The Voice of Labor posted:

anyone can do anything is the point of communism, to fish in the morning, fill potholes in the afternoon, write socialist critique in the evening, rave all night and make out with your dad the next morning before going out fishing again

Epitope posted:

Anyone can be a biochemist

Epitope posted:

I was just joshing ya, since 10 minutes ago you were giving that guy a hard time for daring to think he could dabble in your specialization

christmas boots posted:

I would send Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky a copy of this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNacQaHJqEs

Top City Homo posted:

My wife's mom graduated from a Minsk university at the top of her class and they gave her a giant book and said you can work anywhere you want, in any republic for any position related to her field, no questions asked

Top City Homo posted:

because she was a good student and everyone was guaranteed a job

she got a professorial position in Russian literature

imagine becoming a professor of english literature right after graduation in the US

500 good dogs posted:

did you miss the "top of her class" part or are you doubting that is what earned her the position?

Top City Homo posted:

she earned her position.

socialism is basically the only society where meritocracy can be considered as "merit" based not just another phrase for lottery of birth

dead gay comedy forums posted:

I'd imagined it was something more or less like this, particularly in opposition to russification carried during the empire days

indigi posted:

I’m not going to lie. that sounds like the most boring poo poo ever

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

we're already on the euphronius page

yr new gurlfrand! posted:

I don’t know how to deal with the trauma of the USSR having been created and then failing due to internal contradictions and cooptation

inspiring read though

Fish of hemp posted:

I laughed heartily to the East German defectors who were shocked that in the West you have to actually work for a living.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

yeah I wish I understood biology because cell stuff is really interesting but gently caress organic chem to the 9th circle of hell

MeatwadIsGod posted:

I only got a cursory look at this stuff in college but isn't epigenetics dealing with certain genetic markers/expressions being more likely but not necessarily guaranteed from generation to generation? I learned about it within the context of, like, predispositions to addictions being inherited but that even then it can and frequently does skip generations. "Epigenetic trauma" sounds like straight pseudoscience to justify poo poo like standpoint theory in increasingly ludicrous circumstances. Like the Zionist grandchildren of Holocaust survivors claiming epigenetic trauma means only they can speak on antisemitism or whatever. My understanding was that even if the genetic markers for certain types of behavior were "activated" it means only that someone would have a predisposition towards said behavior and nothing more.

MLSM posted:

“This is the reasoning of a liberal scholar who repeats the incredibly trite and threadbare argument that experience and reason clearly prove that men arenot equal, yet socialism bases its ideal on equality. Hence, socialism, if you please, is an absurdity which is contrary to experience and reason, and so forth!

Mr. Tugan repeats the old trick of the reactionaries: first to misinterpret socialism by making it out to be an absurdity, and then to triumphantly refute the absurdity! When we say that experience and reason prove that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity in physical strength and mental ability.

It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least able to read; were lie to Lake the well-known work of one of the founders of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against D’uhring, he would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes. But when professors set out to refute socialism, one never knows what to wonder at most—their stupidity, their ignorance, or their unscrupulousness.” — V.I. Lenin

MeatwadIsGod posted:

Cuba is imo the best gateway drug for Americans to start deprogramming our anticommunism. Since they're a tiny island nation blockaded by this huge superpower it gives them a kind of sympathetic underdog character and the same is true of the July 26 guerillas in the Sierra Maestra. Obviously they had very well organized urban networks in Havana or Santiago under people like Frank Pais but the guerillas in the mountains get bled down to like 15 guys in the early days and about 2 years later they've taken Oriente, Santa Clara, and Havana. Then you get into what they actually accomplished in terms of literacy, public health, etc. despite the constant US harassment (including kidnapping, supporting reactionary guerillas in the Escambray, etc.) and it makes them look even more superhuman. Plus it's easier for Americans to unlearn propaganda about the dastardly Soviets when they realize what a lifeline the USSR was to Cuba once the embargo ramped up and that Cuba modeled its institutions on the USSR (JUCEPLAN, etc.). And then you realize "oh poo poo every socialist state has made similar extraordinary accomplishments under similar handicaps" and whatever latent anticommunism you had is pretty much gone

e-dt posted:

even in trotsky's fantasy world where people like him and listen to him the most they say is 'maybe, i'll think about it'

Crusader posted:

Aeolius posted:

John Quigley's Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World might hold some interest. It's as much about their law as it is about its ripples in the world at large, though. From the preface:

Dreylad posted:

I really like this short essay by Tony Judt that talks about the postwar acknowledgement of the Holocaust. https://nybooks.com/articles/2008/02/14/the-problem-of-evil-in-postwar-europe/

i think that was a response to my post in the doomsday thread about economists rejecting the LTV that had been widely accepted after it had been proposed by Smith and further developed by Ricardo before Marx made use of it. To be clear, it was classical economists who were mad about capitalism being defined and criticized, not capitalists broadly speaking. I've seen some writing on the subject but I'd have to dig around to see if I can find the references, because I was pretty interested in this intellectual history a year ago.

The Voice of Labor posted:

I just started my own household party and hold daily struggle sessions regarding the wife's liberal tendencies

evilpicard posted:

Marxism is when you're not allowed to realize the value of your labour

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/realPhoenixFire/status/1445960344095051777

Falstaff posted:

Actually, I think it's capitalism that's the problem, not leftist slapfights.

namesake posted:

Lenin - well known for his politeness to others on the left and his failure to bring about revolution.

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

she's not going to usher in people to Marxist thought,

Falstaff posted:

"Both sides have good points" is not a good reason to set aside your differences, it's actually a good reason to have it out. That's dialectics, it's how leftist movements grew and changed throughout history, and if there's any hope for a leftist movement in the future, it absolutely needs to get away from the whole "let's just agree to disagree (p.s. imma ignore you)" bullshit that occupies liberal spheres.

Fight it out! Make your best argument! Try to learn from the other side if you can, and either way be the best advocate for your own beliefs that you can. And if you think it's an unimportant issue, great, you're welcome to stay out of it so the people who actually do care can try to work things out. Leftist solidarity can't actually be achieved in any other way, because for some reason "Your concerns don't matter" has never gone down well with anyone - and if someone's concerns are truly expressed in a way that's counterproductive to a movement, then all the more reason to rhetorically beat them into the dust.

It's a lot better to have these battles before the left has power than after (if that time ever comes), when internal struggles are more likely to have guns and prisons involved.

Falstaff posted:

No, the battles these two groups fought were real, and meaningful, and the inroads the business conservatives built into the evangelical community were constructed through the expense of time, effort, and treasure. It's not like business interests didn't receive pushback over the decades they worked at their takeover. Prior to this, evangelical groups were a much more politically diverse on a number of issues, and although it's pretty clear whose interests are given primary concern in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, it's also true that the business conservatives within this unholy alliance emerged from the process changed - because how could they not?

I think you're projecting a lot of things onto my argument that aren't there, to be quite frank. You're 100% right that dialectical debate isn't the same thing as building organizational capacity, or doing praxis, or however you want to word it - and in fact, I would argue that any truly important dialectical debate can't really happen outside of an actually-existing organization. At no point did I argue that crafting theory would make anything happen, much less generate communism - go ahead and quote me if you think I did. And yeah, posting here is really just a hobby for people who like talking about stuff, its importance to anything outside the forums is nearly non-existent.

My argument was directed against mycomancy who, from my reading, was very irked by the idea that someone might care about what it might say about the leadership of the CPUSA (an organization that someone happens to be a member of) would try to attach itself to Grimes' publicity stunt, even though they admitted that both sides "have good points." It seems to me, if both sides have good points, then that sounds like a good time to hash things out and figure out which points are more worthy of consideration. And if this debate were had within the organization itself, I might even suggest it would be of some importance, at least to that organization's well-being. If I've read mycomancy wrong then so be it, it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong about something and it certainly won't be the last, but that doesn't make my argument turn into "posting is praxis," which is what you seem to be suggesting here.

Falstaff posted:

If that's the case then I'm wrong, and I'm sorry for misreading you. I'll try to be more careful next time.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/Life_Indestruct/status/1446958626896322564

https://twitter.com/Simprano_Tony/status/1447183708746825730

Lol anarchists

splifyphus posted:

where do y'all think the support for communism is supposed to come from, thin loving air? the whole drat point is to take money from capitalists and redirect it towards non-capitalist ends, it doesn't matter how you get it or where you get it from, just that you do get it and do something non-profit related with it.

Red and Black posted:

https://twitter.com/CatholicClod/status/1451917060079034377?s=20

Oh my god

mila kunis posted:

Southpaugh posted:

pfft clearly doesn't know anything about the wide variety of uses for a rubber mallet. You certainly don't want to be hit with one.

Fleetwood posted:

ohhhh it's a mallet, always thought it was a mobile phone with selfie stick