Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Ironic as I went the other way. I was a Communist when I got into FOSS and as I got older I realized I could never defend the historical record of Communism.
This is what happens when everything you know is based on vibes instead of actually reading any theory or history from primary source historians instead of third.
Not really sure what you're trying to say here.
I'm saying I don't believe you've ever engaged with communism. I don't believe you've read a single book. I don't believe you've even read a single pamphlet. I don't think you could give me a simplified breakdown of what historical materialism is and I don't believe you could tell me what the 5 basic classes are that marxists define, along with a simple 1 sentence description of their scientific definition. I don't think you were a communist and I don't think you know anything about the "historical record of communism" beyond what you have passively consumed from the far right wing fuckwads that you've surrounded yourself with and allowed to rot your brain. I'm saying that the confident manner in which you bullshit about these things is a severe personal failing.
All of these are 101 things that anyone who has actually engaged with the topic of socialism for more than like 1 single week would be able to answer instantly and easily.
I'm saying that your political opinions and knowledge of history is based on vibes that you have attained from the massive quantity of propaganda you uncritically consume and not from any actual meaningful knowledge.
Clear enough?
You've not looked into Communism too much have you?
Marx had the opportunity to see Communist movements rise in his own timeline. And he opposed the implementation of Communism in a Democratic manner. And wrote about it in his criticiques of the Germany's Communist movements source. In his criticiques he lays out how he believes a transitional state should be laid out, how it should be organized. And later Lenin refers extensively to this blueprint in his written works and it's clear to me upon reading that he truly believes what he says.
In my experience about almost every modern day Communist hear arguments made about the USSR not being based in Communism and have failed to even hear of this critique of the mythic Democratic Communism they believe I'm so much.
Read the critique, and given everything you know about human beings tell me honestly, do you truly believe a multi-generational dictatorship of the proletariat, led by you (or someone whom you'd champion), would really work?
I've been on the internet a very long time. But this is the first time I've seen a Communist (or anyone really) ague their position based on the vibes of the person their arguing against.
Yeah so you're avoiding everything I said and injecting a completely different topic that you also don't understand.
Marx's critique isn't with democracy it's with bourgeoise-democracy. You would understand this if you understood even the basic bare minimum about marxist theory. All you are doing here is demonstrating that you do not understand the difference between what marxists refer to as a bourgeoise-democracy and what marxists refer to as a proletarian-democracy. Or if you prefer, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie vs the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx's "opposition to democracy" that you are utilising for bullshit propaganda here is opposition to using the mechanisms of bourgeoise-democracy to achieve socialism (because they're designed for the bourgeoisie and to produce outcomes the bourgeoisie want) and instead advocates for revolution to destroy that dictatorship-of-class and install a new democracy of the workers, a new dictatorship of class but one instead run by the working class (the vast majority) instead of the former ruling class (the bourgeoisie, the vast minority).
These are incredibly basic 101 concepts that, if you were a communist as you claim, you would already be aware of and understand. You were not a communist. You haven't even read a pamphlet like the manifesto, let alone the Critique Gotha Programme that you're linking to. I have though. And to anyone that actually HAS read these things that you're pretending to have read you look like and absolute clown who is winging it.
** record of authoritarians that called themself communist.
nOt rEaL cOmMunIsM
You do get that Bad People don't usually label themselves as such right? It would be like the Nazi party (unironically) labelling themselves as the Fascist Genocidal Aryan Elite Supremacists Party instead of National Socialist German Workers Party.
How many people do you think would support fascist, genocidal dictators if they outed themselves as such to begin with?
I agree on that, but that doesn't mean that those who outed themselves aren't communists. They were communists, and all of the attempts at a communist system has failed horrifically. I say this as a person who lives in a ex-communist country.
You're not more Communist than Lenin. Read his letters and works (they've been translated to English) and tell me that's not a man who truly believes in the things Marx said.
Communism isn't about exegesis. It's not about who understands the source texts or believes in the correct unadulterated virgin idea. There are many schools of communism and they have all changed with history in some way.
I think if we cooperate like our gentle cousins the Bonobos for a century or two we'd basically have Star Trek. Instead we (Americans) are spending 3x the cost of housing the homeless on hostile architecture and armed goons to raid/destroy their camps with the aim of making our metally ill & vulnerable as invisible as possible- while we slaughter animals we know are able to suffer & grieve as powerfully as any of our beloved dogs, en masse, at absurd environmental cost, washed and neatly sealed from any evident cruelty so they can be consumed or spoil, 50/50 with hardly a thought.
The concept of cooperation transcends any flawed man. We can do better than this but continuing to enable the psychopaths that got us here seems beyond impractical.
You can support some of the ideas while disapproving the leaders whose greed made it fail... which is socialism in a way.
The ideas are why it failed. Thats the core problem. Marx believed he could build in essence a church of Communism that would be incorruptible zealots who would lead society to Communism. A dictatorship of the proletariat led by an enlightened few who could teach and reeducate the masses to live in productive harmony with one another. And that, for many reasons, never works.
Lmao source please? For the church/zealots-part. Also I don't think you understood the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the way Marx uses language to get his point across. Maybe you should read more secondary literature?