There is a spectrum haunting C-SPAM. I, on the contrary,

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > There is a spectrum haunting C-SPAM. I, on the contrary,

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Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

POWELL CURES KIDS posted:

I feel like the tesla brain microchips and the skynet death robots change the arithmetic there, too. I'm pessimistic about the results of a feudalism redux where the lords have access to drones and whatever scraps of the technological panopticon don't burn up.

I realize I sound pessimistic, but in my defense, it's only because I'm the broken husk of a man. We should still agitate, organize, and fight for liberation, regardless of our chances.

If it makes you feel any better there's no way drones and other high technology are sustainable under pre-capitalist modes of production

At the very least you need an educated population to produce/maintain such things, which as far as I'm aware is antithetical to feudalism

# ¿ Mar 4, 2021 17:31

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 09:01

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

indigi posted:

were Mao and the CPC as incredibly, unbelievably lucky as Lenin and the Bolsheviks in terms of the circumstances and events leading to their successful revolutions? since reading October I keep thinking about how the Russian communists could have been defeated or severely reduced in power at several points during 1917 if not for the ridiculous incompetence of their opponents/a few very lucky coincidences

Well they were a successful revolution so yeah they were pretty lucky, but in practical terms that just means they had the right people in the right place at the right time to overthrow the regime

# ¿ Mar 7, 2021 01:47

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

READ ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS BY J SAKAI

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 17:14

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

apropos to nothing posted:

exactly. for example I’ve been called a nazi enough times on this website that I now am one through no fault of my own

(Inter)national socialism

Trots exposed

# ¿ Mar 9, 2021 23:22

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

i, on the contrary,

New thread title

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 23:21

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ruzihm posted:

say what you will about vaushites but no vietcong ever called me a tankie

# ¿ Mar 18, 2021 00:41

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I love when I poster reveals they have no idea what they're talking about

Tesseraction posted:

Any particular focus? "China" is a pretty diverse topic so if you mean economic then look into critiques of Dengism and the move to state capitalism,

"Dengism" much like, "obuamunism", is a made up term no one describes themselves as, the guy's been dead for decades.

The PRC was state capitalist before deng in the sense that Leninism understands lower stage socialism to be a state capitalist economy controlled by a communist party. The USSR was understood to be state capitalist by it's theorists as well.

The term your looking for is "market liberalization", and while Deng's reforms did have a big effect on the Chinese economy did not shift the control out of socialist control. (See the cambodian people's party for an example of a communist party actually abandoning socialism) Rather, China's economy is closer to the NEP or Tito's Yugoslavia.

quote:

if you mean cultural then look into stuff about Han supremacy,

The PRC is 92% Han (an umbrella term so broad you might as well say "european") so looking at China in aggregate will reflect this fact.

While Han chauvinism certainly exists it falls sort of racial supremacy. The CPC acknowledges this as a problem and tries to prevent the han from overstepping where it can.

Such as by implementing affirmative action quotas in government and exempting minorities from the two child policy. Imagine for example if the government of South Carolina was required to be black, that level of affirmative action is unthinkable in America.

The CPC goes out of its way to propagate the idea that China's minorities are as equally Chinese as the Han. As anyone who's viewed one of their parades can attest.

quote:

if about the governmental style then... tbh even Wikipedia can show you how comically onion-layered the system is.

Thanks for admitting your cribbing wikipedia. In any case the government structure isn't that hard to understand. You have the local government twinned with the party itself. The former mainly maintains the various aspects of civil society whereas the latter enforces the party line on both government and private industry. Typically this means developing the economy according to the parties planning decisions and enforcing it's dominance over private business.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2021 03:04

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Enjoy posted:

isn't state capitalism also an imprecise term? i've seen it mean "the state acts like a capitalist in extracting surplus and reinvesting it in the means of production", but also as a synonym for the right-wing phrase "crony capitalism", and even as just "the state intervenes in the market" (like "social democracy" but with negative connotations)

nvm there was another post about this point

Right, state capitalism is a vague term that means different things to different people much like the words democracy, socialism, liberalism, republicanism or any other political term you care to name.

My point is that no serious Leninist will argue that the USSR, China et all established socialism proper. Instead these revolutions 'merely' established the dictatorship of the proletariat that was capable of constructing the material basis of socialism.

Partly this is due to the fact that the Leninist revolutions all occured in economically backwards countries with weak bourgeois. Thus necessitating a period of capitalist modernism.

The Leninist line is that capitalism can and should be subordinate to the state in its function as proletarian dictatorship. Thus the term "state capitalist" was used.

Trots and ultras like to pull the state capitalist card as a gotcha, but in reality the only alternative to this strategy was a socialist revolution suceeding in an advanced industrialized country. Which up until this point has yet to happen.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2021 20:32

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

namesake posted:

That whole line of thought is undone by simply observing that industrialisation or industrial development does not inherently mean capitalism. The USSR refuted the idea its economy was predominantly state capitalist, plenty of Trotskist and other anti-USSR tendencies analysed it and called it other things, having read some of the arguments about the IS traditions use of the term I find it lacking, it's just bonkers to take some pre-revolutionary term and declare that's what actually happened.

That's the term lenin used for the USSRs economic system. It shouldn't be controversial to us Lenin's terminology when discussing Leninist policy.

Economic development in the soviet union revolved around the state acting as the primary capitalist. The state extracted the surplus value of the working class and reinvested it according to whatever the planners decided was needed in order to grow the economy.

It was socialized capitalism with the goal of building towards socialism. Lenin didn't think this was an ideal state of affairs but he thought it was the best option given the failure of the German revolution.

I'm not sure why you want to die on this hill.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2021 21:00

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

namesake posted:

The fact that exploitation takes place means there was a class society, not inherently a capitalist class society. The labouring class obviously got less than they produced but that wasn't due to labour market prices differing from the value added to production which the state realised for itself by selling products in a commodity market.

Then what pray tell was it due to?

Because I assure you the USSR was very interested in creating a domestic consumer base to increase consumption.

quote:

That's the mechanism of capitalist profit which I hope you agree is a vital component of capitalism so getting all handwavey about how international strategic competition means there's a mystical force compelling the state to follow the same rules as a capitalist firm just doesn't make sense.

It's not magical at all and I'm struggling to see how you arrived at that conclusion.

The USSR was forced by circumstance to exist in a world dominated by capitalist states that sought it's destruction. As such the party had to ensure the USSR developed to a sufficient extent to resist the gravity of the stronger capitalist powers. Therefore something resembling the role of a capitalist was required to reinvest surplus value back into the economy at scales sufficient to keep a pace with the growth of capitalist economies

There's no magic here, merely the rational interest of the state to sustain itself.

The most obvious example of this was Nazi Germany necessitating quick industrialization (and thus a period of heightened exploitation of the proletariat).

The latter half of the USSRs existence was dominated by the reality of the cold war and the twin necessities of military build up and growth of an internal consumer base.

The latter of which suffered at the expense of the former and eventually resulted in the USSR entering the economic quagmire that allowed the US to exploit the internal contradictions of the soviet system resulting in it's breakup.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2021 19:29

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Kurnugia posted:

from the perspective of leftist criticism of the USSR and Maoist China, the argument seems to be that the appropriation of surplus value from existing industries to fund investment in new industries and other crap in the state budget is non-marxist and exploitative, but im having a hard time understanding how new investment capital is supposed to be accrued without such capital being in some way sourced from the surplus value of actual workersquot

I think it's possible to believe the economy had elements of exploitation and capitalism while at the same time acknowledging that these elements are regrettably necessary for now.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2021 18:20

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

PERPETUAL IDIOT posted:

You must have misheard him - he said it was a "call-in-ist" state. He "calls in" the US airstrikes, and uncle Sam drops bombs on the Syrian army.

But only when an appropriate kill streak is obtained.

Can't be letting chumps with poo poo k:d ratios pick the targets, can we?

# ¿ Mar 23, 2021 01:11

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

Many of the people living still remembered the Civil War lol

*Dude looks up from his backyard furnace and shrugs*

"It's a living!"

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 19:21

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Victory Position posted:

seems to not have been a problem for Thomas Sankara

Well until he got shot

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 18:29

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

"Live Laugh Lenin" Joey Steel

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 06:53

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

indigi posted:

maybe I’m just too simple (or stubborn) to understand the full l complexities of the issue, but the labor theory of value has always seemed self evident and unassailable to me since I learned the rudiments of it in high school and I never really felt the need to do a deep dive into the philosophical and economic mechanics of it

All liberals can do is twist themselves into knots in an effort to refute ltov. In the same way they defend the existence of the us senate or electoral college.

It's all kafaybe meant to keep leftists arguing in circles with the convinced liberals rather than engaging with the working class

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 17:44

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Gideon and Esther are cool stories, and The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is a perfect rebuttal to a lot of the grinding and microtransaction bullshit in MMORPGs

This is the single most CSPAM sentence I have ever read

# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 16:54

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

VictualSquid posted:

This guy: We to critically analyse the influence of Christianity on existing and historic Marxist movements.
Also this guy: There are no differences between catholic, protestant and orthodox Christian thought.

It's pretty clear they're speaking of christianity in general as it relates to the west in the same way that one would speak of islam in general as it relates to the ME.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 17:01

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

indigi posted:

when I was like 14-15 I had a eureka moment where realized that my devotion to Catholicism came from the exact same place as my fascination with Lord of the Rings. now I just like Lord of the Rings. but Catholicism is silly and fascinating

Well Tolkien did pattern middle earth's cosmology off of his catholicism

# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 21:09

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Impermanent posted:

let's just put it to a vote when the time comes. the fate of the wealthy is really something the people collectively ought to decide. Decision by committee would be improper, even in a thread filled with the future socialist states of america's most valued anime appraisers.

*Camera zooms in on me while i furiously beat off to hentai, suddenly I turn to face the camera with a big grin on my face*

"I'm doing my part!"

# ¿ Apr 13, 2021 06:27

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

animist posted:

really enjoyed that Red Sails piece from a few pages back.

this might not be the right thread for this, but I keep thinking about Alan Moore's definition of "magic" in From Hell, as "intentional engagement with different aspects of consciousness". Sometimes that lines up with "religion", i.e. it becomes sponsored by some aspect of the ruling economic system. In other cases it doesn't.

It occurs to me that Marxism, real Marxism, can be thought of a form of "black magic".

That is to say, it is a slightly mysterious form of engagement with the world, involving a mixture of intuitive and logical behavior, which is forbidden by the established economic structure due to its perceived destabilizing power.

Marxism can also be thought of as a rich and detailed technical subject, like engineering, poetry, or music. Like any technical subject, it has its own jargon; the lexicon of revolutionaries. "Capital", "Contradiction", "Core", "Periphery".

Marxism is constantly suppressed by Capital. In the imperial core, it survives only in nooks and crannies, hidden away from the scouring light of mass media. It lurks in dingy back alleys; including, occasionally, these very forums.

I am begging you to go outside

# ¿ Apr 14, 2021 19:46

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

apropos to nothing posted:

wb larry rip to your ten bucks and gently caress the mods

# ¿ Apr 20, 2021 15:29

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

THE POLYCULE WILL DECIDE YOUR FATE

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 19:03

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

if you work with liberals you deserve the backstabbing you’re going to get at this point

The solution is to never trust the liberals you work with. Minimize potential opportunities for them to backstab you as you look for opportunities to backstab them.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 23:13

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

I blame bernie for making socialism synonymous with a public option and minor regulatory reform

More likely it was the good normalizing accusing everyone to the right of Bush of communism

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 18:57

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ferrinus posted:

and is! it's just that even being "a socialist" counts for very little where analysis is concerned. pierre-joseph proudhon was a socialist, friedrich ebert was a socialist, julius martov was a socialist. being a socialist is simply nothing to write home about

Marx hated the term social democrat (back then the term was synonymous with socialist) for this exact reason, the term asserts nothing.

This is why he advocated for communist to be the preferred term among scientific socialists. "Social" means nothing wrt society, "communal" implies a drastic redistribution of resources.

Imo it's telling that the Nazis co-opted socialism but very few right wingers identify as communist.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 19:16

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Sharks Eat Bear posted:

Hey can anyone help me out with a recommendation for a documentary film about Marx? Ideally would like something that's more a documentary film style rather than lecture. From my searching so far, these seem like the most promising Youtube options I could find

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FaOKNpAiIM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6TZi9w6j-A

Also see that Netflix has some options (series called Genius of the Modern World with an ep about Marx, a doc called The Russian Revolution, and one on Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century), as does Amazon (series called "Red Chapters: Turning Points in the History of Communism") but tbh I'm more skeptical of the content on these platforms than what might be found on youtube...

I know that the quality/reliability will be less for a documentary film than for a lecture (which will be less than reading about Marx and less than reading Marx himself) but I'm looking to radicalize some friends/family so the accessibility of a doc film is very appealing

Watch the anime op

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 21:08

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

quote:

the trad side is opposed to identity differences on an ideological level, sees them as a threat to the natural order, etc. – this position is probably doomed in the longer term, or at least takes a lot more effort to maintain in developed economies.

Kind of, in reality the woke group slide into the trad group & decide things have gone "too far"

The trade group die off over time as a new "natural order" is created to be defended.

Which is why you have the "radical part" of france as center right, they genuinely were leftwing at their creation but the decades slid by them

Working class politics aren't immune to this either, but I'd argue less hostility is displayed between the two sides in socialist states

Dreddout fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Apr 26, 2021

# ¿ Apr 26, 2021 20:00

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I think this thread should have an IK, mods should gently caress off, and also slurs & derails should be punishable by probation

Just my two cents

# ¿ Apr 27, 2021 22:20

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Lasting Damage posted:

man, nobody wants to read this bullshit what are you talking about

# ¿ Apr 29, 2021 20:54

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ferrinus posted:

that's my favorite part. in the global uprising the revolutionary forces of the USA will have to contend with canadian revanchists

1812 shall be avenged

# ¿ Apr 30, 2021 03:08

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

John Charity Spring posted:

today I remembered how one of the things Trotsky was working on when we was assassinated was a discussion of the revolutionary potential of the Wehrmacht

not his best analysis

By this logic the American deployment to afghanistan would've defected by now

# ¿ May 2, 2021 17:46

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

THS posted:

can someone summarize this for me im at work and cant listen to audio, and theres no way im watching this in my free time

Black women has a bunch of white people (who can't make eye contact with the camera) tell her they owe her cult money for reperations.

At one point she gets this white women to say the phrase "fake white jews"

Excellent trolling on display

# ¿ May 5, 2021 17:12

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, thats the irony, the US electoral system is illiberal when you get down to it.

Even if we abolished the electoral college and first pass the post voting it wouldn't matter at this point. Because capitalists have effectively privatized almost all of the governments powers and functions.

# ¿ May 6, 2021 16:20

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Yossarian-22 posted:

mk stalin

This sounds like an alternative universe where the kbg put lsd in people's drinks

# ¿ May 12, 2021 03:36

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

KidDynamite posted:

am I a dialectic in realizing that I would not fight in the revolution because most outcomes lead to situations where I am dead and when I think of being dead I get a pain in my chest because I have attachment to the mortal for the and my wife. would have been good for the meat grinder before I met my wife. now I work to accrue capital because I want her to have a nice life with me and if I possibly die. brining a kid into this plain of existence is a tall ask, but that would def have me hoarding capital.

Just get your wife to fight the revolution for you, dumbass

# ¿ May 14, 2021 18:09

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ardennes posted:

I don’t know why an internationalist position simply can’t be that the West itself is a special case simply because it is hegemonic and therefore more dangerous.

For example, during the First World War, the allies were ultimately in an advantageous position by 1917 simply because the US had entered the war and therefore the Soviets being overly concerned with Germany was moot. If anything, it is arguable the Soviets would be in a better position if neither side had won and the belligerents had simply ground each other to dust.

Agreed, it is simply absurd to look at geopolitics from an internationalist perspective without considering that 80% of the wealth is horded in the global north

# ¿ May 15, 2021 06:19

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

apropos to nothing posted:

marxism is like a computer

Someone please find the user manual for this thing

# ¿ May 15, 2021 18:06

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/theolivefaerie/status/1393574429557411840?s=19

Can't really argue with this one

Wouldn't small pamphlets be better than handing out cumbersome newspapers?

All you need is a brief mission statement + local project's and a link to your website/ contact information.

# ¿ May 15, 2021 18:17

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 09:01

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ferrinus posted:

guy gets banned for defending child porn, entire SEP group dm immediately crowds into the thread to pontificate about how mods are all ableists, should NEVER use their buttons, etc

As if mods would ever ban someone for defending child porn

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ May 15, 2021 21:47

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > There is a spectrum haunting C-SPAM. I, on the contrary,

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