to propose the concept of a progressive prison.
The simple fact was that across the soviet justice system, conditions were both enormously better than the Tsarist system, and comparatively better than the majority of capitalist countries, especially if we count western concentration camps in the colonies that Hitler later recreated in Europe. I believe in prison abolition in the long run, but I’m also a communist, I view history as a process and not as a static snapshot. The soviets deliberately tried to make a more humane system, and did so, even if they would be seen as backwards today.
But that’s just not true. People were wrongly imprisoned because of the state’s personal goals, the same as the Tsarist system the only better part was the lack of funds and policing power Tsarist Russia had to support their desire to imprison and control the population. People were still imprisoned base on their sexuality, the religious identity and their progressive movements. That’s not progressive.
Nobody is arguing pro western motives here, I don’t know why you want to stick to that soo fucking hard. It literally damages every argument you make. Learn to criticize the USSR on it’s own actions and stop bringing up the west in every single argument you make it literally weakens it every time. You think across the ENTIRE WEST every prison was wayyy worse than in the USSR? Because that’s just not true, the idea of a gulag is definitely made overly cartoonish but being sent to a Siberian labor camp and people dying in these labor camps is absolutely real dude. They did not try to make a more humane system, maybe some people did but some people tried to make more humane prison systems in the west too. Because again, for the like 5th fucking time it is not a this or that argument, a lot of this is cultural global shifts in human rights. Everyone across the world was realizing the need for change. You’re making an ass out of yourself trying to push this east vs west thing sooo fucking hard.
Mate you are a bloodthirsty shitlib, you are clouded in your racism
Removed by mod
You:
also you: continues to post all over the thread
You listen to what the genocidal, colonial empire says about its enemies and spout it all over the thread. You’re fucking vile.
I am being replied to, he is leaping to everyone of my replies.
Y’all are so fake and disingenuous.