The take I saw this week, from a discussion I had in relatively polite company:
"The problem with society these days is everyone is so selfish..."
(wait for it)
"... they only think about themselves and what they can get out of everyone else..."
(wait for it)
"...humanity needs a course correction..."
(uh oh)
"... humans need to stop asking for handouts and start asking what they can do for humanity..."
(appetizer, and now main course)
"... and we need to believe in ELO~N so ELO~N keeps believing in us!" :so-true:
:agony-yehaw:
Talking about the war in Ukraine with somebody, they kept talking about how Russia is on the ropes and are about to lose. All I said was we don't really know how things are going or what's going to happen. They said "you know, it takes zero effort for you to root for the good guys and you're both-sidsing this?!"
Apparently you have to agree it's a simple, clear cut good vs. evil situation and then pick a side while you're discussing the way media reports shit during the fog of war.
zero effort for you to root for the good guys
He's not wrong about it taking zero effort, even if he's full of :brainworms: about what "good guys" means.
Yup, this is what it was like in the run up to and early days of the Iraq war. Just a total rejection of reality.
It takes zero effort to root for the good guys
Okay, "nazis are bad. Bigots are bad"
99% of people cannot say this and nose dive straight into explaining why Hitler good, actually.
They said “you know, it takes zero effort for you to root for the good guys and you’re both-sidsing this?!”
They're right you know.
It takes zero effort to say "Z".
“you know, it takes zero effort for you to root for the good guys and you’re both-sidsing this?!”
This really revealing. They think that your rooting for Ukraine is important for Ukraine winning. As if Ukraine were Goku charging a spirit bomb.
Moreover, it's important for you to believe Ukraine is winning for them to win. Which is weird, in sports I root for teams all the time that are losing or that I think will lose.
That's an interesting way to look at it. It's kind of like an idealogical purity test for these people.
"You don't understand. Back in the 2000s, when we still had bipartisanship, things were better."
BIPARTISANSHIP TO DO WHAT!? WHAT THE FUCK DID THE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS JOIN HANDS TOGETHER TO DO IN THE 2000S!? ALL OF AMERICA'S MOST HORRIBLE CRIMES HAVE BEEN FUCKING 'BIPARTISAN' YOU FUCKING MORON!
...is what I wanted to yell, but it was my mom so I said it much more tactfully.
"Communism is impossible, what we need is some kind of controlled capitalism."
"So a mode of production where the capitalists are subserviant to the government?"
"Yes, exactly!"
"So like China then?"
"NO CHINA IS EVIL"
From the same guy: "Xi Jinping can't leave China because he'll be assassinated. There's a low-level civil war happening in China right now between Xi and Hu Jintao. Xi controls the police, but Hu controls the military."
And my favorite:
"Chinese billionaires buy their way into the military in honorary titles."
"Huh, interesting, do you have any examples?"
"No, but they all do it!" :so-true:
“Xi Jinping can’t leave China because he’ll be assassinated. There’s a low-level civil war happening in China right now between Xi and Hu Jintao. Xi controls the police, but Hu controls the military.”
If you want to be extremely generous maybe they heard about Xi's anti-corruption campaign from someone who was framing that as a huge change to the party implying it was an actual real world civil war and not at best a power struggle against the more :brainworms: members of the party.
But Xi decidedly won that "struggle" anyway and it was years ago already.
I get that a lot, though they don't say "working class," ever. They say "N O R M A L" people. :sus-soviet:
Tried to get someone to define what they meant when they say "imperialism" and they said "it's when you think you're better than someone else and then act upon it".
Sometimes you have to realise you're talking to children.
“it’s when you think you’re better than someone else and then act upon it”.
That does sound like cartoon-tier understanding of motives.
I felt like the Warp was overtaking me with that take about Taiwan until I realized it was a mix-up with Thailand. :sweat:
their king is a sort of weird fail son dude like Hunter Biden and his old shenanigans go viral every now and then. probably why he knows of him.
It was in the news after the previous king, who had been very popular, died. His son is generally disliked.
Think there were some protest recently against the new king too?
when I celebrated the Palestinian missiles launching into Israel, my Israeli friend was quick to sarcastically question the news and defend the iron dome
I need leftist friends
So that friend believed that The Good Guys had an invincible defensive measure that made them even more invincible while bulldozing even more homes for even more walled rich asshole ethnostate suburbs? That's a "Franz, are we the baddies?" moment for sure.
https://hexbear.net/post/213022 multiple people in this post were implying that Russia is more likely than other countries to become socialist because they trade w / are diplomatically close to AES states, and, I'm still trying to square the circle on that one
also as a side rant AES has gotta be one of the worst terms the online left has latched on to, literally a propaganda phrase made by Brezhnev to justify revisionism
Its point was that various alternatives to the Soviet-derived model existed only in the minds of their advocates, while 'actual socialism' existed in the real world.
replace soviet for :xi-beard: now
Another aspect of the term real socialism related to the Sino-Soviet split and other ideological disagreements between the Soviet Union and its satellite states on one side and the People's Republic of China and the followers of a more Maoist brand of communist ideology on the other. The Sino-inspired communist movement, which had grown so rapidly worldwide as a "radical left" alternative to Soviet ideas, had claimed that the Soviet Union was no longer socialist and had betrayed the revolution. To counter this claim of Marxist revisionism, the Soviets called their version "real socialism", implying that other models of socialism were unrealistic
other than to just refer to the 5 states in short hand, it's pretty much an opinion disregarding phrase to me at this point, there is inherently no way to argue with it bc the whole point of it is to restrict what counts as socialism to a narrow lens of today as just China bc it's the most hegemonic country that has any form of socialism, this is how you get people on lemmygrad/GZD who unironically support Duterte over the NPA bc he's aligned with China, and, people who see Russia protecting their national bourgeoisie from the west as a socialist adjacent, etc. it seems like some people (not the people in this thread specifically) can only have critical support or critical thinking and they go with the former.
The term to me feels like the other side of the coin from "That wasn't communism/Communism hasnt been tried", in that both attempt to deflect criticism in a pretty clumsy way that also ends up moving focus away from the living process of building socialism and communism.
FWIW its a better term/phrase than trying to convince people that communists doing things for communistical reasons in the service of building towards communism is not actually "real communism", but its still not ideal to just say that Socialism Actually Exists in a bunch of countries that do things very differently from each other and are in very different situations. You can't always write a big paragraph about how each country is running their own specific process to progress forward towards socialism, but there should be a better way to sum it up than AES.
As it is right now, using AES as a term is just inviting easy ridicule for implying that X country "is socialist" in the most literal economic sense, and then you're on the back foot trying to redefine shit and defend yourself.
Edit: Also of course, a significant amount of the time when people use the argument of X wasnt really socialism/communism, its actually an anticommunist argument attempting to delegitimize armed struggle and to demonize enemy countries in some crab mentality attempt to win legitimacy for succdem/demsucc movements in the west.
Russia still has a communist party, has had numerous polls showing nostalgia for the soviet era, literally had Zyuganov tell Putin "we need to do a socialism" while Putin mouthed amenable words to such, but it's less likely than ??? to pursue socialism because ???
how is any of that a materialist analysis of the likelihood of a transition to socialism other than not banning a nominally communist party from running in elections
You're not going to be doing a material analysis of the likelihood of transition to socialism anywhere because you're not going to be able to predict it but these aspects of the situation and more indicate that it is not out of the realm of possibility and it's on you to argue which countries are more likely to make sucha transition. I would say that pressure resulting from reliance on China + these factors make it more likely than literally anywhere in the western world, so :shrug-outta-hecks:
reliance on the world's only socialist superpower being a factor in future socialism? Idk can't imagine why
I would appreciate an answer if you have the time, I would like to understand why you think this
gosh I can't imagine why a socialist superpower would ever pressure anyone to also adopt socialist tendencies especially after the decline of U.S. hegemony
why do I need to write out some nerd essay on this
But tbf here, the CPC has been explicit in not being interested in pressuring and exporting socialism, banking on them changing course on that after some arbitrary point of declining US hegemony is basically a guess.
Tbf though I shouldn't have to write an essay about what is indeed a guess when Other User has yet to argue what countries would be more likely to go socialist than one where the communist party still gets, what, a third of the fucking vote with explicit nostalgia for the communist period :shrug-outta-hecks:
why do I need to write out some nerd essay on this
the answer is I don't, I'm going to sleep
The capitalists are afraid it's already happening. Look at the meds hand wringing about the global south applying the "Chinese model".
It should be easy to explain if it's so obvious so idk why it would need to be an essay
This crazy country called :some-controversy: didn't follow the Soviet derived model, you may have heard of it
The Sino-inspired communist movement, which had grown so rapidly worldwide as a “radical left” alternative to Soviet ideas, had claimed that the Soviet Union was no longer socialist and had betrayed the revolution. To counter this claim of Marxist revisionism, the Soviets called their version “real socialism”, implying that other models of socialism were unrealistic
Have you heard of the sino soviet split lmao
i can kind of see the logic on that first take. Russia has a greater chance of a proletarian revolution in the next decade or so than p much the entire "west"
nostalgia for the Soviet age has not died, but most of the nostalgia is from a post Stalin USSR so they would have seen the liberalizing policies of krushchev and gorbachev and might be disillusioned away from revolution, even the brezhnev era, despite its decent domestic policies, alienated the PRC (and other socialist states). i think the CPRF is pretty pro China but i dont know much abt that party. if this nato/Russia war escalates Russia has a lot of factors in favor of revolution
multiple people in this post were implying that Russia is more likely than other countries to become socialist because they trade w / are diplomatically close to AES states, and, I’m still trying to square the circle on that one
How would you go about making such a ranking? Looking at countries in a vaccuum only? Are you defining socialism to include the moderate fascist wing aka social democracy?
I don't think Russia is particularly likely to become socialist in this generation, maybe beyond 2050 but by that point it doesn't matter. Russians still have a sizeable nostalgia for the USSR and yes sure this is not necessarily from a socialist perspective, but it is always easier to rebuild something than to start from zero.
But in a conversation where you compare all the western capitalist countries with other third world countries I don't see how France, Sweden or Brazil are any more likely to become socialist than Russia. And when we look at the third world if anything I think people on this site but the anglo socialist left in general are way, way too optimist about the third world, places like South America, realy people here tend to have pretty much no knowledge of Brazil or Argentina beyond the basic bottom lines e.g Bolsonaro is a bad fascist. Nobody realy knows how bad Lula's government realy was in terms of building the very neoliberal foundation that would turn around and fuck him, the party and the people.
Likewise places like India where it is pretty much hopeless, the Middle East is hopeless while the US and Israel continue to oppress the region.
The west is hopeless, Europe surely is hopeless, East Asia? Please the Japanese would rather jump in front of a bullet train than to stage a protest around actualy disrupting the status quo towards the left. South Korea? Only if :kim-drip-too-hard: comes roling down south with the help of some Chinese J-20s and hypersonic missiles.
The point is TL;DR Russia looks like a possible candidate only because the socialist movement worldwide is completely ineffectual and every other alternative is just as unlikely or worse.
Would I consider Russia more likely than every capitalist first world country? Certainly yes.
More likely than most third world countries? Also yes.
Is Russia itself very likely to become socialist in this or the next generation? Big fat NO.
Nobody is seriously suggesting Russia is on a path to socialism, you should ignore them if they say so, the only thing to consider is that if they are lucky there are some contributing factors in favor of it and it is still very unlikely thats all.
How would you go about making such a ranking?
I wouldn't personally
Are you defining socialism to include the moderate fascist wing aka social democracy?
lmao
I'm not saying western countries are more likely, but what I am saying is just being in the close sphere of china isn't a magic socialism button, I think the fact that there are residual structures from the USSR that remain is a much better argument if you were to make one, but I also think third world countries would not be any less likely than Russia, some of the biggest communist parties and movements today exist in third world countries
Now that line can be really funny in the right context, but I'm sure from your inclusion it was not.
