purahna

I acknowledge that this isn't a question towards me, but I'm gonna take a stab regardless, so compared with Lenin, Stalin:

• didn't have the advantage of "noob gains", or the period where all of the low hanging fruit fixes to what was basically feudalism could be made
• had to amass nearly the whole productive output of the union to defending against and defeating the Nazis, as well as drafting nearly every man in the country in a highly self-defensive war
• had to start from rubble at the end of the war
• was the target of much deeper and more frequent propaganda, as the USSR under Lenin was an alarming proletarian experiment to capital, but the USSR under Stalin was a global superpower that threatened hegemony on a daily basis
• faced famines and sanctions of a much higher magnitude at much worse times than Lenin
• and yes, fumbled a couple things very badly which lead to a non-negligible amount of death (although, and I recognize that this is impossible to prove, handled most things far better than any bourgeoise head of state handled their similar crises)

He was decent. He isn't a god, he didn't do perfect, but when you count how shitty the hand he was dealt was and how much better things were going by the time he walked from the table, he did pretty damn decent.

That's still money. It's just pegged to something besides a bar of gold.

you are in over your head if you think replacing a currency with a different currency pegged to the value of labor is communist. Socialist, maybe, communist, not even a little.

This document is very dated and fairly simplistic but it's a good 101 basis for what we believe. Just so we're speaking eye to eye, go read this (it's very short and light reading, don't worry), then come back, and use this definition of communism. It's the definition that communists actually use and it'll do you well to know your enemy before you pick fights with them.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm jk the Manifesto is more relevant here, a little less short and substantially more dense but if you're gonna argue with Marxists about Marxism you should probably read the 23 page pamphlet that Marx is actually famous for https://www.marxists.org/admin/books/manifesto/Manifesto.pdf

We didn't invade them because of mutually assured destruction. We did proxy war them, espionage them, propagandize them, sanction them, embargo them, engage in brinkmanship with them, send blank checks to their enemies, sabotage them, and more, and all of NATO was of a one track mind in doing so.

Was the USSR so weak it was unable to be self-sufficient on the world stage? No, the USSR was so strong that starting from a mean 27 year life expectancy and zero productive infrastructure, it was able to survive this onslaught for nearly a century, and while doing so, put the first human in space, achieve world-class technological innovation, gender equality, literacy rates, and more.

1. click into the source please (or at least read the URL), he tried to resign 4 separate times and every single time the motion was even entertained he was voted to stay unanimously, once even by Trotsky's delegation.

2. if you want to turn this into "your sources are fabricated", well then, no YOU, and with that, we're done here. I've seen this play out too many times to bother with it again.

https://socialistmlmusings.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/stalins-four-attempts-at-resignation/

VOICE FROM THE FLOOR – We need to elect comrade Stalin as the General Secretary of the CC CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

STALIN – No! I am asking that you relieve me of the two posts!

MALENKOV – coming to the tribune: Comrades! We should all unanimously ask comrade Stalin, our leader and our teacher, to be again the General Secretary of the CC CPSU.

Because every single other dominant power teamed up more thoroughly than they had ever done prior or since for the sole purpose of ratfucking them down to every last brick and feasting on the carcass?

You're right, it's so fucked up that Stalin stole all those poor Kulaks' grain and put it in a big swimming pool so that he and his cabinet could swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck.

it blows my mind the lengths that online rightists will go to to defend literally burning food during a famine. Why?

I literally said "liquidating you as a class" as a possible retaliation. "Gulags" is not a gotcha, if you hoard or destroy food during a famine you are committing murder and you need to be stopped for the good of society.

By the way, the US prison population today is higher than the Gulag population of the entire Soviet Union at its peak. I'd sure as hell rather see gulags full of reactionaries and food-burners than full of drug users and the chronically unemployed. I'm curious, why do you prefer the latter?

Sorry, I think this is just a grammatical confusion, let me fix it:

socialist system must recognize that collective ownership of a state by the people requires the people have power over everything that happens in that state, law, economics, religion, war, everything.

I'll go edit the original comment for clarity

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at, can you elaborate? I'm not advocating making laws about what people are allowed to think, but I'm not sure that's what you mean