Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/ComradeHakim Twitter: @YaBoiHakim A spicy one discussing Left-Wing Anti-Communism, its faults and the origins of its misguidance. This took maybe 6 re-uploads before it wasn't immediately demonetized or flagged somehow. I hope you guys enjoy it
The Libertarian Party is now using the #BottomUnity campaign to unite anarcho capitalists with anarcho Communists. The Libertarian Socialist Caucus, of the Libertarian party, is part of left wing anti communism. They say they are trying to unite anti authoritarian capitalists with anti authoritarian socialists. Libertarians like Kevin Carson are pushing for "market based left wing socialism." He is saying that free markets will help socialism. Infantile.
You should do a video on the real flaws of Bernies ideology a lot of the “lefties” like Secular Talk and HR really like posture as far left but will defend the slightly better than what the us has neocolonial-liberalism that Bernie supports. Im really curious what an in-depth leftist critique on Bernies history and beliefs would look like most actually leftists just dismiss Bernie and don’t go deep into hide flaws
@Diogenes TheDog Chomsky also writes about "Communist thugs who ride to power on the backs of the masses." (paraphrasing)... among other things. His latest stunt was basically endorsing voting for Biden.
I'm a Marxist-Leninist and we need to liquidated liberals and social democrats! They are not leftists they want to save capitalism and bend over to the class, they are the true enemies of the proletariat than the fascists ever could! Anarchists are useful for helping overthrow the capitalist class, after that they will be all thrown into the sea sinking holding anchors, anarchists are nothing more but obstacles to the revolution at least a better than capitalists but that's a low bar.
being liberal is fucking libertarian in the dictionary sense, stop being an uneducated retard. i take it you are an american? you realize liberal outside of America, liberal literally refers to the same thing as americans refer to as libertarian? why would libertarians be even the slightest in agreement with socialists? hell thats why some people outside of america use the term "Ultra liberal" to describe people who support billionaires and tax cuts. a liberal would not be taking the bus towards a city in the first place, they are economically right wing and always was
I read blackshirts and reds last year. One of his sources in his footnotes was from an Italian newspaper which I couldn’t find on the internet. I emailed him asking if he could send it to me. He literally emailed me within a few days saying that his friend had sent him a newspaper clipping in the 90s and he couldn’t locate it at the moment because he was in very poor health. I sent a reply back asking if I could set up a gofundme for whatever his health issues were and he never responded. That was probably too much. Parenti is a class act. He is a noble man who responds to his readers and cares for this world. If you have 5 mins, look up is email and send him a message of appreciation for his life’s work. Hakim, thank you for your work too.
As an American lefty I’ve been waiting for this video. I get called a fascist in leftist communities just for having a Luke warm response to the USSR. They have this utopian view of what a revolution should look like. Material conditions matter not. The Vaush community is among the worse in this regard. I would love to see Hakim dismantle Vaush. Hakim is well spoken and well read. A true comrade
READ EDIT I'm in Vaush's community and I don't know what you're talking about dude. Vaush himself has a very nuanced view of the USSR, from what I've seen. I don't know if some one-off person called you a fascist but I'm pretty sure most of the community would have a pretty nuanced view too. EDIT: This is a very old comment and soon after writing this I saw firsthand what ya'all are talking about. I've been an ML for a year. Fuck Vaush 🛠🗺⚖️
Kig V2 don’t know if your new to Vaush but he despises MLs. He’s leveled many mischaracterizations about “tankies” and has likened them to “privileged white boys who can just as easily be nazis”. Vaush and his community are the epitome of what Hakim is talking about. Reactionary responses are aplenty if you reveal a nuanced approach to socialist regimes. Vaush purged all MLs from his community which is why I don’t watch him but I was there from the beginning and he has actively insulted MLs and encouraged his community to do the same. The Vaush circle is one of the most toxic leftist communities I’ve come across and I’ve come across many. Right wingers are more kind to me than the shit levied on a Vaush thread. These are not isolated incidents. I also recommend “Blackshirts and reds”, I actually read it after watching this video. It specifically addresses why folks like Vaush work to discredit and invalidate communists of the ML variety, among other things. You seem like an open minded comrade, give it a look. Stay well
@@shreddiekrueger359 Most MLs are class reductionists who support killing "counter revolutionaries". Maybe the reason anarchists don't like MLs is because of all the anarchists MLs killed?
@@ApexRevolution What a nuanced and honest way to speak your opinion on the matter. I suppose the video above was actually saying "kill the anarchists" when it said views on prior socialist state need to go beyond shouting "red fascism".
It's so true. No one ever looks at the nuance. There are a ton of amazing things that people have achieved in communist countries throughout history. I hate when it's all looked at as being evil.
GeekByDay StudByNight Detrimental and undesirable for sure without a doubt, “evil” is arguable though. Few here are advocating for Stalinist total dictatorship bud, yet not all variants of “authoritarian leftism” are bad. That’s the video’s point.
I did once and got a terse two sentence reply and I was only asking about his views on corbyn and the smears by most of the media so it’s not like I was being a knob to him and got a very bland almost msm reply from him. I’ve gone heavily off Chomsky these last five years and find parenti would have been a better person to do noams job of speaking of this stuff but parenti was too dangerous, Chomsky was just dull.
@@fahim102Chomsky is no threat to the ruling class. He is basically controlled opposition, he can be given a platform as long as he isn't dangerous to the stability. Parenti on the other hand is too radical for the bourgeoisie to stomach, so he never had the spotlight
Re: If your comment points out that parts of academia are bourgeois I agree absolutely. However if the implication is all of academia is bourgeois: What the fuck is this anti-intellectualism? It is intellectuals who brought us dialectics and dialectical materialism. Marx was an intellectual. Most other prominent socialist writers that shaped the countless movements and overall movement were intellectuals. Academia does not have monopoly on who is an intellectual, as much as they might wish to centralize and monopolize the defining of thought and promote the western point of view. There has always been people who were pretty good at thinking. The bourgeois wastes their talents and those people will have helped causing their downfall. The 1800s steelworker is as much a revolutionary as the 1800s thinker. And it has not changed. One could not be without the other. It is perfect symbiosis. A revolution without revolutionary intend falls back into barbarism. Maybe the most revolutionary intend is that of the most opressed in society freeing themselves but if then they use that freedom to opress others not much has been won. Just think this through really.
@@FrozenRat161 - we can assert that Academia has a bourgeois bias, due to the material conditions in capitalist nations. Only the bourgeois and petty bourgeois can afford to make the choice of perusing an academic carrier. Exceptions exist - but to pay to spend years of your life studying and to study something without a large future salary is not something working class people choose often. There are allies of the working class and communists among the bourgeois, they are the minority, because the bourgeois are incentivized to ignore and downplay the issues of capitalism due to their success. Now, if everyone got a free scholarship to any school and rent was 20$ a month - the material conditions would almost eliminate the bourgeois bias of academia. Academia is not inherently the realm of exploitative capitalist bourgeois, the system of capitalism and the material conditions of capitalist nations reduce the representation of the proletariate in academia.
As an American, it’s so mental to me that people here can complain about how the USSR built a big military and used it for things. The levels of critical thinking are zero for some of these people.
Western liberals and leftists are programmed to hate things which are a problem to US imperial interests. They of course are given different reasons to hate everything that is on the way of the US empire. In general, just by looking at what liberals and US leftists hate about not just socialist countries but all official state enemies of the US, you can see what stands in the way of US interests. This isn't always the case, but most of the time it is the case.
"As an American, it’s so mental to me that people here can complain about how the USSR built a big military and used it for things. The levels of critical thinking are zero for some of these people." Isn't that one of the most generic things leftists say about America? So USSR having big military is ok but US having one is not? People on the left should stick to making arguments about classless, moneyless, stateless society because whenever they praise USSR over military, GDP growth etc... they look like idiots because Imperialist countries had the best military and GDP growth so if USSR should get a pass for that then British Empire should also get a pass for that. "But muh exploitation" right which is why you should stick with these kind of arguments and not talking about GDP growth...
Thank you. I found that, in general leftists in countries that don't benefit massively from Imperialism seem to have a much more pragmatic, and frankly much more useful view on politics. Of course, being born in Germany in 1993, I was heavily indoctrinated to condemn the Soviet Union or the GDR without ever even really learning about them. I am thankful for the work of people like Parenti and you, for helping me break out of this indoctrination.
Or it can be because the West is the only place with a long standing tradition of parliamentary democracy. Everywhere else, it´s quite a novelty in comparison, and is often seen as strange. Also, higher standard of living makes people more aware of all the things they could lose, if a revolution or civil war were to happen. It´s generally a lot easier to make things worse than to make them better.
@@jirkazalabak1514 Riiiight... There's a lot of information out there on democratic structures in the Soviet Union or Cuba. I recommend looking into that. TH-cam channels Hakim, FinBol, Endymion and AzureScapegoat do a good job. I also recommend looking into what makes our "democracies" very undemocratic. You can start here. journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Influence-of-U.S.-citizens-and-elites-horizontal.jpg
@@mirror452 Well, my parents and grandparents lived in Czechoslovakia during the socialist regime. It wasn´t a democracy. The elections only ever featured communist candidates. No dissent was tolerated. I highly doubt that things were any different in countries with much tougher regimes, like the USSR. Sure, there could have been "democratic structures". Various local commitees and such, that wielded quite a lot of power, but it always came back to the Communist Party leadership somehow selecting, dismissing, bribing or intimidating the members of those structures. Not to mention that only "politically reliable" people were usually allowed to hold any kind of public office anyway.
This video so full of dishonesty, you can find hours of footage of Chomsky talking about the specifics of how and why the state capitalism of the Soviet Union was masquerading as socialist as a means to seize power. Hakim didn’t once quote Chomsky or Orwell and instead built a pathetic strawman to attack instead. This is embarrassing honestly
I agree with Parenti the fascists should not get their newspapers and the plutocrat should not receive his inheritance. But vanguard Marxist-Leninism of 1917 onward the central and South American Liberation Theology Marxist Catholic is not allowed to join the communist vanguard party specifically out of atheist chauvinistic bigotry. Do you see? The issue is what freedoms will destroy socialism and what freedoms will enhance socialism by being inclusive. Would the homosexual in Castro CUBA be able to be gay, no. Is loving the same sex going to destroy the socialist project? No it’s not. Is abstract art going to destroy socialism? No. The Marxist Leninist vanguardist needs to look squarely at tge bigotry and social and intellectual and artistic conservativism of the past.
Even if you consider yourself an anarchist, you should recognize, whatever socialist society that sprouts is going to exist in the context of the time and place that it exists in. Leftists should learn from the successes of people like Thomas Sankara.
Thomas Sankara was a Leninist who repressed anarchism and denounced it explicitly (and for context it was actively being funded by colonial powers in the region). Had he survived and not been early-martyred he would have been villified as was and is done to Qaddhafi. Frankly these mythologies about socialist governments are those that lead to not only wars on them but scare off anyone from even theorizing about revolution in the imperial core.
@@sungod1384 The Paris commune demonstrates that anarchists can’t defend themselves from outside threats. Marx and Lenin realized this and called for a vanguard party.
As someone who prefers anarcho-communism, I recognize that the growth of anarchism requires the fertile soil of a safe and prosperous communist society. Communism is the pioneer species that chokes out the invasive weeds of capitalism, leaving space for the fragile flowers of anarchism to bloom.
Brilliant as always. This phenomena has two main expressions: 1) 'eurocommunism': adapting to bourgeois society and ideology for some perceived gain. Eurocommunists are forced to compromise and only accept the most moderate socialism, reforms etc and denounce the strongest enemies of capitalist society. 2) ultra-leftism: denouncing any socialism or methods that are deemed in violation to some eternal principles. This stems largely from lack of practical success -- the smaller the ultra-left group, the more extreme and wide their denounciation of real-life socialist experiments or activities is. Those two also often overlap. One proof of the unscientific nature of their approach is that while they all agree to denounce real-life socialism, they dont have any agreement on the reason why. Real life socialism is attacked as being "marxist statism", "not real marxism", "not real leninism", "marxist leninist state-capitalism", "bureaucratic socialism" etc. etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would imagine any scientific factual research could pinpoint the real flaws and make a consensus based on solid proof. But there is no consensus in the united-front of opportunism: only coming up with a narrative that suits their ideological needs. I'll also link my vid on Operation Mockingbird th-cam.com/video/KCPn7lN5gIE/w-d-xo.html
Eurocommunism was the consequence of the Doctrine of Progressive democracy formulated by Togliatti. When left beyond the iron curtain western European communist parties could either go the way of the Greeks and be crushed by reactionary forces without any help from the USSR, or engage in bourgeois democracy.
@@francescofontana9707 There's a difference between simply taking part in bourgeois elections and becoming reformists. Communists usually take part in elections, but the reformists wanted to abandon marxism-leninism and the international communist movement, and basically become social-democrats. Their plan was basically to abandon all the revolutionary stuff, and hope that wins them elections.
Funny thing, not all trotskyst is a ultra-leftist, but every ultra-leftist is a trotskyst. Really funny how on left and even socialist party's that considers thenselfs trotskyst you can see they denounce real socialism experientes, and say that this is not real socialism, and contribute even if they don't realize with the right anti comunism propaganda
I'm also seeing a growing trend of what I'd call anti-intellectualism where people dismiss the very idea of reading theory. They'll tell you "I don't want to read a book by a 200 year old dead white dude", "you're just a book worshiper", and other nonsense as if they don't think they have anything new to learn and have no need to expand their worldview. I hate to come off like I'm saying I'm so much smarter than someone else because I read a book they didn't, but like, reading is cool and good and useful actually.
Comrade, when the revolution come, These bastards will be sent of to the "GULAG" and be forced to read Twilight and every other dogshit dystopian book every written.
After almost forty years of talking to people about this, I'd say it's worse than that. Not only is it hard to find anyone who reads Marx seriously. It's hard to find anyone who has read even one of the classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo, or the architect of our dominant economic orthodoxy, Milton Friedman. Not only that-- they have never heard of "classical political economy," and so they couldn't have any idea that Marx's magnum opus was a critique of it. Much less do they have any idea what it says. Terms like Keynesian and neoliberal sail right by them (although lately I've noticed people using "neoliberal," albeit incorrectly), and the occurrence of an unfamiliar term doesn't even prompt them to go look it up, in an age where it's ridiculously easy to look things up. So, for example, they think we have a functional "market system," but they couldn't tell you the characteristics or functions of markets, and couldn't give you basic definitions of really any fundamental terms they go around using, such as "capital" and "socialism." Their ostensible rejection of Marx (and acceptance of whatever they think "capitalism" means) is therefore just a pantomime. I guess it's supposed to signal obedience to authority rather than a substantial position on these matters. And I'm not just talking about caricatures of apathetic or uneducated or reactionary people. I've run into this attitude from educated liberals, even graduates of elite economics programs, where they're never shown so much as a PowerPoint about Marx's work and yet are taught to reject it. I've come to see that the general public's ability and willingness to critically self-reflect has been systematically sabotaged to the point where it's extremely difficult to have constructive conversations about economic policy.
Bunch of people can't read good. If you can cool. Less and less people are reading less and less. The fact that socialism is the only -ism that assigns homework is a problem.
As a brasilian recently-turned socialist, I can say what you said about white western leftists being more prone to anticommunism is spot-on. In Brasil, it is much more common for self-proclammed socialists to defend real socialist experiences such as the Soviet Union. I guess when you live in a country that has always been vitimized by famine and liberal (pseudo)democracy is the exception more than the rule, the Soviet Union seems great by comparisson. Whereas a white, upper-middle class american leftist might look at it and think it was all worthless, since they likely wouldn't be able to keep their lifestyle in a similar society, and anything that doesn't correspond to their utopian vision of socialism is not worth pursuing.
as a fellow brazilian, I agree. even the few leftist journalists tend to say that PT shouldn’t give open support to cuba or venezuela (though usually their argument is that “it looks bad” instead of an ideological disagreement). and most of the journalists who say this are what we would consider white
@@leonardopires9344 They aren't necessarily white, they are either petty bourgeoise or labour aristocrats, they are sell outs in any case. And they are just liberals, not leftists. Leftists are first and foremost antiliberals. Leftism is antiliberalism.
@@durshurrikun150 as I said, MOST are white, not all. and I wouldn[t consider them the normal type of liberal, like a traditional rightwinger. I[m talking about people that are more of social-liberals, socialdemocrats. I[m talking about journalists from Carta Capital and such
@@leonardopires9344 But they do that because of their class interests, if they were poor or proletarian, they wouldn't be doing that. Social liberals and social democrats are still liberals, though. They are anticommunists, thus they are liberals. Communism and left wing are first and foremost antiliberalism.
@@durshurrikun150 they are proletariat, they are workers, not capitalists. by marx's definition of class these people are proletariat. I do agree they are not radicals though, as in communits
@@zaer7340 ok I'll give it a shot, thanks not really a leftist but I like reading books on both sides of the political aisle, any other books you recommend?
I listened to Blackshirts & Reds in its entirety while on a hike one day. It literally changed my life. That recommendation cannot come enthusiastically enough.
Good video. Especially your point starting at 9:15. Many people forget, downplay or mock Communist revolutionary background, particularly the fascists ("right wingers"/"conservatives"). Many Communist revolutionaries committed Class Suicide, they rejected their privileged middle class bourgeois upbringing. There was a 99% chance of them gaining nothing but death once they abandoned either lucrative properties they owned or a path to academic success and tenure. Yet those people you mentioned still decided to take that risk on the slim offhand chance they could liberate millions from the tyranny of the capitalists, and the rampant misery, pollution and slavery that brought (and still brings as a matter of fact). That in and of itself is inspiring.
Not all that inspiring when these upper middle class ppl that have the least to loose no matter wat happens, bc their parents have political influence, or ur wife's family is rich, and then when the revolution is all over u a nonworking class individual sit at the v top of the food chain. All revolutions have come from the middle class and history shows this, and it's always the poor that suffer and nothing ever changes for them. It's always the upper middle class well educated ppl that lead these revolutions and then we r told that they risked everything, when infact they risked the least put of everybody that fought. It's always the poor man's body but the upper and middle classes war, and in the end we at the bottom r forced to praise men that if the revolution had failed would've been just fine, bc of their wealth and family connections.
@@jayliezambella Wtf are you talking about? The poor were uplifted after all these revolutions. Do you really think bourgeois 'political influence' matters once the dictatorship of the proletariat is established? If the revolution failed they would have been killed, idiot.
Neither we the whites of the third world (Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil or any others peripheral whites) do that. I think the question is not being a white wester leftist, but being leftist in the central- Western powers. Because I have seen lots of non white Western "leftist" who are the typically anti communist. Generally central-Western leftist are less left or more right than third world leftist.
@@McHobotheBobo not only that, it's also in their material interest to prolong imperialism. So, so, many of the western "left" just wants a bigger share of the imperialist pie.
@@exu7325 I don't think most people think of it that way, they just want more pie, and if they've been brainwashed to believe imperialism is the best way to do that they will back it. It is a real risk, tho.
Although I'm worried that the youth (being 20 myself I'm talking about people my age) are more and more influenced by the US and I see this despite skin color, not that there's much variety here either (Argentina). I just hope it doesn't become the norm here too.
In Eastern Europe communists are still communists. In Western Europe and USA communists aren't actually communists. There has been a few new parties in my country where young imposters pretend that they are leftist and denounce the former socialist country in which we were livjng in. Old people (communists) despise them and regard them as CIA left.
As an American, it came as a surprise to me when I got to late highschool that socialism still exists. You would think it was some past movement that didn’t work out and then we move on. It’s actually surprisingly difficult to find any information that makes socialist countries look good. I’m not talking about favorable interpretations, I’m talking about factual information. I think a lot of leftists here just don’t have a nuanced understanding of socialist countries, and I don’t really blame them given the fact that the information is well hidden. They also seem unable to grasp the circumstances by which these countries were formed. It’s not like they were high income liberal democracies with political stability and the complete absence of geopolitical threats, like the US. I mean the formation and development of the US wasn’t pretty either, no country ever was. The point is we need to be able to analyze these things with nuance, to both understand the feats and the failures, and provide adequate context to the events.
@@eddie-roo To my understanding, the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and China are the five remaining Marxist-Leninist countries. There are about a dozen or so other self proclaimed socialist countries, but they mostly are welfare states with a few worker co-ops.
Excellent video. You know, since opening up about being a Marxist-Leninist and relating the historical Irish national liberation struggle to the struggles of oppressed and colonised people all over the world, ravaged by western imperialism, I've noticed that people from all over the world have started getting in touch. Prior to this, when people assumed I was an anarchist or a liberal or whatever, my viewers and the people who contacted me were pretty much all white people from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc. and a few European countries. Makes you think. (Or maybe it's just a coincidence, who knows?)
My Facebook lit up with African Indian Latin Asian and Eastern European communists etc I haven’t looked back. All the drama comes from the western left they’re constantly on the msm bandwagon feeding off it everyday and our comrades in other parts of the world don’t need msm to direct their lives and thoughts. Totally different outlook
Me too. Not because it will be full of controversy, but because it's full of Stalinist circlejerking and one-sided masturbatory self-congratulation. Enjoy your echochamber, leninists
Cameron, Tiglath, you're both right about some things and being dense on other things. Stop this petty fucking stupidity. Stop focusing on ways to explain how the other is a fascist and focus on how the two of you likely share a lot more values and goals than you want to admit right now. Grow up. Authleft and Libleft are not enemies unless we make it so.
I feel sick from just 10 minutes of exposure. Simply because of the amount of disgust I feel for the deliberate or deranged (it doesn't matter which one it is consequencially in this context) dishonesty of what some people are saying.
If we are allowed to criticise, I would say that the arrest and murder of so many communists was a mistake. The purging of people who were later released (therefore innocent) that weakened the Soviet Union and led to the early defeats in WW2 that cost millions of lives. Soviet workers did not have unalienate work, in fact factories were organised exactly like capitalist ones. They did have health clinics and holiday camps but were not the owners of the factories or even partners.
I lean towards Platformist anarchism, and have critiques of a lot of socialist countries, but I do often feel like we refuse to look at or learn from other socialist experiments. It feels like a real weird blind spot.
@@americancommunist6076 It's really weird, like Anarchists who are like... uncomfortable with the idea of even reading Lenin freak me out. Like... if you don't read the theory and history of other tendencies how can you fully understand what you're actually advocating? Why are you so afraid of even exploring his ideas? What is this impulse towards... only reading what falls under your specific label? If you don't see what theoretical points underlie your critiques, how can you be sure your own theory avoids them? The way the revolutionary left is splintered and atomised in the US is clearly heavily COINTELPRO influenced to me, and is a real weakness.
Mostly because the failures stem almost entirely from democratic centralist vanguardism. There's no point in analyzing why something failed from a perspective that isn't going to adopt that policy anyway. It'd be like a plane maker analyzing why most ships sank in the 1900s
You just described me bud. I am an ansync but I don't reject state socialism entirely either, after all there is no such thing as transforming hell into heaven in a single day. Even Capitalist revolution during 18th century culminated due to centuries of growing consciousness or "enlightenment" of the flaws of the Feudal society, which is why I believe a revolution will happen in a distant future, where working class consciousness becomes so strong that it becomes impossible to repress.
I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist, and just like you, I also think we should also not disregard the past socialist experiments completely, instead analyze both good and the bad, and draw lessons from it in order to build a better society. Just like dogmatically accepting every single policy of the USSR, condemning all of them does more harm than good and overall doesn't help to keep the revolution up and running.
@@horhay3608 Lul no. He abolished the worker opposition. Workplace democracy was well kept, but no longer independent from the party to deny saboteurs and infiltrators an angle.
Yes it wasnt true socialism. Thats like saying anything taken on a massive scale has to be considered for the attempt that it was just because an attempt was made, the sunken cost fallacy basically. I'm not going to call a giant fucking palace worth 100s of million dollars what my definition of what a house should be just because a massive concerted effort was put into making it and they want to convince me that thing should be considered a house, its a monstrosity and should be destroyed
@@kazaddum2448 Lmao Lenin crushed the factory commities and gave all the power in the workplace to the state, you are delusional if you think there was workplace democracy in the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has never even achieved Socialism, not in a single ML project did the proletariat own the means of production, quite the opposite, they were slaves to the state, striking was suppressed and unions became puppets of the state. Lenin and his gang is a joke, Marx would spit in his face if he ever saw what he did in the name of Communism, not only the brought a turannical regime in Russia they also ruined the name of Marx and Socialism. Marxism-Leninism is a failed and irrelevant ideology, the sooner you realise it the better.
My parents actually grew up in the soviet union, unfortunately I was born too late to experience it but it sounds so much better than even life in Australia (we have free healthcare, only need to pay off our education once you earn more than a certain amount of money etc.) so it's very weird to me when people talk about how horrible the soviet union was. My mum's complaints about it are that the clothes were ugly and there were no jeans or Mars bars (no fast fashion or American products). She was very surprised and confused when I said that just because I finished uni I'm not guaranteed a job, and when I joked how "in the soviet union, uni pays you" she was like "well it didn't pay that much". It just sounds so great, of course there are flaws but Americans like to forget that while all these flaws were happening in the soviet union slavery and racial segregation was rampant there, women weren't allowed to vote and got paid less etc.
I just read, and re-read parts, of Blackshirts & Reds thanks to your recommendation here. What a great and accessible read! As one who was a teenager during the Cold War Reagan years in the US, I can say many of these points are still difficult for me. They challenge me in a healthy way. I had no idea how deeply internalized the anticommunist propaganda was until now.
One thing is to talk about the October Revolution on a coffee shop and with chill out music, another thing is to talk about the October Revolution on Siberia during the Civil War. I think you can get the idea.
I, more or less, squealed when I saw that you had uploaded. I want to thank you for making videos. Your videos have really helped me in terms of class consciousness and I am eternally grateful. Thank you Comrade.
here's good faith criticism from me. my English is very much not perfect, so please bear with me. there is a huge margin between anarchist critique and Orthodox Marxist, left communist critique. you seem to have acknowledged it here. >"If you have read enough literature on the Bolshevik revolution, for example, you'd quickly notice the pattern of lionizing the first few years revolution up until 1922 or 1923..." still, then you seem to mix anarchist, Trotskyist, and left-communist critiques together. this is a common problem with critics of left-communism because it is too general of a term. many very different tendencies are mashed up together, which makes it easier to strawman them. like with Chomsky and Orwell, neither of them is or was left-communist. Chomsky is Anarcho-syndicalist and Orwell was a trot. >"This trend very easily fits with left-wing anti-communist paradigm as it glorifies the weakest, most fragmented and most uncertain time period in soviet history..." Nah, man. you need to understand the point of critique in order to counter it. equating left-communists to angry children is very misguided. the exact reason why leftcomms have problems with later development in the Russian revolution is that it directly contradicts Marxism. and yes, we know that that was the only way and material conditions demanded it. that the whole point. Bolsheviks, when starting the revolution counted on the upheaval in the western, more developed capitalist countries. as Marx and Engels put it in their preface to the Russian edition of communist manifesto: "If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development. " The failure of Western revolutions to succeed meant the failure of the soviet union as a communist project. instead, it took the role of industry builder, the developer of capitalism in semi-feudal Russia. The pros of the Soviet Union were those of social-democratic capitalism. it was supposed to be a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, awaiting the revolution in the west, but with the apparent failure of that plan, the pretenses of being Dictatorship of the proletariat fell with it. Lenin never in his life called soviet union a socialist state, always saying that it was merely directed in that way: "No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term the Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognized as a socialist order." he also recognized the importance of world revolution in order to achieve this: "We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that score, and we know how difficult is the road that leads from capitalism to socialism. But it is our duty to say that our Soviet Republic is a socialist republic because we have taken this road, and our words will riot be empty words. " I think my Compatriot, Ioseb Jugashivili put it the best way: "The overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and establishment of a proletarian government in one country does not yet guarantee the complete victory of socialism. The main task of socialism, the organization of socialist production, still lies ahead. can this task be accomplished, can the victory of socialism in one country be attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries? No, this is impossible... For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of such a peasant country as Russia are insufficient." That very same Compatriot of mine in several months after publishing the statement redacted it and stated the opposite. he also went on his way to declare the establishment of Socialism in 1936, when the Soviet Union was neither moneyless nor classless, therefore still capitalist... most of what I'm talking about Cuck Philosophy discusses deeper in his latest video. P.S. in the middle of the video you very vaguely try to gesture at historicity which is very much a right-wing tactic and is unbecoming of a leftist channel.
They are like ReEducation in a way, in that they focus their attention on a broader audience than people who make explicitly leftist content do. Vaush is brocialism's Trump: vocal and often wrong, but oddly engaging to some. I can't speak to xanderhal as I am only barely familiar with their work.
@@mateo255 most noticeably on his interpretation of electorialism. He was citing quotes that apply only to workers parties or existing communist parties, neither of which exist in the US.
@@roseblack1301 His attempt to use theory for his argument and his complete disregard for MLs is super cringe, but that's barely any of what he does. He does his other leftist advocacy pretty well in a niche that desperately needs some leftist voices. Why can't we say that he's flawed, just like Hakim, just like (certainly) many of the people in these comments, just like ALL people, and wish he would do better? Why do we all have to call each other "tankies" and "radlibs" and "red fash" and "anarkiddies"? We share so much in common and could share some invaluable perspective. Even our contradictory stances are hard to dismiss as simply "wrong," sometimes life doesn't have easy right and wrong answers. We should be allies. This whole feud wastes time the human race doesn't have.
As someone just starting their leftist journey this was really, really helpful. I have come across passionate MLs who are seemingly sycophants for Stalin and Lenin and it pushed me away for a while. I've always tried to be conscious during my radicalisation to not be a weirdo, to only believe in things if there is evidence or airtight logic around them. This is probably an artifact of a liberal worldview but I just want to make sure I follow something honest and effective, rather than become some kind of QAnon guy. It is true that if you said Stalin was a good man I would likely instinctively question that, fearing a name more than a person. if you asked me why I think he's bad, I haven't a clue about his life or premiership. These names and how bad they are have been drilled into us since birth. You are right that the blueprint did not exist, and of course hindsight means we can debate at length on what the correct actions were. I am glad that around the world people are more open to Marx, and I am glad people understand that change will not be done democratically or necessarily peacefully. The fact you say MLs are not uncritical has reassured and influenced me enough to join a ML space and search for material on Stalin as well as Lenin. Thank you so much for this video ❤️ stay safe
I hear "The USSR wasn't socialism" from other leftists all the time to dismiss all of its faults. I laugh in their face, condemn its faults, and praise its successes.
"He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm."
@Adam Jensen Never meet a Third-Worldist, maybe they are rare in my country because we have a strong communist party [in the context of the European communist movement], but for me third worldism, when defended by people in the West, is just a form of anti-Marxist socialism. You are very right comrade its defeatism and the sad part is that the people, like Jason Unruhe, are just Bernsteinian socialists in negation (if not worst), they follow the same line of though - no matter how radical one seems in contrast to the other.
“If you hold Orwell in any positive regard you need to reassess your political inclinations”. Can I be granted permission to have some nuanced analysis of Orwell as Lenin and Castro are given?
Gotta love when the brigade of teenagers and upper middle class failchildren with no life experience or achievements who make up the majority of online “radical” culture try to defame a guy who actually fought and took a bullet for the causes of international leftism and solidarity.
@@samueloak1600 Richard Wolff just made a video on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics from an unbiased perspective (i.e no CHINA BIG EVIL), Kings & Generals released a great video on Phillip of Macedon's Diplomacy, Dankey Kang made a Lenin defense video & manga wise Oceaniz made a Redestro video that's very good.
@@samueloak1600 did we not JUST watch a video where it was revealed that using a name to erase the tons of ordinary people who believe in something infantile??
While this does exist in certain leftist circles, I think it's kind of overstated in this video. The criticisms of the USSR by people like Chomsky, Foucault are recorded and shown over and over again, while their praise of the USSR (especially when acknowledging the extreme pressures the USSR had to combat at all fronts) are ignored. Chomsky was the one who originally opened my eyes to the successes of mao's revolution. The fact of the matter is, is that western leftests are afraid to vocally say positive things about the USSR, Cuba, China because they understand that that will get them deplatformed. At the end of the day, western liberals are divided and disorganized, and if we ever want to accomplish anything in places like the US you are going to have to work with people who don't have hammer and sickle profile pic.
Foucault entertained Marxist ideas but rejected it pretty early on. The accusation on the right that Foucault was a Marxist is idiotic. Foucault was explicitly a Nietzchean and also interested in Stirner and to some extent Reich Freudianism. Foucault’s ideas are best described as non-idealist structuralism libertarian individualism. Though he criticizes both libertarianism and the concept of individualism. So very Hard to place. What Foucault inherited from Marx was anti-idealism. And that anti-idealism is a challenge to conservatism. For Foucault “we ought to ask what it means to be free.” So very much at the end of the day French libertarianism.
@@matthewkopp2391Isn't Foucault responsible of saying something along the lines of "Marxism is to the nineteenth century what a fish is to water: it cannot breathe anywhere else". I read it somewhere but do not remember exactly if it was Foucault who said it.
I've seen this in the Balkans. People say shit like "Titoism was flawed and it wasn't true socialism". Like bro what are you talking about, the living standard here 30 years later is about the same as it was then😂 Great video
I severely dislike the "all Communism is Stalinism" rhetoric. I disagree with the authoritarian characteristics of certain communist regimes, but it is extremely unfair to dismiss all their accomplishments. Apart from the moon landings, the USSR won the so-called space race. The Bolsheviks were able to transform a largely agrarian society into an industrial society capable of space flight in less than fifty years. This is an enormous accomplishment. The living standards in the USSR for most of the population were vastly superior compared to present-day Capitalist Russia. Said past living standards are superior to that of most of the population of present days US, UK and plenty of other "affluent" capitalist nations. The working class in the 1980s USSR had access to universal healthcare, free education, sports facilities, music lessons and could afford to go to the theatre and do various other cultural activities. Sad but true, that is something the working class in most of the current EU nation-states cannot afford and the working class in the US cannot begin to imagine. Communist systems could be made and maintained without the authoritarian oppression of the USSR, Maoism, and similar regimes although they would certainly need to be able the defend themselves against aggression from Capitalist nations which would necessitate a modern army, preferably nuclear weapons and intelligence agencies to counter foreign interference. The US and US-based multinational corporations have not only violently overthrown Socialist nations, but they also continue to stamp out any democratic socialism within the EU and other liberal democracies by means of political pressure, corporate lobbying and propaganda. I am sad to say that they have been largely successful. A lot of economic and social reforms have been undone by Neoliberalism. Capitalism does not want Social Democrat systems or even minor regulations either. Leftists who try to play nice within capitalism need to face facts: capitalists want them gone too. The only Leftism that is tolerated within a capitalist system is ineffectual leftism. It is not a coincidence that so many successful civil rights activists end up dead even in so-called democratic countries and that right-wing terrorism is not effectively opposed within liberal democracies.
Soviet apartments were tiny by western standards and often had poor heating and ventilation. It was not uncommon for three generations to live together. If they were lucky they would have their own private bathroom and not use a shared one for the floor. Usually citizens had to wait up to seven years to buy a car.
@@jjthefish446 consider the relative improvements that these apartments provided. Most people in the pre soviet era lived in literal shacks with an outhouse. The urbanisation done by the soviet union allowed, in a very short time span, for the majority of people to live more comfortably then they did before.
Honestly, the authoritarianism was not their biggest problem. The biggest problem these old socialist states had was their refusal to socially transform the country and properly combat conservatism. We see this today in China where growing queerphobia, patriarchy and ethno-nationalism have lead to the almost complete disillusionment of socialism and for capitalist oligarchy to replace it. Cause when you allow your people to develop these kind of supremacist attitudes, they will completely stop valuing their material conditions and instead focus entirely on defending their genes. We see this in many western countries where the working class has happily voted themselves into virtual servitude cause they're convinced that they must defend the glorious white DNA against immigrants, queer people and non-Christians. So future leftist projects no matter their flavour, MUST combat conservatism in all its forms and stomp out these kind of self aggrandising attitudes. Least they end up in inevitable failure.
I mean lets be honest Hakim, Western Leftists and Liberal posing as Leftists have absolutely lost the plot. The global Left would be better off honestly.
I agree with what he is saying about how we dismiss a lot of the good that socialist experiments like the USSR did such as how it gave nearly everyone a roof over their head and at least in the early times enough food to go around. But by no means after Lenin did Stalin successfully set up a truely socialist regime. What do labour camps and mass killings have to do with Marxist theory? Under Stalin the USSR took a great turn for the worst as it became a more capitalist country once again after the revolution. Lenin was a great leader and by no means do I think his decisions were wrong, but Stalin made a regime that caused the deaths of millions, so did Mao and Castro. The USSR and other socialist experiments had potential to become a socialist nation, but became exactly what Marx was in direct conflict with, then same mass oppression that Marx outlines in labour is what has happened as a direct result of these leaders (excluding Lenin and some other truely impressive Marxist that were on the right path but shut down by US interference). There is no argument for Stalin truely being Marxist in any way as he clearly creates a system that enforced fear into the people of the USSR and made a system in which he had supreme rule over the nation rather than giving a voice to the people that so desperately needed it.
Thank you for this video. I recently read a lot of Orwell, and couldn’t help but feel the absurdity of it all. I questioned why it’s celebrated, read its interpretations but still felt at unease. This video validated my uneasiness, and now I’ll read Parenti!
I tend to identify with ancom theory, but I am trying to learn more about the founders of the communist movements. I don't really know enough about Stalin, Che, Castro, Mao, or the DPRK etc to make what I consider an informed judgment on them. As one can likely imagine, it is hard to find neutral viewpoints on these polarizing subjects, so if anyone knows a good resource for related writings, I would appreciate the referral. The (admittedly small amount of) reading I have done tells me that I agree with Marx and Lenin in many regards, but I tend to ideologically favor Trotsky to Stalin. Which is not to say I think he would have been better, particularly in historical context with the rise of fascism in Europe. Alternate History (I think is the channel name) did a great analysis on that particular subject imo.
I might be called a liberal for suggesting this, but I find Pascal Robert from This is Revolution to be quite knowledgeable on this. Djene Bajalan, Ben Burgis, Kuba...all probably on the "liberal not tankie" side of communism, but this is my bias and my people.
"alternative historie' ist a liberale. Trotzki had whole different Methods to responding to Faschismus in Europa, i do Not Like it, but you peoplr Like Video ewerywehrte so i rekommenf """in defence of toucans"" about "alternative historie'"
I really listened to Proles of the Roundtable, Revolutionary Left, and Red Menace (to go along with theory) podcasts, and that shifted me from anarchist to more of a ML mindset. That being said, it’s more important to actually join or start an org in your area and learn from local like minded people if possible
Your point about a big army reminds me of these posters on the ussr that hang once in my school where one pf their citicisms is that the bolsheviks build an army even though they had signed a treaty with germany.
*and provided them with raw materials *and invaded a sovegrein nations with them *and had several meeting with the gestapo *and congratulated them on their victories
@@joedenathan4775 *they never gave them raw materials unless youre talking about when they sold raw materials in exchange for new machinery during the industrialisation period. Which they did with every western nation. *they only wanted to take back land Poland had taken during the Soviet-Polish war. That land was Ukrainian land and is still a part of Ukraine to this day. Poland wasnt some peaceful innocent nation. *Now that is just blatantly false. *What congratulations? The only people who congratulated the Nazis getting into power were Americans and British people. The same people that the Soviet Union was trying to ally withagainst Germany but was turned down. The Soviets only signed the pact to huy time to prepare for the inevitable invasion. They also fought the hardest and lost the most during the war. The Eastern Bloc had the dealiest battles and the Soviet Union did a lot of the heavy lifting to destroy the Nazis.
Amazing video! I wish more people here in the US where I live were like you. I wish I could support you on patreon but this Coronavirus pandemic is crushing me :(
Im an organized marxist-leninist and i always get called a fascist and insulted by liberals and even other leftist when i mention anything positive about Stalin or the USSR. Trotskyites and opportunistic socialists have no rooting in materialism and dialectics, the line that they cannot organize a reading circle let alone a successful revolution was much too accurate
@@user58541 why do braindead chud dipshittts, like yourself, rage-watch and comment spam leftist channels? Are you secretly a millionaire/billionaire business owner, or just a pathetic bootlicker?
As an anarchist, I couldn't agree more. I disagree with many actions taken by the USSR and other past socialist experiments, but they must be criticised and analysed as what they actually were with the understanding of context and nuance. Even we as anarchists can learn much from where the USSR went wrong, and where they were correct, and everything in the murky shades of grey inbetween. At the end of the day, even as a hard-line anarchist, I'd rather fight to have a second USSR than more of the same neoliberalism.
@@jefrreyjeffery2192 only a deeply privileged person can fail to appreciate zero unemployment, zero homelessness, and higher average calorie intake per person. I'd kill for such things, so I wouldn't have to watch my dad grovel at the feet of a fucking landlord, working three jobs, and still going to bed hungry in a supposed "northern social democracy".
@@jefrreyjeffery2192 Lmao of course a petty bourgeois first worldist can prefer a Western imperialist country of late stage capitalism! Long live the USSR! 🇨🇺❤🚩☭
@@spaghettimon3851 I'm from south asia colonised by another country, tf you on?💀☠️ Fuck Ussr, it literally was fucking homophobic and AUTHORITARIAN. Fuck stalin asshole
Hi Hakim my name is Jamshid I am from Kerala, India. I have been following your channel for a while and i must say this channel is awesom. As you recommended i read Blackshirts and Reds. In the book there is a chapter named Communism in Wonderland. In this chapter Parenti points out the problems that were in the USSR. Mainly lack of consumer products(even if there were they were not of high quality). Lack of incentive for workers to work. All these problems stem from the inadequacy of a centrally planned economy. My question is how can we remedy this? Do we need to introduce markets like china did? What is the way forward?
hi dude. i haven't read remotely enough honestly and I definitely need to get into blackshirts and reds, but central planning imo is good for necessities such as housing, healthcare, education, food, and also land use and ownership being in state or council hands with the state or council giving land or buildings for the purpose of either housing or businesses I think is a good idea. I don't think central planning is necessary for consumer goods, which are inherently more elastic and volatile in terms of demand. So imho co-ops operating in a market is a decent option there, with universities producing open-source research and innovation. Housing, in contrast, is pretty easy to plan, and even non-socialist countries do this to a large extent. How is CPI(M) in Kerala btw? I'm thinking of potentially volunteering with Red Volunteers for a little while when I visit.
@@rp1455 the soviet Union did had "collective property" distinction (like worker co-ops,consumer co-ops,etc) so yes you're right , not everything in soviet union was planned and it had some VERY small market mechanisms for consumers goods
i watched this before reading theory and came back to it no with a solid understanding of marxism and i gotta hand to you hakim this is beyond excellent!
Cuban-American Socialist here, I’m not a Leninist, I never have, and I can say with certainty that I never will be, I was an anarchist and for the most part I still am, though I’m currently arriving at a sort of blend of orthodox Marx and anarchism more akin to the Zapatistas; I will outright say that the 1959 Cuban Revolution has brought some good to the country, my own Grandfather fought in it, he was taught how to read by Che Guevara and the revolution gave him and his family a home in Havana, it’s probably safe to say that if the revolution had not happened I might not have been born, my own mother who risked her life and suffered psychological torture in a Cuban prison for attempting to leave the country 3 times will admit that there were positives to the revolution such as a vastly improved healthcare and education system, but calling the Island a “socialist” country would be reaching, most businesses are state owned and “democracy” is a stage play, and western accusations of human rights abuses are NOT merely propaganda, my own parents were illegally imprisoned without being formally charged after they attempted to leave the country for the second time; now, does that mean that I believe my own people, the family that I have living there right now deserve to get shit on by the Yankee empire? Of course not, the embargo must be lifted, it has failed in toppling the government and only succeeded in harming the innocent Cuban population, do I think that the Cuban Government is awful and that the Revolution failed? Yes; one only needs to look back at how it began repressing other leftist groups (chiefly anarchists who formed a majority in the labor movement) that played a large role in the 26th of July movement by imprisonment, closing down their publications, and forcing them into exile, Nationalizing trade unions and businesses while cracking down on strikes and labor agitation, the real Cuban Revolution, the revolution of the actual people, of the workers was suffocated by party bureaucracy.
question to ppl who repeat left anticommunist points: we "allow" or say that capitalism can change and evolve, why do we not allow socialism the same? why must socialism always either be perfect or not socialism at all/nothing to take away from?
Because socialism is when the government does stuff and no one has food. Why would someone make a system where no one has food? They have yet to ask themselves why. And if they did, they would realize how absurd of a strawman they are fighting. Its to recognize the evils of capitalism, and then listen to it aboit how evil socialism was, concluding that "ok both are bad". Its crayon-eathing leves of comprehension. Left anti-communism is to listen to the capitalist on why you shouldnt listen to the socialist, while knowing darn well the capitalist is lying. Gell-Mann amnesia.
@@anglo-irishbolshevik3425 it is comprised of strawmen, oversimplications and personal anecdotes, there is literally nothing in this video that could even remotely convert an anarchist.
What about the anarchist ? Those against the comunist are lib under the anarchist skin. You against them, ok, bc we against them too, but dont pour all of shit in our head.
@@anglo-irishbolshevik3425 this video does not clearly identify anti communist leftists and or attempt to persuade people towards Authoritarian Communism. The author made a well edited video, but on multiple watches I still dont see more than canned talking points that have been rephrased a bit. Additionally, its communicated by the author that they are really for ML as a way to achieve the good old stateless, classless, moneyless society but they dont delve into how Anarchism or Anarchists have much to gain from the authors perspective. Again the author does not even detail the specific groups they are attempting to persuade and the arguments are framed to be agreeable to those who already agree with them. If I have not also made it clear, the author does not convey that they have a good understanding of what Anarchism is nor why many on the left also would already have chosen Anarchy as the go to method to escape our capitalist hellscape.
Their rhetoric is identical to anti communists. It especially irks me when they insinuate that their revolution will be the real socialist revolution, all the previous are basically irrelevant or a totalitarian hellscape.
Western comrade here to say i support this content my dude. Its cool to see an international perstective on western imperialism. Would love to hear a leftist perspective on events in Iraq to help counter capitalist propaganda in the USA. Potential video idea?? Good luck in all your endeavors comrade and keep up the great work!
For me, there's two reasons for my somewhat doing this First, is rhetoric. Ussr sympathy is bad optics, to be reserved to leftists circles. Any redicalization to center-left people I might have contributed to could never have happened without first denouncing that which they see as evil. Second, is family history. My entire family has lived their lives in the Ussr. I've heard of what life was like. I just can't possibly support it without feeling like I'm actively dismissing my family's hardships.
This was a country arising out of a backwards feudal society so of course it will not be rainbows and sunshine all through, what you need to propagate is how, were revolution to happen in the West or even in post-socialist states as of mine, Poland, that attempt would only benefit from the theoretical and practical groundwork but of improved material conditions.
Well most people who lived in the USSR say life was good or at least better. That's actually what changed my mind about communism was seeing that the majority of people who lived it miss the USSR.
Very fine, dude. I’ve been studying this stuff for forty years but rare is the exposition on the question as concrete as this was. Very nice work. I came thru the anarchoid/trot/libertarian schools myself, indeed, only broke with them after the catastrophic collapse of the socialist east in the early 1990s. Anyway. Well researched.
@@YaBoiHakim Sadly how he did not know better about the Jordan King's lies about Saddam being a CIA puppet,but his effort in battling anticommunism and imperialism is bar none.
This was a really great video. Do you have some sources for operation mockingbird. I know the article from Karl Bernstein. I am not doubting you. I am just always looking more sources.
Hakim, thank you a lot for making this, I really needed some help with dealing with this modern ''communist'' anti-USSR and all old communist states mentality.
All of the footage is from Lithuania - the first nation to break away from the occupier Soviet shithole that had destroyed any possible progress for 45 years. We are quickly catching up to the civilised world though.
You gotta show your sources on this stuff. Provide examples of what you’re referring to. I know what you’re talking about generally, but it would be really appreciated if you could provide some concrete examples of what you’re talking about and their flaws. General statements like the ones in this video don’t allow for any nuance and just ends up sounding like a rant against some people you don’t like instead of a criticism of a viewpoint. As the Jeepster says, “be precise in your speech.”
In a video, maybe this one, you said that solyenitzyn made up his stories. I am socialist dont get me wrong, but were is the source for it? I want to show it to friends who always refer to him
Hello comrade what horror it is that they mention our friend Solzhenitsyn ;) well the writing is called Gulag Archipelago and the funniest line by far is NKVD brewing potions to take away freedom and using hypnotism in interrogations 🤣😭🚩
For me as an citizen of an former communist country, that is Romania, for us communism was poorly applied, because our communists were very stupid at appling it. We are also stupid at appling capitalism, but that is an other discusion.
I'm not sure I grasp the meaning here: "Another thing to understand is why there even exists such rampant anticommunism within the left, especially within academic spaces. Putting aside the fact that, *_due to the century-long taboo on positive Marxist coverage, many liberals have infiltrated the space,_* we need to also examine how controlled media of all kinds is under capitalist society." Is the idea that the taboo on positive discussion of Marxism causes or allows liberal infiltration because, without positive discussion of Marxism, it's difficult to differentiate liberals from leftists? Does "space" in "infiltrate the space" refer to the aforementioned "academic spaces" or to leftist space more generally? Edit: added line break
As a communist, and as much as I’m sure you will declare me as supposedly one of the people you describe in your video, I will say there is a lot of water to the statement that even by 1922 the RSFSR was already doomed to the fate it would succumb to 70 years later, along with a number of the real criticisms to be made about some fairly horrible actions taken by even relatively early Soviet administrations. A party dictatorship is not and cannot be a dictatorship of the proletariat. I understand the state of the proletariat following the civil war at the time and what caused most of the parties to no longer be valid, but in the end there was an explicit vote to abolish a multi party system, and power like that does not just go away. I am well aware that the diversity permitted within the CPSU held a greater range of ideas than most liberal democracies today, which I do not defend in any way, but both systems are woefully inadequate at truly being dictated by the proletariat. In the end, I think a common understanding among the far left and among communists that we have to accept to form a system where we are all allowed to participate in the running of society on equal footing is what I am in the end truly after. A future in which whatever particular tendency succeeds is the only specific tendency allowed to participate (plus the small other gamut of groups considered similar enough to run within their party) is not one in which the left is most likely to co operate with itself except by force, which is never a stable long term solution.
If you think the RSFSR was doomed in 1922 due to its ideology and state apparatus despite many subsequent reforms to both (e.g. the 1936 Constitution), you'd better also believe sweepingly that Cuba has been doomed since 1965 when it adopted Marxism-Leninism.
The "lack of democracy" it is not a factor in which you can determine if a country is doomed or not, far from it, a single party government (which I do not abdicate for) is sometimes even more desirable than a multi party system simply because it's stability and for another variety of reasons, China and Vietnam are about to outlast the USSR and do not seem to be affected by this so called fatal error in their system ... I think that we (communists) can make criticisms about our previous experiments in the construction of socialism, I encourage you all to do it, but we cannot be myopic nor uber deterministic about certain things, not the planned economy nor the one party system are the one and only factor for the failure of previous socialist attempts. (Srry for going to passionate about it and for my bad English x'D)
@@lentejasrojasalvapor1853 Also, The USSR was shaken by: Constant military spending to keep up with the entire western world, and B: betrayed from within.
I really gotta thank Comrade Hakim for this video and the criticism you provide by it. After a long time bouncing somewhere between a liberal/social democrat and a Communist, its clear to me that i am with all my heart and mind a communist. Therefore last year i joined the ranks of a Revolutionary Socialist Group and read as much marxist theory as i can, parallel to my philosophical literature for my planned path into Academia. Now this video really challenges me in my thinking about my so far held conclusion and i love it. I instantly recognized myself in your criticism to some extend (demonizing stalinism etc.). And boy, there is a lot of re-evaluation i gotta do to develop the perspectives for the revolution and the socialist experiments so far in my organisation and my argumentation for international communism itself. This was really helpful and i hope i can bring some new perspectives, tactics and a clearer theoretical approach forward and out to the proletariat "for they have nothing to lose but their chains." To all my fellow comrades here on this channel, who have not lost hope yet. I am honored to be in this fight with you.
I recently read Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism. I was surprised that a book defending the policies of various republics within the USSR was written by such a conservative social democrat. On almost every page it abjures the 'horrors of state socialism' and the 'crimes of stalinism', and at a few points it even rejects the 'clunkiness' of central planning, just to make it clear the author isn't even a democratic socialist. All the while praising Scandinavia, etc. Still, I found it highly illuminating and I recommend it strongly to everyone.
Most in America can agree on a handful of universally accepted "bad words" that illicit a strong response when uttered in a public space. Communism, when spoken of in a positive manner, definitely belongs on that list, and that needs to change.
This reminds me of an interesting analyses I read: anti stalinism is really anti third world liberation. Before Lenin's internationalism (such as his support of Indian anticolonialism and independence), many European socialists supported colonialism as a "civilizing project". Imperialist socialism was mostly rooted in how to more equitably disburse colonial surpluses amongst European workers. That's the intellectual core of ultraleftism.
Social imperialism is what people like Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky support. They couldn't care less about the Global South because they're not Third Worldists, but imperial facilitators at best and social imperialists more properly. There literally is no difference in their worldview and a Western imperialist like Orwell.
That’s laughable, the Soviet Union literally adopted a policy of “socialism in one country” they completely gave up on exporting their revolution lmaooo
@@julius8012No they didn’t lol. They aided communists in China, Vietnam, Korea, Albania, Yugoslavia, Germany, etc. Socialism in one country means that in a situation where only one country succeeds in revolution that that country can still build socialism. It still recognizes that for socialism to be fully secure and victorious it must be global. Amazing that y’all don’t actually read Soviet documents.
Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/ComradeHakim
Twitter: @YaBoiHakim
A spicy one discussing Left-Wing Anti-Communism, its faults and the origins of its misguidance. This took maybe 6 re-uploads before it wasn't immediately demonetized or flagged somehow. I hope you guys enjoy it
The Libertarian Party is now using the #BottomUnity campaign to unite anarcho capitalists with anarcho Communists. The Libertarian Socialist Caucus, of the Libertarian party, is part of left wing anti communism. They say they are trying to unite anti authoritarian capitalists with anti authoritarian socialists.
Libertarians like Kevin Carson are pushing for "market based left wing socialism." He is saying that free markets will help socialism. Infantile.
Hey Hakim I say I am a left wing person critiquing “communism” so I was wandering if you would like into have a debate on my channel about the issue.
You should do a video on the real flaws of Bernies ideology a lot of the “lefties” like Secular Talk and HR really like posture as far left but will defend the slightly better than what the us has neocolonial-liberalism that Bernie supports. Im really curious what an in-depth leftist critique on Bernies history and beliefs would look like most actually leftists just dismiss Bernie and don’t go deep into hide flaws
@Diogenes TheDog Chomsky also writes about "Communist thugs who ride to power on the backs of the masses." (paraphrasing)... among other things. His latest stunt was basically endorsing voting for Biden.
@@mirror452 Which quote can be actually very accurate when you go down on details on 56 Budapest or 68 Prague.
Being a Liberal is like taking a bus towards a city and then getting off a few miles before you reach your actual destination.
I'm a Marxist-Leninist and we need to liquidated liberals and social democrats! They are not leftists they want to save capitalism and bend over to the class, they are the true enemies of the proletariat than the fascists ever could!
Anarchists are useful for helping overthrow the capitalist class, after that they will be all thrown into the sea sinking holding anchors, anarchists are nothing more but obstacles to the revolution at least a better than capitalists but that's a low bar.
@@spaghettimon3851 yes but unironically.
Yep
being liberal is fucking libertarian in the dictionary sense, stop being an uneducated retard.
i take it you are an american?
you realize liberal outside of America, liberal literally refers to the same thing as americans refer to as libertarian?
why would libertarians be even the slightest in agreement with socialists?
hell thats why some people outside of america use the term "Ultra liberal" to describe people who support billionaires and tax cuts.
a liberal would not be taking the bus towards a city in the first place, they are economically right wing and always was
It's like driving from New York to California and getting off in Texas
I read blackshirts and reds last year. One of his sources in his footnotes was from an Italian newspaper which I couldn’t find on the internet. I emailed him asking if he could send it to me. He literally emailed me within a few days saying that his friend had sent him a newspaper clipping in the 90s and he couldn’t locate it at the moment because he was in very poor health.
I sent a reply back asking if I could set up a gofundme for whatever his health issues were and he never responded. That was probably too much. Parenti is a class act. He is a noble man who responds to his readers and cares for this world. If you have 5 mins, look up is email and send him a message of appreciation for his life’s work.
Hakim, thank you for your work too.
Try to ask him again. He must have a gold mine of stuff to reveal.
@@The80sWolf_ YOO IS MY BOI PARENTI OKAY??
Adam Irshaid in his website there’s two email address to contact him for speaking engagement.
www.michaelparenti.org/events.html
@@berkehan4808 i mean he's like 87
@@The80sWolf_ he's just too old, people are asking too much of him now.
As an American lefty I’ve been waiting for this video. I get called a fascist in leftist communities just for having a Luke warm response to the USSR. They have this utopian view of what a revolution should look like. Material conditions matter not. The Vaush community is among the worse in this regard. I would love to see Hakim dismantle Vaush. Hakim is well spoken and well read. A true comrade
Yea, more shots need to be taken at this new online leftist wave of white male gamers from the Vaush circle. For this reason and many more.
READ EDIT
I'm in Vaush's community and I don't know what you're talking about dude. Vaush himself has a very nuanced view of the USSR, from what I've seen. I don't know if some one-off person called you a fascist but I'm pretty sure most of the community would have a pretty nuanced view too.
EDIT: This is a very old comment and soon after writing this I saw firsthand what ya'all are talking about. I've been an ML for a year. Fuck Vaush 🛠🗺⚖️
Kig V2 don’t know if your new to Vaush but he despises MLs. He’s leveled many mischaracterizations about “tankies” and has likened them to “privileged white boys who can just as easily be nazis”. Vaush and his community are the epitome of what Hakim is talking about. Reactionary responses are aplenty if you reveal a nuanced approach to socialist regimes. Vaush purged all MLs from his community which is why I don’t watch him but I was there from the beginning and he has actively insulted MLs and encouraged his community to do the same. The Vaush circle is one of the most toxic leftist communities I’ve come across and I’ve come across many. Right wingers are more kind to me than the shit levied on a Vaush thread. These are not isolated incidents. I also recommend “Blackshirts and reds”, I actually read it after watching this video. It specifically addresses why folks like Vaush work to discredit and invalidate communists of the ML variety, among other things. You seem like an open minded comrade, give it a look. Stay well
@@shreddiekrueger359 Most MLs are class reductionists who support killing "counter revolutionaries". Maybe the reason anarchists don't like MLs is because of all the anarchists MLs killed?
@@ApexRevolution
What a nuanced and honest way to speak your opinion on the matter.
I suppose the video above was actually saying "kill the anarchists" when it said views on prior socialist state need to go beyond shouting "red fascism".
It's so true. No one ever looks at the nuance. There are a ton of amazing things that people have achieved in communist countries throughout history. I hate when it's all looked at as being evil.
Totalitarianism is evil.
GeekByDay StudByNight
Detrimental and undesirable for sure without a doubt, “evil” is arguable though. Few here are advocating for Stalinist total dictatorship bud, yet not all variants of “authoritarian leftism” are bad. That’s the video’s point.
@@snowfrosty1 The whole point of socialism is liberation from hierarchy.
@@horhay3608
No, that's communism.
@@snowfrosty1 This video is talking about you.
Stalin was not a dictator, let alone a totalitarian.
You should email Noam Chomsky, he almost always writes back.
Sure way to move me up the cia list!
I did once and got a terse two sentence reply and I was only asking about his views on corbyn and the smears by most of the media so it’s not like I was being a knob to him and got a very bland almost msm reply from him. I’ve gone heavily off Chomsky these last five years and find parenti would have been a better person to do noams job of speaking of this stuff but parenti was too dangerous, Chomsky was just dull.
@@JohnKobaRuddy What do you mean "Parenti was too dangerous"?
Genuinely asking.
@@fahim102 probably to the estabilishment
@@fahim102Chomsky is no threat to the ruling class. He is basically controlled opposition, he can be given a platform as long as he isn't dangerous to the stability. Parenti on the other hand is too radical for the bourgeoisie to stomach, so he never had the spotlight
The idea that academia doesn't have a class character is just absurd. Great video.
I noticed that as soon I began to study at university. Just call every university like: "how to become a entreprenour 101 unversity"
I would love to read some concrete analysis of class struggle in academia
Aryan Kumar good place to start is Antonio Gramsci
Re: If your comment points out that parts of academia are bourgeois I agree absolutely. However if the implication is all of academia is bourgeois:
What the fuck is this anti-intellectualism? It is intellectuals who brought us dialectics and dialectical materialism. Marx was an intellectual. Most other prominent socialist writers that shaped the countless movements and overall movement were intellectuals.
Academia does not have monopoly on who is an intellectual, as much as they might wish to centralize and monopolize the defining of thought and promote the western point of view.
There has always been people who were pretty good at thinking. The bourgeois wastes their talents and those people will have helped causing their downfall.
The 1800s steelworker is as much a revolutionary as the 1800s thinker. And it has not changed. One could not be without the other. It is perfect symbiosis. A revolution without revolutionary intend falls back into barbarism. Maybe the most revolutionary intend is that of the most opressed in society freeing themselves but if then they use that freedom to opress others not much has been won.
Just think this through really.
@@FrozenRat161 - we can assert that Academia has a bourgeois bias, due to the material conditions in capitalist nations.
Only the bourgeois and petty bourgeois can afford to make the choice of perusing an academic carrier. Exceptions exist - but to pay to spend years of your life studying and to study something without a large future salary is not something working class people choose often.
There are allies of the working class and communists among the bourgeois, they are the minority, because the bourgeois are incentivized to ignore and downplay the issues of capitalism due to their success.
Now, if everyone got a free scholarship to any school and rent was 20$ a month - the material conditions would almost eliminate the bourgeois bias of academia. Academia is not inherently the realm of exploitative capitalist bourgeois, the system of capitalism and the material conditions of capitalist nations reduce the representation of the proletariate in academia.
"Stalinist soap dispenser that didn't work all that well" lmaooo
The soap dispenser is a tankie!!!!!!
Muh grains eaten by gregorian priest
As an American, it’s so mental to me that people here can complain about how the USSR built a big military and used it for things. The levels of critical thinking are zero for some of these people.
I have literally never heard that criticism before from anyone
Western liberals and leftists are programmed to hate things which are a problem to US imperial interests. They of course are given different reasons to hate everything that is on the way of the US empire. In general, just by looking at what liberals and US leftists hate about not just socialist countries but all official state enemies of the US, you can see what stands in the way of US interests. This isn't always the case, but most of the time it is the case.
Exactly! People in our country have no substance of awareness about the governments own failures
The Audacity of some people! It's like if a priest criticized someone for being a Pedophile.
"As an American, it’s so mental to me that people here can complain about how the USSR built a big military and used it for things. The levels of critical thinking are zero for some of these people."
Isn't that one of the most generic things leftists say about America?
So USSR having big military is ok but US having one is not?
People on the left should stick to making arguments about classless, moneyless, stateless society because whenever they praise USSR over military, GDP growth etc... they look like idiots because Imperialist countries had the best military and GDP growth so if USSR should get a pass for that then British Empire should also get a pass for that.
"But muh exploitation" right which is why you should stick with these kind of arguments and not talking about GDP growth...
Thank you. I found that, in general leftists in countries that don't benefit massively from Imperialism seem to have a much more pragmatic, and frankly much more useful view on politics.
Of course, being born in Germany in 1993, I was heavily indoctrinated to condemn the Soviet Union or the GDR without ever even really learning about them. I am thankful for the work of people like Parenti and you, for helping me break out of this indoctrination.
Or it can be because the West is the only place with a long standing tradition of parliamentary democracy. Everywhere else, it´s quite a novelty in comparison, and is often seen as strange. Also, higher standard of living makes people more aware of all the things they could lose, if a revolution or civil war were to happen. It´s generally a lot easier to make things worse than to make them better.
@@jirkazalabak1514 "democracy"
@@mirror452 It´s not perfect, but it´s hell of a lot more democratic than any socialist state ever was.
@@jirkazalabak1514 Riiiight...
There's a lot of information out there on democratic structures in the Soviet Union or Cuba. I recommend looking into that.
TH-cam channels Hakim, FinBol, Endymion and AzureScapegoat do a good job.
I also recommend looking into what makes our "democracies" very undemocratic. You can start here.
journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Influence-of-U.S.-citizens-and-elites-horizontal.jpg
@@mirror452 Well, my parents and grandparents lived in Czechoslovakia during the socialist regime. It wasn´t a democracy. The elections only ever featured communist candidates. No dissent was tolerated. I highly doubt that things were any different in countries with much tougher regimes, like the USSR.
Sure, there could have been "democratic structures". Various local commitees and such, that wielded quite a lot of power, but it always came back to the Communist Party leadership somehow selecting, dismissing, bribing or intimidating the members of those structures. Not to mention that only "politically reliable" people were usually allowed to hold any kind of public office anyway.
As an American socialist, thank you for keeping me honest.
Cringe lmao
You should be welcome. You’re also not cringe
@@elperrodelautumo7511 what?
@@discordalt1724 He said your shit-talking was bullshit. He's not "cringe". You certainly are.
This video so full of dishonesty, you can find hours of footage of Chomsky talking about the specifics of how and why the state capitalism of the Soviet Union was masquerading as socialist as a means to seize power. Hakim didn’t once quote Chomsky or Orwell and instead built a pathetic strawman to attack instead. This is embarrassing honestly
George "Paul Robeson was anti white" Orwell
@@therowan8704
It was in his dairy/notes he compiled that did not give in to MI5, if I recall that correctly, disgusting nevertheless.
@@commie12akk44 oh ok sorry
lol nice meme, i thought anti white was a recent nazi thing
LOL! Did Orwell really say that?? o.o
I mean, was he anti-white? I don’t know anything about this. Why would he say that?
" 'Are the fascists gonna get their newspapers?!' "
-Michael Parenti
I agree with Parenti the fascists should not get their newspapers and the plutocrat should not receive his inheritance.
But vanguard Marxist-Leninism of 1917 onward the central and South American Liberation Theology Marxist Catholic is not allowed to join the communist vanguard party specifically out of atheist chauvinistic bigotry.
Do you see? The issue is what freedoms will destroy socialism and what freedoms will enhance socialism by being inclusive.
Would the homosexual in Castro CUBA be able to be gay, no. Is loving the same sex going to destroy the socialist project? No it’s not.
Is abstract art going to destroy socialism? No.
The Marxist Leninist vanguardist needs to look squarely at tge bigotry and social and intellectual and artistic conservativism of the past.
Facism is part of socialism
Come on
Even if you consider yourself an anarchist, you should recognize, whatever socialist society that sprouts is going to exist in the context of the time and place that it exists in. Leftists should learn from the successes of people like Thomas Sankara.
Thomas Sankara was a Leninist who repressed anarchism and denounced it explicitly (and for context it was actively being funded by colonial powers in the region). Had he survived and not been early-martyred he would have been villified as was and is done to Qaddhafi. Frankly these mythologies about socialist governments are those that lead to not only wars on them but scare off anyone from even theorizing about revolution in the imperial core.
What are you trying to imply about Anarchists exactly? Anarchism acknowledges that. Like, you sound as if your are addressing a strawman
@@pacotaco1246 anarchists very frequently dismiss Sankara. In fact Sankara dismissed them as well.
@@sungod1384
The Paris commune demonstrates that anarchists can’t defend themselves from outside threats. Marx and Lenin realized this and called for a vanguard party.
As someone who prefers anarcho-communism, I recognize that the growth of anarchism requires the fertile soil of a safe and prosperous communist society. Communism is the pioneer species that chokes out the invasive weeds of capitalism, leaving space for the fragile flowers of anarchism to bloom.
Brilliant as always. This phenomena has two main expressions:
1) 'eurocommunism': adapting to bourgeois society and ideology for some perceived gain. Eurocommunists are forced to compromise and only accept the most moderate socialism, reforms etc and denounce the strongest enemies of capitalist society.
2) ultra-leftism: denouncing any socialism or methods that are deemed in violation to some eternal principles. This stems largely from lack of practical success -- the smaller the ultra-left group, the more extreme and wide their denounciation of real-life socialist experiments or activities is.
Those two also often overlap. One proof of the unscientific nature of their approach is that while they all agree to denounce real-life socialism, they dont have any agreement on the reason why. Real life socialism is attacked as being "marxist statism", "not real marxism", "not real leninism", "marxist leninist state-capitalism", "bureaucratic socialism" etc. etc.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would imagine any scientific factual research could pinpoint the real flaws and make a consensus based on solid proof. But there is no consensus in the united-front of opportunism: only coming up with a narrative that suits their ideological needs.
I'll also link my vid on Operation Mockingbird
th-cam.com/video/KCPn7lN5gIE/w-d-xo.html
Eurocommunism was the consequence of the Doctrine of Progressive democracy formulated by Togliatti. When left beyond the iron curtain western European communist parties could either go the way of the Greeks and be crushed by reactionary forces without any help from the USSR, or engage in bourgeois democracy.
@@francescofontana9707 There's a difference between simply taking part in bourgeois elections and becoming reformists. Communists usually take part in elections, but the reformists wanted to abandon marxism-leninism and the international communist movement, and basically become social-democrats. Their plan was basically to abandon all the revolutionary stuff, and hope that wins them elections.
@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 Good reply comrade. Because they abandoned revolutionary princples they became irrelevant and so gradually faded away.
As a Marxist-Leninist statist, the thing about the ultra-left that absolutely pisses me off is crazy and dogmatic some of them are.
Funny thing, not all trotskyst is a ultra-leftist, but every ultra-leftist is a trotskyst. Really funny how on left and even socialist party's that considers thenselfs trotskyst you can see they denounce real socialism experientes, and say that this is not real socialism, and contribute even if they don't realize with the right anti comunism propaganda
I'm also seeing a growing trend of what I'd call anti-intellectualism where people dismiss the very idea of reading theory. They'll tell you "I don't want to read a book by a 200 year old dead white dude", "you're just a book worshiper", and other nonsense as if they don't think they have anything new to learn and have no need to expand their worldview. I hate to come off like I'm saying I'm so much smarter than someone else because I read a book they didn't, but like, reading is cool and good and useful actually.
Comrade, when the revolution come, These bastards will be sent of to the "GULAG" and be forced to read Twilight and every other dogshit dystopian book every written.
@@thefausty5195 whoah buddy , got any weed
After almost forty years of talking to people about this, I'd say it's worse than that. Not only is it hard to find anyone who reads Marx seriously. It's hard to find anyone who has read even one of the classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo, or the architect of our dominant economic orthodoxy, Milton Friedman. Not only that-- they have never heard of "classical political economy," and so they couldn't have any idea that Marx's magnum opus was a critique of it. Much less do they have any idea what it says. Terms like Keynesian and neoliberal sail right by them (although lately I've noticed people using "neoliberal," albeit incorrectly), and the occurrence of an unfamiliar term doesn't even prompt them to go look it up, in an age where it's ridiculously easy to look things up. So, for example, they think we have a functional "market system," but they couldn't tell you the characteristics or functions of markets, and couldn't give you basic definitions of really any fundamental terms they go around using, such as "capital" and "socialism." Their ostensible rejection of Marx (and acceptance of whatever they think "capitalism" means) is therefore just a pantomime. I guess it's supposed to signal obedience to authority rather than a substantial position on these matters. And I'm not just talking about caricatures of apathetic or uneducated or reactionary people. I've run into this attitude from educated liberals, even graduates of elite economics programs, where they're never shown so much as a PowerPoint about Marx's work and yet are taught to reject it. I've come to see that the general public's ability and willingness to critically self-reflect has been systematically sabotaged to the point where it's extremely difficult to have constructive conversations about economic policy.
@@noisepuppet Absolutely true.
Bunch of people can't read good. If you can cool. Less and less people are reading less and less. The fact that socialism is the only -ism that assigns homework is a problem.
As a brasilian recently-turned socialist, I can say what you said about white western leftists being more prone to anticommunism is spot-on. In Brasil, it is much more common for self-proclammed socialists to defend real socialist experiences such as the Soviet Union. I guess when you live in a country that has always been vitimized by famine and liberal (pseudo)democracy is the exception more than the rule, the Soviet Union seems great by comparisson. Whereas a white, upper-middle class american leftist might look at it and think it was all worthless, since they likely wouldn't be able to keep their lifestyle in a similar society, and anything that doesn't correspond to their utopian vision of socialism is not worth pursuing.
as a fellow brazilian, I agree. even the few leftist journalists tend to say that PT shouldn’t give open support to cuba or venezuela (though usually their argument is that “it looks bad” instead of an ideological disagreement). and most of the journalists who say this are what we would consider white
@@leonardopires9344 They aren't necessarily white, they are either petty bourgeoise or labour aristocrats, they are sell outs in any case.
And they are just liberals, not leftists.
Leftists are first and foremost antiliberals.
Leftism is antiliberalism.
@@durshurrikun150 as I said, MOST are white, not all. and I wouldn[t consider them the normal type of liberal, like a traditional rightwinger. I[m talking about people that are more of social-liberals, socialdemocrats. I[m talking about journalists from Carta Capital and such
@@leonardopires9344 But they do that because of their class interests, if they were poor or proletarian, they wouldn't be doing that.
Social liberals and social democrats are still liberals, though.
They are anticommunists, thus they are liberals.
Communism and left wing are first and foremost antiliberalism.
@@durshurrikun150 they are proletariat, they are workers, not capitalists. by marx's definition of class these people are proletariat. I do agree they are not radicals though, as in communits
Literally can’t recommend blackshirts and reds enough !!
Pirate Aleks that book is a life saver
It’s on the way in the mail! :)
What's it about?
The United Marshmallow Federation fascism communism and left anti communism. It’s pretty good and easy to digest you should defo read it
@@zaer7340 ok I'll give it a shot, thanks not really a leftist but I like reading books on both sides of the political aisle, any other books you recommend?
I bought Black Shirts and Reds after watching one of the reading list videos. Parenti's writing style makes it a very enjoyable read. Great book.
Parenti is the #1 top quality American Academic bar none
“The group’s that can’t organize a reading circle, think they are capable of this.” Best line of the video.
athoritarian!!! REEEEEEEEEEEE!
@@gumbymofugga Soy
@@scammerzone5279 @brimple compelling arguments dipshits
I listened to Blackshirts & Reds in its entirety while on a hike one day. It literally changed my life. That recommendation cannot come enthusiastically enough.
Glad you mentioned Orwell. Having to read Animal Farm in Middle School must've set my political development back by at least a few years
Animal farm feels like it was written to indoctrinate 4 year olds
Good video. Especially your point starting at 9:15. Many people forget, downplay or mock Communist revolutionary background, particularly the fascists ("right wingers"/"conservatives"). Many Communist revolutionaries committed Class Suicide, they rejected their privileged middle class bourgeois upbringing. There was a 99% chance of them gaining nothing but death once they abandoned either lucrative properties they owned or a path to academic success and tenure. Yet those people you mentioned still decided to take that risk on the slim offhand chance they could liberate millions from the tyranny of the capitalists, and the rampant misery, pollution and slavery that brought (and still brings as a matter of fact). That in and of itself is inspiring.
Not all that inspiring when these upper middle class ppl that have the least to loose no matter wat happens, bc their parents have political influence, or ur wife's family is rich, and then when the revolution is all over u a nonworking class individual sit at the v top of the food chain. All revolutions have come from the middle class and history shows this, and it's always the poor that suffer and nothing ever changes for them.
It's always the upper middle class well educated ppl that lead these revolutions and then we r told that they risked everything, when infact they risked the least put of everybody that fought. It's always the poor man's body but the upper and middle classes war, and in the end we at the bottom r forced to praise men that if the revolution had failed would've been just fine, bc of their wealth and family connections.
@@jayliezambella Wtf are you talking about? The poor were uplifted after all these revolutions. Do you really think bourgeois 'political influence' matters once the dictatorship of the proletariat is established? If the revolution failed they would have been killed, idiot.
Neither we the whites of the third world (Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil or any others peripheral whites) do that. I think the question is not being a white wester leftist, but being leftist in the central- Western powers. Because I have seen lots of non white Western "leftist" who are the typically anti communist. Generally central-Western leftist are less left or more right than third world leftist.
The brainwashing is strong here in the imperial core. The capitalists control writing and publication of textbooks
@@McHobotheBobo not only that, it's also in their material interest to prolong imperialism. So, so, many of the western "left" just wants a bigger share of the imperialist pie.
@@exu7325 I don't think most people think of it that way, they just want more pie, and if they've been brainwashed to believe imperialism is the best way to do that they will back it. It is a real risk, tho.
Although I'm worried that the youth (being 20 myself I'm talking about people my age) are more and more influenced by the US and I see this despite skin color, not that there's much variety here either (Argentina). I just hope it doesn't become the norm here too.
In Eastern Europe communists are still communists. In Western Europe and USA communists aren't actually communists. There has been a few new parties in my country where young imposters pretend that they are leftist and denounce the former socialist country in which we were livjng in. Old people (communists) despise them and regard them as CIA left.
As an American, it came as a surprise to me when I got to late highschool that socialism still exists. You would think it was some past movement that didn’t work out and then we move on. It’s actually surprisingly difficult to find any information that makes socialist countries look good. I’m not talking about favorable interpretations, I’m talking about factual information. I think a lot of leftists here just don’t have a nuanced understanding of socialist countries, and I don’t really blame them given the fact that the information is well hidden. They also seem unable to grasp the circumstances by which these countries were formed. It’s not like they were high income liberal democracies with political stability and the complete absence of geopolitical threats, like the US. I mean the formation and development of the US wasn’t pretty either, no country ever was. The point is we need to be able to analyze these things with nuance, to both understand the feats and the failures, and provide adequate context to the events.
Based asf bro
Just out of curiosity, what socialist countries did you hear about?
This is so true. I didn’t even know the Soviet Union existed until the 8th grade
@@MarsTheMeme FR? No mention of it? Not even the USSR?
@@eddie-roo To my understanding, the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and China are the five remaining Marxist-Leninist countries. There are about a dozen or so other self proclaimed socialist countries, but they mostly are welfare states with a few worker co-ops.
Mashallah daddy Hakim has uploaded.
You comment this on every video of his lol
@@pm2881 it's my duty
Naheed Ahmed respectable
@@pm2881 thank you comrade. Ramadan Kareem
Naheed Ahmed رمضان كريم ❤️
Excellent video. You know, since opening up about being a Marxist-Leninist and relating the historical Irish national liberation struggle to the struggles of oppressed and colonised people all over the world, ravaged by western imperialism, I've noticed that people from all over the world have started getting in touch. Prior to this, when people assumed I was an anarchist or a liberal or whatever, my viewers and the people who contacted me were pretty much all white people from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc. and a few European countries.
Makes you think.
(Or maybe it's just a coincidence, who knows?)
@Hussein think Paul was talking about himself?
One legend watching another legend, based
@Hussein Yep, talking about myself here. Probably need to start using pronouns more.
*I probably need to start...
My Facebook lit up with African Indian Latin Asian and Eastern European communists etc I haven’t looked back. All the drama comes from the western left they’re constantly on the msm bandwagon feeding off it everyday and our comrades in other parts of the world don’t need msm to direct their lives and thoughts. Totally different outlook
You can still be a communist and not have a massive hate boner for the western world
The title makes me want to throw back a few painkillers in anticipation of what the comment section will do to my head.
Me too. Not because it will be full of controversy, but because it's full of Stalinist circlejerking and one-sided masturbatory self-congratulation. Enjoy your echochamber, leninists
@@falsum2701 I'm not a "tankie," I'm not even an MLM or anything, I'm libertarian left, and I dig this video. I appreciate the USSR for what it was.
Maybe the real revolution was the leftist infighting we did along the way
Cameron, Tiglath, you're both right about some things and being dense on other things. Stop this petty fucking stupidity. Stop focusing on ways to explain how the other is a fascist and focus on how the two of you likely share a lot more values and goals than you want to admit right now. Grow up. Authleft and Libleft are not enemies unless we make it so.
I feel sick from just 10 minutes of exposure.
Simply because of the amount of disgust I feel for the deliberate or deranged (it doesn't matter which one it is consequencially in this context) dishonesty of what some people are saying.
If we are allowed to criticise, I would say that the arrest and murder of so many communists was a mistake. The purging of people who were later released (therefore innocent) that weakened the Soviet Union and led to the early defeats in WW2 that cost millions of lives. Soviet workers did not have unalienate work, in fact factories were organised exactly like capitalist ones. They did have health clinics and holiday camps but were not the owners of the factories or even partners.
Long life Michael Parenti
I'm a black American Marxist, and I can guarantee you that you are 1,000,000% correct that this is an overwhelmingly white, Western trend.
2:32 must be the stalinist soap dispensers in every bathroom of my high school, DAMN COMMIES!
I lean towards Platformist anarchism, and have critiques of a lot of socialist countries, but I do often feel like we refuse to look at or learn from other socialist experiments. It feels like a real weird blind spot.
I like this anarchist
@@americancommunist6076 It's really weird, like Anarchists who are like... uncomfortable with the idea of even reading Lenin freak me out. Like... if you don't read the theory and history of other tendencies how can you fully understand what you're actually advocating? Why are you so afraid of even exploring his ideas? What is this impulse towards... only reading what falls under your specific label? If you don't see what theoretical points underlie your critiques, how can you be sure your own theory avoids them? The way the revolutionary left is splintered and atomised in the US is clearly heavily COINTELPRO influenced to me, and is a real weakness.
Mostly because the failures stem almost entirely from democratic centralist vanguardism. There's no point in analyzing why something failed from a perspective that isn't going to adopt that policy anyway. It'd be like a plane maker analyzing why most ships sank in the 1900s
You just described me bud. I am an ansync but I don't reject state socialism entirely either, after all there is no such thing as transforming hell into heaven in a single day. Even Capitalist revolution during 18th century culminated due to centuries of growing consciousness or "enlightenment" of the flaws of the Feudal society, which is why I believe a revolution will happen in a distant future, where working class consciousness becomes so strong that it becomes impossible to repress.
I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist, and just like you, I also think we should also not disregard the past socialist experiments completely, instead analyze both good and the bad, and draw lessons from it in order to build a better society. Just like dogmatically accepting every single policy of the USSR, condemning all of them does more harm than good and overall doesn't help to keep the revolution up and running.
"That wasn't true socialism"
And they NEVER can tell what this phantomatic "true socialism" is.
Very good video comrade
@@horhay3608 Lul no. He abolished the worker opposition. Workplace democracy was well kept, but no longer independent from the party to deny saboteurs and infiltrators an angle.
Yes it wasnt true socialism. Thats like saying anything taken on a massive scale has to be considered for the attempt that it was just because an attempt was made, the sunken cost fallacy basically. I'm not going to call a giant fucking palace worth 100s of million dollars what my definition of what a house should be just because a massive concerted effort was put into making it and they want to convince me that thing should be considered a house, its a monstrosity and should be destroyed
Only my perfect flavor of communism is the only trur socialism
I’ll prefer social democracy to your USSR socialism anytime
@@kazaddum2448 Lmao Lenin crushed the factory commities and gave all the power in the workplace to the state, you are delusional if you think there was workplace democracy in the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has never even achieved Socialism, not in a single ML project did the proletariat own the means of production, quite the opposite, they were slaves to the state, striking was suppressed and unions became puppets of the state.
Lenin and his gang is a joke, Marx would spit in his face if he ever saw what he did in the name of Communism, not only the brought a turannical regime in Russia they also ruined the name of Marx and Socialism.
Marxism-Leninism is a failed and irrelevant ideology, the sooner you realise it the better.
My parents actually grew up in the soviet union, unfortunately I was born too late to experience it but it sounds so much better than even life in Australia (we have free healthcare, only need to pay off our education once you earn more than a certain amount of money etc.) so it's very weird to me when people talk about how horrible the soviet union was. My mum's complaints about it are that the clothes were ugly and there were no jeans or Mars bars (no fast fashion or American products). She was very surprised and confused when I said that just because I finished uni I'm not guaranteed a job, and when I joked how "in the soviet union, uni pays you" she was like "well it didn't pay that much". It just sounds so great, of course there are flaws but Americans like to forget that while all these flaws were happening in the soviet union slavery and racial segregation was rampant there, women weren't allowed to vote and got paid less etc.
My Family on the other hand didn't made that good expiriences with the Soviet Union...
Hakim, great video.
Honestly you need to upload more.
I just read, and re-read parts, of Blackshirts & Reds thanks to your recommendation here. What a great and accessible read! As one who was a teenager during the Cold War Reagan years in the US, I can say many of these points are still difficult for me. They challenge me in a healthy way. I had no idea how deeply internalized the anticommunist propaganda was until now.
Wait, there are street stalls in Iraq selling Bordiga's writings?
Surely your country has suffered enough.
I'm beyond blessed to have found you, Hakim. Keep up the good work! Alhamdulillah and pozdrav from an ex-yu banana republic
One thing is to talk about the October Revolution on a coffee shop and with chill out music, another thing is to talk about the October Revolution on Siberia during the Civil War. I think you can get the idea.
Lenin was thinking about October Revolution in Wiena Kaffehaus so its not too different (both Trotsky and Stalin as well)
Vietnam, Cuba, and China still stand!
Yes, but are they socialist countries? Or are they really capitalist countries that only pretend to socialism?
I, more or less, squealed when I saw that you had uploaded. I want to thank you for making videos. Your videos have really helped me in terms of class consciousness and I am eternally grateful. Thank you Comrade.
Seconded
here's good faith criticism from me. my English is very much not perfect, so please bear with me.
there is a huge margin between anarchist critique and Orthodox Marxist, left communist critique. you seem to have acknowledged it here.
>"If you have read enough literature on the Bolshevik revolution, for example, you'd quickly notice the pattern of lionizing the first few years revolution up until 1922 or 1923..."
still, then you seem to mix anarchist, Trotskyist, and left-communist critiques together. this is a common problem with critics of left-communism because it is too general of a term. many very different tendencies are mashed up together, which makes it easier to strawman them. like with Chomsky and Orwell, neither of them is or was left-communist. Chomsky is Anarcho-syndicalist and Orwell was a trot.
>"This trend very easily fits with left-wing anti-communist paradigm as it glorifies the weakest, most fragmented and most uncertain time period in soviet history..."
Nah, man. you need to understand the point of critique in order to counter it. equating left-communists to angry children is very misguided. the exact reason why leftcomms have problems with later development in the Russian revolution is that it directly contradicts Marxism. and yes, we know that that was the only way and material conditions demanded it. that the whole point. Bolsheviks, when starting the revolution counted on the upheaval in the western, more developed capitalist countries. as Marx and Engels put it in their preface to the Russian edition of communist manifesto: "If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
"
The failure of Western revolutions to succeed meant the failure of the soviet union as a communist project. instead, it took the role of industry builder, the developer of capitalism in semi-feudal Russia. The pros of the Soviet Union were those of social-democratic capitalism. it was supposed to be a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, awaiting the revolution in the west, but with the apparent failure of that plan, the pretenses of being Dictatorship of the proletariat fell with it. Lenin never in his life called soviet union a socialist state, always saying that it was merely directed in that way: "No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term the Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognized as a socialist order."
he also recognized the importance of world revolution in order to achieve this:
"We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that score, and we know how difficult is the road that leads from capitalism to socialism. But it is our duty to say that our Soviet Republic is a socialist republic because we have taken this road, and our words will riot be empty words.
"
I think my Compatriot, Ioseb Jugashivili put it the best way: "The overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and establishment of a proletarian government in one country does not yet guarantee the complete victory of socialism. The main task of socialism, the organization of socialist production, still lies ahead. can this task be accomplished, can the victory of socialism in one country be attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries? No, this is impossible... For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of such a peasant country as Russia are insufficient."
That very same Compatriot of mine in several months after publishing the statement redacted it and stated the opposite. he also went on his way to declare the establishment of Socialism in 1936, when the Soviet Union was neither moneyless nor classless, therefore still capitalist...
most of what I'm talking about Cuck Philosophy discusses deeper in his latest video.
P.S. in the middle of the video you very vaguely try to gesture at historicity which is very much a right-wing tactic and is unbecoming of a leftist channel.
I recommend you look up the Worker's Opposition
@@jarinmartin4868 thanks, i am avare of them
@@gugakiziria3845 your english is quite good. Better than many native speakers.
@@norvillerodgersspeaks thank you
You're extending way too much good will to this hack
God bless you my friend
Vaush and Xanderhal got destroyed in this debate.
They are like ReEducation in a way, in that they focus their attention on a broader audience than people who make explicitly leftist content do. Vaush is brocialism's Trump: vocal and often wrong, but oddly engaging to some. I can't speak to xanderhal as I am only barely familiar with their work.
@@roseblack1301 Wrong about what?
@@mateo255 most noticeably on his interpretation of electorialism. He was citing quotes that apply only to workers parties or existing communist parties, neither of which exist in the US.
@@roseblack1301 Exactly. He also belligerently attacked certain TH-camrs as "class reductionists" (lol) without giving any justification whatsoever.
@@roseblack1301 His attempt to use theory for his argument and his complete disregard for MLs is super cringe, but that's barely any of what he does. He does his other leftist advocacy pretty well in a niche that desperately needs some leftist voices. Why can't we say that he's flawed, just like Hakim, just like (certainly) many of the people in these comments, just like ALL people, and wish he would do better? Why do we all have to call each other "tankies" and "radlibs" and "red fash" and "anarkiddies"? We share so much in common and could share some invaluable perspective. Even our contradictory stances are hard to dismiss as simply "wrong," sometimes life doesn't have easy right and wrong answers. We should be allies. This whole feud wastes time the human race doesn't have.
As someone just starting their leftist journey this was really, really helpful. I have come across passionate MLs who are seemingly sycophants for Stalin and Lenin and it pushed me away for a while. I've always tried to be conscious during my radicalisation to not be a weirdo, to only believe in things if there is evidence or airtight logic around them. This is probably an artifact of a liberal worldview but I just want to make sure I follow something honest and effective, rather than become some kind of QAnon guy. It is true that if you said Stalin was a good man I would likely instinctively question that, fearing a name more than a person. if you asked me why I think he's bad, I haven't a clue about his life or premiership. These names and how bad they are have been drilled into us since birth. You are right that the blueprint did not exist, and of course hindsight means we can debate at length on what the correct actions were. I am glad that around the world people are more open to Marx, and I am glad people understand that change will not be done democratically or necessarily peacefully. The fact you say MLs are not uncritical has reassured and influenced me enough to join a ML space and search for material on Stalin as well as Lenin. Thank you so much for this video ❤️ stay safe
thats some good shit
Criticism and self-criticism, always
Here here!
Glad to hear it, perhaps one day we shall all meet at an international meeting of parties!
Great comment. I highly recommend reading Lenin’s work - it’s pretty phenomenal.
I hear "The USSR wasn't socialism" from other leftists all the time to dismiss all of its faults. I laugh in their face, condemn its faults, and praise its successes.
"He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm."
Third worldism looks more and more legit to me every passing day.
@Adam Jensen third worldism is a slur for anti imperialism.
@Adam Jensen Never meet a Third-Worldist, maybe they are rare in my country because we have a strong communist party [in the context of the European communist movement], but for me third worldism, when defended by people in the West, is just a form of anti-Marxist socialism.
You are very right comrade its defeatism and the sad part is that the people, like Jason Unruhe, are just Bernsteinian socialists in negation (if not worst), they follow the same line of though - no matter how radical one seems in contrast to the other.
I mean, if everyone around you keeps saying "communism has never worked", you start believing it at some point.
“If you hold Orwell in any positive regard you need to reassess your political inclinations”. Can I be granted permission to have some nuanced analysis of Orwell as Lenin and Castro are given?
Gotta love when the brigade of teenagers and upper middle class failchildren with no life experience or achievements who make up the majority of online “radical” culture try to defame a guy who actually fought and took a bullet for the causes of international leftism and solidarity.
1984 and animal farm are just capitalism self-protection itself.
Damn LOTS of great videos today, very cool
What else is fresh?
@@samueloak1600 Richard Wolff just made a video on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics from an unbiased perspective (i.e no CHINA BIG EVIL), Kings & Generals released a great video on Phillip of Macedon's Diplomacy, Dankey Kang made a Lenin defense video & manga wise Oceaniz made a Redestro video that's very good.
@@HxH2011DRA Socialism with Dengist characteristics 😑
@@samueloak1600 did we not JUST watch a video where it was revealed that using a name to erase the tons of ordinary people who believe in something infantile??
@@HxH2011DRA I guess the term "marxist" is infantile too, then
While this does exist in certain leftist circles, I think it's kind of overstated in this video. The criticisms of the USSR by people like Chomsky, Foucault are recorded and shown over and over again, while their praise of the USSR (especially when acknowledging the extreme pressures the USSR had to combat at all fronts) are ignored. Chomsky was the one who originally opened my eyes to the successes of mao's revolution. The fact of the matter is, is that western leftests are afraid to vocally say positive things about the USSR, Cuba, China because they understand that that will get them deplatformed. At the end of the day, western liberals are divided and disorganized, and if we ever want to accomplish anything in places like the US you are going to have to work with people who don't have hammer and sickle profile pic.
Foucault entertained Marxist ideas but rejected it pretty early on.
The accusation on the right that Foucault was a Marxist is idiotic. Foucault was explicitly a Nietzchean and also interested in Stirner and to some extent Reich Freudianism.
Foucault’s ideas are best described as non-idealist structuralism libertarian individualism. Though he criticizes both libertarianism and the concept of individualism. So very Hard to place.
What Foucault inherited from Marx was anti-idealism. And that anti-idealism is a challenge to conservatism.
For Foucault “we ought to ask what it means to be free.” So very much at the end of the day French libertarianism.
@@matthewkopp2391Isn't Foucault responsible of saying something along the lines of "Marxism is to the nineteenth century what a fish is to water: it cannot breathe anywhere else". I read it somewhere but do not remember exactly if it was Foucault who said it.
I've seen this in the Balkans. People say shit like "Titoism was flawed and it wasn't true socialism". Like bro what are you talking about, the living standard here 30 years later is about the same as it was then😂 Great video
i was one of those left anticommunist. im cured now
congrats on your recovery!!!
I severely dislike the "all Communism is Stalinism" rhetoric. I disagree with the authoritarian characteristics of certain communist regimes, but it is extremely unfair to dismiss all their accomplishments. Apart from the moon landings, the USSR won the so-called space race. The Bolsheviks were able to transform a largely agrarian society into an industrial society capable of space flight in less than fifty years. This is an enormous accomplishment. The living standards in the USSR for most of the population were vastly superior compared to present-day Capitalist Russia. Said past living standards are superior to that of most of the population of present days US, UK and plenty of other "affluent" capitalist nations. The working class in the 1980s USSR had access to universal healthcare, free education, sports facilities, music lessons and could afford to go to the theatre and do various other cultural activities. Sad but true, that is something the working class in most of the current EU nation-states cannot afford and the working class in the US cannot begin to imagine.
Communist systems could be made and maintained without the authoritarian oppression of the USSR, Maoism, and similar regimes although they would certainly need to be able the defend themselves against aggression from Capitalist nations which would necessitate a modern army, preferably nuclear weapons and intelligence agencies to counter foreign interference.
The US and US-based multinational corporations have not only violently overthrown Socialist nations, but they also continue to stamp out any democratic socialism within the EU and other liberal democracies by means of political pressure, corporate lobbying and propaganda. I am sad to say that they have been largely successful. A lot of economic and social reforms have been undone by Neoliberalism. Capitalism does not want Social Democrat systems or even minor regulations either. Leftists who try to play nice within capitalism need to face facts: capitalists want them gone too. The only Leftism that is tolerated within a capitalist system is ineffectual leftism. It is not a coincidence that so many successful civil rights activists end up dead even in so-called democratic countries and that right-wing terrorism is not effectively opposed within liberal democracies.
Sad but true
Soviet apartments were tiny by western standards and often had poor heating and ventilation. It was not uncommon for three generations to live together. If they were lucky they would have their own private bathroom and not use a shared one for the floor. Usually citizens had to wait up to seven years to buy a car.
@@jjthefish446 consider the relative improvements that these apartments provided. Most people in the pre soviet era lived in literal shacks with an outhouse. The urbanisation done by the soviet union allowed, in a very short time span, for the majority of people to live more comfortably then they did before.
Honestly, the authoritarianism was not their biggest problem. The biggest problem these old socialist states had was their refusal to socially transform the country and properly combat conservatism. We see this today in China where growing queerphobia, patriarchy and ethno-nationalism have lead to the almost complete disillusionment of socialism and for capitalist oligarchy to replace it. Cause when you allow your people to develop these kind of supremacist attitudes, they will completely stop valuing their material conditions and instead focus entirely on defending their genes. We see this in many western countries where the working class has happily voted themselves into virtual servitude cause they're convinced that they must defend the glorious white DNA against immigrants, queer people and non-Christians.
So future leftist projects no matter their flavour, MUST combat conservatism in all its forms and stomp out these kind of self aggrandising attitudes. Least they end up in inevitable failure.
@@classyrassy1790 When was China not a patriarchy? I don’t remember seeing any women in leadership positions in communist countries.
I mean lets be honest Hakim, Western Leftists and Liberal posing as Leftists have absolutely lost the plot. The global Left would be better off honestly.
Your channel is one of the only, where i feel like i'm learning something
"even their memory stirs fear into the ruling class"
I agree with what he is saying about how we dismiss a lot of the good that socialist experiments like the USSR did such as how it gave nearly everyone a roof over their head and at least in the early times enough food to go around. But by no means after Lenin did Stalin successfully set up a truely socialist regime. What do labour camps and mass killings have to do with Marxist theory? Under Stalin the USSR took a great turn for the worst as it became a more capitalist country once again after the revolution. Lenin was a great leader and by no means do I think his decisions were wrong, but Stalin made a regime that caused the deaths of millions, so did Mao and Castro. The USSR and other socialist experiments had potential to become a socialist nation, but became exactly what Marx was in direct conflict with, then same mass oppression that Marx outlines in labour is what has happened as a direct result of these leaders (excluding Lenin and some other truely impressive Marxist that were on the right path but shut down by US interference). There is no argument for Stalin truely being Marxist in any way as he clearly creates a system that enforced fear into the people of the USSR and made a system in which he had supreme rule over the nation rather than giving a voice to the people that so desperately needed it.
Thank you for this video. I recently read a lot of Orwell, and couldn’t help but feel the absurdity of it all. I questioned why it’s celebrated, read its interpretations but still felt at unease. This video validated my uneasiness, and now I’ll read Parenti!
orwell is best for revealing the projection and capability for projection of capitalists
It’s absurd because it describes fictional dystopian world. Shocker isn’t it?
The reason Orwell is celebrated is directly due to the CIA spreading his books as anti-communist propaganda.
I tend to identify with ancom theory, but I am trying to learn more about the founders of the communist movements. I don't really know enough about Stalin, Che, Castro, Mao, or the DPRK etc to make what I consider an informed judgment on them. As one can likely imagine, it is hard to find neutral viewpoints on these polarizing subjects, so if anyone knows a good resource for related writings, I would appreciate the referral. The (admittedly small amount of) reading I have done tells me that I agree with Marx and Lenin in many regards, but I tend to ideologically favor Trotsky to Stalin. Which is not to say I think he would have been better, particularly in historical context with the rise of fascism in Europe. Alternate History (I think is the channel name) did a great analysis on that particular subject imo.
I might be called a liberal for suggesting this, but I find Pascal Robert from This is Revolution to be quite knowledgeable on this. Djene Bajalan, Ben Burgis, Kuba...all probably on the "liberal not tankie" side of communism, but this is my bias and my people.
"alternative historie' ist a liberale. Trotzki had whole different Methods to responding to Faschismus in Europa, i do Not Like it, but you peoplr Like Video ewerywehrte so i rekommenf """in defence of toucans"" about "alternative historie'"
I really listened to Proles of the Roundtable, Revolutionary Left, and Red Menace (to go along with theory) podcasts, and that shifted me from anarchist to more of a ML mindset. That being said, it’s more important to actually join or start an org in your area and learn from local like minded people if possible
Also, I’d watch the rest of Hakim’s videos, especially the DPRK one if you haven’t by now!
@@groovalotfunk4147 This Is Revolution is precisely who this video is about lol
Your point about a big army reminds me of these posters on the ussr that hang once in my school where one pf their citicisms is that the bolsheviks build an army even though they had signed a treaty with germany.
Libtards are ignorant idiots dont mind them.
*and provided them with raw materials
*and invaded a sovegrein nations with them
*and had several meeting with the gestapo
*and congratulated them on their victories
@@joedenathan4775 *they never gave them raw materials unless youre talking about when they sold raw materials in exchange for new machinery during the industrialisation period. Which they did with every western nation.
*they only wanted to take back land Poland had taken during the Soviet-Polish war. That land was Ukrainian land and is still a part of Ukraine to this day. Poland wasnt some peaceful innocent nation.
*Now that is just blatantly false.
*What congratulations? The only people who congratulated the Nazis getting into power were Americans and British people. The same people that the Soviet Union was trying to ally withagainst Germany but was turned down. The Soviets only signed the pact to huy time to prepare for the inevitable invasion. They also fought the hardest and lost the most during the war. The Eastern Bloc had the dealiest battles and the Soviet Union did a lot of the heavy lifting to destroy the Nazis.
ribentrop was non aggression pact, everything else your saying is fanfiction
Amazing video! I wish more people here in the US where I live were like you. I wish I could support you on patreon but this Coronavirus pandemic is crushing me :(
Please take care of yourself, I'll live haha
I pray that the situation gets easier for you as soon as possible
Im an organized marxist-leninist and i always get called a fascist and insulted by liberals and even other leftist when i mention anything positive about Stalin or the USSR. Trotskyites and opportunistic socialists have no rooting in materialism and dialectics, the line that they cannot organize a reading circle let alone a successful revolution was much too accurate
Deserved for being a actual retard
@@user58541 why do braindead chud dipshittts, like yourself, rage-watch and comment spam leftist channels? Are you secretly a millionaire/billionaire business owner, or just a pathetic bootlicker?
“The day after the revolution they get up and say, “But are their civil liberties for the FASCISTS??” -Chad Parenti
As an anarchist, I couldn't agree more. I disagree with many actions taken by the USSR and other past socialist experiments, but they must be criticised and analysed as what they actually were with the understanding of context and nuance. Even we as anarchists can learn much from where the USSR went wrong, and where they were correct, and everything in the murky shades of grey inbetween. At the end of the day, even as a hard-line anarchist, I'd rather fight to have a second USSR than more of the same neoliberalism.
As an anarchist socialist I'd rather live in Western capitalist society than a fucking USSR dictatorship with depressing life.
@@jefrreyjeffery2192 only a deeply privileged person can fail to appreciate zero unemployment, zero homelessness, and higher average calorie intake per person. I'd kill for such things, so I wouldn't have to watch my dad grovel at the feet of a fucking landlord, working three jobs, and still going to bed hungry in a supposed "northern social democracy".
@@jefrreyjeffery2192 Lmao of course a petty bourgeois first worldist can prefer a Western imperialist country of late stage capitalism! Long live the USSR! 🇨🇺❤🚩☭
@@spaghettimon3851 I'm from south asia colonised by another country, tf you on?💀☠️ Fuck Ussr, it literally was fucking homophobic and AUTHORITARIAN. Fuck stalin asshole
@@jefrreyjeffery2192 If you think this way, you are absolutely neither socialist nor anarchist. You've got a lot to read yet, comrade
Hi Hakim my name is Jamshid I am from Kerala, India. I have been following your channel for a while and i must say this channel is awesom.
As you recommended i read Blackshirts and Reds. In the book there is a chapter named Communism in Wonderland. In this chapter Parenti points out the problems that were in the USSR. Mainly lack of consumer products(even if there were they were not of high quality). Lack of incentive for workers to work. All these problems stem from the inadequacy of a centrally planned economy. My question is how can we remedy this? Do we need to introduce markets like china did? What is the way forward?
Hi bro me too from India tamilnadu.l suggest that you should know about Cuban communism
hi dude. i haven't read remotely enough honestly and I definitely need to get into blackshirts and reds, but central planning imo is good for necessities such as housing, healthcare, education, food, and also land use and ownership being in state or council hands with the state or council giving land or buildings for the purpose of either housing or businesses I think is a good idea. I don't think central planning is necessary for consumer goods, which are inherently more elastic and volatile in terms of demand. So imho co-ops operating in a market is a decent option there, with universities producing open-source research and innovation. Housing, in contrast, is pretty easy to plan, and even non-socialist countries do this to a large extent.
How is CPI(M) in Kerala btw? I'm thinking of potentially volunteering with Red Volunteers for a little while when I visit.
@@rp1455 the soviet Union did had "collective property" distinction (like worker co-ops,consumer co-ops,etc) so yes you're right , not everything in soviet union was planned and it had some VERY small market mechanisms for consumers goods
i watched this before reading theory and came back to it no with a solid understanding of marxism and i gotta hand to you hakim this is beyond excellent!
Cuban-American Socialist here, I’m not a Leninist, I never have, and I can say with certainty that I never will be, I was an anarchist and for the most part I still am, though I’m currently arriving at a sort of blend of orthodox Marx and anarchism more akin to the Zapatistas; I will outright say that the 1959 Cuban Revolution has brought some good to the country, my own Grandfather fought in it, he was taught how to read by Che Guevara and the revolution gave him and his family a home in Havana, it’s probably safe to say that if the revolution had not happened I might not have been born, my own mother who risked her life and suffered psychological torture in a Cuban prison for attempting to leave the country 3 times will admit that there were positives to the revolution such as a vastly improved healthcare and education system, but calling the Island a “socialist” country would be reaching, most businesses are state owned and “democracy” is a stage play, and western accusations of human rights abuses are NOT merely propaganda, my own parents were illegally imprisoned without being formally charged after they attempted to leave the country for the second time; now, does that mean that I believe my own people, the family that I have living there right now deserve to get shit on by the Yankee empire? Of course not, the embargo must be lifted, it has failed in toppling the government and only succeeded in harming the innocent Cuban population, do I think that the Cuban Government is awful and that the Revolution failed? Yes; one only needs to look back at how it began repressing other leftist groups (chiefly anarchists who formed a majority in the labor movement) that played a large role in the 26th of July movement by imprisonment, closing down their publications, and forcing them into exile, Nationalizing trade unions and businesses while cracking down on strikes and labor agitation, the real Cuban Revolution, the revolution of the actual people, of the workers was suffocated by party bureaucracy.
question to ppl who repeat left anticommunist points: we "allow" or say that capitalism can change and evolve, why do we not allow socialism the same? why must socialism always either be perfect or not socialism at all/nothing to take away from?
Because socialism is when the government does stuff and no one has food. Why would someone make a system where no one has food? They have yet to ask themselves why. And if they did, they would realize how absurd of a strawman they are fighting.
Its to recognize the evils of capitalism, and then listen to it aboit how evil socialism was, concluding that "ok both are bad". Its crayon-eathing leves of comprehension. Left anti-communism is to listen to the capitalist on why you shouldnt listen to the socialist, while knowing darn well the capitalist is lying. Gell-Mann amnesia.
this video challenged my thinking in a lot of ways. i've been hugely humbled. thank you.
7:50
"...what some may _deem_ "authoritarian", which is a meaningless phrase by the way..."
Dude come on.
its literally a dogwhistle, doesnt mean anything anymore
@@barby8790 Authoritarian is a dog whistle? Jesus you're far down the rabbit hole aren't you.
@@barby8790 shut up nerd
Read on authority by Engels
Authoritarian is indeed a meaningless term
@@HM-wi4ou I've read it. It did not convince me.
Thank you for making this video! I hope anarchists watch and listen to it!
what do you expect anarchists to get from this? the video is weak.
@@raz1616 What's weak about it?
@@anglo-irishbolshevik3425 it is comprised of strawmen, oversimplications and personal anecdotes, there is literally nothing in this video that could even remotely convert an anarchist.
What about the anarchist ? Those against the comunist are lib under the anarchist skin. You against them, ok, bc we against them too, but dont pour all of shit in our head.
@@anglo-irishbolshevik3425 this video does not clearly identify anti communist leftists and or attempt to persuade people towards Authoritarian Communism. The author made a well edited video, but on multiple watches I still dont see more than canned talking points that have been rephrased a bit.
Additionally, its communicated by the author that they are really for ML as a way to achieve the good old stateless, classless, moneyless society but they dont delve into how Anarchism or Anarchists have much to gain from the authors perspective. Again the author does not even detail the specific groups they are attempting to persuade and the arguments are framed to be agreeable to those who already agree with them. If I have not also made it clear, the author does not convey that they have a good understanding of what Anarchism is nor why many on the left also would already have chosen Anarchy as the go to method to escape our capitalist hellscape.
Their rhetoric is identical to anti communists. It especially irks me when they insinuate that their revolution will be the real socialist revolution, all the previous are basically irrelevant or a totalitarian hellscape.
Western comrade here to say i support this content my dude. Its cool to see an international perstective on western imperialism. Would love to hear a leftist perspective on events in Iraq to help counter capitalist propaganda in the USA. Potential video idea??
Good luck in all your endeavors comrade and keep up the great work!
Hakim posted, what a good Ramadhan
Ramadhan kareem to all!
I learn a lot from you from every video. Thank you very very much.
OH SNAP! HAKIM’S JUMPING OFF THE ROPES!! ELBOW FROM THE SKY!!!
You should give us a bibliography I went by the books you mention and now I'm having a very difficult time finding them (:
I began doing so in my new videos. I include them in the pinned comment from now on :)
For me, there's two reasons for my somewhat doing this
First, is rhetoric. Ussr sympathy is bad optics, to be reserved to leftists circles. Any redicalization to center-left people I might have contributed to could never have happened without first denouncing that which they see as evil.
Second, is family history. My entire family has lived their lives in the Ussr. I've heard of what life was like. I just can't possibly support it without feeling like I'm actively dismissing my family's hardships.
This was a country arising out of a backwards feudal society so of course it will not be rainbows and sunshine all through, what you need to propagate is how, were revolution to happen in the West or even in post-socialist states as of mine, Poland, that attempt would only benefit from the theoretical and practical groundwork but of improved material conditions.
@@commie12akk44 lol no it wouldn't you dumb commie, you are polish and you want that commie shit back? You should be ashamed, saying this as a Slovak.
@@MultiSm1l3y
You are a moron, shame on representing the interests of capital in Slovakia not your own people.
Shame.
Well most people who lived in the USSR say life was good or at least better. That's actually what changed my mind about communism was seeing that the majority of people who lived it miss the USSR.
@@scottya2745 True, but those people lived at the tail end of the USSR
Very fine, dude. I’ve been studying this stuff for forty years but rare is the exposition on the question as concrete as this was. Very nice work. I came thru the anarchoid/trot/libertarian schools myself, indeed, only broke with them after the catastrophic collapse of the socialist east in the early 1990s. Anyway. Well researched.
So pleased you cited Parenti :)
I love him like I love my own parents. He is amazing.
@@YaBoiHakim
Sadly how he did not know better about the Jordan King's lies about Saddam being a CIA puppet,but his effort in battling anticommunism and imperialism is bar none.
@@commie12akk44 Of course Saddam is CIA puppet.
This was a really great video. Do you have some sources for operation mockingbird. I know the article from Karl Bernstein. I am not doubting you. I am just always looking more sources.
TheFinnishBolshevik has a great video on it. He has his sources in the description :)
th-cam.com/video/KCPn7lN5gIE/w-d-xo.html
Hakim, thank you a lot for making this, I really needed some help with dealing with this modern ''communist'' anti-USSR and all old communist states mentality.
My favourite expression for them is "their hands are clean....for they have no hands".
0:30 where are those scenes from?
All of the footage is from Lithuania - the first nation to break away from the occupier Soviet shithole that had destroyed any possible progress for 45 years. We are quickly catching up to the civilised world though.
This is objectively the best video on the internet.
no
You gotta show your sources on this stuff. Provide examples of what you’re referring to. I know what you’re talking about generally, but it would be really appreciated if you could provide some concrete examples of what you’re talking about and their flaws. General statements like the ones in this video don’t allow for any nuance and just ends up sounding like a rant against some people you don’t like instead of a criticism of a viewpoint. As the Jeepster says, “be precise in your speech.”
It’s from Blackshirts and Reds
In a video, maybe this one, you said that solyenitzyn made up his stories. I am socialist dont get me wrong, but were is the source for it? I want to show it to friends who always refer to him
Hello comrade what horror it is that they mention our friend Solzhenitsyn ;) well the writing is called Gulag Archipelago and the funniest line by far is NKVD brewing potions to take away freedom and using hypnotism in interrogations 🤣😭🚩
For me as an citizen of an former communist country, that is Romania, for us communism was poorly applied, because our communists were very stupid at appling it. We are also stupid at appling capitalism, but that is an other discusion.
@Nhel Aaten That's right, most of them are idiots.
I'm not sure I grasp the meaning here:
"Another thing to understand is why there even exists such rampant anticommunism within the left, especially within academic spaces. Putting aside the fact that, *_due to the century-long taboo on positive Marxist coverage, many liberals have infiltrated the space,_* we need to also examine how controlled media of all kinds is under capitalist society."
Is the idea that the taboo on positive discussion of Marxism causes or allows liberal infiltration because, without positive discussion of Marxism, it's difficult to differentiate liberals from leftists? Does "space" in "infiltrate the space" refer to the aforementioned "academic spaces" or to leftist space more generally?
Edit: added line break
Read gramci about power and burgueosie state aparatus
Honestly, this is probably your most underrated video. Westerners should watch it more often.
As a communist, and as much as I’m sure you will declare me as supposedly one of the people you describe in your video, I will say there is a lot of water to the statement that even by 1922 the RSFSR was already doomed to the fate it would succumb to 70 years later, along with a number of the real criticisms to be made about some fairly horrible actions taken by even relatively early Soviet administrations. A party dictatorship is not and cannot be a dictatorship of the proletariat. I understand the state of the proletariat following the civil war at the time and what caused most of the parties to no longer be valid, but in the end there was an explicit vote to abolish a multi party system, and power like that does not just go away. I am well aware that the diversity permitted within the CPSU held a greater range of ideas than most liberal democracies today, which I do not defend in any way, but both systems are woefully inadequate at truly being dictated by the proletariat.
In the end, I think a common understanding among the far left and among communists that we have to accept to form a system where we are all allowed to participate in the running of society on equal footing is what I am in the end truly after. A future in which whatever particular tendency succeeds is the only specific tendency allowed to participate (plus the small other gamut of groups considered similar enough to run within their party) is not one in which the left is most likely to co operate with itself except by force, which is never a stable long term solution.
If you think the RSFSR was doomed in 1922 due to its ideology and state apparatus despite many subsequent reforms to both (e.g. the 1936 Constitution), you'd better also believe sweepingly that Cuba has been doomed since 1965 when it adopted Marxism-Leninism.
@@randomserb761 I am explicitly referring to the RSFSR adopting a single party system which remained in place for the rest of its existence.
@@randomserb761 he's criticizing the lack of democracy not the ideology.
The "lack of democracy" it is not a factor in which you can determine if a country is doomed or not, far from it, a single party government (which I do not abdicate for) is sometimes even more desirable than a multi party system simply because it's stability and for another variety of reasons, China and Vietnam are about to outlast the USSR and do not seem to be affected by this so called fatal error in their system ...
I think that we (communists) can make criticisms about our previous experiments in the construction of socialism, I encourage you all to do it, but we cannot be myopic nor uber deterministic about certain things, not the planned economy nor the one party system are the one and only factor for the failure of previous socialist attempts.
(Srry for going to passionate about it and for my bad English x'D)
@@lentejasrojasalvapor1853 Also, The USSR was shaken by: Constant military spending to keep up with the entire western world, and B: betrayed from within.
I really gotta thank Comrade Hakim for this video and the criticism you provide by it. After a long time bouncing somewhere between a liberal/social democrat and a Communist, its clear to me that i am with all my heart and mind a communist. Therefore last year i joined the ranks of a Revolutionary Socialist Group and read as much marxist theory as i can, parallel to my philosophical literature for my planned path into Academia. Now this video really challenges me in my thinking about my so far held conclusion and i love it. I instantly recognized myself in your criticism to some extend (demonizing stalinism etc.). And boy, there is a lot of re-evaluation i gotta do to develop the perspectives for the revolution and the socialist experiments so far in my organisation and my argumentation for international communism itself.
This was really helpful and i hope i can bring some new perspectives, tactics and a clearer theoretical approach forward and out to the proletariat "for they have nothing to lose but their chains."
To all my fellow comrades here on this channel, who have not lost hope yet. I am honored to be in this fight with you.
I recently read Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism. I was surprised that a book defending the policies of various republics within the USSR was written by such a conservative social democrat. On almost every page it abjures the 'horrors of state socialism' and the 'crimes of stalinism', and at a few points it even rejects the 'clunkiness' of central planning, just to make it clear the author isn't even a democratic socialist. All the while praising Scandinavia, etc. Still, I found it highly illuminating and I recommend it strongly to everyone.
Seriously what a breath of fresh air this video is
Just when I had a little shitslinging with a certain someone claiming that MLs somehow are not communists.
Thank you Hakim.
Most in America can agree on a handful of universally accepted "bad words" that illicit a strong response when uttered in a public space. Communism, when spoken of in a positive manner, definitely belongs on that list, and that needs to change.
Your book recommendations are always fulfilling! Thank you, Comrade!
This reminds me of an interesting analyses I read: anti stalinism is really anti third world liberation. Before Lenin's internationalism (such as his support of Indian anticolonialism and independence), many European socialists supported colonialism as a "civilizing project". Imperialist socialism was mostly rooted in how to more equitably disburse colonial surpluses amongst European workers. That's the intellectual core of ultraleftism.
Well said.
Lookup Marx's on India
Social imperialism is what people like Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky support. They couldn't care less about the Global South because they're not Third Worldists, but imperial facilitators at best and social imperialists more properly. There literally is no difference in their worldview and a Western imperialist like Orwell.
That’s laughable, the Soviet Union literally adopted a policy of “socialism in one country” they completely gave up on exporting their revolution lmaooo
@@julius8012No they didn’t lol. They aided communists in China, Vietnam, Korea, Albania, Yugoslavia, Germany, etc. Socialism in one country means that in a situation where only one country succeeds in revolution that that country can still build socialism. It still recognizes that for socialism to be fully secure and victorious it must be global. Amazing that y’all don’t actually read Soviet documents.