• CircaV@lemmy.ca
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    58 minutes ago

    Luckily the US is dismantling the CIA so that’s good news for communism!!!

  • missandry351@lemmings.world
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    2 hours ago

    When people ask me what communist country was successful I usually say all of them until cia decided to go there and spread freedom 🇺🇸🦅

  • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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    3 hours ago

    you know, i tell you what. i’m fed up with all this gringo self-righteousness when you talk about “oh communism was bad, oh people where killed, oh people had no food, oh people had no liberty, oh people could not buy ataris, oh our countries are so democratic”. your countries were democratic during the cold war in the first place because you had people to sort things out for you here in the global south. for each person complaining about how the food rations in eastern europe were not tasty enough, there were 10 dying of hunger or malnourishment here in the global south. for every person complaining they had to wait 5 years in a queue to buy a trabant or an oka, there were 10 who got no school in a range of 50 km. for every person complaining that their 8 hour shifts in state owned factories were overwhelming, there were 10 who were indentured workers. for every person complaining about how the stasi, kgb or the stb had bugged their apartment, there were 10 suffering the most horrific tortures inside black sites of the military of u.s. allies here in the “third world”. for every person complaining about dull standard apartment blocks in mikrorayons, there were 10 who lived in mud shacks and slums, and those are just who were lucky enough to have a roof over their heads. finally, for everyone complaining about chinese sweatshops, which are indeed a problem, there are 10 americans who work and yet cannot afford proper housing.

    you wanna complain about how communism was bad? go ahead. you wanna complain how your parents lived under communism and could not drink coke? do so if you wish. but there are still millions of people down here who would give an arm and a leg to have a polish ration, an apartment in a russian gray building, or a yugoslav job. and while the chinese maoist red guard was bad, surely it won’t be an inch closer to the harassement people endured on a daily basis by our police forces.

    again: you wanna complain? be my guest. but for me that’s an encyclopedic example of white privilege.

  • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I wonder if anyone ever said “Democracy would never work, just look at what happened to Athens”.

    Socialism and communism are relatively new ideas. While I don’t believe communism is an effective form of government, it’s still kind of silly to write it off so quickly.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    whoops, brazil. we had a budding workers movement that was absolutely crushed by the traitorous brazilian military, in the name of the US of course.

    that hasnt stopped syndicalism to take root here and improve our lives a bit, but the communist organizations responsible were all crushed and we see our rights being taken away ever since because no one is left to defend them. we are scrambling rn to see if we can stop fascism.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 hours ago

      Guys like yeltsin and gorby being able to rise through the party ranks screams incompetency to me. Even khruschev taking over screams incompetency.

      But then again, only socialists goverments are under constant attempts to getting toppled by external agents, capitalist states have had plenty of incompetent people in charge yet theyre not under constant siege.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      6 hours ago

      It was complicated. Kruschev, and later Gorbachev’s reforms really weakened the Socialist system because they didn’t properly retain strong control of the larger firms and heavy industry (a lesson the CPC took to heart), however the CIA and really the US absolutely worked tirelessly to weaken it. The Soviets also had to spend a much larger portion of their production on the millitary in order to keep parity with the US, meaning that development rates began to slow.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          1 hour ago

          The US played a part, I outright stated that it was a complicated situation made more complicated by having the world’s largest Empire, the US, permanently hostile and putting nukes on their doorstep.

      • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
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        5 hours ago

        What is complicated about it?

        The reforms you refer to allowed for political dissent. If the Soviet Union was some worker’s paradise, then allowing people complain wouldn’t change anything.

        The simple reality is that the Soviet Union was a dictatorship that only survived as long as it did because it was a dictatorship. Once people had the option of opposing Communist rule, they did. And that is what killed the Soviet Union. Not some conspiracy by the United States or the kulaks.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          5 hours ago

          The reforms didn’t just allow for “political dissent,” they worked against the Socialist system, that was based on central planning. Rather than running in a more efficient manner, it ran against itself.

          Further, nobody says the Soviet Union was a “worker’s paradise.” It had tremendous strides for workers, but it wasn’t perfect by any means.

          The Soviet Union wasn’t a dictatorship. Read Soviet Democracy. It lasted as long as it did because it had tremendous GDP growth while lowering wealth disparity, free and high quality education and healthcare, doubled health expectancies, full employment, and over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%.

          Read Blackshirts and Reds.

          • Stalin:

            Do you really believe that we could have retained power and have had the backing of the vast masses for 14 years by methods of intimidation and terrorization? No, that is impossible. The tsarist government excelled all others in knowing how to intimidate. It had long and vast experience in that sphere. The European bourgeoisie, particularly the French, gave tsarism every assistance in this matter and taught it to terrorize the people. Yet, in spite of that experience and in spite of the help of the European bourgeoisie, the policy of intimidation led to the downfall of Tsarism.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              1 hour ago

              Bit of a non-sequitor, I could bring up Kent State and use that to say the US isn’t a democracy. The US has a far worse track record than the Soviets.

          • Antiproton@programming.dev
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            5 hours ago

            The Soviet Union was, if not a traditional dictatorship, absolutely a totalitarian autocracy. Stalin was a brutal dictator and his successors were chosen by the communist party. Elections in the USSR were for show.

            Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people. The USSR’s implementation of communism was so bad, it’s become cliche.

            • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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              4 hours ago

              The USSR’s implementation of communism was so bad, it’s become cliche.

              So bad that after the fall of the Soviet Union, its former republics all had an immediate, sustained downturn in their quality of life, and a corresponding uptick in mortality.

            • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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              4 hours ago

              “Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people”, said the romanovs.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              4 hours ago

              Allow me to repeat myself:

              The Soviet Union wasn’t a dictatorship. Read Soviet Democracy. It lasted as long as it did because it had tremendous GDP growth while lowering wealth disparity, free and high quality education and healthcare, doubled health expectancies, full employment, and over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%.

              Read Blackshirts and Reds.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  1 hour ago

                  Yep. Democracy doesn’t mean “choose between parties,” it’s about the actual impact you can have on policy. More people in China feel that they have a voice in politics than people in the US, despite the US having 2 parties.

          • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
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            5 hours ago

            That’s what dissent is.

            Nothing you said disputes it being a dictatorship. The people could not choose their leaders, there were no limits on the power of their leaders, er go it was a dictatorship. None of your “pros” matter. And that’s before we get into the lack of freedom of speech and press and total absence of transparency, meaning that I have no reason to trust those supposed accomplishments.

            • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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              2 hours ago

              You are being presented with sources for the claims disproving you, but your anticommunism is clearly more important to you than engaging with actual rvidence.

              No investigation, no right to speak.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              5 hours ago

              No, that isn’t what dissent is, it was a fundamental liberalization of the economy that favored private property over public.

              Secondly, they absolutely chose their leaders.

              Finally, you say life expectancy, literacy rates, and worker rights “don’t matter?” That strong, sustained economic growth doesn’t matter? You must be trolling.

              As for distrusting the sources, you can look into them yourselves, they are well-respected.

              • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
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                4 hours ago

                So, you’re denying that glasnost allowed for political dissent?

                Second, no they didn’t.

                Finally, it does not matter because we were debating whether or not the Soviet Union was a dictatorship, which the literacy rate has nothing to do with.

                Well-respected by Tankies, not by actual historians.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  4 hours ago

                  Glasnost allowed for liberalism to expand as an ideology, sure, alongside other reforms that weakened the economy and erased its foundations. You can’t cherry-pick the reforms to make it seem like the system worked poorly and only was dissolved because the “people had a choice.” In fact, most post-Soviet citizens regret the fall of Socialism and prefer it over Capitalism.

                  Read Soviet Democracy.

                  We were debating a great many things, one of which being the economy and the well-being of the people, because that helps explain why it was democratic.

                  Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan is quite literally used as a reference on the Wikipedia article for Soviet Democracy. You are incapable of being honest or looking at facts that disprove you because you care more about appearing morally righteous than being correct.

              • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
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                4 hours ago

                We weren’t debating the quality of the Soviet Union. We were debating whether or not it was a dictatorship.

                • davel@lemmy.ml
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                  3 hours ago

                  Declassified CIA report:

                  Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.

                  A lot of the cold war propaganda about the USSR turned out to be bullshit, now that US & Soviet archives have been released, as contemporary Western academic historians will tell you, like Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr.

    • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Capitalism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep corporations in line. To this very day, the Thatcher/Reagan ideal of “market liberalisation and privatisation” has ALWAYS resulted in the centralised accumulation of capital that became a massive societal divider.

      No matter which country you pick, large ones like the USA or Russia, all of them have developed into a divided oligarchy of “haves” and “have nots”. […]

      I know you like to cope with “Oh no, the evil minority of bad apples in the owner class again. >:(” but in the end capitalism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely surpressing the market and brutally regulating any sign of market dominance of a few corporations.

      Edit: typo. And to the cunt who removed Realitaetsverlust’s comment: you can suck a cock and die, I wanted to have a normal discussion with them.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        4 hours ago

        It’s very frustrating to me to see people say things like “socialism/communism always ends in a dictatorship” while ignoring that capitalism tends towards oligarchies and monopolies. I’m glad to see someone else pointing out that “capitalism only works on a small scale.”

      • Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        Capitalism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep corporations in line.

        Wrong. Half of europe relied so much on american protection that they had barely any military spending. Germany at the forefront, we only have ammunition for like 2 days of combat. So ye, that’s nonsense.

        No matter which country you pick, large ones like the USA or Russia, all of them have developed into a divided oligarchy of “haves” and “have nots”. […]

        The US has been democratic for a major part of their existence. There were up and downs, sure, but it was largely a democratic system. So have many other big capitalistic countries by the way.

        Russia, while being capitalist, is an authoritarian system - I’m pretty sure that would’ve also happened if they were communist. But the oil money they got from the west probably tasted too good.

        but in the end capitalism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely surpressing the market and brutally regulating any sign of market dominance of a few corporations.

        Uuuuh, did you use AI to write this? Because it makes no sense. Personally, I wouldn’t mind some regulations. Not sure what your point is here.

        • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          I mirrored your comment, because I think it works backwards. From the way it sounds to me, you started with your conclusion/opinion and searched for proof of why it is right. Real socialism and the Soviet unions were deeply, deeply flawed systems from the start, but only because some implementations failed, due to essentially the same problems as capitalism, does not mean the idea as a whole is rubbish. If you read the communist manifesto and “the capital” from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, you will read a brilliant critique of our modern contemporary system. There are some very fine ideas in there, and I think it’s dangerous to discard another perspective because some implementations have failed. The USA are the living proof of how two radically different systems can suffer from the same problems and collapse because of them. Why is it such a culture war against some genuinely very fine points that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have made over a hundred years ago, which are relevant to this day?

          Edit: typo. I apologise for forgetting about Friedrich Engels.

    • Independently of who I side with, I am blocking this community because of the stifling of Realitaetsverlust’s comments.

      edit: was baffled by the stifling and just researched and learned about Lemmy.ml

      it all makes sense now. It is a Socialist Communist instance that censors those not aligned with them. Political leanings don’t bother me, but the censorship does so I will be avoiding anything Lemmy.ml in the future. They of course have a right to run their instance how they wish. peace out

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      This is generally wrong, though. Communist countries have dramatically democratized society, it works better at large scale if we are speaking of Marxian Communism because that’s the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with. Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned. This is the basis of Scientific Socialism, primitive Communism is not the same as the post-Socialist Communism, which must be large-scale as production increases in complexity.

      Pol Pot wasn’t even a Communist.

        • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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          6 hours ago

          Competition does the exact opposite of centralization. That’s why I can buy most goods from completely different vendors that differ in price and quality.

          Competitions have winners, and in this case it means the competition goes out of business and dies, leaving you with a near monopoly or outright monopoly.

          That power then gets used to

          • lobby (bribe) the government to raise barriers to entry to prevent new competitors
          • buy out new competitors
          • intentionally price everything lower than competitors, at a loss, to kill competitors in a war of attrition that they can’t possibly outlast

          And that’s even assuming there’s any competition at all, which often isn’t the case with certain things like healthcare, internet, electricity, etc.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          7 hours ago

          The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc are more democratic than theie previous systems.

          Communism still works, just because the Soviet Union isn’t here doesn’t mean everything is a failure.

          Competition forces centralization and monopolies over time due to increasinly complex production practices that raise the barrier to entry. It’s unavoidable.

          Pol Pot denounced Marxism and focused on an odd agrarian system, and was backed by the CIA.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              4 hours ago

              Read Soviet Democracy, as well as read up on the government structures of the PRC, Vietnam, Laos, etc. They are democratic.

              The PRC is more successful today than the USSR was, and is Socialist. Calling countries in the Global South “shitholes” is wildly chauvanist, along with your unsourced claims about them.

              You didn’t really go against competition causing centralization. Even further than companies, there are joinings of companies under single megacorps that share supply chains and interwork.

              Pol Pot did not “follow Communist ideals,” though. Moreover, if someone makes a clear deviation from Communism and denounces Marxism, why on Earth include it as a detractor other than clear bad-faith?

              Sure, the Cold War was complicated, but the US was never fighting for Communism and neither was Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge never actually read Marx, and mostly declared any Communist sympathies out of aesthetics and geopolitical support than genuine support for Communism, and the US supported them.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              5 hours ago

              Soviet Democracy

              Here’s a well-sourced post on China’s democracy, but really, read their constitution and government structure if you want more.

              Cuba was under a fascist slaver before Socialism, and now has a democracy.

              The PRC is Socialist, and has one of the largest and most rapidly growing economies in the world, I don’t think you need a source for this.

              As for competition and centralization, where do you think the megacorps came from? We are more centralized now than ever before.

              Pol Pot and the CIA, alternatively Blowback lists their sources and they went over it in Season 5.

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        LOL
        The horrible feodal system with serfs/slaves the Tibetans has was sooo much better.
        Some CIA poking didn’t work to bring that back.
        And there was a small minority radicalised terrorists by Turkey and OC again the CIA to cause trouble, which they did.
        blew up a plane with civilians, multiple other attacks on busses, trainstations, etc…
        The majority never liked them and are glad it’s over.
        But nice try.

          • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            What, did a suicide happen years ago in a country you don’t like? Quick, use that as a weak excuse to throw mud.
            I’m sure suicide doesn’t happen in companies from the fascist US, where they have to pee in bottles.
            Sometimes a known fascist boss demands to keep his Tesla factory open in full covid peak and his slaves get sick and die.
            Plenty of them die homeless or from drugs anyway.
            No paid sick days, universal healthcare, unemployment, etc. Really a pathetic 3rd world country.
            Not to mention no other regime puts more of its citizens in jail.

            This is the embarrassing US banana republic.
            Want to try again?

      • Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
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        7 hours ago

        Not sure what you’re trying to say. Uyghurs are systematically eradicated and tibet is controlled by china since their invasion in the 1950s. Not exactly speaking in favor of communism.

        So, if you’d like to expand on your point, I might be able to discuss this further.

        • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          eradicated LOL, their population is growing, despite the many some US backed terrorist killed.
          And Tibet doesn’t have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
          Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I’ll wait

          • Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
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            5 hours ago

            eradicated LOL, their population is growing

            According to who? The chinese government? Lmao. Ye I would DEFINITELY trust the ones that are performing the killings on reporting accurate numbers.

            And Tibet doesn’t have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.

            Imperialism good when country does bad things?

            Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I’ll wait

            I could, but if you want some originality, I can also bring up one of the other atrocities directly ordered by communist regimes, like the Prague Spring, Hungarian Revolution or the mass executions by the Khmer in Cambodia.

            • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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              I don’t need to prove something that didn’t happen which isn’t possible, you show me proof of your fantasy eradication that isn’t from the sick nutbag Adrian Zenz. Must be easy if it’s such a genocide.

              Imperialism good when country does bad things?

              Hypocrisy good in the name of bringing democracy.

            • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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              4 hours ago

              oh, the khmer rouge, that one that the u.s. supported along with britain, china (not so dirty back then, right) and who were toppled by the socialist regime of vietnam?

              • Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
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                4 hours ago

                I already answered that to someone else so I’ll just copy and paste it:

                The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.

                The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.

                So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.

        • thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 hours ago

          Lol I meant to reply to the main thread, but you could pretend im being sarcastic and it kinda works

    • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      For those that don’t like to read, you don’t have to read theory. In fact, most theory is old. There are newer and better takes on these ideas. Find a good YouTube channel that goes over the ideas. I like Vaush.

      If you like to read theory, go for it. But I think there are faster and easier ways to get the concepts.

      • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 hour ago

        You DO have to read theory. Just because it is old doesn’t mean it’s wrong or outdated.

        Also I’m not opposed to watching YouTube videos, but it shouldn’t be your only source for it, and recommending Vaush is a huge problem, don’t do that.

        If anyone wants some actual good recommendations:

        In english: Second Thought, Hakim, Yugopnik, Luna Oi, revolutionary_thot, azurescapegoat. There’s also Hasan, but he does commentary and not theory teaching or analisys or anything like that.

        In portuguese: Ian Neves/História Pública, Laura Sabino, Jones Manoel, Tempero Drag/Rita von Hunty, João Carvalho.

        There’s of course others, I’m just going by the ones I remember right now.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        8 hours ago

        Support for chasers and sex-pests like Vaush is pretty awful, not to mentions his awful politics and constant butchering of Marxist theory for an audience that usually can’t tell the difference.

        Theory is important. Much of my list is newer, some is older when it holds up, some is newer when it meaningfully adds to the discussion. However, as someone who had your approach, reading theory directly genuinely is much faster than rolling the dice.

        I have audiobooks linked as well that people can listen to if they prefer, and importantly they won’t be distorted by a sex-pest who complains about Marxists constantly while misrepresenting them.

      • Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
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        8 hours ago

        I like Vaush

        Lmaoooo, ye I always follow the political opinions of some dude who watches child porn … oh wait, not child porn, it’s “shortstack goblins”

  • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Any one party political system can either fail or be maintained through violent oppression. People need to have a say in who represents them and what their values are.

    A more sustainable solution than soviet style communism is to have proportional representation and work on instilling socialist virtues such as kindness, social responsibility, and fairness in the population. over time, the people in government will start to reflect those values.

  • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.ee
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    4 hours ago

    This is a good example of one of things people hate about lemmy.

    Communism fan boying, implicit denial of genocides committed by communist powers, out in the open on the front page.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      This is a good example of one of things people hate about lemmy.

      Okay. You know where the exit is.

      Communism fan boying, implicit denial of genocides committed by communist powers, out in the open on the front page.

      What communist “genocides”? This one? Or this one[1][2]? Or this one?

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      You’re going to find Communists on a website made by Communists. Don’t know what you mean by “genocide denial,” but in another comment you were unironically recommending the Black Book of Communism’s chief writer as a legitimate source, you’re doing the “Communism killed 100 million” meme.

  • RandomPrivacyGuy@lemm.ee
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    12 hours ago

    Yeah, I remember how my grandfather and everyone he knew fought tooth and nail just to stop America from dismantling communism in eastern Europe!

    Oh, wait, he didn’t. Everyone celebrated when it fell.

  • Montreal_Metro@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    It doesn’t matter what ideology. If the people running it are rotten, any system can be corrupted.

        • Grapho@lemmy.ml
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          17 hours ago

          Sure bro lemme teach my aunt to make her insulin, her own needles, her own glucose test strips and all that cheers

            • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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              4 hours ago

              That’s good work for a lot of reasons, but there’s a world of difference between “open source and theoretically DIY” and it being anywhere near realistic for everyone to actually do it themselves.

              It’s good that I have access to advanced technology without having to have learned how to build it from the ground up. That’s the whole point of civilization – doing more together than we could do apart.

          • Yeather@lemmy.ca
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            16 hours ago

            Maybe we should all specialize, and pay each other with our own goods, or better yet, a sort of representation of goods we all agree is valuable, so you can get one persons goods with anothers.

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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              15 hours ago

              Kinda seems unfair that somebody’s aunt should have to purchase insulin she needs to survive, like she shouldn’t have to work harder to have the same lifestyle as someone without a disability. Maybe we should just give her the insulin she needs to survive, and compensate the people who make it out of some sort of common pool of resources everyone is required to contribute to, in order to distribute the costs more fairly.

              • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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                11 hours ago

                When I was younger, I tried to design an universal constructor.

                Unfortunatelly, I was using Roblox studio to do this.

                How’s that for insanity?

                I also carved a log with a knife, hacking off pieces in an attempt to make a 3D printer

                • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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                  9 hours ago

                  It’s not insane! 3D printing is making huge strides. You were just a little ahead of your time.

                  If we can run Doom on 16 billion crabs, then you can carve a 3D printer.

        • stardust@lemmy.ca
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          17 hours ago

          Like how people were gifted ability to have more knowledge at their hands than previous generations and rapid communication, and then came to the conclusion that the earth is flat, vaccines are poision, and facism is holy?

          Humans are dumb fucks. They will inevitably fuck up even the most perfect utopia they arrive in short of some mass hive mind brain washing Equilibrium style. i don’t hold that high an opinion of human society.

          Leave the world to the animals. Humans are a failed experiment and a virus to the world.

          • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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            7 hours ago

            This is some eco-fascist ass rethoric. You’re not taking into account how all the issues you listed are only possible to exist in a capitalist society, where misinformation and anti-intelectualism is accepted and allowed to grow instead of directly addressed.

            • Dengalicious@lemmygrad.ml
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              7 hours ago

              Environmental issues did in fact exist before capitalism. Human arrival coincided with mass extinction in the Americas and in Australia. That’s certainly not to say these issues are unavoidable or that socialism isn’t the solution (because it 100% is) but we should see environmental issues as transcending others so I disagree that I would place this in an eco-fascist lens. Rejection of science certainly occurred in feudal societies as well

              • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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                6 hours ago

                You’re right, I should have been more specific in saying that current anti-intelectualism is deeply linked to capitalism and not that it is something that happens only in capitalism, my bad.

                Also, I wasn’t referring to that as the eco-fascist rethoric, but rather to the commenters last phrase about how humans are a “failed experiment and a virus to the world”.

      • 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de
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        21 hours ago

        Can you explain how you disagree? Is it about incentives to be corrupt (or against) depending on the system?

        • Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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          20 hours ago

          If you believe in great man theory™ and think that all political developments happen because one person can magically steer entire countries and the world, in geo-political terms, or idealists in thinking that if you have the correct ideas, you can magically steer the entire rest of the world to whatever you think, by having the correct thoughts. Then your theories of political developments are non-materialist, like this comment is objecting to. The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.

          • finder@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            People in this context appears to be plural, thus I don’t see how Montreal_Metro’s take is Great Man Theory.

            The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.

            Ultimately, any system is operated by mere mortals who will arbitrarily reward and punish people based on their own bias, morals and desires. Systems only work so long as the people manning them follow the rules. Systems only last if the people running it punish rule breakers.

            According to all of history, corruption, apathy, and pure human greed and ingenuity will gradually eat away any system, economic and political, until it collapses. Only for the failing system to be replaced by a “better” system, which begins the cycle again.

            • Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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              14 hours ago

              The fact that it is attributed to a very few actors and not a literal, singular actor does not negate great man theory.

              The issue is that this is arbitrarily flattening of the actual material conditions. You can point out that nearly all political systems, on a long enough timeline lead to some form of collapse (Joseph Tainter is a good reference on this). But all of these things are dependent, not independent, of the systems and conditions they find themselves in. The timescales and forms can vary drastically depending on the material conditions actors find themselves in.

              • finder@lemmy.world
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                14 hours ago

                What came first? The chicken or the egg?

                Did the system that created the conditions people find themselves in come first. Or did the people running the system create the conditions that they find themselves in?

                • Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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                  13 hours ago

                  It is not that there isn’t some flow both ways, but that the material conditions is much more dominant than people coming up with ideas and mechanations moving things in ways contradicting the conditions. The system setting the conditions is in fact dominant. The way corruption and self-dealing manifests is different between where you can just create a private corporation and lobby for a government contract to justify being given a 500 million dollars of tax payer money, versus trying to massage Gosplan to syphon off several million Rubles of excess spending, versus tricking a sovereign wealth fund to hand over several billion dollars for some supposed innovative building company to create innovations for Neom.

        • altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          20 hours ago

          I am not that person, but I guess you wouldn’t like the ambassadors of fascism to be efficient and competent.

        • untorquer@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          They didn’t seem to express an argument or value judgment in their comment regardless of their actual opinion.

          Don’t feed the troll.