Probably just a fun sycophant to get drunk and watch movies with. Apparently the one guy that ever got away with snapping back at Stalin during the invasion.

I didn’t realize Sun Yat-Sen was so revered in China lmao

what are the common detractions against staying within the transitional stage/dotp permanently rather than completing the transition and devolving into communism?

too vague of a question tbh, like the answer for this isn’t gonna stay the same even for the same country at different times

word, i’m just trying to understand things properly like i know the point of marxism is transitioning capitalism into communism w the transitional period in between being the dotp after the revolution but i don’t see the necessity to go past that point to full communism. like isn’t society being run in the interest of the majority just a fine end goal enough?

cause a dotp with a capitalist basis will still suffer the same problems as dictatorship of x class will suffer with capitalism, boom-bust cycles, a bourgeois class that will also try to get political influence etc

how is the final stage of communism not too utopian? kind of how it sounds to me

how does one get over political apathy/feeling powerless?

the state has failed me/incarcerated me for my mental illness and I'm honestly torn down at this point, s*** is bleak

the conditions for development to the principles of “each according to his ability, each according to his needs” is already possible with current productive forces in that aspect i don’t see it utopian, the more troubling factor for me are current subjective organizational capacities in order to capitalize on the cyclical crisis system capitalism operates on

right i see boiling it down to it’s slogan makes it seem so much more of a respectable idea i guess im just struggling w how past communist movements have always devolved to be authoritarian

Your idea of authoritarian is framed by liberal bourgeois democracy.

A state at its most basic form is an tool used to reconcile class antagonisms and allow the reproduction of the economic relations and the social relations that contour the former in order to continue the domination of one class over another. this isn’t exclusive to capitalism or socialism and has existed ever since one group of humans were able to subsist and reproduce their wealth without directly engaging in work while extracting value from another class.

what does change however is the subjective view that each person is able to take when connecting their life processes and social relations to their overall role within society as a whole- which in any society, maintaining society and engaging in any kind of work is a collective process no matter how autonomous and atomized it can seem.

for instance, under feudalism the relations serf, the landed nobility and aristocracy, and the Church were much more plain to see to the common person once you leave the sphere of Christianity or any idealistic notions about royal right to rule. The serfs were able to work for a set portion of the week, say 4 days, when the fruits of their labor (rent in kind or the conversion of rent in kind into money) were directly confiscated by the landed nobility through taxation, usury by landlords, or tithes by the Church. The other few days they could subsist by themselves and kept the fruits of their labor. Yet it was much easier to see that the impoverishment of the serfs and the lack of class mobility for the average person was directly linked to them giving up a portion of their fruits to a class of people that did not directly engage in labor to produce the latter. The aristocracy got richer, as did the landlords, even the grand wealth of the Catholic Church was blatant and they lived in excess. While these social relations were maintained and bounded both the ruling class and exploited class through through lenses such as religious duties, “right to rule”, etc, this in itself is authorative. A serf wasn’t allowed to leave their property lest they both be without the means to grow crops, much less being hunted down by militia or without the protection of their state.

Within capitalism, these social relations are also maintained in an authoritative manner, although much more obscured and harder to see. But the average worker does not have the tools or means to feed themselves, they only have their labor. The worker must then go to the market and sell his labor to the capitalist for a set time period on contract, in which the capitalist is allowed to use their labor to produce much more value than that which the worker gets back in return in the form of salary/wages.

Just like the serf, if the worker under capitalism chooses to “run away” from the set social relations, he will simply starve, become homeless, he will be an outcast within society unless he turns to food shelters, etc. if the worker does not pay his rent on time, or mortgage- most workers do not fully own land- financial institutions or landlords- with the backing of the state, have the authority to evict them. If you resist, they are within their rights to call forth the courts, and the police force, to have you forcibly removed and a mark on your records.

However, because under capitalism their is the presence of autonomy and “free choice”, it seems that these social relations aren’t enforced in an authoritative manner, and quite frankly they aren’t as crude to the eye as say your local merchant in Olden times going door to door extracting rents from peasants. But it is still there. You don’t really have a choice but to sell your labor, because you require money, which is the one commodity that can be used to acquire all other commodities depending on the quantity. You must engage with trade at some level to use your money to buy food, clothes, rent. Yet like I mentioned earlier, you may produce say $5000 for your boss within a given week working for 8 hours, yet your weekly paycheck may only come up to say $500 the other amount of that went directly to the capitalist, who must use it to pay the maintenance of his own business, redirect it into more assets to outcompete other capitalists, and maintain his lifestyle so he doesn’t have to directly engage in work and hire other employees.

Communist societies were authoritarian, but that in itself isn’t unique to them, what is unique is the subjective situations they were working within- in this case a hostile capitalist society worldwide, in other areas, semi-feudal/feudal social and economic relations that were antagonistic to the process of freeing the working class from having the fruits of their labor taken from them by the exploitating classes. This by necessity required an authoritative approach, you are quite literally attempting to abolish one method of organizing society and moving it into a new one, and this wasn’t a seamless nor expedited process, and it wasn’t going to be an easy or peaceful one either.

Even the transition from feudalism to early capitalism was marked by bourgeois revolutions, it wasn’t a peaceful one either. The English, French, American revolutions for example

But also your critique of “authoritarian” is too broad, what do you mean? Personality cults, excessive militarization, executions? Without being as long as my last post, it’s too vague with what you’re asking. Some criticisms without a further look at the situations surrounding them are left open to mystification and vulgar interpretation of aesthetics by leftists, or outright anti-communism smears by other imperialist governments or bourgeois scholars, which the latter aren’t always operating from a sense of antagonism but are simply writing- like any writer, from the media they consumed, their own education and biases which are always in relation to the conditions of their society.

On the other hand, there are plenty of genuine criticisms of past socialist societies by both people in here, online, and in literature that are nuanced and well written. It’s not an entire echo chamber like many would say and is actually quite divisive depending on who you are asking.

def see what you mean that it’s just more of a mischaracterization or dishonest framing than anything else

bro just barred out for no reason love to see it

Thing you gotta understand is socialism would likely last for a very long time, and multiple Cultural Revolutions would be required in order to approach communism. Communism isn’t something we can simply decide to jump to all of a sudden. It will require a long process of socialist construction, with each stage of this growing the consciousness and material conditions necessary to achieve communism.

It’s more of a turbulent process than a hard stop and start

makes total sense that it wouldn't/couldn't be the flip of a switch right

Yeah and to answer your more direct question, like Choking said the primary necessity of communism is the fact that as long as there are classes, socialism remains vulnerable to counter revolution and its overthrow

Not as important of a point, but I I don’t necessarily agree with Choking however that cyclical crises still occur under socialism. Maybe in the early stages, but as the law of value is further eroded, these should cease to become a thing.

Even the USSR and China didn’t really have any “pure” business cycle crises while they remained socialist. Their “crises” were largely due to environmental issues, problems of management, and political struggle. Not really secular crises due to the inherent laws of motion of the system

the whole anterograde amnesia has def impacted my ability to retain new info, but i feel at the v least i have the rough edges down

my cyclical crisis point wasn’t really referring to socialism more so a system with proles in power (monopolized, or in a coalition) but decide to keep a capitalist base for whatever reason they deem necessary (NEP, Deng China if u wanna be generous)

Fair yeah that’s true

been reading more about Gandhi's thoughts on class conflict and its even worse than i thought

• The labourers in Bombay made a fine stand. I was not in a position to know all the facts. But this much I could see that they could fight in a better way. The mill-owners may be wholly in the wrong. In the struggle between capital and labour, it may be generally said that more often than not the capitalists are in the wrong box. But when labour comes fully to realize its strength, I know it can become more tyrannical than capital.The mill-owners will have to work on the terms dictated by labour if the latter could command intelligence of the former. It is clear, however, that labour will never attain to that intelligence. If it does, labour will cease to be labour and become itself the master. The capitalists do not fight on the strength of money alone. They do possess intelligence and tact.

• The question before us is this: When the labourers remaining what they are, develop a certain consciousness, what should be their course? It would be suicidal if the labourers rely upon their numbers or brute force, i.e., violence. By so doing they will do harm to industries in the country. If on the other hand they take their stand on pure justice and suffer in their person to secure it, not only will they always succeed but they will reform their masters, develop industries and both master and men will be as members of one and same family.

Ambedkar should've strangled this loser

Joe Biden screaming a certain word from an explosion dot jpeg

What happened