NikkiB

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/7/sirens-warn-of-rockets-launched-towards-israel-from-gaza-news-reports

I find that no one, and I do mean no one, really enjoys living under capitalism. Every liberal is aware that things have not shaken out in an optimal manner for the majority of people. Rather than offering alternative ways of organizing society and a plan for how to build said society, the vast, vast majority of liberal sophistry amounts to justifications for why things must be this way, why there are no alternatives. It is nothing but a long list of excuses for a system which works only for bastards and thugs, and sometimes fails to work at all.

Part and parcel to this hasty defense is that capitalism has always necessarily existed, that it must exist in all contexts. Liberals, taking this absurdity to its logical conclusion, tell us stories about neanderthals trading coconuts and fish around in what apparently constitutes primitive capitalism. It is an utterly laughable conception of human history and pre-history driven by an idealist worldview. They are reciting fairy tales.

This thinking has consequences. Since communism is the opposite of capitalism, and capitalism must exist, communism cannot exist. There is no ideological struggle, no competing interests, and no dialectics. Defying capitalism is like defying gravity. This is what is meant when it is said that "communism only works in theory." People who pursue the abolition of class, a social construct, are in fact struggling vainly against not just human nature, but natural law.

The irony, of course, is that all of liberal thinking is dominated by a purely theoretical understanding of capitalism. Thankfully, we live under capitalism, and can directly observe its injustices. There is no need to speculate about the unforeseen problems that capitalism might cause. We've been doing this for over two hundred years.

This is a lot for liberals to deal with. Thankfully, the cognitive dissonance produced by the asynchrony between the promises of capitalism and what has actually happened under capitalism is alleviated when one remembers that since capitalism must exist, and that every social system is necessarily capitalism, there is no point of reference for what the world would look like without capitalism. Therefore, everything unpalatable can be dismissed as either a necessary outcome of a necessary system, or a purely distinct phenomenon entirely.

Consequently, when a communist says something along the lines of:

"The fact that European and American capitalism are made possible by the exploitation of the third world through slavery, genocide and other violence, as well as having produced the most massive inequality in human history, not to mention the climate crisis it also created, may indicate that it's worth considering how we might abolish this system rooted in the social fictions of class and private property."

A liberal's first impulse is to immediately fall back on theoretical frameworks:

"Capitalism is unrelated to the bad things you said because capitalism is based on voluntary transaction and consent."

But there is a problem here. It goes something like this:

1.) Capitalism must exist; everything is capitalism; anything opposed to or contradictory to capitalism is impossible. 2.) Slavery happened, so either slavery is capitalism, or the above statement is incorrect.

Oops.

This is the drawback casting such a wide net causes. The knife cuts both ways. It works really well for claiming credit for the PRCs poverty alleviation programs, but it does a terrible job of pretending that slavery is a completely extant phenomenon in relation to capitalism. If capitalism is so simple and basic as to encompass all trade, why is it suddenly not capitalism when the traded commodity is a human life?

Capitalism cannot be so necessarily and so conditional at the same time. Someone should really tell them this.

Nothing confounds me more than the droves of "libertarian socialists" and "anarcho-communists" who insist on clinging to the world's least relevant ideologies. Speaking as someone who used to be an anarchist (before I became old enough to drink), I can identify at least part of the reason being a vehement anti-Soviet and Sinophobic worldview cultivated by decades of malicious propaganda.

But I don't think this critique gets to the core of their beliefs. The true operative factor is twofold. On the one hand, anticommunist "socialists" avoid the consequences that come from aligning oneself with actually-existing socialism. This boils down to the simple fact that no one, especially not the powerful, are actually threatened by western leftist "movements" which spend all of their time and resources owning the red fash tankies online. Functionally, radlibs and liberals are on the same team aside from some nominal points of disagreement. This is clear enough from the Ukraine news cycle and its predictable effects on the minds of these terminal losers.

But on the other hand, every single anarchist "revolution" ending in defeat and failure has advantages for those who wish to profess to the ideology. Within radlib mythology, the fundamental failures of anarchist movements can all be blamed on external sabotage. This, of course, is exactly what we have been shouting from the rooftops for decades upon decades. And yet this seemingly obvious point of weakness shields anarchists from having to prove that their ideas actually work. If you have no surviving socialist project, there's nothing to criticize.

Obviously, this is in actuality a serious problem for every anarchist. When all "anarchist" socialist states are fanciful stories of flawless communism sealed in the distant past, there is no scientific socialism and no historical progress along those lines. Apparently, this suits them just fine, though it does make them deeply unserious.

It can't be.

Libs and reactionaries will constantly bring up the Wagner group in response to having the existence of the Azovites pointed out to them. This counterargument strikes me as lazy and equivocating, but I've always had trouble responding to it.

What would people here recommend I say to this point? Assuming I say anything at all.

I was arguing with someone in the V**shite subreddit because I'm a masochist. That was the first time I'd ever heard the term "little green men." Apparently, not knowing who these guys are disqualifies me from having an opinion on Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, so I'm trying to learn. Who are these people? Did they do something awful and genocidal that I'm not aware of? Or is this person just talking out of their ass?

In my research, I encountered more of Stalin's infamous deportations, namely that of the Crimean Tartars to the Central Asian SSRs. It seems downright ghoulish to me that he would do that, especially given the death and suffering it caused. Is anyone familiar with the rationale behind these deportations? Is it not as bad as it seems, or is this a black mark on his record? If it's a black mark, how do we make sense of that while still upholding Stalin's legacy?

And of course, whenever Russia comes up, the radlibs and the anarchists all flock together to insist that Russia is a colonizing, imperialist power. I'm aware that imperialism is something pretty specific, and not something that Russia can be rightfully accused of. Even so, I have to admit that I'm not fresh on what DOES count as imperialism. Will someone elucidate this for me?

Thanks in advance.

I've read many discussions in which certain ideas are denounced as CIA sabotage. I find myself torn between the two camps that form whenever this happens, usually because I have no idea what a CIA psyop actually looks like and have no reference for what a Marxist solution to, say, the question of what anti-colonial society actually looks like. It's not an easy question, and it's made all the more murky with the knowledge that plants and saboteurs absolutely exist.

Is there an ascribed methodology to identifying CIA propaganda?

Imagine my shock when, stoned out of my gourd, I see the ABC Nightly News headlines.

"Warrant Issued For Vladimir Putin's Arrest"

And it's issued by an "international" criminal court America has already deemed an unnecessary inhibitor to their colonial project.

I feel like the media is gaslighting us. Very briefly my sense of reality was annihilated. I was caught in a bizarre imperialist fantasy where nothing made sense. I wanted ask my sister what year it was and whether Kiev had finally sacked Moscow. I was convinced I had missed some major developments.

My fault for falling for the MSM clickbait, apparently.

I see sex work as somewhat analogous to coal mining. It's not that it isn't real work, or that those who work in that capacity don't deserve rights, dignity, or a society that works for them. The problem, of course, is the ever-present exploitation of the workers coupled with the severe unpleasantness of the occupation which ensures that the people who do work these jobs are those with few other options. That isn't to say that all sex workers and/or coal miners are miserable. Even so, the patterns around this kind of work are unmistakable.

Given these facts, I think most reasonable people understand that sex work should go extinct. That isn't to say that you can't make pornography or have sex with strangers. However, it's impossible to gauge enthusiastic consent when money is changing hands, and enthusiastic consent is a vital component for an ethical sexual encounter.

My question for the community is how exactly this is meant to be accomplished. How can sex work be abolished without harming the very people it's meant to protect? The number one problem western sex workers face, more so than creepy clients, is the cops, who profile them, steal their wages, and arrest them on a whim. Clearly, criminalizing sex work hasn't done much for sex workers. What are some alternatives?

I'm seriously considering voting for Tim Fucking Ryan. This won't be the first time I've cast a ballot for monstrous bourgeois pigs. Do I have to turn in my card if I admit to voting for Joe Biden? If I had known the horrific treatment of immigrants would only intensify under him, I might have not voted in 2020, but he dangled hope over all our heads, and I was one of the idiots who reached to grab it.

I find myself cyclically struggling with the urge to vote. Obviously, the midterms are tomorrow, and I'm getting fearful that the fascists will win. I worry about the queer community, I worry about reproductive rights, and I worry about all the other shit. If I vote, I'm going to vote Democrat down the line. Nothing will change, but maybe things won't change for the worse.

It's frustrating that the only thing we can do within the parameters of the capitalist system is swallow these bad-faith choices. I would like to do literally anything else, but I can't. Liberal politics is an addictive drug.

Given that this community has generally positive view of Stalin, I'm curious what he did that my comrades find irredeemable or out of line. Since it's easy to criticize the Soviet Union from a western perspective, bonus points if you explain how this was detrimental to the development of socialism and/or communism.

The book by J. Sakai, not the type of person, hence the capitalization. There are people who say it's too divisive.