• SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    Agree with you in general, but I think a lot if people here are not really informed what differences there are materialistic ideologies.

    Yes, Stalin bad.

    But Guevara is not Stalin.

    Marx is not che

    Engels is not Marx

    China is not communist.

    Marxism is not materialism

    Socialism is not communism

    Also the amount of people bringing the “the 3 times people tried socialism were bad, so the whole ideology must be bad” argument are way to high IMHO.

    How many times was capitalism tried? How many times it worked out? Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

    While I agree with you, that oppression is bad, no matter what the oppressor calls himself, we should talk about policies without resorting to dogmas and generalising people in favor of fear the hegemonic class is propagating to stay in power.

      • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Should probably listen to Blowback Season 3.

        Not to say they’re a perfect country but to pretend that anyone in the West can critique them when their material conditions are dictated by the actions of the West is just comical.

        If you aren’t a materialist, what are you even doing? As if history happens in the realm of pure thought…

          • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Something something worlds largest prison population?

            Again, it’s not like North Korea is some shining example or anything, but to pretend that the west has the moral high ground here is laughable.

            Again, listen to Blowback Season 3, recognize that their country was basically bombed to the stone age Curtis le may style and then maybe reevaluate, just a little, the chauvinist attitude.

            DPRK is not a great country but it’s not as if they were ever given a chance either.

            • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, the US prison system is absolutely abhorrent and counterethical to all the principles it’s supposed to hold.

              First, the US is basically the only western country like that:tm:, second, more than one thing can be bad. “‘North Korea is a great country’ is a dumb position”, the only (implied) assertion I made about it in my original comment, is still true, even if they got dealt a shit hand (which, so did most of the east after WW2; South Korea was in a pretty similar state (it was actually worse than NK shortly after the Korean war), yet they’re doing… much better than NK at least).

              Being “basically bombed to the stone age” doesn’t mean a dictatorship is inevitable, nor that their government is suddenly blameless; being victimized doesn’t mean you can victimize others.

              Genuinely, if you take “the west” as a whole and compare it to North Korea… yeah, I do think they have a high ground. No, I’m not saying the west is perfect, far from it. No, I’m not saying communism is automatically bad, I’m totally cool with communists.

              Basically my base position is “a functional democracy is the governance system that works the best”. Most western states are much closer to that than North Korea (yes, I know what the Electoral College is and why it’s bad), so I do think their political system is better.

              • RedMarsRepublic@vlemmy.net
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                1 year ago

                All of the so called ‘functional democracies’ of the West are abysmal, China has 94% government satisfaction where I doubt there’s one western country over 50% (and the US is at 24%)

            • IriYan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The country that holds the record for number and percentage of people in prison is the US. In the US the percentage of black people in prison was higher than the percentage of black people in prison in South Africa during apartheid.

              No other western/industrialized (at some stage) nation has had so many political exilees and people whose citizenship was revoked based on “anti-american” views than the US. At some point the general secretary of RCP was in exile in France with his citizenship revoked. So, not all states are equal, and their historic development as modern capitalist states should be studied within context.

    • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When a liberal says “tankie” they mean anything remotely communist-looking. When a leftist says “tankie”, they mean authoritarians who like red flags and self-proclaimed communists who nonetheless support hierarchies and have no plan or intention to bring them down. I think the vast majority of people here knows this already.

    • 𝔊𝔦𝔫𝔧𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔲@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

      I hope you realize that this is an incredibly privileged take. The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or (to a less extreme extent) Maduro’s Venezuela. To compare what a US citizen deals with on a daily basis due to capitalism to what a citizen of any of those countries had to go through is very reductive and may be perceived as disrespectful to many who had to live those experiences.

      • proletariatnerd@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia

        I have some fellas from Detroit that would disagree.

      • Cynosure@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well of course the standard of living in the imperial core is higher than the countries it has exploited or destabilized. A lot of American wealth is the fruit of imperialism.

      • Definitely_me@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        The United States, for all it’s faults, is the pretty side of capitalism.you don’t even need to look to the most poor countries to see a standard of living that makes even directly post ww2 soviet union look like a great place.

      • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago
        1. Im not from USA, and from my point of view its mich worse than most other countries (no healthcare, no independend courts, murder sprees in schools nearly every day, opression of half of the world (a half of them just to get more oil to destroy the planet faster), one of 3 of the biggest war-pushers in whole earth, polutes and destroys earth mode than every other country per citizens, etc. PP.)

        2. capitalism mostly opresses and profits from people out of the country to Funktion. if its Bad in Venezuela or Cuba or Afghanistan, or even early russia, thats at least partly fault of US.

        3. Venezuela is not communism, China isnt, russia isnt. Most of them have failed, at least partly because caputalist societys atack them and stop a as soon as they are born and they can’t form a stable democracy. Before reading Marx, your bashing of communism isnt worth anything, as you clearly don’t understand what you are talking about. We never had communism, and some would say not even socialism. You sound like you don’t even know the difference, since you keep talking about communism, which is a utopian society after humanity has stopped a lot of bad habits and has learned to live without working against each other in competition and working together instead, which arises maybe after generations of workig socialism, which we clearly didn’t have.

        4.you exactly prove my point. I dont agree with tankies either, but the number of people around here blindly copying capitalist propaganda while understanding nothing they bash about is too damm high.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You have a warped view of USA that doesn’t reflect reality. You’re seeing it through the lens of sensationalist news media and hyperventilating social media posts.

          The actual reality for Americans is that it’s a vast, beautiful land with an amazing spectrum of various experience. Violent crime is rare overall, and most Americans have never seen or heard any gun violence in person. Health care is available to pretty much everyone, even if you don’t have money. We have state-run healthcare facilities that the poor can make use of like county health departments.

          My life in the USA is great, because I don’t live in a big city. I live on my own land, in a nice house that I own, and I’m just middle class income level. It’s pretty easy to accomplish if you choose a low cost of living area rather than a big metropolis or suburb thereof.

    • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Meanwhile anarchist organizing doesn’t have cops, it has Agents of Community Defense who definitely aren’t cops!

      I have nothing against anarchists, but you need to see past slogans to be anything but a useful idiot to neoliberals.

      • Big_Farto@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I mean any person or entity that enforces oppressive laws is a bastard. The government of China is far from some sort of benevolent state.

  • buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    What are some good actual communist lemmy communities that aren’t supporting the fucking capitalist imperialist russian invasion?

    • WabiSabiPapi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      look for anarchists if you desire a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

      communism has been coopted by auth apologists infatuated with the color red.

        • WabiSabiPapi@lemmy.world
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          https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you

          anarchism acknowledges Marxist theory, but rejects the need for a state/beaurocratic apparatus, as it is considered to be fundamentally oppressive.

          the state is an abstraction of capital, and cannot liberate the working class, as it exists to perpetuate its own hegemonic existence, our subjugation.

          governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

          can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools

          • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

            I don’t. I don’t think all hierarchies are unjust, I evaluate them based on their effect on the world. If a hierarchy can solve a problem better, it’s the preferable solution.

            Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you?

            But what if we all have a different idea of what behaving reasonably means?

            Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice those armies, police, prisons and governments make possible.

            That’s silly. Systemic inequalities don’t make people park their vehicles on the bike path or murder their wife because they think she cheated on them. If anarchism is all about thinking people are angels unless bad, bad oppressive systems make them do evil things they couldn’t do on their own then I don’t think we’ll ever get along. It’s alternate reality and an incredibly naive way of looking at the world and human nature.

            Edit: could you kindly not respond to this? I don’t have an option to silence this thread on my end, and don’t want to hear about it any further.

            • CorruptBuddha@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Edit: could you kindly not respond to this? I don’t have an option to silence this thread on my end, and don’t want to hear about it any further.

              So I have to ask… Why would you respond and then deny someone the same respect?

              • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I wanted to mute this conversation but couldn’t. They could always modify their comment or respond to themselves and not give me any notifications. I just didn’t want to discuss this at the moment.

                But they did try to convince me of the virtue of anarchism and it’s compatibility with Marxism, so I thought I would at least put out some of the reasons I don’t like anarchism so that my first terse comment isn’t misunderstood as me not knowing what anarchism is and rejecting it on that basis.

          • archon@dataterm.digital
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            1 year ago

            I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

            In practice, direct democracy? Or, how would that work - how would we organize society? Positions would still need to be held, no? Roles appointed, decisions made, lines drawn. No one can be up-to-date on all matters in their local nor global environment. And certainly not at the same point in time. How would anything work with any cohesiveness?

            Sorry to be so dismissive, I’m actually kinda curious on your thoughts. Only ways I see are AI governance or a hive mind. Not sure about either tbh.

          • IriYan@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            anarchism acknowledges Marxist theory, but rejects the need for a state/beaurocratic apparatus, as it is considered to be fundamentally oppressive.

            Acknowledges Marxist theory as much as acknowledging Newtonian gravitational theory may be a way to put it. Most of the ones I know either accept Marxist general theory as a whole, non-critically, and the rest are anti-communist/anti-marxist idealists, as much as any fascist would be. Because the true essence and reason for the existence of fascism is anti-communism.

            There are many social relations that are oppressive, why limit it to state? Parents are oppressive, teachers, professors, bosses, cops, military higher officers, spouses, parents in law, … prison guards … they are all oppressive. Is it just the state? Is it a different class of people who oppress from those being oppressed?

            the state is an abstraction of capital, and cannot liberate the working class, as it exists to perpetuate its own hegemonic existence, our subjugation.

            Between the late 1800s and early 1900s the state became an insurer of labor law and justice, the welfare state was born, rights to pension, an 8hr day, sick leave, vacation, overtime pay, were all provided and were promised by the state. So we can say the state backed off and became hostile to capital. Between struggle (labor syndicalism) and the capitalist state there was a dialectic transformation, the social democracy was born. Today the state has absolutely surrendered to the powers of the banking financial world system, made out of a handful of banks and financial institutions mainly based in NY, London, Frankfurt, Paris, maybe even in HKong, Tokyo, to a lesser extent. All states owe to private global markets to such a degree that just one or two clicks down on their bond ratings and they are bankrupt and in the hands of IMF and other bankers to implement the most vicious neo-liberal reform anyone can imagine.

            This means that when leninists propose on taking over a state that just means removing it from the markets and sentencing the population to starvation and misery. “Abolishing the state” is just as suicidal. Should there be a thing like political responsibility for genocide proposed by pseudo revolutionaries, who want to enforce their fantasy on people already suffering because of capitalism?

            governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

            As long as you speak of “a system” you imply, like it or not, a centralized system, a system that supervises whether the system is implemented correctly or not. That constitutes an authority. Whether this authority and enforcement is conducted by “anti-authoritarians” who as a minority forced their terms and conditions on a society, we are speaking of a revolutionary vanguard, an authoritarian force over the entire society (under the state and within state borders).

            By the way, the collapse of the Syrian state had a gradual effect of Turkey moving sourth, Israel and Libanon moving further east, Iran moving west, I am uncleat of Jordan is taking a piece of the pie, and some Iraqi authorities are eyeballing the Kurdish management of some areas they would like to grub as well. So by abolishing a state these days the remaining states in the globe legitimize the neighbors all grubbing a piece without anyone being a state to protest. Assad’s only friend is too busy fighting the entirety of NATO playing a game on the heads of the residents of ex-Ukraine.

            can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools

            As long as your focus is to destroy and dismantle instead of constructing an alternative and an escape route from capitalism you will be condemned by history as a force of nothing beneficial to humanity.

            As long as you preach -isms- from a high tower looking down on people without ideology, and you refuse to accept that the dialectic between leninism and libertarianism has already materialized, that more than a million people have been living OUTSIDE of capitalism, in autonomous communities, for nearly 30years (this next new year’s eve), decide in their communities EVERYTHING about their own lives, mostly using consensus, and their federation (2 levels) is designed to serve the community not to dictate to the community, you are more authoritarian and stuck up than you really think. Now these people have liberated themselves from capitalism, they live outside it, they are unaffected by it, other by having to fend off some para-military attacks here and there 2-3 times a year, their values and principles are even more strict than the early 1900s CNT constitution, and they laugh really hard and stick a finger up to all revolutionary vanguards, but you keep speaking hypothetically, what if society did this and that and the other thing.

            If you want to be heard, you should be looking up to indigenous peasants, farmers, not down. If you want the residents of the favela to follow bureaucrats and academics to social change, you are in worse shape and dillusion than the average tankies. If you want children industrial workers in SE Asia to look up to your ideology and rhetoric, to buy your story, I assure you they think you are dumber than they are.

            Who gives a flying ** what “anarchism” acknowledges.

        • Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          There are an infinite variety of flavors of socialism, at some point you gotta learn to find folks you don’t disagree with on anything too important. In my experience anarchists are generally chill.

    • Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      No one is suggesting that the states the authoritarian communists replaced were good or functional, just that they failed to actually uplift and make people’s lives better. There’s nothing to admire about one oppressive state being replaced by another.

          • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.world
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            Life expectancy in the US is currently dropping for the first time in decades. “line go up” isn’t always a valid way of determining quality of life, but in the instance of life expectancy, I would say it is. Also, America is getting worse in basically every metric we can use to measure quality of life. Is “line go down” not a valid way of assessing quality of life either?

  • animelivesmatter@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    finds social media developed by tankies

    looks inside

    finds tankies

    fr I’m down with having a good old purge eventually but noone should be surprised

  • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Thank fuck. I thought Lemmy was some ultra militant leftist hellhole before the shift.

    I don’t like extreme radical left any more than extreme radical right.

    Fuck Che Guevara. Read a book.

  • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    This post has literally 6 times the comments of the next most-comments post, jesus. Wonder what could have triggered this!

    • AtomicAria@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      ? The developers of Lemmy are tankies, it’s important to make sure that tankies know they aren’t welcome here.

      • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Gotta ask for both a source and your definition of a “tankie”.

        You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.

        • sp6@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A tankie is someone who supports authoritarian communism (I believe the term originated from using tanks to suppress protests)

          Here’s a post showing that the main instance of Lemmy (hosted by the main 2 Lemmy devs) removes any negative posts about the Chinese or Russian governments for “orientalism”: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5784

          In the comments of that post, you can find one of the devs borderline defending what China is doing to the Uyghurs: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/comment/5950

          That same dev has a github repo called “essays on communism”: https://github.com/dessalines/essays

          I’m pretty sure both of the devs’ profile pictures are Fidel Castro too

          • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Aight fair enough, that’s pretty concerning.

            Nothing wrong per se with communism itself, it just tends to be extremely unstable and quickly turns to authoritarianism, I don’t think it’s ever worked for any nation in history so far.

            The defending of Uyghur genocides, and the defending of the CCP and Russian government is really concerning though. Good thing this platform is federated.

            libretro has a similar problem, it’s developed by a team of transphobic, homophobic, racist Russian apologists who border on Nazism. I don’t know what attracts these people to FOSS development.