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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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Socialism
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic and constructive discussion from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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Not at all, it had more to do with material conditions and policy changes of the time: previous wars, undeveloped productive forces leading to very low productivity, forced collectivization leading to peasants mass slaughtering livestock and destroying grain in protest, etc.
Blaming it strictly on the form of government is pretty much anarchist ideological nonsense. This quote sums it up quite well IMO:
From Revolution Summed Up, a good analysis of what exactly went wrong
So... then... if the policies had an effect on the famine, it was the form of government? I'm confused, were the politicians drafting policy not part of said government? Curious.
Form of government = how political authority is structured, how power is organized and managed, etc. For instance, monarchism, presidential/parliamentary republic, single-party state, etc. In this case it was more about the state management aspect of it
Policy = Decisions/rules/strategies that the government adopts and executes. This means stuff like tax policy, healthcare, the forced collectivization, etc.
Two different things
The types of policies that get implemented are determined by the form of government. Yes, they are separate things, but they are inextricably linked. The famine was the result of poor decision-making, and the form of government determines how decisions are made.
Yeah, it determines how decisions are made but not what decisions, as those are majorly determined by mode of production, class character of the state + it's interests, material conditions of the time, etc.
Does a form of government have influence? Maybe, but at best it's relatively minor compared to aforementioned factors. You can see this with bourgeois states of today, where many share the exact same form of government but have vastly different policies that are the result of historical conditions (i.e. compromises given to workers to avert revolutions for instance) and their level of wealth, but overall it's all done to preserve the power of capital and to further its interests as that is its class character.
Are you more of a libertarian communist?
No, just a communist who's most closely aligned with italian left communism
Can you explain why you support Italian left communism?
It's one of the only currents that has read and follows the traditions of Marx/Engels/Lenin, and thus recognizes that the source of capitalism and its class relations, imperialism, exploitation, etc stem from generalized commodity production and puts emphasis on it, recognizes just how important internationalism is in taking down a global system and rejects the concept of AES ('actually existing socialism' so Stalinist and later USSR + all modern day 'socialist' states) as being fundamentally flawed, it's relatively unique position towards tactics such as activism/terrorism/popular fronts/trade unionism and how revolution would be achieved compared to other currents and so on.
There's many more reasons, but in short its because their positions and critiques are the most theoretically sound in my opinion.