commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]

Although I can understand this argument, I don’t think it’s realistically so. Leninism COULD mean that, but in practice, it’s used only to exclude Marxist Leninists from the group. When someone says Leninist, they are so often referring to it in opposition to “Stalinists” that the umbrella model can’t really work.

When the contradictions grow and sharpen, there is a dialectical process where the positions then become clear afterwards, and one of those positions sincec Stalin has, up until this point, always been the consensus “ML” position. Right now, there is broad agreement on many positions. I think China is the main one currently, where some ML are saying that it’s not going fast enough. But ML still means something clear in this situation, just something with a growing contradiction (like everything else).

ML is a term which Stalin used to describe Lenin’s additions. Of course that’s how Stalin described it, not how Trotsky wanted people to understand it. That contradiction built up very quickly and made a split, and Trotsky dropped the term and so it’s meaning was no longer split. But again, it’s just a label. You are just opposed to ML and then feel like it shouldn’t be called that because you disagree with it but feel like you still agree with Marx and maybe Lenin.

If it sounds like I had an attidude, I had no intention for that. I was actually paraphrasing a famous speech of Parenti.

If you want to be an island with your own terms, I do have a problem with that. It is a ‘we’ because you are using language and it’s meaningless to create your own language for only yourself. You confuse the terms tin relation to each othergenerally as it exists in a social context and language. That’s why there needs to be a good reason that a person takes such an action, and they must be clear in that. I don’t think you did either of those.

In every one of those cases, the “minority” position group eventually named themselves something else. Left-opp called themselves leninists and then trotskyists (if they were that particular flavor or left opp). Left deviationists of late Mao eventually settled at MLM to distinguish between the majority opinion there of ML (ML MZT if you want to get fancy, but not necessary because it isn’t distinguished from ML in any real scenario relevant to today).

Other nations had different approaches but agree that they are currently ML with differences in conditions and therefore differences in concrete tactics.

But regardless, you are changing a word unecessarily. Everyone who knows anything about it knows what one means with ML. What purpose is there to changing the label for something concrete and existing to which it refers? Call it a Camel for all I care, as long as we know we’re referring to the foundation of historical materialism applied to material conditions, it doesn’t matter. So changing it should have some benefit, which I’m not convinced exists.

I literally can’t imagine a better method of destroying the US empire than these sanctions

Its a nice simple intro to how China sees State mechanisms relating to Market Mechanisms in its overal strategy. It also clearly reinforces that China is socialist, because it’s use of these mechanisms is entirely in line with goals above profit and bourgeois interests, namely, proletarian interests and Chinese interests.

:denguin: Ok comrade

I’m about 50/50 on parts of that being sarcastic vs. all very serious.

If you (poster above OP) are serious: there is a lot to learn about Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and about the history of socialist countries in general, which could help you make sense of this stuff. I’m big into Losurdo, but I think Roland Boer had lots of good stuff on how this works which can be helpful at this stage. China is entirely socialist while utilizing some mechanisms developed during capitalism in order to grow and develop China economically.

Whoa what?? Avoid Anki? I’ve never heard a single person say that Quizlet is superior in the wild. What makes you conclude this?

Yeah I should say, I’m not worried about theft as a phenomenon, I just wouldn’t have an electric bike outside considering I don’t earn enough to lose something like that. Theft is a tragic symptom but I also prefer not to be affected by it lol

But smart, having inside places is cool. Most places I go and bike to wouldn’t have that

Is bike theft not a major issue in New York It’s the main thing keeping me from getting one. Bikes get stolen so frequently that I prefer my 100 buck bike, much more easily replaced.

Philosophy absolutely has the ability to examine and propose better definitions when definitions (like the ones you linked) do not capture the phenomenon. Losurdo read more books than you’ve seen by liberals in order to write his “Liberalism” book. He understood the phenomenon deeper and further than its dictionary use.

How do you capture such a thing in your world view? Because he found flaws in definitions and worked deeper, he just did nothing because it wasnt the Oxford definition?

Liberalism is associated with those things because it allowed them to happen to avoid a negative effect to property rights (revolution, riots) once more radical people pushed for them. Liberalism is reactionary and regressive, but some liberals are easier to convince of specific rights extensions than others. You’ve been lied to a lot if you think liberals did these things

Now I’m not sure about making those 1 thing or relating them at all.

Max Ajl is famously at least hopeful about Degrowth but rails against half-earth socialism.

Degrowth has nothing to do with population, it claims that overconsumption for the purpose of profit (like single-use, non-repairable, non-renewable) all correlate much more strongly to destruction that population. Degrowthers often see humans living harmoniously with nature as the goal, and often in integrated ways.

Half earth socialism sees earth being split into 2 portions and “not touching” some and allowing others to have human activity. It misunderstands the issue at base and assigns a solution which will almost definitely require genocide of those who already live harmoniously with the environment in places that humans are forced out of.

Goddamn, a significant amount of commies in the country where I live consider themselves some absurd combination of “Post-Trotsky Kautskyists” and I haven’t a damn clue how it’s unironic. It’s mistaking ideological positions for methods and analysis. Pisses me off

I have also said many times that I’d love to volunteer my skills and knowledge to Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Loas, Ethiopia, or any other “non-luxurious” country which has been held back by imperialism. I just don’t necessarily think it’s the best way to help until we have a much more equal world. Bringing that about is priority even if it makes you feel like you’re not directly helping at the moment.

Honestly, I see this text often quoted form the book but I don’t find it super useful as a way to understand fascism. The steps and reforms were all taken for a reason and people agreed with that reason, even the apprehensive agreed enough to stay seated. I think this “separation” isn’t the best thesis out of this book, because the Nazi Party didn’t shift too much in terms of popularity throughout these shifts, except to grow more popular during wartime. The government promised something and many accepted those conditions or at least lent moral license to the achieving the goal and were unwilling to oppose the conditions.

Fascism is Liberalism when and where Liberalism fails to accomplish it’s promises and must consume the people and stuff at the periphery to achieve its goals. A government is just as “far” from its people when it is doing good things that it’s people desire as when it does bad things.

I love the book but have major issues with the ideological assumptions, mostly surrounding fascism’s relationship to its people and to other ideologies

They Thought They Were Free. Book caused me to reevaluate exactly how politics at individual and social levels happened and how fascism works without any individual being inherently “evil.” Class politics and interests followed closely behind to explain how evil can arise among populations that all consider themselves “good people”

Thanks comrade. Language philosophy is why I got into reading in depth books. The national question arises reallllly quickly once you try to understand this whole amazing tapestry of speech and writing around the world. And communism follows quickly to provide a framework for analysis and answers.

Sorry that rant got off topic but I still want to leave it

The flattening of dialect continuums for either nationalist reasons or ease of reading a certain written version of important books (the Bible, often) has had some absurd results. The Russian dialect spoken in east Ukraine is not something that historically was spoken there outside of the influence from the Russian empire or the soviet union, but it’s similarity to Russian was close enough for that to be an easy pickup. The dialect can shift more regionally until it’s less intelligible and Russian was seen as always something different enough to need to speak it separately (as opposed to just shifting some sounds to be more understandable).

This whole thing gets flattened to meaninglessness and just “2 languages” or “2 dialects” because we obsess with this categorization with the desire for some meaningful Continuum through time. It’s idealist to name this “distinction” as causal, but it still is easy to see the results of these processes as being tragic in so many contexts.

There is a gorgeous aspect to this historical situation, but of course we can’t return to that: now we have standardized languages in much of the world and people who have been convinced to fight for those sets of ways of speaking. Idk what my point is exactly, besides that this is all socially determined (whether or not a language is mutually intelligible is determined by a social history, and whether it’s considered to be a specific of some universal is also socially determined) and we communists should keep that in mind. It becomes material is liberation struggles, as well as during the oppression before it. But it’s material under more primary material aspects