Permanently Deleted
"I'm a Marxist but everything every other Marxist ever did was wrong, and everybody is reading Marx wrong except me." :centrist:
"You didn't immediately abolish the state? That's not real socialism! That's right, socialism has never been tried!"
I really loath this obsession with the state. The state is the state of affairs. The state is the status quo. There is always a state. Even Communism is a state. A civilization with no leaders and no hierarchy is a state. It has a nature to it. It has fundamental laws by which it operates, even if they take the form of physical limitations as opposed to bourgeois legal codes. The entire world has brainworms.
Nation-states are fucking garbage, but you know what? We live in a world dominated by nation states. Where the USA ends, Mexico begins. Where Mexico ends, Guatemala begins. If there is a Communist revolution in Mexico, it won't do a damn thing about the confines of the global nation-state system. That revolution will have to navigate within that global system until the entire system as we know it is gotten rid of.
Nation-states are fucking garbage, but you know what? We live in a world dominated by nation states. Where the USA ends, Mexico begins. Where Mexico ends, Guatemala begins. If there is a Communist revolution in Mexico, it won’t do a damn thing about the confines of the global nation-state system. That revolution will have to navigate within that global system until the entire system as we know it is gotten rid of.
:this: Elimination of the "state" is necessarily international.
:agony-soviet: :gun-hubris: :chad-trotsky: Destroyed by my own posting hubris.
:scared: Now I see what it's like to be on the other side of the ice-pick.
This person would say that the Soviet Union and China didn't abolish commodity production in favor of production regulated by the criterion of use-value, which according to Marx is what characterizes the transition from capitalism to socialism.
Excuse me for having more than one neuron and knowing what leftcoms think.
OK, I'm also well aware of their "abolish commodity production" criterion. I'm just making a joking emoji combination about leftcoms, not sure what to reply here. It wasn't targeted at you, sorry if it came off that way.
I remember you going all up my last thread tryna poo-poo the last article I posted here to foster some discussion. This combined with my frustration with the kinda positions that are allowed here without much pushback vs the ones that aren't (ML, Titoist, Maoist, Socialist of the 21st century, Dengist, Anarchist, liberal, completely illiterate? A-OK, no contradiction whatsoever! Left unity! Leftcom, Trot, Stupidpol? Angry emoji) might have made me jump the gun a bit. Sorry about that.
Ah, I see. I just checked, it was the Wang Huning article, right? I did jump in that thread a bit hard, apologies. I'd had a few pretty harsh discussions around propaganda and China recently and I was on a bit of a hair-trigger regarding the subject.
Regarding stupidpol, they've only gotten steadily more reactionary over time and I don't think the community here could (or should) successfully practice unity with them. Honestly, I'm not fan of trots/leftcoms (too much tendency to bash AES), but I think it's unfair to them to put them in the same category as stupidpol.
AND NOW AN OPINION FROM SKELETOR
Stupidpol - not a legitimate type of leftism. Most of them are transphobic / other types of bigot, which invalidates them. Bigots get bullets.
Leftcoms - chill as long as they’re not condescending assholes / sectarian. I don’t know why, but it seems like that’s hard for a lot of them. Big “debate bro” energy for whatever reason.
Trots - newspaper nerds, but we love them. Respect for dealing with all the ice pick jokes they do.
THIS HAS BEEN AN OPINION FROM SKELETOR
NO! NO ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL CONDITIONS! :only-throw: ONLY IDEOLOGY.
Sounds like an alright answer to me, although you would think China and Russia would be more like the Asiatic mode of production.
Asiatic mode of production
Moments like these, I'm reminded Marx was European. Jokes about terminology aside, didn't Marx and Engels themselves drop the Asiatic mode of production in their later works?
Regardless, the point remains that these two examples didn't develop from capitalism, and so couldn't count on already-industrialized societies (among other issues).
This might be wrong, but I remember Trotsky at some point bringing up that Russia was in the Asiatic state of production at some point, saying it was like China where the power is more centralized in the figure of the sovereign who delegates to handpicked provincial governors instead of local power having local sovereignty like in Western Europe. Regardless, I think there is something to be said about China and Russia being alike one another and unlike the West at that point in history.
Regardless, I think there is something to be said about China and Russia being alike one another and unlike the West at that point in history.
Certainly, I think there's something to that. Not coincidentally, they both had somewhat similar revolutions, and the West did not.
:mao-wtf: Maoists rejecting the Soviet Union as a whole as not socialist would be odd, though. :mao-wtf:
Yeah, similar with Trots, who would uphold Lenin. I'd say if this :reddit-logo:or isn't a leftcom, he's some form of terminally online.
What's funny is that Marx actually postulated that (using the concept of the Joint Stock company) in some part of either Capital or the Economic Manuscripts. I remember a footnote by Engels on that part saying "Marx abandoned this idea after seeing how the Joint Stock companies of the time developed, so don't take this seriously" or something.
a footnote by Engels on that part saying “Marx abandoned this idea after seeing how the Joint Stock companies of the time developed, so don’t take this seriously”
Fucking REKT, lmao.
By characteristics of share ownership equitable distribution of shares across all companies would effectively abolish exploitation (if they are inalienable)
Me listening to WTYP: :so-true:
Me when they do this literally every episode :yes-honey-left:
Most people can't define 'communism' in the same way they can't define 'patriotism'. It's difficult to describe any government as entirely communistic or entirely capitalistic. What is patriotism? People feel like patriots regardless of the actions they take: they don't join the military, they may not act any different than any other american. 'Patriotism' is valued more than the actual things they represent, such as actual piety, civic virtue, or true patriotism. These terms are often used as a proxy for something else, 'good' and 'evil', and not its multi-valued orientation of each implementation having its own qualities. These abstractions are real though, it's just difficult to use them at the proper level of abstraction.
It’s difficult to describe any government as entirely communistic or entirely capitalistic.
This is a very good point. These modes of production are phenomena which don't occur in a vacuum. They interact with each other and play off one another. They emerge out of the conditions created by their predecessors. Capitalism in its infancy began in small pockets. It developed out of Feudalism and had to operate within the confines of a Feudalistic society. As a self-perpetuating system, it expanded in a drawn-out process which took centuries, and even today you can still see the imprints left by pre-capitalist socioeconomic development. At no point did somebody suddenly declare "Folks, we're doing Capitalism now," and the whole world became Capitalist.
The same is true of Communism. Communism begins in the pockets of the globe where Capitalism has ripened the conditions to such a degree which it can emerge. Communism expands from there, in a long, drawn-out process that will likely also take centuries. Communism will bear the scars and birthmarks of the society from which it was born, and it will take a long time for those scars to fade.
Communism will bear the scars and birthmarks of the society from which it was born, and it will take a long time for those scars to fade.
The old world is dying, and the new one struggles to be born?
:gramsci-heh: Looks like we're entering the time of monsters, folks.
