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BadEmpanada takes are becoming even worse.
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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The Deprogram
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"As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say that we're tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We also know that when the people understand, they cannot but follow us. In any case, we, the people, have no enemies when it comes to peoples. Our only enemies are the imperialist regimes and organizations." Thomas Sankara, 1985
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Well said, I think we really ought to evaluate our own excuses for inaction before looking to the other hemisphere.
To me Empanada's opinion is one that follows the "President Xi, fire when ready" meme.
And I'm not criticizing the meme, but there seems to be this trend amongst us in the western "left" to expect China to swoop in and take care of all our problems in a style akin only to the nostalgic "memories" we've developed of the Soviets.
This is an interesting point because the key here is the USSR doesn't exist anymore. And for quite a few of us in these spaces, it probably never existed while we were alive (or not while we were cogent adult beings). The USSR as a world savior simply never existed. As impact beyond itself goes, the USSR made a huge difference in defeating Nazi Germany and being the first to establish a socialist state project, but it also took massive losses in the process of fighting Nazi Germany and was stretched thin from that and its international efforts. Meanwhile, the US was positioned really well after WWII to steamroll over the planet, utilizing pre-existing colonial and imperial tendrils to make it all the easier to do so.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is that although the USSR did great things for people, it was still heavily limited by its material conditions. And if it was still around today, it would be getting criticized by ultra-leftists in similar ways to how China is criticized now. Because it wouldn't be making all of the most plainly "moral" decisions, it would not be saving the world but instead acting in a complex way that tries to move the international and local cause of liberation forward, and the western empire propaganda machine would be telling people from day one to despise everything it stands for.
Here the Christian culture that Jones Manoel talks of rears its head again. Now that the USSR is no more, we can freely romanticize what it was, in a form unmarred by complex and uncomfortable realities. We can wallow in the comfort of the idea untouched and untainted by good will having to work within circumstances full of cruelty and neglect. It's reassuring in a way to hide in the purity of the idea, if one believes that acting within a cruel world, rather than rejecting it with the most swift and bridge-burning measures, has an inevitable corrupting influence that destroys otherwise good efforts or damns one (if not the whole world) to depravity.
Likewise with praise of China. It is dangerous (to their comfort) for the purist to sincerely learn about China in detail because the ideal will be shattered in favor of the material realities. The Christian-influenced conclusion will lead to the belief that it has been "corrupted". It is then knocked down from the pedestal that it never asked to be on, where it can be spat upon like a fallen angel who seeks to lead lost souls astray.
The USSR has made a number of mistakes in foreign policy:
As the first successful socialist experiment we could argue, and I do argue that, that it's not like there was a lot of textbooks to pull from. They applied what they knew that worked and everything else was still to be determined, and they did a lot of things right too. Furthermore I also think the world situation around that time was very different; Asia was freeing itself following the defeat of Japan in ww2, there were a number of socialist revolutions all around the same time in the 50s, then in the 60s Africa struggled for independence.
And yet we see that all of this was not enough to defeat the imperial hegemony, so what went wrong? And why repeat the mistakes of the past? We see that it wasn't always correct to 'just' follow the USSR. These mistakes are not entirely the USSR's fault, they're just dialectical. They exist in contradiction and as one element grows the other grows as well. And likewise not everything was of their own making, they were after all constantly under siege from the United States.
Probably nobody thought the USSR would ever be able to be dismantled. And yet it was, and it wreaked havoc in the soviet republics, the DPRK, Cuba. If the PRC were ever to fall, what would remain of world socialism? Are we today in a situation where it would not lead to the post-1991 periods other countries saw? I think so yes, because the PRC has picked a different direction from the USSR in that regard, but I'm presenting the question.
And yet with these mistakes, so to speak, I still support the USSR and would never speak ill of it publicly. My criticisms of their policies are to notice the pothole and mark it clearly so people coming after me can avoid it. Capitalism itself was not established overnight; it took decades of struggle and centuries overall to reach the level it has. Even today there are some countries that have retained their royal family after compromise with the feudal lords.
People like empanada are "neither washington nor beijing" today (he has called China imperialist and 'communist in name only') and would have been "neither washington nor moscow" back in the 60s no matter what they might say they think of the USSR today with hindsight. But where do these words lead new comrades? Imagine just starting to read Marx and your group tells you there is no such thing as a socialist country today and everything sucks, what are you even struggling for at that point? To be right? To flex? To teach newcomers that communism has been thoroughly defeated in the 90s, and we have reached the end of history?
Yeah, there is a really important difference between examining certain choices as mistakes of strategy or limitations of the material or gaps in knowledge and experience, as opposed to treating an AES state, past or present, as something shameful that one must distance themself from in its realities in order to be a good, wholesome commie. Being able to talk about the things these projects have done well and continue to do well (of which there is a lot) is critically important and as you put it, if you can't stand behind them, then what exactly are you fighting for.
In a way, I get why people can end up in that place. The west can be so vicious toward actual support of AES, or even support of self-determination, that people become motivated to couch what they say in softer terms, to water it down, to avoid saying things that would them look like "the enemy". But the danger is also just part of the fight and is unavoidable as part of it. If you remove all the danger from it, you're no longer opposition. You're a career reformist pushing for tweaks.
I can't speak for other countries, but in the US context, I think wannabe-commies who linger in those awkward places of "trying not to be vilified" could learn a thing or two from the far right as audacity goes (not to be confused with learning from them in ideology! fuck patsocs). Granted, the far right has more acceptance and agreement from the offset in the existing power structure, but it also doesn't always go well for them and they keep chipping away anyway. Too many on "the left" are too liberal still and so (I suspect) on top of the fear of being vilified, they succumb to the allure of "going along to get along". But the world does not need liberal would-be commies in the imperial core. It needs the kind of people who would go to a protest knowing they may get arrested, but also directed by the strategic thinking of ML, not just Christian martyrdom thought; so that their actions are put toward the most strategically effective rather than the most self-sacrificing and performative.
I'm sure the latter part of this sounds a bit preachy and I know there are various strategic reasons at times for being careful about how obvious one is in what they believe. But conscious strategy is different from fear-based avoidance. So it's important people identify which they are operating on and try to move more according to conscious strategy, lest they water themselves down into nothing in order to avoid the boot.
To address last point, even the russians struggled knowing there is no socialist nation, doesnt mean it was pointless