Hey folks, just posting to share that we're hosting a Beginner Bookclub over at the Decolonial Indigenous and Proletariat study group discord server!. It is made for beginners but anyone can join. All of us attending it are MLs, just like the server itself.

Our meetings take place on Saturdays at 4:30 PM EDT (UTC-4), and I'm the organizer. Additionally, we have Prolewiki members who attend, ready to answer questions and provide context during our reading sessions. Right now, we're digging into 'How Marxism Works' by Chris Harman, which is super beginner-friendly. We read during the sessions so no need to read before. You can pretty much jump in at any point and follow along just fine.

If we see more new faces joining us, we might even consider restarting the book!

If your new/ish to communism we would love to see you. Here’s your invitation to join the server.📚

https://discord.gg/Wj3HnJAQ

note: there are some questions to fill out to enter the server. Just fill them out the best you can and let them know your here for the bookclub

!

It's a Soros funded organization based out of NYC, run by hedge fund people, they certainly aren't pro communism or Marxism, but they have a lot of videos advocating for unusually things when compared to typical neocon and neolib economix thinkers and institutes in the west, in particular they have a pro-china tilt, I don't really know what to think about them and digging hasn't helped at all, anyone have any decent resources or videos about them? Or suggestions for where to look?

Is it contradictory to run an anti-capitalist business? Is it inevitable to fail under capitalism? And what would it look like under socialism?

I've never thought too much about identifying as one "branch" of Marxism, but now that I think about it I can't really come up with a simple explanation of the main divergences between different currents (ML vs MLM for instance). I suppose I agree more with Marxist-Leninist thought but besides some obvious ones like Trotskyists and patsocs I can only come up with extremely specific details of those divergences (mainly over critical support for AES).

And I definitely can't describe disagreements of less common discussions such as Xi Jinping thought and "Fidel Castro thought".

It doesn't help that a lot of the discussion centers around people like Wisconcom who aren't exactly the height of ideological consistency.

So can anybody help out?

In The State and Revolution, Lenin (and Engels, whom he is quoting) disagrees with communists using "People's State" or "Free People's State" as a programme goal.

If I understand correctly, this is because a) it creates a misunderstanding on the final phase of communism, which is stateless and b) it goes against the Marxist understanding of states as forces of oppression. On the other hand, it seems logical to me that a state following the dictatorship of the proletariat principle would call itself "People's", since the proletariat is the majority.

So, I've been wondering if the existing socialist states have an official line about this, or if there's a consensus amongst M-Ls.

I support the writer's guild strike because they are not part of the bourgeoisie. The same can't be said of a lot of these rich actors who own a ton of capital themselves. So on the one hand, it kind of seems like the bourgeoisie is fighting the bourgeoisie on this one. On the other hand, not every actor in the guild is as successful as Tom Cruise, so some of those striking actors are working class.

Someone curious asked: > Do you know of any resources where I can hear the options of average Soviet citizens during the time of the USSR?

I linked Dessaline's GitHub page: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-citizens-of-the-soviet-union-dislike-their-government.

And I suggested Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds but I don't think it quite fits the description.

Can anyone think of other resources, maybe a peoples' history kind of thing?

Marcuse argued that the middle class was too obsessed with consumerism for them to fight capitalism. This leads to a weak unity among the working class. Instead, the marginalized, victims of fascism basically, should be united.

I read an article critical of him on the marxists website, and it was kinda dumb. At the start of the article the writer labeled him as “anti-working class”, he immediately accused him of being a CIA puppet as well. Then he said he was an anarchist lol. Afterwards, he claims that the working class is not pacified, citing they had " lack of trust" in government as evidence.

Finally, here is a gem of a statement emphasizing the author's idiocy.

“Marcuse was also often accused of being an advocate of the so-called “sexual revolution,” including the supposedly “liberating” effects of promiscuity, pornography and the sexual content of mass culture. Actually, he was strongly opposed to these trends; which he criticized with his theory of “repressive desublimation.” By turning people’s natural sexuality into a commodity, he argued, capitalism actually repressed their capacity for loving relationships and replaced it with perversions that became increasingly brutal. He associated this perversity with the rise of fascist trends and viewed its encouragement by the ruling class as a form of social control.”

It seems the writer thinks porn is liberating? It's what I got from this.

What do you guys think of Marcuse?

Hello everyone. I am looking for any resources (videos, books, ect) that explain what a vangard partie must do to prepare for revolution and how parties that have led successfull revolutions did it. Things like: how to build a dual power stucture able to compete against the bourgeois state, how to deal with reactionnary infiltration of the partie, how to build popular support, how to get ressources, weapons and money, ect.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/853128

> BreadTube is a place to check out left videos, discuss content from creators, and share memes and ideas. > > - BreadTube > - [email protected] > - lemmy.world/c/breadtube

I was listening to an ep of the Deprogram where they talk about how in China, many people have translated Hakim and Yugopnik’s videos into Chinese to understand Marxist discourse from around the world. I’m a lil jealous because they said it doesn’t happen much the other way around, most Chinese resources are not translated into English. I would like to learn more about Chinese resources on Marxism and modern Chinese takes on anti-Imperialism, I tried looking up Chinese sources and surprise surprise, it’s in Chinese and is not really translated well, barely intelligible in the translation I found. I’ll find the link if I still can. TL;DR Where to find good translations of Chinese resources on Marxism?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/638597

> This is an unofficial community for the 3DIVISION game, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic. Share builds, screenshots, and guides, ask questions related to the game, and build a glorious community with comrades. > > From the WIki: > Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is the ultimate real-time Soviet-themed city builder tycoon game. Developed by 3Divison it is available on Steam in Early-Access since 15th March 2019. Construct your own republic with a centrally planned economy and transform a poor country into a rich industrial superpower! > > Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic > > https://lemmy.world/c/workersandresources > > [email protected] >

Comrades, today I had the pleasure of participating in our city's First of May demonstration, and to purchase two books from the local chapter of the MLPD (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany). One of them is pretty well-known, it is the Dialectics of Nature by Friedrich Engels; the other was an obscure philosophy tract written by one Mr Oscar Creydt where he attempts to reframe the entire history of the universe from a ML point of view, which is why I went in there with high expectations, namely that it would use recent discoveries from natural science to develop new ML philosophy.

Unfortunately for me however, whilst the book started promising and ambitious and it does demonstrate a good grasp of the historical developments of quantum mechanics, by page 60 of 220 it occurs to the author that he wants to deny Einstein's theory of general relativity, arguably the most well-tested and internally consistent theory in all of physics. But this was only the hors-d'oeuvre of the work, he goes on to try and reduce every single phenomenon in the universe to the vibration inherent to photons (which he calls "radions"), he spouts metaphysical nonsense about why the speed of light is constant, he declares the cosmic microwave background radiation to be the "primitive stage" of this vibration because Big Bang cosmology isn't real either, and he makes no attempt to explain cosmological redshift, gravitational lensing, or the perihelion precession of Mercury with his mental construction.

Now bear in mind that I don't necessarily want to accuse the author of being bad at science. The foreword of the book explicitly remarks that due to the anticommunist Stroessner regime in Paraguay, he couldn't rely on qualified people to empirically test or mathematically proofread his work, it is possible that the libraries he frequented just didn't have reliable books on the topics, and even the best scientists might publish utter drivel after having to work in isolation for decades. However, it is obvious that the mistake with this approach is that you cannot start with your own interpretation of dialectical materialism, and then change science to fit into it. This is a misconception of ML philosophy which many theoretically-minded comrades have already exposed, including on this very website. The refutation to it is that rather than relying on some rigid dogma formulated by humans, nature begets the shape of her own dialectics via her own interactions with herself; which is why we must study nature to arrive at natural philosophy and not vice versa.

The last thing I want to remark is that, if instead it had been let's say a Christian fanfic of science, one would immediately have noticed from the lack of footnotes and historical background knowledge, the presence of biblical and other nonscientific references, the use of odd figures and diagrams derived from gnosticism, or the extensive use of all-capital letter words. Here, there were no such signs. Marxist-Leninist scientific malpractice is especially worrisome because you might not even notice it until several pages into the book and even then the errors are of a much more subtle nature and require background knowledge.

My region is home to the world's largest worker cooperative, Mondragon Corporation. Do you think worker cooperatives are useful to us? Why aren't they more widespread? Could their growth be facilitated by new technologies like the Internet or Blockchain?

I heard Maoism is popular in India. Why? What is so appealing about committing terrorism in the name of left-deviationism?

Something that isn't anti-deng but honest criticisms

Thanks

Who you agree with more? Kollontai's Glass of Water theory or Zalkind's Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat? Were they good for 1920s-1930s Soviet Union? What about current implementations, which one would you lean closer to and why?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/556716

> If I am to believe my school textbooks (which are not to be trusted more than half the time on recent history), Yugoslavia made use of the Marshall Plan, and if I'm to trust another book, related to that history period, but released when we still had socialism in Poland, the Marshall Plan was used by the USA to manipulate politics of the plan's beneficinaries to their likes. > > How did this affect the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, if at all?

I've heard conflicting things about their political orientation.

I was gonna ask "Are Mestizos settlers?" but I quickly realized that the answer to this question probably isn't black and white. If the answer to this isn't just "Yes" or "No" then what determines whether or not a Mestizo person is a settler?

Do you guy have any good materials about Estonia after the fall os the USSR?

How is their economy doing, how is the wealth distribution, the populations access to basic needs etc

this kind of i formation

It is my understanding that class conflict is seen as the primary contradiction at least in this epoch of history. My question is, what are the new contradictions that formed under socialism thus far and what would be the theorized contradictions under communism? What was the primary contradiction during primitive communism? Or perhaps my questions show a fundamental misunderstanding, which if so I would like corrected. Thank you!

I'm still baffled with how China's economic system works.

I only know about Hoxha bc like a year ago I was reading Espresso Stalinist and they mentioned Hoxha. I don’t know much about him besides that he made bunkers, liked Stalin a lot and he called people Revisionist. This gives me no actual insight into whether he had good ideas or not. I know for a fucking fact that looking him up on YT will mislead me and I’ll be left more confused than I started. What is Hoxhaism and how does it differentiate from Marxism-Leninism generally? Is it an offshoot, what are your general opinions on Hoxha and the modern Hoxha community(if there even exist more than 200 of them worldwide)

I have the Marx-Engels reader which has a LOT of Marx and plenty of Engel’s essential texts. I also have the Essential works of Lenin and a few others by him, I have 3 Stalin books(Anarch or Soc, Marxism & Natl. Question, Foundations of Leninism). I’m wondering who is another important Marxist to collect works of? My main thought is probably Rosa Luxembourg but I don’t know which collection to get. Any other good collections of works would be appreciated

Though I've read and watched a lot about the BPP, I realize there's a lot that has never crossed my path. I assume this is true for a lot of comrades here as well. So, please use this post to share sources and theory surrounding the Panthers and ask questions about them.

I've listened to this episode of a podcast and would love to know more. Books preferred but I'm ok with more podcasts and ig youtube

Sorry if I chose the wrong community to post in!

Okay so I was talking with my therapist today about anxiety stuff, specifically with the war; I voiced my disdain for NATO, fascist sentiment on the rise, and the xenophobia towards Eastern Europeans (specifically Russians and allies). I must have mentioned something that brought up a memory he had when he visited Yugoslavia as a kid. He told me he remembered that there were soldiers at the border with machine guns. He’s mentioned this a few times and now I finally remembered to ask:

What the hell was going on that required machine guns at the border? Military at borders aren’t that shocking, but considering Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore I figured something must’ve been going on. He didn’t mention a time frame or his age, at the time, either.

From what I gather, Dialectical analysis is the opposite of metaphysical analysis. I also know Idealism is the other side of materialism. So I feel like Idealism and Metaphysics go hand in hand. They are ways of thinking that fundamentally go against the way the world works in a DialMat perspective. I’m mainly confused because I basically see DialMat as one in the same when I know they aren’t. Can you give me an example of what a Metaphysical Materialist would look like? Or what a Dialectical understanding Idealist would look like as opposed to the former? I should probably brush up on Anarchism or Socialism by Stalin just to make sure but any input is appreciated comrades.

I know it sounds like I’m feeding into some Doomer vibe, or like I’m giving up. I’m not, I will absolutely continue going to food drives and joining the occasional protest if I can, but my serious question I’ve been kinda struggling with is whether registration for voting is even worth it? I mean in my area there aren’t really 3rd parties, just a bunch of Jackass Democrats and Greedy Republicans yelling about how they’re more American. I suppose there are some referendums, but nothing that really helps people especially. I remember in 2016(I was a lib) I had told a friend that not voting creates a more dangerous situation for POC and LGBTQIA people that we know personally. The fucked up thing about what I said is that it kinda ignores the sad reality that Democrats often toss aside these groups as sacrifices for a few more votes. So Idk how to proceed. My potential vote for a Dem governor will make me feel worse than when I voted for Biden bc I know better. I can tell myself that I genuinely didn’t know better when I voted for Biden, I was a Dem who was willing to do anything to beat the Far Right, and I got what I wanted, just not what I expected. Sorry for the long Body Text, but as a USA comrade in a strongly Blue State, is voting worth anything? Thank you.

Text Mirror:

>What does decolonization of Hawaii, and the US look like? From one Native Hawaiian's perspective (me) > >The US military is destroying our islands along with the 12 million tourists under foreign billionaire-owned tourism. Too many Americans are buying up our lands forcing us out by jacking home prices to $1.5 million etc. > >But the solution in places like Hawaii, North America is not as simple as everyone who is white or non-indigenous simply leaving. > >If the people in Hawaii & North America could repair the inequities with the indigenous people there, respect treaties, allow indigenous and ethnic minorities to exist as equal yet different - the way Vietnam, China have 50+ ethnic minorities who co-exist, allow them to speak languages, don't mass-arrest imjpoverish, etc - then everyone would not need to leave. > >If the colonizer-mindset people in Hawaii leave and go to N America, that pushes the problem to Native Americans. If they go to Europe, at least you don't have re-settler colonialism. > >When the French colonizers were defeated and kicked out of Vietnam, they were < 5% of the population, had clearly delineated 'us and them' lines, and so decolonization was more straightforward. Most French chose to leave Vietnam, because they were there to extract resources and labor from their 'coolies' and when they couldn't anymore, they went back to Europe. > >At the same time, all people of French/white heritage were not required to leave Vietnam after the dismantling of colonial yt supremacist rule. > >As an example, my Vietnamese friend Luna Oi has a white American husband in Vietnam, and he is not required to 'go back to America' because he's white. He simply has to follow the rules of Vietnam, its socialist anti-imperialist country, and co-exist peacefully, and it is fine. Vietnam is 98% indigenous. > >Bolivia is ~60% identifying as indigenous, with a unique history, but they have had great successes with their indigenous-led socialist plurinational - meaning many language, many peoples, coexisting within one state - in the Western sense. > >They do not require the 40% white/non-indigenous identifying people to leave Bolivia and go back to Spain, Europe, US, etc. but over time, they will need to learn to co-exist in actual equality with the indigenous. > >The US is 98% identifying non-indigenous, with ~20-30% non-white identifying. > >The US is the worlds' largest European settler colony by far with 330 million people, and the worlds' capitalist superpower that dwarfs and puppeteers its parent Europe itself. > >The process of undoing colonization, and healing the broken people and ways (including indigenous and non-white people who have had our ways and languages severely harmed by colonization) will not look identifical to either Bolivia or Vietnam, and will be unprecedented in human history - but we can learn from each of these struggles. > >Education, listening to the marginalized, indigenous etc. and implementing that education in concrete ways is certainly an important part of the process. Which is why the US is banning CRT, anything that makes white people 'uncomfortable' from schools. Because it would indeed be the undoing of the US over time. > >Long story short - it will be a long story and there is no easy shortcut out of it, lol. > >If you appreciated this thread, consider helping this Native Hawaiian and family keep doing this educational / decolonizational work with ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/silverspook Or consider becoming a Patreon patron! https://www.patreon.com/neofeud

What did you think of it? Is it worth reading?

Before I start: I have not read Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. I have the book, but I’m reading “Anarchism or Socialism?” By Stalin now to brush up on DialMat(every now an then I confuse Idealism and Metaphysics). I was wondering is this definition of Imperialism and the facts they use to back used in good faith and not just a “Yea they totally aren’t imperialist don’t worry” take on Russia? Sorry if that was worded weird, lmk thanks

So, since Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, I assume a traditional representative democratic system is not viable, as it overrepresents other classes and their desires. So what other forms of governance have been used?