this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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I'm really struggling to find a party that i fully agree with.
For one, i like true leftist ideals, but i don't like guns, so i guess the left parts of the image doesn't apply to me.
On the other side, i think the long-standing support for Ukraine is an atrocious mistake, because it prolongs the suffering unnecessarily (after all, the uproar in Ukraine is mostly an CIA-inspired action after all i believe, and diplomatic solutions were not sought). But shitting on that pink hat (which is clearly a symbol for queer/trans people) is just unacceptable. just leave the people live their own private life as they want. What's so difficult about that?
Edit: as per the comments, i stand corrected and am sorry for my half-assed take. i'll leave it up anyways, because i guess it's a chance to learn for any reader.
How you going to seize the means of productions and depose the capitalists without using weaponry?
wait until they self-destruct, mostly.
i say this as an european
this is laughably utopian and ahistorical, i'm sorry but this is fantasy. There's a reason that the "violent" and "authoritarian" communists have actually won and seized power while the utopian eurocommies have never accomplished a single thing.
Your nation has never successfully had a revolution. They need to be listening and learning from those that have, following their example, and not trying to invent their own perfect (white) system from whole cloth
Well yeah i can tell you what the communists have achieved in the Sovjet Union, and that's 20 million people dead due to stalinistic terror. So much for "winning". No thank you.
Meanwhile, lots of european economies (and people!) have been doing well since after the second world war. Maybe they have accomplished something.
Life expectancy over doubled from the 30s to the 70s in the USSR. Literacy rates went from the 20s and 30s to 99.9%, above Western European and USian rates. Famine was ended by collectivization and industrialization in a country where famine was common under the Tsar. This same nation, barely industrializing at the start of the 20th century, beat the United States into space, and continued beating it with the first man and first woman in space.
Social Safety Nets expanded greatly. Healthcare and Education were free and high quality. Housing was incredibly affordable, and there was full employment. Abortion was not only legalized, but free. Women played a role even in the highest ranks of politics. The economy was democratized. 80% of the combat in World War 2 was on the Eastern Front, the Soviets defeated the Nazis.
Sadly, there were excess deaths, but 20 million people did not die, such a number comes from anti-communist myth-makers before the opening of the Soviet Archives. The numbers given by the Black Book of Communism include Nazis killed during World War 2, and use various other misdirections to grossly inflate the number of excess deaths. Were there excess deaths? Sadly, yes, and nobody denies this. However, when compared to contemporary peers like the British Empire who intentionally starved millions of Bengalis, the French who were colonizing Vietnam, Algeria, and more, or the United States who killed millions of Iraqis, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and more, the USSR played a far more progressive role. From supporting Palestinian resistance against genocide, to helping China throw off their colonizers, to helping Algeria throw off the French, to helping Vietnam against the US Empire and French Colonialists, the Soviets played a far better role.
Wealth inequality went far down, whike GDP growth was constantly positive except during World War 2. It was one of the most rapidly growing economies in the 20th century.
Western Europe (and of course the US to a greater degree), to this day, relies on brutal expropriation of the Global South through outsourcing industry and brutal IMF loans. They have been doing well because they are Imperialists. To say they are doing well is to say the Trust Fund kid working at his father's investment firm is doing well, he does so on the backs of actual laborers and did not earn his vast wealth, but inhereted it from former and current Empire.
well i guess it's good for you to spit these facts but i gotta make my own judgement, and i can see the things around me, and saying "They have been doing well because they are Imperialists. To say they are doing well is to say the Trust Fund kid working at his father’s investment firm is doing well, he does so on the backs of actual laborers and did not earn his vast wealth, but inhereted it from former and current Empire." does not make me believe your point, just fyi
That would be a funny tagline.
So you just reject the facts because they feel wrong?
Anti-communism is an orthodoxy. If facts do not conform to it, they will alter the facts
Colonization and now Imperialism have been the driving forces of Western European Economies for centuries. All of this sheer expropriation of wealth hasn't gone away in any capacity, the IMF still debt traps countries in Africa, Latin America, and other areas in the Global South. Especially during the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, countries like Britain, Germany, and France had industrialized to the point of monopolization, and a blending of financial and industrial Capital. This turned towards the Global South, seeking to export Capital to super-exploit for super-profits.
If you want to read about the origins of this system, the book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is quite a quick read, written in the early 20th century (though it mentions many entities that exist today in the same forms, like Deutsche Bank). For modern analysis, Super-Imperialism by Hudson, though it is US based Western European Imperialism is intricately tied to US Imperialism.
Keep repeating liberal dogma and ignoring the billions of death caused by capitalism by the same metrics
That isn't what that is a symbol for at all. It was a knit hat made for an ineffective Trump protest in 2017. Actually queer and trans people found the hats exclusionary. So did non white people whose genitalia aren't that color. The entire pussy-hat movement was feel-good liberal activity that accomplished nothing and made no difference. Much like the liberal "support" for Ukraine.
This is extreme privilege. None of us like guns just to like guns. Brother Malcolm was being threatened with his life daily and his home was firebombed then he was assassinated, he was trying to protect himself. Fred Hampton was literally murdered by the police. The Zapatistas and Palestinians don't resort to violence because they "like it" either, they are targets of the state that act with violence on them and both have learned that civil disobedience has its limits. Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists that were executed by the state after being framed and falsely accused of a bombing, armed robbery and murder which the state of Massachusetts apologized for in 1977.
LOL yeah... I don't really fetishize them in the NRA sense but I shouldn't speak for everyone I guess.
I do! More dakka is always better!
its time to read theory. you are currently at the utopian anarchist stage. which is a step in a better direction, but ultimately irrational.
you need to better understand that the people in the image [conveniently] on the left incorporated violence because they lived under the constant threat of deadly violence. 99% of the violence was directed at them. Fred Hampton was executed by the police not long after that picture of him was taken.
Do you really need to read volumes of theory to grasp what is fundamentally a rather straightforward concept?
Leftism shouldn’t be locked behind intellectual elitism.
TL;DR the capitalist state will use threats of violence/actual violence against threats to capitalism which includes those who stand for progressive ideals. Leftists believe this is a justification to use violence against the state.
Not volumes. As you say, a little can go a long way. But rather than relearn the lessons of history from first principles, engaging with writings from people who have already seriously grappled with these things is the only efficient way to wrap one’s mind around many different major factors working simultaneously in the material world.
There's merit to your question. Ultimately, as someone who largely hadn't taken theory seriously until the last couple of years, I think theory is not only useful, but necessary. There are good comrades who do good work without theory, I don't want to discredit that. However, theory has had a profound impact on my understanding of history, tactics, and life itself. Theory is important because our predecessors have given their lives discovering and handing down the lessons they've learned.
From Marx, who dedicated his entire life to discovering the mechanisms of Capitalism to give the Proletariat the tools to surpass it, to Lenin, who analyzed Capitalism's monstrous evolution to Imperialism, to Gramsci who spent the later years of his life rotting in prison and reflecting on Marxian teachings, to Politzer who stood against the Nazis and taught Parisan workers Dialectical and Historical Materialism before being captured and executed for his Jewish heritage and Communist alliance, to modern theoreticians such as Losurdo, Parenti, and the many Communists who dedicated their lives to the working class. Revolutionaries like Mao, Fidel, Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, and more all have unique lessons to tell from their experiences in their existence. People like Mao, Deng, Xi, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and more have helped build and design the largest economy in the world. What can we learn from them? What should we copy, what should change?
We owe it to them to learn from the lessons they dedicated their lives to teaching us. We have a duty to humanity to move beyond the wretched system of Capitalism before the planet is destroyed by Climate Change for the pursuit of profit. We owe it to our predecessors to continue the work they started. We owe it to our successors to use the best tools we can to make their struggles easier. We owe it to ourselves, so that we have a future.
Theory is a tool. If you don't take every advantage you can against the most heartless, greedy, brutal Empire in history, do you really care at all? If you refuse to truly learn your enemy, in all its complicated facets of expropriation, or learn the successful tactics and strategies for overcoming them, or learn from the missteps of our predecessors or the correct actions they've taken, we will not have a decisive victory.
intellectual elitism like "people should defend themselves"
Yes! The three volumes on shitting are essential reads. (/s)
Yeah, i'm reading theory alright, i'm studying physics, if that's what you mean, or what?
Political theory. Like this intro reading list
🫡
Thanks, i'll get to it as soon as i have the time.