☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: January 18th, 2020

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  • Indeed, Lein’s work is highly relevant today. For example, The State and Revolution directly addresses the debates over reformism and the nature of the state that we see constantly happening right now. It’s depressing to see all the same arguments replayed as if we don’t have historical evidence to lean on to decide which ones were correct.









  • It’s baffling how often we overlook the importance of negative freedoms, such as freedom from poverty and the fear of illness or a lack of financial security in old age. These are tangible, real-world freedoms that directly impact our quality of life. Meanwhile, we’re constantly told that the ability to express ourselves is the ultimate form of liberty. It’s time to reevaluate our priorities and recognize the true value of actual tangible freedoms.





















  • Famines were common occurrence before the revolution, and were in fact a major driver behind it. USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960’s, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:

    Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:

    During the 1932 Holodomor Famine, the USSR sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:

    While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine. A 25 February 1933 Central Committee decree allotted seed loans of 320,000 tons to Ukraine and 240,000 tons to the northern Caucasus. Seed loans were also made to the Lower Volga and may have been made to other regions as well. Kul’chyts’kyy cites Ukrainian party archives showing that total aid to Ukraine by April 1933 actually exceeded 560,000 tons, including more than 80,000 tons of food

    Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.

    Aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported during the same period. Total aid to famine regions was more than double exports for the first half of 1933.

    According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest

    It appears to have been another consequence of the low 1932 harvest that more aid was not provided: After the low 1931, 1934, and 1936 harvests procured grain was transferred back to peasants at the expense of exports.

    Tauger is not a communist, and ultimately this specific article takes the view that the low harvest was caused by collectivization (he factors in the natural causes of the famine in later articles, based on how he completely neglects to mention weather in this article at all its clear that his position shifted over the years). However, its interesting to see that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500600