Same actually lmao

I was always a vague socdem with strong anti-imperialist and anti-racist convictions, but at some point I just became more and more disillusioned with calitali, came in the ktt1 socialism thread and asked why ppl itt were socialist

Then @ARCADE_GOON linked me Ernest Mandel's summary lf Marxist economic theory

Reading the Marxist conception of exploitation was crazy it made so much sense like a eureka moment lmao

Didn't take much after that for me to become an actual Marxist myself, only had a couple of silly lib ideas like "but what about innovation" and s*** like that

I think the way Cockshott laid out his view on the USSR is correct:

Our view can be
summed up as follows:
(1) Soviet society was indeed socialist.
(2) This society had many undesirable and problematic features.
(3) The problems of Soviet society were in part related to the extremely difficult historical circumstances in which the Bolsheviks set about trying
to build socialism, but that is not all: important policy mistakes were
made (just as possible in a socialist society as in capitalism), and furthermore the problems of Soviet socialism in part reflect serious weaknesses
in classical Marxism itself.
(4) The failure of the Soviet system is therefore by no means irrelevant to
Marxian socialism. We must reflect carefully on the lessons to be learned
from this failure.
(5) Nonetheless, unlike those who delight in proclaiming the complete historic
rout of Marxism, we believe that a different type of socialism—still recognizably Marxian, yet substantially reformulated—is possible. The Soviet
Union was socialist, but other forms of Marxian socialism are possible.
(6) This claim can be sustained only by spelling out in much more detail than
hitherto both the sorts of economic mechanisms and the forms of political
constitution which socialists consider both desirable and feasible. This we
try to do in the book.

@spongebob

Powerful

Thread the past few pages vs when franko was itt

man im already reading 4 different books

the curse of a marxist is that ur never gonna finish ur reading list

Every single big media outlet in Serbia(all on government payroll) are saying that 20 people showed up to todays protest.

Meanwhile,the truth:

I get what you're saying and I guess maybe I framed what I was trying to say incorrectly.
I don't think the issue with what I'm saying is that socialism can't exist at all so long as global enemy states exist - that's obviously not true, nor do I really think that countries must be wholly isolated or can never interact with others, or that interaction is a giant trojan horse so long as there's any form of political discourse.
It's more that he was talking about overton windows existing within countries that are also major pivotal powers (unless I misunderstood) like China or the USSR; so you're already on a slightly different footing than a country like Cuba. Like how much of an "overton window" does Cuba really have? Especially with the popularity of the party. Compared with China where you having raging capitalists, neocons with chinese characteristics, actual socialists, confucians & legalists, western-influenced libs, leftist, etc. it's like there's way more of an overton window and even if you were to slice the overton window to exclude the capitalists you'd still end up with a way more varied environment, probably also in part just literally due to how massive the country is combined with their political model.
With both China & the USSR, when you see like, the slow creep of liberalization + conservative political culture (what I was talking about with Arcade Goon a few pages back) or in the USSR when you see the Iron Curtain dropping, there was 100% a level of omnipresent capitalist creep which is latently present as a kind of abstract way that integration within global economies and trade combined with certain political systems and populations creates - albeit the current Chinese situation way exceeds that by far. There's a lot of different factors here so I'm not really saying there is 1 singular factor at play, obviously that just wouldn't be true either.
Like I think Cuba is a good example of how a socialist country balances influence and politics if anything - but they are definitely somewhat isolated compared to China, especially in terms of generalized media & access, and also just because they're literally an island (I also think the geopolitics there makes a material difference). I actually think super ironically the US sanctions on Cuba have allowed it to become more holistically socialist while the US trading with China has made China more capitalist - I think the same of the late USSR.

so like tl;dr maybe more quickly summarized, i basically think that at any given point the existence or viability of an overton window is way more contextualized by a political system mechanically and its relative geopolitical context than it is just domestic policy

what’s the protest about and @Lawrence_wolve id like to hear ur opinion on it

Classic

People are protesting cause the government is f***ing up the environment.
And the government is trying to cover it up.
It's classic s***. Happens everywhere and gets no news attention.

Similar protests are happening in Iran right now. People in Esfahan province been protesting this week and a mass call to gather for prayer in the dry riverbed was challenged by the authorities lmao how ironic is that.

iranintl.com/en/20211203702196

When i get on pc ill try to give u a longer answer,tho the tldr is the thing Frankito said,just a lot more in depth

I am very weary of any organized large protest movements in Serbia because of our history with anti governmental protests being funded by the state departments "colour revolution" division aka the National Endowment for Democracy (search them up on twitter if you have never heard of them really a despicable organization)

I think the first successful colour revolution was actually here in Serbia when they overthrew Milosevic...

podcastaddict.com/episode/77635551

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor#Revelation_of_U.S._involvement

I am also very wear of any "green protests" in eastern europe/africa/asia that seek to stop local industry from getting developed especially when they get lots of attention from western countries

The environmental concerns are overblown here in my non expert opinion very little plans about the mine have been released and most of the environmental criticism comes from people pointing to some lithium mine that f***ed up a river in the amazon 20 years ago, Serbia isn't the amazon if someone started dumping waste in the drina they would be shot and killed by the locals in a week

I dont have a problem with mining more lithium in serbia I think we should be mining as much of it ass possible but I do agree with the protestors that a foreign company (Rio Tinto) being the one mining it is not acceptable

Yugoslavia used to have a large nationalized mining industry I don't see why Serbia couldn't operate a national litium mine or at least follow the Putin/Gazprom model where the company is technically publicly traded even though the Russian government is the majority shareholder and effectively fully in control of it

Rest in Power Fred Hampton

every day that passes lenin gets proven even more correct

i find this phenomena interesting in that beyond this scope specifically you see this happen on a cultural level as a means of redefining history under current social properties. there's an aspect to which this occurs as a means of subsuming history as a clean retelling in order to reinforce current norms in a linear fashion, or act like all phenomena is synchronous to social regime. its a sort of like reification i guess
also inversely this definitely happens as a kinda inverted phenomena, like there are attempts to redefine historical ills or forces of oppression or conflict as being evil by moral standards not existent yet at the time of their original discourse, which then leaks into the tendency to pathologize or mythologize history separate from the actual real history of the phenomena in question itself

literally the goat orator every single speech

hamptonthink.org/read/its-a-class-struggle-goddammit-fred-hampton

"Because we know that political power doesn’t flow from the sleeve of a dashiki. We know that political power flows from the barrel of a gun. And that’s true. It has to be true. We know that in order to be able to talk about power, that what you’ve got to be able to talk about is the ability to control and define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner. That means that if you can’t control and define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner, then you don’t even have any dealings with power, you don’t know and you probably never will know what power is. And we know what power is, and we know who’s doing harm to the people—the enemy."

"We’re talking about destroying the system, and they have hang-ups doing that because they’re constantly buying property within the system. And it’s kind of hard to burn up on Tuesday what you bought last Monday. Because they’re a bunch of unrepentant capitalists. They’ll never repent. And they know better. We try to make excuses for them—“Maybe they’ll have to go through stages, Fred.” No, that’s not it. Because they’re much older than we are—I’m 21. We’re all young. So stages, they don went through them. Ron Karenga has more degrees than a thermometer. That’s right, he has more degrees than a thermometer and he continues to do what he’s doin’. And how do they fool you? Because they pick the leaders they want. And they put those people up there and portray them as being your leaders when, in fact, they’re leaders of nobody."

"They talked us into buying candy bars and throwing the candy away and eating the wrapper. They’re the only people in the world, you understand, that’s right, that can sell ice boxes to Eskimoes. They can sell natural wigs to s that’s got natural hair already. And see, this is a shame. They can sell a one-legged man probably 24 tickets in a asskicking contest, and he knows he has no business being there. See, these are the things they can do to us and then they have us believe that what they’re tellin’ us is right, it’s bona fide, it’s justified. We say that’s wrong, that’s incorrect, that Malcolm, when he spoke to students, and you probably heard that record, he speaks to some Jews, some slick people, and he told them.

You might say, “Well, the way I feel, people ought to be able to walk around naked because rape is love.” That’s idealism. See what I mean? You’re dealing in metaphysics. You’re dealing in subjectivity, because you’re not testing it with objective reality. And what’s really wrong is that you don’t go test it. Because if you test it, you’ll get objective. Because as soon as you walk out there, a whole lot of objective reality will vamp down upon your ass and rape you of whatever you have. So whenever this happens, this is when people get a whole lot of mistaken ideas. That’s why a lot of you can’t understand and can’t agree with a lot of what we said. You’ve never tried it."

"When we go out there, we’ll be able to protect ourselves. Huey P. Newton issued a mandate a long time ago. It was executive Mandate #3. It said we need to draw the line of demarcation. And when pigs move on our cribs, we have to protect our crib with gun force. Pigs don’t move on Panther cribs. When they move on Panther cribs, they make sure the Panther’s out of town. We had a situation where they moved on a Panther crib and they had three helicopters above his crib. I’m serious, I’m serious. See, they come prepared. Because they know when they comin’ to a Panther’s crib that we might talk a lot of rhetoric, but we deal with the same basic jargon that the people in Babylon deal with. It takes two to tango, motherfucker. As soon as you kick that door down, I have to kick it back to you. We don’t lock our doors. We just get us some good guns and leave them motherfuckers open and when people come in there we put something on them that will make them go to the hardware, buy a lock, come back, pull the door closed, lock it and stay their ass outside!"