"Totalitarianism" as a term was largely popularized in order to depict Communism and Nazism as "twin evils," when the reality is that Socialist countries have had dramatic democratization of the economy.

[+] Jonas@mastodon.nl -9 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

@Cowbee @memes might be true, but by definition (A system of government in which the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control) my comment is correct

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 16 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

No, it isn't. The Soviet system dramatically expanded worker control over Tsarism and Capitalism.

[–] AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

With such a straightforward definition of ‘totalitarianism’, one could argue that Imperial America is totalitarian.

We can find much evidence for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R., as

The [Kremlin] regularly urged its people to criticize local conditions and their leaders, at least below a certain exalted level. For example, in March 1937 Stalin emphasized the importance of the party’s ‘ties to the masses’. To maintain them, it was necessary ‘to listen carefully to the voice of the masses, to the voice of rank and file members of the party, to the voice of the so-called “little people”, to the voice of ordinary folk [narod]’.¹⁷ The party newspaper Pravda went so far as to identify lack of criticism with enemies of the people: ‘Only an enemy is interested in seeing that we, the Bolsheviks […] do not notice actual reality […] Only an enemy […] strives to put the rose-coloured glasses of self-satisfaction over the eyes of our people.’¹⁸

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