Would socialism/communism really help racial minorites

[Belz...]

Sounds like you're just sad that the anti-semitic plans of Nazi Germany and the Eastern-European countries were thwarted by the USSR so you make up stories about the supposed "really, really, very antisemitic" nature of the USSR. Where was the Soviet version of the Nuremberg laws or something similar? That's right, it was nowhere to be found.

The Soviets did have anti-Jewish pogroms.

I find your accusations to Loss Leader to be despicable. You should apologise.

 

[caveman1917]

You heard it here first, folks: the universe has an official ideology!

You say that like it's the first time you heard of the world having an "ideology" (peculiar choice of word but I'll go along with it). The universe in the large-scale follows Einstein's ideology, at small scales it follows quantum ideology, at coarse scales it follows Newtonian ideology, etc. Such notions are hardly as weird as you try to make them out to be.

 

[Mumbles]

Who says this? How is it a truism?

Bernie Sanders.

I'll note that he does tend to say that economic distress is responsible for racism - I see no evidence of this in US history, and is derided as "class reductionism". Crisis, if anything, tend to lead to a reduction racist laws (see: Civil War, Vietnam, WW2, Obama's election during the Great Recession, support for Black Lives Matter during COVID-19 based unemployment now).

I've arguerd that white supremacy in the US is ultimately about robbing Black and Native Americans, and giving the proceeds to some white Americans. I will argue this in the future. But what do the white people who do not benefit, and who may well lose out as well, get from this? The people in Wisconsin terrified of "caravans" that Dolt 45 was hyping up in the 2018 election runup, the sustenance farmers in the antebellum south, the unionists who refused to allow black people to join, thus giving owners a convenient source of labor during strikes, the white people who sold or burned their homes at a major loss as soon as a black person moved in in the 1930s until...um, now, in a way?

W.E.B. Du Bois discussed the "wages of whiteness", a sort of psychological wage where one receives courtesy, an emotion of superiority to nonwhite people, for which many would gladly sacrifice financial wages. Not only do I think that socialism wouldn't stop this, I don't think white Americans would even accept socialism until it's addressed. All it took to make people rage against the "entitlements" that they themselves depended on, was to tie it to young black women. It'd be simple to sabotage any attempt at reforming our economic system when a majority takes that attitude.

 

[Belz...]

You say that like it's the first time you heard of the world having an "ideology" (peculiar choice of word but I'll go along with it). The universe in the large-scale follows Einstein's ideology, at small scales it follows quantum ideology, at coarse scales it follows Newtonian ideology, etc. Such notions are hardly as weird as you try to make them out to be.

None of those things are ideologies. The universe DOES NOT have an opinion. It just has behaviours.

Stop pulling our legs.

To the bolded: irony!

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I think the OP's question - whether socialism/communism would really reduce racism - may be making an assumption that isn't really justified.

Utopians of a particular bent, who think that an unfair world would be made more fair by socialism or communism are likely also to think that other forms of unfairness are bad. So they would be in favour of ending racism even if they don't think that communism will automatically do so.

On the other hand they may believe that communism would make bad people good, cause the flowers to bloom, the birds to sing and the sun to shine a little brighter. But that might reflect a utopians view that they want bad things to stop and if everyone believed the same, bad things would just stop. So it's not really a claim that "socialism would end racism because..." it's more an inane observation that if the world was scrupulously fair there wouldn't be racism.

 

[Arcade22]

Sounds like you're just sad that the anti-semitic plans of Nazi Germany and the Eastern-European countries were thwarted by the USSR so you make up stories about the supposed "really, really, very antisemitic" nature of the USSR. Where was the Soviet version of the Nuremberg laws or something similar? That's right, it was nowhere to be found.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-cosmopolitan_campaign

Antisemitism was unofficially endorsed by the Soviet Union, especially during the later parts of Stalins reign and after they had decisively backed the Arabs against the Israelis.

Of course there were a few token Jews here and there, but in the grand scheme of things Jews went from being a central "model minority" in the early Communist Party to complete insignificance after they were purged by Stalin.

 

[caveman1917]

The Soviets did have anti-Jewish pogroms.

Just making stuff up again? The Soviets never organized any anti-Jewish pogroms. The only anti-Jewish pogroms organized on Soviet territory were between 1941 and 1945 by the Nazis during the occupation.

Indeed, the "Black Book of Communism" tells us quite clearly how the Soviets responded to groups organizing anti-Jewish pogroms on their territory:

According to Ukrainian sources, the UPA had more than 20,000 members by the autumn of 1944. On 31 March 1944, Beria signed an order stipulating that all family members of soldiers in the OUN and UPA were to be
arrested and deported to the region of Krasnoyarsk. From February to October 1944, 100,300 civilians (mainly women, children, and old people) were deported under Beria's order. As for the 37,000 soldiers who were taken prisoner during this time, all were sent to the gulags.

I find your accusations to Loss Leader to be despicable. You should apologise.

And I find Loss Leader's accusations against the USSR on the basis of anti-semitism (and your outright invention of Soviet anti-Jewish pogroms to support said accusations) to be despicable, especially given that in the context they are made in (the take-over of Poland and Eastern-Europe in WW2) they can only be taken as tacit support for the Polish and Eastern-European policies on the matter.

 

[caveman1917]

None of those things are ideologies.

Yes exactly, none of those things are ideologies, so why choose that peculiar term then? I only went along with it because you chose it.

The universe DOES NOT have an opinion. It just has behaviours.

Yes exactly, socio-economic systems do not have opinions either, they just have behaviours. In particular, they tend to behave in agreement with Marxist theory and in disagreement with competing theories.

 

[Belz...]

Just making stuff up again? The Soviets never organized any anti-Jewish pogroms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union

And I find Loss Leader's accusations against the USSR on the basis of anti-semitism (and your outright invention of Soviet anti-Jewish pogroms to support said accusations) to be despicable

The USSR is a defunct, oppressive and murderous regime. You don't get to be offended on its behalf.

Yes exactly, none of those things are ideologies, so why choose that peculiar term then?

YOU are the one who said reality was Marxist, quoting some other bloke and calling him smart. If you agree that the universe cannot have ideas, then it cannot be marxist, or anything else.

Yes exactly, socio-economic systems do not have opinions either, they just have behaviours.

Like all good communists, you forget to take into consideration that those systems are all composed of humans, WITH opinions and ideas.

Nice try.

 

[dann]

Uh, no. It’s got nothing to do with commies not liking me, and everything to do with the actual horrors they inflict every single time they come to power. Commie logic: what we do doesn’t count as long as we meant well.

Another one that sounds like Trump!

Communists haven't come to power yet. The ones that come closest haven been quite successful in helping the descendants of slaves. It hasn't yet overcome racism entirely, and the Special Period in the 1990s was a major setback:

Reflections on Cuba, Race, and Politics (Colombia.edu/Souls, Spring 1999)

It might seem that racism and discrimination had disappeared from Cuban society. At least that is what many believed. But the economic crisis of the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, with its strong traces of a social crisis, caused racism to resurface with the virulence that can be expected from a problem that, having been seen as solved, in fact was not. To imagine it had been solved was a form of the worst kind of pure idealism.
Racism and racial discrimination was eliminated from the institutional frameworks of the state and the government with the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. But the phenomenon maintained a toehold in the family, individual attitudes, and some institutions, and today there is the danger of its reestablishment in the macro consciousness of Cuban society. And this could take place through mechanisms that inject prejudice and negative racial stereotypes into the population, as well as through the dynamics of relations between the formal institutions and the informal networks of power.
Challenges of the racial question in Cuba (Minnesota Cuba Committee, Minneapolis St. Paul, 2008)

More than anything else, when "racism and racial discrimination was eliminated from the institutional frameworks of the state and the government with the triumph of the Revolution in 1959," it led to an awful lot of the white upper classes leaving for Miami. That their white supremacist country clubs were banned by the revolutionaries went against the order of the universe.

You can get an idea of what the Cuban revolution meant for black Cubans from the fairly recent Swedish documentary by Daniel Fridell about a black family, a young Cuban doctor and his mother, and a Swedish businessman trying to score a buck by promoting him as a pop star: El Medico - the Cubaton Story. Going from medical help being inaccessible to having your son become an MD in just one generation can convince people that the revolution was worthwhile.

Mother: Before the revolution, my two older brothers died of tuberculosis. Because we were poor and the hospital would not let us in.
Doc: My mother wants me to continue as a doctor and to dedicate my life to the revolutionary ideology.
Mother: But thanks to the revolution, we now have a public health system. But my childhood was … very hard.
I want him to continue as a doctor. It’s what I have been fighting for. And he owes it to the revolution.

A few excerpts from the documentary:

Much like homophobia, Cuba's fight against racism hasn't entirely wiped it out. You can still find racist and homophobic sentiments in some people, but it will probably die with them. They usually shut up about it when they find out that people disagree with them, and they can't really do anything with those sentiments because the vast majority of Cubans are anti-racists and anti-homophobes - unlike the ones in Miami who are still hoping to return and retrieve their lost property.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There seems to be a truism that abolishing captialism will lead to be end of racism. But if we had a system of worker co-ops or were property is communally owned, can't white people still oppress (inadvertently or not) black people by being the majority?

This is one of the fear-mongering talking points the GOP promotes. It's pure BS. Progressives for the most part are not socialists and don't believe in abolishing capitalism. There are a few, but even Sanders' and Warren's ideas are not to abolish capitalism.

 

[Ziggurat]

Another one that sounds like Trump!

Communists haven't come to power yet.

No True Commies.

That's always the refrain, and it always rings hollow. You can object to Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot calling themselves communists, but they did. And they're the only sort of people who come to power who do call themselves communists. So functionally, that's what communist means. Hypothetical flavors of communism that you imagine won't have all the downsides of actual communism but for some reason never actually exist simply don't matter.

Racism and racial discrimination was eliminated from the institutional frameworks of the state and the government with the triumph of the Revolution in 1959.

No it wasn't. Perhaps that's what the letter of the law said, but the letter of the law never actually matters under communist regimes. In practice, the state was and is racist too. There are basically no blacks in positions of power within the Cuban government, and blacks are mostly excluded from working in the lucrative tourism industry as well.

 

[caveman1917]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union

Where exactly does that say that the Soviets organized anti-Jewish pogroms? Either provide evidence for such pogroms or admit you just made it up.

The USSR is a defunct, oppressive and murderous regime. You don't get to be offended on its behalf.

I never said I was offended on behalf of the USSR.

YOU are the one who said reality was Marxist, quoting some other bloke and calling him smart. If you agree that the universe cannot have ideas, then it cannot be marxist, or anything else.

The world doesn't need to "have ideas" to behave in accordance with Marxist theory, just like it doesn't need to "have ideas" to behave in accordance with Newtonian theory. You seem terribly confused. Have you ever even read any Marxist theory? Do you have any idea what it consists of?

Like all good communists, you forget to take into consideration that those systems are all composed of humans, WITH opinions and ideas.

And?

 

[Venom]

Bernie Sanders.

I'll note that he does tend to say that economic distress is responsible for racism - I see no evidence of this in US history, and is derided as "class reductionism". Crisis, if anything, tend to lead to a reduction racist laws (see: Civil War, Vietnam, WW2, Obama's election during the Great Recession, support for Black Lives Matter during COVID-19 based unemployment now).

I don't think I've heard him publicly say this. He says economic distress makes racism worse.

 

[Belz...]

Where exactly does that say that the Soviets organized anti-Jewish pogroms? Either provide evidence for such pogroms or admit you just made it up.

Just read the damned article. There's plenty of antisemetic policies, especially during Stalin.

I never said I was offended on behalf of the USSR.

Semantics. That's exactly what you said. Are you going to apologise to Loss Leader, an actual, living person and active member of the forum?

The world doesn't need to "have ideas" to behave in accordance with Marxist theory

Well, that's not what you said, but ok let's go with that retraction: The world does not behave in accordance to Marxist theory. In fact the great failure of Marx and his followers is to ignore human nature. That's why communism doesn't work, and why most states that tried it devolved into oppressive regimes.

And?

What do you mean "and"? And it counters your point.

So far all you're doing is playing word games.

 

[Darat]

No True Commies.



That's always the refrain, and it always rings hollow. You can object to Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot calling themselves communists, but they did. And they're the only sort of people who come to power who do call themselves communists. So functionally, that's what communist means. Hypothetical flavors of communism that you imagine won't have all the downsides of actual communism but for some reason never actually exist simply don't matter.







No it wasn't. Perhaps that's what the letter of the law said, but the letter of the law never actually matters under communist regimes. In practice, the state was and is racist too. There are basically no blacks in positions of power within the Cuban government, and blacks are mostly excluded from working in the lucrative tourism industry as well.

And North Korea is a democracy since they called themselves a democracy....

 

[Belz...]

And North Korea is a democracy since they called themselves a democracy....

Three times. I guess they figured democracy was like Beetlejuice.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And North Korea is a democracy since they called themselves a democracy....

That's what we get told about Antifa.

//To be 100% absolutely clear in this case it's completely correct and the Right's boogeymaning of a loosely organized anti-facist movement is 37 different kinds of insane and 48 kings of stupid, but the whole "It literally means anti-fascist!" argument is stupid and waaaaaay overplayed.//

 

[caveman1917]

Just read the damned article. There's plenty of antisemetic policies, especially during Stalin.

So you just made up the claim of the Soviets organizing pogroms? How unsurprising.

Semantics. That's exactly what you said. Are you going to apologise to Loss Leader, an actual, living person and active member of the forum?

Why the hell should I apologize?

Well, that's not what you said, but ok let's go with that retraction: The world does not behave in accordance to Marxist theory. In fact the great failure of Marx and his followers is to ignore human nature. That's why communism doesn't work, and why most states that tried it devolved into oppressive regimes.

I noticed you have ignored my questions, I'll just ask them again:

Have you ever even read any Marxist theory? Do you have any idea what it consists of?

So far all you're doing is playing word games.

Well so far all you're doing is making made-up accusations about the Soviets organizing pogroms, and confused rants about how the world can not behave according to Marxist theory "because humans have ideas and opinions."

 

[Venom]

We don't know how racial minorities would fare under communism, because that's probably not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. So it's out of the discussion.

Socialism can be considered the transition stage towards communism in Marxist thought at least. But I'm sure most modern socialists don't actually want the state or money totally abolished. I would say the popular understanding of "socialism" in the United States today is social democracy.