• SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
    1539·
    1 year ago

    Agree with you in general, but I think a lot if people here are not really informed what differences there are materialistic ideologies.

    Yes, Stalin bad.

    But Guevara is not Stalin.

    Marx is not che

    Engels is not Marx

    China is not communist.

    Marxism is not materialism

    Socialism is not communism

    Also the amount of people bringing the “the 3 times people tried socialism were bad, so the whole ideology must be bad” argument are way to high IMHO.

    How many times was capitalism tried? How many times it worked out? Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

    While I agree with you, that oppression is bad, no matter what the oppressor calls himself, we should talk about policies without resorting to dogmas and generalising people in favor of fear the hegemonic class is propagating to stay in power.

    • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      918·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, that’s not the tankies here; these are “North Korea is a great country, actually” tankies.

      • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
        18·
        1 year ago

        Should probably listen to Blowback Season 3.

        Not to say they’re a perfect country but to pretend that anyone in the West can critique them when their material conditions are dictated by the actions of the West is just comical.

        If you aren’t a materialist, what are you even doing? As if history happens in the realm of pure thought…

          • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
            8·
            1 year ago

            Something something worlds largest prison population?

            Again, it’s not like North Korea is some shining example or anything, but to pretend that the west has the moral high ground here is laughable.

            Again, listen to Blowback Season 3, recognize that their country was basically bombed to the stone age Curtis le may style and then maybe reevaluate, just a little, the chauvinist attitude.

            DPRK is not a great country but it’s not as if they were ever given a chance either.

            • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              63·
              1 year ago

              Yeah, the US prison system is absolutely abhorrent and counterethical to all the principles it’s supposed to hold.

              First, the US is basically the only western country like that:tm:, second, more than one thing can be bad. “‘North Korea is a great country’ is a dumb position”, the only (implied) assertion I made about it in my original comment, is still true, even if they got dealt a shit hand (which, so did most of the east after WW2; South Korea was in a pretty similar state (it was actually worse than NK shortly after the Korean war), yet they’re doing… much better than NK at least).

              Being “basically bombed to the stone age” doesn’t mean a dictatorship is inevitable, nor that their government is suddenly blameless; being victimized doesn’t mean you can victimize others.

              Genuinely, if you take “the west” as a whole and compare it to North Korea… yeah, I do think they have a high ground. No, I’m not saying the west is perfect, far from it. No, I’m not saying communism is automatically bad, I’m totally cool with communists.

              Basically my base position is “a functional democracy is the governance system that works the best”. Most western states are much closer to that than North Korea (yes, I know what the Electoral College is and why it’s bad), so I do think their political system is better.

              • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
                2·
                1 year ago

                I still wonder why you’re so obsessed with North Korea. It’s not like the South wasn’t also a dictatorship until very recently. I wonder what the difference in economic outcomes was. Surely not the political system but instead the different material conditions between south and north i.e. embargo and isolation.

                Again, I don’t think that NK is the best example of AES, in fact their country is probably the worst. But I don’t think the people who have produced the economic emisseration of the country and have worked to undermine its regime at every term get to scold them about their political choices.

                Why should democracy be privileged when the choices of that democracy, at least internationally, are immoral. Should we praise democracy when it produces an evil outcome? Why are you so wedded to a system? After all democracy produces trans and drag bans in the south. Is that good? This isn’t to say dictatorship is superior, I don’t think it necessarily is, but to pretend the virtue is in the system rather than the outcome is pretty lib. If democracy produces fascism is it still good? If we throw our trans friends or homeless into the wood chipper because voters say it’s good with 51% of the vote, does that legitimate it?

              • RedMarsRepublic@vlemmy.net
                2·
                1 year ago

                All of the so called ‘functional democracies’ of the West are abysmal, China has 94% government satisfaction where I doubt there’s one western country over 50% (and the US is at 24%)

    • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
      716·
      1 year ago

      When a liberal says “tankie” they mean anything remotely communist-looking. When a leftist says “tankie”, they mean authoritarians who like red flags and self-proclaimed communists who nonetheless support hierarchies and have no plan or intention to bring them down. I think the vast majority of people here knows this already.

    • 𝔊𝔦𝔫𝔧𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔲@lemmy.world
      228·
      1 year ago

      Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

      I hope you realize that this is an incredibly privileged take. The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or (to a less extreme extent) Maduro’s Venezuela. To compare what a US citizen deals with on a daily basis due to capitalism to what a citizen of any of those countries had to go through is very reductive and may be perceived as disrespectful to many who had to live those experiences.

      • Definitely_me@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        223·
        1 year ago

        The United States, for all it’s faults, is the pretty side of capitalism.you don’t even need to look to the most poor countries to see a standard of living that makes even directly post ww2 soviet union look like a great place.

      • proletariatnerd@iusearchlinux.fyi
        16·
        1 year ago

        The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia

        I have some fellas from Detroit that would disagree.

      • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
        91·
        1 year ago

        1. Im not from USA, and from my point of view its mich worse than most other countries (no healthcare, no independend courts, murder sprees in schools nearly every day, opression of half of the world (a half of them just to get more oil to destroy the planet faster), one of 3 of the biggest war-pushers in whole earth, polutes and destroys earth mode than every other country per citizens, etc. PP.)

        2. capitalism mostly opresses and profits from people out of the country to Funktion. if its Bad in Venezuela or Cuba or Afghanistan, or even early russia, thats at least partly fault of US.

        3. Venezuela is not communism, China isnt, russia isnt. Most of them have failed, at least partly because caputalist societys atack them and stop a as soon as they are born and they can’t form a stable democracy. Before reading Marx, your bashing of communism isnt worth anything, as you clearly don’t understand what you are talking about. We never had communism, and some would say not even socialism. You sound like you don’t even know the difference, since you keep talking about communism, which is a utopian society after humanity has stopped a lot of bad habits and has learned to live without working against each other in competition and working together instead, which arises maybe after generations of workig socialism, which we clearly didn’t have.

        4.you exactly prove my point. I dont agree with tankies either, but the number of people around here blindly copying capitalist propaganda while understanding nothing they bash about is too damm high.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          You have a warped view of USA that doesn’t reflect reality. You’re seeing it through the lens of sensationalist news media and hyperventilating social media posts.

          The actual reality for Americans is that it’s a vast, beautiful land with an amazing spectrum of various experience. Violent crime is rare overall, and most Americans have never seen or heard any gun violence in person. Health care is available to pretty much everyone, even if you don’t have money. We have state-run healthcare facilities that the poor can make use of like county health departments.

          My life in the USA is great, because I don’t live in a big city. I live on my own land, in a nice house that I own, and I’m just middle class income level. It’s pretty easy to accomplish if you choose a low cost of living area rather than a big metropolis or suburb thereof.

      • robinn@lemm.ee
        3·
        1 year ago

        This take, rather than being incredibly privileged, is just stupid. I love the examples used. Pol Pot’s Cambodia (which hasn’t existed for a while) was propped up by the U.S. Maduro’s Venezuela has hardship due to western sanctions (including from the U.S.), which a U.N. report found:

        1. Shrank government revenue by 99% (the report acknowledges the majority of government funds were spent on universal services including free housing) [p. 5].
        2. “had a devastating effect on the people, especially the most vulnerable – such as women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities or life-threatening or chronic diseases, and indigenous communities” [p. 5].
        3. In 2020 alone prevented ~2.6 million people from receiving blood reagents and deprived at least another 123,000 others of blood transfusions [p. 8].
        4. Drastically increased poverty and infant mortality [p. 8].
        5. Prohibited the purchase of certain antibiotics and other treatments which resulted in the prevention of ~180,000 surgeries [p. 8].
        6. Created a reported 50-70% drop in public health workers [p. 10].
        7. Dropped internet coverage in the country from 50-90% of territory to 10% [p. 12].

        The U.S. is an imperialist country that drives up oppression in numerous nations, and it is silly and ignorant to talk of its effects in isolation alone. You seemingly ignored the whole "invading other countries for monetary interests part of OP’s comment (and the millions killed in Iraq and Afghanistan thereof, for instance). This is the only way that domestic rights in the U.S. have been able to surpass other nations. Even still, there are destitute groups in the U.S. which lack rights and the means of subsistence, and to downplay this by pointing to worse conditions in other nations which the U.S. directly caused is laughable and childish.

      • Cynosure@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        Well of course the standard of living in the imperial core is higher than the countries it has exploited or destabilized. A lot of American wealth is the fruit of imperialism.

  • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.one
    7115·
    1 year ago

    Thank fuck. I thought Lemmy was some ultra militant leftist hellhole before the shift.

    I don’t like extreme radical left any more than extreme radical right.

    Fuck Che Guevara. Read a book.

            • river@lemmy.world
              62·
              1 year ago

              the US state department dogma must be a much better read😌

              lmao

              How will you perform a non-authoritarian revolution? How will you quash racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.? By being polite?

              the main idea is dual power structures. spreading awareness, and people will do whats necessary, mobilize, organize, all that fun stuff. if u can teach people about the struggles of marginalized groups, they will be able to recognize it in their own lives and stand up against it.

              Or are you going to vote us towards communism🤩

              and there wont be a need for political parties to enforce “compliance”, people are naturally empathetic. well not all people, but the vast majority.

              And I have plenty more books, but go on🤗

              try “Are you an anarchist? the answer might surprise you” by David Graeber, if ur ever looking for something else.

              or “Anarchy works” by Peter Gelderloos for a more comprehensive description of these ideas.

        • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
          31·
          1 year ago

          Do you know its possible to read books and disagree with them?

          The ML obsession with treating books as religious tomes is getting tiring.

    • SunsetFruitbat
      13·
      1 year ago

      Che Guevara did a lot of good for people, like the people of Cuba. Considering he fought, and helped Cuba free itself from being a colony to the United States and against Batista. I didn’t know people fighting for the right to not be under colonial rule and have their own self determination is “extreme”.

      Also maybe go check out “On revolutionary medicine” by Che Guevara. I’ll also leave this quote from him.

      …the life of a single human being, is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth…

  • animelivesmatter@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    585·
    1 year ago

    finds social media developed by tankies

    looks inside

    finds tankies

    fr I’m down with having a good old purge eventually but noone should be surprised

  • buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    538·
    1 year ago

    What are some good actual communist lemmy communities that aren’t supporting the fucking capitalist imperialist russian invasion?