I know sometimes people say debates aren’t that important in the real-world. But in the real-world, we’ll probably have coworkers we need to argue with in order to convince potential comrades who’re participating.

“It’s actually bourgeois to, for moral reasons, not want to be a landlord or own a factory.”

Serious question, what’s your thought process? I get removing them during war because they’re a threat to the working class. Afterwards, when a worker’s state has firmly been established, further deaths don’t necessarily serve an end.

I agree that this is bad-faith, but from a liberal’s point of view, they don’t see this as just following the science. Because they don’t study oppression as a material phenomenon, all they see is @knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml went from center-left to far-left.

I feel like there’s nothing to do with the SO accept try to explain the steps that got to Marxism (despite her condescension). If she can’t respect your viewpoint after that, you can either keep trying or end the relationship.

Yeah I’m at the point where I don’t think I could date someone unless they’re some sort of Marxist-Leninist, who’s open to organizing.

This happened to me too. My SO’s family were petty-bourgeois landlords, so when I started talking about communism, she became very upset. Needless to say, partly due to this and partly for other reasons, we broke up.

Is that what your fiancée says? This screams of liberal conceptions of “whataboutism.” While it shouldn’t be the only argument deployed in a debate, it’s extremely useful when discussing foreign policy.

If the US is claiming China is committing genocide of Uighurs, but historically has indifferently killed Brown people in the Middle East, labeled the The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) a terrorist organization, and conveniently stays silent on Saudi Arabia’s and Turkey’s human rights abuses, then why would you trust them? At best, they opportunistically care about Brown people. At worst, they’re actively making it up.

It also makes the point that we shouldn’t see countries through utopian lenses. All countries struggle with mistakes, and if a socialist country sometimes struggles with it too (though hopefully much less), we should be critical of those events, but still support the country overall. The country is still doing much better than capitalist ones.

There’s probably 100s of things to unpack, but some of the big things I can think of at the moment are:

• I’ve heard good things about Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism (Kristen Ghodsee), for an analysis on East Germany. Ghodsee isn’t a communist, but she views the GDR somewhat favorably.
• One of the key parts of rebuilding Germany (and the rest of Europe, as well as South-East Asia) is the Marshall Plan. The US used the MP to prop up rival capitalist countries like West Germany, among other things.
• The US selectively funded post-modernist philosophy and art during that period. For philosophy, I’d postulate it was to promote defeatist ideology. For art, it was probably to “prove” that capitalism has more culture than communism.
• The GDR was undemocratically dissolved.

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Why do you disguise yourself as a moderate in politics? Are you in a country where being a communist is forbidden?

It depends on in which context you’re organizing (e.g. are these petty-bourgeois people or workers?), but in my opinion, honesty is the best policy (with other workers at least). You’ll never destigmatize the word “communist” if you’re afraid to say it yourself. Also, with actual working people, you’d be surprised how many of them are desperate for a change that they’ll consider communism.

I’m having the same issue.