Did I agree or disagree with you that the USSR and China were not capitalist? I’m open to different interpretations. I can see ways that USSR and China were capitalistic in some ways, socialistic in some ways, and had their own unique character in other ways. China and USSR weren’t even allies after Stalin, and China’s economy changed dramatically after Deng Xiaoping took charge of organizing the Chinese economy after the cultural revolution. I’m actually quite critical of the USSR after 1921.

I think you should try to be a little more specific. The creation of the military of the USSR was a carry over of the armies of WW1 who were being sent to die senselessly by the Tsar. Afterward, Russia was invaded by like 6 separate countries, including the USA, and had to deal with a counter revolution by the Tsarists. I think those are two specific circumstances where the maintenance of a military was verifiably not imperialist but necessary for preservation of the worker state. Afterward, the military was used for repression by the Stalinist bureaucracy, but industrialization was necessary after the destruction of the early 1920s, if not how it was carried out.

The carving up of Eastern Europe by Molotov Ribbentrop might be considered imperialistic, I think there’s a lot of different ways to look at the only thing that Stalin and Trotsky agreed on: that the Germans and Italians were going to be the opponents in another world war. I’m actually very critical of Stalin, and think he made many mistakes. But other than being a bastard and a motherfucker, I think the historic circumstances, that were the motivators for a the mistakes that were made by the Stalinist bureaucracy, were objective, often defensive. And while imperialists always claim national defense when claiming some foreign prize, there is much more basis for a defensive posture against the Nazis, who actually invaded the USSR and killed 20 million Russians, mostly civilians; than there is when, for example, the USA invaded Vietnam.

Vietnam might be a good example of an imperialist agenda on behalf of the Chinese. The USA and China both supported the villainous Khmer Rouge. But other than soft power, what evidence has China demonstrated of imperialism? Genuinely curious about what your answer might be.

Don’t make me out to be something I’m not. Yes I’m a socialist and an anti capitalist but I’m not a sucker, at least not a willing one.

That’s an interesting observation, whether or not USSR and/or China is/was capitalist, and in what ways, is a rich topic of discussion. There are a ton of different theories about them, and I’m familiar with a few.

Why do you think USSR and China still had militaries? Was it to make imperialist war, or to defend against it? There’s an abundance of different views on the topic that are much more scientifically and historically honest than “its just human nature.”

And many didn’t, and none produced the kind of mass industrialized war capable of dozens of millions of casualties. But yes their ruling classes still waged war for the same reason as our ruling classes do. So it isn’t a problem of human nature, but a problem with having a ruling class.

But never before have the underclass actually held the tools and means of production, and been as directly opposed in every rational interest, as the exploiting and exploiter classes produced by capitalist social and economic relations. Furthermore, the working classes are broadly opposed to war, broadly in support of rational, secular government, human rights, and freedom of association. But because the education and dissemination of info to the masses is overseen by the ruling minority, people lack the ability to name the problems which we face.

So our social forces that produce war, are imperialism, which is a historic stage of capitalism. So we can concretely identify specific tendencies in a society built by people, name them, and subsequently resist them; rather blaming all problems of society on “human nature”. We can be much more accurate and specific than that. And the moment we are, we have an imperative to do something. Which is why fatalism is so convenient for people who fear freedom.

That’s how people who consider themselves rational and scientific end up falling for apocalypse myths; with facts underwriting eschatology. I think there would be less conflict and difficulty in the world if people were 50% less gullible.

“Humans” can be violent, short sighted and ignorant when people stop thinking critically and start applying dumb, impractical abstractions to complex and ever-changing objective reality – and then stubbornly pretend like the dumb abstraction is objective truth.

On a thread about being more intelligent to prevent human suffering, don’t be on the side of stupidity and suffering by pretending that a deeply contradictory social order that directs all human activity toward the production of war and human suffering, is the only social order humans have ever been capable of producing, let alone, will ever produce.

You’re entitled to be a misanthrope and hate humanity, but entitlements granted by capitalism on one side, are paid for with victimization on the other side. Being on the side of the victims, but receiving entitlements (often unintentionally) means that the victimized class both hates them self for their even involuntary role in in the victimize/entitlement social relation, but also unable to imagine anything different.

Ultimately, it is a fear of freedom that prevents humanity from advancing beyond capitalist social relations. But fear in some inspires courage in others. And in that courage, is hope.

For the ten millionth time, its capitalism

points at everything humans have built look at everything humans have destroyed

This isn’t about anarchism as an abstract ideology. This is about Mikhail Bakunin and the anarchist faction developing within the IWMA.

If you’re an anarchist reading this as “Marx doesn’t like anarchism,” then consider these facts:

1. Marx was a materialist. He wasn’t concerned with ideas, he was concerned with action.

2. The church was still an immensely powerful social force. An anarchist who resisted the old order, would believe in negating the morality of the church. Marx however, wanted the negation of Capitalism. To Marx, the bourgeois and the workers are completely opposed, not the workers and morality. Marx really hated how people in his era talked about morality, he believed that morals were a social relation, not a code handed down by a higher power. He thought morals were a response to particular set of historic conditions, and overthrowing religion meant reversing the material social relations that made religion a necessity among the masses.

3. Morals could be thought of as guardrails on the bourgeois. They want to always be seen as moral by the nobles, peasants and workers, especially in that era, since the bourgeois weren’t really the ruling class of the time. They were like a rapidly ascendant middle class. The bourgeois were still under the influence of feudal ties, which had been bound up in church morality for thousands of years. And the conflict between the bourgeois and the proles hadn’t been decided yet, not in most parts of the world.

4. So attacking “morality” as an oppressive force, when the actual oppressive force was economic/bourgeois just gives the bourgeois freer reign to do whatever they want. Its like setting a bomb in a church or factory. You’re just giving the bourgeois justification to violently oppress the working class, who it is always in the interest of the bourgeois oppress.

5. Marx is going after “amorphism” more than he is going after anarchism. Marx believed in taking action based on verifiable material fact, not on abstractions, moralizing, false equivocating, etc., the truth of the brutal exploiting nature of the bourgeois against the workers was a verifiable material fact, and the job of the revolutionary was to help people see, consider, and act upon (praxis) the truth of their conditions, not tell them what they need to hear to make them plant bombs.

Marx opposed Bakunin’s faction, the AOSD, part of the IWMA, on the basis of what they were doing, and why they were doing it. He isn’t attacking an abstract “idea” of Anarchism.

Marx is talking about Bakunin, not you

He is talking about Mikail Bakunin

It feels good to be starving, knowing that someone else is starving more

dark /s

When they counted, they counted hundreds of thousands! We didn’t count therefore the number is zero, well done! The good and simple people of Starvation Land can sleep easy knowing that no one ever starves in Starvation Land

/s

It isn’t secret societies, it is class society. Capitalists rule over production and the government, that is the state, runs the political institutions that keep the masses of people out of power, while keeping the rich calling most of the shots.

Democracy contradicts class society, but it is a stage in a process. Democracy needs to be defended. This version of “democracy,” with parliaments and congresses and presidents, has always been the form of democracy that the rich owners have wanted, because it serves their interests. Now maybe less so, but the problem with it isnt its democratic nature, but in fact that it is largely, by design and historic precedence, democracy for the rich.

And in capitalism, the interests of the rich and poor are opposite, by nature. What is good for them is bad for us, because the more we work and the less they pay us, the richer they get. It isnt that democracy is a “sham”, but their democracy is designed for the rich freaks, whether or not they are baby eating occultists, or Mormons, or engineers. If you want to have power you have to put people below you, and if you want to keep power you have to continually put people under you at an increasing rate. If not, someone will steal your power, because if they didn’t, someone would steal both of your power. Everyone competes, that’s how the system gets everyone to cooperate.

But parliamentary democracy was an improvement over monarchies. Within that framework, the rest of us were able to struggle for more rights, people could fight for freedom with solidarity.

The rich, including members of elitist occultist secret groups, want rid of it. They think more cops and more surveillance will make it so they don’t have to deal with costly civil infrastructure, they will just use direct force to control everyone, not just the lower classes and heavily exploited people. They want rid of democracy because the profits aren’t coming in fast enough, which is why guys like Trump who are really good at legal crime, bleeding and butchering corporate empires for personal and investor gain, are given the reigns of real power. To bleed and butcher the social democracies of EU and planned economies of East Asia, to cash every check and strongarm every loan, that has been written by every president and supreme court ruling for the past 70-100 years.

Climate catastrophe is inevitable, the social contract is expired. The only chance we have is to show solidarity together and organize for the power of workers and everybody who has it rough working for some faceless corporation, depending on dwindling govt welfare or shitty min wage paychecks. Its happened before and it will happen again. We need better forms of democracy that serve our interests not theirs. Organization and leadership from below, not rule from above. The basis for it is solidarity, not elections or parliament. And the rich hate and fear other forms of democracy, especially forms of mass democracy.

The rich want us to reject democracy the way they have. They’ve been maintaining this system that disenfranchises most people, and now they think they can get a better deal. But as they cut away at the institutions that maintained our bare-minimum “civil society” they cut away the illusions that made people feel safe, or at least hopeful. But that doesn’t mean that the illusions won’t get replaced with new ones, like that democracy is a sham.

Democracy doesn’t exist unless we fight for it. People stopped fighting and so it started slipping away. Rationalizing the loss of our rights as a good thing is not the right kind of defeatism. As long as the rich exist, the poor exist; and the poorer we are the richer they get. The only way to fight and win is to organize on the basis of the best interests of an international working class, and the most potent offense and defense our class has is progressive, mass democracy.

Keep telling that to yourself

That awkward moment when you realize that Lemmy.world is the Chinese misinformation psyop and not any of the tankie instances.

Capitalism

what they did in Afghanistan

And Iran in 1953

Thanks for the detailed run-down! You have a very practical application of language construction, and I appreciate your work with this, it’s interesting to me, since I write quite a bit, often trying to communicate social theory to people without a background in social theory. This leads me to do a lot of stuff like taking a passage from late 19th, early 20th c. and then rewriting it in easier language, concisely explain core concepts, demystify clunky philosophy words like “epistemology”, etc., so I’m def familiar with some aspects of “relighting” I think. I don’t usually make up new words for things, but i see some similar considerations between our processes. Just maybe where you start recontexualizing other words into new practical application, I’ll break it up conceptually, using simpler words.

Not every exasperated petty bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petty bourgeois

That’s right I’m posting Trotsky on .ml

Thank you! I’ve read a little Deleuze, and I have a comrade who bases a lot of their views on Anti-Oedipus and ATP. I’m familiar with the rhizome, but its role as a criticism of “the root” is new, compelling.

Def appreciate the references, I’ll try and find these sources and acquaint myself with them.

Thanks. Where are you getting this from? Or is this your own set of theories? Do you have writing somewhere?

I edited my comment and then it got kinda long and took a while to finish and now I forget what my original post was. Probably just the first paragraph.