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09/11 Chile vibes
And it’s a holiday in Cambodia
Where you’ll what you’re told
Holiday in Cambodia
Where the slum’s got so much soul
Yeah, everything is good in theory.
“Working people should have a good salary and good work conditions”. Does a communist say that or a capitalist?
Communism will end up in an oligarchy, capitalism will end up in an oligarchy, anarchism will end up in an oligarchy and totalitarianism starts as an oligarchy.
Maybe there will be a system that taxes the rich in a progressive manner, will give working individuals freedom, will not tolerate corporations as humans and will keep everything somewhere in the middlem
Maybe we should call this a social democracy or something, but what do I know?
When people ask me what communist country was successful I usually say all of them until cia decided to go there and spread freedom 🇺🇸🦅
Well… There was this thing called Soviet Union. They decided to try to speed up the transition to communism by using repression and violence. And ended up being a totalitarian state, a direct opposite of what a communist state is supposed to be like.
Of course you can argue that Soviet Union was not communist, it was just a state that had chosen to call itself communist for propaganda reasons… But still, Soviet Union is an example of a communist country that was unsuccessful as a communist project already by itself. Then came outsiders and helped make it even worse, but bad doesn’t become good by some people wanting it to be even worse. Burma is another example. I’d say they hacked away their own leg before anyone else, such as CIA, had time to interfere in their business.
The USSR had to deal with a civil war, rising up during WWI and being sabotaged by the Germans, more civil war, foreign meddling, and all while being the first successful communist revolution. Yet they still managed to raise literacy, raise health outcomes, raise average life expectancy, gender equality, science and technology, end the cycle of famines (after the first one or two they had when they were still building up), had faster growth during that period than any capitalist country (except maybe the US, which was doing imperialism at the time and the biggest hegemon), all while helping sustain other socialist countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.
What no theory does to an mf
Maybe don’t brag about your ignorance publicly and keep your mouth shut about things you know nothing about?
TheRe Was THiS THinG CallEd The SoviEt UnioN
The russians got sick of dying for the tsar during ww1. They revolted. Six months later, ww1 “ended” (between germans and british, that is) and everybody was redeployed to russia.
Of course a country that’s being invaded is totalitarian, wtf do you expect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War
The USSR didn’t “do repression and violence to speed up Communism,” they had a successful revolution and established Socialism. By all accounts it was quite successful overall, but we can learn from where they erred and adapt for the future.
The only ones who believe the Soviet Union wasn’t Socialist are generally Western Trots or liberals/Anarchists who already don’t want the form of society Marxists want, which is a government that publicly owns its large and key industries and gradually folds in the new firms that grow to that level until the entire economy is publicly owned.
Have you never heard of bolševiks and menševiks? What you’re explaining is what menševiks wanted, but what happened was what bolševiks aimed for.
And that was inhumane horror.
No, the Mensheviks had a poor understanding of Historical Materialism and didn’t think the Peasantry could truly be allied to the Proletariat. What I am describing is what the Bolsheviks did. To a better extent the PRC also fulfills this.
Least smug shitlib
Luckily the US is dismantling the CIA so that’s good news for communism!!!
JDPON DON
Is this true?? I suspect something closer to the way the KGB was “dismantled” and then re-assembled around the entire government.
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.
This, so much this. Having a job and a roof over your head is such a luxury in the ‘global south’, the true face of capitalism
Why would you not compare european communist countries woth european capitalist countries? Sure, africans and asians were poorer, but that goes without saying, honestly, what does that even have to do with this matter?
East Germany was poorer than west Germany. That tells us something. The fact that Ethiopia or whatever was poorer does not really tell us much about ehich economic system is better.
Ethopia and the rest of africa got colonized by capitalists, idiot. It tells us a whole lot about which economical system is better.
Of course if you only see the receiving end of theft, you would think theft is great.
You’re conveniently forgeting all the plundering of the global south the good ol’ european capitalist countries did to develop themselves.
West Germany had almost all of the industry of Germany, and East Germany was made to pay harsh reparations for the immense devastation the Nazis wrought upon the Soviet people and countries. Moreover, West Germany was never de-Nazified, and the US and Western Countries heavily invested into its development as a means to destabilize the relations with the East, even threatening to put NATO nukes in West Germany.
Loool it’s easy to say East Germany was poorer when they had to deal with all the sanctions. But be my guest, how many homeless people in USA and how many in Cuba?
If only there was a superpower leading a blok of nations rivaling the west that could have supported east Germany…
Hard to do so in the aftermath of World War II when the Nazis destroyed half your buildings and murdered 20 million of your people. The Soviets did 80% of the combat against the Nazis.
So you claim the USSR did not support East Germany because of anti-german sentiments, while the west invested quite a lot into the reconstruction of FRG. I am afraid I am not qualified to assess how accurate that claim is(the former half of it, specifically). But I am deeply skeptical about this, since it would be quite a useful propaganda tool both domestically and in the west. Also, the east had a communist government and it distanced itself from it’s past. The internationalist ideology of the USSR should have triumphed over the nationalist sentiments that might have existed.
However, I should say, that the main point of my original comment still stands. Of course, there are always many factors at play and it is not the case that the disparity between the east and the west can be attributed to the economic system alone. However, this does not mean that such comparisons are not valid, and I still would say that comparing european countries to underdeveloped countries to say that life in eastern Europe “wasn’t that bad” is quite absurd.
I didn’t say the USSR didn’t support East Germany, I explained the unique struggles East Germany faced compared to West Germany.
Well if you didn’t I do not know how I can possibly explain your previous comment.
“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.”
So… “man doesn’t exploit man”? Sounds good!
Its a Galbreth quote.
I’m gonna be real with you, I don’t know who or what that is and I deliberately chose to ignore the likely sarcasm, but feel free to enlighten me.
Death to America
as an american, hell yeah!
Same, man, same lol. I’m still patriotic during the Olympics, but if we’re going to be funding genocides, assassinating leaders, and starting wars and shit, fuck it, I hope we lose them all lol. Let’s just start over on the whole project.
I invite US balkanization at this point so I can go hang out in the new sovereign state of whatever CA, WA, and OR will be called. Hawaii can come, too.
As an Australian I now understand the contempt of the middle east for America.
And we haven’t even bombed you to the stone age yet to take all your oil! (or coal? Whatever Australia has) Imagine it would be even more after that lol.
Just listen to Blowback.
Hey I’m European, I have loads of contempt for them too, and same for our sellout leaders.
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.
to anyone who says “why don’t you compare communist eastern europe to democratic western europe?”. sure, first thing to notice is that eastern europe didn’t had companies exploiting underdeveloped nations for their cheap labour and raw materials, their oppression of labour organizations and the support of corrupt rulers. since brazil was mentioned (heh), let us remember that west german companies such as vw or mercedes-benz used to report on syndicalists and communists working and organizing on their plants to the brazilian military during the dictatorship, and sold equipment to the military and police. that siemens sold nuclear reactors to the dictatorship during the late 70s. that many former officials of the dictatorship got leadership jobs in these companies and in basf, hoescht, atlas-schindler, mwm. behind the “economic success” of the rich countries of the west there’s always some degree of exploitation of poorer countries.
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.
There isn’t really a single form of communist government, same as there isn’t a single way to do democracy or capitalism. Every country does it different, experiments a different way. For all we know, the perfect way to do it is just waiting for us to discover.
For example, I’d say the US’s form of liberal, bourgeois democracy is one of the worst ways to implement it, but it was also an early experiment with it and deserves credit for at least trying it and helping us learn what to do and what not to do.
There is a poem in Polish, it goes in fast and dirty translation: “Today you scare us with communists, just as years ago, you scared our fathers with the democrat name”.
The more I study history, the more I see the great wheel of humanity. Communists now, Jews in the 40s, Muslims in the early middles ages, the barbaric Gauls before Christ was even born. It never stops. The people with wisdom die off leaving remnants of their culture and ideas while the next generations tries to piece it all together.
5·21 hours agoSomeone between 1804 and 1830: Democracy doesn’t work, just look at France, it dissolves into an empire
Or during Rome lol.
Republics don’t work. They always just end up authoritarian.
Seeing some of the zingers in the comments here, now seems like a great time to plug my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Read up, comrades!
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.
Choosing not to read theory is choosing to always be ignorant.
Why? Information is information. Why does it matter if it comes from books or videos?
Firstly, “Results from the study confirmed the substantial equivalence of all conditions in immediate comprehension. Conversely, results confirmed the disadvantage of subtitled videos for deep learning outcomes.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360131520302323
Secondly, there are no videos ever made that explain the depth and volume that many books do. They simply don’t exist
Thirdly, you can easily refer back to other areas of books that are more difficult in videos.
Fourthly, you can read sentence over again when you don’t understand but you have to stop to rewind which makes it more difficult to place in context.
Fifthly, videos just don’t exist for this. There are no videos that exist that explain things in the structured format that actual theory provides.
You cannot become educated on this matter with videos and it will just leave you over-confident and ignorant
Vaush’s whole thing is controversy bait. He purposely crosses lines to get people mad at him while maintaining some form of “plausible deniability” to where his fans can always find a way to defend and excuse his actions by talking about “you don’t understand the context” or whatever, it’s a very common and tiresome tactic. Like, if you’re trying to promote a shitty video game that can’t stand on it’s own merits, just do something to antagonize either the left or the right (doesn’t matter which) and then go to the other group and be like, “Look, the guys you hate hate us, you should check us out.” Controversy generates clicks. A big reason for Trump’s success is that he cracked the code on how to apply this formula to a political campaign. If you know how to recognize it, it’s very obvious that Vaush does this.
This sort of opportunism is very detrimental to actually understanding the world or promoting ideas or building a movement. It’s essentially brain-poisoning and a cognitohazard. You’re much better off reading actual books than just following whoever’s best at attracting attention on the internet. If you are going to shun books for videos, you should at least go with someone more educational, like Shaun.
I do get that vibe from Vaush occasionally. Unfortunately the attention economy is a real thing and I would be impressed with anyone with the same reach as Vaush wouldn’t be doing similar things. I am not sure I would be as far left as I am without his content.
Doesn’t Hasan have a larger audience without doing that sort of thing?
No idea, I have only watch him one or two times. Seemed good to me.
A big difference between Hasan and Vaush is that Hasan generally wastes very little of his time with sectarian nonsense or left-punching, while Vaush makes that one of his core focuses. Hasan networks with the Deprogram crew, Chapo, and other more Marxist aligned groups without screaming about “tankies,” while Vaush leans heavily into that.
Hasan is also generally much better with foreign policy, even though I don’t always agree.
The biggest thing is that Hasan serves as a great gateway to Leftist radicalization, while Vaush ends up preventing further Leftist movement, kinda like a more Libertarian Socialist-coded Destiny.
My fiancé and I will still watch Hasan even when we may disagree with him on some issues because he is generally entertaining and generally more correct than not, but would never watch Vaush.
Lmfao
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.
How can you have a problem with Vaush when he is so ideologically similar to Hasan? Unless you have have disagreements with Hasan.
Comrade Cowbee already listed the issues with Vaush that I’ll not repeat here.
That being said, I can’t really say much about Vaush’s ideological stance since I don’t watch him. What I can say is that I doubt he’s anywhere close to Hasan ideologically if going by how his fans act. Most of the times what I have seen is a pretty clear anticommunist stance from them that I cannot comprehend, specially when they love to laud Vaush as such a great leftist youtuber.
Unless you have have disagreements with Hasan
I do have some issues with Hasan actually, which I’ll use this comment to inform anyone that reads it after my recommendation. I don’t watch a lot of Hasan, I usually see bits and pieces of him here and there when youtube recommends him to me, and I mostly disagree with some of his instances on China, from the little I seen he’s mostly pro China, but I have seen some iffy stuff on his knowledge about the Uyghurs. I also don’t think his format of reaction/commentary to be that great either, specially since he likes to leave mid video a lot while it is still playing for his audience. I think his content could benefit a lot more if he actually paused on key points of the videos he reacts to to explain, debunk and or give context to the stuff said while also giving his opinion and stance on that as a Marxist. If you want an example of what that would be like, the brasilian youtuber João Carvalho I mentioned before does this, a lot, like to the point of even being a bit tiring sometimes, lol, but makes the content usually pretty transformative instead of just content theft.
That being said, Hasan is a very important figure in radicalizing and propagandizing for the left in the english speaking internet since he’s at the top of the left pipeline on youtube at least. I recommend this video by Yugopnik to learn more about this.
Thank you for your reply.
Big yikes
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.
Where can I find audiobooks you talked about? My app probably doesn’t show your userpage right.
I have audiobook links after (almost) each listed work.
I am pretty familiar with Vaush’s arguments on Marxist theory. What are your points of contention?
The vast majority of them, to be honest. He has no grasp of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, has no knowledge of AES, and horrendously distorts Lenin.
He’s a liberal that cosplays an Anarchist and pretends to have beyond a Wikipedia understanding of Marxism.
That’s, of course, ignoring that he’s a chaser, pedophile, sex offender.
He has no grasp of Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Can you list a specific example? I think he has a good understanding of this.
One of the worst issues is when he depicts AES as “not real Socialism” because they contain contradictions, when Dialectical Materialism shows that all systems contain contradictions and must resolve them, that doesn’t mean they aren’t that system. Ie, Capitalist states contain public ownership, which is a contradiction but does not define the system.
One of the recent and larger-scale issues was when he tried to explain Lenin advocated voting Socialism into existence.
I don’t make it a point to hate-watch sex offenders that do the work of the US state department.
Yeah, I am not surprised that you have disagreements behind Lenin and AES. The two are pretty related and hard to pull apart. I was just surprised that you would disagree with any of his Marxist takes. I think you both agree what the problems are from a Marxist perspective.
As for the sex offenders/sex pest stuff. I don’t think he is those things, but I understand I am just one person. From the stuff I have seen it is mostly people that disagree with him that label him as such as a way to get around the fact they don’t really have a leg to stand on; Fascists and the like. Not saying that is you of course.
Thanks for taking the time to talk this though by the way. I figure you get hit with a lot of stuff.
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”
As far as I know, all the criticisms of Vaush watching child porn has been misinformation.
Then you clearly don’t know much. Maybe you should actually learn about the people you recommend
I watch Vaush a lot and I haven’t seen what you are talking about.
can communism survive in a single country was always a big question.
I think the original idea was to try a world revolution but that didn’t work out.
Us is the main holdout. Russia is basically socialist, EU is basically socialist. China is communist.
Us is the only serious holdout
Russia is Capitalist, the EU is Capitalist, the US is Capitalist, and China is Socialist. Communism must be global, but Socialism is the process of building towards that through publicly owning large firms and key industries. Communism exists as an ideology for now, and hasn’t been achieved yet.
Russia has universal health care and mandatory vacations and many other perks - it’s in Russia constitution in 7.1. Same is EU.
us is definitely capitalist
Welfare and social programs are not Socialism. Socialism is when public ownership is the primary basis of your economy.
For what purpose - for the purpose of providing these social programs. It’s all connected
No, not really. The purpose behind Socialism is that as time goes on, production becomes more and more complex, and eventually must be publicly planned to continue being effective. Social programs are important, but Social Programs in a system dominated by Private Capital are subject to the will of the bourgeoisie, and often done in a manner that supports private profits.
Socialism and Capitalism are descriptors for economic formations, not if a country provides free healthcare or not.
China is a cocktail of socialism, capitalism, nationalism… claiming it’s only one ~ism is probably oversimplifying, but communism is probably a bit far stretch.
China has a Socialist Market Economy, it isn’t so much a cocktail as it is Marxism-Leninism applied to China’s current conditions.
China has a Socialist Market Economy, it isn’t so much a cocktail as it is Marxism-Leninism applied to China’s current conditions.
This sentence is in Chinese constitution and text book for every first grade student. Repeating it doesn’t help any meaningful conversation, unless you are a 7 years old trying to pass exam and get to second grade…
It’s a sentence I made, just because the PRC agrees with describing themselves that way doesn’t mean I’m not adding to meaningful conversation. When you declare that China is a cocktail of Capitalism and Socialism, what does that actually mean? It seemed like your comment was more about not analyzing China’s economy than coming up with a coherent and consistent answer, which is what I pushed forward.
Basically, Capitalism and Socialism are descriptors of overall systems, not portions of an economy, so calling a system a cocktail of each doesn’t make too much sense and adds confusion more than clarity.
Could a Communist Nation be considered viable if such a hostile force can take it down? Does it all come down to survival of the fittest (in the best use of the term)?
It does come back to it because the “fittest” nations are barbarians as shit.
Yes and no. Yes in the sense that we can get a good idea of what does work as success/failure isn’t a binary, no in the sense that, ultimately, the overall strategy ended up not being viable. We can learn from this, taking what works and leaving behind what didn’t.
The AES states of today have learned from what happened to the USSR and other former Socialist countries and have adapted, such as China’s Socialist Market Economy and stance towards international investment, not closing off but not ceding power.
lemmy.ml moment
Tbh did you read this thread? lemmy.ml made these capitalists look like completely unread simpletons, it’s genuinely embarrasing on their side
Most people don’t become Marxist-Leninists without doing a lot of reading, in my experience.
The biggest flaw with communism is that you have to actually read instead of trusting a propaganda mill blindly and uncritically to become one.
some utterly propagandized capitalist will read this and think we’re the propagandized ones, hilariously not realizing all they have is strawmen they didn’t even come up with themselves and things they didn’t fact check even the tiniest bit.
There’s propaganda on both sides
yeah in the same way that there’s guns and shootings all over the world but they’re almost all concentrated in one place… american schools.
either way, communists are vastly more prepared to deal with propaganda because in capitalist societies critical thinking is destroyed by nearly every institution that can teach it.
if you go by this thread one side has nothing but propaganda. There was not one valid argument made on the capitalist side when I read this thread, I could’ve better argued for capitalism, it’s pathetic.
closest they got was china is mean to uyghurs, but capitalists do genocide every 5 seconds so that’s hardly a pro capitalist argument. At least the chinese, if they are covering it up, have the decency to cover it up, capitalists brazenly and openly happily do it, and support it!
Your main problem is that you’re saying capitalism = USA. There are a lot more other countries that aren’t involved in genocides
The only arguments I’ve seen in this thread are “but USA corrupted them so it’s entirely their fault” and “but somewhere in the world some people had worse living conditions”
I think we’re all suffering from confirmation bias in this thread
I have to admit I don’t know a lot about communism and geopolitics overall, but so far I haven’t seen a successful implementation of it that would make me want to live there, and the main countries that approaches its definition are a huge red flag to me
The Western Capitalist countries that you’d likely consider “good to live in” depend on Imperialism. In short, they act as landlords in country form. Socialist countries like the PRC are making huge strides in comparison without depending on Imperialism, genocide, etc to sustain themselves.
If the only arguments you’ve seen in this thread are along the lines you’ve described, then you’ve either blocked people or otherwise are defederated from instances like Lemmygrad.ml.
If you want to learn more about Communism, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. It’s designed for complete newcomers, the first section is designed to be self-contained in that it gives you a broad overview of Communism in theory and historically, then it goes through the essentials of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice in the latter sections. There are audiobooks linked as well for most works.
No, all capitalist countries that are nice places to live are guilty of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, or some combination of the three. No exceptions. All you’re noticing is that they have successfully exported their suffering at best.
Communist countries have a massive uphill battle, they have to gain wealth without imperialist exploitation AND fend off the US, who has the same military budget as the rest of the world COMBINED, this combined with the fact they usually started poor makes this a wildly unfair comparison. Only authoritarians can hold onto power when faced with all of these things.
the mere fact that in 75 years china has gotten where it has and the only issues you can really point to are matters of policy rather than fundamental failures of communism tells most of the story, communism can be essentially identical to what china does with freedom of speech, no censorship, and no genocide very easily, as none of those things have anything to do with whether a country is communist or not, with all of the benefits.
in other words capitalists can’t find flaws with communism that don’t apply to capitalism, only issues with particular implementations, the issues communists talk about are mostly fundamental to capitalism.
So I’m scrolling back up to reply to you after reading more. I actually don’t see most of the capitalist comments lol. I see a bunch of replies to removed comments that really don’t tell me anything about how the other side is replying.
You can use the modlog, lemmy’s web interface lets you see it
It doesn’t matter what ideology. If the people running it are rotten, any system can be corrupted.
So then the solution is to decentralize so everyone is running it.
And have a way for it to be trustless as well
Communism by any other name would smell as sweet
Communism is more about centralization, Anarchism is the one about decentralization as a rule.
And likewise, oligarchy calling itself communism smells just as rancid.
A co-operative ?
It’s simple: teach everyone to make everything they need for themselves, so they can’t be expoited
ah yes let me just manufacture my own toilet paper on my 50m2 apartment
Sure bro lemme teach my aunt to make her insulin, her own needles, her own glucose test strips and all that cheers
There is a group actively working to open source Insulin manufacturing to make it practical to self produce.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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”.
Start from yourself
Something something darwin
What does Darwin have to do with enslavement of the human species?
Deeply anti-materialist take.
Can you explain how you disagree? Is it about incentives to be corrupt (or against) depending on the system?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Human greed destroys all forms of government.
This is one of bourgeois ideology’s last defenses: apathy.
That all the other systems are just as bad.
That it’s just “human nature.”
That there is no alternative.Greed is our evolutionary dead end
