lmao

I feel like eventually you may want to break the list in two parts (basics / advanced). The former geared towards understanding enough about socialist theory and history to genuinely be a capable comrade, the second one aimed at people who have been involved with socialism for a while but they could use advanced theory/history to avoid complacency.

The basic list would benefit from being “jack of all trades” style - a broader tent will bring more people to the movement. The advanced list, I imagine, would not need to include necessarily every aspect of socialism and would moreso focus on the most pressing modern analyses.

Just a thought.

Abolishing the billionaire class is proving difficult. Let’s just skip to abolishing money - two birds, one stone.

Brave, honest soul.

Basil similarly will do this.

my point is that even our western nations aren’t strangers to mass manipulation and oppression, at all.

Agreed, it’s my opinion that they actually have always been the best at it.

You’d think that in the modern world, and with our modern technologies, we’d have to work less, not more. Something in the system is broken.

Agreed. My current belief is that the inundation of work for individuals (comprising communities) is the point and therefore by design. When workers are exhausted and strapped for time they become politically inert and easier to predict/control (because they are fucking tired). This theory perhaps also requires sufficient access to conveniences and entertainment, I might add.

This would explain why when working class organizations actually muster the time/effort to propose reducing work hours or controlling rents they are met with fierce opposition by the ruling class. It also explains why the major (controlled) political parties never propose such things as options on ballot initiatives.

When there is no tangible reward for investment, what motivates people to invest into local or shared projects?

Not an anarchist, but I am sympathetic and interested in their theory.

I think the valid concern you are citing here is derivative of the intense amount of rents that are heaped upon individuals. Everyone having to justify their own existence to the monetary system day-in-day-out creates a modern “survival instinct” to outweigh your own (perhaps extended to the immediate family) interests/needs relative to the needs of your community. Any effort that wants to promote more cooperatively-minded people will first need to erode the rents of a society.

Another factor is the length of the work-week. If people have more free time, they will be more generous with their time. So lessening the working hours of the week (this actually would be achieved indirectly by combating/eroding rents) would dovetail nicely with this strategy.

“our enemy”

1. OP was painting China as a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie (and then your initial comment operated to reinforce his point).

2. It being the primary contradiction means those same workers better be ready for the blackest reaction and generations of trauma if they cause the barrier that exists between them and outright capitalist/fascist exploitation to fall.

I’m a bit tired so I’m not sure I’m following.

I agree that workplace protections and whatnot should be provided by any AES state - and China outperformed every other nation on worker protections during COVID - I think this speaks to the alignment between the DotP and China’s citizenry.

Yes. But the primary contradiction remains to be imperialism. That is the task that cannot be equivocated on. It has primacy to all else - sometimes this means civil society is non-ideal - it’s a similar strategy to war-economy and I don’t aim to glorify that; I naturally would love to see socialism stand on its own merits and operate in good faith with other nations (so long as nations exist). But, the fall of the USSR, if nothing else, should teach us to defend our remaining AES states - each one that falls is comparable to surrenduring a century of working class struggle.

Speaking in good faith with fellow comrades, we can be critical of AES states - but what OP has done in this thread is call into question the validity of China’s DotP, and in so doing, has undermined their popular support - and this is not to be tolerated. Painting China as equivalent to a Dictatorship of the Bourgeosie is something I will not tolerate as it is no better than those who mocked the USSR as a “totalitarian d e g e n e r a t e d worker’s state” - not caring that the fall of that state would cast its working class into a period of acute struggle on such a scale that natural disasters cannot compare. I just really have lost my tolerance for people criticizing post-revolution societies from the perspective of pre-revolution society. Why fixate on other states (and for the love of all that is holy why AES states among them all) while your own capitalist-class still lords over you? I think they deserve your attention more.

If a state has achieved socialist revolution already, then their foremost task becomes the historic defeat of international capital. After that, may the unions flourish and all employers weep. The proletariat of the USSR enjoyed comforts that they have not known since the triumph of international Capital in the 1990s - turns out their (state controlled) employers were the least of their problems.

A socialist state doesn’t have a reflexive need to abuse its workers, we project that onto them due to our own inability to oust our capitalist ruling class. Have we not observed astronomical gains for the proletariat under historic actually existing socialist states?

I guess I’m sympathetic to unions in mixed socialist economies - but I don’t see the need post-revolution to spark unrest that can be beneficial to international capital.

dog soviets and strikes are for the proletariat in a capitalist state; not a socialist state that is under siege by international capital.

A lot of the people that you are observing (those who just get their bills paid and then fall into their entertainment addiction mills) probably have tried to become involved in social movements and either burnt out in so doing or failed to even find one to begin with. In the West sometimes it feels like all you can do is earn a paycheck and donate some of it to good causes. They are also inundated by their own familial and personal struggles - time is scarce in the West; many people in order to not be unemployed accept employment conditions which could be split into 2-3 full jobs just so that they can actually make enough $ to escape financial insecurity. All of this is by design. A society comprising over-employed and un(der)employed populations is a society that cannot find common ground to organize on.

Not trying to justify it, but that is my perspective on the matter. I have been both unemployed for periods of time and I have also been deeply over-worked. The few jobs that aren’t chronically under-staffed are reserved for the ultra-skilled, coupled with a hefty salary, in order to align their sensibilities with liberalism.

I love how the PNW just largely doesn’t refer to people as anything.

Half-hearted ‘Pal’ dominance in New England is also concerning.

obvious astroturfing

Criminal

market doesn’t have to equal capitalism. As we can see, Capitalism abandons the market when conditions are unfavorable. Capitalism simply fetishizes the market.