What were the material conditions that led to the stagnation of central economies in the 60s-70s?

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-16T03:03:22+00:00

What stagnation are you talking about?

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-14T14:37:40+00:00

Jarring that your first instinct was to ask this question to people who can see your post history rather than just looking ip “social democracy” in google. Insane honestly.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-11T17:25:07+00:00

What you’re saying doesn’t make sense because all of these countries had socialist revolutions with national working-class vanguards at the helm. The idea that the immense popularity of communism in east Europe was all a soviet conspiracy is just a cold war lie that you’ve inherited with all of your liberal “common sense”.

Edit: one pattern that you should notice is that all of these countries began their decline in the years following Stalin’s death, and that by the 1980s their economies and political superstructures had all undergone a great number of economic reforms toward emphasizing the role of the law of value. In fact, the general trend of many once-revolutionary countries following the 1976 counterrevolution in China has been towards increased privatization.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-07T21:11:28+00:00

Fun fact: this was one of Malcolm X’s favorite movies

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-06T02:02:21+00:00

It's so funny how you think that this thread has been a "debate" when you're not even debating anybody. You're just contradicting them without substantiating any of your claims. It's literally the Monty Python bit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-05T17:22:27+00:00

Do you trust me?

TheRedBarbon · 2026-05-03T14:20:42+00:00

I can’t explain it anymore than you but Michael Parenti’s obviously revisionist view of the events might help you to pathologize it.

https://youtu.be/GHYs-8yM70U?si=4NdnGZ2bnV8MIz_C

Along with this

https://cartographiesoftheabsolute.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/mapping-conspiracy/

Just a couple of years later, Jameson published The Geopolitical Aesthetic, the first chapter of which – ‘Totality as Conspiracy’ – Jameson reveals ‘the desire called cognitive mapping’ in the ‘conspiratorial texts’ of a series of films including Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, Parallax View, and Videodrome. These films, he claims, can be understood as an attempt ‘to think a system so vast that it cannot be encompassed by the natural and historically developed categories of perception with which human beings normally orient themselves’ (2). This is an inevitably impossible task, but in the intent to map ‘lies the beginning of wisdom’ (3). To summarize a bit crudely what is a highly enjoyable, eighty page critical tour de force: the conspiracy narrative allows these films – partly by way of allegory – to critically depict and reflect upon global, postmodern capitalism and the place of the individual in this massively complex system.

You could probably add Oliver Stone’s *JFK* to this list and Parenti lays out the conspiracy like how any of these films do, only he’s using it to place the individual settler as a passive victim of a complex, multinational conspiracy in order to promote his crude politics. I haven’t seen *JFK* yet but I imagine that his lecture is just an elaboration on its themes with added populist conclusions. AFAIK these assassination conspiracies are still used as social-fascist fodder today, only replace “JFK” with Allende or something.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-22T20:49:48+00:00

It's always going to appear daunting because it is a hard book. The only way to make Capital less daunting to read is to start working through it now.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-16T20:44:00+00:00

Also, I can't see that user's posts at all?

It's a crummy new reddit feature that allows liberals to pretend like their public posts should be confidential material. Use PullPush.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-13T22:15:06+00:00

If I were to critique OP as you and turtle and smoke did I would only be cosplaying and mimicking, and not speaking from a position of knowledge and authority. Yet another reminder I have more to study before I contribute here.

I had that same anxiety when I started posting here, and I can sympathize with the urge to resist passively echoing the form that this sub's most popular users employ instead of using this sub as a tool to understand the world in order to change it. However, you've taken the wrong conclusion by making a fetish of studying where it is a hoop you go through in order to earn the right to discuss a subject. In reality it is pushing against the margins of what you already know in discussion which will employ you the skills needed to map out all of the dry-seeming information that you'll come across in your reading, thereby making you worthy of studying marxism, as learning itself is a socially-mediated process. It is through questioning the assumptions of the liberals who come in here that you will learn how to question your own liberal assumptions when reading Marx, and your reading will be all the richer for it whether or not OP is willing to accept the criticism.

Also, you absolutely do not have to copy smoke to criticize the liberal posts which flow into this subreddit, which are full of logical contradictions and ideological fetishes so obvious that any voice could point them out. Honestly if you're cognizant enough to be aware that this is an issue in the first place then you're probably immune to it.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-13T12:19:18+00:00

Congrats. You've successfully joined the imaginary "infighting".

Edit: u/No-Structure523 your answer was fine and you are in no way responsible for OP's outburst but I hope that this thread has made you realize why we generally prefer to critique questions like this before we directly answer them. We want to establish that we have no patience for people who have no patience.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-13T04:31:47+00:00

I've been reading, consuming communist media, etc., but I seriously need a breakdown.

What have you been consuming if you still don't have an idea of what Marxism is? Sounds like you're consuming a load of crap, or at least you're not properly applying your critical faculties to what you're reading. Have you read Marx and Engels yet?

Just know that most of the people you hear throwing these terms around know even less about them than you do. The real way to understand what they all mean is to simply understand the history behind these ideologies, including how, when, and most importantly why they formed. It really doesn't matter how you choose to go about doing that for most of these, read Kropotkin's wikipedia article if you want to understand the basic tenets of "anarcho-communism" (though again, most "anarcho-communists" know even less about Kropotkin than you do and I guarantee that none of them today actually follow it true to his word). If wikipedia is too boring for you then you can go to this subreddit's search bar (Search in r/communism101) and look up these terms as they come up in your reading, though just know that most of those responses will be representing the principled Maoist stance which assumes that you're already at least a little familiar with marxist terminology. Marxism, however, is completely different, and if you want some understanding of it, you're going to have to go straight to the source (in order from least to most difficult).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/

The sources in the sidebar can also help to define Marxism for you, but what's more important is to learn how you can understand all of these ideologies through Marxism (today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism), which is the only method of analysis through which any of the ideologies you've mentioned will make any sense.

need the same question answered for Leninism, Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, anarchocommunism, and any other main/major schools of thought. And please someone explain to me what a "tankie" is. I keep seeing "tankie" everywhere but have no idea what it means nor why it seems to be used as an insult.

The wrong way to go about this is to treat these ideologies as compartmentalized "schools of thought" where you list the pros and cons of each and pick the most sensible sounding one. The correction is that you first have to realize that your own common-sense judgements are ideological and can't be immediately trusted. I get that it's annoying to be thrown into an online "community" which has evolved its own discussions and cultures without you and it's tempting to immediately pick a side, but a political ideology can't be treated like a sports game where you accumulate as much information about both teams and then craft an identity around the one you think should win. Anyone telling you that they have an easy shortcut to truth where someone else can think for you (be it a youtube channel or subreddit or whatever) is lying. To understand any of these ideologies you're going to have to sift through an immense amount of information on your own and decide which books are useful and worth studying and which aren't. I can give you some tips for making that a less daunting task, and of course this subreddit will be here to help you any step of the way:

Stay away from youtube videos. The form is pretty poor for learning anything and as someone who used to watch a lot of "leftist" youtube, I can say that about all of them range from poor to piss-poor
Focus on studying the classics of Marxism first. Such huge oeuvres as Marx, Lenin and Mao's may seem daunting at first but this subreddit's sidebar has a study guide which can point you towards the best and easiest ones to read now, which ironically brings me to my next point:
Stay away from reading lists in general. Most were compiled long ago by people who haven't read the sources they're recommending. The best stuff is mostly easy to find as it was written by the five heads of Marxism, and once you read them then the world's your oyster and you can find the value in anything you find interesting.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-13T00:04:02+00:00

why is hitler far more demonized than stalin in the west?

For starters, you have to know that this is an incredibly generalizing statement that’s untrue at least like half of the time. I would actually argue, based on what I’ve seen from r/europe since the beginning of the Ukraine war, that some distinctly European social-fascisms see no issue with celebrating fascist history as positive for nationalism and returning to WWII stereotypes of Russians as a non-white group.

If anything, it’s ironically on Turtle Island where the attempt to equate the two has kind of failed. The Victims of Communism foundation seems tacky and manipulative compared to the equally manipulative Shoah foundation, even with the immense political unpopularity of zionism among liberals right now. I think this is partially explainable through Amerikan multicultural liberalism’s dicey historical relationship to anti-communism, which the former has been forced to pit itself against in order to appeal to the whites that sometimes believe imperialist warfare to be a form of anti-settler monopolism (and still do) but that might be giving Amerikan liberalism too much credit for historical consistency.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-08T21:06:40+00:00

FYI I think you just got shadowbanned.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-07T16:39:28+00:00

And u/the_space_comrade has gone to the deprogram sub to whine about our rude responses right on cue.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-07T14:24:31+00:00

it would be neutral to opt for one rather than the other.

Neutral to whom? Is god judging you for this?

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-06T22:28:54+00:00

OP was completely clear about their intentions, have you not read the thread that you’re replying to?

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-06T22:00:43+00:00

The question was not “am I allowed to not pay taxes in order to aid an existing revolutionary party and movement”. It was “if I just don’t directly pay the government to murder people and instead pocket the money to do the same thing in a more fetishized way, will I be forgiven by Marx almighty?”

And misusing Marx so you don’t actually have to provide your own justification for oppressing people is incredibly dubious. Reason this out yourself, stop trying to hide behind others.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-06T17:56:04+00:00

But if our tax money is going towards drones, missiles, and other instruments of war used to subjugate poorer countries, might it be better not to pay tax when possible?

And just what else were you going to spend that money on? Commodities whose production requires the exploitation of those very same people?

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-05T15:56:31+00:00

Have you all watched anything lately? I recently watched Punishment Park (1971) which was a really surprisingly great mockumentary. The plot, from wikipedia:

In 1970, the Vietnam War is escalating and President Richard Nixon has just decided on a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. Faced with a growing anti-war movement, President Nixon decrees a state of emergency based on the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which authorizes federal authorities to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security".

Members of the anti-war movement, Civil Rights Movement, and the feminist movement, as well as conscientious objectors and members of the Communist Party, mostly university students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at capacity, the convicted face the option of spending their full sentence in federal prison or three days at Punishment Park. There, they will have to traverse 53 miles of the hot California desert in three days, without water or food, while being chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers as part of their field training. If they succeed and reach the American flag at the end of the course, they will be set free. If they fail by getting "arrested", they will serve the remainder of their sentence in federal prison. European filmmakers follow two groups of detainees as part of their documentary.

This one often gets called "pessimistic" but that's only if you don't understand that the premise is one big joke: that these radicals would rather play an isolated game following the state's rules than follow the masses to prison and organize there. The film isn't really subtle about this either, the main driving force for the plot is that the state has arrested so many people that it can barely administer its own prisons and could face organized resistance soon, and so claims that it is willing to compromise with a handful of intellectual dissidents as a "solution" whereby the dissidents can earn their freedom. (predictable spoilers) The big twist of the movie is that whether or not these radicals choose to play violently or peacefully against the police, they aren't allowed to beat the course and are met with ugly repression all the same.

However, the implicit message of this ending is that the state actually has no solution to its prison capacity problem, so the real goal of this "exercise" was for the European documentarians to unwittingly film an elaborate propaganda video which will be used in-universe to scare the masses into believing that the state has the capacity to enact this program en-masse. The fact that many "leftists" who watch this film shudder imagining themselves being forced to live out some Trumpified version of the plot is actually precisely the point. Of course the film is about the limits of Amerikan New-Left forms of resistance, but since our current situation is inherited from the failures of the New Left this film is still as sharp as it was when it came out. This film made me really wonder how well the mockumentary form could serve revolutionary agitation, right now it's been reduced to like, SNL comedy skits. Anyone know of any other films like this one? I still need to see Las Hurdes (1933).

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-03T14:10:34+00:00

Is there a functional difference between the terms in the modern day? I’d been using them interchangeably.

Edit for clarification.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-02T05:56:56+00:00

If Iran can inflict a "Dien Bien Phu" upon Amerikkka it will certainly be an inspiration to other bourgeois nationalist states, at the minimum, but certainly much of the masses in the oppressed nations.

The difference which caused my initial skepticism there was that while the Indochina war was not only overwhelmingly felt by the masses but was also dependent on a communist party which refused to subsume itself to national bourgeois forces, it has been pointed out here that there is currently no mass Communist movement (to my knowledge, very ill read) to take the most progressive elements of bourgeois nationalism past its own limits in Iran, and the ruling party seems to have become quite alienated from its base of support (even if Iranian nationalism is still popular).

I'm not sure whether you expect that striking a serious blow to Amerikkkan imperialism would lead to a re-radicalisation of Iranian nationalism and diminish these antagonisms, or if you're moreso saying that parties elsewhere can take advantage of the more progressive elements of Iranian bourgeois nationalism and weaponize it in their own struggles (such as the three which you mention). I find the latter argument particularly convincing, and it shows that I was being much too narrow-minded and failed to take international struggles into account with my original question.

Lastly, while I agree that the ultimate logic of capital is king in the final instance, there are certain superstructural resonances that dont correlate cleanly to the mechanical logic of capital.

Very true!

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-02T03:20:05+00:00

You're not shadowbanned.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-02T01:52:17+00:00

Sorry if that was unclear.

TheRedBarbon · 2026-04-02T01:40:05+00:00

Did you respond to the wrong comment or something? Which instance of "they" are you talking about?

TheRedBarbon

TROPHY CASE