The absolute state of the discourse on this board lately is pathetic. It’s almost 202
6 and I’m still seeing "socialists" parroting CIA talking points like they’re reading from the Black Book of Communism. It’s time to filter the radlibs and the ultras who care more about moral purity than winning.
If we actually apply historical materialism instead of utopian wish-casting, it becomes obvious that Stalin and Deng aren't just "good" – they are the two greatest practitioners of Marxism in history because they did what Western leftists refuse to do: they prioritized the survival of the revolution over the approval of the bourgeoisie.
1. Stalin: The Shield
Stop crying about "authoritarianism" and read Losurdo. His Critique of a Black Legend completely exposes how the "millions dead" narrative is just recycled Nazi war propaganda that the West adopted during the Cold War. The "Holodomor" wasn't a genocide; it was a combination of kulak sabotage and cyclical drought that the Soviets eventually ended through collectivization. Stalin understood that you don't survive capitalist encirclement with good vibes. He took a country of wooden plows and turned it into a nuclear superpower in a single generation. He purged the fifth columnists because he knew a war of annihilation was coming. Without that "authoritarianism," the Wehrmacht would have wiped the Slavs off the map.
2. Deng: The Sword
The hate for Deng is even more embarrassing. You guys claim to care about the poor but hate the man who oversaw the greatest poverty alleviation program in human history? Deng understood that "poverty is not socialism." He developed the productive forces necessary to compete with the West. And regarding 1989: He saved China from the fate of the USSR. Tiananmen was a textbook color revolution, backed by Western NGOs and intelligence. Deng saw Gorbachev selling out to Pizza Hut and realized that sometimes you have to crush a counter-revolution to preserve the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Because he had the spine to do that, China is now mogging the US economy while Russia spent the 90s getting looted by oligarchs.
TL;DR
Parenti said it best in Blackshirts and Reds: you people want a revolution without a revolution. You want a clean, safe process that never makes mistakes and never exercises power. That doesn't exist. Stalin secured the state; Deng secured the economy. If you reject them, you’re not
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