cross-posted from: https://lemmy.perthchat.org/post/41379 > The far left wants guns to protect against the right. The conservatives and libertarians already have guns. Only the liberals don't. Afaik. > > If we arm the liberals, what benefit is there?

I seek to contribute to the proletarian revolution. Currently, I contribute to ProleWiki, but I want to do more.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.perthchat.org/post/37961 > Follow up to https://lemmy.perthchat.org/post/36465 > > I came across an interesting idea, which is the post title. > > Thoughts? > > If true, this might say something about why i know way more women with leftish values then men. > > Ex, romantic movies. 500 days of summer: protagonist isn't special in any way. > > Vs > > Avengers movies: literally the protagonists couldn't be more god's chosen hero. > > my hero academia and a lot of animes and green lantern: you can do anything if you have enough will power, regardless of the system around you. (Pull yourself up by your uwu boot straps)

A lot of Western fiction goes along the lines of: the world's in danger and since you're God's chosen person, only you can save the world. You don't require that much assistance from anybody else because you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps Even if it involves a team, it's like a team off like 10 people, that the protagonist had to pull together in some way shape or form due to their personal charisma or something. In real life, to take down the evil dictator or whatever it needs a lot more than 10 people, and since you're not God's chosen person, you could even die. Additionally a lot of Western fiction places big emphasis on money. The protagonist will have access to very expensive equipment frequently. The evil dictator is basically straight out of a psych ward, which I guess is not offend conservatives, but It's rare that the evil dictator is even racist. Like Trump would make a great villain. This is kind of a follow-up to my personal branding question. But basically protagonists have done a great job with personal branding. --- I think it would help our cause a lot if there was fiction that emphasized basically the opposite of what I listed above. And it should go mainstream. Any examples of good fiction? Especially if it's free and visual

A lot of people are trying to get some kind of fame online. It could be people trying to imitate their favorite Instagram celebrity. Obviously people would like to be in a similar position as that celebrity. But some people spend a lot of hours per day trying to take really good selfies and probably won't ever get fame or fortune. It does strike me as kind of a libertarian kind of thing.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/323451 > In the west I get that we simp for landlords, but I've never even heard of like a Cuban anti landlord movement or ussr or whatnot.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.perthchat.org/post/31862 > Everyday is a new day and there are new potentially low hanging fruit to radicalize - what about cryptobros? > > Judging from the subreddit, a lot of them are banking their 1000$ oncrypto to try to get a better standard of living. 1000$ and only a 1000 and they had to save up for months/weeks to have that amount of expendable cash. > > Libertarians like things like entrepreneurship and venture capitalism eh? What about... like venture leftism? Tell them starting up a union is like being a business owner! (union bosses make a lot more money than regular workers right?). > > Venture neighborhood community pod might be harder since they're not making much money from that. But something like "youre so dashing charismatic, instead of using your money, you use your charisma to build an organization and then put that on your resume and apply to be a ceo. Plus women dig that." > > I'm not sure how to try to appeal to them properly, or how to even go about contacting them in an effective manner (ex a self post on r/cryptocurrency?)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/314250 > If our society falls apart and we lose productive forces; but humanity still survives, maybe we could return to primitive communism. > > Some people are saying that the climate change crisis will bring humanity back to tribal ages. (I disagree with them; but it's possible.) In the past, the lack of productive forces meant that communism could flourish. > > Society was primitively communist because humans could barely produce enough necessary materials to survive. If humanity were to lose a large amount of their productive forces, could we be coerced into returning to primitive communism? > > EDIT: Elaborated on my opinion. > > EDIT 2: Of course, this idea supposes that all capitalist countries will fall during the crisis.

I don't think she's on the same level as MLK or Gandhi, but she might be the closest we've had in a while? Especially in the West? I heard that mlk and Gandhi were socialist, no idea about Greta.

Just to preface this, I am not an Ultra or LeftCom and I'm certainly not here to argue in bad faith. I have been told by people more well-read and educated than me on the topic that China is a DotP. While I'm sure they may be right I just can't recall the reasoning and I'm having some trouble reaching that conclusion on my own (beginner Marxist) so I thought maybe someone here could enlighten me through a more educated perspective.

Recently I tried to correct somebody suggesting that ‘the Russian working class lifted not one finger in defence of 'their' state’. At first I offered a video of the demonstration from 1993, and some opinion polls, but she basically said that they weren’t good enough. I am tempted to link to her essay where she justified her arguments, but to be honest it’s so messy and lengthy that I feel like it would be too distracting to share here. (But I can concede if somebody insists.) Still, it raises an important question: where were the tens of millions of Soviets demonstrating or striking in favor of their union? One possible reason for this is that, since the working masses already had so much political power, physical demonstrations would have been unnecessary and many thought that their electoral input would have sufficed. This might be begging the question (‘did they really have much political power?’), but surely they had ways to fight back besides physical demonstrations or strikes. Either way, it’s clear that people were being too polite and gentle with the anticommunists infiltrating the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s and later.

How is Engels’ *Criticism of the Draft of the Erfurt Programme* letter to Kautsky that is cited in *State and Revolution* advocating for centralized and not a federal republic? Lenin quotes this from Engels: >”So, then, a unified republic – but not in the sense of the present French Republic, which is nothing but the Empire established in 1798 without the Emperor. From 1792 to 1798 each French department, each commune [Gemeinde], enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is what we too must have. How self-government is to be organized and how we can manage, without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the first French Republic, and is being shown even today by Australia, Canada and the other English colonies. And a provincial [regional] and communal self-government of this type is far freer than, for instance, Swiss federalism, under which, it is true, the canton is very independent in relation to the Bund [i.e., the federated state as a whole], but is also independent in relation to the district [Bezirk] and the commune. The cantonal governments appoint the district governors [Bezirksstatthalter] and prefects – which is unknown in English-speaking countries and which we want to abolish here as resolutely in the future as the Prussian Landrate and Regierungsrate" (commissioners, district police chiefs, governors, and in general all officials appointed from above). Accordingly, Engels proposes the following words for the self-government clause in the programme: "Complete self-government for the provinces [gubernias or regions], districts and communes through officials elected by universal suffrage. The abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state." Lenin then says this: >It is extremely important to note that Engels, armed with facts, disproved by a most precise example the prejudice which is very widespread, particularly among petty-bourgeois democrats, that a federal republic necessarily means a greater amount of freedom than a centralized republic. This is wrong. It is disproved by the facts cited by Engels regarding the centralized French Republic of 792-98 and the federal Swiss Republic. The really democratic centralized republic gave more freedom that the federal republic. In other words, the greatest amount of local, regional, and other freedom known in history was accorded by a centralized and not a federal republic... Insufficient attention has been and is being paid in our Party propaganda and agitation to this fact, as, indeed, to the whole question of the federal and the centralized republic and local self-government. As I read it, it seems like that quote from Engels is not disproving the notion of a federal republic necessarily meaning a greater amount if freedom than a centralized republic but instead supporting it? I’m pretty sure I’m missing something here… could anyone help? Furthermore, if Engels did advocate for a centralized rather than federal republic can someone explain this following quote to me? Its from a footnote by Engels to the *The Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League* of 1850 that was added in 1885: >It must be recalled today that this passage is based on a misunderstanding. At that time – thanks to the Bonapartist and liberal falsifiers of history – it was considered as established that the French centralised machine of administration had been introduced by the Great Revolution and in particular that it had been used by the Convention as an indispensable and decisive weapon for defeating the royalist and federalist reaction and the external enemy. It is now, however, a well-known fact that throughout the revolution up to the eighteenth Brumaire c the whole administration of the départements, arrondissements and communes consisted of authorities elected by, the respective constituents themselves, and that these authorities acted with complete freedom within the general state laws; that precisely this provincial and local self-government, similar to the American, became the most powerful lever of the revolution and indeed to such an extent that Napoleon, immediately after his coup d’état of the eighteenth Brumaire, hastened to replace it by the still existing administration by prefects, which, therefore, was a pure instrument of reaction from the beginning. But no more than local and provincial self-government is in contradiction to political, national centralisation, is it necessarily bound up with that narrow-minded cantonal or communal self-seeking which strikes us as so repulsive in Switzerland, and which all the South German federal republicans wanted to make the rule in Germany in 1849. So, post-commune, but still predates his claims in the *Criticism of the Draft of the Erfurt Programme*. So, if he isn't advocating for centralism here and is in the previous quote then he seems to have changed his mind on it by 1891 unless I’m missing something again which I very well may be.

When I explain surplus value to people, I use the example of a Starbucks. You're working for $15/hr, selling hundreds of $5 drinks per hour, the surplus value covers the other costs like rent and supplies, but, as most investor-facing documents will lay out, that $15/hr/person is the largest expsense. So, fudging numbers here, you sell 50 drinks at $5 each, that's $250-15-15 for labor and other costs, so $220/hr getting taken from the workers and sent to the owners. So, even if a) I'm wildly off with the numbers, which makes perfect sense because I made them up and b) startup capital is hard to come by if you aren't already rich, the existence of profit from seemingly simple businesses like a standalone coffee shop should be something workers can organize and replicate without much involvement from capital. So, why don't we? Is it that we all have been propagandaized to want the surplus value for ourselves?

I know that the Communist Manifesto is always mentioned in politics, but what, if any, other literature should I read first if I want to understand Communism? I consider myself a Socialist at the moment, but can't really get behind the statelessness of Anarchism.

So I was wondering how I can get better at analysing the world through dialectical materialism. I've read a fair share of theory and other comprehensive stuff about dialectics and materialism and I do think I get the core principles. What I think I need is to get some kind of practice to overcome my idealist way of thinking. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, maybe a collection of applied examples, maybe even exercises with solutions? Or you could let me know how you guys got better at thinking in a marxist way. Thanks in advance!

I associate with anarchism and i'm not sure why.

I just realized they are calling themselves a socialist republic, and I've seen parades with communist iconography posted on Lemmygrad. Despite this, the most inclusive list of AES countries I've seen is Cuba China DPRK Vietnam Laos, never including Sri Lanka. Why is that?

Historical materialism is a scientific view of history that is often associated with communism; but this model of history could be useful outside communist theory.

I can't trust western media.