Sounds like Blackshirts and Reds did its job! As you point out, its biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. In being a short and direct cry of support for revolution in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR, which set Socialism back dramatically at the time (especially because the 90s really did seem like China had abandoned Socialism, when we now know that that wasn’t the case and Deng’s gamble paid off), it also skimps out on thorough analysis and deep historical account.

I want to add that the purpose of my list is to equip the reader with solid foundational knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, so that the reader may better make up their own conclusions and further explore theory and historical texts (though I do include a section on history later).

As for Envisioning Real Utopias, I hadn’t heard of it until you told me, truth be told. My immediate reaction to trying to establish cooperatives to “overcome Capitalism” is that it doesm’t work like that. Cooperatives are better in that they avoid the excesses of standard firms, but since they fundamentally rely on exclusive ownership there is a barrier to scaling, and a lack of a collective plan. It merely repeats petite bourgeois class relations, an individualist view of the economy rather than a collectivist, resulting in an economy run by competing interests rather than being run by all in the interests of all. I actually wrote a comment on the communist perspective on cooperatives a few days ago.

I also think that, eventually, you’ll want to read Anti-Dühring. Engels counters the cooperative model from a Marxist perspective. It’s the much larger book the essay Socialism: Utopian and Scientific comes from, so if you’re down for a challenge you can read Anti-Dühring instead of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

Ultimately, it boils down to 2 possibilities, neither of which are good for the cooperative model:

1. We try to build cooperatives within Capitalism, and establish our “seed bank” cooperatively. This runs into several errors:

-The state will dismantle any legitimate threat to the Capitalists if Capitalists cannot find a way to profit off of this new development

-Cooperatives alone are not enough to overcome Capitalism, rather, they replicate it in a different form

-Production is already extremely complex and monopolized, the age of small businesses growing to huge powerhouses is dying. Cooperatives will always be at a disadvantage when competing with established businesses

2. Cooperatives are the basis of a Socialist economy, where the workers have dismantled the Capitalist state and hold power over Capitalists, also called “Market Socialism”

-Cooperatives compete and eventually begin to replicate bourgeois class relations, if the public ownership of the economy is not the dominant factor, ie in control of larhe firms and industries. A few cooperatives would scale and create a new Capitalist relation.

Those are just my perspectives based on your summary. Cooperatives certainly aren’t bad at all, and are a part of Socialist economies as a minority of the economy, like Huawei in China or the collective farms in China. However, public ownership is still the key factor, as it goes beyond the profit motive and into allowing humanity to finally direct production for the needs of all, and not for the profits of the few.

You’ll have plenty of time to develop your own opinions, cooperatives are certainly better than traditional firms, but you’ll find Marxists typically don’t agree with “utopia building” and other cooperative forms of ownership, and you’ll best see why generally in section 2.

Fantastic, glad you liked it! Any thoughts or questions you might want to offer? Selfishly, feedback for my list is always appreciated, I like tweaking it from time to time, haha.

I think you’re using your own personal experience with Marxists in your area as a blanket to generalize. Marxists as a general rule don’t spend all their time hypothesizing about future society, but practice labor organization, protesting, and building dual power (similar but not the same as prefiguration). The Black Panther Party, Marxist-Leninists as we all know, was famous for directly going out and feeding people, and protecting them from the State. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is at the forefront of the US-based pro-Palestinian protests. Marxists do get the here and now done.

Your personal experiences are giving you a malformed view of the broader US-based Marxist movements, which are recovering from the heights of the Red Scare. They are also missing the global context, Marxists currently govern many countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc, and China in particular is becoming more and more important in the world context, which has an impact on US-based organizing as well.

I think you’re running into resistance because you have painted Marxists in general with your experiences of one subset of the particular.

I think you’re turning your disillusionment towards the Capitalist framework into nihilism about analysis of structures. Marxists frequently posit structures like the Soviet system, which feature both local, tight-knit councils and larger councils made up of representatives of these councils, resulting in a comprehensively democratic system. Without these higher rungs, large-scale planning can’t exist effectively, which means a fall in the level of production and a decrease in the ability of humanity to satisfy its needs.

My comment was more about how “authoritarian” discourse is meaningless, and more about perspective than anything else. From my point of view, the US Empire’s use of authority is far worse and more destructive than, say, Cuba’s, yet Capitalist media paints the US Empire as a bastion of freedom and Cuba as an Orwellian nightmare.

This is deliberate ignorance. Marxists see the modern Russian Federation as a right-wing, Nationalist Capitalist country that is socially reactionary. Marxists tend to support Russia’s movements against the US Empire, which is seen as a much greater evil, and appreciate ties to countries like China that may have a positive influence on Russia reverting to Socialism, but there is much to be critical of in Russia. When you have to make up your opponent’s position, you’re deliberately lying to others, and frequently yourself as well.

You can also read historical texts like Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan, as well. There’s also tons of information from the Soviet Archives, we know quite well that this is accurate information. Labelling everything that goes against your understanding as “propaganda” without doing the legwork to prove it is shallow.

You said you aren’t a Marxist, and you’ve claimed things about Marxism that are undeniably false. If I’m mistaken and you have studied Marxism, then I apologize for misunderstanding you, though that doesn’t validate your misconceptions.

The “lot of Ukrainians” that saw the USSR as worse than the Nazis were the far-right nationalists in Ukraine spearheaded by Bandera. A “lot of USians” were certainly upset at ending slavery, to the point of armed struggle, but that doesn’t make them correct, either. Bandera was a far-right nationalist that is supported by the modern far-right nationalists in Ukraine, which is why there’s a problem with Nazi brigades like Azov increasing in relevance in Ukrainian politics post-Maidan.

Further, again, the Soviets were unquestionably the most progressive force throughout the 20th century, from supporting revolutionary movements in Cuba, Algeria, South Africa, Vietnam, Korea, China, and more, to supporting Palestinians against genocide at the hands of Israel, to being responsible for 90% of the total Nazis killed in World War II and saving the world from fascism, to doubling life expectancies, over tripling literacy rates, democratizing the economy, and dramatically lowering wealth inequality.

Yes, there absolutely were problems faced internally and externally, and there were mistakes and excesses. These pale in comparison to the deliberate acts of mass genocide perpetrated by Western Europe and the US throughout the 20th century and today, all while the USSR was under constant siege and the Western world reaped the spoils of Imperialism.

Bandera and neo-Nazism are tied to Ukrainian politics. Nationalists are in control of politics, and the Banderites make up the majority of Nationalists in Ukraine. This is a sad reality that must be confronted, no matter what your stance on the modern Russo-Ukrainian war is, and it ties directly to Ukraine and the US being the only countries to vote against this resolution.

Not at all, Marxists are quite critical of Russia, for example, for being deeply socially reactionary, or China for engaging with trade with Israel, rather than sanctioning it. Marxists don’t accept prevailing western narratives surrounding enemies of the US Empire, which anti-Marxists try to simplify into simple reaction against the US Empire, rather than actually engage with the reasoning for supporting, say, China overall fronted by Marxists.

You did not give “Marx’s definition of Socialism,” you erased dialectics from his analysis of the transition from one mode of production to the next. Marx frequently referenced commodity production even remaining in lower-stage Communism, the goal is to abolish it but the presence of it alone does not disqualify a system from being Socialist. State Capitalism was a descriptor for the NEP by Lenin, and he still considered the USSR to be Socialist in that it was a transitional state towards Communism.

It’s extremely condescending when you act like you know more about a subject while admitting to not studying it.

You can drop the ableism, and the proletariat ran the government in the USSR. The democratic structure looked like this:

Noooooo 🫠 not like that…

Oh god, that’s an image I can’t unimagine… 🫠

Fuck Jackson Hinkle.

The famine in the 1930s was the last major famine outside of wartime in Russia and the surrounding areas until the collapse of the USSR, in a country where under the Tsar famine was regular and common. As a consequence of providing free and high quality healthcare, lowering working hours, improving labor conditions, and achieving food security, life expectancy doubled from the 30s to the 70s. The famine was a tragedy, but the Soviets were also responsible for ending famine and dramatically improving the lives of the working class.

As for the Great Purge, that wasn’t something targeting Ukrainians specifically, but all manner of criminals. The purges themselves usually just meant expulsion from the party, but often criminal charges were levied against former members of the White Army, Nazi collaborators, rapists, corrupt officials, and other serious crimes. 700,000 were condemned to death, with many of those condemned being aquitted and not actually executed, though it is true that there was unfortunately excess.

You’ll want to read this excerpt from the book The Triumph of Evil, specifically page 74:

The claim that Stalin and other Soviet leaders killed millions (Conquest, 1990) also appears to be wildly exaggerated. More recent evidence from the Soviet archives opened up by the anticommunist Yeltsin government indicate that the total number of death sentences (including of both existing prisoners and those outside captivity) over the 1921-1953 interval (covering the period of Stalin’s partial and complete rule) was between 775,866 and 786,098 (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). Given that the archive data originates from anti-Stalin (and even anticommunist) sources, it is extremely unlikely that they underestimate the true number (Thurston, 1996). In addition, the Soviet Union has long admitted to executing at least 12,733 people between 1917 and 1921, mostly during the Foreign Interventionist Civil War of 1918-22, although it is possible that as many as 40,000 more may have been executed unofficially (Andics, 1969).

These data would seem to imply about 800,000 executions. The figure of 800,000 may greatly overestimate the number of actual executions, as it includes many who were sentenced to death but who were not actually caught or who had their sentences reduced (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). In fact, Vinton (1993) has provided evidence indicating that the number of executions was significantly below the number of civilian prisoners sentenced to death in the Soviet Union, with only 7,305 executions in a sample of 11,000 prisoners authorized to be executed in 1940 (or scarcely 600/o ). In addition, most (681,692) of the 780,000 or so death sentences passed under Stalin were issued during the 1937-38 period (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993), when Soviet paranoia about foreign subversion reached its zenith due to a 1936 alliance between Nazi Germany and fascist Japan that was specifically directed against the Soviet Union (Manning, 1993) and due to a public 1936 resolution by a group of influential anti-Stalin foreigners (the Fourth International which was allied with the popular but exiled Russian dissident Leon Trotsky) advocating the overthrow of the Soviet government by illegal means (Glotzer, 1968).

Stalin initially set a cap of 186,500 imprisonments and 72,950 death penalties for a 1937 special operation to combat this threat that was to be carried out by local 3-man tribunals called ''troikas" (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). As the tribunals passed death sentences before the accused had even been arrested, local authorities requested increases in their own quotas (Knight, 1993), and there was an official request in 1938 for a doubling of the amount of prisoner transport that had been initially requisitioned to carry out the original campaign “quotas” of the tribunals (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). However, even if there had been twice as many actual • executions as originally planned, the number would still be less than 150,000. Many of those sentenced by the tribunals may have escaped capture, and many more may have had their death sentence refused or revoked by higher authorities before arrest/execution could take place, especially since Stalin later realized that excesses had been committed in the 1937-38 period, had a number of convictions overturned, and had many of the responsible local leaders punished (Thurston, 1996)."

This is why relying exclusively on Wikipedia is silly, do some actual reading. A solid rule of thumb with respect to any Wikipedia article on enemies of the US is to look at where the figures and sources come from and analyze them yourself, as you can see Wikipedia made the error of conflating condemnations with executions.

Your entire point, though, relies on painting the Communists as comparable evils to the Nazis, which is quantitatively and qualitatively divorced from reality. Again, the Nazis industrialized mass murder deliberately, and figures like Bandera sided with them deliberately against the Soviets, who were a force for good. Upholding Nazi sympathizers is a bad thing.

Yep, conversations around “authoritarianism” usually wind back down to just disapproving going against the status quo, regardless of how popular the measures in place are within their countries. The CPC has an over 90% approval rate, and people call it “authoritarian” functionally because businesses are heavily restricted by the state.

Read that interview a few weeks ago, actually! And he’s correct, trying to go easy on an enemy that will thoroughly destroy you with the most brutal of measures possible is a luxury Socialists cannot afford to take if we want to build a world without such brutality to begin with.

Use of authority is driven as reaction, not action, typically. The United States putting down the Confederate rebellion was a good use of authority, but was driven because of the Confederate rebellion. The extent authority is applied depends on the circumstances a country finds itself in, in Socialist countries we often see invasion and active subterfuge from Capitalist countries seeking to undermine the system, and Capitalists are oppressed. This is painted as “authoritarian” by Capitalist dominated media.

You don’t reduce the use of authority by saying “no, don’t do that,” you do so by abolishing the conditions that give rise to its necessity. It is much better for the working class to weild its authority than the Capitalist class.

I don’t support something as vague as “authoritarianism.” I support the working class being in control of the state and using it in its own interests, depending on the circumstances it finds itself in, minimizing excess wherever possible.

The fact that Nazi collaborators are seen as heroes is a problem. The Communists were in no way comparable in evil to the Nazis, the Communists were a massive force for progress as compared to their peers, while the Nazis invented industrialized mass murder. Read Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti. Further, the majority of Ukrainians actually believe the breakup of the USSR was a bad thing.

The reason is simple, transitioning from Socialism to Capitalism resulted in an estimated 7 million excess deaths globally, a huge spike in poverty and wealth inequality, destruction of safety nets, and a rise in far-right nationalists directly funded and supported by the West. This is why Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera are seeing resurging popularity in Ukraine, and this is a bad thing.

Further, the 1930s famine in Ukraine was by no means an intentional mass murder, such claims originate with the Nazis trying to discredit the Soviet Union. Even the Wikipedia page on Holodomor recognizes that claims of intentional murder are dubious at the most generous:

While most scholars are in consensus that the main cause of the famine was largely man-made, it remains in dispute whether the Holodomor was intentional, whether it was directed at Ukrainians, and whether it constitutes a genocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union.

The truth of the matter is that it was a horrible tragedy that got spun by the Nazis as evidence of the evils of the Soviet Union, as it was free propaganda to paint it as such by the Nazis, and useful for the anti-communist west to spread the Nazi narrative as from a Realpolitik perspective any means of discrediting Socialism was a good means. This is further affirmed by the openining of the Soviet Archives and the wealth of information confirmed and denied by them.