The Soviets might have aspired to socialism early on, but slipped into totalitarian state capitalism.
Even so, they did start the space race from which a surprisingly large number of technical advances came. There are over a dozen advances in your cell phone that came from NASA research. That includes almost everything except the touch screen which was invented by the Smithsonian museum.
I studied early soviet history and Lenin was a total nutcase - the USSR was totalitarian from the start. It wasn’t a popular revolution, it was a hostile takeover of a nation
Unfortunately every example I’ve heard of communist and socialist countries is always followed by “unfortunately someone took over and they weren’t actually that”. Are there any countries since the industrial revolution that use actual communist or socialist economic systems and aren’t effective dictatorships?
It works the same for capitalism. I’m in the camp that says neither pure capitalism nor pure communism are systems that can realistically exist at all. In one system, the government usurps the power of capital and in the other capital usurps the power of government. They both end up totalitarian by different paths.
I’m libertarian, but that gets confusing since in America the right wing has twisted the definition beyond recognition. Libertarianism started as a left wing philosophy that uses the power of government and democracy to protect individual freedom from both government and capitalist tyranny.
Nice to meet someone in the wild who knows the difference between libertarian and the US definition of libertarian. I’ve often wondered why US politics takes perfectly decent words (conservative, socialist etc) and proceeds to redefine them at odds with the rest of the world. For example: team red’s loony religious right wing being called conservative or calling anybody from team blue left wing.
Specifically with politics the left-right spectrum is nothing to do with the surrounding culture. It’s objective rather than subjective. As a result to be classified “left” you cannot be occupying the “right” nor “central” section of the spectrum. Communist - socialist - centrist - conservative - fascist is an easy to remember five steps through the spectrum. Although obviously it is far more nuanced and complicated than that in reality.
Hmm, interesting. But surely to be classified as objective, the definitions of left vs right couldn’t be so complicated, and only their relations to various political parties would be? What ARE the actual definitions?
(Very) broadly speaking in politics there’s economic and social positions. i.e. What kind of society to have and how to fund it. It’s complicated because it’s possible to have an identical position but for opposite reasons. For an extreme example imagine two people against slavery in the US civil war. Person one is against slavery because it is a stain on humanity. Person two is against slavery because they don’t want any non-whites living in the US. Identical political policy, diametrically opposed ideology. If I had to commit to one sentence answers about the values of left/right positions I’d probably say: Left - our money spent on our best interests whilst looking forward and being progressive Right - My money spent on my best interest whilst keeping society pretty much as it is or even going back a bit to how it were. This is obviously a gross generalisation and probably quite wrong.
Yes, as we’ve seen so many great examples of, none of these systems seem to work on their own at the national scale. I think a nice mix of socialism, capitalism, and libertarianism is the best we’ve had on a national scale so far. The United States was pretty fucking rad for half of the 20th century, and that’s when they were ramping up socialist policies after having just busted up unchecked late-stage capitalism, while still allowing plenty of personal liberty.
It’s really unfortunate how the far right in America has stolen the libertarian label. Now it just means Republican who likes drugs to most Americans, which isn’t at all what it is supposed to mean. Noam Chomsky has referred to himself as a libertarian and as an anarcho-syndacalist, and I think we all know he’s a damn site far from a Republican.
Let’s not forget they managed to match the Americans in the space race even though their space budget was so small they were using cardboard boxes as office furniture.
The USSR beat the US in every other stage of the space race.
First unmanned space vehicle (Sputnik), first manned space flight (Gagarin), first space walk (Alexei Leonov), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)… the list goes on, and I didn’t even have to look up any of this.
The space race didn’t end with the moon landings. The USSR launched the first manned space station program - which became crucial in the development of the ISS - and performed the first landings of probes on Mars and Venus. The space race effectively only ended when the Cold War ended, and I think historians could spend days arguing who actually ‘won’ it.
Because the Soviets were so well known for their social and technological innovations, right?
The Soviets might have aspired to socialism early on, but slipped into totalitarian state capitalism.
Even so, they did start the space race from which a surprisingly large number of technical advances came. There are over a dozen advances in your cell phone that came from NASA research. That includes almost everything except the touch screen which was invented by the Smithsonian museum.
I studied early soviet history and Lenin was a total nutcase - the USSR was totalitarian from the start. It wasn’t a popular revolution, it was a hostile takeover of a nation
Unfortunately every example I’ve heard of communist and socialist countries is always followed by “unfortunately someone took over and they weren’t actually that”. Are there any countries since the industrial revolution that use actual communist or socialist economic systems and aren’t effective dictatorships?
It works the same for capitalism. I’m in the camp that says neither pure capitalism nor pure communism are systems that can realistically exist at all. In one system, the government usurps the power of capital and in the other capital usurps the power of government. They both end up totalitarian by different paths.
I’m libertarian, but that gets confusing since in America the right wing has twisted the definition beyond recognition. Libertarianism started as a left wing philosophy that uses the power of government and democracy to protect individual freedom from both government and capitalist tyranny.
Nice to meet someone in the wild who knows the difference between libertarian and the US definition of libertarian. I’ve often wondered why US politics takes perfectly decent words (conservative, socialist etc) and proceeds to redefine them at odds with the rest of the world. For example: team red’s loony religious right wing being called conservative or calling anybody from team blue left wing.
Something something left and right are relative to the surrounding culture?
Specifically with politics the left-right spectrum is nothing to do with the surrounding culture. It’s objective rather than subjective. As a result to be classified “left” you cannot be occupying the “right” nor “central” section of the spectrum. Communist - socialist - centrist - conservative - fascist is an easy to remember five steps through the spectrum. Although obviously it is far more nuanced and complicated than that in reality.
Hmm, interesting. But surely to be classified as objective, the definitions of left vs right couldn’t be so complicated, and only their relations to various political parties would be? What ARE the actual definitions?
(Very) broadly speaking in politics there’s economic and social positions. i.e. What kind of society to have and how to fund it. It’s complicated because it’s possible to have an identical position but for opposite reasons. For an extreme example imagine two people against slavery in the US civil war. Person one is against slavery because it is a stain on humanity. Person two is against slavery because they don’t want any non-whites living in the US. Identical political policy, diametrically opposed ideology. If I had to commit to one sentence answers about the values of left/right positions I’d probably say: Left - our money spent on our best interests whilst looking forward and being progressive Right - My money spent on my best interest whilst keeping society pretty much as it is or even going back a bit to how it were. This is obviously a gross generalisation and probably quite wrong.
Yes, as we’ve seen so many great examples of, none of these systems seem to work on their own at the national scale. I think a nice mix of socialism, capitalism, and libertarianism is the best we’ve had on a national scale so far. The United States was pretty fucking rad for half of the 20th century, and that’s when they were ramping up socialist policies after having just busted up unchecked late-stage capitalism, while still allowing plenty of personal liberty.
It’s really unfortunate how the far right in America has stolen the libertarian label. Now it just means Republican who likes drugs to most Americans, which isn’t at all what it is supposed to mean. Noam Chomsky has referred to himself as a libertarian and as an anarcho-syndacalist, and I think we all know he’s a damn site far from a Republican.
nope
Let’s not forget they managed to match the Americans in the space race even though their space budget was so small they were using cardboard boxes as office furniture.
I don’t remember the USSR making it to the moon first.
The USSR beat the US in every other stage of the space race.
First unmanned space vehicle (Sputnik), first manned space flight (Gagarin), first space walk (Alexei Leonov), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)… the list goes on, and I didn’t even have to look up any of this.
Yet they still lost the space race.
The space race didn’t end with the moon landings. The USSR launched the first manned space station program - which became crucial in the development of the ISS - and performed the first landings of probes on Mars and Venus. The space race effectively only ended when the Cold War ended, and I think historians could spend days arguing who actually ‘won’ it.
Do you remember them making it to space first?
I remember them sending a dog to starve to death in space
And I remember decades of American crews arriving at the ISS in vehicles labelled ‘Soyuz’.
ISS was pretty far along. Let’s talk Skylab and Space Shuttle.