My dad called me one last week. I told him I’m not even a communist, just a moderate social democrat who likes Soviet symbols for the shock value. (Not true, I’m a Marxist-Leninist, but gotta keep the peace with family, IYKYK.) But now I’m wondering, is “Stalinism” even a thing? Are any of you bears “Stalinists”?
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Stalinism is used by Hoxhaists to self-identify, used by Trots as a pejorative for Marxist-Leninists, or can be used to refer to Stalin’s policy in the soviet union (such as socialism in one country). “Stalinism” as an ideology is just Marxism-Leninism, which Stalin synthesized.
Libs and Trots wield the fear of Stalin as a club to silence Marxist-Leninists in public spaces by calling us “Stalinists.”
do you think it’d be funny to plunge a know-nothing lib into the deep end of the olde leftist infighting, by saying “I’m not a stalinist, stalinists are Hoxhaists, I’m a Marxist-Leninist! That’s like calling a Marxist-Leninist who adheres to Mao Zedong thought a Maoist. You’re practically spitting in their face because you’re calling them a gonzolite baby bath-water enjoyer or a pot-head!”
“whats a pot-head?”
“someone that hates cities and glasses”
“like a hipster?”
“sure lets go with that.”
I assume it would be like walking into the Star Wars cantina for them.
“What the fuck is a luxemburgist and why did you just call me a “rosakiller”?”Calling soneone a Rosa killing luxembourgist is advanced leftism
“Do you want the entire story of scientific socialism starting with Marx and Engels, or do you just want to know why real socialists never trust socdems?”
I think it would be hilarious to drag a clueless lib into leftist infighting. Take this random social democrat who wants to learn about the actual left, instead of forcing him to read Lenin until his eyes are bleeding and he still doesn’t have any greater understanding, just a bunch of outdated terminology and a pounding headache, drag him into a place where leftists infight and tell him “go talk to people, I need to go to the ladies’, I’ll be back in ten minutes, don’t piss off the cranks”, and expect to come out of the toilets just in time to see the Maoists and the Hoxhaists agreeing to throw him out.
you forgot to include the trot calling the sucdem a series of archaic insults in words and sentences that’re both dated to silent generation lingo and all the wordy shit they’ve read from the collective trot library right to their face while pushing them to buy their paper.
also the trot’s either fucking ancient or freshly graduated from highschool
“You people are the reason the left has no unity.” - Guy my dad’s dad’s age. Not a minute later… “Can we interest you in a newspaper?” - Guy who looks 14 and can’t be a day over 19, with a voice squeakier than my kid brother’s. Wearing the same party symbol as the guy who insulted me. “This is why I don’t go to left unity shit anymore. Come on, buddy. Let’s go home and read some theory, you’ll learn more doing that than hanging around here.” - Me, beyond frustrated at this complete waste of my time, to the guy I dragged there.
Fuckin’ Trots. The jokes write themselves. (It is rather funny that the only Trots older than like 20 are old enough to be the younger ones’ grandparents.)
Excellent bit, lol. Might have to try that next time!
Pot-head
How have I never heard this term in this context? Too good.
“Stalinism” is also a pejorative term wielded by western liberals against anyone who is to the left of Hitler and who actually wants to win instead of being good little western leftists who fetichise bourgeois parliamentarism and insists on losing every single time.
A good way to counter that and scare the hoes would be to call ourselves Stalinists.
I just might do that. I already just say “Yes.” when I’m called a “tankie”… yeah, Soviet tanks are cool! And socialist revolutionaries driving tanks through outdated capitalist power structures is super neat! Hell yeah I’m a fuckin’ tankie! No shame in that!
Stalin made good points, and I think we as leftists can learn a lot from the USSR’s successes! Sure, call me a Stalinist, I think he was right about a lot of stuff!
Congratulations, comrade Lenin would be proud.
Quick note though, communist tanks already did a lot of driving through monarchistic power structures. That’s why we have some semblance of society and you and I are not chained to a wall getting executed by CBT or whatever. Capitalism is a disguise for monarchy. Look into the colleges rich North Americans send their replacements to. Fascism is a tool of monarchy. Liberalism is a tool of fascism.
Socialism is a lot like capitalism but with a strong welfare system that still doesn’t always provide for those who absolutely can’t contribute to society and have no one to take care of them. It, unfortunately, causes it to frequently rely on an unemployment base, like capitalism, except that the unemployed have a guaranteed welfare system under socialism. Because they are still treated like people in a society. Or at least they’re supposed to be. It’s not always easy to think about and put into practice right away. It’s frequently very hard. Probably 1/3rd of the world even understands what a communist is right now. All of this has been derived from communal poverty forced on us by a repugnant, blatantly evil parasite class that absolutely will destroy the world soon if they are not stopped. For us tankie communists in 2025, it’s basically just good enough until the worldwide revolution of the proletariat is fully organized.
Capitalism is a disguise for monarchy. Fascism is a tool of monarchy. Liberalism is a tool of fascism.
This one is going into The Collection. Thank you.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Some do, for sure.
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Well, that doesn’t tell me anything new or interesting.
I knew the term ML came from Stalin’s time as GenSec, I knew that most commies who call themselves Stalinist care more about the Soviet flags than actual socialism and liberation, and I knew that my dad is a rabid anti communist child of the Cold War who thinks “commie” is too mild of an insult for actual ideologically committed commies and calls me every Cold War insult there was for the entire damn Warsaw Pact. Regardless of the ethnic slurs not fitting and things like “Stalinist” effectively meaning nothing.
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Hoxhaists call themselfs stalinists
“The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is what they have in mind. But, on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet; it is an honor for us to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will never force us to our knees.”
– Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV, pp. 234-235Well, in that context, that Stalinism is just anti revisionism, and knowing that I’ve called myself a Hoxhaist as a bit before (as part of jokes about bunkers, because I live in a basement), I guess I am a Stalinist and the guy wasn’t wrong.
(Not that I actually know what Hoxhaism is. Lol. I just think the bunkers are a good bit.)
Stalinism means whatever the person saying it wants it to mean. So next time someone says it either roll your eyes and ignore them (what I do) or ask them what they mean by it.
Usually it means that a person who venerates (or minimizes the negative aspects of) a period of Soviet history defined by a high degree of bureaucratization that discourages/ punishes democratic participation. For others it means wanting a police state maintained by violent purges and gulags for political enemies, in which regular people were afraid to speak out. For some both. For others it’s just a thought-terminating epithet and they don’t really know what it means but it’s bad for reasons they’ve never had to explain like how most people have never had to explain why they think the Nazis were bad.
I will say I think saying something like “Stalinism isn’t a thing Stalin was an ML” isn’t really helpful. Like Reaganism isn’t really a thing either, but it does convey a shorthand and that’s how people communicate.
I don’t think it’s a useful category so I don’t call myself a Stalinist but a lot of people in my org probably think I am one.
I don’t say that exact line, I just say “Stalinism doesn’t exist, that’s what Trotskyists call Marxist-Leninists.” And I don’t use “Reaganism” as a term either, I call it what it was - Cold War Christianity in an ecumenical alliance with American Civil Religion, and the rise of the Religious Right.
I’d say that the only person who’s ever called me a Stalinist to my face probably doesn’t actually know what that term means. He doesn’t know why the Nazis were bad, either, and he doesn’t know what a communist actually is.
I’d say by your definition I’m definitely not a Stalinist. I think that the excessive power of the bureaucracy and the gulag system were some of the black marks on the USSR’s history that socialists should learn from and not repeat, while also learning from the USSR’s successes, so. Yeah. Definitely not a fan of “Stalinism”.
‘Reaganism’ is what they called neo liberalism cause he (for all intents and purposes, I know carter did get the ball rolling) started it.
Oh, that. I’ve never heard or used that term. I just call it neoliberalism.
My dad called me one last week.
Trust me, that man is not based.
Imagine “child of the Cold War, broken by that culture of fear, convinced the USSR still exists, convinced communism is a Russian ethnoreligion not a political and economic stance and the USSR is/was its theocracy, that communists are all ontologically evil, but hey, at least he believes it’s impossible for someone born outside the historical Warsaw Pact to be a “genuine communist”… except that he doesn’t fully believe that and he treats Western communists the way a very proud anti-semite treats Jewish converts.” Now, whatever you’ve imagined, consider him if he was ten times worse and his only semi redeeming quality was being so rabidly pro capitalist that he thinks his asshole behaviour has a monetary value and buying his familial victims of it gifts and family experiences cancels out the poor behaviour, so at least his wife and kids get nice material things for surviving him and pretending to not mind his emotional and occasionally physical violence, and you might be getting close to a portrait of my dad.
I wasn’t called a Stalinist because I actually know what the hell I’m doing WRT being a principled Marxist-Leninist. I was called a Stalinist because he thinks calling me a commie isn’t a harsh enough insult and he doesn’t know the word “tankie”.
Stalinist is just another way to way marxist-leninist. So no, there is no meaningful stalinism in the west
Comrade, these days even the Trotskyists are Stalinists
At this point maybe the Hexbear front page should just have a portrait of Stalin displayed. Maybe right above our clock that shows Moscow time, to lampshade everyone who calls us Soviet bots. (Which is funny. The Cold War is over, dude! Move on already!)
Unless you’re a freak like Grover Furr or part of a political faction that is acting in alliance with Stalin or Hoxha, no.
I told him I’m not even a communist, just a moderate social democrat who likes Soviet symbols for the shock value. (Not true, I’m a Marxist-Leninist, but gotta keep the peace with family, IYKYK.)
Why bother displaying Soviet symbols in a context where your dad can see them? You’re just making yourself look like a 14 year old. You don’t need a bunch of lifestyle merchandise to be a communist anyway. I say this because if the answer is, “I was at a communist rally,” then why would a hamsic be the sticking point?
I got caught with that kind of junk when I was like 12, needed an explanation, I was stuck and he’s not going to ever buy that I outgrew it, at that age he still wouldn’t drop cringey shit I was last into when I was like six and he still hasn’t, so I couldn’t tell him the truth then and claim to be over it as an older teenager or young adult. I needed to tell him something that wouldn’t totally fuck me over at 12 and that I didn’t mind him believing for the rest of our shared lives.
Its just Marxist Lenninism
Albeit under even more extreme duress.
Huh. Maybe I am a Stalinist. In my worst moments, when all I really want is a world where the right side won the Cold War.
If those are your worst moments you should really see what the other guys are doing right now man.
The other guys?
ICE, Israel, rightwing militias in the U.S., any other number of murder-addict mercenaries pretending to be religious extremists across the globe funded by three letter organizations from the U.S. Your tankie dark moments really aren’t that bad.
Ah, I see. Even when we are at our worst flashes of “Stalinism”, the commies still suck less than every other ideology. Checks out.
Username checks out. Lol.
Stalinism is when you really like food so you get a really big spoon so you can fit more food in your big fucking mouth like the big ol’ slop-loving piggie you are
Really though, yes and no. Yes Stalinism is a term that could be used in a way that would be meaningful. Stalin was a world leader and he had actual policies, so you could refer to those policies and the philosophies behind them as Stalinism and that would make sense. But among people who know what they’re talking about, that set of ideas is usually just called Marxism-Leninism, because that’s what Stalin called them when he was actually doing them.
Usually when you hear the term Stalinism, it’s from people who don’t know what they’re talking about and think Stalin was some kind of demon summoned from the underworld to do a genocide worse than the holocaust. So it’s kind of a poisoned term at this point.
I wish we could summon Stalin from the underworld to actually be those cranks’ nightmare.
And someone will probably call me a Stalinist for saying that.
stalin was a hologram
I didn’t ask if Stalin himself existed, I asked if “Stalinism” was an actual communist tendency separate from Marxism-Leninism.
Computer, turn off holodeck safety protocols.
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My reaction would be “He looks like someone’s dad. Can I have a dad hug?”
Like this:
At one point, like the 1948-1953 range, yes, absolutely. Now the term has been heavily diluted, and most “stalinist” schools of thought have been subsumed by arachno-bidenism–specifically aligning with the jonkler tendency.
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Cooler with Stalin than with liberals and fascists, generally.
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Comm is on Hexbear, and follows Hexbear’s rules. It’s kind of like you crossing an open border to another country and expecting the laws to be the same, we don’t ask for your passport or credentials but we ask that you abide our rules.
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The USSR, both during Stalin’s tenure and not, was the largest and most significant socialist state in history (until the rise of the PRC). Slandering the USSR is pretty basic anti-communism, and is in no way comparable to Israel conflating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism.
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Fair, it happens.
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You’ll still see this comment, you just won’t see these comms show up.
The thing is, we can’t separate Stalin from the USSR’s successes. We can either look at the USSR (and Stalin by extension) honestly, for the good and the bad, or we can just say Stalin and the USSR were bad. Looking at Stalin’s achievements, he was actually right a broad majority of the time despite existing in the most chaotic and dangerous period of soviet history. He was often socially reactionary, but at the same time he played a large (but not all-encompassing) role in the dramatic improvements the working class saw in the soviet union.
To quote Nia Frome:
The thing is, delinking socialism from Stalin also means delinking it from the Soviet Union, disavowing everything that’s been done under the name of socialism as “Stalinist.” The “socialism” that results from this procedure is defined as grassroots, bottom-up, democratic, non-bureaucratic, nonviolent, non-hierarchical… in other words, perfect. So whenever real revolutionaries (say, for example, the Naxals in India) do things imperfectly they are cast out of “socialism” and labeled “Stalinists.” This is clearly an example of respectability politics run amok. Tankies believe that this failure of solidarity, along with the utopian ideas that the revolution can win without any kind of serious conflict or without party discipline, are more significant problems for the left than is “authoritarianism” (see Engels for more on this last point). We believe that understanding the problems faced by Stalin and Mao helps us understand problems generic to socialism, that any successful socialism will have to face sooner or later. This is much more instructive and useful than just painting nicer and nicer pictures of socialism while the world gets worse and worse.
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I don’t spend 6 hours saying it. But I’m not a Stalinist. I often think it’s funny when someone insists I am, though.
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Lenin’s Constitution that decriminalized homosexuality, legalized abortion and let women initiate divorces unilaterally
Lenin wasn’t a king, it’s the 1918 Constitution, which did not have the features you describe. For example, the decriminalization of homosexuality was a characteristic of the 1922 Criminal Code, not the Constitution. The other two were decrees, not the Constitution (then the divorce policy was put in the 1918 Family Code, so again law, a year after its decree).
Stalin’s Constitution that reversed all of that
Though they happened around the same time, they are not features of the 1936 Constitution, they are all laws.
You can just say “Under Lenin” and “Under Stalin” and be both more concise and more accurate. Hell, even the “Lenin Regime” and the “Stalin Regime.” Yes, I am being pedantic, but this talk about the respective “Constitutions” is a senseless affectation.
But what you are talking about, besides eliding the entire content of the Constitutions, is simply not useful on a fundamental level because no one here is going to argue that we should be implementing either Constitution wholesale and will obviously disagree with those actions under Stalin. But again, this isn’t from either Constitution, so how am I supposed to answer? The Constitutions with these laws tacked on? Why these laws specifically, and why bring the Constitutions into it? I disagree with the laws you tacked on, but the 1936 Constitution has many good provisions in it that the previous did not have regarding economic rights and the like, not that I’m even blaming Lenin (mostly*), since I think all of these Constitutions were written in response to current conditions and there’s only so much you can do to declare a better society by fiat (though I grant you the mentioned laws under Lenin are a good example of it, though you’re missing of course that abortion was also free, and that cannot be merely declared but requires infrastructure, and so was only guaranteed because they could provide it).
*I said “mostly” because I broadly believe in universal suffrage and there were people the 1918 Constitution banned from voting who I don’t think it was very helpful to ban, not that I’m kept up at night by the injustice of it. I just think it’s minimally a mild detriment without a real benefit, at least in some cases.
True communism is when gay people.
I can’t wait to see the good faith interpretation they have of this comment
