you deem the great Terror to have been necessary

Repression of the previous ruling class was absolutely necessary, the fact that it went overboard and also targeted comrades is the mistake. If it were possible to have a revolution that made absolutely no mistakes I would sign onto it no question, but I believe that such a thing is idealistic nonsense - and that forswearing all repression of the previous ruling class in order to not accidentally target comrades is far worse, because it takes an essential tool out of the revolutionary’s belt and replaces it with nothing.

Do you think that there isn’t independent press in China? You’re not allowed to spread baseless conspiracy theories, but you can express dissatisfaction with the government or its policies. This 'aint the Cultural Revolution.

Hong Kong’s system is still entirely intact under the one country two systems principal. China has shown more restraint in reintegrating it into the national system than pretty much any other country that has undergone something similar, like when East Germany was plundered and deindustrialized by West Germany.

The Harvard study was a study of all Chinese people, not sure why you think that Uyghurs would be excluded. They stopped collecting that data because, frankly, they didn’t like the results they were getting, which is that China’s government is successful and that the people living under it aren’t trampled and downtrodden and miserable. Meanwhile in the “free” west, our population dutifully changes its opinion on foreign countries when it’s commanded to by the ruling class.

And yet the Soviet economy uplifted hundreds of millions from poverty and built the war machine that was critical in stopping the Nazis. People went from working on tenant farms to living in modern cities with all of the amenities of the time in a single generation, and the first man in space was the son of a farmer! The achievements of the Soviet Union - yes, even the Soviet Union under Stalin - far outstrip its failures and mistakes. I’m partial to Mao’s overall critique of Stalin, that he was 70% good and 30% bad (which also applies to Mao as it turns out), and I feel that Mark Twain’s quote about the French Revolution equally applies to the Russian one.

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

one last thing

I dont want to fucking replace the boot with another one. I want the boot gone.

Me too, brother. But the bourgeoisie aren’t going to lift the boot from anyone’s neck willingly, and we have to be willing to stomp on their neck when we have the chance, otherwise a world without class is and will remain completely impossible.

Cuba’s democracy is actually a 0-party state. Candidates stand on their own for election, and most politics are run through local orgs and workplaces. They recently concluded one of the most democratic exercises in the history of the Western Hemisphere, when through a series of local referendums they amended their constitution. No lobbyists, no special interests, no controlled media - an almost totally pure example of a government run by citizens, for citizens.

As for China, the Chinese people have something like 90%+ satisfaction with their central government, as measured by independent observers. The reason for this is their commitment to Full Process Democracy, which means that your democratic participation in the system doesn’t end with your vote for a representative - low and mid level officials are required to constantly be polling their constituencies, and they can be dismissed (either by a recall election or by higher ups) if they don’t act in accordance with the desires of the people they’re supposed to represent.

Furthermore, China’s ruling party may be one party on paper, but it is “one party” that is made up of over one hundred million members. It has internal factions that range from neoliberal to anarcho-communist, and it is very intentionally embedded into every single Chinese institution. Most of the service that the CPC provides to the people is provided at a local or even individual level - for example, a Chinese worker’s equivalent to a union leader is a coworker who’s with the party, where if you have problems with your boss you can get it resolved through them.

Meanwhile Brazil went back to their last progressive president after Bolsonaro’s failure, and Bolivia has foiled two attempted coups by reactionary forces. Venezuela and Cuba also remain strong, with the latter being possibly the most democratic country on this planet.

In Africa, the most notable “democracies” that have been overthrown in recent memory were all client states of western countries whose previous governments cannot in good faith be said to have been representative of the people.

The Middle East is pretty bad, what with Israel going full fash in the past year. It’s not like they haven’t been edging for decades, though.

But in Asia, the only country that might be more democratic than Cuba is China, and they’re as strong as they’ve ever been. Since that’s 1/5th of the population of this planet living under one of its premier democratic governments, I’d say the prognosis for global democracy is fine.

Ukraine can fight this with whatever they can get from around the world.

You ignored the entirety of my point, which is that Ukraine has signaled that they want the conflict to end, but their masters in Washington and the EU are pressing them forward regardless. Donbas has been functionally independent from Ukraine for almost ten years now, and only two of those with Russian troops supporting it. It’s not Ukrainian territory anymore in any way that matters.

I never said mistakes weren’t made. Class war is war and war has collateral damage. The problem here is the total idealistic rejection of “authoritarianism”, where every single thing that has ever worked is classed as such and therefore made off-limits.

It’s Ukraines fight

The US and its allies have sabotaged peace talks between Ukraine and Russia on multiple occasions. European politicians have been talking about putting EU troops on Ukrainian soil in support roles so that more Ukrainian men can charge directly into Russian artillery fire for the past few months. In the months leading up to the invasion, the western media apparatus was braying for Russian blood with a fervor that I hadn’t seen since the runup to the Iraq War - and for ten years now the US has been directly backing anti-Russian elements inside Ukraine, regardless of the fact that many of those elements were literally fascists, leading directly to the Maidan coup and the ethnic schism in Ukrainian society that resulted in the civil war.

It’s a proxy war, always has been.

All over the world

Showing your bias here, because really this is only happening in Europe and the Anglosphere.

I mean, for the majority of the country’s history, huge portions of its population had literally no democracy due to no right to vote. But I guess we’ll ignore that.

Don’t forget the millions of felons who still don’t. In Florida they passed a direct referendum to give them their franchise back, but the state government employed legal fuckery to prevent it from working as intended.

This is a law

The US also has laws against providing arms to military units that have been credibly accused of war crimes, but in Israel (also Ukraine) they simply don’t investigate allegations in order to keep the arms flowing. If Biden wants a legal casus belli to deny Israel arms, he has many to choose from, but he is actively choosing not to employ them.

one is a guy trying to stop the genocide that’s been negotiating behind the scenes for months

I don’t believe you. Or more accurately, I don’t believe the alleged “leaks” from the White House about how mad Joe Biden is but it’s behind closed doors just trust me bro. This guy has been hard in the pocket for Israel his entire career, why wouldn’t he be now?

Batman put Harley Quinn in charge of the bat cave.

If by “not falling in line” you mean “actively sabotaging the working class for selfish reasons” then I suppose you have a point, but I would argue that in class war those organizations which do not support the working class are fair targets.

the will of the proletariat during the 1917 and 1918 elections

By the time the Bolsheviks were disregarding the results of elections, the People’s Soviets were the state power in the former Russian Empire, and they were a hundred times more democratic than the Duma ever was.

amassing personal power and wealth

I’m sorry comrade but the Soviets simply never did this. The benefits enjoyed by even top Party officials paled in comparison to the lavish lifestyles of the former Russian Empire’s aristocracy or those of the ruling class of any of their contemporary capitalist rivals - even fucking Stalin lived in a shared apartment!

Objectively speaking the Soviet Union was one of the most democratic and equal societies on this Earth during the time of its existence, and you can very clearly see in the data how their system equalized wealth (not “perfectly”, just “better than everyone else has ever done it”), and how the destruction of their system undid all of their progress.

Palestinians

Claudia De la Cruz it is.

I won’t deny that people can do multiple things at once, I just don’t agree with the premise that voting matters in the current paradigm.

If you had enough people to do the thing, then you would be able to protect members of the group at a local level while national orgs realign and/or get replaced.

But nobody has a large enough group of people to do the thing. In the absence of a large enough group of people to do the thing, voting is a purely personal decision that will not effect the outcome.

As I’ve said elsewhere, to fix it from within the system itself you would need a bloc of people willing to punish one of the parties for moving right by withholding their votes and their donations. To fix it from without the system is also possible, but would require some “authoritarianism” in the form of people with guns. Anything else is just people flailing around ineffectually and getting mad at others who aren’t flailing in the ineffectual way that they prefer.

Either way you’ve got the same problem: getting a large enough group of people together who are willing to do the thing. Socialists of all stripes have been trying to crack that egg for over a hundred years and the only ones who had any success were the ones that managed to get the peasants on their side because peasants have a certain amount of class consciousness that proles don’t.

If choosing red or blue doesn’t work, and choosing another option also doesn’t work, then what good does feeling self righteous about your decision to pick one over the other do? Unless you’re suggesting that the shitty reality of our situation is that we’re fucked and nothing will work at all no matter what - which is a level of defeatism that I don’t think is very helpful either.

You could put the Sega CD or 32X into this meme and it would still work, the Dreamcast was just the last in a series of flops.