[coldtea]

>Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record.

And yet people don't have issues with political movements with the same or even worse records (from colonialism to slavery), and can swipe their issues under the carpet (what does capitalism has to do with some such countries enslaving 2/3rds of the world causing untold suffering and deaths, that's just human nature, some bad apples, some greedy leaders, etc) whereas issues with other systems they present as "inherent".

It's mostly the winners getting to write history.

[hacknat]

The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn, who are/were hardly neo-liberals. For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.

[danharaj]

> For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.

Are you sure? For example, colonialism was a project of capitalist development and it very much involved a moral prerogative to '''civilize''' the inferior races of the world... by plundering them of their resources and subjugating them.

[coldtea]

>The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn

Bolshevism yes, the political movement it belongs in general, no. Take Zinn for example: "Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name."

>For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.

The protestant work ethic? The white man's burden? The various civic-religious views of the free-market and the invisible hand?

Or, Dr Bowring, an English economist said it in the 19th century: “Jesus Christ is free trade and free trade is Jesus Christ.”

Or maybe it's freedom itself? Friedman: "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself".

-- and tons of such colonial, and neo-liberal moral justifications, from the 16th century to Fukuyama end of history with the triumph of the one true system.

[throwaway2048]

I see a ton of moral prerogative behind ideas like "hard work" and "private property", "they worked hard and deserve it" and "just get a job" myself.

[mythrwy]

Disclaimer: not a Bolshevik.

You raise a very valid point. Also often disregarded are social advances from the movement.

I mean, my understanding of pre-communist Russia was that it was still basically medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships and very not advanced. I'm not sure it would be were it is now, nor have become a major 20'th century super power without what happened.

Not saying the end justifies the means at all, just we have to take progress into account when weighing relative merit.

[thriftwy]

> pre-communist Russia was that it was still basically medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships

Which were dismantled in 1961.

Since then, 56 years passed before the revolution. That's a lot of time. Russian Empire was urbanizing and industrializing rapidly.

If not for communists, Russia will be more like 300 mln strong Norway today, not 140 mln strong Guatemala like it's today.

[coldtea]

>Which were dismantled in 1961. Since then, 56 years passed before the revolution.

You mean 1861 (emancipation of the serfs). That didn't prevent 1917 Russia from still being a "medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships" country -- like the civil war might have meant the end of slavery in the US, but it took a century for de-seggregation, and still today blacks are over-represented in poverty and prison populations (long term after-effects of starting worse than nothing -- other "white" immigrants started their US life with nothing, but blacks, until the 60s, started worse than that).

And there were several revolutions before November 1917, precisely because the masses felt the need for them. (If anything November 1917 was a party takeover of the grass-roots February revolution).

>If not for communists, Russia will be more like 300 mln strong Norway today, not 140 mln strong Guatemala like it's today.

Nobody cared for Norway. Everybody cared (had it in) for Russia (from Napoleonic France to Nazi Germany, all the way to global corporate interests today that plunder all around the world but are bitter because Russia prefers its own national class of kleptocrats to do the plundering instead of selling to the lowest bidder).

If it wasn't for the communists (not the ideology, but the hard-forced fast-track industrialization and urbanizing project) they'd be plundered all the way now, and WWII might have ended very differently.

[thriftwy]

We are plundered every way either way.

However there's also 50 mln death toll.

Come on! Nobody pushes divisions of Poland as something positive for Poland. Revolution is tragedy, communism is failure, have the dignity and leave our corpse alone.

[mythrwy]

Or perhaps like the Eastern suburb of Germany.

We'll never know for sure.

[thriftwy]

You can't control a 200 mln strong nation from 100 mln remote location with different language. One thing that had zero chance of working in XX century.

Moreover, Allies will meanwhile fick said Germany with rake. That's actually what got Russia, being biggest fish in a pond and unstable at the same time.

[coldtea]

>You can't control a 200 mln strong nation from 100 mln remote location with different language.

And yet, a few western powers had enslaved and controlled 2/3rd of the world.

[thriftwy]

That wasn't in XX century however. They were universally gone by mid-century.

Russia is a crypto colony of UK anyway, so no way it could be worse.

[mythrwy]

I think the population of India in 1890 was nearly 300 million. Controlled from thousands of miles away by a tiny island and had been for a long time.

If Russia had still been at the state they were in 1912 they may well have gotten rolled by the Axis. Perhaps the appearance of the Bolsheviks saved them from that fate. We'll never know for sure.

I'm not a Bolshevik supporter btw. I'm aware they caused a lot of suffering and I don't attempt to justify that.

[thriftwy]

> If Russia had still been at the state they were in 1912 they may well have gotten rolled by the Axis

Wut?? They didn't the first time. What makes you think second time is the charm? Without a crippling 10 years civil war, Russia will have a huge head start.

But even if they did, I doubt it would be worse than what we have now. You can infer that what we have now is pretty bad.

They did roll Poland. Does Poland have it worse than Russia? Nope, the opposite is true. French understood that and abstained from the fight.

[sorokod]

So, can't make omlet without breaking eggs?

[mythrwy]

Nope. Just that there are many ways to break eggs and make omelets.

Not justifying (can anyone really justify Stalin?). Just pointing out we have to take the omelet into account when pointing out a messy kitchen with roughly broken egg all over.

Because no matter who you are, no matter where you are, I assure you a lot of eggs were broken to get there. And no, the broken eggs are not OK with me. But sometimes that's how it is and we can't rewind the clock. But we should try to look at the whole story, not just the parts we find morally repugnant.

[narag]

Or maybe it was just a bad idea.

Forbidding diversity and giving absolute power to the leaders. What could go wrong?

[AnimalMuppet]

I'm not sure that colonialism, taken as a whole, has a worse record than Bolshevism (or even Communism), taken as a whole.

[coldtea]

Make sense, since colonialism belongs to the winners, who have been whitewashing (and continuing) its legacy at the same time.

From the murdered native Americans (North and South), to concentration camps, mass executions, slavery work (including US blacks), huge colonial wars, all the way to human zoos...