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alicirce @lemmygrad.ml
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Comments 7
Supply and Demand is an idiotic way to get compensation for art
  • While obviously capitalism sucks for art, it's not clear to me that a LToV-based system would allow you to make the type of art you want to make without consideration of what the people who use the art will value.

  • Do AES countries restrict citizens from leaving?
  • This is not quite the same since it is not about freedom of movement but instead about economic control, but is an interesting comparison: the US charges its citizens income tax even when they are not resident in the US, and it is the only country that does this, IIRC.

    If you leave the US and immigrate elsewhere, the only way to stop paying for the US's militaristic imperialism is to renounce your citizenship.

  • How can we answer the question "China is revisionist because of billionaires in the party?"
  • Maybe you find this essay has some useful ways to think about it: https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

    It quotes from mainstream media sources to support the charge that the communist party keeps their reins on the billionaires in a way that just doesn't happen in capitalist countries, with an eye towards long term goals.

  • Pro-socialist/Anti-Capitalist fiction books
  • Some of these have already been mentioned but I would suggest the following:

    • What Is To Be Done by Chernyshevsky. Lenin read it five times in a summer and named his pamphlet after that. Xi Jinping lists it as a fave too. It was huge in the years leading up to the October Revolution. It has better credentials as revolutionary socialist literature than probably anything else. It is a cozy read, and i think the narrator is funny.
    • The Dispossessed by Le Guin. Yeah it is anarchist, but i think it's interesting how she explores both liberalism and anarchism, and imagines how things like language change when your mode of production do. I have a twitter thread on some highlights/questions it explores (spoilers though).
    • Babel by RF Kuang. This is not socialist, IMO, and its anti-capitalism is more anti-imperialism rather than taking the form of moving past capitalism. Still it's a fun read; the world building replaces mechanization with magic, and explores how industrialization/capitalism leads to imperialism (eg Opium Wars). I have a thread on some of the world-building in it and why it's neat from a socialist angle here (again, some spoilers).

    I did read The Jungle too, but i thought it was kinda dated, miserable and uninspiring. Maybe you like it better than I did.