• tooting_lemmy@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I think most revolutions just lead to a new ruling class that is just as bad as the old. It didn’t take Stalin long to become just as bad as the Czar. After fighting a war to stop taxation from Britain, one of the first things Washington did was put down a rebellion to enforce a federal tax on whiskey.

    • Mayoman68@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The thing is the American revolution wasn’t about taxation itself. The taxation without representation bit was more of a minor component over how society should be organized. The question was whether the inherited aristocratic titles or ownership of land(later means of production) determined your social power. There’s nothing about the ideology of the American revolution that is about the levying of taxes, it is about who gets to collect them.

      With the soviets, the problems and successes are significantly more nuanced than “Stalin was bad dictator”(although that is a true statement). Which on one hand makes a lot of western criticism of the USSR questionably true, but also makes the actual issues(which there were) harder to address because they happened not because of one guy being bad.

      • tooting_lemmy@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Taxation was the main reason for the war. Britain had levied some new taxes to recoup the cost of the French and Indian war. It put a significant strain on the economy.