They’ve finally started adapting to climate change, guys!

Socialism or Extinction has a good section on it (unfortunately it lacks a table of contents, but its all good).

Cringe. I listened during Trevor Noah’s time, and it was part of my SocDem phase in podcasts. It was fun to hear them dunk on the Cons. The foreign policy takes stunk though. I remember an episode where they were shitting on Kim Jong Un for crying as he congratulated his people on dealing with Covid well. “It’s not like they could elect another leader.”

China has high approval rates as most loathe-some tankies know. I heard Vietnam has fallen off in terms of socialist education, but they at least are proud of their government’s Covid response. I’ve heard from the only people I know that have been to Cuba that they aren’t very fond of their government, but that’s biased as they were missionaries and the church tends to be more reactionary. I’ve heard that outside attacks on a governments tend to embolden public support, so that probably accounts for the support Cuba and the DPRK receive despite their relatively poor sanctioned conditions.

There are many tools that we can use to avoid degeneration such as democratic centralism and criticism and self criticism. The fall of the USSR wasn’t inevitable I think it could have been avoided if the Khrushchev coup didn’t happen, as well as other mistakes. We can study those mistakes and avoid them like China is. China has studied their mistakes intensely, and that’s why they’ve managed to stay around and continue to improve people’s lives. In terms of the “Uyghur genocide” it is a fabrication of the western media. Basically, the US trained jihadis in the Middle East and many happened to be Uyghur. The terrorism was brought home to China and instead of killing hundreds of thousands like the US after 9/11, China organized education and de-radicalization programs. The media has spread the lie that genocide was being committed there instead with dubious sources like (CIA) radio free Asia and (CIA) Adrian Zenz. Many visitors from Islamic countries testified there was no genocide happening. I believe these programs are since closed. We have many resources here on Lemmygrad.ml if you use the search function like this. On the surveillance thing what I’ll say is the US has more per capita CCTV cameras. I’d love to live in China especially because according to Harvard over 90% of people support their government there.. If you want to learn about Socialism With Chinese Characteristics I’d suggest Roland Boers book on the subject and some more resources here and here.

Our goal is not equality or UBI, it’s to first meet everyone’s basic needs and then help everyone reach their own personal potential. If people own their own labor they are more likely to be motivated to work. Ireland still has a dictatorship at work and that’s why people take the excuse to not work. Marx’s original goal was to make work life’s prime want. If through socialist culture people are encouraged to learn as much as they can about whatever they want people will take up jobs they really like. No brilliant artist will be forced to work a sucky fast food job because their art isn’t profitable. No one will have to be a doctor or lawyer and hate it but continue because it pays. People don’t like to not work. They will at least put labor in to hobbies, games, and community once most things are automated. Even then people can work if they want. There will and have indeed be/en bonuses for and luxuries for people who work extra hard in socialist countries too. Capitalism hinders people’s desire to work by exploiting them for capital and commodifying everything. If people can help themselves and their community by working harder they will. “No innovation under socialism” is a common anti-communist argument and can easily be debunked by the fact that the USSR went from peasant backwater to industrial superpower in a few decades without colonialism, and they went on to send the first satellite, dog, man, and woman to space, along with first crafts to the moon and mars. They also invented the internet (which they unfortunately did not see the potential of) and mobile phones.

People are capable of having power and remaining true to the people. Though it’s true some of the leaders of the USSR eventually became estranged from the people and ended up illegally dismantling it, Stalin and his comrades were paid the same as a normal worker and he died with nothing but the clothes on his back. We can and are learning from the mistakes of the past so we can do better in the future. China’s leaders have remained principled and that’s how they managed to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and crack down on corrupt corporations and politicians. Scientific socialism will continue to learn from our mistakes and avoid them in the future. Also, If communists were out for power why would we side with the oppressed (not that you’re necessarily insinuating we are just “power hungry authoritarians” or something like that).

Thanks for the reminder. I went to last year’s and forgot to sign up for this year’s.

Edit: I realize this post is old, as I went through your posts to see when you were last active, but nonetheless, I’m glad for the reminder.

I agree with everything you said. Engels was definitely a product of his time. The Patsocs like Gus Hall a great deal so I’m not sure if he’s problematic or not in himself. Fortunately I effectively left PCUSA, though not officially as the the person I emailed never got back to me, thus I’m probably still in their records. I think I heard from the ACB people who split (and PCUSA is sueing) mentioned they have inflated records of inactive people.

I don’t think using law to as much of an advantage as possible is problematic in itself. Of course we should not idealize “the constitution” or naively forget the bourgeois nature of it, but we can’t act like it was unprincipled for comrades under trial during McCarthyism to plead the fifth, when that was the last bourgeois defense they had.

Hakim’s video on the fall of the USSR: https://youtube.com/watch?v=w72mLI_FaR0&feature=sharec

Must have showed up on a bunch of people from other instances’ “all” feeds.

AOC is AOC for zoomers, Greta doesn’t have any power and there’s still some hope for her.

Wdym, there are plenty of ultras that hate Russia and also capitalism in general

Anti-Russian/pro-Ukraine stuff

It’s one of the works in 5EOP

Principles of communism is just a good work for beginners to know “what is communism?” “What is capitalism?” “What is the proletariat?” And so on. I recently finished “what is to be done” and I think it is very important to avoid bowing to spontaneity, but there’s also a lot of very context specific things that are often dogmatically copypasted. I’ll have to read those works of lenin. Five essays on philosophy is a compilation by foreign languages press of ‘on practice,’ ‘on contradiction’ and some other important works of Mao. The red deal is a US specific work about decolonization.

There are other decent figures who are younger. Vijay Prishad is only 55. We’ve got everyone in the revleft podcast family. In addition, more zoomer centered figures like the deprogram people and hasan.

All you should need to say is there were famines every couple of years before the communists came to power. After they came to power there was a single famine. There were no more famines after that. If communists really wanted to cause famines wouldn’t they have allowed/forced even more afterwards? They didn’t, and the lack of famines also showed that socialism eliminated famines. And now they’ve eliminated poverty striking a strong blow to general food insecurity too.

It’s possible in the next century, almost 45% of Americans support “socialism” if we can convince a reasonable amount of them that its not just socialism we need, but communism and it cannot be achieved by reform, then we may have a chance. As we sink further into fascism and people’s material conditions worsen there will be more who are willing to fight for a better future. (Source on 45%: https://www.newsweek.com/socialism-america-gallup-poll-1431266) Also, the US has the most armed population. As Marx said “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempts to disarm the people must be stopped, by force if necessary.” if enough armed Americans become based revolution may be feasible.___