• kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    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.

  • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • sturlabragason@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Congratulations, you’ve described me perfectly! 🥲 (except for the anarchist part, cought up with that about 6 mon ago)

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

    • Liz@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

  • SoleInvictus
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • Lad@reddthat.com
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • Liz@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          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.

          • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            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?

            • SoleInvictus
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              7 months ago

              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.

              • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                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.

            • Liz@midwest.social
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              7 months ago

              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.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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        7 months ago

        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.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        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

        • cannibalkitteh
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          7 months ago

          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.

          • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            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.

            That, or I’m a masochist, lol

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • InputZero@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          Here is the post in question.

          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.

  • Reznik@lemmy.zip
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    7 months ago

    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?

    • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 months ago

      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.