this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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I don't know about Mao, but while Stalin being an evil dictator wasn't an accident, Lenin being an evil dictator was. The Russian revolution wasn't just the Bolsheviks; there were many different groups of which the Bolsheviks simply happened to come out on top because of a ton of coincidences and bad decisions by everyone else.
The Ukrainians did it until they were invaded by the Soviets, and Rojava's experiment seems to be mostly successful.
The examples you gave were or aren’t strong enough to survive and spread global revolution, so they don’t count. Literally that’s the criteria.
Socialism never promised to be able to survive an assault by a vastly superior military force, that's not how that works. It doesn't promise to spread global revolution either.
Hmmm, then what are all those socialist internationals still lying around…. Marx and Engels literally believe that socialism was the alternative to capitalism, and capitalism is global. Socialism is an international movement, and basically can not exist “in one country” like Stalin tried. It is an era of history not a thing you do in your backyard.
Yes socialist internationals literally tried to end things like WW1 and WW2. They wanted international worker movements to stand up to capitalist militaries at home and stop the fighting, take over all governments all at once, then aide revolutionary struggles around the world, until eventually socialism was achieved in place of capitalism. People like the DSA,PSL,etc and other international socialist participating groups still largely support this plan.
That's literally the thing though, and perhaps where the USSR went wrong. There is no magic bullet that would make a small nation able to survive a large attack, asside from strong allies with a ton of bigger nations, and sadly being different, and a possible threat to the status quo, doesn't help with that.
That's like saying being a serial killer helps survival over being a law abiding citizen that cares about others. Proof when I put a law abiding citizen and a serial killer in a locked room... the law abiding citizen doesn't live as long. Of course the reality is, being a serial killer is evolved as the exception rather than the rule in humans, because, with numbers not making enemies is a more succesful strategy than always making them.
That's why socialist internationals exist.