reformed liberal

I was a liberal until I saw a banksy painting, now I'm an anarchist with an interest in the arts

Let me remind you a bit of history. In 1962, soon after the Cuban crisis, the Soviet government announced a 25-30% rise in prices on the main food staples (like meat and butter). This was to help raise money for the arms race vs United States. The newspapers printed, smugly, that the working class wholly approves of this step. But the real working class was not happy. On one factory in the Rostov area (down south, near the Black Sea), this raise in prices coincided with a 33% rise in production norms (ie. a drop in effective wages for the workers). This led to the proletarians going on strike. The director of the plant said: "Can't afford meat, just eat liver pies!" Thousands of workers went on strike, and on the 3rd of June, 1962, about a hundred of the rioters were shot by the Soviet police (24 of them dead on the spot). The whole situation was kept secret and almost no one in the Union knew of the shootings.

And they called it "the dictatorship of the proletariat", "people's rule", "communism". They paid workers slave wages and shot them if they went on strike - and called it fucking working man's republic.