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 for more information.

Discord

Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory (and other books), you can use z-lib, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.

  • @knfrmity
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    221 year ago

    I’m glad to be able to be active here again. Wasn’t for a few days because of that comments bug on Jerboa. Meanwhile I’m getting myself into stupid reddit threads with people who think diamat and ML is “just a theory” and plays to emotion without any empirical evidence.

    We must never stop teaching.

    • QueerCommie
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      61 year ago

      I thought Marx was a dry mechanical materialist who was alienated from the realities of life/s

  • DankZedong A
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    221 year ago

    Things are not looking good for Turkey and Syria

  • ☭CommieWolf☆
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    221 year ago

    Got a job offer from an Israeli company and I told them to stuff it. Really annoyed my family since I was turning down a lot of money but some things you can’t compromise on.

  • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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    201 year ago

    The state and revolution is so old and yet so actual and relatable, expecially the page where he talks about how all the social chauvinists and mensheviks will create parties to fool the working class by using Liberal democracy, that’s the state of “leftist” parties in our western “democracies” today

    • @knfrmity
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      191 year ago

      I’m reading now it for the first time. It’s incredible (both positive and negative) how so little has changed and how prescient Lenin was. I thought the same reading Imperialism. And he’s so entertaining to read what with dunking on Kautsky and others every other paragraph.

      • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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        151 year ago

        Hahaha yes reading Lenin is so cool, both entratsining and enjoying, second best writer after Mao for sure Unfortunately we have to face the same struggles he had to face but fortunately he succeeded, so we can learn from the actions of the revolutionaries of that time and - trough a dialectical approach and careful analysis - apply it to our current conditions, for example we are really seeing the birth of a new labor movement (not only in the US! there has been an enormous strike of over 500k in the UK, I’ve personally been seeing a lot of schools being occupied in Italy where I live, a lot of- calls to action, calls to strike, a teamsters union in the city of Genoa just said they won’t ship any weapon to Ukraine) we are seeing it in the east too, for example in India, massive protests and strikes, what I think is really missing though is a Vanguard party, without a Vanguard party all of theese strikes are just temporary hindrances to capitalist production that can easily be suppressed, we should work on that but the social chauvinists and kautskyists from lenin’s time are winning. But hey, Lenin in 1917 thought they would win too! And yet a few months later the bolshevik won! So we should have revolutionary optimism and try to build a va guard party of sort.

      • @Beat_da_Rich
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        121 year ago

        I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If social media was around in the 1910s, Lenin’s Twitter page would be absolutely savage.

        • @knfrmity
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          81 year ago

          I often think the same about Stalin. Both would have drawn blood. Chen Weihua better watch out.

          • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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            61 year ago

            The inverse would probably had been true, Chen would have wrote fire theory, like Lenin and Stalin

    • Muad'DibberA
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      91 year ago

      IMO it could easily be called the most important political work of the 20th century.

  • DankZedong A
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    191 year ago

    Dutch socialist sub is doing my head in fr. Had a guy responding to me how African countries could just decide to not supply resources to Western countries if they wanted to…

    • @Shrike502
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      141 year ago

      Yeees I am sure that’ll go down swimmingly

    • DankZedong A
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      131 year ago

      Also, Jacobin has entered the Dutch leftist market and is spanning the sub with its articles, and they are not always good lmao

    • @ihaveibs
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      111 year ago

      Glass half full, learning about how the IMF and World Bank operate was a crucial step in my radicalization. Maybe it could be a good opportunity to educate? Or this more of a denial of the American military’s role in imperialism?

      • DankZedong A
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        131 year ago

        I try to keep educating but it does not always get positive replies unfortunately. But then I just hope the lurkers see my points.

        • @ihaveibs
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          111 year ago

          I remember outright dismissing things like the truth about Xinjiang when I was first getting my toes wet, if you put it out there some people will eventually be able to receive it ✊

        • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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          51 year ago

          Lurkers definitely see your points comrade, and I speak from experience when I say that. I’m a big lurker on other platforms (not on here as u can see by my comments count jejeje)

    • @KrupskayaPraxis
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      41 year ago

      The sub is overrun by socialdemocrats and anarchists. I try to educate them but it’s so frustrating.

  • DankZedong A
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    151 year ago

    I wonder how much of a dent the European armed forces get in their equipment by sending it all to Ukraine.

    The entire Dutch armed forces have 18 tanks and they are all leased from Germany.

    They are co-owners of 49 PzH 2000’s, together with Germany. Five of them have already been sent to Ukraine.

    Can’t be good for armed forces that had years of defunding happen to them recently.

    • DankZedong A
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      141 year ago

      Same goes for aircrafts. The Dutch airforce has 26 F-35’s of which 18 still have to be manufactured. So that’s 8 semi-functional F-35’s. And 40 F-16’s who appear to be falling apart if you look at them in a funny way.

    • @knfrmity
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      101 year ago

      It’s like Yogthos wondered in another thread. There could well be a massive wave of austerity coming to Europe, pulling state funds out of social services and dumping it into war, under the pretense of the conflict in Ukraine and the decimated weapons stocks of EU/NATO countries.

      And then there’s the German-US tank politicking going on, which in some ways looks like the US-MIC trying to replace German defense contractor Rheinmetall.

  • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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    141 year ago

    Finally after ghosting me for 3 months the communist youth org contacted me yaaay They’re still not the best but hey, at least they’re moderately big

    Ps. Italy is funny because you’re a kid until you’re 30

    • DankZedong A
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      101 year ago

      Ps. Italy is funny because you’re a kid until you’re 30

      Same over here with some things. Our youth group goes up to 30 as well

      • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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        71 year ago

        Europe isn’t called the old continent for no reason, I feel like we are born old over here

  • 小莱卡
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    131 year ago

    Gamers are pretty dumb ngl lol

    • @knfrmity
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      91 year ago

      Gamers are super dumb but why is that exactly? Is it a product of seeing the world through the lens of game narratives?

      • Muad'DibberA
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        141 year ago

        It’s an activity dominated by the “idle rich”, mostly first world labor aristocrats and petit bourgeiosie.

        Games as products must cater to that audience to be successful, and their stories reinforce capitalist hegemony.

        • dominated by the “idle rich”

          I don’t know if that’s true. There are plenty of poor workers inside and outside of the imperial core that regularly play video games

          stories reinforce capitalist hegemony

          For AAA games, this is true in many cases. For independent games, not really, in my experience

      • 小莱卡
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        101 year ago

        I really think that the cringe game narratives + lack of social interaction irl are part of the problem but i think the main problem is that games nowadays absolutely destroy your ability to pay attention and retain information, just like social media.

  • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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    131 year ago

    How does one sets up an helium balloon that goes up into the stratosphere? It’s for school I swear

    • SovereignState
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      171 year ago

      western communist parties gotta just release a bunch of balloons, capitalism will collapse in a day

      • @Shrike502
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        81 year ago

        99 balloons playing softly in the distance

  • 小莱卡
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    111 year ago

    Shared time vacation might be the biggest scams ever, like how do people buy these things lmao.

      • @knfrmity
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        121 year ago

        Ok this is one of the craziest capitalist real estate scams.

        Imagine you have some extra cash and want a holiday home, but you can’t afford the whole holiday home. So you share it with some other people. Split, say, maybe four ways this could work logistically. But nah, the timeshare company is gonna split this holiday home two hundred or more ways and tell everyone they’ve got the use of it for one week a year (do the math!).

        And then you’ve got annual maintenance fees and meetings and you maybe even have to pay again to take advantage of the one week per year of this place you supposedly own. Some of the companies that offer these scams have hotels and resorts all over the world too, so you can be tricked into thinking it’s a good thing, having a week or two per year of resort privileges wherever you want to go.

        My parents had one, my mom is a bit gullible and my dad wasn’t able to say no to some of those things at the time. They paid a ton of money for it over the years and we barely used it. My mom finally got rid of it by “selling” it back to the company for free.

        • @Shrike502
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          61 year ago

          Thank you for the explanation!

  • @Darkerseid
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    81 year ago

    why didn’t mao take HK back during his time? why did it take so long to be integrated into mainland?

    • @Kultronx
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      121 year ago

      The PLA was exhausted by '49 and not ready to fight yet another Imperialist power.

    • @knfrmity
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      81 year ago

      As I understand it the next “target” for the PRC and PLA after the end of the Civil War was Taiwan and the remaining elements of the KMT. But the US did the whole Korea thing so China had to respond there. By the time the PLA was in a position to look towards Taiwan or even HK the Americans had solidified their position in Taiwan.

  • 陈卫华是我的英雄
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    81 year ago

    I seriously just got a Youtube ad telling me that now was an “opportune” moment to date Ukrainian women…wtf

    • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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      61 year ago

      In the 90s after the Soviet Union fell and people (of alle ages! Even minors!) had to prostitute just to have the luxury of food and maybe even shelter we had literal ads on journals and spam mails saying that you could “buy date with Ukrainian women” anyway yes Gorbachev definitely bringed democracy freedom n shiet to the USSR

  • @Shrike502
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    71 year ago

    Well a friend of mine had just compared the situation in the Russian Empire (Christianity being mandatory) with that of the Soviet Union. In which, according to him, one had to “believe in atheism,”, scream “GOD ISN’T REAL” from high tribune and then pray to an icon at home in secret. And that “now it is much better, because we’re free to go either way”.

    I am saddened, comrades.

  • @Eat_Yo_Vegetables69
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    71 year ago

    Some strange SK “sources” were spreading rumours of the DPRK sending 500 troops to the Donbass…

    lol