I am a Marxist, yes.

Hexbear doesn’t praise Putin, but they do praise Xi, quite a bit.

Ah yes, if a Communist is young, they are naiive, and if a Communist is older, they are cyncial and regressive.

The double-think is strong with you.

Where’s that Parenti quote?

“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.”

On the other hand it’s been about 20 years since I read the work of Marx and Weber. I had classes on social stratification, feminism, materialism, and conflict theory. I’m pretty rusty.

Critique of the Gotha Programme is a quick read on how Marx envisions the transition to Socialism and eventually Communism.

How do we put the genie back in the bottle when we released it so very long ago? Let’s try looking at children. Education would certainly help, but can you teach empathy without the help of the parent(s)? Even if the parental figures teach empathy and structured education enforces these teachings, we come to secondary groups. This would be groups like the child’s friends or peers.They are considered more important to childhood development after a certain age (12? Not the same for everyone of course maybe an average). If the members of these secondary groups do not value empathy, the child who was taught it by their parental figures and enforced by education will begin to value it less.

This is a very ideas-focused view of society. Largely, culture and values are shaped by Material Conditions amd Mode of Production. This is the concept of Base and Superstructure, the base being the material conditions and mode of production, and the superstructure being ideology and culture.

We move beyond class society through collectivization and Socialism. This society then moves on to Communism.

I don’t know the answers. Believe me I want fully automated post-scarcity space communism. I really want it. I just can’t see the way there.

Believe me, everyone wishes we could jump hundreds of years to higher-stage Communism. Anarchists even think we can approximate that now, which is a whole other school of thought. However, Socialism is a drastic improvement on Capitalism, and lower-stage Communism is a drastic improvement on Socialism as well. Progress should not be impeded because the target is far away, especially if the process of building it is itself progress.

Some instances on Lemmy are going through a Red Scare, I doubt they can explain.

Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ca tend to be right-leaning even if they have some Leftist comms. The fediverse still appeals to leftists, but liberals have their own enclaves.

According to Harvard in 2020, 95.5% do. That certainly isn’t 100%, but it’s pretty high, I would say.

You are the perfect person to ask, because you claimed Communism cannot work because “power corrupts” and “human nature.” I am not saying you are a Capitalist. Your ideas regarding Marxism are immaterial and vibes-based, which is why I am trying to get you to take a Materialist stance.

Why does power corrupt? How can representatives be held accountable? What determines “human nature?”

1. Power itself does not corrupt. People generally act in their material interests, and in Capitalism, this is dominated by the profit motive, like all class society. The bourgeoisie are focused on making profit, no more and no less. The Capitalist State is molded by the class in power, ie the bourgeoisie, and thus serves the interests of Capital. In an alternative, collectivized system, these same dynamics would be abolished, with a different set of challenges taking their place, such as the question of allocating labor.

2. Representatives can be held accountable via democratic measures, ie a representative democracy. Worker councils and parliaments can handle coordination and check against corruption.

3. Human Nature is determined by material conditions. Humans are thought to be competitive naturally because Capitalism is competitive, even though the average worker does not care, only the bourgeoisie do. In different Modes of Production, “Human Nature” appeared very different. In primitive Communism, for example, Human Nature was cooperative and communal, class society arose from technological advancements like the agricultural revolution.

You need organization, yes. What is “fair?” Why can’t there be democratic processes keeping these people in check? What does “human nature” have to do with this, does the local post office go rogue?

I understand that the basis of Capitalism is that it isn’t fair in any way, shape, or form, but why does that mean it’s better?

Why would “power corrupts” mean Communism can’t be fully implemented? What on Earth are you talking about, specifically?

You’re right, he does have a prescription…it’s just one that doesn’t work in practice despite being tried over and over again for more than a century at this point.

It does and has worked. What do you believe is sufficient to decide if something does or does not work?

Sure seems like this country at least gets a say in voting for who runs it, unlike many, many socialist examples (with great reading scores! yay!) where they are not only not doing that, but it is prohibited structurally (or behind the scenes through radioactive tea administration).

Socialist countries do in fact have elections, voting, and so forth.

Also, don’t bend my ear with all the grand achievements of socialist countries that are decidedly not democratic and then pay lip service to democracy.

Why not? Why do you say Socialist countries aren’t democratic?

America was always too far gone, any good candidate would’ve gotten Allende’d.

What?

What do you mean? I have already provided evidence.

That doesn’t happen either. You get “Communism with Chinese characteristics”. You get the USSR that falls apart and was never really communist to begin with. You get Cuba with great food and nice looking old cars, but in an otherwise isolated and somewhat dire state and in consistent poverty. You wind up with Russia with sham elections and an international alliance of creeps including North Korea. You get czars and emperors masquerading as “presidents”. It’s all a worthless facade: still authoritarianism but comrade-chic; dictatorship but by che guevara wannabes.

So 1. You get drastic improvements on material conditions for the vast majority of people as opposed to life under the nationalist KMT

2. You get a doubling of life expectancy, massive increases in literacy rates, housing rates, free education, and consistent growth in a Socialist economy until it liberalized and collapsed

3. You get a functioning country doing the best it can for its people despite a brutal blockade designed to punish the people for throwing off their fascist dictator and slave society

Not sure what your point is here.

I don’t like capitalism either, and I think Marx’s critiques of it are well founded. He just doesn’t have a prescription: exactly like many other analysts throughout history and various wanton technocrats today.

He does, did, and I linked the sources. The fact that you’re ignoring this directly in spite of said sources is incredibly dishonest.

I’ll stick with democracy until the cossacks come knocking at the door thank you very much, and I’ll do it while reading whatever I please instead of useless theory.

Capitalism cannot be truly democratic, only Socialism can be. If you don’t want to read theory that is your personal choice to make, but that also makes all of your opinions of said theory worthless.

Yeah. I do mind. As I’ve said, I’m not engaging with you on this. Your bad faith false equivalence rhetoric is not worthy of discussion because you have NO MODELS to compare against America.

How have I been bad faith? What part has been false-equivalence? What do you mean by a Model, are you referring to another country with similar material conditions? There can’t be, as America is history’s most developed and exploitative empire, and no former empire has become Socialist straight from said Empire.

So your life expectancy,” your “literacy rates,” your housing rates,” your scientific progress” and “poverty reduction” are irrelevant things to compare.

So improving conditions is irrelevant, got it. Is your point that you want these to lower, like what happened in the Russian Federation?

Again, there is NO WORKING MODEL that can show pure socialism working in America. And you cannot provide one.

I’m sure I could if you ever once explained what you meant by this.

Because it predictably goes the same way it always goes. You start with your “temporary period of single-party state socialism” after a half decade of bloodshed, and then the party never wants to give up power. So again you’re just following what some stupid asshole / dear leader wants to do and that’s never the real actual communism.

This right there is why I recommended you read Critique of the Gotha Programme. Socialism being temporary never was meant to mean it was supposed to be a short term sacrifice, but an improvement on Capitalism and with the continual goal of improving production to get to the stage where Communism can be accomplished.

"But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

It’s not that there’s a secret cabal that never wants to give up power, but that government cannot simply dissolve and become Communism. Marx was no Anarchist! There has never been a point in time that the entire world has been made up of Socialist Republics, free from Capitalist interests, and thus trying to say that every single Socialist state should have simply collapsed themselves into magical Communism is nothing but idealism and speaks nothing of the Material Conditions of society.

Thinking that we’ll take down capitalism with some revolution and then going through a period of single-party state socialism and then eventually moving to communism is a weak ass half-thought out idea that’ll never winds up getting implemented in whole. So, I stand by my characterization there.

Why do you believe it is weak ass and half-thought out? Have you read the texts I linked? I’m not even asking you to read every Marxist text by every major Marxist who ever lived, I just think currently you have very little idea of what you’re actually trying to talk about and would be better off getting some idea of what the source material actually states and see how it has panned out in context would be better than just resorting to ad-hominem and dodging.

If the leftists get their way, Claudia de la Cruz, representing PSL, would win.

He slipp

Not arguing this. Socialism has never worked anywhere that is even remotely comparable to America. This is a fact.

It has, mind explaining what you mean when you say it hasn’t? Does improving life expectancy, literacy rates, housing rates, scientific progress, reducing poverty, and more not count as success?

I don’t argue against people that dispute facts. The facts do that themselves.

What facts have you presented? So far you’ve been sharing your opinion.