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FluffyPotato

@FluffyPotato@lemm.ee

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FluffyPotato ,

I actually got permabanned from both without ever commenting on either. I think I argued with a few users from both under a post at .ml and that did it.

FluffyPotato ,

While yes, a socialist country would have other priorities but let's also not forget that the USSR wasn't socialist. Before Stalin it had the potential to be sometime in the future but that got sidelined at best.

FluffyPotato ,

Workers had no control over the means of production. Those were owned by the party which was just another form of bourgeoisie rule. A good example of that was the insane amount of nepotism in the party leading to appointment of friends and relatives with no competency who went against the wishes of the workers. Trofim Lysenko for example was appointed by Stalin and his policies forced farmers to basically kill their crops leading to mass famines in the USSR and those that didn't were declared fascists, traitors or something along those lines.

It's not socialist if the workers lack any control.

FluffyPotato ,

Planned by the party, not the workers. Workers lacked any voice in the party, it was no different than any other authoritarian rule in that aspect.

I grew up in the USSR, nearby farms were controlled by a kolhoos which was headed by someone important in the party, the farmers had no say in what was to be produced or to who their produce goes to, only the party decided that. The same control existed for every other industry, party gave the orders with no input from a single worker, commonly even going against workers in their orders.

I would love a system where workers actually controlled the means of production but the USSR was not that.

FluffyPotato ,

I never said a direct democracy is needed but worker control of the means of production is, in the USSR workers did not have that. Pretty much all meaningful elections in the USSR were held within the party by the party, not by the workers. The party was a bourgeoisie ruling class with vastly different class interests which is why the USSR was not socialist.

FluffyPotato ,

If you read your own source you will find that soviet democracy pretty much fell in 1921 and with the death of Lenin it was gone. Which was my original statement that with Stalin any hope for socialism was gone. So my point of it being bourgeoisie rule stands.

FluffyPotato ,

I did but that section definitely does not reflect what life was for a worker in the USSR after Stalin so I'm curious when he participated in that election.

I did not say that capitalists were in power what I said was that the party was in power. There aren't just 2 options, a monarchy for example is commonly neither capitalist nor socialist.

FluffyPotato ,

I already checked the book where the quote is from and it doesn't say when he participated in the election. At least I didn't find it but I can only assume it was before 1921.

I guess bourgeoisie does technically refer to a ruling class in a capitalist society but it's so commonly used to refer to just a ruling class or just who owns the means of production in general conversation that my usage is more colloquial. Like I would also refer to a monarch and the royal family as the bourgeoisie while the society isn't capitalist.

FluffyPotato ,

I'm old, I'm not going to reread all of the things I read in my youth. The usage of bourgeoisie has changed colloquially and I don't really care either, it's irrelevant to the USSR having worker control after Lenin.

FluffyPotato ,

As I have said I have read enough Marx in my youth and usage of one word does not change a single part of my argument or any point which was that post Lenin in the USSR workers did not own the means of production.

Also you earlier said that your opinion is supported by historians and I missed that comment then so let me address that: It's supported by one dissenting opinion on the Wikipedia article. The rest of the article agrees with my statement.

FluffyPotato ,

You provided one source which also lists the Thurston and Sloan quotes as a dissenting opinions to the rest of the article. The Wikipedia article itself states that worker councils lost both their power and ability to vote followed by protests by workers which were violently put down.

Why do I need to provide more sources when the one you provided almost fully agrees with my statement with the exception of one dissenting historian?

FluffyPotato ,

You know the anarchist group I'm part of had people like you join from time to time that seem more interested in reading, purity testing and just calling other members "bad lefties" instead of taking part in local politics which is our main goal. Calling me unserious while complaining about definitions takes the cake though.

You seem to have misread it more. Yes, parties were banned but so were factions in the bolshevik party, elected city soviets and pretty much all groups outside the party. Meaningful elections happened only inside the party, the elections everyone took part in were for show, they gave no control to the workers. It's all in that source.

If you are interested in how elections were run in the USSR this is pretty much how I remember: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union
From what I remember the candidates you could actually vote for were party picks that would do the same thing anyways so your vote was merely symbolic. Over time people cought on to that and voter turnout crashed so hard the party started handing out exotic fruit to people who show up, I got my first orange that way.

If you want to know what happened to the worker councils in the USSR read it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_council

Pat Sloan probably took part in an election before Stalin, as I previously said, the election process after Lenin was very different. So, yea one dissenting historian.

FluffyPotato ,

What I wrote was that workers did not control the means of production, the party did. Having symbolic elections does not give workers any control.

You should find a local political group that actually takes part in local politics, that actually has a chance of bringing about socialist policy. Political book clubs are largely useless and only good for mutual mental masturbation.

FluffyPotato ,

Are you saying that if the bolshevik party had 1% workers in it it would count as socialist even though the party had different class interests to the workers and workers had no control over the means of production? If the party was controlled by the workers there would be no need to violently put down mass worker protests.

The assumption was made based on how insufferable some of your ad hominems were and contact with other people who talk like that. Work in effective local politics groups tends to mellow people like this out and makes them less pedantic.

FluffyPotato ,

The Wikipedia article you started with had this info. The party was more interested with remaining in power and benefitting it's members than the working class after Lenin. They banned any dissenting voice and cracked down on the working class. They became closer to a royal family in a monarchy with Stalin. And I do repeat that the workers had no control of the means of production after 1924, potentially even after 1921.

FluffyPotato ,

Are you being purposely optuse or bad faith? The elections were symbolic with no effect on production as I already said and provided sources for. It's not socialism if workers have no control over the means of production.

FluffyPotato ,

I guess you missed the link I provided: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union

During those elections you were voting for local party picks that all had the same instructions from the party. Who won had no effect on how things were run. The high ups in the party controlled how the means of production were used, not the workers. As you may recall from your own link factions in the party were banned meaning dissent got you ousted.

Elections that don't give workers any control over the means of production are meaningless and not socialism. How many times do I have to repeat this?

FluffyPotato ,

No it doesn't, I read it too. If this has degraded to you just going nuhuh we can call it a day, that's no longer fun.

FluffyPotato ,

Google has been unusable in English for at least 2 years now. Searching in Estonian makes Google behave like it did when it was still good. I wonder how long that's going to last.

iPad Pro with M4 chip boasts impressive performance jump compared to just-released M3 MacBook Air (9to5mac.com)

On raw performance might, the M4 really does live up to Apple’s promises, should deliver. Single core is up about 20% compared to all M3 chips and more than 40% compared to M2. The generational computational leap from the previous M2 iPad Pro is at least a 42% jump on single-core and multi-core.

FluffyPotato ,

I don't use apple's stuff but alternatives to X86 could be the future. The one thing they need is compatibility with X86 software otherwise mass adoption is heavily crippled. It doesn't matter as much for Apple's stuff since their whole ecosystem is under strict control but for general purpose consumer hardware that compatibility is required first.

FluffyPotato ,

Yea, obviously, that's the case for most people. A lot of people for who a chromebook would be enough would not be effected, yea but for example software that isn't getting new updates and like all gaming would just not work on other architectures currently.

FluffyPotato ,

That heavily depends on what the previous machine was. Like factorio runs on my laptop without taxing the system much more than just idling and on my desktop I can't even tell it's running based on performance monitoring. So yea, I'm not sure factorio is a good indicator.

FluffyPotato ,

I'm pretty sure the old AMD APUs from the Bulldozer era can run factorio and that's like a decade old.

Like sure, it's some metric but I'm pretty sure any computer produced currently can run factorio.

FluffyPotato ,

I don't doubt it, Apple has never had good gaming performance. But a non apple laptop in the same price range with X86 aimed at gaming can run it a lot better.

FluffyPotato ,

It already is, finding a parking spot and then walking through a parking lot is a lot less convenient than walking from the tram stop to the store and it's roughly the same distance. I sold my car after moving to the city because public transit is so much more convenient.

FluffyPotato ,

I was in my early 20s when the Soviet occupation collapsed here, the victims here were everyone not high up in the party.

Sure, capitalism fucking sucks but pretending the USSR was anything other than just bourgeoisie rule is delusional. The oligarchs were just called the communist party then.

FluffyPotato ,

Yea, no shit, nothing to do with what I said though.

FluffyPotato ,

Yea and I was commenting on how things were in a country under the occupation of the USSR. So both temporally and geographiclly unrelated.

FluffyPotato ,

The USSR had a minimum sentence of 5 years of forced labor for being gay. Being gay is also apparently wrongthink.

FluffyPotato ,

I was literally talking about the time before the USSR collapsed also it was applied to Russia, not to the countries it occupied.

FluffyPotato ,

You say that but there are numerous people in the comments defending both the USSR and Stalin.

FluffyPotato ,

Yea, I know, I'm not defending capitalism. I'm saying every attempt at communism has been fucking horrible for not just landlords and capital owners.

FluffyPotato ,

Estonia but it's not like that was not the case elsewhere in the occupied areas. Russia mostly exported resources out of there to benefit itself which is a large reason how it raised quality of life in Russia itself.

FluffyPotato , (edited )

My problem with people citing those metrics is that they are true for Russia itself while ignoring that a large reason for those improvements was colonialism done to the occupied regions. Industrialisation was another thing that improved those metrics but that was hardly unique to the USSR. Some of those regions may have had benefits but here in Estonia it was pretty much all around bad. After the occupation ended the quality of life here improved rapidly.

As far as examples for socialism I'd say the USSR was an all around failure but people still defend it and even Stalin who basically guaranteed it's failure as a socialist project. In the baltic region the word communism is basically poisoned because of the USSR.

FluffyPotato ,

In the USSR those improvents were for Russia, not so much for their colonised regions where they exported resources from. Industrialisation also helped but that's not really unique to anything.

FluffyPotato ,

I never said the US was better than the USSR, I don't really give a shit about the US. One shit country being slightly better than another one does not make it good.

I like how you characterised it as "some mistakes" . The whole famine business that ravaged the USSR was caused by sheer incompetence. A guy appointed by Stalin to manage agriculture came up with a fun idea of "communist crops won't compete for resources" and forcing farmers to plant crops way too close. I'd say that was one of the greatest mistakes. There was also some killing the gays and some ethnic minorities but I think those were intentional.

I also don't attribute anything to communism, only the USSR, communism hasn't existed. I also attribute being the worst advertisement imaginable for communist to the USSR. They kinda ruined it for everyone else by calling themselves that.

FluffyPotato ,

The one boycotted by 6 of the 15 territories? Or the ones that followed in each that led to them declaring independence which in turn led to the collapse of the soviet union?

The baltics were 3 of those boycotting territories and we had similar referendums for independence which, I'm pretty sure, all got over 70% support.

FluffyPotato ,

The baltics are actually doing much better now yea, by pretty much every metric.

FluffyPotato ,

Nope, living conditions have improved massively and way less nazies here than Russia as well.

FluffyPotato ,

In the US or Germany: Straight to jail

In Japan: Your organs are now the property of Nintendo to repay this heinous crime.

Rest of the world: it depends.

FluffyPotato ,

Not in real life but I have yet to not find one in the comments of anything Linux related.

FluffyPotato ,

I have seen arch recommended to first time Linux users more times than I can count. It's usually said that installing it is a learning experience. If that's a joke it's a really stupid one.

FluffyPotato ,

Last time I installed EndeavourOS I had to connect to the wifi through the terminal. That's a surefire way to get a beginner to stop installing right there so I would not recommend it.

FluffyPotato ,

I had a similar issue on Manjaro when I got a 7900XTX but it was solved after some kernel and Mesa updates. That was about a year ago though.

FluffyPotato ,

I got drinks a month ago with some people and we bonded over our shared hatred of generative AI.

FluffyPotato ,

No, we didn't. Average computer users didn't exist then, only tech people.

FluffyPotato ,

Wait, so you think computer usage should go back to just large companies and a few niche enthusiasts?

FluffyPotato ,

Yes, they can but an average user never will and for Linux to get any adoption beyond the enthusiast space it also can't be a requirement.

Like it's fine if you believe Linux should never get mass adoption and be a niche desktop OS. All I'm saying is that I want Linux to get mass adoption and for that terminal usage can't be a requirement because your average computer user, who's most advanced computer use is installing an ad blocker on their browser, will never open a terminal.

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