What if I’m neither?
0·19 days agoIf you aren’t one of these, then what are you? I guess there still is reactionary, off to the right of the image.
I can see why we lost the election considering people like OP.
This is stupid, you will just get Lemmy labeled as extremist and then we will have one less antifascist platform.
Nuh uh, you’re stupid, in fact you’re the worlds dumbest man.
Why couldn’t your meme show like solar punk utopian imagery, and people living in beautiful harmony with nature.
Oh, that’s why.
The problem with Solarpunk is that it isn’t really grounded in theory, it’s a vibe and an aesthetic, a hope for a better future but without any real binding ideology. It’s easy to transform, like cottagecore being weaponized into upholding traditional gender roles.
Solar will absolutely be a huge part of the future, but getting there requires taking supremacy over Capital to go against the car and oil industries. This requires Socialism.
Oh yeah fair points. It’s an ideal not anything near an immediate option by any stretch.
So just right of centre?
Is equating the defense of Ukraine with that hat the entire point of the meme?
.ml people will stand by people resisting the imperialism of one country, and then condemn people resisting the imperialism of another, and still won’t realize they are effectively nationalists.
Liberals will invent fanfiction about Marxists before genuinely trying to engage with Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism or attempt to have a genuine conversation about it.
Marxists are great people. Leninists have fantastic ideas. And Marxist-Leninists betray everything Marx and Lenin stood for.
“Socialism in one country” is the invention of a bourgeois dictator who sought to destroy communism because it was a threat to his power.
No, lol. Marx wanted a fully publicly owned and planned economy free of class antagonisms, Anarchists want decentralized networks of communes. These are very different systems with very different analysis.
Socialism in One Country is correct, Trotsky wanted to abandon building Socialism essentially and just keep trying to do revolutions elsewhere. The correct path is to not abandon building Socialism, while still supporting Socialist movements elsewhere.
“Socialism in one country” is the invention of a bourgeois dictator who sought to destroy communism because it was a threat to his power.
Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
A lot of the cold war propaganda about the USSR turned out to be bullshit, as contemporary Western academic historians will tell you, including Domenico Losurdo.
Karl Marx died an anarchist.
This is laughably false by simply reading what Marx actually wrote.Please judge this source by the content of the writing and the sourcing of its own arguments rather than by the hosting medium.
Even if it were true that Marx threw out his entire life’s work and became an anarchist on his deathbed, how did the Paris Commune turn out? Why has no anarchist society lasted more than a few months before collapsing from within, or from without by capitalist/imperialist forces? Anarchism has not and can not succeed in the world we presently live in, if for no other reason than they cannot defend themselves against the imperialist forces of the monopoly capitalists who want to profit from everything everywhere.
From Michael Parenti’s 1997 book Blackshirts and Reds:
But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
Davel, you do know that this is not a statement by the CIA, but a comment collected from an undisclosed USSR informant?
If we take these unevaluated comment reports as what the CIA thought, they would have changed their mind some time later.Comments on the Current Soviet Situation:
Stalin was a fanatic, an all-powerful dictator with a persecution complex and a mania for greatness. He wanted to see his goals accomplished during his life- time. If he were still alive, the Soviet Union would be either on the brink of or in the midst of a catastrophe. It is hoped that the present authorities will permit their pursuit of their aims to be tempered by reason, and a recognition of the realities of life. They are normal people, not sick, and see that resistance to change must be considered. As Bukharin and Rykov proposed, many of the changes made by the Soviets can be retained; the others can be abandoned gradually, It is important to make concessions to the peasantry, and the authorities appear to have chosen that road. Malenkov’s speech of 8 August 1953 is regarded as a change from an unreasonable to a reasonable policy, Freedom, of course, is the most important thing and the regime can scarcely grant that and retain power. The disappointment to those who regard Malenkov’s speech as the beginning of a new era will be terrifying and may have consequences.
I think that report wasn’t an honest assessment but rather the cold war talking points to be used for cold war propaganda. The CIA is as much in the job of disinformation as it is in information. Contemporary Western academic historians, having access to declassified US & USSR documents from the time, have published accounts that put these cold war cartoon villain narratives to bed.
My country has been Gladioded, no need to convince me that they’re manipulative fucks 😜
My issue isn’t about which is closer to the truth, but about using these documents as a proof, as the CIA admitting this or that. I’ve seen many otherwise well informed MLs frame it that way, and it’s a bad look since it make them appear as willingly obtuse or disingenuous. Both the quoted documents are just collected intelligence, and certainly not from an internal source from the politburo which, by the CIA’s own admission, they weren’t able to infiltrate. And you said it yourself, there’s many historians that did their job well; quoting them instead of some unverified crap would be more convincing.Edit:
By the way, while looking at my notes on the topic, I found something I saved from “Titoism and Soviet Communism”. Given the nature of this document, an analysis for “those who need to know”, it’s actually closer to a statement about what they thought of the USSR under Stalin at the time.
About “Stalinism” (their word, not mine):
This term is used to denote the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin as dogmatically interpreted by Stalin, and as imposed by him on the International Communist Movement.
The term denotes in particular the theory and practice connected with Stalin’s personal dictatorship – “one man rule” – over the CPSU, the Soviet State, and – under the guise of “the leading role” of the CPSU – over the International Communist Movement as a whole.Edit 2: said document https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A073800530001-4.pdf
Yeah this is some not-so-subtle propaganda from our komrades.
literally just poking fun at this brand of american liberals be so serious
Da, all in good fun.
The “left” is way too broad of a grouping today. The classic political compass is 2D with left-right referring to economic and up-down (authoritarian-libertarian) to social policy. And even that is oversimplifying it, many saying it should be 3D. Grouping everyone into either A or B is I guess what humans do when their understanding of a topic is too narrow.
I find this especially funny with Trump’s tariffs. You know, the mechanism with which you control the market… closing it… like leftist economic policy does. Trump is a leftist now? Any more tariffs and he’ll be a complete communist! Dismantle more government and he’ll be an anarchist! It just completely falls apart.
This is supposed to be a tetrahedron, but I suck at drawing 3D shapes. Just imagine that anarchism is the top of the tetrahedron and that the triangle is the base.I’ll offer an explanation, I think it would be helpful.
First, mapping complex political beliefs on ill-defined and vague lines adds more confusion than it clarifies. What is authoritarianism? What is meritocracy? We have a general idea, but these aren’t useful for measuring ideologies.
Second, making it 3D makes little sense. Why is Liberalism in the “meritocracy” column, when one of the most widely agreed countries to focus on an idea of meritocracy, China, is a Socialist Market Economy? Why is liberalism distinct from conservativism enough to be an entirely separate leg?
All in all, it’s nice to think about how to view ideologies, but we should view them as they are, and not on some map that doesn’t exist. For example, why is a fully publicly owned, democratic society considered more “authoritarian” than society decided by the whims of few Capitalists competing like warlords?
Those are all good points. Thank you.
No problem!
While this is somewhat true, in all of the west there are only 3 groups currently : liberals, fascists and leftists.
Liberals are a diverse group, ranging from socio-democrat and liberal green parties to libertarian who leans on fascism.
Fascists are all the brands of conservatives who leverage racism, authoritarianism and nationalism.
Leftists are basically the groups opposed to both fascism and liberalism.
Those are 3 objective groups. They are the groups that determine how likely they will cooperate or oppose each other, or how elections will turn.
Some parties will be a bit in between, but that’s merely political communication. In practice a group that promote itself as a middle group is actually leaning right. This means that “leftist liberals” (who range from some green parties and movements to the socio-democrats) will always pick liberals if they must choose between them and the left. Likewise, conservatives and libertariens are leaning toward fascism when given the choice.
The political spectrum is radicalised and triparted. You can deny this model and blur the information, but it usually means that you are leaning more to the right than you are pretending.
We should make a special political spectrum just for these people. Let’s call it the imperial political spectrum.
Both can be correct, it’s not a hard black and white split
The leftist revolutionary heroes are resisting the people on the right, it is a hard split. The people on the right are shepherds of the US carceral state and imperial murderers
Last time I checked, that’s not how that works, everyone has a wide range of ideals and views. Not 1 or 2, there can be 1 1/2, 1 1/3, 1 1/10000, whatever
Until we get ranked choice voting, you still need to support them though.
Alternative voting methods have proven useless against capitalist power. Countries like Australia and Japan use them, and it does nothing. It might make candidate stacking a little more expensive, and they have to pay more to advertise their candidates, but that’s it.
Alternative voting methods allow for smaller parties, ones who’s values may align more with the general population, an actual fighting chance. You gotta admit at some point that having only two realistic choices is a bit of a problem, right?
In current Polish sejm there is 17 parties and 42 indpendents (on 460 seats). But every single one of them is procapitalist, proimperialist, pro USA, anticommunist. Alternative voting methods do literally nothing by itself.
It seems like it should help, but in practice, its been useless. You end up having a greater diversity of candidates and parties, but if capital still stands above the political system and controls it, it just means more capitalist puppets, and more advertising money required to get those preferred puppets elected.
Multi-party Bourgeois parliamentarism is not really any different from the ancient roman imperial senate. Its government by oligarchy / the wealthy entrenched class.
Ranked Choice Voting is both too ineffective to make any change, and too difficult to get in the first place. It’s the perfect endless carrot on a string, the eternal “just one more lane and traffic will be gone.”
Even if that’s so, you’d still need to vote for the people on the right, because voting third party in first past the post is objectively just terrible for everyone with similar goals.
The people on the right work with the Republicans. They aren’t resistance. Revolution is a necessity.
Even so, voting third party or not voting is worse than voting for the people on the right.
Which side are you on?
The left side with the heroes and not the right side with the imperialist murderers. You should read Fanon.
The title says, Leftist.
the fucking hat lmao
Who are those ninjas?
Zapatistas
This framing isn’t particularly helpful for solidarity.
The left relies on coalitions. Criticizing the stewards of those coalitions because they fail to address the needs of the people they rely on for votes is helpful and constructive. Just reducing all left-wing voters to a pair of stereotypes and trying to push one of those stereotypes away from the other? Not helpful.
We need nuanced dialogue and mutual aid. It’s a matter of survival. This isn’t that.
They are imperial murderers and managers of corporate oligarchy. The solidarity we form is against them. They are not left-wing at all, they are hard right wing reactionaries in a nation where the overton window has been shifted and the population is so brainwashed that they can even entertain that they are left-wing. They are barely left of most right wing politicians in the world. As a prosecutor, Kamala Harris has condemned thousands of innocent people to hard labor in slave camps and is an agent of the carceral state. Anyone in the US government is the enemy of free people in the US and around the world.
Do you think it’s realistic to take back any branch of government from like, actual whole ass conservatives by dividing the only coalition we have?
How many times are memes of this rhetoric going to be posted and reposted?
If someone said they were leftist then I would very much hope they were pro EU and pro Ukraine
It’s the far right that is against those
Nah dude. A good portion of leftists want Ukraine genocided.
Probably not left then
Just want to pretend they are because they aren’t as far right as someone they can point to
I’m trying to avoid certain words on .ml. there are different kinds of “leftists”
But in doing so you’re making your message less clear, because it’s saying that tankies are leftists. (Uh oh you made me say it!)
The stated goal of the US State Department is to drag out the conflict for as long as possible. Years ago, Boris Johnson threatened to cut Ukraine out of financial markets if Zelenskyy held peace talks with Russia.
There’s a group that wants as much suffering as possible out of this war. But it’s not the people who recognize that being the proxy in a struggle between the US and Russia is only going to hurt the people of Ukraine.
Russia could foil all those plans by simply ceasing the invasion and going home.
Why would they? That’s like saying the Capitalists in the US could willingly implement Socialism. This isn’t an actual solution, as long as it is in Russia’s interests to continue, they will. Russia gains nothing by packing up and going home, and they have the means and will to continue.
What do they gain by continuing the war?
It’s hardly in Russia’s interest for their sons to die, their equipment to explode, and their economy to crumble. It’s self destructive, which it has in common with capitalism, but worse than that it’s a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
Russia’s economy isn’t crumbling, and its industrial capacity is fairly high. What Russia wants, ultimately, is either an assurance of Ukranian neutrality with respect to NATO or full demillitarization of it. Russia went to war to combat NATO encirclement of its borders. If a peace deal isn’t met, Russia can just continue to slowly advance while the US carves out Ukraine for profit.
There’s definitely some BS the west is imposing on Ukraine to drag this conflict out. It feels like it’s to financially ruin Russia. I just don’t understand why Russia doesn’t cut it’s losses and just take what they already have. Ukraine is never going to be a part of NATO so I don’t understand the NATO expansion argument either.
Right, because being willing to accept an end to the war in any other way than Zelensky’s impossibly maximalist goals means wanting Ukrainians to be genocided. Also history began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Hey, I’m actually interested in your personal opinion. Are you pro Russian and if so why? Is there a long game being played out that fits your views with Russian expansion? Or rather the west’s decline.
I don’t think Russia currently has an interest in expansion. I already linked above to the reasons for Russia’s invasion, and they weren’t revanchism or Lebensraum, as Western governments & media claim.
It’s also often said that Russia is imperialist. I think that if Russia could be imperialist it would be, but since it presently can’t, it presently isn’t. Putin tried to join NATO once, to join the imperialism club, but the US rejected Russia, because the US wanted (and still wants) Russia Balkanized and re-plundered instead. Russia has figured out that it’s better off allying with Global South countries than attempting imperialist adventures upon them. And this war has accelerated that allyship.
Are you pro Russian and if so why?
I’ve answered this before: https://lemmy.ml/comment/9498456
Thanks. The nuance is appreciated. If Russia “reclaims” Ukraine through total victory do you think they would allow the Ukraine identity to subsist? Are there more countries Russia would like to revanche? I think Moldova would be an easy grab.
I think Russia knows full well that it can’t “reclaim” western Ukraine: few people there want to be part of Russia, and the Banderite fascists especially don’t. It would be a absolute nightmare to hold. There would be endless insurgencies and bloodshed, and it would be a huge drain on state resources. Russia wants what is says it has wanted since the 1990s: a neutral buffer state.
Keep in mind that when the invasion started, Eastern Ukraine had been in a civil war with Western Ukraine for almost a decade, and some in Eastern Ukraine had for years pleaded Russia to intervene. Eastern Ukraine is a very different situation from Western Ukraine. Russia had almost no issues when it “invaded” Crimea in 2014, because most of the people were glad to no longer be ruled by the Banderite coup government. They were right, too, because they didn’t suffer nine years of fascist paramilitary terrorism like their northern neighbors in Eastern Ukraine did.
Are there more countries Russia would like to revanche? I think Moldova would be an easy grab.
As I said, revanchism isn’t what this was ever about, despite what Western states publicly claim and Western media repeat. Russia would piss off its allies and its enemies if it invaded another country, and its enemies would probably ramp up their war machines against it significantly.
If Ukraine wants to breakup with Russia. The correct response is to not rape and murder them.
Citation needed
Oh yeah that Ukraine is definitely the last bastion of communism
It’s about a super power trying to exploit a small country
Palestine isn’t leftist either but you will find people campaigning for the protection of their people
