this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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The sino soviet split is one of the elephants in the room of modern leftist discourse. But hey, if China manages to become the world’s leader and spreads world wide communism, that era will be forgiven I imagine
Socialist states absolutely can and have done cringe. Western socialists ("socialists") need to understand that even when they fuck up that's still "our guy" in charge [the party]. Unfortunately, the power received in victory includes the power to fuck things up. Look it in the eye, understand it, don't repeat the same mistakes. Any westerner who starts using the word "socialist" to describe themselves must be held to this.
With people on the more liberal end, be more smug than mean:
Some resentment should be reserved for sabotaging the Soviet Union.
I’ll defend them against the US and the West, but I find it hard to be a die hard supporter of China the way some people are, considering its history in the sino-soviet split and, well, their lack of vocal ideological support for communism on the world stage
This is the biggest caveat to China support for me, too. Like I've read and understand the arguments that if China were to support global socialist movements the way the USSR did, they would lose a lot of the leverage and power that they've accrued for themselves in the past couple of decades - but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow them supporting right wing governments against socialist guerillas. If they're not going to send PLA volunteers to aid the rebels then at the very least they should use their neutrality to play some wishy washy word games about how they can't get involved!
Plus, I think there needs to be a reckoning with the fact that in every way that matters China is the largest power in the world right now. America's hegemonic status has been broken for a long time and the rest of the world is just figuring it out, China might see it in its interest to keep the dollar as the world reserve currency or whatever but they absolutely have room to be making moves that advance the socialist cause.
Exactly. Palestinians are literally on the brink of extinction, and China’s support for Iran is by million layers of proxy. Pakistan is their closest ally in the region. There are simply so many contradictions with China I can’t personally hand waive away through n degrees of abstraction.
These are important things for all socialists to consider among ourselves. Let's not make the same mistakes in the future and do our best to build unity among the working class at a global scale.
I'm very uneducated, but I feel like the USSR would have had a much better chance at pulling through if they had close relations with the PRC. Socialism would be in much better shape in the modern day if that were the case, it's truly a shame.
It's hard to say, since China was far weaker than the USSR at the time, and did not want to be an unequal partner to the USSR, especially with revisionists at the helm. Who's to say China would have managed to lose its pariah state status and become a superpower if it was subordinate to the Soviets? This of course is no excuse for the atrocious foreign policy decisions following the split, a gross overreaction brought about by a combination of Mao's senility and some realpolitik with Nixon, but there's no guarantee that had the split not happened that things would have played out better; you'd still have a revisionist USSR in ideological decay to contend with, and now China would be poorer, still cut off from most of the world, and more vulnerable to the predations of imperialist states.
No easy answers here
I think the lack of vocal calls for communism is more a strategic necessity than anything else. The US and Europe love idly speculating about regime change in China. Any active support on China's part will get spun as imperialism, and used to justify realizing those dreams of regime change. Do business with whatever institution is recognized as legitimate, keep the communism within your own boarders, and you can more safely entrench yourself within world systems.
I don’t think China not going publicly mask off about its gommunism, allowing it to escape western imperialism, is a convincing argument.
Keeping to yourself has more benefits than that. Active support always comes with the risk. A far off power throwing its weight into a set of conditions it doesn't have an on-the-ground, real time understanding off. There's always unintended consequences. The US has spent the last half-century demonstrating how that sours your global perception. China keeps to itself. China doesn't presume to know local conditions better than locals do. And hey, if local communists do manage to take power, China is there, ready and willing to do business with them.
This is the correct take.
The PRC was the 2nd successful anti-colonial revolution. They went through decades of struggle to free themselves, and think that every country can't skip this step, or rely on others to do it for them. Non-interventionism and maintaining trade relations with any and every country has served them well since their founding and it continues to do so.
This is a great way to put it. A lot of the condemnation of socialist governments is specifically condemnation of the big programs they put into place to try and reverse the ongoing horrors of capitalism - success or failure, the socialist government fully owns the results of those programs, meanwhile since most of the horrors of capitalism are done in a kind of decentralized way, capitalist governments get to play the blame shifting game where the bad things that happen under their own rule are the result of forces beyond anyone's control and the good things are totally the result of capitalism and would be impossible under any other system.
It's gonna be hard not to make the same mistakes when western socialists can't even acknowledge that the 1956 crackdown in Hungary was one of these fuck ups.
Ceausescu supporter who is against the intervention in Czechoslovakia but is for the one in Hungary because he's a Romanian nationalist and hates Hungarians
What should have been done differently?
Just let fascists take over, duh
Start negotiating with the workers councils, help them beat down the fash, negotiate with them about what's next.
I do not think that NATO-backed nazis should be negotiated with.
Me neither, that's why i didn't mention them.
Well, then there was nobody to negotiate with, then.
There were though, there were workers councils who shut down their factories and declared that they won't give it back if there is an attempt at restoring capitalism, also launched patrols to protect jewish people whose houses the fash marked.
When JDPON Don was releasing all those documents in the so-called ''JFK files'', one of them finally confirmed that the Hungarian dissidents were funded by the CIA.
No it didn't, what that document talked about was an NGO founded by Hungarian dissidents AFTER 56.
You mean the NGO that is/was a tool of regime change by NATO, and you assume that there was no NATO involvement prior to after 1956?
There were many faults in the USSR and the leadership of communist parties across the world ultimately being handed down from Moscow (this prevented a revolution in France in '68).
However, their lack of propensity for allowing fascists to take charge is not one of those failures. Only the revolutions that protect themselves can hope to win.
The fascists wouldn't have been able to take charge since the country was already shut down by workers councils who declared they will fight against going back to capitalism. The USSR decided to punish the workers first and foremost.
That sounds exactly like every time the CIA leveraged existing economic issues in socialist countries to use their unionized labor movement as a way to overthrow them. Looking at history, those workers councils would not have been able to defend themselves against armed fascists, easily.
For all the faults of the USSR, I'm not convinced that defending socialist countries against fascism is a flaw it possessed.
Well they surely won't be able if the USSR cracks down on them and lets the fash get away.