Communism

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/746751

Degrowth, mfs

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1759348

https://www.mazdoorbigul.net/pdf/Bigul-2005-12.pdf

Available on plain rss https://anchor.fm/s/e8b6108c/podcast/rss too

Also, please send me suggestions for articles I should add there, because I have no idea how to approach curation of that library.

Any other feedback is appreciated.

Edit: I just found this https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6319. Looks excellent! I'll work on getting it through.

Edit 2: and then I'll probably come this way: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/dessalines_marxism_study_plan.html

Edit 3: I'll also play with the order, because it feels like a good idea to mix introductions for multiple subjects, so that it feels a little less repetitive. Even though... can't do much about the dryness of AI speech.

Here. One year of our research, including mine, on the fucking gulags.

My own knowledge on communism and how it was practiced by the USSR and Mao's China is severely lacking, but I work with a colleague who had some questions (most of them familiar, but I don't personally know the answer) and I said I'd ask some folks who'd know better; his questions were:

1. Did people all have the exact same salary regardless of job?

2. In positions that were similar and worked in close proximity, for example nurses and doctors, what were the differences in their salary if they had different salaries according to job? Even if a doctor made more than a nurse, was it noticeably so or only minorly? Were these salaries comparable to American salaries?

3. If a colleague was completely lazy and did no work, did he get paid a salary, and in the same amount as hard working colleagues?

4. I told him that under Mao, landlords were given the option of handing over their lands/apartments/additional housing and were executed if they refused. Was this accurate or was I mistaken? I'd read something here I think that said as much, or perhaps saw a youtube video about it but I thought I'd get a concrete answer to take back to him.

5. He was saying that without a profit incentive, people won't innovate; what innovations from the USSR and Mao's China could I point to? I remembered some major stuff later on myself that were released for free and brought no profit to their creator, for example linux, but forgot to mention it at the time.

6. Could someone start a business if he had an idea he wanted to pursue. I told him the government would own the business and himself and the other people working at the company would be government employees, but not sure how true this is.

7. I told him people like farmers were effectively government employees and the produce they grew was owned by the government and rationed to the people, again, not sure how strictly true this is.

8. If a person didn't want to work at all, just stay home and do nothing at all, what does the government do about it? Does he still have housing, medical care, payment to care for his family and himself, and a salary?

9. Why did China begin to transition away from the communism it practiced?

Could you folks also please give me references to the answers to provide him with?

That's why they hate us deep down. They can't reconcile the fact that they are not actually the most progressive and tolerant person in the room.

We actually support the LGBT community, we don't just say we do. We don't just wait until politicians finally get on this side of the fence and then cheer when they finally get on the right side of history.

Liberals are the kind of person to say their community is accepting of all genders, all nationalities, all minorities etc. but then not ban fascists who threaten that acceptance (and even lives) because everyone deserves free speech. It's like they walk half the way, then suddenly stop and stand there, claiming this is actually where the trail ends even though you and they can clearly see the trail keeps going beyond the horizon.

We have better politics in all ways.

• We actually want things to get better
• We actually don't want people to die, no matter if it's from homelessness, hunger, or Ukraine.
• We actually want to hold our politicians accountable.
• Shit, we actually want competent officials.
• We actually want democracy, not whatever capitalism passes off as democracy (hey here's a riddle, you get to vote every 4 years and your boss can decide your schedule without consulting you! Is that democracy?)
• We actually recognize fascism, even when it comes from liberals.
• We actually fight against it too.
• We are able to deeply analyze societal issues and not simply repeat from our high school history lessons.
• We know our history and geopolitics. Liberals will repeat from NATO propaganda. We've actually read about it.

This is impossible to the liberal who thinks so highly of themselves that they must, by default, be the most accepting and progressive person in the world.

And so they resort to calling you a CCP shill instead of actually examining their privilege and positions.

Face it liberals, we are actually the person you think you are. Not the person you want to be, because you don't want to be anything other than what you are right now (because as a liberal you are, after all, perfect). But the person you and your fellow liberals spent years building up as being a pretty great guy.

And yes that includes whatever the fuck conservatives think they are.

What is it were missing? And how can we fit more pieces together to find out what to do?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4377536

Check out c/breadtube for more left video content and discussion.

• BreadTube
• !BreadTube@lemmy.world

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/467394

My first time trying cross-posting, hope I did this right

Source: Piketty's World Inequality Report 2022

I shared this deep in a dunk thread earlier and figured there's probably many comrades who haven't seen this data. I think it's very good rhetorically because a lot of libs have an incredibly vibes-based impression that the Soviet Union was just an Animal Farm old-boss-same-as-the-new-boss situation.

Instead, this demonstrates that Russia underwent one of the most dramatic inversions of income inequality of any country in recorded history.

For comparison here is the US over the same time period:

China:

And the UK:

I don't know if you know, but the current Hammer and Sickle is from the Khrushchev era, which is considered revisionist for any communist who values Comrade Stalin's contributions. I think it is worth changing to maintain aesthetic cohesion, as it seems to be the general line of the instance and the community.