I don’t equate it, but it’s in the same family. I don’t really care how you spin it, dialectical materialism is the liberating philosophy of the proletariat, and any attempt to spin it as “the ultimate tyranny” is just vibes and nonsense.

Lemmy.ml had zero impact on the election. The Dems ran a horrible campaign and lost because of it.

Nah, you came in here declaring materialism to be tyrannical, when historically it has been idealism used by monarchists, fascists, and liberals to exploit the people while materialism has been liberatory, and used in service of working class liberation.

No worries! I know I’m not very popular over here, and I know you aren’t trying to spark anything, I just wanted to give my side of what I felt was misrepresentation of my views. I don’t intend on starting a struggle session here, I deliberately try to leave dbzer0 communities to dbzer0 users.

Well, since I was called here, and now you’re directly calling my views into question, I’ll give my side of things.

1. The Nazis and the USSR did not cooperate to invade Poland. The Nazis invaded Poland as a part of Lebensraum, and the Soviets went in weeks later to prevent the Nazis from taking all of Poland. Because the Soviets went into Poland, the areas they took (largely areas Poland had annexed from Ukraine and Lithuania) were spared from the Holocaust.

2. I do not frame the Russo-Ukrainian War as Russian “self-defense.” I frame it as western-provoked, and maintain that Russia’s goals are NATO neutrality and to annex the 4 oblasts as a buffer zone to protect from a hypothetical land invasion. The 4 oblasts are culturally and ethnically Russian, and seceded following the coup against Yanukovych in 2014, and have been at war with Kiev for a decade. Russia’s goals are purely self-interested, wishing to annex the seperatists and ensure Ukraine cannot join NATO. It isn’t in the war for plunder, the 4 oblasts aren’t exactly economic powerhouses or resource rich. My stances on the Russo-Ukrainian War are very consistent with other communist orgs like PSL and FRSO.

3. The PRC is democratic, although certainly not a multiparty form of liberal democracy. Regardless if the PRC’s form of socialism is something you agree with or not, we need to take an accurate view of the situation. Ultimately, polling in support of the PRC is extremely consistent, even when taken from western orgs.

According to the most recent report (2024), people in China have overwhelmingly positive views of their political system. 92% of people say that democracy is important to them, 79% say that their country is democratic, 91% say that the government serves the interests of most people (rather than a small group), and 85% say all people have equal rights before the law. Furthermore, China outperforms the US and most European countries on these indicators – in fact, it has some of the strongest results in the world. The figure below compares China’s results to those from the US, France and Britain. These results may help explain the high levels of satisfaction with government reported by the Ash Center.

Just wanted to clarify my stances here, as the way you framed them were clearly meant to smear my legitimacy. I understand why some may disagree with my analysis, but the underlying evidence is reliable and widespread.

Thanks for the shoutout, comrade! 🫡

The US is desperately clinging to oil while Solar is cheaper and better. If the US truly wanted to have green energy, they would buy cheap solar from the PRC.

I’d say it’s definitely a “normal” thing to do. A lot of people don’t understand the importance of organizing until they’ve read a bit of theory, and saying they were wrong to do so, or framing them as privledged, isn’t the right path. There are two “wrong” camps, those who only read theory, and those who only do practice, though the practice camp is less incorrect. The correct group is the group that tries to balance both.

You need both theory and practice together. Practice sharpens theory, theory guides practice. You don’t have to be a grandmaster Marxist-Leninist with decades of theory under your belt to do good work. A large part of organizing involves training and educating comrades, for example, you even hint at it. Many orgs require a protracted training period before even being a full member, such as PSL or FRSO.

What’s classist would be shutting out the working class from theory, keeping it purely for the vanguard. Many existing communist orgs have run into this problem, and resolved it in various ways. Theory is for the working class, not for a privledged few, so the good vanguards have managed to make theory approachable and digestible.

This is reddit-tier reverse-atheism, lol. Matter comes prior to consciousness because the brain is a physical organ responding to stimuli as reflected from the material world, a phenomenon further affirmed by the same results happening even from people completely unaware of the other. I think you need to settle down, maybe relax a bit, rather than acting so condescending baselessly.

Claiming I support states where the workers have no power, without doing the legwork to explain how that’s the case, is just smearing. It isn’t a point. The socialist states I support are those that are broadly recognized as such by socialist and communist organizations and states, I am not acting out of the ordinary for doing so.

Marxists have described the withering of the state. From Engels:

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

To Lenin’s State and Revolution, which centers this very issue. Marxists have written about the state and how it withers away upon collectivization for centuries, this isn’t a new thing. Administration is not the same thing as a state. Further, the PRC is democratic:

The rest of your comment is a baseless, unsupported rant about socialist states supposedly being “just as bad” as capitalist states, despite the opposite being the case when it comes to uplifting the working class. From doubling of life expectancy, to certified safety nets, to tripling of literacy rates, to certified healthcare, to decolonial action, to fighting imperialism, socialist states around the world are rising while capitalism is dying, and you sit on the fence and say real socialism isn’t good enough for you while you live in a western country. It’s social chauvanism, plain and simple.

I don’t block people, nor would I announce that I am going to. I don’t take ill-founded insults or libel seriously, either.

To respond to your edit, here:

Edit: To me the big mystery is why defend these states? Why aim for vanguard states? Can’t we aim for something better rather than something that has “succeeded”? Why do we have to choose between liberalism and marxism when we can instead try to work towards actual socialism?

I defend the achievements of really existing socialism, that have brought dramatic democratization and uplifting of the working class. From Russia to China to Cuba to many other countries, socialism has proven to be extremely successful at meeting the needs of the people. We need to use a vanguard because it works, and vanguards themselves will appear whether we formalize them and democratize them as they have been in AES countries, or if we ignore them and let them form naturally and unaccountably.

We should always aim for better, but when that takes the form of saying “real socialism isn’t good enough,” then that becomes an incredibly privledged and chauvanistic viewpoint. Workers fought and died to win socialism in their countries, and are making constant improvements. This is actual socialism, not the socialism that lives only as a perfect ideal in our heads. Rather than saying that they did it the wrong way, or that they didn’t fight hard enough, we should respect the tremendous gains they’ve made and try our best to carry out our own revolutions, charting a path to a better world collectively.

When we oppose the working class in socialist countries for the mistakes they make, and declare these states enemies when they ought not to be, we make the same mistakes as those who oppose Palestinian liberation because they aren’t very queer friendly (and I say this as a pansexual person myself). It completely aids the imperialist narrative and serves as justification for color revolution and massive setback on the path to building socialism. It’s against solidarity.

No, I don’t, actually. For starters, all states are authoritarian, as all states are means by which the class in charge exerts its authority. To get rid of the state, all property needs to be collectivized, which both gets rid of class and the state itself. That means its good for the working class to have a hold of that authority, and use it against the Capitalist class. There’s no “promising to abolish” anything, the state gradually withers away with respect to class withering away as property is sublimated and collectivized.

I am a Marxist, yes. I became one after engaging with history, theory, logic, and practice. The fact that poor logic and false history doesn’t sway me doesn’t diminish my points. I haven’t seen any ethical arguments being brought up here.

Nope, socialism is popular in China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. The people like their system, and support their governments. Calling me “auth” for supporting them is a bit silly.

I understand perfectly well, again, I’m a former anarchist. We’ve both read a lot of the same anarchist theory, the difference is that I’ve rejected it as I’ve read it and also read Marxist-Leninist theory.

My critique of anarchism is the same as it has been for centuries for Marxists, cooperative ownership as opposed to collectivized ownership gives rise to social striation on the basis of different geography and production, which gives rise to capitalism. The state doesn’t give rise to capitalism, capitalism gives rise to the state.

You keep saying you reject workers states because they lead to “tyrannny,” without justifying your claim, and further go on to say democratic centralism is dictatorship. How is workplace democracy to function if the outcomes are not binding? Any useful applications of democracy must be binding, otherwise nothing gets done.

As for your point against vanguards as being a class, this is wrong, flat-out. Vanguards are subsections of the revolutionary class, not a class in and of themselves, as they are formed from the working class, elected by it, and hold the same relations to production. A manager is not a class in capitalism, but a subsection of the proletariat.

Your argument against democratic centralism is an argument against democracy. Minority rights are absolutely crucial to a functioning democracy, but thay’s fully compatible with democratic centralism.

TERFs are less effective than unified, intersectional groups. I recommend reading Leslie Feinberg’s Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue.

The struggles faced by socialist states were real, yes, but it is a good thing to suppress fascists, Tsarists, imperialists, and terrorists. This is a fact of life, if you do not stamp out fascism, it will stamp you out. The USSR was more progressive on queer rights than western countries. Alexandra Kollontai was a bisexual woman and one of the most important figures in early socialist society. The GDR was giving state-run gender affirming care. Queer rights in the PRC are rapidly improving, one of their most beloved celebrities, Xin Jing, is a transwoman, and Cuba’s family code is among the most progressive in the world. Socialism enabled this.

“Russification” wasn’t really a problem. The USSR took national liberation very seriously. The fact that they established common methods of writing for communication existed alongside national autonomy in the various SSRs and SFSRs. You can read testemonials from various travelers to the USSR like Paul Robeson:

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

And yes, killing Trotsky, who was organizing terrorist attacks on Soviet citizens and government officials, was a good thing. Killing terrorists that threaten your people and Nazis is a necessary function of society.

Also, can’t help but notice you ignored that the Zapatistas despise being called by western labeling like “anarchists,” did you miss that part?

I’m not going to apologize for being a Marxist, nor for advocating for socialism as a means to eventually erase the state and thus any speak of authoritarianism. I will not be an enemy of existing socialism or of the working class of those countries.

Matter comes first, because consciousness is represented through brainwaves, electrochemical signals, and stimuli from material perception 👍

I understand what you’re saying, I just reject it. You put the role of the individual over the collective in rejecting a socialist state as a method of reaching collectivized ownership, and conflate democracy with dictatorship without basis.

The vanguard exists whether formalized or not, all it is is the most advanced politically of the revolutionary class. As there is a difference between a first year medical student and a seasoned surgeon, there will always be differences in political skill among the people. The advantage of formalizing the most advanced is that it becomes visible, democratizable, and accountable, rather than shadowy and elitist.

We can learn a lot from the experience of the feminist movement in structure, actually, where the initial rejection of formalized structures resulted in counter-productiveness. Jo Freeman’s The Tyranny of Structurelessness is an excellent overview of this.

Democratic Centralism just means individuals are beholden to the collective decisions of the group, and are expected to uphold them. It’s the best tool for using the working class’s best advantage, our numbers, into one aligned spear, rather than a formless blob lashing out in different directions. An example of the benefits of aligning is the LGBTQ+ movement, the TERFs end up being less effective because fighting for the liberation of all unites greater forces, and that’s ignoring the evils of transphobia.

I understand where you’re coming from, I used to be an anarchist myself. I suggest you actually make it an effort to engage with Marxism-Leninism and the theory and practice of Marxist-Leninists. If you want a place to start, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list.

Edit: saw your addendum on the USSR and PRC. Both are excellent examples of the working class in power achieving dramatic results and improving the lives of the working class. Tripling of literacy rates, doubling of life expectancies, achieving dramatic improvements in science and well-being, fighting sexism and racism.

As for Trotsky, he was assassinated because he was organizing terrorist groups against the USSR after being bitter that his suicidal plan of Permanent Revolution, that saw the peasantry as an enemy of the proletariat, lost out democratically to Socialism in One Country. It wasn’t because he was just a critic, he was a traitor and a terrorist.

The Zapatistas do reject the western label of anarchist. They have horizontalist structures but reject western labelling.

The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be.

Over the past 500 years, we have been subjected to a brutal system of exploitation and degradation few in North America have ever experienced.

It is apparent from your condescending language and arrogant short-sightedness that you understand very little about Mexican History or Mexicans in general.

Our struggle was raging before anarchism was even a word, much less an ideology with newspapers and disciples. Our struggle is older than Bakunin or Kropotkin. We are not willing to lower our history to meet some narrow ideology exported from the same countries we fought against in our Wars for independence. The struggle in Mexico, Zapatista and otherwise, is a product of our histories and our cultures and cannot be bent and manipulated to fit someone else’s formula, much less a formula not at all informed about our people, our country or our histories. We as a movement are not anarchist.

We see narrow-minded ideologies like anarchism… as tools to pull apart Mexicans into more easily exploitable groups.

But what really enraged [us is] the familiar old face of colonialism shining through your good intentions. Once again we Mexicans [find ourselves put into a position where we] are not as good as the all knowing North American Imperialist who thinks himself more aware, more intelligent and more sophisticated politically than the dumb Mexican. This attitude, though hidden behind thin veils of objectivity, is the same attitude that we have been dealing with for 500 years, where someone else in some other country from some other culture thinks they know what is best for us more than we do ourselves.

Once again, the anarchists in North America know better than us about how to wage a struggle we have been engaged in since 300 years before their country was founded and can therefore, even think about using us as a means to “advance their project.” That is the same exact attitude Capitalists and Empires have been using to exploit and degrade Mexico and the rest of the third world for the past five hundred years.

Even though [you talk] a lot about revolution, the attitudes and ideas held by [you] are no different than those held by Cortes, Monroe or any other corporate imperialist bastard you can think of. Your intervention is not wanted nor are we a “project” for some high-minded North Americans to profit off.

So long as North American anarchists hold and espouse colonialist belief systems they will forever find themselves without allies in the third world. The peasants in Bolivia and Ecuador, no matter how closely in conformity with your rigid ideology, will not appreciate your condescending colonial attitudes anymore than would the freedom fighters in Papua New Guinea or anywhere else in the world.

Colonialism is one of the many enemies we are fighting in this world and so long as North Americans reinforce colonial thought patterns in their “revolutionary” struggles, they will never be on the side of any anti-colonial struggle anywhere. We in the Zapatista struggle have… asked the world to… respect the historical context we are in and think about the actions we do to pull ourselves from under the boots of oppression.

Source

Mutual Aid is a good thing, but it does not create a fully collectivized and planned economy.

This is getting very, very silly. You’re rejecting any and all proof of matter despite the continuous and replicatable proof of the same experiments resulting in the same results, across double-blind testing and more, of matter behaving in the same way regardless of who is percieving it.

Anarcho-communism repeats petite bourgeois class relations, wishing each cell/commune/etc to be equivalent worker/owners while rejecting collectivized global ownership. As each cell has different resources and geography, each will have greater or lesser development, giving rise to further social striation.

Having individuals not capable of going against the collective interests of humanity isn’t a bad thing. Capitalism cannot return from a fully collectivized global economy without ecological disaster or something equivalent.

The Zapatistas explicitly reject the anarchist label, and still have class, for what it’s worth. Zapatismo is its own thing, and while they reference anarchism and Marxism-Leninism in their founding, they prefer their own terminology as it is the basis of a decolonial struggle.

Your insistence that any and all leadership will always revert to capitalism or private interests being upheld isn’t true. It isn’t backed up by historical evidence, nor theoretical, it depends on an idealist notion of matter having an inherent “corrupting” quality.

All AES states wish to spread socialism, but all exist under siege and threat from capitalism. Simply “sharing” will not spread socialism and result in communism, that completely erases the millitant role of capitalist nations against socialist states.

Ultimately, there is no direct path to communism. One cannot abolish the state and class without collectivizing all property globally, and this cannot happen without building it. There is no A to Z shortcut. Anarchism itself isn’t the same as the Marxist conception of communism, it’s based on individualism and horizontalism, rather than collectivization and democratization.

Democratic Centralism is a critical tool for practice, any group that cannot act in a unified manner and allows itself to fall into factionalism will fracture and buckle, failing to meaningfully challenge capitalism. Even some anarchist orgs are adopting democratic centralism as a matter of practicality.

Capitalists will not willingly give up their privledged positions, socialism has only truly come about in a lasting fashion through revolution.

This is circular reasoning on your part, equivalent to positing that I’m not real simply because you are not me. Consciousness is a material, measurable process, that increasingly is better understood the more science advances. It isn’t that I require no proof, it’s that materialism is the best method for understanding, and the more science advances, the more it affirms the materialist understanding. You flip this on its head, affirming that even if materialism is the better method for understanding the world and is increasingly affirmed while idealism remains stagnant and increasingly disaffirmed, you prefer it to be true so you hold to it.

No, lol. The ideas of people like Kastrup and Hoffman rely on consciousness being distinct from matter, and not a product of matter. Brainwaves are measurable, as biology advances we understand the electrical signals and chemicals forming perception. Further, matter is measurable and consistent, many humans can measure the same rock’s mass in isolation from each other and get the same result without knowing the mass or the results beforehand.

What you’re doing is deliberately holding onto idealism as the basis for justifying what you personally wish to be true. Idealism always returns, in some fashion, to religion, as explanation. It’s a further abstraction from science and replicatable results in favor of subjectivism and vibes.

You’re having a bit of a meltdown now because you can’t actually argue against science. You have a hypothesis, and reject anything going against that on the basis of your hypothesis resting on the immeasurable and immaterial.