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Cowbee [he/they]

@ Cowbee @lemmy.ml

Posts
1
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1172
Joined
3 yr. ago

Actually, this town has more than enough room for the two of us

He/him or they/them, doesn't matter too much

Marxist-Leninist ☭

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don't know where to start? Check out my Marxist-Leninist study guides, both basic and advanced!

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  • Your google search backs me up. I'm not redefining anything, it's a pejorative for communists.

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  • Socialist countries do exist, and are alleged by liberals to be "authoritarian," but this is meaningless without acknowledging the class character of state authority. All states are "authoritarian," what differentiates them is which class is in control. In socialist states, that class is the proletariat, in capitalist states it's the capitalists. Communism is not utopian, it's scientific, and Marx railed against the utopian socialists like Robert Owen.

    I think Marx would be more upset with those who refuse to support socialist states for being "too heavy-handed" with capitalists, landlords, fascists, etc, as he spoke this of the proletarian revolution:

    We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.

    Hence why all discussion of authority needs to be grounded primarily in class analysis to be Marxist.

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  • "Voluntary" is certainly a way to phrase the control and comorador regimes they had in place, but it's far more than eliminating defense contracts, it also has to deal heavily with export controls, sovereignty, and more. Again, neocolonialism is a fact of modern geopolitics.

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  • And all of this at present relies on imperialism and neocolonialism, with a bourgeois state and private ownership as principal. It's farther away from socialism than socialist countries.

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  • Neocolonialism is a very well-studied phenomenon that absolutely exists, and is why the Alliance of Sahel States are kicking France out of Africa.

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  • Communism, at least in the Marxist understanding, is essentially a fully collectivized mode of production and distribution. It will necessarily have administration as is required for mass production, and this entails hierarchy and centralization. Socialism is "authoritarian" in that the working classes use the state against capitalists and fascists, but this is a requirement for building communism, which is stateless, classless, and moneyless. It's no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of communists support the PRC, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Cuba, and former USSR, as these are all states where socialism has been established.

    It's less that the US Empire has successfully overthrown 100% of legitimate attempts, and more that it has tried to overthrow every attempt and has succeeded in some cases and failed in others. Communists are not "morons" for supporting the success stories of socialism.

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  • Just a formatting tip, you need a double newline in between quotes and comments you mean to have in your own voice, not just a single newline.

    Either way, your comment is a continued lack of evidence, and doubling down on misinformation. For example, the Budapest Memorandum was nullified by the US first, Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation after the 2014 Banderite coup, and Donetsk and Luhansk have been at war with Kiev since they seceded in 2014 and requested aid from the Russian Federation in 2022. Russia isn't trying to turn everyone Russian, this is clear misinformation on what is far more complex than "Russia is evil definitionally."

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  • Nazi bars are evil and bad, commie bars are good and cool.

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  • Thanks, comrade! 🫡

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  • Russia is capitalist right now, as are social democracies. Either way, you're missing 3 critical problems:

    1. Social Democracies have private ownership as the principal aspect, not public ownership like in China. Both have private and public ownership, but private has power in social democracies and public in China.
    2. The class character of the state in social democracies is capitlaist, while the class character of the state in China is proletarian.
    3. Social democracies in the west depend on imperialism to subsidize their safety nets, China's safety nets come from its own production and trade.

    The nordics are not socialist in any capacity, nor are they nearer to it than existing socialist countries like China.

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  • So is authoritarianism the presence of having a state, even in a temporary form, in your eyes?

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  • Back when we last discussed slurs, you had said that opposing their usage itself was idealist, and that we give words power by caring about it. I still disagree with using slurs no matter the context, but this is an advancement on your prior position, or at minimum an advancement in your communication as such.

    As for what you've read, pretty good start! I mean that genuinely. The State and Revolution, The Tax in Kind, and of course Capital are all good places to go next. The Tax in Kind is directly related to the background of the 1930s famine, so it's helpful immediately, though do keep in mind terminology has advanced since it was written to be clearer.

    Returning to the 1930s famine, as I showed above the Central Committee was kept in the dark by the Ukrainian communists as to the famine. They tried to save face by telling the Central Committee that everything was fine and under control, but this was not the case. Drought, flooding, and kulaks burning their crops and killing their livestock as protest against collectivization had destroyed output, and the soviets were still exporting grain in order to trade for industrial equipment with the west (which is what the west wanted in exchange for industrial equipment).

    Upon learning the truth of how bad it was getting, the Central Committee was furious. The officials responsible in Ukraine were held accountable, hundreds of tractors and other farming equipment was directed to Ukraine, as well as 17 million poods (14ish kg/pood) of grain were redirected towards Ukraine. The Central Committee had been deciding policy based on the reports they were recieving, and these reports were falsified to protect the Ukrainian communist party leadership.

    Had famine been the goal, no aid would have been given at all, or perhaps token aid. Sending hundreds of millions of kg of grain to Ukraine is no petty tribute, and punishing Ukrainian party leaders that lied and facilitated famine was the correct course of action for such treason. Counter-revolutionary is correct! They had put their own skin above the peasantry.

    In all of this, there was absolutely no reason to have intentionally created a famine. The USSR needed grain for industrial equipment and to feed its people, it would not have sabotaged output deliberately. On top of this, there was existing accusations of the soviets overly supporting Ukrainian national identity, Lenin had given them the Donbass region and in an effort to overturn the Tsar's oppression the soviets highly valued national identity and self-determination.

    There is no real evidence of deliberate starvation or creation of famine. All that exists is evidence of tragedy, weather adversity, class conflict between kulaks and the peasantry, and mismanagement in part by the Ukrainian communists and in part caused by disinformation fed to the Central Committee, which changed how they treated Ukraine. Again, they needed grain for industrialization, which they saw as necessary for defense (and this was proven correct as the rapid industrialization in the 20s and 30s is what enabled soviet victory over the Nazis in the 40s).

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  • Indeed!

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  • I'm on Lemmy.ml, I have never seen anyone that fits your description. Further, Lemmy.ml isn't astroturfed by Russia or China. Regarding Ukraine, you were banned for misinformation, such as the idea that Russia is trying to "force everyone to become Russian," with a temp ban at that.

    If you could give an example of people "standing up for the most brutal of regimes," for example, that would help. The simple fact is that socialist states have not been "the most brutal regimes," western countries have been.

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  • I know you consider yourself a Marxist, but when you push ideas like "opposing slur usage is idealist," you completely betray any comprehension of what you've read. I'm curious what you consider to be "most of the foundational texts," but either way, simple input does not make one an actual Marxist. That's why theory and practice have to be unified. I don't know if you've moved beyond that particular position, but it's just an example.

    The famine was not a genocide. This theory is pushed by liberals and by fascists, but as I already showed, there was no targeting of Ukrainians or any ethnicity, and archival evidence from opening the soviet archives proved definitively that the soviets did all they could to alleviate famine. You haven't actually addressed my claims. Facts are facts.

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  • Neither the political compass nor horseshoe theory are accurate. The political compass erases class analysis, and as such equates the presence of the state with an absence of freedom in a linear fashion, when an accurate reading is in differentiating what class controls authority and thus has freedom, the working classes or capitalists. Horseshoe theory equates working class states with capitalist states, overly focusing on the presence of the state and again drawing a blind eye towards class.

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  • A few notes:

    1. Communists do not support imperialism. We do support millitarism against fascists, capitalists, landlords, colonizers, imperialists, etc, but not imperialism.
    2. Lemmy was made by communists. Communist communities on Reddit have been cracked down on, so the communists made a FOSS reddit alternative.
    3. The .ml in Lemmy.ml stands for Mali. Lemmy.ml is not a Marxist-Leninist instance, it just has a good number of us. Lemmygrad.ml is the Marxist-Leninist instance.
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  • What you're describing isn't a real person or ideology, but a caricature in the form of a strawman that can be wielded to delegitimize communists. You aren't describing a real group, but instead a real perception of a real group that is projected onto said real group.