ah good, lemmy hasn’t changed a bit since i left it 2 months ago
welp see you losers next year
“I don’t have a solution to the problem, I’m just here to reject the moral imperfections in yours.”
Leftists do have solutions, though. Usually Leftists are revolutionary, the idea that they don’t have a solution just because they don’t support voting as a legitimate tactic is flawed.
Refusing to help stop MAGA from taking power is flawed.
As though voting is a solution at all
And what exactly are leftists doing that is so effective?
🙄
There are no leftists in America because of the Nazi consolidation of power in the red scare and this is what you get.
Why is it a problem for “leftists” to solve?
It’s a problem for everyone to solve
What a disingenuous question. Do the leftists have the resources, reach, recognition, institutional support and seer amount of fucking money that liberals do?
The average liberal voter, who this meme seems to be targeting, is just as powerless as you are. But yeah let’s make fun of them for voting, even though Kamala lost because of poor turnout.
Poor turnout? That election had some of the highest voting numbers in our history.
You’re absolutely right, it is clear that telling you to shut the fuck up has had no positive effect
They can’t do that. The simple rule of LAW IN THIS COUNTRY should be enough to stop them. All we have to do is remove them from power. Where is the Democrats gathering part of our military and law enforcement to oust these people from our government? This is all it takes. Our country has very clear, simple laws that prohibit exactly what is going on right the fuck now from happening, and it’s still happening. Why? Because they’re afraid they’ll be seen as the same as the people from 6 January? That it will give these asshats some sort of ammunition against actual justice? Fuck them. Fuck them, throw them out, lock them up, and re-educate the people that this shit isn’t going to be tolerated. We can remove them forcefully because they did something wrong, they couldn’t remove anyone because we didn’t.
It’s that goddamn simple. How is it not that goddamn simple? Fucking do something. Fucking throw these fuckers out. Now. Not next election cycle, not whenever a bunch of people want to finally get off their ass and violently rebel, fucking right now.
Most of the country wants this. For every person who tries to overthrow the government, there are more people who will fight to keep it as it is.
77/335 > 0.5
Most of the country are just uninformed enough to not vote or to vote for Trump because they believe his lies.
It’s not because they believe his lies. It’s because they their own conditions are enriched by upholding a system that extracts profits from the third world through neocolonialism. You should read Settlers by J. Sakai and see how it is.
In your country your political parties operate as one and the politics are managed by the oligarchy. Everything is occurring exactly as your business dictatorship wants.
As Lenin said in State and Revolution, “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!“
This is no different and only shows the media’s effective advertising that people think otherwise.
Lenin said, “Only simpletons put faith in words.” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/09.htm) This is the root of the discussion when it comes to “lawfulness”.
Your ideas of the violently rebelling “right now” doesn’t quite make sense. In the US, the white “proletariat” is still benefiting for the capital extraction occurring in the global south as Sakai has explained. This, as long as it is happening, will impair the development of class consciousness. A rebellion without class consciousness will not be substantive rebellion. It would either be pointless of adventurist.
Only morons listen to extremists about other extremists. - Me, now.
Tired of people putting faith in alt-left historical shitlords like Lenin.
Lenin was one of the most important figures in creating the first Socialist State, I think we should at minimum learn from his experiences and thoughts to see what we should copy and what we need to change.
I’ll maybe take your thoughts on Lenin seriously when you accomplish anything even comparable to what he did. Until then, you can sit around and feel superior over individuals who brought about earth-shattering change created through the correct analysis of the conditions that he saw.
Laws mean nothing if the Dictator in chief can break them without consequence.
Yeah, there’s not exactly a lot of options for those of us with front row seats to the US being dismantled.
This idealism around a violent revolution to resolve our problems is asinine. Protests are nice, but even they won’t solve the key issue: we have a king that ignores laws right now, and we’re being ruled by a kletocratic corporatocracy.
Just try to tell them the parties are the same. I’ve been pilloried three times, they cut my balls off, and I’m set to be hung tomorrow at dusk.
See?! See?!
Yeah, there is a reason my instance doesn’t have downvotes or federates with the lemmy.world idiots
Glad I finally got off world and can see your comments again. Missed you. Not trying to be weird, I just like your style.
Yeah, I feel you. Every time I say that the earth is flat I get ridiculed left and right
Why should you say that out loud?
The issue isn’t that the parties are the same. It is that neither should be in power. And you’re all too fucking brainwashed to realize the only way out of this mess without violent revolution is a third party gaining power. And even with, probably.
3rd party can’t really gain power with first past the post. We have to implement ranked choice or approval voting before meaningful 3rd party choices are viable.
Amen brothersister
They aren’t the same. But they don’t need to be the same for them to both suck and not deserve to be in power. But had reduction is real.
No it isn’t. Harm reduction caused a genocide.
Do you see any realistic scenario where the majority of the American people didn’t support a government that would enable the genocide in Palestine? I hate to break it to you, but the average American is selfish. You were never stopping the genocide. Anything you do outside of speaking out and fighting so had you ruin your own life helped cause a genocide. And honestly, there are actually bad and worse genocides, and things in Palestine will be much worse because the Republicans aren’t scared of a war with Iran. They’re foaming at the mouth for it. Plus you get the bonus genocide of trans people too.
Fuck straight off. Democrats threw tarns people under the bus at the crack of dawn. And a worse genocide of Palestine? Are you fucking high right now? There is a ceasefire. A violated ceasefire is still superior to the no limits genocide you’re saying I should have voted for, you fucking nazi piece of shit. What the fuck is it going to take for you to look at yourself critically?
Its wild you think another violated ceasefire isn’t going to result in a leveled Gaza and West Bank. Enjoy the blood on your hands. Your certainly seem to think the people who will die are worth your moral superiority.
Harm reduction would have saved trans people like me from being erased by the government.
Our trans comrades are our front lines. If you’re not fighting for them you’re not fighting.
Exactly. Voting has never been enough, but it’s also the absolute bare minimum. How am I supposed to trust people to have my back who couldn’t take an hour out of their day to check some boxes?
Such things are never on the ballot
Voting is fake
System is rigged
Only methods outside the system work
Saying a simplistic, basic-ass statement such like “both parties are the same” is just annoying and not correct
Ok, but no one here said that. Thats a strawman liberals put up to avoid a few topics.
Those topics you’d rather not talk about:
Is all of gaza destroyed right now or not? Were tens of thousands of innocent civilians massacred there with our help or not? Be honest.
Bidens response to the defund and reallocate movement for justice was to ignore the plees and increase police funding, correct?
Did abortion go down on Bidens watch? Did his previous work as head of the senate judiciary committee contribute to that?
Didnt Biden carry through with his promise to the rich that “nothing would fundamentally change?”
Biden and Harris were not for gun control were they. Are guns just not a problem anymore in our schools? School shootings stopped?
Did the Dems talk about the issues important to the poor and middle class? They sure needed their votes.
Did Biden have the polling numbers to win at any time in the 2 years leading up to the election? And did Harris do anything to differentiate herself from what was clearly a candidate who was about to lose in a big way?
And now Biden/Harris lost but its everyone elses “fault”? come on man. Stop lying to yourself and holding a pointless grudge and lev eling these “both sides are the same” playground name calling distractions from these truths. Biden and Harris made the choices that led to the loss. They are not victim here, they are the perpetrators. We all got effed by their incomptence and hubris. Every demographic of voter was angry at Biden/Harris. Do you deny that?
You shouldnt be blaming the desperate voters who have been ignored and abused by their party, while excluding Biden/Harris from any blame. Some of you lot keep saying he’s one of the best presidents ever-- when all of the above topics argue pretty strongly otherwise, if you;d just acknowledge that the topics even exist.
All of these shortcomings are true, yet none one of them are a valid excuse for not voting for the lesser of two evils, I don t understand how this is so hard to grasp for some people. Accusing the abstentionists for what they have caused doesn’t imply absolving Biden of anything.
Accusing the abstentionists for what they have caused.
Oh my God, get over yourself
Directing the attention towards the voters instead of the democratic party is a deliberate tactic to create division among the working class. The democratic party has way more power than your neighbour who didn’t vote. Getting angry at your neighbour will only alienate them further. It’s a waste of energy.
Ok, but no one here said that.
They literally did though, in those exact words.
They literally did though, in those exact words.
I said you’d use that as a distraction and not engage on any of the topics I listed and lo and behold, thats exacly what you did. Frustrating.
Has is occurred to you that the reason no one is arguing that Biden and Harris aren’t pieces of shit is because they are actually pieces of shit, and no one in this reply chain said otherwise? That’s why “no one said that” was so funny to me.
Not recognizing that one party isn’t better than the other is the stake in the heart of democracy, nothing will change until you realize this
Counting negatives on my fingers…
huh?
You’re ignorant or lazy if you cannot see the difference- even if it is a nuance . . .they are different. For easy reference just check the Internet for voting disparity between the parties. Give me your top 5 most important values and then see which party aligns with them. Most likely you will not be able to say - they are both the same when voting for or against the 5 values I hold in highest regard.
My most important values are:
- no genocide, like under a whole Dem can we do that first?
- basic income for everyone regardless of status
- universal healthcare for anyone who ever should need it
- the legal system shouldnt discriminate based on who a person is
- you can fite me to to death on this, Trump is a shit piece and if i lived in Idaho I would have voted Harris but ya know what “oops” with regard to the electoral college I guess you are on the same team as me in Cali.
Tankies: they can’t do this, it’s not our side.
…what?
Better than not voting and doing nothing.
The best would be voting and being an activist.
Malcom X said,
“ I don’t think that if I was cornered by any fox or a wolf, that I would have to take a choice between either one. I don’t see any choice between a fox or a wolf. A fox is a fox and a wolf is a wolf—to me. Neither one is the lesser of two evils. Both of them are evil. And Negroes, when they become politically mature, I think will realize that you don’t have to throw the bullets out of your gun just because you have a gun. Likewise you should wait until you have a target and bring that target down. I think when Negroes become really mature, they won’t vote just because they can vote. Sometimes they’ll abstain. Ofttimes in a position of abstaining is as effective in its results as an actual vote, as is proved in the UN. You have those who say “yes,” those who say “no,” and those who abstain. And those who abstain have just as much weight. And probably the most intelligent thing Negroes could do at this juncture would be to abstain and withhold their vote completely and make both the fox and the wolf fight it out among themselves.”
This was true when he said and is true now. Malcom X knows far more about opposition to reactionary politics than you do and he what he said was in no outdated then nor now.
(https://www.icit-digital.org/articles/malcolm-x-at-columbia-university-november-20-1963)
You are free to participate in any kind of meaningless gestures and genuflection to make yourself feel better, but the US is a controlled authoritarian oligarchy with democratic window dressing and not a democracy in any meaningful way.
Look, if you aren’t going to do anything else, you might as well vote. It’s the best you can do. And even if you are active, you should still vote.
Right, I said you are free to do any meaningless gestures you want
You’re right, if you alone can’t fix everything, there’s really no point to trying.
My guy, life is filled with meaningless gestures we all have to regularly do.
I frequently know the only viable solution for companywide issues at my workplace. Do I just run off on my own and shove it through because I know I’m right? No.
Even when the change is so buried in the back end that they’d never know, I participate in the meaningless gesture of informing the business folks, taking questions that they don’t have the knowledge base to understand my answers, etc. It’s a regular process established in my workplace, and despite it not changing anything, it must be followed.
For the price of a few hours every four years, I get to bite back at people who argue that you don’t have any say if you didn’t vote. And if by some miracle voting ends up effecting some change (companies drawing conclusions from the popular vote maybe?), I’m already doing the bare minimum.
Wow, a lot of words to say nothing. You don’t have to do anything meaningless, it is by definition meaningless.
The US is not a democracy, it’s a capitalist dictatorship.
Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’
Okay, and? How does voting harm us? Not voting does a lot more harm.
Both voting and not voting have the same effect. Nothing. It is not a democracy and pretending you are in one does fuck all.
Throw bricks at fascists, punch nazis, but also vote, ffs
- votes Kamala
- at least 51% of others do the same
- Kamala wins
Explain again how voting and not voting does the same? I know the first past the post system is horrible, but saying that voting does nothing is disingenuous.
This is false, multiple presidents won more than 51% of the vote and lost. Your elections are decided by election riggers during redistricting. It is called gerrymandering. You live in a corrupt society that uses voting and a circus every few years to mollify you. Even if Kamala won, which was basically impossible based on how the districts were drawn, you’d still live in a capitalist dictatorship that would be every bit as bad as it is now. You would still be causing wars around the world, you would still have homeless people everywhere, and most people would still be living pay check to paycheck while she did absolutely nothing. Kamala Harris is a manager of capitalism, not leader in any sense. You have absolutely no vote or say in the people who run your country, the board members of Goldman Sachs, Chase, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and the rest.
The sad thing is, trump won even the popular vote. And, even with gerrymandering, voting still makes a change, if even a small one.
Also, are you saying trump and kamala are the same lmfao
It’s clear that you are completely unaware of the history of the US democratic party as controlled opposition, and how thoroughly evil they are.
Here’s what the Biden administration did to Palestine:
Some more on your party:
If your democracy is staged like reality TV, then it does nothing.
Does voting in a capitalist dictatorship work? It got the US to where it is now. Doing the same strategy over and over again, when proven that historically things keep getting worse, should tell you that not only is it a pointless strategy, it’s actively harmful because it draws energy into an electoral contest that does nothing to improve people’s lives.
Bourgeois democracy is an elaborate theatre piece used to keep people distracted, and give them the illusion of choice.
I’m not going to say the same thing twice, take a look at https://gregtech.eu/comment/3527169
That doesn’t address anything. Saying vote over and over doesn’t make it a viable strategy, especially in bourgeois “democracy”'s staged elections, where the vote choices are stacked between various capitalist puppets.
Essentially you’re asking us to play a rigged game, and insisting both that it’s not rigged, and that it’s super important to play it. Also that anyone who refuses to play it deserves ridicule. This is the level of zealotry people have in their fake political system.
I never said it wasn’t rigged. Not voting is not going to help you achieve the goal of stopping this madness. It will only make it harder. Democrats are, of course, the party of the rich, but so are Republicans. Republicans, however, are way more against the redistribution of wealth.
Not voting is not going to help you achieve the goal of stopping this madness. It will only make it harder.
You can only make statements like this, by ignoring history. People in the US have voted for 150+ years. This is the result.
Again, if voting is working so well, why do things keep getting worse? Are they just not voting hard enough? No, it’s the system that’s broken, it’s theatre, a catch-22, a rigged game. Those of us who’ve studied US history and it’s class history learned this a long time ago. The liberals coming and telling us to vote to fix things, aren’t bringing any new arguments, and appear to us like fanatical zealots, who think that if they repeat mantras over and over, it cancels history.
Even if one accepts the argument that voting is not productive, that doesn’t inherently justify not participating. There’s plenty of things people do daily that are not productive or useful uses of their time.
Please demonstrate the harm caused by voting in the presidential elections.
Even if it’s not productive, it takes at absolute worst case living in a hellscape without properly staffed polling places, one day out of your time every four years. I was able to do it and get back to my shit in 30 minutes this time, from the time I left home to the time I got back.
So even if it’s useless, for me it was the same as sitting on my ass and watching a TV show. Explain why that is such a horrendous waste of my time that I should have instead not done it at all.
The harm is simple, people get the illusion they’re making a difference and that it’s enough, it also legitimizes voting as the way to change things despite ample evidence it doesn’t.
This leads to Dems hating protestors, or telling protestors to protest quietly and no in the road. This leads to liberals hating the working class when they go in strike, because why didn’t they just vote for better conditions. It leads to liberals hating anything useful, because they already did the only ‘useful’ thing and voted.
This leads to lesser evilism and accepting institutions as the foundation of society, instead of any ideology that will positively change things.
Nah, this is not harm, this is “basically, way too many people are fucking idiots”. Idiots enough to think that just with "I voted"tm they have done something to really move things toward a better life for everyone
Well… true that only voting does not much help when those who make the rules are not someone you can influence. Also true that abandoning voting is just plain dumb.
Saddest part: I have no answer to the question of how to make a society that works well for everyone with people who do not understand that to ensure wellbeing of anyone the wellbeing of all and everyone must be ensured
Worse would be discouraging voting and activism. Instead try to tell people that nothing they do matters and just bend over and take it up the ass
I’m starting to see people rile up, fortunately, but it’s not enough. I’m going down to my states senate office with a megaphone and gonna stir some shit up. You should too. People are like lemmings, they won’t act until you do.
The current moment is like the recent wildfires. All this trash built up over the years and it sort of has to have its time to burn out. Everything just has to find a way to survive it until it runs out of fuel. When the pendulum swings back the other direction, just be ready to rebuild from the natural disaster.
Sorry. But this is total crap. A dictatorship won’t burn out by itself. People need to fight for freedom and democracy over and over again. It is not for granted!
The current moment is like the recent wildfires. All this trash built up over the years and it sort of has to have its time to burn out. Everything just has to find a way to survive it until it runs out of fuel. When the pendulum swings back the other direction, just be ready to rebuild from the natural disaster.
-Author unknown, February 1933
Dem’s aren’t even putting in the minimum effort into pretending to be an opposition party.
They’re gladly letting it all burn because they lazily expect it to mean easy wins in 2026. Then they’ll manage to barely take the House and maaaaybe Senate, and literally do nothing with it.
cuz that worked so well this year. got booty clapped by a felon. utterly waffle stomped right back to the segregation days by this diaper clad casino salesman.
they’re fucking done. they ain’t participating in 2026 as anything but a joke write-in
Sooo when does a new sane party appear ?
Fuck em. Saves me the grief of having to convince others they are a sunk cost and investing into them is like robbing ourselves because never get anything of value back. Or if we do it’s canceled out by all the other shit we conceded to corporate america.
Think of Martin, that dude didn’t get shit from the dems until he was orginized and marching. The dems weren’t on a path to provide rights. He did all the heavy lifting and they slithered into his camp and got him killed.
It’s so dense and stupid to generalise everybody. It’s not like the US has more than 2 parties to vote on and the country is already having an us vs then mentality which cause people of the “other side” to disprove of anything the “other side” does. Does comprise even exist in US dictionaries?
It’s all of you.
Not me, I’m on a whole other continent, watching the blaze, hoping it doesn’t spread too far.
Not me. I want the zealots all beheaded. Yea, what they’re doing is illegal and I also* voted. But now it’s chop chop time. I should start a website to get 15% of the population to agree with me on a specific day. Kind of like The General Strike. But with more axe.
I like where you’re going but the general strike stuff is suppose to be the step in between, ya know. It’s like a bit of a comprise before chop chop time. Just like hey guys we mad and have orginized and are willing to sacrifice.
OK. But what are you actually doing right now? What are any of us doing right now?
Learning about firearms to teach targeted groups. Teaching people about online alternatives for secure communication. Maintaining an antiICE communication network. Building an independent news source RSS so friends and family can get off Meta.
You?
I did that for years and then I emigrated because it didn’t work.
Pretty soon authoritarianism will be worldwide, though. That’s the goal.
I’m talking to like minded people overseas about preparing resources to help at-risk people evacuate the United States. I’m also accumulating an emergency fund and arming myself. I will continue to masquerade as a cis white dude so I can move mostly unimpeded. I plan to help people get to New England as a staging point–it will remain RELATIVELY less dangerous than most other parts of the country here–where they might have a chance of SURVIVING LONG ENOUGH to cobble their shit together enough that they can legally get overseas from here without violating a visa and getting deported back to this shithole.
I will also continue attempting to practice the art of not tipping off the enemy by giving them any warning that I might be a threat to them. I must swaddle myself in the flayed skin of civility. I must smile politely and patiently to their faces. I must lull them into feeling safe around me. I must wait until their back is turned. And then I can personally drag them to hell by the neck. Hopefully when nobody else will witness it.
There needs to be fewer fascists in America. One way or another. I’d rather see them convinced rationally to peacefully change their minds and stop being fascists. If they remove that option, well, they get lie in the beds they’ve shat.
I like you
You might also like transworldexpress.org :3
What they’ve got so far is brand new and the growing pains are real
but if you remember Mister Rogers: “Look for the Helpers”
Well there are some of them right now.
And you might get to be one too.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I live with someone who won’t stop crowing about the illegality of it all. Like, dude, I fucking get it, but also these fucks were evil from the very FUCKING start and the rule of law is meaningless without anyone to actually enforce it.
Suggestions?
I dunno, do something. Anything really. You have a handful of the richest people on earth trying to turn your country into a tech monarchy that wants to have the ability to put its people in vr prisons or kill then outright if it becomes uneconomic to keep them alive. Your entire people should be in a fight or flight response. Literally attacking the government and trying to kill the billionaires. It’s that bad of a situation for you. This is the worst possible timeline. In 10 years I don’t think the us will be a democracy. I think it will be a dictatorship kept in power by some type of artificial intelligence run surveillance system. The average man will have less and less economic importance to the oligarchy meaning less and less power to stand up to them until eventually you have to value to them at all at which time they start killing you. This is a nightmare timeline you are in.
This just advocating for adventurism. Lenin said, in Adventurism that,
“*Now take the other groups which pose as “trends”. We shall enumerate them: 1) the Vperyod group plus Alexinsky; 2) ditto plus Bogdanov; 3) ditto plus Voinov; 4) the Plekhanovites; 5) the “pro-Party Bolsheviks” (actually conciliators: Mark Sommer and his crowd); 6) the Trotskyists (i. e., Trotsky even minus Semkovsky); 7) the “Caucasians” (i. e., An minus the Caucasus).
We have enumerated the groups mentioned in the press. In Russia and abroad they have stated that they want to be separate “trends” and groups. We have tried to list all the Russian groups, omitting the non-Russian. All these groups, without exception, represent sheer adventurism.
“Why? Where is the proof?” the reader will ask. Proof is provided by the history of the last decade (1904–14), which is most eventful and significant. During these ten years members of these groups have displayed the most helpless, most pitiful, most ludicrous vacillation on serious questions of tactics and organisation, and have shown their utter inability to create trends with roots among the masses.*”
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/09.htm)
Adventurism is just a non-Marxist and non-revolutionary response to reactionary politics. Advocating for it, and following through on it are useless. Assassinating Franz Ferdinand didn’t achieve the Black Hands goals’ and nor will it achieve any other groups’.
So… yeah… not exactly helpful today.
You gotta know this stuff.
Read and learn from successful revolutions, and the Marxist tradition in general, which correctly identifies both the root problem, and has a wealth of historical experiences for how to defeat it, the correct and incorrect roads taken, and what worked/didn’t. Join working-class parties, and organize for our own interests, so that sociopaths who would be happy sacrificing all of us for the sake of profits, don’t control society.
Cowbee keeps an excellent study guide here, and I have one here.
Thank you, Dessalines. I of course remember your welcome when I first showed up in some instance in Lemmy. I admire the work and the structure of this alternative to social media and I quickly became aware that much of its success is due to your efforts. I have presumed they are all volunteer?
I am grateful for the two reading lists.
I have started one of the audio books already — one I’ve been telling myself I’d read forever.
But I’ll ask — considering how brutal and distorted much of what has been associated with this work became, how do people remain idealistic and hopeful about it?
If you take a gander at my last few posts, you’ll discover I’ve just been sharing a 3 second image of a swastika being blown upanywhere I can manage it. We all know where Trump is headed… same exact thing that happened to Hitler. I say we get to the end of this the sooner the better. I don’t know how to stay positive.
The idea that any of these theories have become “brutal and distorted” is incredibly dishonest. Please tell us about this trend of this occurring and not the trend of Marxism correctly analyzing material conditions in a scientific manner. Please tell us about how millions weren’t lifted out of poverty by China, Vietnam, Cuba, the USSR, Laos, DPR Korea, and many other states influenced by MLism. Your comment stinks of ignorance. Mao’s Combat Liberalism explains how your thinking is reactionary and ridiculous. When you have not investigated history, you have no right to comment on history.
I’m not Dessalines, but as the curator of the other list, I can do my best to answer.
When you say that Marxism has become “brutal and distorted,” I think you’re operating from a mindset and understanding rooted in Western culture and education. I would say, based on my research and reading into AES (Actually Existing Socialism), these countries such as Cuba, the PRC, and the former USSR all apply Marxist understanding and methods to amazing effect.
The Red Scare never ended, and being aware that it existed isn’t enough to actually understand what AES is like. The history of AES, and the conditions within those countries, is not reported faithfully or honestly in the West, so it is very difficult. That doesn’t mean they are perfect, but it means they are real, and come with real victories for the Working Class.
That’s why the opening sections of my reading list include Blackshirts and Reds as well as Dr. Michael Parenti’s 1986 lecture, these 2 really give an eye-opening look into the mythology and demonization of AES in the west, and how that process is intentional and persists to this day.
To circle back to your question, Marxists are hopeful because Marxism works, we know this and see it happening. We learn from the mistakes our predecessors made and we promise to carry their work forward.
As a final side-note, regarding the Nazis: it was the Red Army that did 80% of the fighting against the Nazis. We have Marxists to thank for the defeat of the Nazis, and we can do it again.
I’m surely not here to argue.
What do marxists think of North Korea?
And you are correct that my “education” has been little more than capitalist brainwashing, but what’s true about the millions that Stalin is supposed to have massacred?
Generally, the DPRK is seen similarly to Cuba, they would be doing far better if the US Empire wasn’t sanctioning them directly to cause harm. As for Stalin, it depends on what you’re talking about, the Great Purge had no more than 700,000 condemned to death, and that doesn’t mean every one of them was actually executed. Stalin certainly wasn’t a saint, but at the same time he wasn’t worse than Hitler and killed 10-20 million like the Black Book of Communism would have you think.
Ultimately though, Marxism isn’t “become DPRK” or “be Stalin.” I think you have to study Marxism more to understand why those questions largely don’t matter for building Socialism. I suggest you read Blackshirts and Reds.
I shall embrace beginner mind and read more. Thanks for the recommendations and the links.
I believe that progressives in the US brought this on by lacking genuine and real vision. They called themselves progressives but Bernie was too socialist for them?? I can’t stand it.
🫡 thanks comrade!
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