Comradeship // Freechat

I know there's an entire Spanish Armada of disinformation about the USSR - especially during the Stalin years - but I am instinctively skeptical of claims that Lavrentiy Beria wasn't a sex pest.

For one thing, I believe all women.

For another it's not exactly hard to imagine a man in a position of power abusing said power to take advantage of women - especially when that man is a cop and being the head of the NKVD does make you a cop no matter what way you try to look at it and all cops at the end of the day are bastards.

Of course I can still accept this possibility that it might not be true; I'm just very suspicious of the claim when covering up the sex crimes of powerful men is a recurring theme throughout history and despite the great progress the USSR made on the front of women's liberation there was still a very visible patriarchal culture present right up until the end.

Again: I accept it could be bullshit. I just really doubt it.

Who the fuck is going around recommending 'What is to be done?' as a beginner Marxist text?

“What is to be Done?” was not bad for me, but that it because I read Communism books and watch Communism videos beforehand. That said "Wage Labour and Capital" and most except the later parts of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was hard for me because I have a hard time understanding economic theory.

"Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism" by Lenin

I find it important and, for me, it was a very good first read.

But it has sections that are filled with economic data for various countries at the time (Germany, France, Britain, Russia mostly) and it can become quite heavy and involved. I could see someone, who's not used to reading that kind of book, being put off by the sheer volume of data drops that Lenin uses. When I recommend it, I usually tell people to skip the data analysis if they aren't interested.

Bukharin was a rightist, because he suggested that children should be separated from their families to be raised by the state.

This might be more of a complaint on how some Marxists act vs an ideological disagreement, but it has to do with some of the dismissiveness on certain topics.

For example, if someone decides to talk about their Fandom culture, or some piece of media they enjoy which is not explicitly revolutionary or just generally mainstream, there are quite a few Marxists who will jump on that person, and tell them "this is nonsense you should be busy organizing."

I generally don't go into my interests here on the Grad just because I don't often get the opportunity to. Sometimes I do indulge however when a topic comes up in the gaming, free chat, or anime communities.

Regardless, I think some Marxists underestimate the amount of effect agitprop can have when you engage in Marxists analysis of consumerist media. I don't mean just going into a fanspace for a media you like and scolding everyone there either, I mean just existing Inna community as a Marxist openly, as it can be surprising how receptive people can be when you apply Marxism to something outside of strict political discussion.

This is one of the things which strengthened reactionaries duing the 2010s and caused a social democratic backlash in the same spaces online. We are seeing a more explicitly fascist reaction confronting the old socdems and need explicitly socialist opposition to battle for cultural hedghemony online.

Dialectic logic is unnecessary to explain the world. The job that dialectics supposedly does is better done by complexity science, classical economics, critical realism, evolution, and psychology.

I think Mao gets a bad rap for stuff that happened during his later years.

I've seen a lot of people who kinda just melancholically say he would've been remembered better had he not led China through the 50s and 60s. I guess I get it, but is that what we care about? Legacy? Everyone should just hang up their hats when they make a bad decision?

Additionally, i think in any case, it's hard to blame Mao and Mao Zedong Thought for the problems that occurred specifically during the era. Establishing a new proletarian state us hard, establishing one of the first ones ever is even harder, establishing one in China was a miracle. The economy grew at similar rates before before reform and opening up as it did after, and without that initial foundation of independence there could never have been an independent reform and opening up. I also think the red book is one of the most important texts for beginners and should be one of the first reccomended.

Additionally, like I've said in other threads, I'm not one for discussions on morality. I think i got empathy overload [edit: more like empathy burnout] at some point and have just accepted bad things are going to happen no matter what when things get violent. If you just boil it down to "is hurting x necessary to establish socialism? Yes? Then it's moral. If not then it's immoral" then life becomes much simpler. I'd kill the entire Romanov family 20 times over personally if that was the decision that needed to be made to save the USSR. I would lie, cheat, and consort with the worst to establish socialism, and that's the attitude that's needed to do so. I will argue at length about what is necessary--materially--to establish socialism [I don't think the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki were necessary, so they were immoral] but individual sob stories are pointless and I'm glad I'm becoming numb to them. Maybe your grandpa wasn't a counter revolutionary, but the wider purge was necessary to save the people from the blackest era of reaction. So it was moral. Life is very much a play of averages and odds. Unfortunately it will be that way until the last capitalist is dissolved. Edit: However this also applies the other way. I don't really care about justice if its unnecessary. It's not about what people deserve, it's about living, about science, and about the natural coarse of human events

Lastly, the Jacobins are more than just Bourgeois revolutionaries. I wouldn't go as far as to describe them as proto-socialist or anything, but there was a difference between them, the Girondins, thermadorians, etc. The jacobins were the Bourgeoisie who aligned themselves with the journeyman proto-proletariat and the peasantry. This is opposed to people like Cromwell in Britain who aligned themselves with the lower landowners against the peasants. It's why we appreciate Sun Yat-sen more than Chiang Kai-Shek, or Thomas Paine than George Washington, etc.

I have always believed that without Trotsky, the 1917 Revolution would have failed.

I perceive myself as abnormally cautious, hesitant, wanting to be thorough (sometimes to the point of inaction). Some of it's anxiety-driven, some I suspect is a predisposition toward looking for threats and anticipating problems. I don't say it as a good thing, but not necessarily a bad thing either. It makes me shy of leadership positions because I can be too plodding and uncertain to take immediate action. Sometimes I think it's the times or a cultural thing though. I had little enough use of technology in the earlier parts of my childhood that I can remember the contrast between that and when I became an adult and started using high-speed internet regularly. There's something about the pacing of things that changes. Not only on how you operate, but how society operates.

For example, a society that needs days or more to send a message from one place to another simply can't move as quickly as a society that can instantaneously send a message across a great distance. This makes snap decision-making more common and more valued. It's strange though because it's not like this means society changes instantaneously. Rapid movement does not mean rapid change, necessarily, since the superstructure has to catch up to the base.

So you can get this "hurry up and wait" feeling a lot. "Why am I even rushing? For what? To where? Is time actually running out quickly or do I only perceive it that way because of the perceived pace of the world?"

I don't know. I feel abnormally older than I am at times. Probably in that messed up childhood way, not actually wise from experience. Life is strange, but I am glad for diamat because it helps ground me in the sea of nebulous western ideologies.

not sure how unpopular this is, but i'm of the opinion that having a strong education in diamat is more important than any other political/philosophical education, because it is simply more fundamental in the sense that it itself can be applied to all spheres of knowledge and discovery. furthermore, a lack of interest or knowledge in diamat is one of the main problems i perceive from western ML orgs. there's a lot of room for new theory here but i haven't really seen anything major published, although i might just not have seen it.