And to me that’s dishonest, because you have to add the “attacks from capitalists” clause or else you would also have to laud mercantilism/capitalism as well for lifting the standard of living from straw huts under kings and feudalism.

What’s the laudable part, lifting standards of living or doing it while under attack. Because as far as I see it, the concern should be with the material conditions not the degree of difficulty.

What’s even more laudable to me, is doing so without an overbearing brutal state oppressing the people on top of that. We know it can work as we have seen how people flourish both materially and socially under direct community rule whenever it has been tried.

Let’s compare the USSR to itself, an authoritarian shithole that sent gay men to do hard labour.

The Zapatista have been going strong for 30 years.

Revolutionary Ukraine fell to Communist backstabbing.

Historically the biggest threat to anarchist revolution hasn’t been capitalism, it’s been red fash communists.

Wow yeah moders Russia! So modern! Soon modern toilet, indoor!!

And being trans is considered a mental illness there, but you gotta simp for your fav dictator I guess.

The USSR was a horrible aithoritatian dictatorship murdering millions of people, every western country got a better life than that hell hole lol. They even teamed up with the Nazis and started WW2, can't make that shit up lol. So progressive.

This rationale holds for many nations under capitalism over the same time period.

It in no way justifies the superiority of the model of transition from fuedalism to state-controlled centralized economies to state-controlled capitalism present in the USSR / China