I'm interested in hearing your stories.

It seems like nobody is willing here in the US to actually throw themselves into a revolt or meaningful change because our conditions are just good enough. I still see everyone around me going for the best social status, the best job, the best car, the biggest house, and completely ignoring all the major flashing red lights. I feel like a crazy person, like one of those people that's missing the point. I feel surrounded by lunatics and typically that means you're the crazy one but I just know I can't be in this situation, it makes no sense. Why is it like this? Why do I feel surrounded by NPCs? I can't connect to pretty much anyone here. It all seems so trivial. I don't want to sound elitist or anything I just can't see how people still don't see the full picture What to do?

This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds (no it won't) The alt hunt account is still ongoing comrades, not until I say it's over. First time? Read this: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/500112 Second time? Then get to hunting. I'm waiting. Third time? Read carefully 😉

Holy shit man. I hope it has to do with algorithm or some another shit. This is huge amounts of suffering imposed on not by natural disaster only but by goverment and the capitalists to the workers.

This might seem like an odd question but I'm totally serious. I'm tired of having to sift through capitalist propaganda whenever I want to ask a question like "how does China's government structure work" and seeing like 20 results about how Xi Jinping personally controls the mind of every Chinese citizen. On the other hand I don't want to bother everyone here with trivial questions every day. Does anyone have pro-socialist alternatives to Google? If not, where should be the first place I go to for information from a socialist perspective?

I'm perhaps in a bit of a fringe position as a historian. I actually think the United States is already in a low-effort civil conflict, and it will continue escalating into a full-fledged civil war within two years. The similarities between the First Civil War and the events today are undeniable to me at least, having studied it extensively. Of course, that is child's play compared to what the Climate Crisis is going to do to the United States government or its successor state(s). With that said, how much longer do you personally think Washington is going to be able to claim control over its portion of the North American contient and subjugate its people with capitalist tyranny? How do you think it will fall? If you don't think it will fall, please explain why because I am genuinely curious why you think that given the state of the union.

Thoughts? They apparently have "experts" https://www.insider.com/north-korean-girl-youtube-subscribers-song-a-propaganda-videos-2023-2


https://www.sm28.org/articles/j11-the-return-of-the-cuban-proletariat/ I’m wondering your thoughts on this. I think they are ancoms and/or leftcoms, so obviously I took everything with a grain of salt. They have both been to Cuba in the last few years, and talked to people there. I’m pretty sure they are talking about “#soscuba.” This is what they claim: -the Cuban people have become disillusioned with communism -since the economy is mostly based on tourism the state puts a lot of money into resorts for foreigners instead of caring for their people, Cuba therefore basically already has capitalism, especially because most of their economy relies on exports and trading with companies like nestle -the people were originally supportive of the revolution, but since Fidel died stuff has gotten worse -Cuba really peaked in the 90s when people took care of each other and there were cool farming programs and stuff -since, the farming stuff has ceased and most people are food insecure -the government is bureaucratic and is very strict not wanting people to do anything they don’t directly approve of -at this point the Cuban people don’t even care about political ideology, they just want an end to it -one claimed most people on the street will express disapproval of the gov, while the other claimed most people say they want capitalism -they say Cuba has a very small amount of crime and then claim that they have a high incarceration which is mostly political prisoners -the Cuban anarchist they interview claims there was no cia involvement, but if there were they would have welcomed it My assumption was that the sanctions on Cuba are what is causing most of these problems, but they deny it as the underlying problem. They acknowledge the “Stalinist” talking points that Batista was worse, etc and say they’re right, but that doesn’t mean Cuba’s gov isn’t bad. Then they say something about Communism naturally coming to be hated by people in places like Cuba and the USSR, (of course they think their own specific brand of communism would be better), and this rubs me the wrong way, as the people of the USSR didn’t want it to end, in fact they almost voted the communist party back into power after the undemocratic dissillusion. So, what do you think? Is the US’ strategy of sanctioning countries til their people get desperate working? Is cuba a degenerated workers state?

Thus I bring you **Vetlugasaurus**. Despite the *-saurus* in the name, it is in fact an Amphibian of the Temnospondyli order, which lived in what is now Russia and Greenland during the early Triassic period. Originally discovered and categorized in 1920-s, it is named after river Vetluga - on the shores of which the first fossil was found. The skull measures ~22 cm, with overall body length ranging from 75 cm to 3 meters. In 2018, a full skull was found. 

Hello everyone. I am interested in learning about the death penalty specifically from a socialist perspective, as well as why do socialist countries currently implement it. China is notable for being based as hell and executing corrupt capitalists. But, my question is, why is execution necessary or preferable to, say, life imprisonment? The biggest argument I can think of against the death penalty is simply that nobody and no government is perfect, and it's entirely possible that somewhere along the line, an innocent person will get executed and be exonerated only after the fact. If someone gets life in prison and it later turns out they are not guilty, they could be released and recompensated. The death penalty however, is not reversible. So this raises a few questions for me: 1. What are your opinions on the death penalty (both in principle and in practice)? 2. What are the reasons current and former socialist countries practice it? I should also mention I am primarily thinking of countries in a stable, peaceful state, as opposed to during a war/civil war. Thanks!

Seems like the narative around demand from China has changed every few hours for like a year. Either too many covid restrictions or too much covid. Either opening up will drive prices up or opening up is underwhelming but still driving prices up? It's hard to follow I swear the last year or so China narratives are just market manipulation tactics

Russia's SMO is approaching its 1 year anniversary. I am interested in learning what people have to say about the war, how it's going, and how it will end up. Do you think this will end in the foreseeable future? Will it escalate further? How will the media represent whatever result happens?

dengtists work with dental hyxhaists

Watching an episode of boyboy and look what pops up

Apparently it's some wrestler lol.

https://miralatinalab.com/es/artista/wara-vargas/

Sometimes it's difficult to find a good argument against blindly siding with Ukraine against Russia, so I'm wondering what to say next time some NATO worshipper orders me to fulfill my daily NATO worship quota or else he's gonna cancel me on twitter dot com or whatever. What are the facts? For one, I don't believe Ukraine belongs to Russia and I don't want to be excusing Russian war crimes, let's get that out of the way. I don't want to make those kinds of arguments. For two, I also don't want to say that Ukraine should cede all ground, let Russia take over (assuming that's what they want to do), and only help the refugees who fled to us and do nothing else. (Also, I'm not sure what to make of Donbas and Crimea. It was indeed weird that NATO did nothing when the latter got annexed, but now...?) Three, I'm wary of "future predictions"; I don't want to predicate my stance on the matter on the possibility that Russia's war effort will eventually falter and things will get back to normal anyways. Opinions akin to this do not seem very thought-out to me. Something similar goes regarding the Ukraine corruption and Nazis arguments. Yes, these issues are real, but it doesn't seem to me like they justify letting Ukraine be invaded by someone who doesn't seem to be doing it for those reasons in particular. And lastly, if I should accept the idea that NATO is fundamentally bad because it is the muscle of the Euro-American empire, rather than just marginally bad due to whatever bad thing it's currently doing in regards to the Ukraine war (again, highlight what exactly it is), then what about those "NATO is just a defensive pact" arguments? Who exactly can and cannot join NATO, who are its enemies, what are its motivations, etc? I'm hearing a lot of comparisons between Russia and Nazi Germany where I live (I'm Czech). They compare the way both have expanded, were initially tolerated, but then they expanded too much and war broke out. They compare Hitler and Putin and their "Lebensraum" vs "vulnerable borders" and call both bs. BS because Germany had enough space, and because Russia isn't the only nation with vulnerable borders, yet they're the only ones complaining. What do I even say? At this point, my entire opinion amounts to "war is bad and the fighting should stop", which, despite how much I've learned over the past year, seems awfully uneducated.

Unfortunately the silesian autonomists are libertarians and no one is treating them seriously, but the silesian nationality is the problem that is being shushed in Poland hard since Poland has tried hard to prevent it from emerging as true nation for over 100 years now.

I'm considering selling pc parts to make a living though I am a bit concerned about one thing: CPU My concern is the bottlenecking of the GPU (especially given I'll get a 2060)

Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Feel free to marvel at our stockpile of high-tech spy balloons. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread! We have our own Matrix homeserver at https://genzedong.org, and a Matrix space; see [this thread](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/484053) for more information. [Discord](https://discord.gg/QA72fD89hb) Short reading list for new MLs [here](https://teddit.net/r/communism/comments/wisiw). To find theory (and other books), you can use [z-lib](https://z-lib.is), [libgen](https://libgen.is), or [Sci-Hub](https://sci-hub.ru/about) (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try [the Wayback Machine](https://archive.org).

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/506167 > When say "self-employed" I mean folks like custom-pc builders, carpenters, vulcanizers, with no additional staff. > > Which class do they fall under, capitalist or proletariat? Are there some special cases regarding them? >

[This is from the same timeline as the People's Republic of Korea timeline.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/433473) After a period of negotiations between the CPSU and the Socialist Unity Party from 1949-51, war reparations – which in our timeline amounted to approximately USD$100b – to be paid by the GDR to the USSR, were cancelled – accompanied by the return of industry (which had been carted away during the immediate post-War era). The effect of this was a smaller portion of the GDR's national income going towards Soviet coffers, and more reinvestment – producing exponential returns. Observing the negative effects of the brain drain of skilled technicians and scientists across the border, the GDR constructed the border wall in 1954, seven years earlier than in our timeline, and in doing so headed off its brain drain. But not the concrete division was not intended to last – the 1971 market crash signalled the beginning of a long period of recession and stagnation in the GDR's neighbour – officially known as the Federal Republic of Germany, and colloquially known as West Germany. While the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, subsidies to the FRG's economy trickled to a halt – the US government had more important things to worry about than the performance of the West German industrial sector. In the same period, the socialist planned economy of East Germany consistently expanded year after year – the anarchy of market capitalism having been superseded by scientific socialist relations of production. Originally almost deindustrialized, with an economy historically poorer than the western regions, the GDR advanced forward in leaps and bounds – expanding by a consistent 7-9% each year. By 1973, GDP per capita had equalized with West Germany, and by 1980, the GDR's GDP per capita stood at €15,000 while the FRG stood at €13,800. With Khrushchev's faction losing the power struggle within the CPSU to Molotov's faction in the 1950s, the economic reforms establishing profit as the main criterion for evaluating the success of a firm never became prominent. In our timeline, these reforms lead to stagnation, corruption, and inefficiency – firms were neither effectively planned from the centre, nor were they disciplined by market forces – in this timeline, subsidies for innovative products were retained (as opposed to being abolished in the mid-1950s) and the CPSU embarked upon a course of continually perfecting production techniques and reducing labour hours. The indirect effect of reducing labour hours was forcing firms to effectively utilise all reserve labour, to allow more women and young people (otherwise discouraged by the longer hours) to enter into the workforce, to increase the intensity of production (increasing labour efficiency), and to oblige these firms to think about using labour in a more conservative way – increasing mechanisation and automation, and cutting down on unnecessary "boilerplate" work. The CPSU being the vanguard of vanguards, the Socialist Unity Party of the GDR soon followed in its wake, introducing very similar programmes. After furious debate within the Central Committee of the SUP(GDR), it was decided that the border wall would be reopened in 1981, reuniting families and making for spectacular photo opportunities. But the fall of the Berlin Wall signified the strengthening of socialism rather than its fall – disenchanted with an inert economy, lower incomes and scarce employment opportunities, West German professionals soon found themselves visiting the GDR, although in 1981, still only a few hundred had decided to permanently relocate. The tables had turned – before the construction of the Wall, the GDR had lost 55,000 skilled workers to the more prosperous West – but the West soon found itself in a very difficult position, with 88,200 declaring their allegiance to socialism in East Germany from 1981-89. By 1987, West Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) was seriously discussing constructing another wall, or at least heavily limiting immigration – but soon every political party that openly discussed the problem found itself the target of jeers and rebukes. Pre-empting the West German decision to massively restrict emigration, popular support or not, in order to head off the skilled-labour crisis that was rapidly unfolding, the GDR unexpectedly offered to collaborate with the FRG to reduce movement across the border, in exchange for certain economic concessions: the emerging microelectronics industry (the only area in which the West could call itself superior in) was of particular interest. East German negotiators offered to restrict border movement from the annual 180,000 people (in 1988) to only 15,000, with the restrictions coming into effect within two years. Within that time, the FRG would pay microelectronics factories to close up shop and relocate to the East, along with sending trained personnel to educate East Germans on production techniques. Soon after the agreements were set in stone, the FRG government realized that it had made an enormous mistake: once people had heard that border movement would be stopped, many skilled professionals (who lived in the West and went to the East for work every day) instead opted to permanently drop their West German citizenship and undergo naturalization in the GDR. At the same time, the closure of microelectronics factories across the country contributed to a minor (but considerable) uptick in unemployment. West German labour unions refused to allow the factories to simply be shut down, and extracted concessions in the tens of millions, all of which eventually came from the vaults of the West German government. But the worst was soon to come – in 1991, international stock markets shedded half of their value over the course of three weeks, and the FRG soon lost 30% of its industrial output. By 1991, GDP per capita in East Germany had grown to an astounding €30,200, while West Germany, wracked with inequality and debt, averaged at €14,600 – with most of that wealth concentrated in the pockets of the wealthy. In East Germany, the Sixth Five-Year Plan brought with it a cap on labour-hours to an absurdly low 16 hours a week – severely demoralizing the West, and throwing it into a political crisis. By November of that year, after a snap election and several unsuccessful coalition negotiations, the Federal Republic of Germany had not yet fallen, but from Bonn to Koblenz to Düsseldorf, violence was erupting in every major city. With plentiful financial aid from East Germany, communist guerilla groups, such as the re-emerging Red Army Faction, clashed with police, with local governments being dissolved everywhere. With the USA taking an isolationist stance after withdrawing from Vietnam in 1986, NATO bit its nails, fretted, and delayed, until the West German government inevitably dissolved, and was integrated with the GDR in 1995. By 1996, after civil order had been restored in the unified Germany, this poster started appearing across several US cities, encouraging Americans to defect to the GDR.

No, I don't mean video games a whole, I'm talking more along the lines of playing yoyos, jackstones (or knucklebones), teks and pogs (only us FIlipinos understand it), etc. TL;DR: Outside games I still play Yoyos and knucklebones and even pogs in this day and age


Unless maybe you are a devout anticommunist, there is nothing surprising about this report. What is significant, though, is the sheer amount of time that it took for an authority to confirm this: even in the late 1980s and the 1990s, when there was an increased interest in the subject of (German) Fascism, nobody stepped forward to confirm that the Finnish Waffen‐SS had participated in atrocities. This is why [*Finland’s Holocaust*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=B364C05916A278F714E9B84E1A9EA4EA) (which is still worth reading), published in 2013, could only say ‘*whether the Finnish *Waffen-SS* volunteers participated directly in genocidal acts during the war remains unclear and contested*’. [This confirmation](https://www.arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/sarjajulkaisut/SS-VOLUNTEERS_verkkoon.pdf) came out in early 2019, and now the overwhelming probability is no longer deniable. To sum it up cynically: >The maxim with which the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer in 1956 returned the honour of the whole Waffen-SS is fitting for the [Finnish] battalion’s soldiers. Those who served were, according to him [Adenauer], “Soldaten wie andere auch”—soldiers like any others. ‘*Soldaten wie andere auch*’ indeed.

if only we had some torches...