I’m not really knowledgeable enough to contribute to the discussion going on here.
I just wanted to say I’ve seen you engaging in good faith discussion all over Lemmy, and I really, really, appreciate that. Whenever socialism, communism, Marxism and the like come up, people are quick to jump to ad hominem and flinging shit-covered sarcasm at each other, and you consistently engage thoughtfully in the discussion, even when your interlocutors don’t. Thank you.
Thank you! I really appreciate it, I do try to be level headed when engaging with people. I know I used to have a lot of the same misconceptions so I try to correct them when I can. Thanks!
Please share your wisdom, I always get snarky as hell and I don’t like that about myself
I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of consciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.
If I’m being honest? Reading Liu Shaoqi’s How to be a Good Communist (also in the reading list on my profile). A good part of it stresses the importance of maintaining a level head and trying to maintain good relations with “wrong” but well-meaning comrades.
Humans are brainwashed into thinking it’s “Human nature” to be greedy and self-centered, so when someone comes offering help those stuck in this condition can’t help but think “What’s the catch?”
And the clearer it is that the person has good intent, the more dangerous the catch must be.
People aren’t really “brainwashed” in the traditional sense, they seek license to confirm their biases that they think they benefit from. A good article on the subject is Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing.”
My dad: “Yeah, maybe a good solution to the problem of not being able to pay rent would be government-provided housing”
Also my dad: “Socialism is horrible! If it wasn’t, then why would EVERYONE be trying to leave Communist countries like Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe???”
I didnt know i was living in a communist country
Its also strange that there are anti-communist stickers in a communist country
Its also strange that there are anti-communist stickers in a communist country
No it isn’t. Revolution isn’t the rapture. Fascists and liberals don’t just cease to exist.
But there wasnt a socialist revolution since the sticker was placed
Okay…?
why would EVERYONE be trying to leave Communist countries like Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe???
China is empty. Russia is empty. Cuba is empty. Vietnam is empty. South Africa is empty. They’ve all been hollowed out by the scourge of Communism. That’s why nobody lives there anymore.
Meanwhile, the US is the most populous country on Earth. We have the densest cities. We have the largest apartment towers. We have the most-used transit systems. Our nation is full to bursting thanks to all of the people who want to live here. And the more traditionally conservative, the more flagrantly capitalist, the more Christian and Based and Traditional, the larger the US State. That’s right, folks. West Virginia, South Dakota, Utah, and Idaho are the four most densely populated corners of the planet.
I wonder what the modern world would look like had the USSR not been dissolved, and repaired its relationship with the PRC.
To me the biggest hypocracy in general when it came to forms of communism.
It’s a failed ideology, it will always collapse in on itself as soon as it grows.
Followed with
We need to destroy it at all costs to keep it from taking hold anywhere in the world.
You don’t need to stop something that’s self defeating. It’s like the tower of babel story in the bible. Mankind was building up a great tower because they thought uniting they would be a powerful as gods, so god knocked over their tower, scrambled their languages to divide and conquer the world… Isn’t that kind of an admission that, God believed without his interference man can be as strong as he is?
Yep, really US foreign policy purely supports that which it can profit from, and it can’t do that if the population starts using its own resources for its own benefit rather than allowing them to be stolen by the US.
God ? Really ? Self-defeating, oh yes via spending billiins of dollars funding coups & sanctioning & bombing them in the name of Freeeeeeedom
Probably like Europe
At the end of the day, there is a reason the USSR dissolved. Generally related to bread lines, gulags, all that fun stuff
If the USSR had dissolved due to issues like the ones you’re talking about (Gulags being basically entirely dismantled after WW2 so 45 years before the dissolution, and breadlines being nonexistent until the 1980s liberalisation during Perestroika), it would have been dissolved with the popular consensus. There was a referendum in 1990 that asked the citizens of the Soviet Union if they wanted to maintain their country under communism and 70% of voters (admittedly a few republics didn’t participate) voted yes, so the USSR was extremely popular and people didn’t want it dissolved. The reasons for the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR are much more complex than that.
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I’m getting a little tired of hot takes from those who don’t know shit about fuck.
Did… Did you just equate the former socialist state that was the Soviet Union to the contemporary proto-fascist and capitalist Russian Federation that literally emerged out of the dismantling and auctioning of the former??
I disagree with the reasons you gave, feeding those in need didn’t hurt the USSR and the GULAG system was abolished several decades prior to the dissolution of the USSR. It’s ultimately a complicated issue, but one that I believe ultimately had to do with rejecting much of the world economy, which resulted in a form of Siege Socialism.
Can we put the combined efforts of every capitalist market and oligarchy who’s power has reigned uninterrupted since centuries before communism was formally theorized?
Or nah it was probably the… checks notes
prisonsgulags, right glad those are gone.Or the bread distribution? Yea didn’t work for Rome either.
Ever tried Sabotage ?
Socialism is the people. If you are afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.
- Fred Hampton
The same folks I know who wouldn’t even consider a conversation about socialism are not going to be swayed when I quote any black man to them, much less a panther.
Totally fair. The trick is to meet them where they’re at, and then work from there. The folks you’re thinking about will take a lot of effort, but if union organizers can do it then so can you
Rest in Power Fred Hampton, a brave Marxist-Leninist that tried to do what was right and got murdered by the US police for it.
“No, no, they tries to tricks us, precious [capitalism]! They wants to take you from us, stop you from helping us, precious, gollum!”
“but you’re gonna take my private property !”
That’s the People’s Toothbrush!
I think “private property” isn’t well defined in socialist discourse and this idea of no private property gets a lot of backlash from some. A distinction between personal and private property needs to be made where one is used to generate capital in exchange for wages and the other is your dildo. The dildo is your personal property and no one is going to take it. A piece of land can be someones private property when they employ you and pay you a wage to work it - you get payed a pittance and they, without work, take the cream.
I think it’s generally well-understood amongst Socialists, the issue comes from those first learning about Socialism and thinking it is applied as dogmatism to the strictest degree, and isn’t a drawn out process of iterative improvement following revolution. For such people, they need to know if “going along with” Socialism means they can’t have a gaming PC or something, but the reality of Socialism is that it isn’t nearly as rigid or strict as it is stereotyped as.
Its well defined IMO, but anti-communist propaganda intentionally spreads the wrong definition of it to make communists look scary.
A distinction between personal and private property needs to be made where one is used to generate capital in exchange for wages and the other is your dildo
That’s always the definition. It is well defined, the problem is that there are national propaganda machines outright lying to the people.
This is a reasonable explanation, similar to the ones I write on the spot when attempting to explain things. Made more difficult by the fact many signs barring entry to owned land say “private property” (or some variation on it, at least in France and the US)
All you have to do is come up with a new name for it. It’s not like any of them have a clue about what socialism actually entails.
Historically, such a strategy doesn’t actually work. Sooner or later, you get accused of being a godless commie or a tankie anyways. You can either stand firm in your beliefs and attempt to sweep away the dirt of the Red Scare to accurately contextualize Socialism and AES states, or fail to support them at all, leading to issues like Trotskyism (poor understanding of theory and a lack of support for AES) or PatSocs (Nationalist Socialists in the Imperialist countries).
You can try acknowledging that people have actual differences of opinion instead of referring to different ideological tendencies as a result of poor understanding. Doesn’t really help your cause to always come across as pretentious and arrogant, even to people who would otherwise be your allies.
There’s a difference between a difference in opinion, and a difference in understanding of what is clear-cut. I specifically singled out Trotskyism as an example because it’s an overwhelmingly western ideology, hasn’t seen any real practical success, and the fact that Trotskyists have historically ended up indirectly supporting Capitalism by attacking AES with the same or sometimes even greater vigor. I don’t denounce Trotskyism out of arrogance or pretentiousness, most Trots spend more time fighting Leftists than working to overthrow Capitalism, and can therefore not be seen as genuine allies.
Are there good Trots? Yes, many in fact. The Party for Socialism and Liberation has Marcyite roots, but due to adopting a strong, pro-AES internationalist position, they end up, despite differences in opinion and what I consider clear-cut theoretical shortcomings, as actual allies worthy of support. In fact, that’s why many Marxist-Leninists end up joining PSL. I also get along quite well with many Anarchists, as I used to be one myself, and many Anarchists get along quite well with Marxist-Leninist analysis of geopolitics and thus serve as more immediate allies than anti-AES Trots do.
If you mean that I in general am pretentious and arrogant, I try not to be. In fact, I try to always take a positive and gentle approach when correcting misconceptions about Marxism, and try to disengage when it’s clear that that isn’t working. If you have suggestions for how I can be better, I am more than willing to listen. However, I am not going to stop correcting misconceptions when I see them, as to not do so when I know better weakens the movement overall. It’s akin to the Socialist Revolutionaries in pre-Revolutionary Russia denouncing theory as “divisive” and celebrating individual acts of terror as “real victories,” when we know now that it was the Bolsheviks, and their adherance to strong theoretical study and working class organization that led to successful revolution.
In fact, building off that last point, I think we have spoken about this before with respect to Solarpunk as an instance. The lack of actionable theory and the instead focus on “Utopia Building,” ie the process of trying to design a perfect society rather than focusing on working with existing society and what needs to be done in the immediate for revolution and building Socialism, can lead to bad-faith actors taking advantage of it, like traditional conservativism and misogynistic gender roles did with Cottage-core. That’s the key danger of aesthetic-based movements, and why I suggest coming up with a clear theoretical line and list of actionable theory first and foremost. An example of this is China’s clear-cut domination of the solar industry, but many Solarpunks being vehemontly anti-PRC, which is antithetical to the process of building mass sustainable green energy in as short a time as possible.
we know now that it was the Bolsheviks, and their adherance to strong theoretical study and working class organization that led to successful revolution.
To give an example, I disagree on this. Now, if you were to approach this discussion under the pretense that my disagreement is based on poor understanding of history or of theory, that would be pretentious, and therefore unproductive if you actually want to change my mind. Instead, keep an open mind and be willing to entertain an alternative perspective.
In my opinion, the Bolsheviks were oppurtunists who co-opted the revolutionary fervor in order to centralize power and influence in the movement under their control. They did indeed use Marxist theory to guide and justify their actions, but that doesn’t make it right. I understand that Marxist theory advocates for the centralization of power and control, I just disagree with it, which is a view more in line with Trotskyites than Marxist-Leninists.
I’m not trying to say that you are particularly arrogant or pretentious, but Marx and especially Lenin certainly were, and that is reflected in their work.
If you want to make that point, I would ask that you back that claim up. There are a few important things you need to tackle in order to do so:
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The mass support for the Bolsheviks among the Working Class, and the Soviet system in general
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The mass expansion in democratic power under the Socialist system as opposed to the prior Tsarist system
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You need to prove the cause of the Bolsheviks being “power/control” and not a genuine adherance to the pursuit of Socialism
All 3 of those are hard truths that we can see through commonly accessible historical texts and archival evidence. We can track metrics like the doubling of Life Expectancy, free healthcare and education, the highest literacy rates in the world, massively lowered wealth disparity, a huge emphasis on teaching Marxism to all workers, and more. What we find, is that while not perfect, the USSR was indeed a massive progressive movement for the working class not only in Russia, but the whole world over, from Cuba, to Algeria, to Palestine, to China, to Vietnam, Laos, Korea, and more. The presence of the USSR forced the New Deal into existence, among other western concessions, even those not aligned with the USSR benefited.
If you have an opinion and feel confident enough to stand by it, I would hope you also have reasons and experiences that back that up. From what I have shown, and if you want me to link stats and sources I can, I think it’s fair to say that the Bolsheviks were genuine Marxists that upheld and carried through the revolution. Regardless of percieved arrogance of Marx and Lenin, their teachings and theory provided the theoretical backbone for every long-lasting leftist country, even the EZLN who most think of as more Anarchistic (they have their own ideology but much was inspired by Marxism-Leninism).
I highly recommend listening to Michael Parenti’s 1986 “Yellow Parenti” lecture.
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It worked when people rebranded “falsehoods” to “alternative facts” so why not try it?
Ignore what politicians say, look at what they do.
Both is good. Sometimes politicians are quite honest in an explanatory way for their actions, both need to be taken into account. They don’t have to be honest, but their stance is usually projected clearly.
Although when someone tells you how terrible they are, listen.
The phrase is ‘When someone shows you who they are believe them’ and has nothing to do with their words because people say all kinds of shit.
Well in some ways there’s double meanings.
Fact is almost universally people lie to make themselves sound better. When someone says “I like to backstab people who put their trust in me, and I love to take loans and never pay them back, by the way can I borrow $200”. You probably don’t need to loan the person the money to find out if he was really just lying.
But the talking head on Fox told me what to think about socialism, using no facts or common sense.
What am I supposed to do? NOT believe them?
If we can simply help Americans understand small-s socialism from small-c communism, we’d be in much better shape.
Because yes, my healthcare is already paid in advance by me and everyone else from our taxes; and my buddy’s emergency Sunday morning quintuple stent install after the widowmaker heart attack and two ambulances and a bed in one hospital before transfer (a third bus) to the regional trauma/cardiac center for the operation and 2 weeks of aftercare was free to him that day – and his only concern was not dying. And that’s not just normal but that’s the general expectation. No monthly subscription, no premium cost, no user fee, just paid-parking and vendor-machine food for visitors not coming in via the train.
Our upcoming election will gut that, though. Being bankrupt, losing retirement savings and mortgaged to the hilt at 61 is the American dream mr Polievre has for all Canadian plebes.
Socialism leads to Communism, Socialism isn’t social safety nets, but an economy where public ownership and central planning is the primary driving force.
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Which part is “provably false,” and why are you using a homophobic insult? Moreover, I’m a Communist, I have no idea what you mean by me supporting Capitalism.
I mean this is provably false
[Citations needed]
First sentence from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism :
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
The social safety nets in the imperial core—which are built on the backs of the neocolonized—are not socialism.
I call fed
Certainly not defending them, but this is a common yet obviously false notion. There are other prolific posters that are far more fed-coded than this on Lemmy.
Yeah I’m just kinda makin jokes at that point
BBILBO BBAGGINS
Gandalf really pulled the double consonant in Bilbo’s name, dude was ANGRY
It had everything to do with human greed.
As long as there is the suggestion or possibility, no matter how remote that anyone of us can become enormously wealthy, we won’t want to change the system.
I love how people act like their knowledge alone somehow makes them better than their peers, just utilizing knowledge to appear aloof, or above it all, when in reality, if capitalism shot itself in the chest and socialism took over tomorrow, we would still have the same rich 1% families stealing from the working class and none of us would actually be in any better a position because no damned political system to date has figured out how to keep the rich from sacrificing the poor for their own selfish ends. End of story. Time to change.
Not only is this ahistorical, it’s self-contradictory. If the same rich 1% still owns the means of production and is still expropriating the working class’ surplus value, then capitalism never died and socialism never took over.
That’s not historically accurate, though. Socialist states have made dramatic improvements to the lives of the working class and generally dramatically reduced wealth disparity, such as in the USSR. This seems to be more political apathy than genuine analysis.
the fear for good, is the fear for change or admitting they where wrong. it is pride, as well as lazyness, combined with stupidity and weakness. because weakness is not how strong one seems(or lack there of) but weakness, is how little a person would be their real self, as well as how much they assume that in order to be strong they need to supress others so they are in a worse state than them. supressing people is a sign of the weak, because they are blinded and can only destroy.
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