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Cowbee [he/they]

@ Cowbee @lemmy.ml

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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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    There's a clear up tick on daily users growing and we've crossed the 50k line as of yesterday! LETSSS GOOO!

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  • Historically, many stick and many bounce off.

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    What is stopping corporations from hijacking the Fediverse by hosting massive servers?

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  • Nothing, but instances can defed from them if they wish and they can't stop that either.

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    There's a clear up tick on daily users growing and we've crossed the 50k line as of yesterday! LETSSS GOOO!

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  • Every instance has a "rep," sh.itjust.works is generally seen as right-wing.

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    There's a clear up tick on daily users growing and we've crossed the 50k line as of yesterday! LETSSS GOOO!

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  • The admins managed to get Hexbear.net back and the sale of the domain was stopped.

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    There's a clear up tick on daily users growing and we've crossed the 50k line as of yesterday! LETSSS GOOO!

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  • You can pick a less "reddit-coded" instance. Lemmy.world is pitched as more of a reddit-clone, but other instances have niche subcultures or other fun characteristics like unique emojis. It's less about size and more about policies and structures that cause something to become "reddit-like."

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • The concept of matter shaping ideas that then reshape matter into reshaping ideas in endless spirals is Dialectical Materialism, actually. I'm not denying that ideas are important, but they are not primary.

    For what it's worth, I do have an "agenda," I'm a Communist. I want Communism, and I want to create more Communists, that's why I made that reading list. Communism isn't an intellectual fascination, but an ideology surrounding working class liberation.

    If you want to dip your toes, Principles of Communism is a great start, maybe try reading section 1 of my reading list and watching the Parenti Lecture as well if you want to see Communism in context.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • For guns, revolution is a necessity to move to Socialism. Pacifism for the Working Class against a Class that will not and has never hesitated to use force is acceptance of the status quo. This is unfortunate, but is reality.

    As for the idea of "power corrupting," it's more that it isn't an actual explanation for why some structures work and others don't, kinda like the Greeks believing the gods did everything. It's superstition, and doesn't have any bearing on a real, materialist analysis.

    Really, the bulk of my issues with your comments is that they deal overwhelmingly with individuals, rather than focusing on structures and material reality. Ideas are shaped by matter, not the inverse, ergo you must focus chiefly on the material (that's peaking a bit into Dialectical Materialism).

    As for the "tankie" jab, in my opinion that word is meaningless. I'm a Communist, a Marxist-Leninist, etc, make of that what you will. I am the most common and historically relevent strain of Marxist thought, and while I have my own little nuances, I am not far from that general norm.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • Hey, I'm the one who made the list Edie linked. What's wrong with getting a gun, exactly? In an ideal world it wouldn't be necessary, but we don't live in an ideal world.

    As for "power corrupting people," that doesn't actually exist, that's just a catch-all reason for any time a leader of something does something wrong.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • Russia is a Capitalist country, quite similar to the US in that regard. The fact that few people own the most doesn't mean it isn't a Capitalist economy driven by private ownership.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • I think it does. Capitalism at a higher stage is still Capitalism, even if some of the characteristics change.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • The US is at a much higher and more developed form of Capitalism, also called "late-stage" Capitalism. This is a part of Capitalist development.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • What do you think a system that has managed to achieve "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" would look like? Are you just imagining a Utopia and thinking it wouldn't work? Marxists agree, imagining a Utopia and trying to build it is a failure in analysis of reality, hence why Marxism rejected Utopian model building. Read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific if you want to see what Marxists actually believe.

    The main thing you are arguing is that your preconceived notion of Communism that you appear to have extrapolated from a single phrase doesn't account for imperfect behavior, but you aren't arguing against what Communists actually want, just what you think they want.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • Socialism (and Communism, ie the future post-Socialist global mode of production) are both democratic. Are you using "Democracy" as a stand-in term for Capitalism? What do you believe "Democracy" means? Moreover, why do you think Socialism is "easier to hack?"

    Secondly, I genuinely don't know what you mean by Communism requiring everyone to "act in good faith." There's laws and government in Communism, as well as democratic control and civil protections.

    I think, more than anything, it would benefit you greatly to take a look at what Communists believe. Up in the parent comment I have a list of reading you can check out, if you'd like. I think you'll find it difficult to understand and talk about Communism if you don't first take a look at what Communists believe in the first place.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • The Soviet system lasted nearly a full century, and worked very well for the vast majority of its existence. If someone wants to make the claim that collapse is inevitable just because the USSR was dissolved, they need to do the legwork to prove it as such. We can discuss what went right and what went wrong in the USSR, including how and why it dissolved, but without legwork assertions like "collapse was inevitable" can be ignored and not taken seriously as there's nothing to take seriously.

    As for scarcity of resources, that's something that can actually be addressed, but I want to clear up the rest of that paragraph first. For 1, I never said the USSR was "optimal," and no Marxist believes it to have been a perfect wonderland, just a much better system with its own flaws, albeit lesser flaws. For 2, social services aren't a bad thing, especially not in a system that saw by far the most devastation from World War II. The fact is, addressing hunger was a priority for the Socialist system as full employment was one of the benefits and necessities for that form of economy, unlike Capitalism, so even if we assume everyone acted selfishly there was no need for a "reserve army of labor."

    Now to actually address scarcity of resources. The fundamental issue with the Soviet system and resource gathering was that it could not depend on international trade for anything. The Capitalist countries all made deliberate choices to provide unstable or unfavorable trade with the Socialists, so they had to develop all of their resources internally, even ones scarce in the regions controlled by the Socialists. Even then, GDP growth was some of the highest in the world while wealth disparity some of the lowest. Further, much of the economy was spent on millitary research and development in order to keep the US at bay.

    As for your final paragraph, I don't think we actually disagree here, though I imagine your "socially conscious democracy" is different from what you think the Marxist-Leninist states look like. Surviving Imperialism as the highest form of Capitalism requires, above all, an end to the US Empire as the world's greatest Imperialist power, and an uplifiting of the Global South. We can't move beyond Capitalism globally while the US Empire still functions the way it does, by "dollar recycling" off of all the other countries and owning 800 millitary bases globally to keep the Dollar standard going.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • By and large, Socialism was an incredible improvement compared to the Tsarist system, though not some fairytale perfect wonderland, and Socialism was far better than current Capitalism is in the Russian Federation. 7 million excess deaths occured from the transition from Socialism to Capitalism, as the previous safety nets were dissolved or sold off at bargain prices to foreign Capitalists.

    The Bolshevik revolution was positive, suffering was dramatically reduced with its implementation, not increased. With Socialism came a dramatic and sustained improvement in worker's rights, equality of the sexes, a doubling of life expectancies, an end to famine, incredible scientific achievement in a country that began the century as an underdeveloped agrarian backwater, and a democratization of society in a way that far supercedes the former Tsarist system and the future Capitalist system in the Russian Federation.

    I don't know what you mean by "to this day," to this day Russia is now Capitalist, it hasn't been Socialist since the beginning of the 90's. If you want a nuanced critique of the USSR, Blackshirts and Reds is a good option, it's the second item in my reading list if you want a link.

    Moreover, Russia transitioned to Socialism when Russia was a feudal backwater and the US was transitioning to the world superpower, it was always far behind in world power and yet did a better job of maximizing resource usage in favor of the Workers, despite the US's Imperialism.

  • No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

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  • The capitalist press

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  • The Nordics aren't Socialist in any capacity, heavy industry and large firms are squarely in the Private Sector, and they earn the bulk of their income from acting essentially as a landlord in country form, from predatory IMF loans.

    Moreover, all Socialism is democratic in some form, the idea that there is a niche of Socialism that alone is Democratic is a misnomer. Democratic Socialism is better described as Reformist Socialism.

  • Is there an instance for Democratic Socialists rather than Communists?

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  • She's talking about reformism as though it is revolution, and is using revolution as a term for "system change." I won't say that's linguistically wrong, but among Marxists that strategy is called reformism, and is generally seen as strategically futile by Marxists since Marx himself. Revolution, in the Marxian strain, looks like the Paris Commune, Russian Revolution, Cuban, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc. as all of the strategies she is espousing are seen as impossible to actually do with the present level of power workers have within the system.

    If Marxists believed the system could be reformed, they would be first in line, but in the overwhelming majority of countries where Capitalists have power, this is impossible. A notable exception is countries under the thumb of Imperialism, who usually can band together against Imperialism and form a coalition, though usually revolution is seen as necessary following breaking free (as the CPC and the KMT in China aligned against Japanese colonialism and then fought a revolutionary war against each other).

  • John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed

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  • Bluesky is corporate, Mastodon is closer to Lemmy in ownership.