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> A blindness towards the realities of the USSR was common amongst the highly educated at that time. There's a reason the west had such huge problems with westerners becoming Soviet double agents

It was even worse than that. Both the British governments under Chamberlain and Churchill and the US government under FDR sympathized with the USSR. There were continuous sub rosa contacts going on (for example, FDR regularly sent emissaries like Harry Hopkins over to Moscow to confer with Stalin) that were, while not publicly known, officially sanctioned. This was why the USSR was able to end up in control of all of Eastern Europe after WWII--which to any objective observer meant that WWII failed to achieve its primary goal in Europe, which was to liberate Eastern Europe from tyranny. But nobody made any such criticism at the time; the USSR was praised as an ally even while they were shipping millions of Germans and Eastern Europeans to labor camps.

Hm was that the primary goal? I thought the primary goal (of the Allies) was to defeat the Axis powers because they were directly attacking the UK and USA. Liberating France and other parts of western Europe was just a requirement of getting to Berlin.

> was that the primary goal?

Yes. The reason Britain and France declared war on Germany was that Germany invaded Poland and Britain and France had treaty commitments to defend Poland. (They also had treaty commitments to defend other Eastern European countries, which they decided not to honor when Germany invaded those countries before it invaded Poland, but that was because their governments erroneously believed that Hitler would stop invading countries if they appeased him.)

> I thought the primary goal (of the Allies) was to defeat the Axis powers because they were directly attacking the UK and USA.

Germany never directly attacked the US. (Japan did later on, but that was on their own initiative; they never discussed any overall war plans with Germany.) And when Britain and France declared war on Germany, Germany had not attacked Britain or France either. As I said above, they declared war when Germany invaded Poland.

Fair points! I did say Axis powers (to include Japan).

I think though, that the average Brit did not care so much about Poland. It was clear by that point that Hitler intended to take all of Europe and the exact event that triggered it was maybe not so important. After all it's not like France was wrong to declare war - it was obvious that they were going to be next.

> the average Brit did not care so much about Poland

After the Nazis invaded France, I expect that's true, yes. But before that the only reason for Britain to be fighting was over Poland.

> it's not like France was wrong to declare war - it was obvious that they were going to be next

No, it wasn't at all obvious. Hitler's stated purpose, going as far back as Mein Kampf, was that Germany should expand to the east. His decision to move west instead was rather sudden and surprised a lot of his own advisors. And didn't happen until eight months after Britain and France declared war (the intervening period was called the "Phoney War" even at the time).

OK, thanks for the corrections!

> This is still a problem! There are still a lot of academics publishing today who take Marx completely seriously and attempt to build on his ideas.

I don't think dismissing (all of) Marx because of Stalin makes much more sense than dismissing the idea of democracy because of the size of the US prison population or it's history of war crimes?

Perhaps if democracy was an American invention your comparison could hold some water, it doesn't really make any sense otherwise. Democracy's practiced by the majority of nations worldwide, I don't see what the prison population of a single nation has to do with that.

The reason myself and others are so dismissive of Marx's ideas is because time and time again, any time those ideas have been forcibly implemented amongst a population, the result is bloodshed and subjugation. Every. Single. Time.

Many of us have grown weary of tankie types trying to shoehorn pro-Marxist viewpoints into these conversations and are pretty quick to identify the dog whistles ("But, but, America!") when we hear them.

> Perhaps if democracy was an American invention

They invented a democracy. Their democracy is of their own design, based on the historical work of philosophers. The constitution is not a plagiarized document stolen from the greeks. Marx was decades dead when 1917 happened.

Your point falls flat on its face.

> any time those ideas have been forcibly implemented amongst a population, the result is bloodshed and subjugation

You are one of today's lucky 10,000. Allow me to inform you of the genocide of native Americans, manifest destiny, the slavery of Africans, the toppling of the kingdom of Hawaii, the contras, operation condor, US Imperialism, etc..

Text book example of special pleading.

> But, but, America!

IDK, maybe you shouldn't make such weak fallacious arguments that don't pass even the lightest of scrutiny?

People living in glass Native American burial grounds shouldn't throw stones?

Maybe these """tankies""" are tired of all these first world dronies or diet white supremacists (IDK what you're suppose to be) spewing colonizer propaganda everywhere?

> Maybe these """tankies""" are tired of all these first world dronies or diet white supremacists (IDK what you're suppose to be) spewing colonizer propaganda everywhere?

I don't think the notion of fair and equal representation is colonizer propaganda, but based off your previous comments, you're far enough down the rabbit-hole that it's not worth trying to lift you out. I'm not a "diet white supremacist" whatever that is, just someone whose family was murdered in the Holodomor and as a result has done a lot of reading on the USSR and its atrocities.

Be well, I hope someday you can put this hate behind you.

> Be well, I hope someday you can put this hate behind you.

What's hateful about wanting to expand the benefits of democracy to the working class?

Multiple worse real genocides have happened to my people than your historically cyclical-until-1947 famine that's only talked about for the sole purpose of excluding the working class from a better form of democracy.

You yourself point out the real issue but instead focusing on the vague point of "Marx ideas".

Which is that the "revolution was ultimately forced down people's throat whenever they liked it or not.

And due to your vaguely defining "Marxs ideas" thar would then include the Nordic model or any state intervention/run enterprise if we were to stretch it.

And talkies in the modern age is defined as similar to those of the alt right where they either overtly or covertly support every aspect of the Ussr and in particular Stalin shamelessly.

Hence not every Marxist.

A quote from Marx himself -

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution."

If the man himself agrees that his ideas can only be implemented through a "forcible overthrow", isn't it safe to say that those who follow his teachings today are either purposely ignoring a big part of his message, or are merely biding their time for the next revolution?

It all reads the same to me. In the same way I consider every Nazi a Nazi, I consider every Marxist a Marxist.

You're not addressing the argument whatsoever.

Your quote without context does indeed proclaim "forcible overthrow"... of all existing social conditions.

If you read it with context in mind it becomes clear that the notion or idea of the revolution is multifaceted as the communist manifesto refers to different means as to how the revolution is spreading (france, germany and Switzerland) and said quote is meant to represent the unrelenting resolution to not conceded to the "bourgeoisie" terms of the social condition upon the working class/proletarian, hence forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions that primarily the working class had to suffer through.

Out of all the things you could pick to critic the communist manifesto this has to be the weakest one, you could bring up the flimsy and quite frankly speaking terrible argument for the abolishing of private property.

Or the assumption that capital is only defined by materialistic definitions.

And now you change your point. Yes all Marxists are Marxists, tankies are not Marxists however, which is what you originally said.

But the core of Marx ideas are an analysis of value, labor, production and surplus. They have been very useful for analysing the global recessions and over-production crisis, the concentration of wealth and lowered wages that we see today vis-a-vis the 70s.

They're not some loonie ideas about the size of skulls or a master race.

They are, however, deeply flawed. The labor theory of value is the core Marxist economic principle, and it is incorrect. Marx also doesn’t deal with the knowledge problem, and he doesn’t adequately address the value of laborless resource. If we move on from there, his summation of the trend of history is also incorrect. Societies have not tended toward Communism but instead toward Fascism (corporate and governmental merger coupled with totalitarianism) at the level of countries, and toward a neo-feudal order globally.

Of course Marx is wrong, he's a scientist. The work is never "done". And everyone is ofcourse free to critique the theories - but I find it rather extreme to view his theories as deranged garbage on the level of eugenics or social darwinism.

This is absurd. Nobody would ever say “But the core of Nazi ideas are an analysis of genetics” as though that excused anything. The fruits of both ideologies were hellish disasters, and the oppressed/oppressor dichotomy of Marxist thought is every bit as poisonous as the aryan/non-aryan dichotomy of Nazism.

Nietzsche is still relevant despite being misread by fascists?

Marxism can easily be adapted to support any group's resentful revenge fantasies so it's seen with much better eyes than a German man's resentful revenge fantasies.

Marx is not the same as the ussr nor Stalin.

For instance if you were to read Das kapital, its very much a dry economy book and not some crackpot ranting about capitalism bad.