this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Not a socialist, but I am genuinely curious.
Is there any socialist revolution that you wouldn't class a fascist?
Well, Chile was a democratic election but then came the CIA because those nasty people wanted their own resources for themself!
OK, that's as good an answer as any.
Salvador Allende got couped three years after his election. Are there any ways you can think to prevent a foreign power from undermining future hypothetical socialist governments that wouldn't be authoritarian?
Gun.jpg
Yea, because they just gave up and certainly didn't try to defend themswlf, sadly even a gun is of no use as poor third world country facing the world power, I can't see a way to prevent that.
Cuba is the most notable example of the many countries that have proven this wrong.
If you have popular support and guns, the options for the U.S. are either mass, indiscriminate slaughter or leaving. We usually get tired of the mass, indiscriminate slaughter after a few years.
Yea, the CIA got rid of them and installed one of the worse dictators in history. Luckily the fight against communism is over so I have my doubts it would happen that way again but especially for a poor country I see no chance whatsoever be that with or without violence :(
The coup in Bolivia kind proved that even social democracy is off the table if it interferes with imperialist interests.
This is a problem that all anti-capitalist ideologies have to face.
The capitalist hegemony has an interest in preventing nations from shifting away from the status quo, so socialist, anarchist, whatever revolution that is fought will have to carry out some practices that would be decried as authoritarian to protect themselves from outside interference.
I don't see how you would prodect yourself in that scenario, you sewm to think they just let it happen on purpose which certainly wasn't the case, America is just a lot mor epowerful than any third world country. I do agree that the rich will always fight any attempt because they loose power and money from such a move and as soon as you interfer with imperialistic interests you are fucked byond recovery anyway.
I don't see how to protect this hypothetical socialist state either. Cuba has managed to escape any attempts that the US has made to overthrow it's democratic mandate but it had the support of the USSR in it's early stages and there's no hegemonic power right now that could be of similar help.
I'm not a particularly bright person, and I don't think I'll ever have a proper answer.
There is a lot that's wrong with Cuba and I certainly wouldn't want to live there but it's one of if not the only better places (in terms of things like access to healthcare, housing and such) in south America despite heavy sanctions and the dictatorship but I have absolutely no idea how they still exist, it's a fucking miracle considering the the circumstances and they do it at very high costs in terms of technological progress. What I always viewed as huge mistake is the UDSSR or China as partner, they never cared much about the ideology (they did kind of care for a perverted version supporting some parts whenever it was convinient for the powerful but really not much) and fought for their own interests, doing so wasn't/isn't just a risk to your reputation which would be fine but also your autonomy and many of their goals aren't any less imperialistic than Americas.
Chile was coup'd by a faction in its own military with western backing, not actually invaded by the west. Chile could have prevented this by preemptively purging fascist officers in the military. This would have saved Chile but condemned it to being called fascist on lemmy.
My main issue with authoritarian attempts to achive anything close to socialism failed because of coruption and similar shit if they didn't just use it as nothing but a talking point in the first place so I don't see that as viable option to achive any kind of equality ether.
That the USSR managed to last long as long as it did despite being invaded by more developed nations multiple times during the aftermath of its revolution and eventually collapsed largely due to its own internal corruption does put paid to the idea that some authoritarian measures will help protect a socialist state from external attempts to destabilise it.
The problem seems to be one inherent within the structure of states. Any heirarchical structure like that is fit to be abused by someone sufficiently self interested that they'd put their own interests above the interests of the people gestures at Mikhail Gorbachev selling the USSR out to the Western core for his own enrichment.
Anarchism, being decentralised, might be able to withstand some of the issues that were present in the late USSR. But previous anarchist attempts have been crushed by outside actors much easier than socialist attempts.
I don't really know what there is to be done.
Absolutely but authoritarian states are at a even higher risk in that regard and you got enough powerful enemies as a socialist already. One of the biggest issue for Arnachism next to the absurd amount of very different interpretations is ironically Socialism/Communism, parts of many revolutions had Arnachist ideas and so did big parts of the historic worker movments (Black is the flag of the Arnachist and Red of the Socialist worker) but they never really managed to get any of them in to the new system even after a successful revolution. It's all a very tough question and I wish I had good answers but I fear the truth is none of us dose, at least we oppose fucking capitalism I guess, that's a start and history has shown it can spread to bigger parts of society in some cases.
Are violent revolutions not a form of democracy? They generally require popular support to succeed.
You misunderstand. When liberals violently overthrow the aristocracy, that's a liberation movement. When socialists violently overthrow the capitalists, that's authoritarian tankie red fascism.
but I thought propaganda was when I don't listen to the western narrative
Chinese socialist revolution before Mao's leadership is pretty legit. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, are all real socialists, they truely cares about the worker and envisions a better future for China.
If anything, many Chinese intellectuals in the republic era really cares about the little man, like Lu Xun, Lao She, etc.
I don't think I've seen this position before and it sounds pretty wild ngl. Let me just lay out my understanding.
Mao disagreed with the party on the basis that he felt the peasants had more revolutionary potential than the small, new proletariat working in what few factories existed in China. Mao's arguments were rejected, and the party's commitment to rigid ideology over analysis of the specific material conditions of China led to them being crushed by the Nationalists and massacred. It's the whole reason that the Long March happened.
The few surviving members of the party regrouped, though they were hunted to the ends of the earth and had extremely little manpower or resources. Despite this, because they used Mao's approach of appealing to the peasants, who reflected the majority of the working poor, the communist revolution spread like wildfire, gaining more and more supporters everywhere it went.
Once the communists gained power under Mao's leadership, this happened.
I don't deny that the party before Mao had good intentions, but it seems to me that history has proven their approach wrong in an incredibly decisive way. They tried their approach when the party was in a better position and failed miserably, they tried Mao's approach after that miserable failure and it succeeded on an enormous scale. I'm pretty curious to know where you disagree with that.
Mao's approach led to the largest Proletarian Revolution in history that resulted in almost equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.
In response to your graph and the question of what changed - antibiotics became widespread after ww2, and medical care in general advanced greatly.
Is there some specific policy you think mao implimented that had a bigger impact than those?
Not to mention the many miliions who died during the great leap forward, I'm sure they were reassured by such statistics while they starved to death.
US life expectancy in 1940 was 62, almost double that of China. The state of medical knowledge and technology doesn't matter if the people don't have access to it, as was the case with many Chinese, especially rural people. What actually made up a large part of the difference was not antibiotics but vaccines, which were around well before WWII, but Chinese people had virtually no access to them. Under Mao, China implemented something called the Barefoot Doctors program, through which large numbers of doctors were trained quickly and sent out to rural regions, relying primarily on Western medical knowledge, though they also used some traditional herbal remedies due to the massive amount of medical supplies needed to expand care across all of China. The program was a success and resulted in the sharp rise around 1968, when it was implemented.
Another factor was land reform and increasing food security. Yes, the GLF was a failure, but before the communists came to power, famines were an extremely common occurrance. Rural Chinese were suffering under extreme poverty and brutal exploitation under the landlords (really more like fuedal lords), and the communist uprising redistributed the land which allowed farmers to keep more of what they produced.
Generally, there were a lot of improvements in the lives of rural Chinese that were very basic and obvious. Anyone who went and observed their conditions could plainly see things that needed to be changed. But no other faction - the KMT, the invading Japanese, the European colonizers, the Qing, etc, hell even the communist party before Mao wasn't interested in trying to reach them, as I mentioned. The reason Mao got so much support from them, and the reason that he knew they could be radicalized, is because he actually took the effort to go out and live among them and listen and learn about what their lives were like.
Those reasons are why, despite the failure of the GLF (which we can discuss if you like), I would still argue that there have been a lot of material improvements for the people of China which wouldn't have happened under any historical faction but the communists. Notably, Chinese life expectancy has now surpassed that of the US, while China has emerged as a major economic and geopolitical power, despite having once been one of the poorest countries in the world.
Thanks for the detailed response, you've certainly given me a lot to think about.
So no revolution at all? 95% of the critical mass and anything that can be called a large scale revolution (with organizational successes of the masses) happened in China in the 30s and had little to do with Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao previous work ,no matter how admirable. The CPC almost died and was built back up multiple times by the time Mao succeeded and Mao was vital in that. You cant get more legit than revolution under Mao. Under probably the worst odds and situation any communist party and revolution had to face they endured, made correct and miraculous choices and political and military manuvers at every turn and won, uplifting and liberating hundreds of millions of peasants and women. No Mao, no successfull revolution in China and no emancipation of the masses. Good luck doing the long march and outmanuvering the KMT from the countryside by amassing immense support with Chen Duxiu's ideas about the peasantry.
Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao may have envisioned a better socialist future for China but they were and would have been unable to make it happen. They lacked both the military genius, the correct analysis on the peasantry or the rhetoric and vision of mass politics that Mao had that allowed the CPC to pull through against all odds and win
OK that's a lot to look up, thanks for the recommendation.