Unions have done more to increase the wages of the working class than tax cuts for the rich have ever done.
If you want to live in a country with rampant poverty, homelessness, crime, etc then go to a country with low or no income tax. If you're not a lord in a feudal society then you're a serf.
> How very Marxist. How have those Marxist governments fared in the past?
One lasted about 70 years, turned a country from "agrarian" to "beat the USA to Earth orbit, put landers on the moon and Venus first, roughly equal nuclear capabilities".
The other big one went from "agrarian" to "makes most of your smartphones, e-readers, etc."
But more than that, if your standard for "marxist" is "Laborer coordination and workforce strikes", then the UK, France, and Germany are currently also Marxist. The UK and France brings the number of permanent UN security council members who are "Marxist" to 3 (not 4, because Russia doesn't have those things today), and those plus Germany are the economic backbone of western Europe.
It went from from "agrarian" to "beat the USA to Earth orbit, put landers on the moon and Venus first, roughly equal nuclear capabilities, and still couldn't provide toothpaste to its people".
Yeah, it was able to channel more of the output of the workers into achievements like nuclear weapons and space programs. It didn't put much into things that actually benefitted the workers, though.
So the USSR may not be making the point for you that you think it is...
> It went from from "agrarian" to "beat the USA to Earth orbit, put landers on the moon and Venus first, roughly equal nuclear capabilities, and still couldn't provide toothpaste to its people".
> Yeah, it was able to channel more of the output of the workers into achievements like nuclear weapons and space programs. It didn't put much into things that actually benefitted the workers, though.
Yes, and? I don't feel a need to claim the USSR was in any sense "nice" or "wise" or anything else like that. They were awful in many, many ways.
If my point had been about niceness, I could of course also point out that at the same time, the USA was still in the middle of saying "well obviously black people need to have separate bus seats" and had yet to end redlining policies, while the UK had yet to fully internalise that perhaps the people in the colonies who kept shooting the troops might possibly not like what we had done and were continuing to do with their homes.
But such was never the point I made in the first place.
Think lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Famine is the default, that everyone used to suffer on a regular basis. The USSR, India, China, these are all countries had all been suffering from mass famines at the start of their industrialisation, and compare them to how Ireland was part of the UK when the potato famine happened: The Soviet famines were 1930–1933 (including Holodomor) and 1946–1947 (which was partly due to WW2 and a need to not look weak due to very legitimate fear of America at that point); the Chinese one was the Great Leap Forward in 1958-62 (the CPC only took power in December 1949); the last really severe Indian famine was 1943, just before the British were made to leave.
Then think of the housing stock. Of electricity. Of plumbing, even (even today, Russia's % of that is pretty low). Pre-industrial societies basically do not have mass plumbing — can't pump sewage away without power. Toothpaste is important, but it's way down the list compared the radical improvements to quality of life that these governments brought their people (which is not to say they therefore are above criticism, they're absolutely fair game for criticism!). Even good nations aren't above criticism, and the USSR wasn't even good. The USSR in particular had huge avoidable problems caused by their own censorship preventing themselves from fully understanding how badly wrong their own policies were.
Even despite all the stuff the USSR did wrong, they still made things a lot better than what came before. (Unlike, say Pol Pot, who was an unmitigated disaster for Cambodia).
That the USSR was, and China now is, able to reach the point of challenging the USA for hegemony, is nevertheless a national success story. Despite both being flawed. Likewise India now having a GDP higher than the UK, even if they're still a long way behind on the per-capita front.
There are zero rights without obligations. Why do we never hear about the latter?
To read about people standing up for their rights in a Marxist State read Robert Conquest's 570 pages of 'The Great Terror' - an account of the crimes committed against humanity in the name of the Soviet Communism that emerged from the 1917 revolution. 'We'll do it differently' is the usual response. Sadly this always leaves out appreciation of the human factor whereby charismatic leaders arise and are convinced they know the truth and the way. Before considering a revolution, ensure there's a solution for this human problem of leaders who lead the masses (they regard the latter as such) down a path that in retrospect is seen to be a disaster. Pol Pot, The Great Leap Forward, the Iranian Revolution. We need to sit down and think about this before taking to the streets.
How about evolution rather than 'eggs in one basket' revolution?
> There are zero rights without obligations. Why do we never hear about the latter?
I hear much about the latter. The right to freedom of speech vs. the obligation to not defame, to not pump up your own share price, to not leak state secrets, to not openly call for civil wars in foreign countries, etc.
The right to bear arms, vs. the obligation to keep them locked up so kids can't play with them.
While I share your opinion that revolutions are generally bad and messy things, there's plenty of people who think the rich are failing their obligations to the society which gave them the right to own property.
Taking an isolated look into history is unhelpful and lacks wisdom. The events you mention will feel and sound raw due to how close it is to us. Looking at it this way, it only serves to protect existing entrenched power structures because it fails to acknowledge why revolution happen. If the system evolved, we wouldn't have revolution. It's the last straw.
China's economy is more state owned than not. The private market is strictly controlled with socialist ideology. The difference between Chinese markets and liberal markets is that the state there controls the capitalists, in the US the capitalists control the state.
Xi has been moving in that direction yes, but generally that has not been true. Also, it sounds like you greatly sympathize with Chinese authoritarianism, maybe you need to do a reality check. You can always go live in China if prefer that. I've been many times, for months at a time, since I have in-laws there. Lately I would describe it as a high-tech North Korea.
I honestly would prefer moving there but it's pretty hard to attain citizenship. I believe the US is going to collapse and potentially balkanize in the coming years and don't want to witness it firsthand.
To someone who thinks "Laborer coordination and workforce strikes." are "very Marxist", China is indeed Marxist.
I know you're not the person who responded with that conflation, but if you were, to ask if Lenin would agree with that assessment is a motte-and-bailey fallacy.
False equivalence. The strawman that sticks out gets hammered. Peter Turchin has mapped this out. The elite wealth pump is what's ending the US empire and prosperity. This is why Trump is in power. Talk and negotiations dont work anymore, do you think people will lay down and give up?
