I made a post on the resolution as well! Perhaps you can read mine and give feedback? A few critiques:
You: “If anything, European countries where socialists ruled the longest have the strongest democracies today. Take Sweden, which was ruled by the reformist socialist Swedish Social Democratic Worker's Party.”
Social Democracy is not socialism. Have you forgotten Rosa Luxembourg’s teachings?
You: “On the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (a measure of democratic norms and freedoms), it was the #1 highest major country in 1976 and the #2 highest major country in 2021”
V-Dem is funded [https://v-dem.net/about/funders/] by The Swedish Research council, a government agency. (Also the EU, the FUCKING WORLD BANK, Facebook, and gov agencies of Germany, the U.S. (USAID), and Canada).
You: “For example, in 1956, [Nikita Khrushchev] gave his "Secret Speech" that detailed many of the crimes of Stalin.”
And Furr destroyed this speech in “Khrushchev Lied” (I know you don’t like Furr but that is besides the point, his research in this case is solid even if his Katyn research is shaky).
Other than that, your post is fine. I respect your stance on the Holodomor. You should have brought up the dichotomy between the words of the last figures on freedom and the fact that they owned slaves. I think this is more convincing.
"Social Democracy" was the blanket term for all socialists before the split after 1917 -- remember, Lenin's party was the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Российская социал-демократическая рабочая партия), founded 1898; Meidner and Palme's was the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti), founded 1889. Before ~1970-80, most socdem-named parties pursued (or claimed to pursue) a parliamentary road to socialism (reformist socialism).
Since the neoliberal turn of the world, they dropped the reformist socialist goals (read: slowly displacing capitalist class, expanding public sector and cooperative sector to become universal, decommodifying labor as much as possible) but kept the incrementalist socdem goals (read: increasing social spending, expanding public sector's role, minimizing inequality).
2nd: On Furr, briefly:
Furr's "destruction" of that speech was very low quality research. He gets very few academic reviews, and when he does, it's extremely critical.
1. I'm aware. Rosa offers an appraisal of what were "Social Democrats" of her time in Germany. I was referring to her pamphlet “Reform or Revolution” where she emphasizes the role of worker’s political power. But socdems today (as you highlight) are pro-capitalist with varying levels of state control under the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. These methods do away with effective worker’s control and attempt to pacify revolutionary vigor. Ever wonder why the fullest malice is directed by nations such as the U.S. against China, Vietnam during its emergence from French colonialism, the DPRK, and Cuba, yet no such resistance can be found against these “socialist” social democratic nations? The doc itself mentions that it is not targeting increased social spending generally so how can you find this to be a proper critique?
2.
a) I’ll rely on your thread for the following reasons:**
b) Apparently I must pay 25 dollars for the pdf document (and only for 24 hours although if I were to purchase such a thing I would instantly make a copy). Do you have the pdf scan if you had purchased it?
c) Same for this one, although the preview page says “some of Grover Furr’s disagreements with my piece…” so I thought that I should search Furr’s website for a “Gerald Myers” to see what he had to say. I could not find any reference. Perhaps you know what he is talking about?
Note: the bottom link is to Meyer’s work
Tweet 1: You show an image (from one of the prior reviews I assume, as you don’t say) stating that Furr lied since he did not mention that all confessions relating to the assassination plot were derived through torture and that “[they are told to confess] in order to bring a halt to their suffering.” The author has no footnotes for this claim. It seems to be correct that Rudzutak was tortured, but that all involved in the case were tortured and told to confess, the author has assumed the burden of proof and dropped it.
Tweet 2: Yeszhov claimed he had been tortured into confession, but is this “undoubtedly” the case? Again, no citation.
Tweet 3: No citation, not even a page number to Furr’s claim.
I’m sorry but this isn’t convincing. You haven’t even read Furr’s respective book.
Also I didn’t want a long thread of arguments again, I liked your post for the most part (as I said, I made a similar post a. These were just small critiques I thought I should mention.
I made a post on the resolution as well! Perhaps you can read mine and give feedback? A few critiques:
You: “If anything, European countries where socialists ruled the longest have the strongest democracies today. Take Sweden, which was ruled by the reformist socialist Swedish Social Democratic Worker's Party.”
Social Democracy is not socialism. Have you forgotten Rosa Luxembourg’s teachings?
You: “On the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (a measure of democratic norms and freedoms), it was the #1 highest major country in 1976 and the #2 highest major country in 2021”
V-Dem is funded [https://v-dem.net/about/funders/] by The Swedish Research council, a government agency. (Also the EU, the FUCKING WORLD BANK, Facebook, and gov agencies of Germany, the U.S. (USAID), and Canada).
You: “For example, in 1956, [Nikita Khrushchev] gave his "Secret Speech" that detailed many of the crimes of Stalin.”
And Furr destroyed this speech in “Khrushchev Lied” (I know you don’t like Furr but that is besides the point, his research in this case is solid even if his Katyn research is shaky).
Other than that, your post is fine. I respect your stance on the Holodomor. You should have brought up the dichotomy between the words of the last figures on freedom and the fact that they owned slaves. I think this is more convincing.
Hi again Robin: To reply to two comments:
1st: On terminology:
"Social Democracy" was the blanket term for all socialists before the split after 1917 -- remember, Lenin's party was the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Российская социал-демократическая рабочая партия), founded 1898; Meidner and Palme's was the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti), founded 1889. Before ~1970-80, most socdem-named parties pursued (or claimed to pursue) a parliamentary road to socialism (reformist socialism).
Since the neoliberal turn of the world, they dropped the reformist socialist goals (read: slowly displacing capitalist class, expanding public sector and cooperative sector to become universal, decommodifying labor as much as possible) but kept the incrementalist socdem goals (read: increasing social spending, expanding public sector's role, minimizing inequality).
2nd: On Furr, briefly:
Furr's "destruction" of that speech was very low quality research. He gets very few academic reviews, and when he does, it's extremely critical.
See some highlights in this thread: https://twitter.com/SocDoneLeft/status/1520083406759116800
See the (brief) review by Meyer (PhD historian, leftist) here: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/siso.2014.78.3.390
See the (brief) review by Elich (leftist activist) here: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/siso.2018.82.4.576
1. I'm aware. Rosa offers an appraisal of what were "Social Democrats" of her time in Germany. I was referring to her pamphlet “Reform or Revolution” where she emphasizes the role of worker’s political power. But socdems today (as you highlight) are pro-capitalist with varying levels of state control under the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. These methods do away with effective worker’s control and attempt to pacify revolutionary vigor. Ever wonder why the fullest malice is directed by nations such as the U.S. against China, Vietnam during its emergence from French colonialism, the DPRK, and Cuba, yet no such resistance can be found against these “socialist” social democratic nations? The doc itself mentions that it is not targeting increased social spending generally so how can you find this to be a proper critique?
2.
a) I’ll rely on your thread for the following reasons:**
b) Apparently I must pay 25 dollars for the pdf document (and only for 24 hours although if I were to purchase such a thing I would instantly make a copy). Do you have the pdf scan if you had purchased it?
c) Same for this one, although the preview page says “some of Grover Furr’s disagreements with my piece…” so I thought that I should search Furr’s website for a “Gerald Myers” to see what he had to say. I could not find any reference. Perhaps you know what he is talking about?
Note: the bottom link is to Meyer’s work
Tweet 1: You show an image (from one of the prior reviews I assume, as you don’t say) stating that Furr lied since he did not mention that all confessions relating to the assassination plot were derived through torture and that “[they are told to confess] in order to bring a halt to their suffering.” The author has no footnotes for this claim. It seems to be correct that Rudzutak was tortured, but that all involved in the case were tortured and told to confess, the author has assumed the burden of proof and dropped it.
Tweet 2: Yeszhov claimed he had been tortured into confession, but is this “undoubtedly” the case? Again, no citation.
Tweet 3: No citation, not even a page number to Furr’s claim.
I’m sorry but this isn’t convincing. You haven’t even read Furr’s respective book.
Also I didn’t want a long thread of arguments again, I liked your post for the most part (as I said, I made a similar post a. These were just small critiques I thought I should mention.
it's called sci-hub: https://sci-hub.ru/
just pop in the DOI