Not a tankie, but the USSR had mostly solved this problem, despite all its other issues. There did exist some homelessness, but nowhere near the extent of current USA.
At least they tried. Our homelessness is an intentional feature of our capitalist system. A constant threat and extant punishment for those among us who aren't fortunate enough to be born with a silver stick up our ass.
Sure, you could get a piece of land in Siberian tundra at any time, I would not call that housing.
Moving to a city was way more complicated than in capitalist US. You could not simply buy an apartment. You had to be allocated an apartment by the government. And you needed connections for that. Or bribes. Ideally both. If you think your local rabid Republicans do not care for little wage slave men, you never experienced USSR, it was like that but 100x worse.
Vodka had been linked to the Russian economy under multiple Czars. I'm not sure that Stalin could have separated the two even if he had wanted to. Admittedly it doesn't appear that he wanted to.
I'm pretty sure that the USSR was screwed the moment that Lenin returned from exile in Germany, or when Wilson was elected. Take your pick.
The Menchaviks would have been a better government.
The mechaviks literally wanted to continue ww1 and have a psuedo democracy where the bourgeoisie were literally guaranteed a majority of seats, wtf are you talking about?
I wasn't aware of that. I was under the impression they were less extreme than the Bolsheviks, and didn't want to execute everyone that wasn't a hard core Bolshevik
They were more extreme than the bolseviks but less extreme than the monarchists, they were just on the side of capitalists so were painted with a nicer brush by capitalist historians
Well, I'm from a post-USSR country and a substantial part of this was the criminalization of homelessness. Can't have homeless people, if you lock them up (be it in a prison or asylum).
Then again, just about anyone, who did not conform to the party's message got locked up.
Getting your place bugged at the slightest hint you might be up to something disagreeable and all that good stuff. The secret police could disappear and or beat you up without any real justification.
I hate late-stage capitalism as much as you, but coming from a country that's been through this, I am extremely reluctant to give the rotten and frankly repugnant USSR regime any credit.
I mean even in the case of USSR they had to wait for more than a decade to actually get a livable apartment, not to mention severe lack of infrastructure...
But of course, better than people just kicked out to the streets. But then again, less is not none. The housing situation definitely didn't do USSR's overall economic status any favor.
Soviet Union? It was uncommon for a family of 6 to live in a small apartment. You can even see it in old soviet movies where apartments would be separated by curtains (common comedy trope).
In Communist countries people starve to death because of famine, in Capitalist countries people also strave to death because of famine while still starving to death after famines are over because they cant afford groceries.
Woohoo both systems suck. You can actually believe that just because one system is bad, what is considered the opposite is also bad. Marx was not some omniscient doctor manhattan. He had some ideas. Some were good critiques on capitalist culture. Others were fantasy that do not function in the real world.
Notice how the folks arguing in favor of Communism have sources and receipts, while the folks arguing against it have done nothing but regurgitated Capitalist propaganda. Also note folks who are opposed to Communism and Marx's philosophy are always forced to admit that it only works on paper, because his logic is irrefutable if you address it with a modicum of intellectual honesty...
I have a whole fucking family, who lived through the USSR. Not a single one of them misses it. Being spied on every step you take, my grandma has the "you never know who's watching" mentality to this day.
That's not to say they don't hate the current regime, but it's nothing compared to the absolute atrocities of the USSR's secret police.
Bruh there is a reason Putin is framing his imperialist ideations as a revival of the USSR. Also I've watched a shit ton of bald and bankrupt videos where all the old people he talks to go on and on about how times were better under the Soviet governments. Facts dont care about your feelings
You know, it's a universal thing. That's what MAGA is about, that's what Hitler pushed. Glorifying distant past no one really remembers, reinventing it, it's fucked up, especially if it's promoted via selective parts of it. You can't use political stunts as a proof of anything. They sell you dreams because they can't show something real, they can't show important systemic improvements. In times of fuck ups, they show you that billboard, shining so bright it's blinding, while bread prices climb 2-3x to what they were a decade ago. And people indulge in that constructed feeling of it being better before, while government can do whatever they want.
Ok, how about people currently living through communism? 83% of Chinese people believe they live in a democracy, more than in the US. Chinese citizens are on average around 4 times wealthier than their parents. Millennials are the first generation in US history to be poorer than their parents. Most of the wealth in the US is held by boomers who lived through the tail end of new deal social democracy.
Do you also disregard these accounts by people who are currently living through communism? Or will you move the goal post again?
Things got much worse for most citizens of the USSR after it collapsed and state industry was privatized. Life expectancy dropped pretty severely. It shouldn’t be surpassing that anyone who suffered under that economic collapse would tell you the USSR was better.
You're claiming communism is so great and when presented with links you just go "WELL WHAT ABOUT ALL THIS HUH" and then completely ignore the above. It's ridiculous. Actual text book definition of what about ism. Seriously stop and think for yourself for two seconds without restarting to this tribal shit slinging mentality.
Yeah, capitalism is bad, we live in it, we can see that happening around us, but you're eating literal propaganda about communism and ignoring actual verifiable evidence. This isn't a capitalism vs communism debate, there are more than two fucking systems you smooth brain chud
The holodomor narrative surrounding the ussr wide famine of 32-33 was literal nazi propaganda from open nazi collaborators and was used as a justification for the mass murder of jews in Eastern Europe during the holocaust.
It was debunked in the literal 1930s in the US and now it re-emerges like a zombie during an era where fascism is on the rise. Even anticommunist academics like Applebaum, Davies, and Conquest say it wasn't a genocide.
What a crock of shit. Practically every historian says it was caused by soviet policy. The only debate that occurs if whether it was due to stupidity or intentional genocide.
Literally none of your sources definitively claim it was a genocide except the university of Minnesota one which cites Davies and Applebaum who later says it wasn't.
Also lol, you use Wikipedia, a random university of Minnesota webpage, KellogInsight, and I dont even know where you got your last source but it literally cites Wheatcroft and Davies amongst others who do not argue it was a genocide after examining the soviet archives.
Gonna tell me how the Holocaust was a lie too?
No, the holocaust is a well documented historical fact, unlike the holodomor. The soviet wide famine of 1932 and 33 is a well documented historical fact, it is also not considered a genocide by mainstream anticommunist historians, who argue to what extent soviet policies and which policies worsened the famine.
Also ironic that you ask "do you also deny the holocaust" given the holodomor myth was used as justification to kill Jewish people during the holocaust and was later used as justification for collaboration with the holocaust.
Here is a well respected Jewish historian and activist on it:
Wow the lengths commies go to deny actual genocide.
We all know communism is an ideology strictly for the uneducated and violent, why try so hard to make it seem like something else? The countless sexual and ethnic minorities murdered by communism due to its inherent hateful nature is something only the nazis on the other end of the fascism-spectrum rivaled.
No one is going to deny that making perpetual motion device is good. How are you going to do that?
Do you have source and receipts for real life communism solving housing problem? Not being better than capitalism. Solving. Being better than capitalism is kinda low bar you know. There are plenty of other things that real life capitalism does better than real life communism, hence communism failure. No one is going to show up with receipts and sources because obvious.
You show us tents as a capitalist solution. That's not a capitalist solution. That's the problem itself. You're misleading.
because his logic is irrefutable if you address it with a modicum of intellectual honesty...
Can you at least try to sound less douche about things?
The joke is that Capitalism DOES NOT have a solution to homelessness because there is zero profit motive to solve it. And facts dont care about your feelngs, you cant refute Marx's philosophy while being intellectual honest. Capitalist Economists study Das Kapital because Marx was so fucking spot on.
Yes, that's why there is no pure capitalist country anywhere.
you cant refute Marx's philosophy while being intellectual honest.
Why are you keep doing this? I said I don't disagree with Marx. It'd be nice if communism can happen. Facts don't care about your feelings either and all the shitty attemps of communism failed due to human being shitty. If you have to kill off people to keep the ideology, only to fail after about few decades, it has some reality problems.
And again, I cannot stress this enough, can you please stop sounding like a 16 year old kid who just read few paragraphs of Marx going iamverysmart about it?
The existence of state run social services and regulations does not mean a country is not fully capitalist if you’re using Marx’s understanding of what capitalism is. Additionally I think there is a misconception that communism depends on altruistic behavior. It really doesn’t.
No need to refute Marx, reality has already proven time and time again that communism doesn't work in practice.
Btw your argument only applies to "pure" capitalism, without any government interference. Homelessness is not really an issue in many European countries.
Tell me you haven’t read Marx without telling me you haven’t read Marx.
Seriously though, Marx is like the guy you go read if you want a ruthless critique of idealism. I’d go so far as to say it’s the reason his theories became so popular in the first place.
Yeah that's called late stage Communism, which we have never achieved as humanity. Late stage Capitalism is currently pushing more and more folks into dangerous housing situations like the bottom right quadrant of this meme. Capitalism and Utopia are oxymorons while Communism and Utopia are synonymous.
They don't call you old fashioned for that, they call you tankie. It's because they're mad that you don't buy the bullshit they push. Look at all the claims they make about the USSR here while providing no evidence or context for the situations they claim people were living in.
They compare apples to oranges when it's communism they are criticizing and stick their fingers in their ears while screaming when it comes to criticizing crapitalism.
There were still people that lived in the streets in the USSR. Also, the housing the USSR provided wasn't really that.. great... I watch a Russian YouTuber (NFKRZ) who has talked about Soviet architecture in not just Russia, but other former USSR countries and shows that yes it's good they were built, they weren't very well built.
The USSR had many problems, and bureaucracy was a big problem. I never understood why tankies love the USSR so much when the USSR didn't truly get rid of class. Those in the government lived like kings compared to the common man, who yes lived better than they had before but still not that well due to the bloated and mismanagement of the government.
Idk, the fact that they even had a centralized government like that seems like.. the opposite of communism to me.
I think what people don’t fully understand is that Marxism is meant to be scientific. That means that there will likely be many imperfect and failed attempts at building a socialist society before one comes along that is stable enough to outlast outside interference from capitalist states.
As such, most people I know who like the USSR are also it’s biggest critiques. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation about the USSR that most discussions about it online are just about delineating truth from propaganda.