Did I agree or disagree with you that the USSR and China were not capitalist? I’m open to different interpretations. I can see ways that USSR and China were capitalistic in some ways, socialistic in some ways, and had their own unique character in other ways. China and USSR weren’t even allies after Stalin, and China’s economy changed dramatically after Deng Xiaoping took charge of organizing the Chinese economy after the cultural revolution. I’m actually quite critical of the USSR after 1921.

I think you should try to be a little more specific. The creation of the military of the USSR was a carry over of the armies of WW1 who were being sent to die senselessly by the Tsar. Afterward, Russia was invaded by like 6 separate countries, including the USA, and had to deal with a counter revolution by the Tsarists. I think those are two specific circumstances where the maintenance of a military was verifiably not imperialist but necessary for preservation of the worker state. Afterward, the military was used for repression by the Stalinist bureaucracy, but industrialization was necessary after the destruction of the early 1920s, if not how it was carried out.

The carving up of Eastern Europe by Molotov Ribbentrop might be considered imperialistic, I think there’s a lot of different ways to look at the only thing that Stalin and Trotsky agreed on: that the Germans and Italians were going to be the opponents in another world war. I’m actually very critical of Stalin, and think he made many mistakes. But other than being a bastard and a motherfucker, I think the historic circumstances, that were the motivators for a the mistakes that were made by the Stalinist bureaucracy, were objective, often defensive. And while imperialists always claim national defense when claiming some foreign prize, there is much more basis for a defensive posture against the Nazis, who actually invaded the USSR and killed 20 million Russians, mostly civilians; than there is when, for example, the USA invaded Vietnam.

Vietnam might be a good example of an imperialist agenda on behalf of the Chinese. The USA and China both supported the villainous Khmer Rouge. But other than soft power, what evidence has China demonstrated of imperialism? Genuinely curious about what your answer might be.

Don’t make me out to be something I’m not. Yes I’m a socialist and an anti capitalist but I’m not a sucker, at least not a willing one.

That’s an interesting observation, whether or not USSR and/or China is/was capitalist, and in what ways, is a rich topic of discussion. There are a ton of different theories about them, and I’m familiar with a few.

Why do you think USSR and China still had militaries? Was it to make imperialist war, or to defend against it? There’s an abundance of different views on the topic that are much more scientifically and historically honest than “its just human nature.”

And many didn’t, and none produced the kind of mass industrialized war capable of dozens of millions of casualties. But yes their ruling classes still waged war for the same reason as our ruling classes do. So it isn’t a problem of human nature, but a problem with having a ruling class.

But never before have the underclass actually held the tools and means of production, and been as directly opposed in every rational interest, as the exploiting and exploiter classes produced by capitalist social and economic relations. Furthermore, the working classes are broadly opposed to war, broadly in support of rational, secular government, human rights, and freedom of association. But because the education and dissemination of info to the masses is overseen by the ruling minority, people lack the ability to name the problems which we face.

So our social forces that produce war, are imperialism, which is a historic stage of capitalism. So we can concretely identify specific tendencies in a society built by people, name them, and subsequently resist them; rather blaming all problems of society on “human nature”. We can be much more accurate and specific than that. And the moment we are, we have an imperative to do something. Which is why fatalism is so convenient for people who fear freedom.

That’s how people who consider themselves rational and scientific end up falling for apocalypse myths; with facts underwriting eschatology. I think there would be less conflict and difficulty in the world if people were 50% less gullible.

“Humans” can be violent, short sighted and ignorant when people stop thinking critically and start applying dumb, impractical abstractions to complex and ever-changing objective reality – and then stubbornly pretend like the dumb abstraction is objective truth.

On a thread about being more intelligent to prevent human suffering, don’t be on the side of stupidity and suffering by pretending that a deeply contradictory social order that directs all human activity toward the production of war and human suffering, is the only social order humans have ever been capable of producing, let alone, will ever produce.

You’re entitled to be a misanthrope and hate humanity, but entitlements granted by capitalism on one side, are paid for with victimization on the other side. Being on the side of the victims, but receiving entitlements (often unintentionally) means that the victimized class both hates them self for their even involuntary role in in the victimize/entitlement social relation, but also unable to imagine anything different.

Ultimately, it is a fear of freedom that prevents humanity from advancing beyond capitalist social relations. But fear in some inspires courage in others. And in that courage, is hope.

For the ten millionth time, its capitalism

points at everything humans have built look at everything humans have destroyed

It isn’t secret societies, it is class society. Capitalists rule over production and the government, that is the state, runs the political institutions that keep the masses of people out of power, while keeping the rich calling most of the shots.

Democracy contradicts class society, but it is a stage in a process. Democracy needs to be defended. This version of “democracy,” with parliaments and congresses and presidents, has always been the form of democracy that the rich owners have wanted, because it serves their interests. Now maybe less so, but the problem with it isnt its democratic nature, but in fact that it is largely, by design and historic precedence, democracy for the rich.

And in capitalism, the interests of the rich and poor are opposite, by nature. What is good for them is bad for us, because the more we work and the less they pay us, the richer they get. It isnt that democracy is a “sham”, but their democracy is designed for the rich freaks, whether or not they are baby eating occultists, or Mormons, or engineers. If you want to have power you have to put people below you, and if you want to keep power you have to continually put people under you at an increasing rate. If not, someone will steal your power, because if they didn’t, someone would steal both of your power. Everyone competes, that’s how the system gets everyone to cooperate.

But parliamentary democracy was an improvement over monarchies. Within that framework, the rest of us were able to struggle for more rights, people could fight for freedom with solidarity.

The rich, including members of elitist occultist secret groups, want rid of it. They think more cops and more surveillance will make it so they don’t have to deal with costly civil infrastructure, they will just use direct force to control everyone, not just the lower classes and heavily exploited people. They want rid of democracy because the profits aren’t coming in fast enough, which is why guys like Trump who are really good at legal crime, bleeding and butchering corporate empires for personal and investor gain, are given the reigns of real power. To bleed and butcher the social democracies of EU and planned economies of East Asia, to cash every check and strongarm every loan, that has been written by every president and supreme court ruling for the past 70-100 years.

Climate catastrophe is inevitable, the social contract is expired. The only chance we have is to show solidarity together and organize for the power of workers and everybody who has it rough working for some faceless corporation, depending on dwindling govt welfare or shitty min wage paychecks. Its happened before and it will happen again. We need better forms of democracy that serve our interests not theirs. Organization and leadership from below, not rule from above. The basis for it is solidarity, not elections or parliament. And the rich hate and fear other forms of democracy, especially forms of mass democracy.

The rich want us to reject democracy the way they have. They’ve been maintaining this system that disenfranchises most people, and now they think they can get a better deal. But as they cut away at the institutions that maintained our bare-minimum “civil society” they cut away the illusions that made people feel safe, or at least hopeful. But that doesn’t mean that the illusions won’t get replaced with new ones, like that democracy is a sham.

Democracy doesn’t exist unless we fight for it. People stopped fighting and so it started slipping away. Rationalizing the loss of our rights as a good thing is not the right kind of defeatism. As long as the rich exist, the poor exist; and the poorer we are the richer they get. The only way to fight and win is to organize on the basis of the best interests of an international working class, and the most potent offense and defense our class has is progressive, mass democracy.

Keep telling that to yourself

Capitalism

Good bit

Do you have projects that you personally admire? I assume you are choosing to donate to open source because you have an affinity for it. Personally I donate to political causes, particularly ones where I participate in/contribute to. Projects where I can get in the discord and talk to people, learn and really experience the practical side. I’m in a few Foss discords as well, so maybe joining some communities and getting to know people working with it, maybe learn to work with it yourself, will help and inform your decision.

It isnt moral bankruptcy, it is systematic. The capitalist who produces profit stays in business, the capitalist who does not goes bankrupt. It isnt morals of individuals, the dehumanization of the poor by the rich is a symptom of a system that prioritizes profits over humanity.

Capitalism is, among other things, a system of forced competition.

I’m glad to hear you are on the right side of it. But in order to be effective we have to name the actual problems. I am above all a humanist, and certainly the capitalist class contains some vile and hateful individuals. That is more clear now than ever before. But we are not made rich or poor by our morality; our morality comes from the conditions that dictate whether we are rich or poor.

Even individualism is structural.

The distribution of productivity gains and development of new technology are intrinsically and historically connected. New technology is only developed in order to exploit workers, either to make individual something which was previously socialized, or to directly replace workers with industrial advances; and in many cases both.

Marx said it best: Machines were the weapon employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

This was true for the Luddites and it is true today.

El Derecho de Vivir en Paz by Victor Jara

Anything by Shin Jung Hyun, but especially Beautiful Rivers and Mountains and The Sun

Tell them you love them lots, tell them they have to love their siblings, that family is important because family will get you and support you when none else will, when they’re a little older and fighting really bad, walk past them and tell them something like, “you know you two are best friends right?” Celebrate differences, try not to compare, make value judgements or set expectations based on personal value.

The DSA libertarian socialist caucus has reinvented itself the last year or so, they put out some good solid analysis prior to convention, and is doing a lot of work to build a libertarian socialist plurality within the org.

Right libertarians arent politically coherent, their lack of coherence means they are shot through with Nazis who exploit unprincipled movements yo plant the seeds of hate. A libertarian could be your uncle who smokes weed but listens to Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan podcast, or it could be a school shooter, a transhumanist tech accellerationist who always brings up Rokos basilisk after a couple Busch lights, or a neo-Randian objectivist.

As a left-Hegelian, I like discourse around human freedom, but people never concretize what they mean by freedom, and we always end up back to Marx:

Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.

Isn’t that just like regular school? American schools students have to do all sorts of patriotic nationalist hoo ha

1000%

But exploitation is about human freedom. Getting rid of billionaires doesn’t end exploitation. It’s just a beginning.

The struggle for human freedom will never end

Sigourney and Gillian aren’t billionaire capitalists, they’re wealthy because they’re talented actresses. Their talent makes the owners of production companies lots of money, and they’re paid a fraction of it. But they still have to find someone to buy their labor. They had to audition to get jobs before they were big stars.

TS’s dad bought a record label and signed her to it.

Class analysis can be tricky, especially the entertainment industry, but it isnt always about being rich or not. The surest way to tell is “what is the relationship to production?” Tay is a billionaire because she helped ticketmaster and Live Nation create a monopoly, she’s a parasite. Without Gillian and Sigourney, the movies and shows they worked in wouldn’t be as good.

She’s worth 1.6 billion so its actually less