I wouldn't blame you.
Yea, I can't agree with it at all.
Do you have evidence of Dessalines, or any other Lemmy dev, being supported by the CPC?
Solipsism pretty much died out a long time ago as an extreme form of idealism. It exists as a philosophical framework but that's about it.
What do you mean by "state actor" if not someone funded, paid, or otherwise supported by a state? Is just being a fan of China being a state actor?
I don't think solipsism is grounds for defederation from most places. I disagree with it heavily, but it isn't CSAM or fascist.
I dunno if they'll be defederated, they're small enough that they only have a few active users.
I'm a dialectical materialist, not a solipsist. This is taken from the MULTIVERSE piefed about page:
About Us
Destroy Reality. Create a Multiverse.
MULTIVERSE is a threaded, federated forum for anarcho-antirealists. The UI might remind you of Reddit, and we’re connected to dozens of other sites run by different people with different values. But if you came here, you’re probably an anarchist with a distaste for “objective” reality, and I promise that this site is a safe space for you.
Escapism is literally praxis for this group, that's what rejecting reality is about. Trying to achieve better happiness for everyone by strengthening escapism.
Opinions are not evidence of state funding.
Grail is referring to the solipsist idea of "anarcho-antirealism." Grail moderates it. Less vanguard, less community building, less consent, less mutual aid, more escapism and rejection of reality.
About Us
Destroy Reality. Create a Multiverse.
MULTIVERSE is a threaded, federated forum for anarcho-antirealists. The UI might remind you of Reddit, and we’re connected to dozens of other sites run by different people with different values. But if you came here, you’re probably an anarchist with a distaste for “objective” reality, and I promise that this site is a safe space for you.
Do you have any evidence backing this claim up, or is this the way you've decided to rationalize a greater portion of people being pro-PRC?
There are a lot of people supportive of the PRC, both because the US Empire is declining and the PRC is positioned as an alternative to the US Empire's naked terrorism, and because Lemmy has a lot of communists. Lemmy has a lot of communists because the lead developers are communists, FOSS attracts communists, and because as Reddit bans communist communities they are often suggested to come here.
There's absolutely no credible evidence of CPC interference in Lemmy, this is a normal thing to happen to a FOSS alternative to Reddit.
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I was talking about Maoist and Stalinist dictatorships, not socialism.
Marxist-Leninist countries, such as the USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, etc. are all examples of socialism, and have robust systems of democracy. Again, Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance goes in-depth in many of these countries, explaining the intricacies of socialist democracy, as well as what's been general across all socialist states and also particular to each.
These are all definitely socialism. The large firms and key industries, at a minimum, are publicly owned and run. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economies, and the working classes in charge of the state. This is what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means, the control of the state by the proletariat.
“Communism” was the brand name that these dictatorships used for their artificially red-dyed flavor of fascist mass murder. This name was stolen from the original Communists, and falsely & deceptively used by the fascist mass-murderers.
This is easily verified as false, though. Fascism is a violent protection of private property rights and capitalism, and happens in decaying capitalist countries. From Spain to Germany to every other fascist state, capitalists were entrenched by the state and communists murdered. Meanwhile, in socialist states, the working classes gained control, oppressing the fascists, capitalists, Tsarists, slavers, etc, and collectivized production and distribution.
Neither Stalin nor Mao had any intention of ever living in a classless society. Like all fascist leaders, they demanded obedience beyond that accorded to feudal kings, and erected new forms of hierarchy and class for their servants to populate — while they murdered the common people in whose name they claimed to rule.
This is more Orwellian fan-fiction than reality, though. With the advent of socialism, socialist states brought tremendous democratization. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The PCUSA made a handy graphic, here (though I'm not a member of the PCUSA):
Further, on top of the dramatic democratization, socialism has been tremendously uplifting. When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
Healthcare was dramatically expanded, made free and high quality. Housing rates skyrocketed, jobs were assured, education was free and high quality, women's rights dramatically expanded. Literacy rates jumped from 20-30% to 99.9%. Life expectancies doubled:
The “dictatorship of the dictator pretending to care about the proletariat” murdered the proletariat by millions.
They didn't, though, unless you're counting deaths from unintentional famine as "murders."
However, when people today say “Communism” — as in the title of this post — they are often referring to those dictatorships, and not to the earlier Communism of Marx and Engels, whose name the fascists misappropriated.
When people say "communism," they refer to Actually Existing Socialism, such as the socialist states we are talking about, and to the societies Marx and Engels wrote theory to arm the proletariat to fight for. I already explained why calling communists "fascist" is wrong, so I won't retread old ground.
When Marx and Engels spoke of the beginnings of communism, the transitional stage of socialism, they spoke of the working classes siezing control of the state, replacing it with a socialist one, and gradually collectivizing production and distribution. This requires violently oppressing the fascists, Tsarists, capitalists, kulaks, slavers, etc. The transition to the communism spoken of by Marx and Engels begins with socialism, as exists in real life.
Hence my response, which distinguished Maoist and Stalinist fascist dictatorships from the theoretical communism of Marx and Engels.
Your response didn't have much of Marx or Engels, nor much respect for historical fact, though. When I gave clear sources showing how you were under the wrong impression about existing socialism, you ignored them and just re-asserted your original, incorrect claims. Marxism-Leninism is a genuine continuation of the work of Marx and Engels today, and has successfully established socialism in real life.
Do not bother making excuses for fascist mass-murderers. There are none.
I'm not making excuses, I'm correcting the record. Socialist states and socialist leaders have all been flawed, and have all made mistakes, including major ones. They've done so because they are real, not imaginary, perfect ideas of communism. It's very common among westerners to use this ideal picture of socialism in our heads as a club against existing, real socialism for not being as perfect as our fantasies, but this works against us. If we in the west established socialism, we would too make mistakes, errors, and face struggles, because like presently existing socialism, we would be building it in real life, not just in our heads.
Socialism in real life is genuinely real, flawed, and progressive. It's impefect, under constant siege, and blemished. It also has been tremendously uplfiting for billions of workers and peasants, and to fight against that and continue spreading debunked, outdated Red Scare mythos prevents us from meaningfully building solidarity with the global south, and sets ourselves up for failure when we refuse to learn from our comrades.
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No problem on the FAQ! It's a deceptive title, it's extremely lengthy. I don't really agree with it either, as I'm a Marxist, not an anarchist, but I know anarchists swear by it.
As for what I mean by asking in a place with more anarchists and communists, Lemmy.world is predominantly liberal. The communists are usually on Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, or Lemmy.ml, while the anarchists are generally on dbzer0 and Hexbear.net.
With a Lemmy.world account, on a Lemmy.world community, you are going to find the majority of upvoted comments are from non-communists trying to explain communism. For example, the top comment that showed up for me on the communism post was entirely off-base, to which I wrote a hopefully constructive response. These kinds of comments are upvoted on Lemmy.world because they reinforce the general "pro-left in theory, anti-left in practice" stance that is predominent here on Lemmy.world.
I think it's useful for getting the ideas of non-communists, ie you have your dissenting opinions, but for a more well-rounded view I'd use Lemmy.ml's Ask Lemmy community and with a Lemmy.ml account, as that way you can actually see Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml answers. Just my two cents!
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This is a caricature of how socialism has functioned. In socialist states, people were compensated for their labor, and necessities were heavily subsized or otherwise free.
To the contrary of your depiction, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union. This expansion in humanitarianism actually carried onto the judicial system, documented by Mary Stevenson Callcott in Russian Justice, written in 1935.
Reducing the tremendous gains made by socialist countries to the whims of Stalin or Mao is extremely reductive. It means every single victory gained by the working classes, such as free healthcare and education, massive literacy campaigns, huge increases in equality among the sexes, and more were in fact the exclusive whims of their leadership. It also reduces all of their problems, struggles, and flaws to personal failings of their leadership.
This kind of analysis is very flawed, and gets in the way of analyzing what went right and what went wrong in existing socialism. Simply painting a prettier picture of socialism in our heads and rejecting all existing socialist projects for not measuring up to that picture means we will be hopeless when we run into similar problems when we ourselves begin building socialism.
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In socialist societies, more dangerous jobs are usually compensated by higher pay or reduced working hours. Such was the practice in the USSR, as an example. The USSR was a top competitor in the field of science, managing to go from semi-feudalism to space in merely half a century, so the idea that socialism stalls progress is faulty.
In communism, when all of production and distribution have been collectivized, and the productive forces themselves have been sufficiently advanced, people still work for their own fulfillment and to obtain personal enrichment for still-scarce non-necessities.
If you want to learn about Marxism-Leninism, I wrote an introductory reading list you can check out.
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I think if you're asking questions about communism and anarchism, it makes most sense to ask those questions where communists and anarchists hang out, rather than communities that tend to be more liberal. For clarity, I'm a Marxis-Leninist that used to be an anarchist.
Anarchism is primarily about communalization and decentralization of production and distribution. Anarchists view the state as a monopoly on violence and an unjustifiable hierarchy, and so seek to establish horizontalist structures and production methods that are more local than interconnected where possible. Think community self-reliance, with minor trade between cells.
An Anarchist FAQ tends to be valued among anarchists as a good but lengthy intro.
They were and are fully Marxist-Leninist.
Are you on the web client, or using an app?