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I'll provide a few. Indigenous Americans participated in a gift economy quite successfully. African Socialism, notably Ujaama, was a non Stalinist socialist g

I'll provide a few. Indigenous Americans participated in a gift economy quite successfully. African Socialism, notably Ujaama, was a non Stalinist socialist government. Pre (and even part of) Hanseatic league Europe was neither state capitalist nor capitalist. Portions of Spain were socialist and anarchist until state capitalists/Stalinists shut them down for being the wrong kind of socialist.

refurb 4y ago
So all your examples failed to sustain themselves?
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Indigenous Americans survived using this method longer than capitalism has been around. Then there was a genocide. Pre Hanseatic league Europe likewise had evolutions of non improvident markets stretching for hundreds of years, when capitalism took over. Ujaama was attempted to be started up right before a brutal oil crisis, and Western attitudes towards a successful and progressive Africa were hardly complementary. Spanish independents faced Stalin literally marching on them. No tiny state can survive one of the world powers deciding you are done. None of these failed due to their governments, and many existed for much, much longer than capitalism has. Besides, my assertion was that other models were possible, and I think I've demonstrated that yes, such models have successfully existed for decades or centuries.
  - refurb 4y ago
    You’re comparing systems that existed centuries ago to modern life. I mean I have no doubt a “gifting economy” works great as nomadic hunters. But I prefer my antibiotics and cancer treatments.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      Spanish anarchist communities were less than a century ago, and there are people who practice these ideals and still have access to healthcare today. They aren't nations, of course. But it's possible at a moderate scale.
churchill 4y ago
Nope. Every single African socialist movement failed. Woefully too. Source: I'm Nigerian, versed in history, and I have neutral sources that back up everything I'll say here. 1. Haile Mariam Mengistu's socialist policies didn't lift Ethiopia from poverty. Instead, it contributed to the deaths of 500k to 2 million Ethiopians, due to the government messing with grain production and sales. Yes, Ethiopia would have had a famine anyway but Mengistu's agrarian socialist policies made it worse and led directly to at least 2 million deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Et... 2. Julius Nyerere's socialist policies (the Ujaama) in Tanzania were bitterly resisted by the locals and Nyerere had to forcefully have the same rural villagers he claimed he wanted to help forcefully removed to collective farms. Police began to round up farmers and forced them to move into the villages. 13 million people were eventually registered to 7000 villages. As a result, rural production was severely disrupted. According to a 1978 government survey, none of the villages had achieved the official targets for agricultural productivity. Many villages were left reliant on famine relief. In contrast to the government's intentions, food imports rose dramatically, and inflation accelerated. Overall import levels tripled during the 1970s, while exports only doubled. The entire process also damaged Nyerere's reputation with the rural population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0821422601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-082142... I could go on and on, because I've actually studied along this line extensively. Socialist policies don't work. It only concentrates power and wealth with a strongman leader, and then socialists turn around and claim it wasn't real socialism because it didn't created a stateless utopia. So, you think you understand socialism more than Malenkov, Beria, Stalin, Mengistu, Mugabe (yes, he was socialist; his policy was to seize and redistribute land from the whites - it only destroyed Zimbabwe's economy), Tito (Yugoslavia), etc? Mao ate chicken and imported comfort food while tens of millions of Chinese died in his engineered famines. How can you even wake choose to uninformed when all this is public knowledge? They all failed woefully. I'm not asking you to denounce your socialist ideals, but please, in a world where information is just a click a way, it's immoral to be promoting lies like these.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Thanks for this. I'm curious how you feel the oil crisis in 78 impacted Nyerere's vision, or if that was not a factor. From what I've read, Nyerere didn't have a desire to become an autocratic ruler in the style of a Stalin. (Though using police forces to relocate people pretty much makes one an autocracy.) I genuinely do believe that socialist policies can work, but not Marxist-Leninist (or Tankie) approaches. Soviet style socialism, with its vanguard parties is basically set up to install a strongman leader, I agree with you there! But it's not the only model. Read Bordiga and Gramsci for how council communism and left communism are built on democracy, and letting workers councils collaborate (rather than seizing power through force). These ideologies strongly oppose state capitalism or state communism and planned economies. Chomsky and Kropotkin discuss a sort of Anarcho syndicalism. I certainly don't claim to be a scholar, but plenty of scholars do exist and do not consider the discussion as settled as you do. Zizek and Badiou, David Harvey, etc. I believe strongly that Marxist-Leninist policies are bad and will demonstrably fail. But that we can learn from those failures and investigate the other modes that Stalin stamped out as opposition to his autocracy.

refurb 4y ago

So all your examples failed to sustain themselves?

socialismisok 4y ago
Indigenous Americans survived using this method longer than capitalism has been around. Then there was a genocide. Pre Hanseatic league Europe likewise had evolutions of non improvident markets stretching for hundreds of years, when capitalism took over. Ujaama was attempted to be started up right before a brutal oil crisis, and Western attitudes towards a successful and progressive Africa were hardly complementary. Spanish independents faced Stalin literally marching on them. No tiny state can survive one of the world powers deciding you are done. None of these failed due to their governments, and many existed for much, much longer than capitalism has. Besides, my assertion was that other models were possible, and I think I've demonstrated that yes, such models have successfully existed for decades or centuries.
- refurb 4y ago
  You’re comparing systems that existed centuries ago to modern life. I mean I have no doubt a “gifting economy” works great as nomadic hunters. But I prefer my antibiotics and cancer treatments.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Spanish anarchist communities were less than a century ago, and there are people who practice these ideals and still have access to healthcare today. They aren't nations, of course. But it's possible at a moderate scale.

churchill 4y ago

Nope. Every single African socialist movement failed. Woefully too. Source: I'm Nigerian, versed in history, and I have neutral sources that back up everything I'll say here. 1. Haile Mariam Mengistu's socialist policies didn't lift Ethiopia from poverty. Instead, it contributed to the deaths of 500k to 2 million Ethiopians, due to the government messing with grain production and sales. Yes, Ethiopia would have had a famine anyway but Mengistu's agrarian socialist policies made it worse and led directly to at least 2 million deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Et... 2. Julius Nyerere's socialist policies (the Ujaama) in Tanzania were bitterly resisted by the locals and Nyerere had to forcefully have the same rural villagers he claimed he wanted to help forcefully removed to collective farms. Police began to round up farmers and forced them to move into the villages. 13 million people were eventually registered to 7000 villages. As a result, rural production was severely disrupted. According to a 1978 government survey, none of the villages had achieved the official targets for agricultural productivity. Many villages were left reliant on famine relief. In contrast to the government's intentions, food imports rose dramatically, and inflation accelerated. Overall import levels tripled during the 1970s, while exports only doubled. The entire process also damaged Nyerere's reputation with the rural population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0821422601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-082142... I could go on and on, because I've actually studied along this line extensively. Socialist policies don't work. It only concentrates power and wealth with a strongman leader, and then socialists turn around and claim it wasn't real socialism because it didn't created a stateless utopia. So, you think you understand socialism more than Malenkov, Beria, Stalin, Mengistu, Mugabe (yes, he was socialist; his policy was to seize and redistribute land from the whites - it only destroyed Zimbabwe's economy), Tito (Yugoslavia), etc? Mao ate chicken and imported comfort food while tens of millions of Chinese died in his engineered famines. How can you even wake choose to uninformed when all this is public knowledge? They all failed woefully. I'm not asking you to denounce your socialist ideals, but please, in a world where information is just a click a way, it's immoral to be promoting lies like these.

socialismisok 4y ago
Thanks for this. I'm curious how you feel the oil crisis in 78 impacted Nyerere's vision, or if that was not a factor. From what I've read, Nyerere didn't have a desire to become an autocratic ruler in the style of a Stalin. (Though using police forces to relocate people pretty much makes one an autocracy.) I genuinely do believe that socialist policies can work, but not Marxist-Leninist (or Tankie) approaches. Soviet style socialism, with its vanguard parties is basically set up to install a strongman leader, I agree with you there! But it's not the only model. Read Bordiga and Gramsci for how council communism and left communism are built on democracy, and letting workers councils collaborate (rather than seizing power through force). These ideologies strongly oppose state capitalism or state communism and planned economies. Chomsky and Kropotkin discuss a sort of Anarcho syndicalism. I certainly don't claim to be a scholar, but plenty of scholars do exist and do not consider the discussion as settled as you do. Zizek and Badiou, David Harvey, etc. I believe strongly that Marxist-Leninist policies are bad and will demonstrably fail. But that we can learn from those failures and investigate the other modes that Stalin stamped out as opposition to his autocracy.