It can be vexing at times to work out how to talk about communism, and socialist state projects, in particular around those with anti-communists views, but sometimes even around sympathizers when you are just trying to dispel propaganda or put it in perspective.
I’ve noticed you can find yourself in this realm where you’re sort of first trying to dispel the “monster under the bed” binary view of what communism is in both theory and practice. And in doing so, it can come out sounding like you are saying communists are not devils, but they are angels. When the point is that they are neither devil nor angel, but are humans who are doing their best to build a more equitable and just world, free of class and caste-based oppression. But if you simply start out by saying this, it can sound like you are admitting to the truth of every absurd narrative against them. This sort of “yes, they are flawed, so that means all the stories about them are true.”
But that is not what you want. You want to shake the anti-communist narratives. So you might sort of say, no look, they made incredible strides in quality of life. We can talk about the failures and the excesses and so on later. It can feel like a very awkward way to engage. You know that communism and communists are not perfect, that no one is, that they are not demi-gods but are regular people dealing with difficult material conditions who overcame through organizing. But the good and evil worldview, I think can sort of find this way of describing them to be disappointing or underwhelming, on top of the aforementioned point about some viewing it as an admission of guilt.
I don’t have a strong conclusion here, which is why I wrote the title like a question. It may be one of those things where western Christianity rears its head and contributes to difficulties with viewing the struggle as something more nuanced than good vs. evil, or David vs. Goliath. But whatever the cause of it is and the means of getting past it, it seems critical to get there. Even just for the nuance of an anti-imperialist stance combined with communism, it is fundamental to notions of “critical support” to recognize the gray; staying stuck on good vs. evil but sympathizing with communism seems like a fast track to becoming an ultra, for example.
If someone even tries to discuss communism with you in good faith, then it means you already have a better starting point than 90% of communists. I discussed the Soviet Union with an American and it was just painful, typical Stalin killed millions of people etc. Also thought that every historian (American btw!) that said something good about USSR was a russian propagandist.
But getting back to the topic, I think the most important part of discussing AES is not knowing the history of the said country per say (although it is very important), but understanding how to talk about the contradictions it faced. When you tell an average person that Stalin didn’t kill 8 million people in the terror, but 700 k it doesn’t really make it look all that better does it? However, when you put in the context of the conflict between regional leaders and Stalin and say that the USSR really had a very real existential threat, then it directly challenges the cartoonish version of Stalin and the USSR.
I think the issue is that you make it seem like you want to overcompensate for real tragedies that happened under AES. What I always want to explain when talking about AES is the role of state power in class societies. Most of libs will dismiss socialist states for killing people, but we know that state power is universally used by all states in the history of the world. The Soviet Union didn’t succeed in spite of using a highly repressive aparatus, it usually succeeded becaause of it.
I don’t know if that was a response you wanted, but that’s my perspective. Just remember that you don’t have to force yourself to persuade everyone.