Socialism

An interesting article describing the experience of YDSA organisers running an introductory course into socialism and Marxism.

Excerpt:

At the start of this class I was confused about socialism. As most of American society is. I was conflicted between what I had learned about Marx and Marxism in my past classes and all of the times I had been told it failed. I was not aware that in actuality the examples we’ve been told about the cautionary tales of socialism were not examples of true or pure socialism. I’d been told that Cuba was a poor, struggling, tyrannical state where the people were suffering. I had no idea that none of this was true and Cuba was strides beyond American society in many ways. I didn’t understand what unions did or their cultural and historic significance, and I was unaware of the capitalist greed going on within our campus affecting my own teachers. In my position statement I don’t think I was fully aware that so many of the causes I’m passionate about are tied to socialism, universal education, universal healthcare, equality, climate justice, etc. Embarrassingly I did not even understand the concept of private property and what it would mean if the government banned it. I had pictured a dystopian image of a neighborhood with every house identical to the next. All of these mental images that I was indoctrinated to believe around socialism were hard to shake, it took me a while to ditch that mindset and see it for what it is.

Taking this course opened my eyes to the reality of socialism and made me question why it had been censored so much. Although I knew that news was manipulative and every side has their own agenda, I don’t think I fully understood that sources I considered reputable, like the New York Times for example, to be untrustworthy. I didn’t realize this until I used a New York Times article in my first essay that was misrepresenting socialism. Being raised in a liberal place I always associated Fox News, and other conservative sources with manipulation and untrustworthiness. I didn’t really consider the fact that liberal sources also were guilty of this. So many of the changes I want to see in the world are inherently socialist.[1]

Above is the first section of a final reflection letter written by one of the students who took the course “The Rhetoric & Writing of Socialism” at the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2023. This was written by a student with no previous experience with activism, social movements, or socialist organizations. Apart from several YDSA comrades who also took the class, most of the students in the course were similarly bereft of these experiences. But, this student’s response was by no means unique. In fact, this response was standard from several of the students in the class: a turn from vitriolic mainstream liberal or conservative positions on socialism to positive associations if not outright affinity for our ideological commitments. Clearly, something positive took place in this course and it's worth exploring why and how it happened.

[....]

One of the major concerns I expressed in my last article for Cosmonaut was that overt propagandizing could potentially alienate students; or worse, have them actively work against me or the YDSA comrades in the class. Instead, multiple students wrote positively about the course content and classroom environment. To quote one student directly, our class provided “a classroom environment where every student felt comfortable to share their thoughts and opinions.”[2] Reading through these qualitative comments, which were submitted by 16 of the 19 students in the class, it quickly becomes apparent that perception of the course was overwhelmingly positive.

Thus, it appears that overt propagandizing does not bother students, and the qualitative comments offer another reason for why this was. First is the importance of creating a positive, laid back classroom environment. This kind of environment was necessary given the contentious topics we covered. In a class where I took seriously the now dated but still applicable call from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1962 to create a culture of “controversy” and lean into difficult political conversations, we were no strangers to sensitive topics.[3] As can be clearly seen in the syllabus, we covered anarchism, the history of socialism in the United States, the efficacy of electoralism, the intersection of feminism and the civil rights movement with socialism, as well as other related topics.[4] Students were asked to write a manifesto where they clearly articulated what they thought about the controversial topics we covered in class. I even had an anarchist organizer come to class who talked openly about their confrontations with the police.

However, despite all this controversy, students took everything in stride because we treated one another like human beings. We joked around. We goofed off. I did everything I could to counter the idea of the “professional” college professor who must be detached from their students. Instead, I showed them pictures and videos of my daughter. We took a day to toss a frisbee back-and-forth. We talked about our lives outside the classroom. This created buy-in for the students who weren’t already socialists.

I like Immortal Technique and the album Let's Get Free by dead prez.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24744108

I see what the cartoon says (from Introducing Hegel), but would like to hear more about recognition.

Hello comrades,

I want to get my younger half brother a good book to read on the subject of leftism/socialism and the true workings of economic oppression we live in.

However I have a contentious relationship with my family. My wife and I currently live in a dilapidated rv in my mother’s driveway. When i was sixteen she moved us into a house with her at the time boyfriend whom she met at her job where I also worked as a teenager It turned out this guy who had pretended to be my friend was really an abusive authoritarian. Not so much violent abusive but definitely emotionally and psychologically. Several memories i have after we all moved in together are one time we were arguing in each others face and a little bit of my saliva escaped my Mouth and as a response he literally hocked a lugie and spat in my face. That was the most extreme and looking back I wish i had responded differently, as in called the authorities because no adult should spit in a teenagers face ever. but even before that the hypocrisy was making itself pretty evident. Before we moved in together I had a rather autonomous existence as a socially active developing 16 year old. I had issues with authority and had dropped out of highschool after my sophomore year.I was someone who got good grades however i didn’t often do homework and just coasted along on high test scores and my sponge like memory. After dropping out I was in a punk rock band with 40 year olds who i met through one of my mother’s best friends. She bought me beer for my birthday, took me to a heavy metal concert where we smoked cannabis together. At that time my mother and i had a close relationship and a tight bond. Things changed after they started seeing each other once he had even asked me to get pot for him before we moved in when he couldn’t get any. But even after that, there was one day when i came back from a camping trip in Maine with friends and i asked to buy some from him since he sold at the time and he said “im not selling weed to a kid” then after we moved in together it became a hellscape of “my house my rules, im the man of the house” authoritarianism. I could not smoke even outside of this house on the property and had to go walk half a mile away to a nearby cometary to smoke unless i asked permission and offered to smoke with him. Then they would search my room and once found some mushrooms I had in my dresser and claimed to have flushed them although a month or so prior they both had purchased a quarter ounce from me. All this motivated me to move out as soon as i could. Luckily they allowed me to leave several months before I officially turned 18. But this was 2007 and it was possible to live a decent life on a low wage even after the market collapse in 2008.

I was not very socio/politically conscious at the time. However i was aware of the hypocrisy of our society. Just not entirely aware of my socio/political ideals as being far left/ socialist until the end of my twenties.

My half brother is just about to turn 17. He has virtually no autonomy. Besides a part time fast food job he only recently acquired and his learners permit it seems he doesn't have the ability to take a piss without asking for permission. And it also seems that while we are living in a 40 year old rv in the driveway with no access to electricity and having to spend $30-45 weekly on propane so we and our pets don't freeze, that we are obviously persona non gratis. I just recently started communicating with my brother through a messaging app after last thanksgiving and he has encrypted the chat so that gives me an idea of the environment he lives in as being repressive.

I want to develop a relationship with my half brother but i feel as though i am walking on eggshells. This last thanksgiving we talked and joked while his father was not present but on christmas he was present so my brother was a completely different Person when he was there. I just feel really awful knowing how he tried to control me as a teenager despite myself being unrelated to him in any way and I can not even imagine what its like for him being directly related.

So i want to get him a book on socialist thought. I was thinking something by michael parenti could help to open his eyes to the reality of this world we live in. And that would also be easier to give to him as it wouldn't be something so overtly and obviously controversial as something by Marx/engels or even noam chompsky whom my opinion of is somewhat torn considering his past associations with jeffery epstien have given me some serious ick.

What do you all think would be the best book to give to a heavily repressed 16 year old on his seventeenth birthday in a few months?

Thanks for any suggestions and for reading my deluge of over sharing my personal family issues.

A woman creates the world

A woman of any nationality or ethnicity deserves deep respect, if for no other reason than the fact that she brings about the most important event on our sinful earth—she gives birth to a human being. She creates the future. For this alone, we men must carry women in our arms, appreciate them and protect them. I am not even mentioning all that a woman does. She feeds us from the very moment we come into this world and continues to care for us until the end of her days. She does not sleep at night and guards our sleep, our health, and our peace. She creates warmth and beauty in the home. A woman makes us knights, men. It is for women that we strive to become better, braver and more noble. We could speak at length about what a woman means for humanity, but there is simply not enough time. And this applies to all women of any nationality and any country.

From Baku to Tiksi

But now I want to speak about the Russian woman, and there is no nationalism or chauvinism in this. Because, first of all, I am an Ossetian and do not believe my mother was any worse than women of other nationalities. My wife is Georgian. I can only say that the life of both an Ossetian and a Georgian woman is neither easy nor simple. My wife went through fire, water and the copper pipes with me. I will stop at just one example from her life. In 1966, I was transferred from Baku to **Tiksi **for service. Tiksi is on the southern shore of the Arctic Ocean. We had three children, the youngest just three months old. She gathered them up and, without informing me, flew to Tiksi. Meanwhile, I was setting up my unit on combat duty—not in Thailand, but on Kotelny Island, somewhere near the 75th parallel, in the center of the Arctic Ocean. To be honest, not every Frenchwoman would have made such a decision. But by then, she had already become a Russian woman because she was married to an Ossetian but a Russian officer.

Russian Woman

I want to speak about the Russian woman because the fate of the Russian woman is the fate of the Russian people. The Russian people played a decisive role in the destinies of those nations historically connected with them. Many beautiful things have been written about the Russian woman. Personally, it was through reading Russian literature that I formed my impression of the Russian woman. It was Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Leskov, and of course, Gorky, among others, who created the most beautiful image of the Russian woman in my mind.

Service in Kurdamir Azerbaijan

The thing is, I lived in Tbilisi until I was 20, and I rarely came into contact with Russians. But when I was a cadet at the Odessa Anti-Aircraft Artillery School, on leave from Tbilisi, I "stole" my wife (and to be fair, she was eager for me to do so) and brought her to Odessa, with no money, no apartment, nothing. It was then that we felt the real, genuine support from Russian women. My wife was going through a tough time. As a second-year cadet, I earned 7 rubles and 50 kopecks. We had to pay 10 rubles for coal, which we got from a friend. My wife didn't know Russian, had no profession, and we had to survive. Russian women helped her get a job at a sewing factory, became her friends, and supported her. I finished school and was sent to the Baku Anti-Aircraft Defense District—a cursed district, to be honest. We lost our son there. In Kurdamir, the heat in summer reached 50°C in the shade. There were mosquitoes, flies, and snakes in our Finnish houses. I don't know any English or German woman who would have endured such wild conditions, but the Russian woman stood by her husband, helping him endure these inhuman conditions while maintaining the combat readiness of the units. And again, Russian women helped my wife. In many ways, we were able to survive thanks to the officers' wives, and they were mostly Russian. They even organized amateur performances, which somehow made our lives more interesting and helped us survive. So, our life together, my wife and I, was intertwined with Russian women in military towns and garrisons, where we interacted as wives of officers. And being an officer's wife, my friends, is not for the faint of heart. Russian women followed their husbands to the ends of the earth—remember the wives of the Decembrists. When I saw how the wives of officers lived in Tiksi, I thought that, perhaps, the wives of the Decembrists had it a little easier.

Harsh arctic days

I arrived in Tiksi in July 1966. I saw from the airplane window the Laptev Sea, with huge chunks of ice floating. The air temperature was close to zero. I introduced myself to the authorities. They gave me a small room of 8 square meters, for two people. It was a barrack, with a corridor in the middle. The barrack was wooden. On both sides of the corridor, there were small rooms of 8 square meters each. Naturally, there were no facilities, neither in winter (-40°C, wind speeds of 40 meters per second, polar night), nor in summer. I will not even describe the conditions. The general kitchen had 20 stoves, and 20 women stood shoulder to shoulder around them, cooking meals for the brave defenders of the country's air borders. And all this while American bombers with nuclear payloads were flying overhead! The water was brought in, and by "brought in," I mean that a truck brought chunks of ice cut from a freshwater lake. The women put these pieces in barrels and that was our water. Tell me, what kind of woman would agree to live in these hellish conditions? And I haven't even mentioned the polar night from November to April, the blizzards, the fact that summer lasted only two months, with temperatures between -2°C and +2°C—the rest of the time was winter! Tiksi was still a tropical paradise compared to what I saw on the islands of Kegelyakh and Kotelny. These islands are part of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. I had to stay on these islands for months at a time. We had radio-technical units there, with about 7 or 8 officers and around 50 soldiers. The island was surrounded by the Arctic Ocean. There were soldiers' barracks, officers' barracks, and combat equipment. In winter, you couldn't go outside and return due to the blizzards and polar night. In summer, the mud stuck to your shoes, and walking was extremely difficult. I won’t even mention the facilities. The officers' wives walked in the dimly lit corridor, both in winter and summer, with children in tow. I had to eat "delicacies" like dried potatoes, dried onions, dried carrots, and the like. No radio, no television, nothing. What would have become of an officer if his loving, tender, and caring wife had not been by his side? One can only imagine. But they were there. They could have chosen not to be there. No one would have blamed them for not going. But they were there. This is the Russian woman.

Taiga

I met Russian women in Krasnoyarsk when I was transferred from the Polar Regions to the position of head of the political department of a regiment. The regiment had 9 battalions, and the battalions were in the deep Taiga. The officers' houses were wooden. The temperature reached -55°C. The water was brought in. The nearest schools and shops were 40–50 km away. There was no work for the officers' wives. I went to the battalion, gathered the women, and asked what their problems were. One officer's wife said she was a doctor, but there was no work for her in the battalion. Another one said she was a teacher, but there was no work for her either. And so it was in every battalion. They could have gone to the city, to their fathers or mothers, and found work, but no—they stayed in the Taiga, next to their husbands, supporting them with their presence so that their husbands could keep the skies clear over our Motherland. How can one not admire the Russian woman?

My daughter is also a Soviet woman

And I don't have to look far. My own daughter spent almost 4 years on the Kuril Islands, on Shikotan and Utorup, islands that the Japanese want to take, living with her husband, an Air Defense officer. The small children were with us and her husband's parents. My daughter followed the example of her Russified mother. Time passed, and I was transferred to Klin, to the Anti-Missile Defense. In 1973, I was moved to Naro-Fominsk as the head of the political department of a separate missile defense center, and the conditions there were very different. The living conditions for an Air Defense officer at the time were simply wonderful—closed city, a cultural center, a school, a kindergarten, stores of all kinds, post office—everything one needs for a normal life. But here, other difficulties arose. The town was 20 km from the district center, and there were about 2,000 women, officers' wives, and warrant officers, but the work in the military town was not sufficient for all the women, which created some tension. Of course, this was felt, and we had to do something about it. In the unit, there were several women's councils. We got together and decided to organize an amateur performance, and since we had a music school with music teachers, we were able to organize a great amateur performance. I will say without boasting that we always took prize places at competitions. And this amateur performance eased the tension to some extent. People were busy with something. Even now, I have in front of my eyes my wonderful, beautiful, graceful, and full of inner nobility and self-respect Russian women.

Soviet women have not disappeared anywhere

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is a mistake for men to claim Victory Day as their own. German General Guderian writes in his memoirs that if the Russians had not had Russian women, they would not have won. Although he was a fascist, I agree with him in this case. Unfortunately, what I noticed is that the Russian woman often does not receive the attention she deserves. A woman can forgive everything, but she will never forgive a lack of attention. Therefore, dear men, we must be attentive to women not only on March 8th but always. They deserve it.

Soviet Colonel. Shamil Chigoev

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6664202

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6664201

This was inspired after seeing the original article posted here. It's pretty basic stuff for this community but you never know.

I was a far-right lunatic until about 2009, when I started turning left. I have read many (center-)leftist articles from Jacobin, Common Dreams, The Guardian, and, from Brazil, Carta Capital and IHU (Catholic liberation theology).

Lemmy (despite my suboptimal instance) and communist friends got me interested in actual Marxism, but I have not yet really studied it. So please recommend:

• The best Marxist Lemmy instance for my background.
• Marxist books or videos in approximate reading/watching order. For the next many months (I suspect six months) I will have very little time, though.

Bonus:

• reasonable tolerance of Catholic faith and individual morality
• contextualized on Brazil, Cuba, broader Latin America or China

Background: Brazilian Catholic male autistic ADHD IT analyst with an electronic engineering degree and MsC in computer science. I have a son with my wife. I highly value privacy and software freedom. I read English well, but Spanish quite poorly. Native Portuguese speaker.

EDIT: I got a lemmygrad account. I am still processing the other recommendations.

In the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the Left's association with identity politics has been a major focus of public debate. But what identity politics is or who primarily benefits from it remains contested.

In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics, why this form of politics can't fight oppression, and the real history behind struggles for justice.

Apparently the language was popular among early 20th century socialist movements because it was of an international character and therefore not associated with any nationality and its use by international socialist organisations wouldn't show favour to any particular country. It was banned in Nazi Germany and other fascist states because of its association with the left wing, with anti-nationalism, and because its creator was Jewish. It has mostly languished since then but still has around 2 million speakers with about 1,000 native speakers.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Afaik, liberalism ambiguously meant both advocacy for human rights and an economic system. To avoid this confusion, the economic system has been moved out as libertarianism.

For example, accessibility improvements of government buildings is a liberal movement.

Minimizing the control over capitalism is a libertarian movement.

There's also so called "liberals" which is not more than a hate speech. We are not "conservatives" or "liberals" in every topic.

By writing The Peoples’ Era in 2014—a revolutionary theory for a “citizens’ revolution”—Mélenchon performed a Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism and its crisis. He redefined the notion of “the people”, those for whom revolution is now necessary. He shed light on the objective necessity to break with the capitalist order. This break, this politics of rupture, is perfectly communist. And this is the heart beating in all the work of the France Unbowed: to unite the people around a program of rupture.

"My friends, you don’t have to be a PhD in political science to understand that this is not democracy. This is not one person, one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future. This is oligarchy."

Jean Jaurès is not well-known or much-translated in English. The hero of turn-of-the-20th-century French socialism was revered across the international left following his assassination in 1914. This article discusses why he was loved by everyone from social democrats to individualist anarchists, and what can we learn from him today.

Citizen Marx is a new book that studies Marx’s intellectual development in conversation with 19th-century republicanism. I thought it was quite good.

The theory that large segments of populations are manipulated through indoctrination holds little water, and serves to stem real revolutionary efforts to change the minds of people. Roderic Day makes the case in this essay I consider to be required reading for any self-respecting leftist that instead of brainwashing, propaganda instead works by providing a narrative that is easy to "go along with" as tacit benefactors of present systems. Propaganda does not need to hold under scrutiny to be effective, because it serves as justification, it "licenses" the populace to adopt stances that align with state interests.

Because these narratives are easy to go along with and stem cognitive dissonance, this means that we can convince others, primarily through focusing on positives in the primary and debunking negatives in the secondary. We can convince the proletariat of the benefits of adopting Socialist stances and subvert that way, rather than focusing on debunking atrocity propaganda which gets ignored due to a still-existing belief that the present is the best that is possible.

In current discourse on Lemmy, there is much fearmongering about “tankies,” yet this term is frequently ill-defined and moreover used as a thought terminating cliché. Roderic Day goes over the term, and offers contextualization and explanation for those who uphold and defend Actually Existing Socialism, in this short 8 minute article. My favorite paragraph is as follows:

“Anyway, the basic point is that socialist revolution is neither easy (as the Trotskyists and ultraleftists would have it) nor impossible (as the liberals and conservatives would have it), but hard. It will require dedication and sacrifice and it won’t be won in a day. Tankies are those people who think the millions of communists who fought and died for socialism in the twentieth century weren’t evil, dupes, or wasting their time, but people to whom we owe a great deal and who can still teach us a lot.”

If you consider yourself a Socialist, you have a duty to try to better understand and contextualize historical Socialist movements. It is only through correct analysis based on fact and not fiction that we can move onward.

I believe in socialism, but I feel Stalin shouldn't be idolised due to things like the Gulag.

I would like more people to become socialist, but I feel not condemning Stalin doesn't help the cause.

I've tried to have a constructieve conversation about this, but I basically get angry comments calling me stupid for believing he did atrocious things.

That's not how you win someone over.

I struggle to believe the Gulag etc. Never happened, and if it happened I firmly believe Stalin should be condemned.