- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- tankiejerk@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- tankiejerk@lemmy.world
Cross-posted from “TRUE communism!” by @Muaddib@sopuli.xyz in !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
And of course here’s Hexbear posting about how they hate this place after they came here breaking the rules of our instance.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6307751 https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/48342361
Be warned @db0 they’re insulting you in there, because they’re such good, moral, and just socialists. Also mocking other users in here like @masquenox for not satisfying their debate bro tactics.
And here’s them admitting to lurking on the thread to Gotcha! and leap onto users.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/48132283/19880859
Hexbear, the totally innocent instance!
As is tradition. I don’t care though. They’re well known to constantly lie and misrepresent people they hate in their own comms. So long as they don’t come and shit in here.
Fair enough. If the hexbear defed is ever for a vote, I’d probably vote yes.
At this point, so probably would I. Funnily enough, they think my experience with KKE was what disillusioned me against MLs, but in truth I was never that much against them specifically instead of their ideology only. But my hexbear experiences and the absolute constant of bad faith, ableism, bullying and disinfo I see from them, made me far more wary of MLs as people.
The latest case of them not respecting requests for disengagement and goading people to be their lolcows is just the lowest they’ve ever fallen in my eyes.
Hexbear is a leftist colored KiwiFarms.
You all act like lemmy ML and lemmygrad are the worst, and clowns of fedi, but you tend to ignore fact, that without them, there would be empty hole in our hearts, we would be unable to fill alone.
remember to love your local ML user, they are folks too
In the delths of their souls, they are little beautifull redaf butterflies ready to show their true shape and colors, they only need a bit of warm
Man hexbear is pissed and just can’t help but defend their lust for authoritarians. Then ask for left unity when we won’t want to be with people who uncritically support China and North Korea.
Maybe someday hexbear will learn better but today isn’t that day.
A good communist is suspicious of all leaders. Because nobody fucks the working class like leaders
Well said!
Distrusting the vanguard is counterrevolutionary
They got so upset some of them resorted to ableism. Just astounding stuff.
I’ve seen them using ableist slurs, i try to report them when they do.
Such radical leftists they just use disabilities as insults.
And that guy who pretends that hexbear doesn’t tolerate ableism while you can hear crickets from them when Yog-something is, to paraphrase him, “calling into question the functioning of someone’s brain [which] is pretty neuronormative” in every other dot ml’s c/worldnews’ post… Pure gold 🤣
Edit: I can’t see replies from hexbear on piefed, but I’m still lurking the thread on db0.
So, Sphere laddie:
Yogthos isn’t a Hexbear, and .ml’s worldnews comm is not a Hexbear comm. Good try, though!
Since when did that prevent you folks from jumping at someone’s throat? You called out that pedo mod I don’t remember the name, then Nutransphobic. What prevents you from calling out Yogthos if not a lax stance on ableism?
“We take ableism very seriously, we just don’t ban people who are on our instance for it.” - Hexbear
Well, that was quite entertaining.
I understand that this is an anarchist comm, so you’re free to post whatever you want, but I don’t think it’s productive to take a stance that fundamentally rests on misrepresenting what you’re critiquing. Since you invoked my username in one of your comments here, I’d figure I’d give the Marxist stance its fair representation.
First, there is no such thing as “true communism.” The obsession over purity in politics is a result of dogmatism and book workship.
Secondly, for Marxists, the stance isn’t that you “do a state” and then “stop doing the state.” For Marxists, not just Marxist-Leninists, the state is purely a body that resolves class contradictions through class oppression. It isn’t hierarchy, and it isn’t organization. Communism in the marxist conception, as a stateless society, is stateless in that once all property is collectively owned and planned, there is no class distinction. Administration remains, and is not to whither, as that’s a necessary product of mass, industrialized production.
Taking that into account, the state can only disappear if all class disappears, and class cannot be abolished until all global production is collectivized. There has never been that point, you cannot have communism in one country. You can be socialist, in that public property can be the principle aspect of the economy and the state can be proletarian in character, but the state can never whither until all states are socialist, interconnected, and borders fading away into one democratic system.
Socialist countries like the PRC do rely on commodity production to engage with the global economy, as they must for the time being. They can’t achieve a global system as one single country. As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character. You cannot “declare socialized production” with the stroke of a pen, it’s something that must arise from development. That doesn’t mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the “socialist road,” ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.
This is all starkly different from the anarchist position, that we can develop from the outset a decentralized, horizontalist society. I’m not going to debatelord here, this is an anarchist comm, but if you’re going to misrepresent the views of Marxists, then I feel you’re doing a disservice by making anarchists less prepared to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.
That doesn’t mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the “socialist road,” ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.
This is the crux of the disagreement between anarchists and MLs. I would argue that state ownership - if the state does not adequately represent the will of the people - is not public ownership. A hierarchical state with a flawed and bureaucratic democracy that is prone to corruption inevitably creates and maintains a class of bureaucrats with social, political, and economic privilege. The state - in order to preserve itself - maintains a monopoly on collective ownership, preventing workers from organizing on their own terms.
This is what anarchists mean when they call something “state capitalist.” They are arguing that the state itself is a private entity pretending to represent the will of the people.
I’d say the real crux of the argument is in full centralization and collectivization, or full horizontalism and decentralization. The endpoints are different, so the means are different.
Either way, I don’t agree that administrators represent a class. Public property is not bourgeois property, it doesn’t exist in the M-C-M’ circuit of production, it’s collective and planned. Even if there’s administration, it’s a physical, real thing. There will be flaws, there will be issues, but to let perfect be the enemy of progress is an issue. It’s less about some metaphysical “will of the workers” and more about material relationships to the means of production and the sublimation of property.
Secondly, the state doesn’t “preserve itself,” at least the Marxist conception of the state. The state isn’t a class, it’s a representative of a class, and when all property has been sublimated, there is no class, and no state. There still exists administration, but not special bodies of armed men to oppress other classes, as there are no classes to oppress.
It feels a bit disingenuous to hear the following:
to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.
I mean I got your point the other day, that I shouldn’t necessarrily argue about Communistic dogma without reading all the literature, but I had to fight tooth and nail to get to that point and not just be waved away as a bad faith actor. So I was already working hard just to be told to go and read up.
OP is using the same intensity hammer you guys got going on over there. Is it fair?
I don’t remember having this convo with you, so I don’t have any reference for that convo. OP is misrepresenting the Marxist stance. It’s one thing to critique the genuine positions Marxists have, it’s another entirely to invent a strawman to argue against. The intensity of the argument isn’t the problem, the illegitimacy of the argument is.
8·4 days agoI don’t think it was with you specifically, more hexbear in general? https://lemmy.ml/post/28545991
Oh, good catch!
I sure do love being treated like I’m a part of a hivemind, and that everyone on Hexbear is interchangeable with no individual characteristics… 🫠 /s
Seriously though, I thought that was an odd statement, but that makes sense.
Yup, that was me. Sorry for mixing you up. I guess you spoke to me like a human there first, that’s why your name stuck.
I feel it still doesn’t take away too much from my argument. While OP’s post is outright malicious and is meant to start a fight, I wasn’t doing that on what I thought was a proper place for discussion.
Again, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, and I did make a mistake, but don’t you see what I’m trying to get at?
Personally, I try my best to adhere to the principle of “no investigation, no right to speak.” I’m not perfect at that, but I do my best. Someone who has a strong stance on a subject without doing the due dilligence to justify that strong stance muddies the water. I believe you were guilty of it over in that thread, and I believe OP is guilty of it here. Does that make sense?
Goodness, does it ever.
But my problem was that the group put me in a box. Nobody wanted to know my level of education, just if I read this or that book on communism.
It is a totally fair reason not to engage in argument. It’s just… How can I put it…? Just because I didn’t read a book, I can’t be knowledgable on a subject?
My guesses are that your community is so exposed to bad faith arguments, so you cannot give everyone the time of day. I haven’t gone back to reread the thread, but you can probably see how I was basically backing into a corner through the whole thread.
The intensity of the argument isn’t the problem, the illegitimacy of the argument is.
Yeah, I know OP is trolling. I see it is causing calls to not pull apart. Sure, maybe not every thread goes for the jugular on the hex server, but it fept by going against the grain I was a pariah immediately.
I mean at the end of the day it is petty squabbles on the internet, I just feel that we’re missing out if we don’t make a connection. Like, you seem smart, well read, and have a pretty novel world view that would interest me. I grew up in the context that communism is not of the devil, so it was terribbly disjarring that I finally saw a safe space to talk about the fallies of communism with hobby scientists on the matter.
I dunno, maybe I was devil’s advocating and triggered a healthy response. It still feels off that I felt shut up there and now I see members of that community pleading for more open communication here.
Hexbear is a space for communists and anarchists to hang out, and there’s a culture of cedeing no ground to ill-informed takes in order to help protect that space in a deeply anticommunist English-speaking internet. There’s a strong culture of requiring well-sourced, developed, and informed takes in order to go against the grain.
The reason OP is coming under attack is because it’s obviously just left-punching and baiting a response, and the post itself is ill-informed and misrepresentative.
I suggest that if you want to learn more on Hexbear, you try to use more open language. I see in that thread when you tried to be more clear that you aren’t just another anti-communist, you got kinder responses.
I did get kinder responses, that is true. Though my main take-away wasn’t a ‘wow, these guys are awesome, I wanna read everything’, more like a ‘I’ll only comment on anything political when and if I get past the literature they recommended’.
It is alright, I am sure the revolution will do just fine without my organizational skills. I am just arguing that OP is right to troll in this instance.
Again I want to emphasize, that I am really digging this convo, but I guess I have very little to lose as well. It feels like we are communicating, but I don’t think I need to ‘be the bigger man’ by understanding the other side (these are my neuroses, no shade towards you, just where I’m coming from).
I feel you do understand me, yet don’t really concede any points or validate them.
I understand you, I even agreed with what you guessed, that Hexbear gets a ton of bad-faith users and that sours interactions with better-meaning users that aren’t on their A-game. However, I also disagree, I don’t think OP is “right” to troll. As we already agreed, OP is doing so based on clear misrepresentation, it would be one thing if it had merit, but it doesn’t, so that brought on a ton of users correctly debunking OP and pointing out that left-punching isn’t productive to begin with.
You don’t need to join Hexbear, it’s totally fine to never go there if it isn’t a good fit for you. At the same time, Hexbear isn’t under the requirement to accomodate users that are antagonistic (which you at least appeared to be in the beginning, hence the backlash). It’s totally fine for you to make dbzer0 your home and maybe peak into Hexbear if you see a good meme or two.
Well, thanks for being open. I feel we still didn’t really address my concern, but that’s alright. I see OP’s post as a legit reaction to the emotions I got from there, even if they are clearly bad faith posting here.
Hey, maybe I’m just butthurt you didn’t spoon feed me where I’m wrong, so no love lost.
As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character.
When has this been achieved in communism?
Cuba, USSR, PRC, etc, though these are/were socialist. Communism, in the Marxist sense (not anarchist), must be global, fully collectivized, etc, while these are examples of single states in the context of a globally capitalist-dominant system. Nevertheless, they are all examples of socialism, where as they developed as socialist countries their economies became increasingly developed and collectivized.
The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms that set elements of the system against each other, and the PRC at one point under the Gang of Four tried to shortcut its way to communism out of a dogmatic approach to socialism, but post-reform as the PRC has been developing, it has steadily been increading the socialized character of its production. The large firms and key industries are firmly held by a proletarian state, and over time as the small and medium firms grow, these are more and more controlled by the public sector.
The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms
The USSR collapsed because of internal contradictions and oppression.
The former is partially true, (though not intrinsic to socialism, but the unique flaws in the later years of the soviet system), the latter, no. The large majority of the people supported the system and wished to retain it until the very end due to the social instability at the time, and the larger majority regret its fall. The “internal contradictions” were the liberal reforms that added elements embodied into the system that worked against a collectivized and planned economy.
The soviet economy was relatively strong, but towards the end because of liberalization, as well as problems from needing to dedicate a large proportion of production to millitarization to keep parity with the US, it began to decrease the rate of growth that was so rapid earlier on.
More importantly, it’s absolutely true that the dissolution of the USSR was avoidable. The mistakes made by the soviets towards the end don’t need to be repeated, we can learn from what worked so well with the socialist system while also not repeating their mistakes. The torch is carried on by countries that have learned, like Cuba, the PRC, etc.
Marxism is a science, and is improved through practice.
Marxism is a political religion with sacred texts, prophets, a promised paradise on earth, and superficial pseudoscientific trappings. It has killed more people than any other ideology in history.
- No, political theory is not the same as religion.
- No, there are no sacred texts in Marxism. One of the key elements of Marxism is Dialectics, it’s an ever-evolving theory. One of the more important works is Oppose Book Worship.
Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, “Show me where it’s written in the book.” When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from “a higher organ of leadership” but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.
- No, Marxism does not promise “paradise on Earth,” in fact it directly tackles the Utopians that tried to make such a paradise, like Robert Owen and Saint-Simon.
- No, it doesn’t have “superficial pseudoscientific trappings.”
- No, it has succeeded in lifting billions out of extreme poverty, ended famines common to feudal countries like nationalist China and Tsarist Russia, and more. Meanwhile, liberalism created industrialized mass-murder in the Holocaust, caused Chuchill to divert food from India to the deaths of millions, has created the conditions for mass murder, genocide of Palestinians, and so much more. The death toll of liberalism, both by ratio and in total, far surpasses Marxism and it isn’t close.
You’re deeply unserious.
Marxists will always have a wall of text full of theoretical facts and logic to point to. Practice looks very different. It means no diversity of opinion, oppression, secret police, gulag, millions of deaths.
Contrary to you I actually know people who have lived in socialist countries. I even have a former high ranking party member in my family.
lifting billions out of extreme poverty
Industrialization did that, not Marxism.
Tankies <—> Liberals. Same thing, different imperial branding.
It’s almost as if corrupt sociopaths are drawn to positions of authority regardless of stated values, and a vanguard party is no exception. Church, State, HOA, offer a crumb of power and bastards will say anything they can to snatch it up. The value of an organizational system has very little to do with its aspirations, and everything to do with the obstacles it erects to obstruct corruption. Build a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the proletariat will be abandoned by the dictatorship.
This sums up my thoughts on human behavior quite nicely. I really want to believe “true communism” is possible but I just don’t see how when power-hungry assholes exist. My thoughts are that it can only happen at small scales where you know everyone in your “tribe”. It’s far easier to oppress nameless strangers than it is to oppress Jenny with a heart condition a sick kid.
I’d be very interested in an honest answer about how this is handled from someone with more knowledge on communism.
It’s more that the user you replied to made a strawman of Marxist socialism.
First of all, “true” communism isn’t a thing, there’s no such thing as a pure system and to think of purity as a requirement is to make the perfect wonderland in out heads the enemy of flawed but real progressive movements.
Second of all, administration isn’t inherently corrupting, nor is it impossible to have democracy and recall elections in case of bad actors, like socialist states have.
Finally, the Marxist conception of communism, as a post-socialist system, can only be global, as class is only abolished when all property is collectivized and planned. A small-scale society cannot be “stateless” in the Marxist sense (though anarchism can exist, it uses different definitions of the state).
Well said!
The good old “revolutionary state capitalist” Often comes with some nice totalitarianism and atrocities sprinkled in.
Oppress, exploit, and kill the masses for the benefit of the masses!
I expect some spicy takes in the comments soon…
You done gone and triggered the whole damn beehive!
100% chance of a hexbear brigade when we post something like this 😁 they literally cannot abide anarchists making fun of them in our own space.
Dear god did they deliver… The shit wagon rolled through town
I’m popping my popcorn, I’ll be back later 🍿
View the post locally.
Holy Jesus am I glad my new account is on an instance that defederated the tankie triad. Looking at this thread without logging in is something else.
This happens like clockwork whenever a meme makes fun of authcoms from a typical anarchist perspective. Always! You should see the 1000-comment salt mines of the very first such post I made.
It’s too bad you have absolutely zero personal control over who db0 federates with!
I kind of miss them. Seeing their unhinged political opinions made me feel normalish.
The comments are going to be normal.
ITT: red fash pissed anarchists got wise and ain’t gonna do their dirty work anymore. Figure it out.
This is me playing Tropico when I’m just trying to have a stable economy.
Oh man, I’m gonna enjoy this comment thread.
Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the factory owner.
