(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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The DPRK didn't have COVID for about two years, and then managed to completely smash their outbreak from three months to point they've been back at zero for two weeks as of yesterday At this point yeah I'd much rather be there than here
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Aug 14, 2022 06:45
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caring about tendency = fed
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Aug 14, 2022 06:46
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apropos to nothing posted:so you think that north korea is an example of a socialist society? apropos to nothing posted:theres a pretty big leap between "socialist parties have to adapt to their environment" and "juche is marxism." if you think that, welp then i dunno what to say, like its actually not really possible i think to have any kind of useful discussion cause its just so beyond the pale imo. that's more interesting to me than "is it socialism or not." i'm not saying you have to like korean socialism. it could be really distorted or warped, or not a good example of it, so why is that and how did that happen? the nature of the problem is also international, involving the cold war, the division of the peninsula, the presence of U.S. forces there, the collapse of the USSR, and so forth. therefore, given that extreme structure and the external sanctions on its civilian development, north korea is definitely "ugly" to look at, which turns their form of socialism into a "necessary evil" that comes with not being subjugated to the U.S. and south korea and they don't have "mexicans" to "pay for it" either. i think trotskyism has an inherent idealism to it, hence its particular focus on texts (and constant splitting over arguments based in texts) and then this "i'm just flabbergasted that you think that... it's beyond the pale." why? what does that even mean? BrutalistMcDonalds has issued a correction as of 07:39 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 07:14
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oD0W6SSBUAquote:The video is subversive to us - the Western people, thinking we are living the perfect life and everybody else should learn from us. The Moment where everybody is waving to the musician's bus and they wave back is pure gold. And the scene, where Milan starts to sing and the girl's mouth drops, because she knows the song, but has never have heard anything like this before. A seed was planted in her brain. Is it good? is it bad? We don't know. It just is. BrutalistMcDonalds has issued a correction as of 07:48 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 07:16
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Samog posted:why's it so important to denounce north korea this is the talking out of both sides of your mouth thing i was talking about. on the one hand, you should organize through relating to people's everyday struggles and explain marxism in relatable terms and not alienate ordinary people. on the other hand you need to keep rehashing factional and sectarian crap from a 100 years ago because people won't find that alienating. also if you take the side in the debate he doesn't like you're not a marxist and a danger to the movement. and also you need to be denouncing china, north korea, and other targets of american imperialism whenever you get a chance.
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Aug 14, 2022 09:28
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do they have a version of the smallest church in saint saens?
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Aug 14, 2022 09:38
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Cuttlefush posted:do they have a version of the smallest church in saint saens?
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Aug 14, 2022 09:46
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apropos to nothing posted:
i am going to answer this question honestly and with waaaaaay too many words to give my perspective: first you're right, there isn't a country or person on that list i could give my full unmodulated and exhaustive opinion on in a professional or most personal contexts, but that's true of almost literally everyone and every state. i extremely routinely would not eg put forward my complete opinion on jeremy corbyn even when he was in power and i thought he was a really cool candidate, was doing organizational work for his party, and would and did totally big him up etc - both positive and negative. that's really not how my experience has been, frankly. i would say i would be mostly pretty frank about NK, tito or trotsky. my opinions there are pretty mainstream, i think, or at least in the case of tito and trotsky i legit don't think most people would care even if i had a radical opinion to share. i would still modulate some stuff however, hell in this conversation i have some criticisms of trotsky's approach that i don't lead with because i feel it wouldn't be productive right now. i would just be alienating someone i'm trying to talk to - being a dick about someone who they might strong positive feelings about can also be counterproductive. castro is a funny one, i have actually in professional contexts talked glowingly about castro, working in socialized healthcare. i suspect extremely strongly this is relative to where i'm living - neither canada nor the UK have as strong a reaction to cuba and as such they are relatively "safe" to talk about. castro and smallwood used to do literal televised debates and poo poo as two islands in the atlantic both stuck in the american sphere of influence, eg. there are loving absolutely still poo poo i wouldn't bring up, or would condemn if someone wanted to talk about it, but this one i'd be most willing to be frank about i think. ussr and stalin i don't think i would in any professional contexts praise or say positive things about. i have a perception it's slightly safer to talk about the soviets since the fall but i dunno i was very little, generally anything more positive than "i miss multi-polarity" would be EXTREMELY suspect. there is some ironic or kitschy reverence but it's almost all cosplay and it's usually just generic stars and sickles and poo poo rather than explicit stalinism and very alienating besides. the most radical marxist i've ever openly praised professionally will be some nhs guy. stalin i have almost nothing but uniformly negative outlook on and would if asked call him a piece of poo poo for the stuff he did, but i still wouldn't be fuckin completely open. i would never ever in this country say some things i believe about stalin like "easily the second most evil leader at the yalta conference", because that would get me into a conversation about churchill which might get me crucified. mainstream history here is not an adequately safe subject, and to have the same criteria you have, ie being able to completely casually go "i think stalin was a horrific monster comparable to the guy on all our insurance commercials" i would not make forward progress, frankly.
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Aug 14, 2022 10:05
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:it could be a bad example of a socialist society  i'm not nearly as learned about marxism or socialist history as a lot of people in this thread, but when I read stuff like the last four pages, I mostly just think, was the ussr degenerate? i don't know, but it's gone now, and materially speaking its history must be understood in the context of it being gone now. whatever stalin and trotsky did or didn't do, something must have gone wrong with the ussr, as a system. is north korea socialist? i don't know, because the only information I can get about it comes from north korea's enemies, who I do not trust to tell me about north korea. maybe it's very nice and the people are happy. maybe not. either way I can't do anything or even really know about north korea. to me these are distractions from learning to apply marxist analysis to the world i live in. it seems really pointless to spend many words discussing the merits of individual elements in the system to me, like obsessing over particular water molecules in a wave.
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Aug 14, 2022 10:19
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here is my true stalin story: at a meeting we were discussing some current political thing, and i not talking about anything communism related said "there's a phrase that i think comes from the USSR in stalin's time, a "useful idiot". and a dude with white dude dreads said "that's it, i'm out" and abruptly left, lol
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Aug 14, 2022 10:42
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CoolCab posted:here is my true stalin story: at a meeting we were discussing some current political thing, and i not talking about anything communism related said "there's a phrase that i think comes from the USSR in stalin's time, a "useful idiot". and a dude with white dude dreads said "that's it, i'm out" and abruptly left, lol honestly sounds like a win right there
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Aug 14, 2022 10:47
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Not So Fast posted:honestly sounds like a win right there he was alright, he eventually lost enough hair that he cut the dreads and became your standard anarchist organizer type, big into extinction rebellion now lol, but i learned from that mortifying experience that you cannot even neutrally talk about these things or people because the well has been so so thoroughly poisoned. he wasn't being an rear end in a top hat, at least not on purpose.
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Aug 14, 2022 10:50
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what’s the opinion on moshe lewin’s the Soviet century? i thought he did a quite even-handed evaluation of the ussr based on the actual economic, political and demographic challenges it faced. no idealization of any of the leaders (except andropov) but also no blanket condemnations
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Aug 14, 2022 11:16
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CoolCab posted:here is my true stalin story: at a meeting we were discussing some current political thing, and i not talking about anything communism related said "there's a phrase that i think comes from the USSR in stalin's time, a "useful idiot". and a dude with white dude dreads said "that's it, i'm out" and abruptly left, lol old guy responds  other than the national question, which of stalin's works would you recommend uhh... i... [sounding like steamed hams] well there's dialectical and historical materialism, which has [unparalleled contributions to the science of marxism-leninism yada yada]... and... there's an interview he gave with H.G. wells. it was called marxism vs. liberalism. yeah i would really recommend those to begin well i used to have his collected works. there were 13 volumes. i had 'em all at one point and, well, i didn't think it added anything new from lenin ... but i'll look up marxism vs. liberalism
BrutalistMcDonalds has issued a correction as of 11:36 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 11:29
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he should, it really is a GOAT interview
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Aug 14, 2022 11:31
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it is a good interview
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Aug 14, 2022 11:34
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it's like if asimov got to interview mao or something, just completely crazy that happened. but it's better than that, it's like if asimov interviewed mao and they both were genuinely interested and engaged in the conversation.
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Aug 14, 2022 11:49
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I like the part where Wells says he is the real communist because unlike Stalin he believes the capitalists will just give up and do communism for efficiency's sake. Also the part where he gets backed into a corner and has to insist Oliver Cromwell abolished the monarchy with the power of decorum and following all the rules.
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Aug 14, 2022 14:55
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no he believes he's further "on the left" on the basis he thinks the capitalist system is on the verge of collapse in 1934, which is funny. i think he's deliberately poo poo stirring when he name drops gorky at the end because this is roughly when he was falling out of favour and before being repressed, but i could be mistaken. i've read it a few times over the years and i always feel like i come to an additional insight, either on the historical figures and in particular how stalin wanted to present himself to america in particular at this time, or on how their professed (apropos would strongly disagree with the title lol) ideologies were handling the present crisis and how reflective that is of current terms. like, does this not sound very familiar: quote:Wells : I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelligentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a superabundance of technical intellectuals, and their mentality has changed very sharply. The skilled man, who would formerly never listen to revolutionary talk, is now greatly interested in it. Recently I was dining with the Royal Society, our great English scientific society. The President's speech was a speech for social planning and scientific control. Thirty years ago, they would not have listened to what I say to them now. Today, the man at the head of the Royal Society holds revolutionary views and insists on the scientific reorganisation of human society. Mentality changes. Your class-war propaganda has not kept pace with these facts. this could be pulled almost word for word from the modern perception of the increasing radicalization in our current period tech workers like coders - but in both cases they take an almost pathological revulsion to any kind of meaningful analysis. he acknowledges while the workers were scarce and extremely well compensated they were complacent and largely reactionary while against the increasing decline of their material living standards they grow more revolutionary and yet claims this is somehow unrelated to class?
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Aug 14, 2022 15:23
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CoolCab posted:here is my true stalin story: at a meeting we were discussing some current political thing, and i not talking about anything communism related said "there's a phrase that i think comes from the USSR in stalin's time, a "useful idiot". and a dude with white dude dreads said "that's it, i'm out" and abruptly left, lol Tbh this person sounds stupid. What was everyone else's reaction? Like I'm sorry is mister white dreads the anarchist having a hissy fit evidence that you ABSOLUTELY MUST NEVER EVEN TANGENTIALLY MENTION ABOUT THESE FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS. unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 15:26 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 15:24
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Raskolnikov38 posted:my opinion is there must be a larger plan or idea of a plan, rather than small, discrete, and disconnected activities, so who's got one? to the trots' credit taking over the DSA is a plan and a decent one albeit if not extremely on brand for trots the main effect of their success on that front would be the DSA's full-throated denunciation of china and the dprk
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Aug 14, 2022 15:26
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unwantedplatypus posted:Tbh this person sounds stupid. What was everyone else's reaction? he said it kind of half jokingly and ducked out the next time he was supposed to go to the bar, iirc. i don't think there was much of a reaction at the rest of the table at all, although i was personally very embarrassed. i think we were talking about george osbourne and people defending the austerity for ignorant but genuine reasons ie "the national credit card" type stuff, i certainly didn't raise it to talk about josef stalin. it was a weekly meeting so there were like less than ten of us in a pub, again i later did know the dude a bit and he's not that bad, i don't think it was his scene.
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Aug 14, 2022 15:29
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unwantedplatypus posted:
uh. i am literally describing a thing that happened, lmao
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Aug 14, 2022 15:30
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CoolCab posted:uh. i am literally describing a thing that happened, lmao Yeah, fair enough, but its been an ongoing topic of discussion for several pages.
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Aug 14, 2022 15:33
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Ferrinus posted:the main effect of their success on that front would be the DSA's full-throated denunciation of china and the dprk to that point, there’s fairly constant infighting between the liberal/neoliberal wing of dsa and the international committee that tends to be more leftist than the average chapter as a whole, e.g. over last year’s Venezuela delegation
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Aug 14, 2022 15:35
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Crusader posted:to that point, there’s fairly constant infighting between the liberal/neoliberal wing of dsa and the international committee that tends to be more leftist than the average chapter as a whole, e.g. over last year’s Venezuela delegation Or their position on Ukraine!
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Aug 14, 2022 15:47
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so the dsa is useless and all the other parties are go-nowhere clubs of a couple hundred members at best, great. I’m going to go back to reading Marx and hope a Lenin emerges because it certainly ain’t me
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Aug 14, 2022 15:51
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Its very fortunate that the correct course of action is to wait for somebody else to do all of the hard work /s
unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 15:58 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 15:55
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Raskolnikov38 posted:so the dsa is useless and all the other parties are go-nowhere clubs of a couple hundred members at best, great. I’m going to go back to reading Marx and hope a Lenin emerges because it certainly ain’t me the op of the "marxism" thread 
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Aug 14, 2022 16:05
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Raskolnikov38 posted:so the dsa is useless and all the other parties are go-nowhere clubs of a couple hundred members at best, great. I’m going to go back to reading Marx and hope a Lenin emerges because it certainly ain’t me the dsa is so big that it's actually pretty easy to find like-minded people doing good work no matter how you define those two terms. of course that work will often include struggling against other parts of the dsa but that's just how things go in the early stages of party formation
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Aug 14, 2022 16:06
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I mean thanks for your belief in my ability to affect some course change on an org with ten of thousands of members but I assure you you severely overestimate my abilities
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Aug 14, 2022 16:07
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Raskolnikov38 posted:so the dsa is useless and all the other parties are go-nowhere clubs of a couple hundred members at best, great. I’m going to go back to reading Marx and hope a Lenin emerges because it certainly ain’t me i mean, there are actual communist caucuses and members in dsa, so you can do some organizing there (like we voted as a bloc on some things during last year’s local convention) - i wouldn’t say it’s useless, just know like with most things it will be a struggle edit: yeah what Ferrinus said
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Aug 14, 2022 16:08
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Lol there are always more excuses.
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Aug 14, 2022 16:11
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I mean thanks for your belief in my ability to affect some course change on an org with ten of thousands of members but I assure you you severely overestimate my abilities that's what the like minded people and good work are for!!!
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Aug 14, 2022 16:11
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I mean thanks for your belief in my ability to affect some course change on an org with ten of thousands of members but I assure you you severely overestimate my abilities There's no excuse for not at least trying to organize in some capacity, not even lack of talent or probable personal impact. Why even bother being a Marxist if all you're going to do with it is be alone and "correct" in your room, if you're that much of a nihilist you might as well just be apolitical. It'd probably be personally healthier
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Aug 14, 2022 16:11
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lol even if there isn't an active local org there are so many things you can do to meet like minded people. around where i am pipeline protests, mmiw, now roe have active movements for example re standing stalin, nk, etc i try to give people the historical context to make them less comically evil caricatures in peoples minds but if you're also not willing to talk about the contradictions you're a coward
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Aug 14, 2022 16:12
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The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to be an isolated misanthrope -Marx, probably
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Aug 14, 2022 16:14
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okay then, i guess the analogy i would use is your marxism basically Posadist then? it's just the magical belief that maybe some day in the future someone else is going to step down from the heavens to raise the working classes up, and as such no action is needed no matter how poo poo everything gets until then - in fact some take it further like Posadists really and say it's better when it gets worse faster. if you want to argue on message boards fine so do i whatever we all have terrible habits. but doing so is basically masturbation and we all know it, it's not actualizing loving anything.
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Aug 14, 2022 16:16
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fine if you all think the dsa is salvageable I’ll go annoy local meetings
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Aug 14, 2022 16:27
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If you don't like the DC chapter, the NOVA chapter was run by an old woman who is completely offline. At least that was the case a few years ago.
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Aug 14, 2022 16:28
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