• Ericthescruffy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 hours ago

    I could be wrong since I wasn’t there…but I have a stinking suspicion that the majority of successful leftist movements in history didn’t happen on account of a highly literate populace who all individually read karl marx and decided they needed to do a revolution at the same time.

    • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      7 hours ago

      People rarely get radicalized by books and knowledge. People get radicalized by living conditions

      Hexbear is a very biased population of people who have largely been radicalized by theory

      • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        4 hours ago

        It is both, both are necessary. Material conditions set the stage for struggle but it requires political education and organization to create radicals. The political education itself also emerges from conditions and history. They are co-creating.

      • afters [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        6 hours ago

        i grew up poor surrounded by poor people. first time i landed in the west we lived in public housing among asylum seekers. my conditions led to my own decision to educate myself of alternative ways to live/take a step away from western programming.

        no one around me grew to become radicalized by living condition. they either took the punches and continued to play the game, or turned to crime (i don’t blame them). i think it’s also why i find it difficult to fully integrate into leftist groups; the loudest voices are often from the most privileged

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 hours ago

          I was raised in the same material conditions as my immediate biological family.

          Pretty much all of them still alive now besides myself are fucking fascists.

          I don’t think I had some magic gift of enlightenment, though I highly doubt that all it takes is people checking their pay stubs, bank statements, and zip code then deciding “the math says time for fascism!”

  • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 hours ago

    1st third: Yep

    2nd third: lmao what

    3rd third: lmao what

    Material conditions? Never heard of them.

    Basically every successful Communist revolution immediately instates major literacy programs after the initial victory to empower the populace. It isn’t a prerequisite.

  • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 hours ago

    This is an incorrect take imo, literacy in Russia was ~30% and in China was ~20%, almost all of that being men, too

  • FunkYankkkees [they/them, pup/pup's]@hexbear.net
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    6 hours ago

    It is doomed to fascism because it is a highly successful settler colonial project built on genocide. It’s immense wealth and the relative comfort of it’s citizens depend on exploiting and murdering people outside it’s borders

  • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 hours ago

    Literacy is dropping due to erosion of the education system, as Imperialism eats itself alive. It isn’t out of pride, necessarily, that’s a post-hoc justification.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 hours ago

    Reading is necessary, but there also needs to be literary analysis and critical thinking.

    Plenty of ignorant bazingas read “Please Don’t Build The Torment Nexus” already, and then line up to help build the Torment Nexus.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 hours ago

    This is not a well developed take from me, but I think that Amerikkka is doomed to fascism because of the abundance of petit bourgeois people, bourgeois centred attitudes, and settler history and mentality. I’m sure that illiteracy is a part of it, but IMHO it’s not in the top 5. I’m worried that this might be ableist, but I’m not exactly sure.

    • AnarchoAnarchist [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      6 hours ago

      After their revolutions China and Cuba both made major reforms and have some of the highest literacy rates in the world.

      I don’t know what the literacy rates were for revolutionary Cuba, Russia, or China, but I’m willing to bet they weren’t great. Something tells me Batista and the Czars were not running efficient public education systems.

  • ghost_of_faso2
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    9 hours ago

    Its not doomed to anything, its already there and always has been there.

    • ComradeWizardmon2 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      7 hours ago

      This, you don’t become what you already are. We love to say “it’s coming” in the US to ignore the fact it’s here, it’s been here, and the violence comes home in peaks and waves of increasing frequency.