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.
Lemmy.world really can be maddening sometimes. It seems like any vaguely political post develops some intense strawman “tankie” action. I’ve pointed it out a few times and it doesn’t go well.
It’s even worse sometimes, they think the left is a portal that is actually secretly MAGA. It’s what happens when your political opinions are purely vibes based and not founded on any material analysis or reality.
The tankies that they keep complaining about are just your traditional Marxist-Leninists saying Marxist-Leninist things.
I think some Lemmy users like the image of being communist without actually subscribing to orthodox communist viewpoints. Just accept that you’re not one, there’s no shame in it.
They craft an image of Marx in their heads because they agree that Capitalism has issues, otherwise they would be on Reddit, but never actually read Marx. That’s the crux of these liberals complaining about Marxists and Anarchists.
Lemmy.world is allergic to reading theory, basically
In a lot of cases, while I am frustrated by them, I don’t entirely fault them.
Theory is dense and written in an antiquated way since the base of it is over 200 years old. Folks often try to find a summary, which can lead to a whole slew of rightwing disinfo. On top of that, anarchism has been actively maligned in the US since the dismantling of unions in the 1920s and communism has been since the cold war, so people often have to overcome their initial misconceptions before they can even begin to learn.
You’re absolutely correct. It’s why I have a Lemmy.ml account in the first place, I want to reach out and feed them theory, or challenge their pre-existing worldviews in a manner that might lead to good discussion. It doesn’t work most of the time, but it has worked in other instances, and that makes it more worth it to me.
Nah. There are cases where it stops being about upholding their values and more cheering on one side over another even if what they support is against their values.
I agree, you should see how mad the liberals got when I told them that the term leftist means someone who is against capitalism, not just people more left than elected representatives. Had a whole fight with me about the word not meaning that and that you could totally be a capitalist supporter and a leftist.
It really depends who you’re talking to. That’s the big problem with political buzz words. If Jordan Peterson called me a leftist it basically means that I don’t think dominating others is good. If someone on lemmy.ml called me a leftist, they’re probably assuming I agree with a bunch of theory I’ve never even heard of.
Words have meaning and we dont let people arguing in bad faith determine that meaning. Most republicans would call Biden socialist, but is he by any measure?
Sure, but the point is that you don’t know how your audience is going to interpret the word leftist when you use it on the internet. Better to use words that have clear meaning or to clarify what you mean when using words that have multiple understandings.
I agree. Thanks to conservatism worldwide, leftist has become not a set definition but a term denoting relative ideological standing. Anything other than far-right is proclaimed as “extremist Communist socialism”, which is on its face hilarious but also letting idiots dictate the manner in which we communicate.
We really have to wrench these terms back and I believe holding fast to and explaining their actual definitions is the foundation of accomplishing this.
Full agreement, if we describe positions as vibe-based and not based on what they attempt to accomplish and how, nothing can be reasonably discussed without first defining terms.
Same here. It’s always Lemmy.world and their echo chamber. They are especially idealistic liberals, they can’t stay on Reddit but they also can’t stand leftists, everything is vibes and nothing is material.
They, right now, are comparing Marxists to Evangelical Christians and are circlejerking about it, lol.
They, right now, are comparing Marxists to Evangelical Christians and are circlejerking about it, lol.
In what way are they comparing the two? Doing a comparison of Marxists against Evangelical Christians could be valid depending on the context of the comparison. Marx had a bit to say on religion’s role in the class struggle.
The crux of the argument is that both Marxism and Christianity see problems in the world, and both Marxists and Christians see a future event “fixing” these problems, and finally that people who don’t agree with these takes are uneducated, equating immaterial religious fervor with historical materialism and class struggle.
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’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.
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.
If you want to get into Marxism (even if it’s just to learn about what people are actually talking about), Principles of Communism by Engels and How Marxism Works by Chris Harman are fantastic pamphlets that really take no time to read through, though beware, Harman is a Trotskyist and that bleeds through a bit in his writing.
Marx mostly spoke about Capitalism and while no Marxist can avoid reading Marx, he doesn’t provide a great introduction to Socialism in the Marxist sense, if that makes sense. Still, Value, Price, and Profit and Wage Labor and Capital are fantastic intros to the critique of Capitalism.
Even if you’re interested in learning about Marxism-Leninism, jumping straight to Lenin before even understanding Marxism would be a mistake. Lenin builds his own critique off of Marxism, as a Marxist, so it is preferable to go through Marx first.
“Redfash” or “horseshoe theory” is usually another giveaway. MAGA Communism and PatSocs certainly exist, but not in any serious number, and they aren’t here on the mainstream Lemmy communities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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