Inaccuracies about Marxism, drawn from Twitter

Marxists, such as Richard Wolff, insist that Marxist socialism worked very well in the Soviet Union. They say the Soviet Union failed for other reasons.

Oh really? Should we believe that socialism is viable?

I think the "success" of the early Soviet Union was an illusion. The Communist party had taken all the wealth and land from the previous rulers. And they had control of all the natural resources. Even with a corrupt and inefficient command economy, it was hard to fail in the beginning. They were able to imitate the USA and copy our inventions.

But eventually the economy stagnated. There was no innovation, no creativity.

And the system was utterly impractical. A market economic system is a huge computer, that determines wages and prices automatically. The Soviets had to figure all that out for themselves. And of course they couldn't.

And corruption was a much bigger problem under communism than under capitalism, because of the complete lack of competition.

Bordigist said:

Capitalist apologists have held the floor for three decades. The time has come to yield it, and it will be yielded.

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What makes you think you have a majority of the population with you? I can tell that you don't. Yes, people are tired of runaway capitalism and globalism. But they aren't willing to trade what they currently have for communism.

Oh, you mean this application, and all others deriving from it?

The Tax in Kind

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Lenin wanted to murder the middle class, and rob them of their wordly possessions, in order to fuel his revolution. The middle class, and the ethnicities which made up the middle class, were the scapegoats for most of the problems with Russia, much like the jews were in Nazi Germany. Do you want to eliminate the middle class?

“Left-Wing” Childishness

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How did that turn out?

Citing sources is a bad habit, it seems.

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Alternating between the two allows you to cherry pick the quote which sounds the best. It's a minor thing however, as Marx and Engels were in agreement on much, including the Manifesto, which was the basis for much of the war and murder of the 20th century.

And? Thomas Jefferson went bankruot on three separate occasions. Who cares?

[/moralism]

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Jefferson didn't advocate for communism. And you Communists are the biggest practitioners of moralism, judging the 99% of society that wants nothing to do when your failed ideas as inferior. Trotsky championed terrorism in order to make reluctant populations comply with his worldview. And he's thought of today by many in your company as the nice & sane one out of that bunch!

When you tell people your plan is to steal everything they own, don't expect them to go along happily. That is why capitalism does NOT peacefully evolve into Marxism.

So how is it possible to defend Marxism, knowing the violence it has caused, and will inevitably cause if it is ever tried again?

Many, or most, Marxists have decided that the Soviet Union's authoritarian style of socialism should not be repeated. They now advocate a peaceful, egalitarian, form of socialism. They are expecting capitalism to evolve into a system of workers' cooperatives.

Workers' cooperatives are not socialist, for one thing. And we have no reason at all to expect our system to evolve in that direction. And if it did, there are so many obvious problems with the workers' cooperative idea, it would be crazy to expect it to be our future.