OctRev - JB 2/3 - What does USSR mean to my generation?

[LightOnTheDarkness]

Here is one accomplishment during Soviet times... what you really need to do is dig deeper into the backgrounds of those individuals who were behind this. Watch youtube video: `` Holodomor (English) The Original Holocaust *Ukraine 1932 - 1933 ``

[MegaGamesbond]

you guys should do History GCSE to really understand the so called Russian socialism, Stalinism etc. 

[shananagans5]

After the Soviet Union failed my friends mother came to the US. She was amazed with a simple grocery store. She was amazed at how nice our home was. (we were poor college students) She was amazed how even poor people could get a car. She was amazed at everything we had and at how easy life was. This made me realize how great capitalism is. It's not perfect but it a heck of alot better than communism.

[ProletarianCPGBML]

@shananagans5 Look harder! US and UK have raised living standards by impoverishing the vast majority worldwide - third world represents most people's experience of 'capitalism'. And it's far worse than your life of a 'poor' college student. US has been at constant war with the world to maintain its privilage, Killing 50 million since WW2 in direct military ops against nation after nation... 2 billion people live on $2/day; 1 billion on $1/day. 1bn have no access to water. THis is capitalism!

[shananagans5]

@ProletarianCPGBML So I guess its better we quit buying from 3rd world countries and take away that $2 a day. 

[jumpnjza2]

@shananagans5

Living standards are a function of a country's productive forces. The industrial base of the USSR was smaller than that of the US. Unlike the US, the USSR didn't go into other countries to extract resources and employ sweatshop labour so that its citizens could purchase cheap goods. The USSR was burdened by the objective need to maintain military parity with the United States which means that resources that could have gone into consumer production had to be spent on defense.

[Esoparagon]

@shananagans5 Pay no attention. The idea that capitalist countries are rich at the expense of poor countries is nonsense. The reason these poor countries are poor is because they don't have capitalism. They have no stable law. The wealth created in capitalist countries is created from nothing not taken. It's not a zero sum game. Wealth is created in free markets. It's not taken from somewhere else.

[xCBKxScArFaCe]

How big is the CPGB in Great Britain?

[blackiron60]

For all the propaganda to the contrary spewing forth on mainstream television daily, the truth is that socialist countries like Cuba and North Korea are some of the most self-sufficient countries on the planet. Socialism isn't about sponging off the system, it's about doing things yourselves as a team effort. That's the reality.

[shananagans5]

@blackiron60 And how many are starving to death in N Korea? Why are there guards to keep people from leaving? I don't think there are hoards of people trying to sneak into the north. Why did the Berlin wall had to be built? Why do people allways seem to want to escape countries like that? Because that type of system is a miserable failure. Thats the reality.

[blackiron60]

@shananagans5 The grass is always greener on the other side. They wanted to "escape" because Western propaganda always portrayed the non-Communist world as a promised land where money grew on trees and where everything was fair and just. Needless to say many were bitterly disappointed with what they really found. Your "reality" is the reality of American propaganda. I advise you to question more.

[AtheistBright]

I'm a Socialist not a Communist. However I do think there are a lot of lies told about Stalin and that generally he was a force for good. Most people in the Soviet Union got much better off under Stalin and he had so much opposition from the old fuedal and religious power bases who didn't care for the poor people one bit. Also Hitler would have taken all of Europe had it not been for Stalin and the Soviet Army. People need to remember how difficult times were before judging Stalin negatively.

[burnsy1976]

@donroche yeah and "childcare in the dprk?". i feel so sorry for her and her misguided ideology,i think her heart is in the right place, we all want to see a more equal society but when you talk about stalin, kim jong il,castro etc as if they were/are good people who wanted the best for everyone your obviously living in some parallel universe where good is bad and bad is good. These people are responsible for the deaths of countless numbers of their own people and not allowing basic freedom.

[burnsy1976]

Why not take a long holiday to North Korea if communism is so great!!! Whilst your there ask if you can go and speak to some local villager or factory worker maybe later in the day ask if you can hold a meeting and have a debate on politics,oh and i dare you say something negative about the country. Let me know how you get on?

[johnnecron]

Socialism had became your religion.

[mikeplay007]

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks!!!!!

[vivascargill]

ms brar--if you want to be a communist join slp--look during the 59'a I was briefly a member of an organization in the US that talked and talked and did nothing, Then I but changed and joined SNCC--probablty with few "communists: but with people who DID things often at risk and deat. I have bo quarell with your speech (save china) but SLP

[ProletarianCPGBML]

@vivascargill SLP is dead. I tried my best to keep it alive. I have lamented and moved on. Its been 6 years now. Time to move on.

[slanker786]

p.s. cuba and n korea would flourish now if they lifted the criminal blockade

[slanker786]

the soveit union had trade restrictions imposed upon them, but still made sputnik and uri gagarin. armstrong was a fraud and a bum

[johnnecron]

@slanker786 Do you have some proof to back up those claims?

[762cat]

so what are you now a grammar Nazi.

[762cat]

wow commies are cute they live in there own little worlds.

[ProletarianCPGBML]

Their own, cat, their own. if you're gonna condescend, please get it right - otherwise we're all a little embarrassed on your behalf.

[Shoggy100]

I agree. I lived in Yugoslavia and it s true that people living in socialist countries live with a feeling of fellowship and unity! Even security, with all the free homes and jobs.

Continue spreading a good word about socialism!!

[perseverance8]

Most incredible place to live, WTF??? Youre a delusional idologue.

[762cat]

as are you

[762cat]

they must have been weak people that wanted others to wipe there ass for them from birth to death some people are just sheep.

[ProletarianCPGBML]

you're a very deep thinker

[johnnecron]

@ProletarianCPGBML

i would enjoy going deep inside you and finding the root cause of this romanticism you have for a failed system that does not take into account human nature.

we have true socialism here in America with freedom.

there are people here that have been on unemployment for almost two years and keep getting those weekly checks.

[slanker786]

@762cat lol, 'weak' people won the most olympic medals and put the first man on the moon thank you very much. and having education and healthcare is not what i would call having their bum wiped for them! and getting rid of exploitation isn't wiping bum either. slavery is though!

[762cat]

fuck all nazi's fuck all commie's what the fuck are you talking about commie bitch.

[762cat]

why is it that people that have never lived under a evil empire want to live under that evil empire. and people that do live under that evil empire want out and risk their live to find freedom. fuck you collective fuck communism better dead than red. do people lose their hearts soul and mind in college spoiled little college brats communism has kill more people than any other regime in history. grow the fuck up

[ProletarianCPGBML]

Advocates of Nazism are in a poor position to pronounce on "evil empires." banish yourself and look into your soul-less, blackened heart, before coming to lecture the living.

[lucien350]

60% of East Germans in a resent poll said they liked life more when the wall was up.

[Shoggy100]

That is not true. Religion killed more people then communism, fascism also, feudalism and if you count slaves imperialism. AND YOU DO count slaves.

[JMcKW19]

[x] this woman needs to GTFO

[workergirls]

imperialism and fascism are two sides of the same barbarian coin...

Long live great communism !!!

death to fascism and capitalistic corrupt system !!!

Down with revisionist traitor revisionist Trotsky !!!

Glory to Stalin, Mao and Che !!!

Long live Marxism and Leninism !!!

Death to fascist rats !!!

[despe906]

This charming lady is clueless about the economy. We don't have any capitalism, we live in a full blown socialism, with central banking, huge public spending and an inevitable end to this nonsense is coming.

[wscparks]

Can we have some links to nuclear disarmament? And anti war in general?

And the needs of 4 billion people have to get above subsistence levels ????

Information on micro biology and say genetics please

No troops to Afghanistan

Other side of the co2 debate

This lady is on target

[NaturalSelection2]

As for the working people---

Erm, duh they had a say in the system. That's why people took to the streets to fight for Socialism in the first place, and why the Workers' state was able to survive the chaos of a war against fascism. It is a terrible slander to the memory of Soviet workers to claim their building of the first publicly-funded hospitals in that region of the world, for example,. to claim they seemed enthusiastic because they had no say.

I'd also recommend looking up "Soviet".

[NaturalSelection2]

Lastly, without guaranteed access to a home; to health care, and other necessities, claims to freedom of speech, movement, and having a say in society lose their significance. Survival is the first priority. Without survival, one cannot exercise whatever freedoms Capitalist society claims to grant them.

[NaturalSelection2]

Someone else would have to cover the freedom of movement issue in more detail, but:

Maybe people just liked where they lived?

Also, if this is specifically about the years of the Great Patriotic War...movement was tough for everybody in those days.

It's also a rather hypocritical allegation. "Freedom of movement" is non-existent in Capitalist countries for those born into poorer families who do not have the funds needed to live in an ideal home/neighbourhood, if they even have a home.

[commissar17]

This remains one of the best speeches mobilising young(ish) working-class people to think beyond capitalism, enbrace socialism and fight like hell for the future of humankind! Joti, you're a star.

[NaturalSelection2]

Yeah:

yington...sigh.

I'm tired of this, but for anyone else's sake:

Freedom of speech:

Absolute freedom of speech is destructive...just by looking at the power of words spoken by everyone from frinbge groups like Westboro Baptist Church to the lies of the Bush Admin., we can see that words can trigger actions that would bring harm to the people.

Threats, especially, cannot be tolerated.

[yington]

It is absolutely incredible that she is defending the most oppressive and imperialistic regime the world has ever seen.

There was no freedom of speech.

No freedom of movement.

And the working people had absolutely no say in the system whatsoever.

It is a disgrace. The fools in the west that use their freedom to defend regimes that deny their own people that same freedom.

[harrison28514]

Super agree with your theory on the greed of human being. What capitalsim has done is they had encouraged people to be greedy. They infinitely amplified the desire of human, and the result is always the moral decay of the entire society.

[vulnerabledonkey]

There are like 7 socialist/communist parties in Britain, and all their votes in the 2005 general election added together were still a full quarter less than the BNP's vote tally.

We're all fucked.

[ummcarlos]

to protect capitalism, the major bourgeois political parties give out propaganda that foreigners are the problem and disillusioned people vote BNP because they think that this is the only party prepared to deal with this 'problem'. The solution is for more and more people to get out there and spread the truth about capitalism. Are you in or out?

[MarxBakuninMe]

I think the other CPGB are better. They have sanity.

[prolesvin]

mmm all good points .. where can i meet this girl?

[Stalinikos1917]

Joti, you did very well! Well done for this excellent introduction to the Soviet Union

[johnloony]

An excellent speech! The same mixture of conflicting systems of thought with which so many people - particularly of the same generation - have been struggling. Overcoming a lifetime of indoctrination by the bourgeois media is difficult (and, as I have discovered, unpopular among some) but Joti shows that it is possible.