true but I was hoping he'd give them more credit, I was watching his lectures on the history of indian communism, and he just had a little laugh at the maoist and moved on, to be fair I didnt get to finish the lectures since I couldnt find the later ones where he might have talked about them.

He was my high school gov teacher and he’s a really cool guy but he’s a deep ass anarchist and he keeps using four-quadrant references

get a connection not private to the site

how tf he gonna be a professor and an anarchist makes no sense

Is this a W communist fam

i believe the maoists in india actually formed an opposition coalition w the fascists and attacked the cpim so that would probably explain it

banger krishna post

nah that was the bengal maoist that did that, not the Indians

There is zero evidence of this occurring other than something spit up by the media because of Maoists killing a CPI Marxists. It would be like calling Communists and Trump supporters allies for both hating on Joe Biden.

CPI (M) is essentially the DSA of India

ah yea you're correct

Thought you were a Marxist

I rly don't see how anybody serious about politics can take the political compass as anything more than a meme

The DSA comparison is rly unfair lmao

bad take and disrespectful to CPI (M)

CPI (M) is not nearly as reactionary as the DSA; CPI (M) expresses solidarity with Cuba, while the DSA regurgitates Imperialist narratives on Latin America; a DSA member even visited Israel + voted for the Iron Dome

CPI (M) also has good relations with China and Vietnam

DSA distances themselves from formerly socialist states: "Our vision pushes further than historic social democracy and leaves behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history" - meanwhile, CPI M acknowledges the successes of the USSR and is able to demonstrate a coherent understanding of historical materialism, not just some shoddy pseudo-leftist garbage that perpetuates Imperialist narratives

There's also a generation of people in Kerala named after Lenin and Stalin, plus their pictures are hung in CPI M offices; DSA offices hang pictures of AOC and Bernie

Kerala (led by CPI M/LDF) is the state with the highest literacy rate, highest health index, highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, best rights for trans people, and the best s***ratio in India. They also handled COVID really well initially, tho im not sure if that's changed recently. Kerala and the CPI (M) haven't achieved proper socialism and their over the top emphasis on reformism is a valid critique; nonetheless, they've managed to drastically improve the lives of millions of people and implement progressive policies - this is even more impressive when you look at what's happening in the rest of India, and consider India's status as one of the poorest countries on Earth. I can't name a single noteworthy thing the DSA has ever done

The CPI (M) organizes effectively and has planned some MASSIVE peasant + farmer protests in recent years. I think they were one of the most important factors in getting the anti-farmer bill revoked and helping bring international coverage to India

what do you see as the reason for the cpim disdain for the naxalites? i get why the naxalites dislike the cpim but what happened to cause such an aggressive split

The term "social safety net" really is a WOATED term if you think about it.

It frames social programs as being nothing more than a safety net for when the market fails instead of it being an end in itself, it implies the neoliberal way of viewing social programs where social programs are only there to prevent workers from falling too far down so they can still be able to take part in the market.

The term was barely even used that much before the 90s. It was mostly used and popularized by the IMF in reference to social programs in their structural adjustment plans that they imposed on underdeveloped countries, that should tell you enough already

These subtle ways of framing things help keeping people from questioning the capitalist logic. Me and @ARCADE_GOON had the same conversation about how in Dutch and German employers are called werkgever/Arbeitgeber (literally = work giver) and employees are called werknemer/Arbeitnehmer (=work taker lol). Apparently there was a whole debate about calling employers/employees that in Germany. Which makes sense because it frames the capitalist-worker relation as the capitalist gracefully and generously blessing their workers with work (because it's of course not the workers who do the work which gets appropriated by the capitalist). It's really a ridiculous way of framing it when you think about it lmao, I think I had this realization when I was high asf too

But all of this really shows how important language is in maintaining false consciousness. And conversely how important it is to show deeply ingrained capitalist logic is in these terms that we use in our everyday lives in order to raise class consciousness.

I generally agree with Marx but Libertarian Socialist probably best describes me.

I always found that term to be really vague because who really isn't for liberty? And when you are limiting freedom, is that by definition bad? I'm assuming you're not an antivaxer so you are in favor of limiting people's freedom when it comes to covid measures. But does that now make you less libertarian than antivax qanon weirdos who are against those measure? They would definitely say you are. But proponents of these measures would argue that the freedom of people to go out and live their life without being exposed to people who aren't vaccinated is more important.

This is just one example of course, but the point is that in general the freedom of one person to do something can often lead to the unfreedom of others. The same goes for the economy. The freedom of a capitalist to invest and pay their workers whatever the market decides, is the unfreedom and exploitation of those workers. Liberals call this "economic freedom", and are they really wrong? Not really, it is one form of freedom. It's just that one freedom can be in contradiction with another.

Like the Zizek quote falsely attributed to Lenin said "freedom yes, but for whom? To do what?”. Is a question that needs to be answered or otherwise before you know it freedom turns into FREE DOOM iykyk....

So tldr; in my eyes blank freedom/liberty without any qualification are really useless terms aside from using them as slogans, because it can lead to the framing of an act that causes the unfreedom of others as freedom.

Also with regards to libertarian socialism specifically I know there are a lot who consider themselves anti-statists, but why not just call yourself an anarchist then? Is it because there are hierarchies outside of the state that you aren't opposed to?

And if you are indeed anti-state, wouldn't that also make you anti-Marxist?

Engels wrote this in the foreword for the third edition of the German Kapital:

Thus not a single word was changed in this third edition without my firm conviction that the author would have altered it himself. It would never occur to me to introduce into “Das Kapital” the current jargon in which German economists are wont to express themselves — that gibberish in which, for instance, one who for cash has others give him their labour is called a labour-giver (Arbeitgeber) and one whose labour is taken away from him for wages is called a labour-taker (Arbeitnehmer). In French, too, the word “travail” is used in every-day life in the sense of “occupation.” But the French would rightly consider any economist crazy should he call the capitalist a donneur de travail (a labour-giver) or the worker a receveur de travail (a labour-taker).

Me & Engels smoking the same strains confirmed

Engels is very underrated

Lot of people dont know Marx became a communist because of reading Engels

Before that Marx was just a vague leftist trying to apply Hegel to the world

Also Engels fought in the 1848 revolution and led some troops

My liberal friend told me: "The American version of freedom is stupid because it defines freedom without responsibility. Freedom always ends there where it infringes upon the rights of others."

But then like you say, economic freedom can mean charging a guy 30%, 40% of his after-tax wage for rent. If you work 8h a day, this means that like 2h of your work day are just being done for your landlord.

This is why the labor-time accounting Cockshott suggests is so powerful IMO. Imagine going to a job and realizing "yo today i will just work towards the military budget"

King