Yliaster

The guy you mentioned is an editor for BBC news, which is kinda disappointing (US news outlets are owned by the same company)

Okay.

I haven't given other outlooks their fair share of investigation for me to be able to conclude upon their utility yet.

dialectical materialism itself understands that the world is constantly changing, new things are arising all the time and old things are dying away

Isn't this an eternal truth itself? That change is an immutable property of society.

If peasants are communitarian and city-dwellers individualist, what class fits in the ''collectivist'' category?

Feudalism refers to the time period between the 9th and 15th century AD, whereas Islam was founded (and thriving) in the 6th or 7th century (with Christianity going as far back as 1st century). Though Christianity had slavery. Islam is said to have discouraged slavery (although it did not outright prohibit it), though this is something that is debated. Granted our interest is more on what actually occurred than theological accuracy; the Islamic Empire did wage wars and enslave people as a result of these wars largely on the justification that if they were left free they would just attack them again, if I'm not mistaken.

the ruling classes of a given society create a state and structures by which to eminate ruling class ideology. Religion was largely the means by which this was accomplished in feudal and slave eras.

Can you elaborate on this

Some questions:

1. Why did the West develop economically through imperialism, and why did China and its east asian socialist counterparts not develop to be that way?
2. Isn't capitalism typically described as a necessary stage of economic development after which communism arises in socialist theory?
3. What caused colonialism to turn inwards as fascism, and how do you explain fascism in countries that haven't had imperialist histories?

What remains of the old, powerful clergy is that which support bourgeois property rights

Can you elaborate on this

The working classes currently are slaves, of which there are few, the peasantry, who toil the lands of their lords and pay rent in the form of that which they grow and keep the rest, and the proletariat, which far outnumbers the rest.

You didn't describe the proletariat, though I'm assuming going by selling labour power that would include professionals such as doctors, engineers, businessmen, etc.

Countries need surplus product to direct towards improving outputs to make more and more and redirect that surplus to make more and more and more, but if you only keep what you need to sustain yourself and not grow then you’ll never grow.

I thought communism ran on the idea that driving surplus is capitalist ideology and that communism was needs-based, instead of being focused on growth?

culture is a product of how people live and produce

why is culture wildly different amongst capitalist countries, then? the means of production and economic model is largely the same.

It is possible for traits to be innate in individuals (and thus cultures). If innate traits exist, this would not be related to economic factors (because it's innate, which means it is not caused by external factors, and economics is external). Features such as temperament being innate is something that has at least some scientific grounding, so this shouldn't be scientifically inaccurate, though I am not privy to the specifics.

I didn't find the focusing dismissive.

I found it dismissive when you said it didn't matter what I believed. You may assert that, though, and the accuracy of dialectical materialism. Brute force assertions will not make me believe something is true or accurate, though I guess that doesn't matter to you. But at that point, why even bother conversing with me?

I am not walking forward with the assumption that dialectical materialism is true or accurate.

Assuming you still care to hear the rest of what I say:

Physics is an entire field of study, it is not just one model. Rejecting or being skeptical of a theory within a field of study is not absurd as you're trying to make it sound; models have been improved upon and expanded in science precisely because of this. Einstein gave us an improved model of gravity that was more accurate after Newton's. Similarly, I am not rejecting sociology in its entirety when I am skeptical of dialectical materialism. Sociology is not reducible to dialectical materialism, and historical/sociological analysis is entirely possible without dialectical materialism.

I'm trying to keep the discussion polite and respectful, and I try not to dismiss your beliefs like that. Please reciprocate that. I don't want this to become an abrasive thing, if the discussion can't happen without being abrasive, I'd rather we just stopped.

Dogma is something I am opposed to, and being dogmatic about something is the fastest way to turn me off from something. I personally view dialectical materialism as having explanatory potential (despite not being the only explanation), and there were points in your answer that caught my interest prior to that.

The rest of my thoughts are as follows.

I've saved my comments, I'll pivot to them individually afterwards.

This is why the peasantry is associated with individualism as a class outlook, and why the proletariat is more collectivist.

Uhm... not the other way around? Isn't the peasantry collectivist?

How does the base create religion? If you have any (brief) readings on the matter, I might be willing to read a bit on that specific subject. Also, you say the hegemony switches from religion to schooling -- I'm a bit confused here as isn't destroying education the aim of fascism? Like in America, especially as of late.

The old forms of culture do not disappear when transitioning to a new society, they mold and fit the new form and slowly die away. They are subsumed by the new.

Examples and/or resources on this would be appreciated.

You mention proletarianization, is this about the population becoming more white collar or blue collar in terms of employment? I've gotten conflicting definitions for the term(s). ''Working class'' used to be manual labourers but that's a smaller portion of the population now as white collar jobs go up, I think.

this process is depressed by imperialism, which traps countries at certain levels of development by sucking up all of the surplus that could be used to develop the country. Ie, they keep what they need to maintain themselves, but imperialist countries take what they need to increase production and infrastructure.

I didn't get this part.

It's true that secularization is rising in Muslim countries. I suppose it's the combination of the fact that this is not yet deeply reflected in the law in most of these countries, and the fact that things such as gay rights are at the far edge of the process, such that the connections to religion would have to become incredibly loose for those to come about, that I've assumed them to be essentially static since it's not happening before I get old (if not my life). Just reads the same to me, though of course it can eventually happen down the line. I can't personally be concerned with that though. It's like watching hair grow, it's not actually static but if you take that process and make it incredibly slower, it feels that way.

I'm not entirely convinced that production is more significant than culture in determining thought yet

Even if you consider yourself to be secular, you return unknowingly to supernatural explanation of phenomena that do not accurately describe the world.

Not knowing the why doesn't mean I have a belief in the supernatural. You can know (or believe) that something is, even if you do not understand why or how. I know rocket science and quantum mechanics exist, even though I don't know why or what they entail. This doesn't mean I believe in the supernatural.

We can hold countries accountable without treating it illogically, like a race.

So how does holding China accountable for what it currently lacks in queer rights look like to you?

Nope, framing social progress as a process, rather than something static, means looking at the fact that countries that are ahead presently are behind what will be considered acceptable in the future, and countries that are behind now are often ahead of where they were in the past. There is nothing special about this present moment

This comes off as you "equalizing" everything globally to a "neutral" in every case, which feels very detached and inappropriate to me. It's always a process everywhere, current protections or lack thereof don't get mention.

The existing protections in places I do consider to be special in this moment.

This is how I know you aren't really reading what I say. I have said everything is a process. Understanding that nothing is static doesn't mean everything bad doesn't matter or that nothing good matters. You framed existing social progress in, say, China as bad when it is better than it was in the past and is continuing to get better and better.

Yeah but then why do you only give lip to the west, when it comes to queer rights and not also socialist countries?

Because there would be no point in this current conversation?

There would be a point to me in that it would show me that you don't actually have a wholly uncritical and unilaterally accepting opinion of China and can actually see their flaws.

If you're just someone who views country X as idyllic and are always going to be in favour of country X no matter what flaws exist and what it does, and you cant ever honestly account for them, then I'm highly unlikely to give any real weight to anything you say about country X. It comes off as zealotry, nothing but a zealot's zeal.

Not saying you are, but you have only given me overwhelming evidence for this through our conversations so far.

I also didn't say an account on their flaws has to be "equal". You've written countless answers of such a length that unilaterally describe the pros of the country, one mere response of the same length owing to the opposite wouldn't come anywhere near to making it equal.

I'll beg to differ on Cuba not being an exception, you didnt name any other current socialist countries w similar laws.

I don't really buy into the whole process framework you have, or what I've understood of it so far, anyway.

This is why I keep stressing that nothing is static, and that everything is moving through time, as a process. Even countries that appear to be doing the same thing for a long period of time are undergoing constant buildup to result in change.

I know, you've said that. I don't feel it, though. I don't feel like the bulk of conservative areas are going to become progressive. I don't mean just China or socialist countries right now though.

Consider the Muslim-majority parts of the middle east, Africa, and Asia. Do you believe they're going to have a queer liberation any time soon? The stronghold that religion has on these places is far more deeply entrenched than Christianity does in their western counterparts. Expecting them to progress for gay rights even by the end of the century is optimistic, I would assume. If you have reasoning otherwise, I'm open to hearing it.

Parts of the Islamic world have somehow managed to allow for transgender rights (Iran, Pakistan), but that is the extent of it.

And why did those ideas come to be? What material conditions were present that allowed some ideas to propogate and others to be ignored?

This may just be a stereotype, but it is said that urbanization and the rise of cities and city culture is associated with things such as progressivism and secularism; the rural counterparts to a country's populace is typically more conservative.

If that's the direction you want to go... perhaps it was the steam engine and the industrial revolution that played into this or amplified it.

It may also have to do with the change of economic structure such that the church was no longer the direct source of provision and governance and therefore that made contradicting the church less detrimental to survival, thus allowing for secularism to be realistically feasible. This is a hunch, though. I'm not well-read on history, especially the farther back we go, and this is already around 17th century, I think.

You overstated the gap between western countries and existing socialist states

I stated the legal protections that exist in the west that do not exist in existing socialist states (sans Cuba). This is not an overstatement, this is fact.

I am not trying to convince you of anything at the moment, just exchanging information. I can't provide sources for the prior topics we were discussing as that is something I'd have to research prior. For those topics, I can't do better atm, so if it is unsatisfactory for you, you can always exit. But I don't think this applies when it comes to queer topics, at least not as much.

I never brushed them off as though they were nothing, I highlighted that they aren't as solid as you claim

I claimed they have certain legal protections. Marriage equality, housing/employee protection, adoption. This is fact, it is not something merely claimed by me.

you frame it as though China is getting worse over time and the west is getting better while the opposite is true.

I didn't say this. My point was there are factually better laws extant in the west today that don't exist in modern-day socialist states besides Cuba.

This is the kind of frankly bad-faith bullshit you've been stating that makes it abundantly clear from my perspective that you don't seem to care at all about what I say, but instead are fishing for "gotchas." I'll bold this so it's clear: Less discrimination is better, obviously. Overstating the gap between countries when it comes to social rights in order to push a narrative that this gap is due to failings on the part of the country lagging behind is illogical and ignores the reality of how social change comes to be, and undermines the ongoing efforts of queer activists in socialist countries.

The legal protections I mentioned, again, are all factually true. Allow me to rephrase the part where I said it was ''miles ahead''. There are much better laws in place for queer people in the west than the socialist countries that exist today, asides from Cuba.

However, I will say that I am inclined to believe that the parity is a failure on part of the country. Whose else is it, do we just not hold countries accountable, now? Or is everything just always explained as being the West's fault? That seems illogical to me.

Prolewiki frames social progress as a process, not as a snapshot. In doing so, it's documenting the progressive movements in socialist countries and what struggles they face, it doesn't try to document a list of what's presently there because history is not a set of disconnected snapshots but a process.

Does a framing of social progress as a process mean that you overlook flaws and negatives and what's missing?

How can you even begin to honestly document the struggles faced when you haven't even mentioned the fact that they don't have some of the most significant rights.

Both are necessary, having a good view of existing conditions while analyzing trends, and Equaldex lacks that historical background analysis and analysis of trends. This is what you deliberately are choosing to ignore, and what I have pointed out this entire time.

Then why can only one be seen to the total omission of the other? You criticize Equaldex for lacking one but not Prolewiki for lacking the other.

Furthermore, Prolewiki does NOT have a good view of existing conditions. I do not take issue with trend analysis. Go for it! I take issue with not calling a spade a spade and ignoring what is in the here and now altogether. That is not something that will be read as logical to me.

Just because it's a process, in our current account of things, we are going to skip over what's missing and painful right now? How can you even work towards what's missing if you don't even mention ''I don't have X''?

This is as absurd to me as hearing someone trying to document how economic inequality has changed over time without even bothering to mention the facts of what exactly is wrong right now. Lets not even mention the problem of housing, the wage gap by race and gender, unemployment, etc, because it's a process! It's not a snapshot!

To be clear: this is not intended to be inflammatory, but I am trying to convey why this kind of view just makes no sense to me.

Benefits: Benefits Drawbacks: "Process"

This is clearly cherry-picking and unbalanced and if you work like that it doesn't matter how abysmal a country could be in theory because the drawbacks will always be reframed as a process while you only really account for the benefits, resulting in a distorted picture and account of the country.

Also, another counterpoint would be, how come you don't call the problems in the west "a process" too, then? The drawbacks are just process when looking at socialism, but the west? You don't seem to have an issue with calling their drawbacks for what they are, drawbacks, without calling it "process" there. Seems to be inconsistent to me.

The negatives are not downplayed or glossed-over

And yet you have never stopped to acknowledge them or give them their due weight. You write one or two sentences, at the most, on how China is not perfect in the most general and nebulous of terms, but that is all one gets, before focusing the entirety of your responses on why China is doing well.

How about you give me an equally lengthy answer on the areas where China is performing poorly, and not being up to the mark where it should, flaws in the government, problems faced by people living there today, things like that? Can you actually do that?

Cuba is not an exception

Cuba is absolutely the exception in currently existing socialist countries, this is fact. Name one other socialist country today that has legalized gay marriage— or any of the other legal protections I mentioned earlier. There isn't one.

queer rights in Cuba are not perfect.

I didn't say it was "perfect". I said it was ideal and there wasnt anything to say about it to critique it, within the context of our conversation (i.e. a comparison between queer rights under socialist and non-socialist countries). Compared to the non-socialist countries with progressive laws, Cuba isn't doing noticeably worse in this regard to warrant discussion.

You were downplaying Scandinavian imperialism just a few comments ago, and you said Cuba is "perfect" with regards to queer rights.

Wasn't downplaying, I asked, because I'd never heard of Scandinavian imperialism before; and ceded the point (for the purposes of the discussion) when given evidence. As for Cuba, didn't call it perfect, that is your wording, not mine.

On the why behind queer rights in the west: I'll preface by saying this is speculative and I've never thought about the why much before, believing most countries just remain the way they are for the most part.

I think that secularism and other thought emerging from the enlightenment era played a role in forming the bedrock where queer rights would be discussed more openly.

In the US specifically, in the 70's, the stonewall riots and queer lobbying lead to the removal of homosexuality from the DSM as a mental disorder.

I think that the shift of focus in favour of individualism replacing traditional family values (even if far from completely, I am aware MAGAts and conservative and/or christians make up a significant portion of the US) allows more space for gay liberation. Though to be clear I am not saying the US is ideal for gay people, it is just an example. West Europe is less conservative and affirming (likely Scandinavia being the best in this regard).

Collectivist cultures are inherently less likely to be able to give room to such things coming about because they want everyone to conform to the same norm, which is always going to be heterosexuality (if not within a traditional marriage). Gay people don't come out to their parents in Asia (mostly collectivist cultures) because of the emphasis on "furthering the parents' bloodline" (amongst beliefs that it is unnatural and all sorts of other bigotry, of course).

It has been my idea that we've had a lot of activists over the last century (possibly prior as well) in the west. Perhaps due to language barriers I can't say I have personally heard enough to say the same about the east, though I have seen japanese activists pushing for this for a while the last year or so.

"Social progress" is too broad a term for me to be able to assess just like that, but specifically in the context of queer rights specifically I am more or less content with where they're at in West Europe; they are declining sharply in the US under Trump, though.

I don't personally see it improving in socialist countries in a significant way any time soon.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if it happened before the turn of the century (it'd be about goddamn time), I just wouldn't personally care since it's not happening in my lifetime. I can't envision myself living there because it's not happening in time. If it'd happen sooner, I could, but that's just not realistic.

Just do it.

Tldr?

It's a lot of people but big tech can easily get back those numbers.

Let's see how the tendency unrolls over the long-term.

That's just capitalism. But yeah, they can just bailout since the concept of separate legal entities means that individual investors aren't held responsible for corporate losses.

Zuck lobbied the US for age verification laws, won't Altman just lobby them for this, too?

Where can I see them? I'd like to

And France, especially Germany, and a fair bit of Europe, sadly. France is being lobbied hard by Israel to fast-track bans against Palestine action.