Depends on the “anti-dengist”. I believe most “anti-dengists” (Maoists especially) denounce Cuba due to introducing private property, that or Castro never called his revolution “socialist” but rather “bourgeois democratic”, thus Castro cannot be a Marxist-Leninist. This is stupid. Not to mention that Maoists also tend to believe that Cuba is a sugar colony.
I think materialism involves matter, but it does not mean we can reduce everything to simply matter. That’s like saying emotions are just “the product of chemical and hormonal imbalances in our brains”, which is ultimately reductionist because these emotions are a method of expression. You put “consciousness” as an example of idealism even though marxists do not deny the existence of a consciousness, and that a consciousness is material thing. Also, do you think a consciousness is a form of materialism or idealism? Because you do not seem to argue either or in this paragraph.
If it is true that an economist, an cyberneticist, and a marxist have equally valid (supposedly) ways of viewing the world, why there exists such a division? Why do economists follow Neoclassical/Keynesian economics while Marxists still follow (and succeed) the classical economists by upholding the Labour Theory of Value? It is clear that there exists different interpretations, and these different interpretations lead to different conclusions because of different premises and methods.
In the context of marxism, where we fold out materialistic dialectics for lay people to understand, sure, I can understand dumbing down terminology to the layperson so that they can fulfill a better understanding of dialectics. This does not mean we must scrap the entire term all together. Also you did not put any counterpoints to what I said. The meanings of words under Marxism do not correlate with the common meaning, or even meanings under other fields of the natural sciences.
If it is not worth arguing about my interpretation of diamat, then why bring it up to begin with? What is supposedly the issue with my dialectics? What am I being an idealist for? A consciousness existing that is material? That ideas while intangible can also be material given the right circumstances (i.e. Science and Marxism). If you don’t think it’s worth discussing then don’t bring it up.
Lastly, correct thought is needed for correct action isn’t anti-Marxist. Without any revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. If it is true that correct thought isn’t needed for correct action, why do we have theory? Why do we need to impose cultural revolutions under socialism? Why do we care about Marxism, at all? It’s clear that this “correct” thought while not being overall correct, it is the most correct. And that is what Marxism currently is. It is the most correct form of the social (and likely natural) sciences, because it does not disregard the political economy, and thus makes more accurate predictions as a result.
Materialism isn’t just “where everything is matter or energy”. That’s reductionist. Idealists can agree that things are composed of matter or energy, the same as materialists. The idea of a conscious mind isn’t inherently idealist either, as things which are intangible can still be material. Marxists do not deny the existence of a consciousness, instead they acknowledge its existence. The difference between materialism and idealism is how our consciousness interacts with the world. Materialists argue that it is not consciousness that dictates reality, but reality that dictates consciousness. In other words, there can exist things which are independent of our consciousness. Idealists argue the former, stating that consciousness dictates reality. It’s the reason why gods or angels exist within the idealist mind. Idealists believe in the existence of an angel, although it is a product of our minds, and does not exist within reality. Also combining “ideas” with “idealism” supposes that Marxism is also idealist. Science is idealist. Ideas are not inherently idealist, the concept of idea is the formation of our mind, but these ideas can also have some application with reality. Marxism is a set of ideas, it is based on science, which Marxists observe the political economy and form ideas which align with reality.
Your first paragraph doesn’t align with the 2nd to last paragraph. If Marxism is simply a different view, why must we have different views? What makes Marxism different from a cyberneticist? I read your examples and they show vastly different things. And your 2nd to last paragraph shows that clearly. Marxism is different from an economist, a cyberneticist, because it looks at things in a different view within the application of the political economy, something which an economist or cyberneticist cannot do. Also saying “the contradictions are sharpening” is vague. What contradictions? What application of Marxism are we using here? We are referring to change, but there are several types of change, with negations or quantitative to qualitative transformations. All of this seems to be speaking in absolutism, in isolation from what Marxism is supposed to be.
Also saying this:
Ultimately the entire thing is fancy language from the 1800s that should probably be replaced because it’s alienating and bad for propaganda.
Why? Why is it bad for propaganda? We used these terms for centuries now and now we need to change them? The proposed terms are absolutely vague. “Conflict” does not speak of non-antagonistic contradictions (i.e. Proletariat-Peasantry), “tradeoff” does not speak of what dialectics truly is (It’s not always binary, in fact suggesting dialectics is inherently a binary thing is metaphysical). “change” is absolutely vague because of what I said earlier. The term “motion” is always referring to change, a specific type of change. Ultimately dumbing down terminology should be done for beginners, but not for the sake of sacrificing the word itself.
It is true that they are not worse than the CPUSA. But just because they produce good “takes” doesn’t make them worthy of critical support. They may have good ideas surrounding geopolitics, but their “critical” support (or lack thereof) makes them more prone to chauvinistic stances which are displayed within the takes of the Russian Federation. It may be more correct than the CPUSA’s international stance, but they’re both social chauvinists on different levels.
Let’s not forget that patsocs initially “critically” supported Trump, who was deemed an anti-imperialist (or at least his actions were anti-imperialist) by Hazites, and likely the same by those who follow MWM or Hinkle. Just because the party statement rejects both parties doesn’t mean it won’t likely remain that stance. CPUSA claims to not be a puppet of the democrats yet in their twitter they claimed to be “small d democrats”. Their tailism is a product of their chauvinism, they believe that the masses have nothing wrong with their thoughts, of being transphobic, homophobic, etc. That’s revisionist, and just because they leech the working class from the republican party doesn’t mean those chauvinistic thoughts go away. If anything it may be reinforced.
Also, critically supporting them for the sake of accelerationism is not going to do much. The regard for “chaos” at the cost of trans, gay, and black people would be more costly for them rather than for the cishet whites (or Conservatives to be more specific). This is not a party worthy of support, by any measure, as supporting them is supporting the same social-chauvinistic stances which Lenin initially opposed.
Aussig supports the Shining Path. But I don’t think the distinction matters much in this case. She claimed to be a maoist in the discord server.
Edit: This statement is corrected because I’ve later learned that this isn’t true from Aussig. However as I stated earlier, the distinction doesn’t matter much. She’s still an ultra. Everything else is correct.
Aussig is irrelevant in general, but her contributions had lead to the Prolewiki accounts being banned. She just took advantage of the vandalism and used it for her own purpose. I can personally confirm that Aussig is not a sock puppet account, especially given she was participating in the discord server not in the same way as Parabola (Wisconcom). She was a part of the scandal but for different reasons.
I think Parabola made a larger dent into Leftypedia that will take harder to scrub off compared to Prolewiki. Especially given at the rate the articles are being changed (Literally productivity has been cut in half since Parabola is gone, only leaving Harrystein to edit the wiki), we won’t see Leftypedia recovered.
This is because Parabola (Or Wisconcom perhaps) originally introduced the idea of a leftypedia discord server in the matrix server, and so Parabola was the official owner. That means that Parabola has all official access to the discord server since he is at the top.
In my month staying in there, it is a gold mine of bullshit, I have amassed a collection of screenshots which clearly show that leftypedia is a place where left unity cannot happen.
Also, you have posted that link about Harrystein linking it to Wisconcom. I think Parabola is actually Wisconcom, given he made sock puppet accounts after his ban, and I’m one of the few people who can judge his tone and voice in voice chats since I heard it before when I was a part of the study group.
Since Aussig and Parabola are banned, I doubt Leftypedia would stand up again.
I had a conversation with one of the members of the Leftypedia discord server before my ban yesterday (whom I will not reveal the identity of), and they stated that Parabola has stepped down as administrator.
I thought there would’ve been more chaos at the discord server, surprisingly it was the opposite. It seems everything happened at either the editor’s side or at the admin’s side.
What is clear is that Aussig states through paraphrasing their words that:
They said they don’t want Leftypedia to be for all Leftist peoples.
In other words, Aussig has directly stated that leftypedia does not want to be leftypedia. They have banned all “revisionist” tendencies including 3 prolewiki accounts that only existed to tackle the issue with Wisconcom existing on the server.
Leftypedia has become a failed experiment it seems. The split between the Hoxhaites and Maoists (Aussig was a maoist when she entered the server* and I know it from my days in that discord server) is real. I’m not surprised at the very least. Parabola kept shitting on anarchists, even banned an anarcho-egoist (or minarchist, doesn’t matter) because they were reactionary and espoused anti-marxist views.
In the short amount of time I’ve been on that server (which is a month I think, a few days after the server’s creation) it was clear that this server would break down. It’s a funny coincidence that breakdown happened the day after I was banned for being “hostile”.
EDIT: Made corrections, see points marked by a *.
I bet even the editors are laughing over the transcript:
[Editor’s note: Biden appeared to mean Xi here, not Putin.]
How the fuck can you confuse them? Actually I’m not surprised at this point. Biden must have dementia at this point.
I see Libertarians advocating for microtransactions as it is “how the consumer spends that benefits the corporation” bullshit.
Instead of Libertarians seeing capitalism advancing towards the usual notion of maximising profits, they just see as consumers helping the corporations and thus it should be perfectly legal to do so. Games become worse due to their “efficiency” (efficiency meaning to extract as much profit as possible) by laying off employees, replacing them with contract work, utilising microtransactions, especially if the game is Free to Play. Did this all happen when the consumer spend their game or was it due to the capitalist because he wanted to maximise profits?
The libertarians argue “They should just stop spending if they don’t like the company!” but this doesn’t explain why capitalists make a tendency towards maximising profits. Then they argue about " ““social”” enterprises " and whatnot. In other words, what they explain (i.e. the products consumers buy), doesn’t explain the general tendency of capitalism, nor political economy in general.
This means that these libertarians have nothing to explain. Their arguments don’t explain anything. They don’t explain capitalism. Selective Apathy is nothing more than ignorance. They don’t care about other people, they only care if they are not affected, or if this practice helps them in some way or another. This line of thinking of “I don’t care what you do” can be extrapolated to many horrible ideas that libertarians or liberals can cling on to. We can also argue this is an aspect of alienation, but I made my point. This is just another aspect of individualism.
Add this one to the collection:
fascist-imperialist Russo-Chinese bourgeoisie
As a person who’s about to head to University in a few months and currently does Maths, Computer Science, and Business Studies, I can definitely state that any degree/subject which involves liberal topics such as Economics and Political Science are useless.
As an example, in Business Studies, it’s always about the business. They just put the thing out there, “the business is what matters”. Of course they delve into ethics and stuff but they don’t care about that because businesses are supposed to be the best option. It’s just capitalist realism combined with writing too much.
Economics is similar, it just doesn’t involve businesses as much. It’s just: “keep the economy going, line go up means world more gooder.” It’s an absolute joke. People with Economics or PoliSci degrees are also utterly atrocious and worse than marxists who don’t hold any degree of the sort.
I’m surprised that this shit is being taught to begin with. It’s all liberal nonsense, really. I don’t have much on PoliSci, but someone here made a series of posts where it delves into the liberal nature of PoliSci.
The UK wanted to have a unified legal definition of ‘sex’. Scotland agreed to this but later on changed this with the Gender Recognition Bill to have a different legal definition of what ‘sex’ is. The CPB opposes this, saying it will create ‘legal chaos’, basically stating that there would be differences in how it’s being carried out. The UK only recognises changes in sex only when there is gender dysphoria. Scotland changes this to ensure that anyone over the age of 16 can change their sex without needing to have gender dysphoria. The CPB thinks that a ‘unified’ legal definition of sex would help the UK somehow?
Not really. When it comes to Communist Parties in the UK, you either have revisionist parties or transphobic parties. There is almost nothing in regards to principled ML orgs.
Fictional book? does “The Gulag Archipelago” count?
This requires more than a post to cover the entire history of the USSR, but in summary, it all kind of started with Khrushchev. Khrushchev was undoubtedly a revisionist, and his policies like the Kosygin reforms, the replacement of the label DotP with “State of the Whole People” and laughable claims like “Communism in 100 years” set the USSR down the path towards the capitalist mode of production. The bureaucracy that formed within the USSR had lead to the USSR being disconnected with the masses, basically trying things out to see if it would improve the USSR in any way. It did not. If anything, it lead to further liberalisation. There was no “absenteeism” that was common called by anti-communists, but rather, the USSR had begun to quantitatively change in regards to the mode of production.
It just accumulated. and as dialectics go, the quantitative transforms to qualitative. Which is why Gorbachev rose to power to begin with. His reforms like Glasnost and Perestroika were despised by the masses, in fact Gorbachev was not a very popular leader especially since he considered bans on things like vodka. But since the masses couldn’t oust him, it was clear that the DotP had shattered, and what remained was a bureaucratic government that was ready to burst.
This is oversimplistic, and I believe I’m missing out a lot of things, which is why you should do further investigation on this topic.
tl;dr: Bureaucracy and Revisionism is why the USSR collapsed, also do research.
Comrade, what do you think about this article in particular?
I am 100% convinced that Wisconcom is CIA agent who is tasked with eliminating online communist servers
That’s so funny to see as a ProleWiki author lmao, but I think it will be taken down soon. Still, natopedia using a prolewiki article as a reference is one of the most funny things to see come out.