I’m talking about deeply held beliefs you have that many might disagree with here or deem to be incompatible with Marxist ideology. I’m interested because I doubt everyone here is an ideological robot who all share the same uniformity in belief
The proles, especially in the West, often don’t want to read dry, jargon-filled theory unless they are already radicalized. Western socialist publications would be better served through allegory, metaphor, and subtext in fiction—ranging from comics, to fan fic, to short stories, short films, indie games, and other mediums of what gets lumped into “entertainment”—than continuing the focus on more articles on why x’s theory is better. Of all the socialist-friendly publishing I’ve ever come across, none of them has ever had a fiction section. NONE. With no plans or interest in one. I think we’re doing ourselves a great disservice and limiting our reach by not producing and giving greater focus to spreading fictional content that doesn’t adhere to capitalist ideology or its underpinning assumptions about the world.
I completely agree with this.
100% agree
i agree. most people want to live their life and not think about politics. think about how it is now, basically. We absorb capitalist ‘culture’(or lack of, however we want to think of it) through background noise mostly. We pick up stuff from entertainment and from wherever we do frequent: for a lot of us that’s work, and/or school, and possibly ‘online’.
we should seek to disseminate our ideas through many channels.
some people are very theory minded and political and like to study texts and apply it to real life situations. that won’t cease to exist because we try to appeal to people in less explicit ways. in my opinion, it will likely increase the amount of studious and politically involved workers just by increasing the amount of people who are being exposed to communist ideas.
For me it was hearing figures like Tupac or Helen Keller were communist, or pro communist, that made me interested in the first place. I looked into them as figures, then into communism in general.
I think you need those things as intros to theory. Start with popular culture, or something relatable, before getting to something deeper
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My views regarding prostitution is probably one most people on the left won’t agree with. I do consider sex workers as workers, however, rather than working towards legalising prostitution, we should work towards eliminating the circumstances that force people to turn to prostitution in order to feed themselves. Ideologically, I’m not comfortable with the implications that it commodifies the human body and turns it into nothing more than a tool to be used by others. This is the very view that slave owners had, turning humans into nothing more than property to be used.
Arguably, it’s the same view that Marx has of prostitution, but somehow it’s not popular in Leftist circles.
This should not be controversial. This is the conclusion arrived at via Marxism and has been for a long time.
I agree with you
Also in agreement with you, but dang is it one of the fastest ways to start a heated argument with most leftists these days
i agree with your assessment of sex work (tho i wouldnt extend it to the petite bourgeoisie minded cam models) but the reality of the matter is that while capitalism is still around the conditions that lead to sex work will not be abolished and their form of employment being criminalized in the meantime wile we figure this whole revolution shit out is just bad, so i think we should support efforts to decriminalized sex work.
Around most left wing circles around here my controversial opinion would be that they are too elitist and ‘soft’ so to say. Dutch left wing figureheads are mostly elitist figures whose life goal it is to do politics. They look like cartoon figures to me and I really think it’s one of the reasons they don’t have success.
I know that’s bordering body shaming, but I can’t help but think that way. I don’t mean that you have to look like a body building factory worker as a left wing leader, but still. In Belgium, for example, a lot of our members of parliament are actual factory workers / cleaning staff etc. and I can just see the difference it makes. They know what workers are up to, they use the same language, they might even look the same. Dutch left wing politics is focussed too much on the people that had higher education so that they can pretend to be better than the actual workers, workers for which they seem to be allergic to.
This might not be controversial here, but I got a lot of shit for expressing my views like this lol
As a buitenlander in NL (here for almost 11 years now), I totally agree on that view. The outward facing "left"involved in the political process here are almost entirely bourgeois champagne socialists who seemingly never had a hard day in their lives and are incapable of connecting to the common person, “soft” is a great way to describe them. At the same time, most of the “hard” on-the-ground leftists I’ve met in Amsterdam seem too close in their views to co-opted CIAnarchists instead of Marxist-Leninist socialists and communists, and that bums me out hardcore. My working theory on that is because they take their cues on social issues from the American “left” instead of through their own dialectical processes and historical nature of the struggles. Their ideas are tainted with Amero-centric characteristics.
There is a big hole in NL politics where a legitimate Socialist Party of workers should be. SP (the official socialist party of Netherlands) are at best a bunch of weak-willed SocDems a la Bernie Sanders. Might as well be controlled-opposition. It’s time to bring back the tomatoes (and throwing) from which the SP logo is designed.
The funny thing about SP is that they realized the same thing, but instead of trying to educate the workers on the importance of socialism, they are now considering taking on reactionary takes to appeal to them. Literally the reverse way of thinking.
Yeah you nailed it exactly. It’s really muddying the waters of socialism as mainstream Dutch understand it, simultaneously as it pushes the Overton Window to the right.
individualism fetishizes losing. they have a million reasons why they can’t do anything and why nothing is good enough for them to contribute to.
I firmly believe that you guys raise many good points but I’m a black man in America so I still have a few homegrown beliefs that I can’t shake. I think belief in God or a god is unfairly discriminated against in leftist circles. Fascists aren’t evil because they have faith, their evil because they use faith as a shield and spear to attack others.
You’ve nailed how I feel about it. Like, I don’t have a problem with a religious person; what I have a problem with is the organized ‘religious’ using their religions as a cudgel.
Yeah religion doesn’t have to be like our modern Abrahamic religions in the west. Everyone has some sort of ‘religion’ anyway that helps us understand the world, why not share it with our community? It’s only a problem when it crosses into orthodoxy
not everyone has religion, no not even any spiritualness plenty of us dont need it and its frankly offensive you would suggest otherwise. and if it doesnt have to be like it is then why is it the way it is? idk 2 millennium at least of it being the way it is isnt counter acted by u saying “its actually great”.
I don’t consider myself religious or spiritual but acknowledge that communism and Marxism occupies a similiar place in my brain as a compass that helps me process and understand the world around me. I don’t think its offensive to suggest that this is a near universal part of the human experience. And the last 2000 years religion has been used as a tool by the ruling classes, who is to say religion can’t exist in a fundamentally different way in a classless society?
dialectical materialism is not a compass it is a method it doesnt tell u arbitrary values with no justification that some dude thousands of years ago thought were good or benefited him, it allows u to actually think for yourself and analyze things, and if it a fixed compass for you, always pointing the same way with no understanding or reason then u arent using it you simply picked an application of it by someone you licked and follow it dogmatically and yes it IS offensive to suggest everyone else does the same. and sure who knows what religion will look like in a classless society but the imperialist slaver and misogynist propaganda wont magically disappear the religious text that it is in so unless people decide to dump the very foundational ideas and texts and costumes of the most popular religions that exist right now it will always be a threat to said society.
It feels like you are willfully misinterpreting what I am saying tbh. Compass here is operating as a metaphor, and I don’t like the implication that I am somehow perverting dialectical materialism because you don’t like my turn of phrase. Human beings aren’t computers, we have subjective experience that amounts to more than just logical operation. Regardless of whether we are applying science or not, there is still an experiential aspect of everything we do. And when did I say I was talking about modern popular religions when I was merely talking about religion in the abstract? I was clearly not suggesting that Christianity should be incorporated into Marxism or encouraged in socialist society or something
isn’t that like one of the ten commandments? using god to promote fascism sure seems like taking their name in vain.
Judging from the lack of any noticeable reaction, he’s definitely not angry. Considering the multiple times he punished Israelites for way less, and taking pardon me for saying that, holocaust into consideration, god is a fascist himself.
Or he, idk, just don’t exist
I’m with you 100% as a brown Latino
My 3.6 roentgen take is that frankly, if you live in the imperial core, and your Socialism/Marxism/pick-another-left-ism isn’t explicitly anti-colonial and reparative, your ‘leftism’ is just as hollow as the ‘progressive’ libs; and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you when the subjects-of-empire that are getting whittled away start considering the only proper way forward to be lit by the fire of a burning Amerikan flag.
I think the USSR went too far with pretending certain events never happened, which makes those events seem more significant than they were. Example: When they edited out Trotsky from pictures, it was completely unnecessary, it’s easy to explain Trotsky’s faults and whitewashing history by acting like he wasn’t an instrumental part of the Revolution is a band-aid solution to the problem of revisionism and reformism.
i think China are perfect on this front. They condemn both the ultra-left who uphold Mao but denigrate Deng and the ultra right who denounce Mao and only uphold Deng. China recognises that the cultural revolution was an abhorrent mistake whilst also praising Mao as the hero of the nation who delivered them from chaos and allowed Deng to bring them into modernity. Mao was a great leader, but not infallible : the same goes for all socialist heroes.
I agree modern China is pretty Even-Keeled and as much as I like Maoist era China, they were kinda open and out propaganda at times this song is a banger but the lyrics are a bit intense for a dude that had reasonable criticisms of certain policies of Mao’s. I mean I would need to look more into him but I checked a bit on him and he seems ok on the surface
A YouTube link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:
USA and a few European countries are beyond help
I believe revolution in the imperial core will only become possible once the conditions deteriorate to a sufficient level that most people no longer benefit from a continuation of the status quo. This will happen when they have lost enough of their imperial control over the rest of the world that they can no longer afford to maintain their material conditions to an acceptable level for existence for the majority of people, which requires that they lose the ability to freely steal the resources and exploit the labor of the global south, that they lose the ability to extract superprofits from underdeveloped countries through neo-colonial unequal exchange, and finally that their financial monopolies are pushed out and they are no longer able to coast by on the “free lunch” of monopoly rents.
This is why the rapid and real development that is being achieved through mechanisms like the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (which represents a positive alternative to the predatory IMF), and multilateral organizations like the BRICS pose an existential threat to the imperial core’s global hegemony, without which their relative prosperity would be unsustainable.
That is why anti-imperialism must be the first and foremost priority for revolutionaries in the imperial core, since no revolution can occur as long as imperialism has not been defeated.
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Wholly agreed tbh. There may be sparse unfortunates who can get on the same, proper accord, but they’re too few, too far between, and too either disorganized, or organized on an archaic “class only” line that takes no modern assessment of the imperial core’s material conditions.
Perhaps yes perhaps not; I will say this has never been done before, but what else are we in the core to do even if this is the case?
If I’m in a Patsoc space then it would be that a revolution in the United States will have to be an anti-colonial movement led by black and indigenous people, and that there will be no “USSA”
That’s controversial right here for a lot of people.
The COVID virus was most likely a bioweapon created by the US to release on either Russia or China as evidenced by the Ukrainian biolabs.
9/11 was likely committed by the CIA and Saudi Arabia and I think the Patriot Act was likely their motivation/aim.
There is already evidence that suggests the FBI create terrorists/mass shooters, however I believe 98% of these events are due to the actions of the FBI.
I say likely because I am not an expert on these subjects, these are simply my opinions currently on these matters.
9/11 was likely committed by the CIA and Saudi Arabia and I think the Patriot Act was likely their motivation/aim.
I don’t think there is any other option. From the attackers persons, through pentagon attack, the destruction of buildings up to complete lack of any other noticeable attack in America, everything just screams “FALSE FUCKING FLAG”. Not to mention what happened later, the worst decades of naked imperialism ever.
My dad has the same opinion on 9/11
They fuckin did it! Maybe they didn’t directly create COVID, but the capitalist conditions created it and it was just convenient for the CIA to let the working class die of it
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At this point, I prefer to believe that COVID was completely natural. Playing who’s who with bioweapons is a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.
Yeah I prefer the same, but I always question Fort Detrick labs and the whole Virginia and Maryland thing with oldage home deaths, plus the coincidence of mysterious pneumonia-like vaping illness, 3 months after which we saw COVID. Even French government told their Olympic athletes to keep mouth shut in front of press.
Oh yeah no, there is overwhelming evidence that COVID or at least something similiar didn’t start in China but it’s all been scrubbed now.
I think this too.
My evidence is that in August 2019 the US completed a clinical trial for a MERS vaccine that provides the technological breakthrough that allowed all the top tier Covid vaccines to work. Also, there’s the thing where US intelligence agencies warned Israeli intelligence agencies about an outbreak in China, before China knew or could know there was an outbreak.
The coincidence of the US just having developed a vaccine that took nearly a decade to get a breakthrough and then the outbreak in China happening a couple of months later is just too perfect. Had they waited longer, China would have preemptively started developing a vaccine based off that research. US intelligence agencies probably misjudged just how long it would take to ramp up production of the vaccine, likely mislead by industry insiders excited to gobble up billions of dollars.
I also don’t know why no one is talking about the MERS vaccine and how US pharma pretended to discover effective vaccines at “Warp Speed.”
I wasn’t aware of this. Yes that is suspicious.
Our internalized liberalism (Westernism?) means that all socialist groups in the West inevitably become about being The Good Ones who know better than everyone else and is a fundamental reason why there will never be a successful revolution in the current world order. ML spaces like this one included.
Agreed, here’s an article on how it’s actually linked to Christianity: https://blackagendareport.com/western-marxism-loves-purity-and-martyrdom-not-real-revolution I believe there’s also a Midwestern Marx book coming out on it too.
I believe there’s also a Midwestern Marx book coming out on it too.
The purity fetish and the crisis of western Marxism I believe it’s the title, I’ll buy it when it comes out this week
If Christianity blunts revolutionary consciousness, why did Cuba, a majority Catholic country pre-Castro, make a revolution?
The argument doesn’t apply to Cuba. They didn’t have an established Marxist tradition when the revolution happened to have to debate each other’s purity of socialism. Another aspect is that the revolution wasn’t communist originally, they just want sovereignty and they found that in socialism after the revolution. Once the whole country was governed by democratic centralism there were no factions to debate how to have the purest seizure of power.
Because the contradictions risen so much that people just stopped paying attention to the usual “ora et labora”. It’s was also far from the only revolution in christian country but all of them, successful or not, went despite the churches.
Because then there’s a sociology and cultural aspect that isn’t being applied during the period of 60s to 70s the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America started to have Archbishops that preached liberation theology which in turn laid some foundations for a Marxist gateway if you will, of people starting to lean really left. This is apparent in El Salvador and Nicaragua FMLN and FSLN
Absolutely, it has been a part of our culture for hundreds and hundreds of years
This space is about education, not necessarily itself being a revolution. And there are not just North Americans here. Awareness and presenting a discussion space in itself is critical because the controlled internet is not exactly very welcoming of communists. This “space” migrated from Reddit. You need numbers and educated notions for revolution.
the heavy emphasis on online spaces and culture is a bourgeois distraction that alienates the working class more than it unifies
There’s no way around touching grass and organising, teaching, or debating offline, but we should not simply choose to forego an online presence in the name of combatting this alienation because that would mean to hand this arena of class warfare over to the enemy without a fight. There is just no cheaper or more convenient method to store, find, connect, evaluate, organise, and distribute information than the internet, lots of people do spend most of their leisure online, and it is easier for the children of a speed-addicted age to learn theory by watching short videos than it is to read it in a book. Neglecting this sphere of life means standing by as the capitalists use it to spread fascism
Depend what socialist circles.
Among infantile disorders and opportunists is that i support Russia in the Ukraine war (critically of course, but opportunists and ID don’t get that term in the first place).
Among ML’s is that atheism is an integral part of materialism and thus marxism (shouldn’t be any controversial since its obvious but still it cause shitstorm every time it surfaces)
Also a weird one since most of people will agree with effects but i was already banned in some places for saying that - patriotism have class characteristics and is not a term to be screamed upon and exorcised just because some US youtube shitheads try to apropriate it.
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the sad reality is that by now, every remotely relevant american communist party is 50% normal people and 50% FBI infiltrates
Stalin wrote a good piece on the US left that’s still relevant today
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Here you go comrade https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1929/cpusa.htm
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Putin has done more for socialism, anti-imperialism and internationalism than all the parties/organizations in the collective west (NATO and vassals) that claim to be progressive/socialist/leftist/communist/etc.
How?
very simply, by challenging american hegemony. That doesn’t make him a good person or a leftist, but Russia is the reason why the global south feels like you can ignore the US’s wishes and get away with it.
To make a few examples, Putin (with comrades Xi and Lula) is spearheading the process of de-dollarization of the global economy, which will benefit all of us massively, and he is also the first to draw a line concerning NATO expansion. Moreover, he is an oligarch - but he also prevented Russia from being fully and completely looted by neoliberalism. Russia still has control of its resources, how many countries victim of neoliberalism can say the same?
Putin has showed the world that you CAN fight NATO, and that most of the world will either be on your side or at least indifferent
In addition to what others said broadly. The moves he is making and allowing others to make if successful will cripple the US to the point where it eventually lead to barbarism or revolution, there will be no other choices and no options to continue the status quo as imperialist plunder will stop and the bourgeoisie will start devouring the labor aristocracy at home for profits out of desperation.
He isn’t doing it for those reasons but if you only care about purity of intent you’ll get nowhere in this messy world of ours as it stands. Its results we must care about, it is the material change and reality, not the best wishes and idealism which will bring about communism.
So in that respect, if this whole thing pans out and the US doesn’t pull out some masterful trump card, he will have had a large hand in helping the peoples of the world by no intentions of his own. Much like the German government helped communism by sending Lenin back on a train, it was not their intent for all that happened with the Soviet Union to follow but it was the actual material consequence of their actions.
Putin has done squat except put his puppets in control of the largest communist party
he was put into power to (and infact did) put a stop to the neo liberal looting of Russia which denied the west a source of cheap labor and completely free markets russia is also close allies of many socialist countries or countries in anti imperialist struggles. his no socialist and the ideas he has helped to popularize in russia arent communist but his still helpful in fighting the west which is good for socialism globally.
How accurate is that? I keep hearing it, but from what I’ve read Gennady is just another passive general secretary. He’s not terribly unique from the old guard, but he’s not Gorbachev either. Just a classic communist with some religious views.
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Drugs are bad and should be criminalized for the most part (exceptions for caffeine, drinking not to excess, weak marijuana (90s strengths, not this new super strong CIA stuff) also drug “culture” is bad and anti-Marxist, should be discouraged)
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The western online left has a noticeable misogyny problem. A problem with being -excuse the language but- blind to certain elements of sexism in ways they are not to other forms of identity bigotry. Try and excuse homophobia or transphobia being expressed in memes or sentiment in left spaces because of culture or the way someone was raised and you rightly get shit on and torn apart. Try and excuse racism being expressed in memes or sentiment in left spaces because of culture or the way someone was raised and you rightly get shit on and torn apart.
But the moment you point out the misogyny in those lyrics, that song, that meme everyone is enjoying together you’re a b***h, you’re splitting the par-- /the space/, you’re being too serious, or someone brings up how things are in the certain racial communities to create such misogynist and violent lyrics, and the OP hides behind race (as if women of color aren’t the first to suffer from misogyny in that instance). Like a little solidarity. I don’t need perfect policing over everything and constant quibbles and inquisitions striving for academic perfection and hunting down and throwing out every person who accidentally commits it, just solidarity and people calling what should be obvious shit out, educating, putting a stop to blatant sexism being permitted. No I don’t mind the virgin, chad, wojack stuff. No I don’t mind hate directed at awful women. I don’t mind the girl-boss mockery stuff because it’s true about how that and pink-washing is hijacking progress for preservation of capitalism/imperialism. I do mind the casual incorporation of wide-spread internet misogyny in memes, comments, posts, asides etc that is unchallenged, upvoted, and not actioned. I’m tired and I don’t stand up to this stuff because it seems pointless and hopeless in some ways unless guys in the movement start doing so. I see this all the time on reddit in otherwise good spaces. Thankfully not much here on lemmy though.
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Sex ‘work’ is exploitation not work and if you’re paying sex workers you’re not a comrade. If you can afford to give a woman several hundred dollars for sex you can afford to give a woman several hundred dollars in aid to allow her to survive without prostituting herself. If you can afford to pay $50 a month for onlyfans you can afford to pay $50/month towards the funds of an anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist group’s funding or $50/month on leafleting/postering.
You’re gonna have to pry this weed and shrooms from my cold dead hand!
Hahahahaha definitely funniest thing i seen today
Thank you, made me smile to read.
Much agreed on your second point. I’ve been fighting the battle against the ‘Karen’ shit for years and no one cares. And it’s like yeah I think we should call out liberal white women and other liberal women for the ways they advance capitalism and imperialism (like you said), but the Karen shit is clearly just inherently misogynistic. Not that I see that meme specifically a whole lot in these spaces but I’ve definitely seen similar stuff.
im sorry for my ignorance but why is the karen meme misogynist?
Same. I thought the karen meme was making fun of white people acting super entitled and being a menace if they don’t get their way.
Fun fact: we have paralel meme in Poland, Karen is called “Grażyna” (for one particularly uninspiring character from really shitty show, as a bonus which is funnier to Americans than Poles that show was named “Klan”) - but that meme is only a female version of much more popular meme about “Janusz” - sterotypical polish boomer.
That’s how it started at least. No telling what settlerdom has done to it.
It started as being simply a way to be misogynistic and is still frequently applied by misogynists to downplay when women speak out about gender violence and other issues. I know when people are using it to just make fun of cracker bullshit, but it is still inherently gendered and the most common usage of it I’ve seen is just an excuse to shit on women. I don’t think the making fun of crackers part can be separated from the misogyny at the end of the day
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