In order to get an accurate picture though, you can’t cherry pick and you have to account for nostalgia.
In order to get an accurate picture you really need to look at what happened to southern republics like Georgia or Kazakhstan. Westerners tend to focus on places like Ukraine or Poland and completely ignore the real horrors that followed the collapse.
That’s not to mention that the Anarchists’ fear of authoritarianism is completely valid.
Except it’s not given that capitalism is just as authoritarian and it’s responsible for far worse horrors than anything that ever happened under communism. The default state of the world isn’t some Platonic ideal of society, bu a living nightmare that subjugates vast majority of human population to a brutal rule of capitalists. Westerners generally don’t see the real horrors that prop up their own lifestyles.
Besides, Mao and Stalin killed over a tens of million combined, and Mao’s cultural revolution caused the suicide of my grand-uncle, according to my dad.
Thanks to the wonder of capitalism roughly 3.5 million people die from lack of clean water, 1.5 million people die from vaccinable diseases, and 9 million people die from hunger each and every year. That’s over a 140 million deaths every decade.
Meanwhile, life expectancy actually increased under Mao. The context you seem to be missing is what living conditions in China were like prior to the revolution. You should really read up on that some time.
You can also get a good idea what the USSR was like by looking at Belarus, which is arguably the former SSR that preserved socialism the best.
I have a good idea of what USSR was like because I actually lived there. And thinking Belarus today is an example of that is incredibly ignorant. This is how USSR handled pandemics.
TL;DR Fears of authoritarianism are justified; and Belarus shows how the USSR was bad.
TLDR you have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.
In order to get an accurate picture you really need to look at what happened to southern republics like Georgia or Kazakhstan. Westerners tend to focus on places like Ukraine or Poland and completely ignore the real horrors that followed the collapse.
Except it’s not given that capitalism is just as authoritarian and it’s responsible for far worse horrors than anything that ever happened under communism. The default state of the world isn’t some Platonic ideal of society, bu a living nightmare that subjugates vast majority of human population to a brutal rule of capitalists. Westerners generally don’t see the real horrors that prop up their own lifestyles.
Thanks to the wonder of capitalism roughly 3.5 million people die from lack of clean water, 1.5 million people die from vaccinable diseases, and 9 million people die from hunger each and every year. That’s over a 140 million deaths every decade.
Meanwhile, life expectancy actually increased under Mao. The context you seem to be missing is what living conditions in China were like prior to the revolution. You should really read up on that some time.
I have a good idea of what USSR was like because I actually lived there. And thinking Belarus today is an example of that is incredibly ignorant. This is how USSR handled pandemics.
TLDR you have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.