The people before us weren't perfect. Their mistakes are blueprints to learn from and build a better world
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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Read Engels https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Excerpt from Stalin - the History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo
Impressive demonstrations of grief accompanied Stalin's passing. In his death throes, “millions of people crowded the center of Moscow to pay their last respects” to the dying leader. On March 5th, 1953, “millions of citizens cried over his loss as if they were mourning for a loved one."1 The same reaction took place in the most remote corners of this enormous country, for example, in a “small village” that, as soon as it learned of what had happened, fell into spontaneous and collective mourning.2 The generalized consternation went beyond the borders of the USSR: “Many cried as they passed through the streets of Budapest and Prague."3Thousands of kilometers away from the socialist camp, in Israel the sorrowful reaction was also widespread: “All members of MAPAM, without exception, cried”, and this was a party in which “all the veteran leaders” and “nearly all the ex-combatants” belonged to. The suffering was mixed with fear. “The sun has set” was the title of Al Hamishmar, the newspaper of the Kibbutz movement. For a certain amount of time, such sentiments were shared by leading figures of the state and military apparatus: “Ninety officers who had participated in the 1948 war, the great war of Jewish independence, joined a clandestine armed organization that was pro-Soviet and revolutionary. Of these, eleven later became generals and one became a government minister, and are now honored as the founding fathers of Israel."4
In the West, it’s not just leaders and members of communist parties with ties to the Soviet Union who pay homage to the deceased leader. One historian (Isaac Deutscher) who was a fierce admirer of Trotsky, wrote an obituary full of acknowledgements:
In summary, despite conditioned and in part disfigured by the Asiatic and despotic legacy of Tsarist Russia, in Stalin’s USSR “the socialist ideal has an innate and solid integrity.”
In this historical evaluation there was no longer a place for Trotsky’s harsh accusations directed at the deceased leader. What sense was there in condemning Stalin as a traitor to the ideals of world revolution and as the capitulationist theorist of socialism in one country, at a time in which the new social order had expanded in Europe and in Asia and had broken “its national shell”?5 Ridiculed by Trotsky as a “small provincial man thrust into great world events, as if by a joke of history”,6 in 1950 Stalin had become, in the opinion of an illustrious philosopher (Alexandre Kojève), the incarnation of the Hegelian spirit of the world and called upon to unify and lead humanity, resorting to energetic methods, in practice combining wisdom and tyranny.7
Outside communist circles, or the communist aligned left, despite the escalating Cold War and the continued hot war in Korea, Stalin’s death brought out largely “respectful” or “balanced” obituaries in the West. At that time, “he was still considered a relatively benign dictator and even a statesman, and in the popular consciousness the affectionate memory of “uncle Joe” persisted, the great war-time leader that had guided his people to victory over Hitler and had helped save Europe from Nazi barbarity."8 The ideas, impressions and emotions of the years of the Grand Alliance hadn’t yet vanished, when―Deutscher recalled in 1948―statesmen and foreign generals were won over by the exceptional competence with which Stalin managed all the details of his war machine."9
Included among the figures “won over” was the man who, in his time, supported military intervention against the country that emerged out of the October Revolution, namely Winston Churchill, who with regards to Stalin had repeatedly expressed himself in these terms: “I like that man."10 On the occasion of the Tehran Conference in November, 1943, the British statesman had praised his Soviet counterpart as “Stalin the Great”: he was a worthy heir to Peter the Great; having saved his country, preparing it to defeat the invaders.11 Certain aspects had also fascinated Averell Harriman, the American ambassador to Moscow between 1943 and 1946, who always positively painted the Soviet leader with regard to military matters: “He appears to me better informed than Roosevelt and more realistic than Hitler, to a certain degree he’s the most efficient war leader."12 In 1944 Alcide De Gasperi had expressed himself in almost emphatic terms, having celebrated “the historic, secular and immense merit of the armies organized by the genius, Joseph Stalin." The recognition from the eminent Italian politician isn’t merely limited to the military sphere:
No less powerful or uncommon was the prestige that Stalin had enjoyed, and continued enjoying, among the great intellectuals. Harold J. Laski, a prestigious supporter of the British Labour Party, speaking in the fall of 1945 with Norberto Bobbio, had declared himself an “admirer of the Soviet Union” and its leader, describing him as someone who is “very wise."14 In that same year, Hannah Arendt wrote that the country led by Stalin distinguished itself for the “completely new and successful way of facing and solving national conflicts, of organizing different peoples on the basis of national equality”; it was a type of model, it was something “that every political and national movement should pay attention to."15
For his part, writing just before and soon after the end of World War II, Benedetto Croce recognized Stalin’s merit in having promoted freedom not only at the international level, thanks to the contribution given to the struggle against Nazi-fascism, but also in his own country. Indeed, who led the USSR was “a man gifted with political genius”, who carried out an important and positive historical role overall; with respect to pre-revolutionary Russia, “Sovietism has been an advance for freedom, just as, “in relation to the feudal regime”, the absolute monarchy was also “an advance for freedom and resulted in the greater advances that followed." The liberal philosopher’s doubts were focused on the future of the Soviet Union; however, these same doubts, by contrast, further highlighted the greatness of Stalin: he had taken the place of Lenin, in such a way that a genius had been followed by another, but what sort of successors would be given to the USSR by “Providence”?16
You understand so little you would likely have to unlearn effectively everything you "know" to even approach 0 understanding.
Fuck you first of all you massively racist fucking loser. You don't get to be suspicious whitey.
Maybe, if you have no fucking idea what capitalism, socialism or communism actually mean.
Not understanding the firewall award.
Gulag archipelago reader award. (A book so terribly it's been disavowed by everyone involved bar the main author)
Depends do you mean the real issues that occured during the crackdown on ETIM or the Zenz/US state department fantasy.
Views stuck decades in the past award.
Categorically not a massacre but a clash between violent rioters and the military acting as riot police at the time, also funnily enough none of the violence was actually in the square.
I don't think you know what this word means
"My country is evil and constantly lies but I also believe everything they say about their ideological enemies"
I do think China has done some good, but it also doesn't cancel out the sketchiness. I do agree that we could learn from China, but there's also a damn good reason why their phones are banned in multiple countries. There's also a good reason why people are urging people to stop buying from fast fashion websites, which are mostly Chinese.
Please do explain to me how selling carcinogenic products worldwide (from sketchy AF factories) isn't capitalist. Explain it like I'm 5 years old, I do insist. With the way the world is going, I'm even going to use GrapheneOS for extra privacy.
Considering that China is known for its heavy censorship and is in good cahoots with Russia, it isn't racist to be suspicious. I'd be just as suspicious of a person from the USA defending Israel, so it's not like I'm not like I'm going after race. Not to mention, at least 250 people died during the Tianamen square incident. Some even estimate that thousands died, but it was at least 250 people.
I quite literally do not celebrate Canada day because it's built on top of the blood of colonialism. I am also largely not a fan of Christians and have very little patience for a lot of them.
Plus, China has billionaires. Any truly non-capitalistic country wouldn't have billionaires. Nor would they have factory workers working for 75 hours per week.
I'm not referring to any books when talking about the Gulag survivors, for the record.
I wrote a more direct reply to this, but I have come to realise that in this situation it would most likely be unproductive. You appear to be a very new leftist of some description: you seem to like the idea of socialism or communism, but you do not yet seem to have a firm grasp of what they actually entail. So instead of arguing point by point, I am going to explain what socialism is, why China has been socialist since 1949, and then add some book and article recommendations so you can begin studying the question more seriously on your own.
To start, we have to define a term that is commonly used but rarely properly understood: the state. Many people use “the state” and “the government” interchangeably, but this is not accurate. The state is specifically the organised force by which class antagonisms are mediated through the rule of one class over others. The government, on the other hand, broadly refers to the administration, coordination, planning, record-keeping, infrastructure management, public decision-making, and the organisation of social production required by advanced societies. This distinction will be important later.
Next, it is important to define socialism. Socialism is the transitionary period between capitalism and communism. It still contains many contradictions inherited from capitalism: classes, class struggle, uneven development, commodity production, wages, bureaucracy, ideological struggle, and often limited market mechanisms. Socialism is not “when everything is already communist.” It is the period in which the proletariat holds political power and uses that power to transform society, develop the productive forces, suppress reaction, and gradually overcome the material basis of class society.
This stands in contrast to communism, where class society has been abolished as a meaningful social reality. Communism is classless because there are no longer opposed classes standing in antagonistic relation to one another (as only a single class, the proletariat, remain after the other classes have been proletarianised during the socialist period). It is stateless because, once class antagonisms have disappeared, the state as an instrument of class rule no longer has a function and withers away. This of course does not mean that organisation, administration, planning, or collective decision-making (the government) disappear. It means that the coercive state as an instrument of class domination disappears.
At this point you might ask: if contradictions remain under socialism, how is it different from capitalism? That is a reasonable question. The answer rests on one primary and one secondary characteristic.
The primary question is: which class commands the state? Under socialism, the proletariat commands the state through the people’s democratic dictatorship, also called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie commands the state, which communists refer to as the dictatorship of capital (even if they have a liberal democratic cascade).
The secondary question is: which mode of ownership holds primacy, public ownership or private ownership? This is secondary because public ownership under the dictatorship of capital functions as state capitalism, while public ownership under the dictatorship of the proletariat is part of socialist construction. Ownership forms matter, but they cannot be separated from the class character of political power.
Now, with this groundwork laid, we can finally look properly at the Chinese situation.
China has been socialist since October 1, 1949, because the old landlord-bureaucrat-comprador state was destroyed and replaced by a people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class through the Communist Party. The Communist Party of China has more than 100 million members as of the end of 2024 (slightly over 1/14 people). The commanding heights of the economy were brought under public ownership and workers state direction. The new state was built to suppress reaction, defend sovereignty, develop the productive forces, and transform society.
In China, the bourgeoisie still exists, but it does not rule as a class. Capitalists can own firms in non-commanding sectors, make profits, and accumulate wealth within limits, because developing the productive forces still serves necessary social goals at China’s current stage of development. But they do not command the state, the army, the land system, the central banking system, or the strategic direction of the economy. They do not stand above the people or above the people's organised political instrument, the Communist Party, as a sovereign power.
When capital conflicts with the long-term interests of socialist construction, it is disciplined, subordinated, investigated, broken up, fined, or otherwise brought to heel. Jack Ma and Ant Group is a useful example: its $37 billion IPO was suspended in 2020 and Jack Ma was made step away from public life as he attempted to put his profit before the benefits of the people by pushing for loosening banking regulations so he could provide micro loans. Foreign capitalists spent years crying about this as it showed the truth capital holds no power in China.
To put it briefly: China is socialist because the proletarian-led state holds political power, commands the strategic economy, subordinates capital to national and social development, suppresses reactionary threats, and continues the long transition out of capitalism under conditions of imperialist encirclement, uneven development, and a still-existing world capitalist system.
It would also be remiss not to mention that much of what you “know” about China has been manufactured through a mix of exaggeration, selective framing, omission, and outright lies. For example, you have likely heard about “996” as if it represents Chinese labour law or the normal working life of the whole country. In reality, 996 was an issue in ~40 of the large tech firms around the 2019 tech boom and was quickly ruled illegal which it now has been for half a decade.
For a proper explanation on how this kind of ideological manufacture happens, I would recommend reading Michael Parenti’s Inventing Reality.
Further reading recommendations:
I have to a plug @Cowbee@lemmy.ml and their beginner reading list
But for my recommendations more directly related to the topic at hand I would recommend:
I understand having such a long list dumped on you is likely off-putting however that's the unfortunate truth of being a real socialist/communist, constant reading, education and investigation is a must. If you have any specific questions on any of them I can try help you if need be.
Excellent write-up I'd like to point to one thing though
This doesn't mean anything to a westerner. What westerners hear is "The communist party officials presume/claim to speak in the interest of the working class with no direct input from them". Since this is what almost every party in the west has done since parliaments became a thing. The ones that didn't aren't included in textbooks. And since you're speaking positively of such a party you must be "shilling" for them. I know adding the "how" of how workers shape and influence the state would make your comment even longer, but as it is to most it's just an unbelievable, meaningless phrase.
Yeah I 100% agree but also felt that it was long enough that it was 50/50 they'd actually read past the first few lines anyway so I could clarify in any follow-ups if they did and if they didn't then it was fine as is anyway.
Thanks for the shoutout, and excellent comment as always!
Selling products is not capitalism by itself. Capitalism is a system where private ownership is the principal aspect, and capitalists control the state. Socialism, on the other hand, is a system where public ownership is principal, and the working classes control the state. The backbone and commanding heights of China's economy are publicly owned, and the working classes control the state, ergo it is socialist.
Billionaires exist because private property exists, and private property exists because it speeds up development and integrates China with the global economy. This is a tradeoff used to build up the productive forces as quickly as possible, so that the social surplus can be redirected to developing underdeveloped regions, and because developed industry is easier to publicly own and plan. As these private firms grow, they are more tightly controlled and/or folded into the public sector.
Average working hours in China are 46 hours per week, not 75.
In china, the state controls capital. In America, capital controls the state