It's always funny when liberals come from Reddit because the profit motive slowly ruined everything that once made Reddit fun and disruptive, but then absolutelty mald about Marxists and other leftists once they get here, the explicitly leftist answer to Reddit.
It's especially bad on !Lemmy.world, where the majority of users are too idealistic to stay on Reddit but not well-versed enough in leftist theory or practice to actually engage with most of Lemmy.
It's even goofier when these same liberals think they are leftists, but then still get upset at Marxists, and even Anarchists.
and even Anarchists.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been called a tankie by libs lol
I am an anarchist, but I work with a decolonial Marxist org and I have read plenty of ML theory and know who my comrades are.
It's pure idealism and vibes, theory is scary and anything beyond the liberal echo chamber is MAGA and Russian propaganda.
The good news is that the turbo liberalism drives the more well-meaning liberals leftward in search of actual theory.
They're afraid to read Lenin because they know they might agree with him.
I was called a "fascist" for saying that Lenin was a Marxist. Not even for suggesting to read Lenin! Marx is whatever they want him to be, Lenin is whatever they want him to be (nevermind Lenin's deep respect for Kropotkin), ideas shape reality.
It's all Idealism.
nevermind Lenin's deep respect for Kropotkin
THEY LITERALLY NAMED A FUCKIN TRAIN STATION AFTER HIM
And not just any train station
Kropotkinskaya was therefore designed to be the largest and grandest station on the first line.
I think something both the Vaushites and PatSocs have in common is viewing things in a vacuum like liberals do, they try to carve up ideologies like football teams and insist that you cannot be an anarchist if you don't swallow NATO propaganda, or that you can't be a socialist if you acknowledge the unique struggles of LGBTQ people or colonized people in the US for example.
Meanwhile historically the lines are a lot fuzzier and both groups have aligned and clashed in various ways over a whole century.
We also do not need to keep rehashing hundred year old ideological beefs when we can simply examine the causes of those divides and also the points of agreement and learn from past mistakes. This should be something all contemporary communists of any tendency should agree on.
Yep, it's 100% vibes based and excessively frustrating to deal with. You don't even have to support the USSR or anything, just please be historically and politically consistent!
I have critical support for the USSR because they were clearly a net good and their existence gave leverage and power to workers' movements in the US because they were terrified of us doing our own october revolution. It is glaringly obvious that the existence of the communist bloc held at bay the unrestrained voracious maw of capital because we can see what happened in the years since its (illegal) dissolution.
Sure, I largely agree. I don't believe the USSR was perfect, but I see it as invaluable to seeing how a large-scale socialist project can actually work, and what parts didn't. Regardless of tendency, it's one of the best examples of Socialism at work, period, for good or ill.
Ok, that's a new one. Calling you a fascist for saying Lenin was a Marxist...
I can usually take these liberal takes in stride, but this is like they invented some new kind of weapon. I feel this weird itch to engage with them somehow, and that's not healthy.
It's a genuine drain trying to feed Lemmy.world's radlibs with any theory of any kind. Usually I try to avoid saying scary words and they will ultimately agree with the logic and analysis, which gives me hope that some can be convinced to actually educate themselves on leftism, but there's such a strong anticommunist slant on Lemmy.world that it's usually met with absurd claims with no basis in reality. Just knee-jerk vibes.
not well-versed enough in leftist theory or practice to actually engage with most of Lemmy.
The problem is that if your political world view requires actual study in order to understand and promote, you're never going to get anywhere when it comes to affecting real change. Most humans don't give a shit. You have to give them something simple and easy to make the core of their political identity. In our society capitalism has a head start because it's baked into the school system, but you don't get the luxury of forcing everyone to learn how you economic system works.
The problem is that if your political world view requires actual study in order to understand and promote, you're never going to get anywhere when it comes to affecting real change.
Two war-torn feudal backwaters transformed themselves into spacefaring superpowers in the span of a single human lifetime. History has shown that mass political education is possible and effective. I mean hell, we all have to be instructed as kids about the dangers of fire, and that works. I don't believe that educating people in Marxism is some sisyphean task any more than educating people in math. I think I can and has been done.
Do you control the public education system? Because until you do, you have to work with the educational background of the population you're given, not the one you want.
Edit: the replies to this comment that I can see are so nonsensical or make so many wrong assumptions that it's impossible to to even know where to start with them. I'll just leave my reaction at "????". If you, dear reader, want to explain to those people why their statements make no sense, I applaud your effort and the essay it will require.
If many millions of actual illiterate peasants who grew up with no school system at all can do it multiple times on different continents, it can absolutely be done here.
To be honest, people who didn't go to school were less propagandized against Marxism.
Obviously you do, and obviously the Bolsheviks and Maoists and the Cuban communists successfully did.
It really doesn't require much study to understand and promote. You can go as deep as you like, but the underlying principles are straightforward and rather obvious, like class dynamics.
Additionally, Capitalism doesn't have any "edge" over Socialism - it's in a steady state of decline, has been declining, and appears to continue to decline. Capitalism cannot be permanent, it does not have a head start, and there is no need to force everyone to understand how Socialism works.
That's really my point, you have these knee-jerk reactions because you are unfamiliar with the topics at hand, and do not appear to have tried to understand them further. The inevitability of Capitalism's decline means you don't need to be forced to understand Socialism by anyone, you'll either learn on your own or will ride the tide.
You probably won't agree with what I have said, but that's more a choice you personally make, on whether to engage or disengage, and that's fine.
I'm paid to be a software developer, but my real passion is to be a bisexual communist game developer and writer. But i'm not good at the bisexual, communist, game developer, or writer thing.
Post communism? whats that? As far as I understand it communism should be at the end of cultural and social development. What should be after that?
I'd argue that it is not possible to have an end. Culture and society, like species, continue to evolve and is never a static thing (believing otherwise is one of the big contradictions of neolibs and other staunch pro-capital ideologies). So, "post-communism" could be a set of philosophies that may not be concievable until such point that humanity has evolved culturally and socially enough. Possibly influenced by technological or external factors.
The nature of the dialectic is for it to continually and fluidly evolve, every now and then contradictions mount to a point of qualitative change and give rise to a new system that resolves the contradictions of the last, but gains new ones. It never ends. Marx only said, capitalism will bring about socialism, which will in turn bring about communism. Everything after that is too far away to really make any concrete statement that isn't grossly biased by the conditions of our time.
i like asking other people to tell me what i do, because i do whatever the fuck i please. And am beholden to no labels.
