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Cowbee [he/they]

@ Cowbee @lemmy.ml

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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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  • Can you point to an example? I haven't seen any Marxist claim that Communism would be devoid of central planning and hierarchy. If you can point them out, I will be more than willing to correct them, though I am fairly certain you are misinterpreting their words given that you made the statement that "Anarchists and Marxists want the same thing."

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  • Fascism is described as both "Capitalism in decay" and as "Imperialism turned inward." It served and serves the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat, and historically arises when the Petite Bourgeoisie is facing proletarianization. That's why the most violently MAGA are small business owners and the like, and why they think immigrants are the ones proletarianizing them.

    I highly recommend reading the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti, which covers the material conditions surrounding fascism and who it served.

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  • Then as a student of history, are you saying the Tsars, Kuomintang, Batista regime, and so forth were better for their citizenry than the Communists? It's very well-recorded just how bad the previous regimes were and how dramatically material conditions improved post-revolution.

    This feels like arguing with a Jehovah's witness. To your credit, you're not getting annoyed or abusive in the face of my contradiction. But then that's also a hallmark of religious people: absolute certitude, which provides a certain peace of mind.

    The fact that I have carefully cited multiple different sources from multiple periods and patiently responded to your bold-faced attacks makes me a "Jehovah's Witness?" What about those supposed "much better alternatives to Capitalism?" Where are those? I have responded to every point you've made, and your response has been to belittle me and take the high-ground without responding in kind. That's rude.

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  • It's worth noting that when a Marxist says "stateless," they don't mean "governmentless." The Marxist theory of the state surrounds classes, while the Anarchist theory of the state surrounds hierarchy.

    When an Anarchist says they want a stateless society, they envision a complex web of horizontal communes, networks of mutual aid, like a spiderweb.

    When a Marxist says they want a stateless society, they envision a world Socialist republic that has managed to fully absorb all private property into the public sector, which no AES state has managed to accomplish thus far.

    The idea that Marxists are advocating Socialist states to dissolve into Anarchism is wrong, nobody claims that. What Marxists claim is that their notion of the state will wither away, leaving a classless government.

    That's also why Marxists are anti-Utopian, they don't advocate for Communism about a belief in its moral superiority, but because Capitalism naturally creates the conditions for it through free competition giving way to consolidation and monopolist syndicates, which can be siezed, publicly owned, and centrally planned.

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  • The others here are using it the second way, which I agree with. Centrism meaning the "status quo" can be violently and toxically upheld.

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  • Do you not think your remarks have a bit of a religious flavor to them? Quoting a couple of eccentric academics from 150 years ago as if transmitting their divine revelation. Defending your interpretation of their holy words as if you were a lawyer or a priest. Why not just look to first principles instead, to the values you considerate important, rather than citing a gospel like this?

    I quoted both Marx and Engels, while linking modern analysis and theory at the end. Marxism has a long history with numerous writers, when you say the PRC has "reverted to Capitalism" it's important to point out that they have more accurately reverted to Socialism. Marxism isn't a religion, it's a method of analysis.

    I don't know what you mean by "look to principles instead." I have values and principles, I desire humanity to move beyond Capitalism and onto Socialism because Capitalism reaches a dead-end when it gets to the stage it is at today: dying Imperialism and Monopolist Syndicates devoid of competition. Socialism is how we move beyond.

    There are much better ideas for how to replace capitalism, though - spoiler - none of them involve a bloody revolution

    I have yet to see anything succeed in replacing Capitalism without a revolution, so I'm curious what you are referring to.

    This doesn't mean that Marx had nothing interesting to say. Of course he did. His description of society was revolutionary. But the prescription was disastrous and I feel we would do well to just move on from it at last

    Again, post-revolution, Marxism has dramatically improved conditions compared to previous squalor. It isn't correct to say AES states have been disastrous, especially when comparing to the horrendous pre-Socialist conditions. AES isn't a utopian paradise either, but to call them "disastrous" is a bit outside of reality. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti.

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  • My biggest issue is with these two statements:

    But the fact is that capitalism won the economic battle, for better and (I agree) for worse.

    Attempts to replace it completely, in an interconnected world, invariably end in disaster or (China) in a reversion to capitalism.

    For the former, I disagree because AES states still exist, and Marx's analysis has retained it's usefulness at full capacity.

    For the latter, most AES states were and are dramatic improvements on previous conditions, such as the fascist slaver Batista regime in Cuba compared to now, where life expectancy is 50% higher than under Batista and disparity is far lower.

    As for the PRC, it isn't correct to say it "reverted to Capitalism." It's more correct to say that Mao failed to jump to Communism, and Deng reverted back to a more Marxist form of Socialism, compatible with China's existing level of development. The Private Sector is a minority of the economy in the PRC, the majority is in the public sector. Here's an excerpt from Engels in The Principles of Communism:

    Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?

    No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.

    Mao tried to skip the necessary developmental stage. Marx wasn't a Utopian, he didn't believe Socialism was good because it was more moral, but because Capitalism creates the conditions for Socialism, ie public ownership and central planning, through formation of monopolist syndicates. Marx says as much himself in Manifesto of the Communist Party:

    The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

    The PRC increases ownership of and eventually folds into the Public Sector companies and industries that form these monopolist syndicates.

    For further reading re: China, Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism is a good modern essay. For elaboration on Marx and the transition to Socialism, I recommend Why Public Property?

    The reason I didn't want to have this conversation on Lemmy.world is that I have had similar comments to this one removed for "misinformation."

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  • I don't think this is a good place to have this convo, but I firmly disagree with what you've said here. I understand if you don't want to, but if you want to discuss this further you can shoot me a DM.

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  • I tend to recommend their posts because they are written in modern lingo and in the last decade, so there's specifically modern analysis there. I recommend Marx, Engels, etc. frequently as well, but a lot of their writing is several times longer and as such several times less likely to be read by people I recommend them to, perhaps with the exception of Engels' The Principles of Communism, which is a great and to-the-point intro to Marxism.

    Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!

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  • Are you using "extremism" to mean "far from the status quo," or "has absolute belief and violent justification for said belief?" Centrists can absolutely be the latter.

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  • Most modern Marxists are supportive of "AES." Something fairly common among the western left is left-anticommunism, something gone over in chapter 3 of Blackshirts and Reds, by Dr. Michael Parenti. A good article is Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the "Worker's Paradise?" It's a critical examination of AES and why Marxists tend to support AES despite not being "worker's paradises," and why AES states failed to live up to that utopian ideal.

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  • Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.

    I agree with this most out of what you said. This gives users the most power to curate what they see, and lessens the likelyhood of troll accounts.

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  • Defederation has it's own uses, yes, but that also ironically makes it more difficult to avoid trolls. When you defederate from an instance for X reason, only the more irrational users are going to create alts to attack. Defederation is often over-used.

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  • Social democrats do not code as "right" anywhere in the world.

    Are you trying to say that wherever Social Democrats are found, they are the most left available? That may track, but again, Social Democrats want to "harness Capitalism," it isn't pro-Socialism nor anti-Capitalism, hence my categorization.

    And liberals are only "right" when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term)

    Liberalism is the ideological framework for Capitalism, this is, again, supportive of Capitalism and against Socialism.

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  • Sure, my point is about community replication. Defederation has its own uses, my point is that community consolidation serves very few people.

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  • I don't want to spiral this out of control, but I do think you might be interested in Why do Marxists fail to Bring the "Worker's Paradise?" as well as Why Public Property? The former is a critical examination of why states guided by Marxism haven't been worker utopias from the perspective of a Marxist-Leninist, the latter is an exploration of why Marx believed Socialism to overtake Capitalism. It isn't a moral argument, rather, as markets consolidate into monopolist syndicates devoid of competition, they make themselves ripe for public ownership and central planning.

    What is Socialism? is also good, it goes over the various arguments between different strains of Marxism over what can be considered Socialist, but at this point I think I've recommended far more than enough articles. Really, the first one about "Worker's Paradises" is the one I think you'd find the most interesting.

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  • I can DM you if you want, this is already spiraling far beyond my intentions of my original statement, that I think it's better rather than to consolidate communities and overpower an instances mods and admins, to decentralize and replicate so there's always a space for people, on an as-needed basis.

    The short answer is that Lemmy.world is a very US-focused liberal instance, essentially the Democrats embodied in an instance.

    Sh.itjust.works maintains NCD, MeanwhileOnGrad, and other generally pro-Liberalism, anti-Communist communities, hence why I say it leans right.

    As always, you can absolutely find Anarchists and Communists on both Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, my point is more that the moderators and userbase generally consolidate around a given stance, my point isn't that you can't be a leftist on Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works.

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  • When I say Leftist, I am using the typical definition, anti-Capitalist. Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, and all their myriad forms.

    When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.

    Considering Lemmy is an international site, it doesn't make sense to use the Overton Window. If we went by, say, the American Overton Window, but another user lived in, say, Spain, there's a significant difference there. That's why I am using the standard definitions, and not going off of any one country's Overton Window.