Cowbee [he/him]

I have and blocked nearly all of it. They have fuck-all to do with Marxism or Communism and mainly focus on Kremlin and CCP anti-west propaganda.

Can you explain what you mean by that? On what grounds do you claim they have “fuck all to do with Marxism or Communism?” How familiar are you with Marxist theory?

It’s worse than the “conservative” communities, actually. It’s not so much about promoting a cause as it is about telling everyone else how they are “bad”. Any dissent is usually met with insults or walls of cut-n-paste posts that all point back to state media sources or fake sites.

I’d love examples, because this is blatantly false in my experience.

While all places have their own degrees of circle-jerk mentality, it can be especially bad in some corners of Lemmy.

Lemmy.world tends to be pretty bad, I agree 😜

You’re more than free to actually visit instead of whatever caricature you concocted in your mind palace.

Not to be pedantic, but “corporate socialism” isn’t a thing, that’s just Capitalism as it monopolizes.

Why are you including things which have not yet made it to the Communist stage of development as examples of success of Marxist theory?

Because Marxism isn’t Utopian. Marxism isn’t a grand idea of a just society, but a theory of historical development. Read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, this is basic Marxism.

That isn’t a proof that Communism is great yet. It’s calling the experiment before actually seeing if it works.

No. Communism is not an “experiment.” Marx didn’t come up with Communism as a grand society to implement, but saw how one Mode of Production gives way to the next, ie how Capitalism monopolizes into socialized syndicates over time, reaching central planning after proletarian revolution.

And I am not quick to call the USSR or Cuba particularly Dictatorships of the Proletariat. They became actual Dictatorships that carried forward the heirachy of the paramilitary organizations that spawned them never ceeding them to the workers councils like they were supposed to do instead creating new dynasties of career politicians…Career politicians of a one party state are not “working class”.

1. They were not dictatorships.

2. Cooperarives aren’t Marxism.

I suggest reading Why do Marxists fail to create the “Worker’s Paradise?” You have an anti-Marxist idea of what Socialism and Communism are. I also suggest reading Blackshirts and Reds to debunk anticommunist myths. I know I recommended both texts, and I know you didn’t read them. You really should!

But its difficult to say if he had everything figured out because his “dictatorship of the proletariat” doesn’t seem to ever actualize in a lasting fashion. It usually ends up as an authoritarian state arguably because the system is vulnerable to the first group that decides to break faith with the covenant

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the DotP and Communist history in general. The PRC has a DotP, the USSR did, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, etc. All have a DotP. Read Why do Marxists fail to bring about the “Worker’s Paradise?” You have an odd, idealistic idea of Marxism that even Marx would deny.

A lot of Communist hopefuls tend to either take the examples of this happening as “not true Communism” or try to minimize the bad aspects of regimes that adopted the principles… It does seem once power is too laterally spread it becomes weak to any hierarchy that as long as they can talk a good game and use Marxist language.

This is just a bunch of gestures. The reality is that AES states are truly guided by Marxism, and are true attempts at Communism, but haven’t made it to the Communist stage of development.

In either case a lot of us would not call those outcomes “proven correct”. I would say he had some very lasting ideas which are useful tools… But the fact that none of the places where attempted enactment have particularly lived up to his hype means that like a lot of philosophy of his time that the answers are a lot more complex and nuanced than he could have forseen.

They have absolutely lived up to the hype, coming with drastic reductions in poverty, wealth inequality, increases in life expectancy, housing rates, ending famines, free healthcare and education, democratization, and more. Please, read Blackshirts and Reds.

For clarity, comtemporaries of Marx and Engels also called them authoritarian, hence On Authority.

Not to be nitpicky, but it really depends on what you’re talking about. The Petite Bourgeoisie, for example, has a tendency to try to align with either the Bourgeoisie or the Anarchists as they are proletarianized by big competition. When they align with the Bourgeoisie, this usually is a factor in the rise in fascism, also known as Capitalism in decay.

The general Proletariat vs Bourgeoisie conflict is certainly one of the most important nationally, but internationally it is the Imperialist Bourgeoisie vs the Proletariat and Nationalist Bourgeoisie, as we live in the age of Imperialism, or “moribund Capitalism.”

Hexbear.net is anti-sectarian, so it has AnComms and Marxist-Leninists alike, with no infighting allowed. It probably has the largest number by quantity.

dbzer0 has many AnComms, though it’s explicitly a Piracy instance.

Lemmy.ml has Anarchist communities as well as the Solarpunk instance, but neither have the numbers of the other 2 instances listed.

To be fair, we are not the ones making those decisions, the Bourgeoisie is.

Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml are explicitly Marxist aligned. Lemmy.ml’s admins are Marxists, but for some reason insist that it isn’t a Marxist instance. Lemmy.world defederated from both Grad and Hexbear, because the Lemmy.world mods and admins are anti-Marxist.

Lemmy.world is defederated from the largest Marxist aligned instances.

So you are advocating for random terrorism. Please read theory.

Actually I find that it allows more range of Socialism strains to be discussed. A lot of Marxists tend to look rather poorly at any mixed Socialism blends as either heretical or as liminal states with Communism as a complete end goal instead of being legitimate in their own right.

The PRC is an example of a Socialist Market Economy, it isn’t fully socialized. What Marxists take issue with is Dictatorships of the Bourgeoisie vs Dictatorships of the Proletariat.

Marx may have coined the term

Marx did not coin the term. Marx was simply the most relevant and influential Socialist, and history has proven his ideas to be correct.

The only meaningful class distinction is working class/wealthy class.

It’s nice to recognize Labor Aristocracy, petite bourgeoisie, peasantry, small handicraftsman, and so forth, IMO.

The soviet union and the CCP today famously committed a number of genocides, killed dissenters, and are one party states. You seem to think I mean liberal democracy when I say democracy. I mean democracy.

Having a one party state is not anti-democratic. What matters is what you can vote on, which the Soviet system allowed for moreso than liberal democracy.

Soviet Democracy by Priestland seems to disagree with you on how democratic the worplaces were. The power of the unions was greatly dialed back very quickly, with managers being reintroduced and the economy becoming more hierarchical as time went on.

Again, hierarchy and managers are not against Marxism, nor is direct worker self management Marxism.

Socialism being when the workers own the means of production is kinda essential, be it directly or indirectly. This is the basis on which I state that tankies are not socialists. I’m guessing you think that the workers indirectly own the means in the soviet union, or that the direct democracy you seem to think existed there for any meaningful amount of time counted (it did count, but again, only briefly).

I highly recommend reading Why do Marxists fail to bring about the “Worker’s Paradise?”, it’s an excellent article on economic democracy with respect to Historical Materialism.

Anything you’ve said about china is just flat out wrong. The soviet union is certainly complicated, and much could be debated there, especially since the power of the unions fluctuated with time, but workers have literally zero power under the ccp.

I literally linked you a wikipedia article, I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. There’s workplace democracy in China, and public property is entitely state planned. I wish you’d throw me a bone here we can work with, you just denied everything outright.

But we clearly disagree on reality, no further debate is necessary. Have a nice day I guess.

I really implore you to have an open mind, and again, read Marx regarding Historical and Dialectical Materialism. Elementary Principles of Philosophy is my personal favorite overview of the concepts.

Classes are social relations to production, not arbitrary income levels. I’m a proletarian, but in the upper stratum of the labor aristocracy.

Are you advocating for random terrorism? That’s adventurism, which sets revolutionary movements back.

Hex is very self-sufficient and has healthy overlap with grad, so not being entangled with .world isn’t a bad thing for HB. It isn’t dying out anytime soon

No worries! That happened a while ago, I voted to keep federated.