Cowbee [he/they]

So are iPhones, this is just a retread of the “you critique capitalism but use an iPhone, curious” conservative joke.

They actually are, cobalt mining is devastating for production of iPhones. Copyright is a liberal value IMO, I don’t really care for respecting it anyways.

It isn’t at all ironic to use tools created within the boundaries of capitalism to critique it. This is just a retread of conservatives doing the “socialism is when no iPhone” meme. Marxism is not a moral philosophy. We will not throw out all of the tools built up by capitalism when we establish socialism, we will own them collectively and run them in the interests of the working classes.

There are two major problems: The Democrats are a bourgeois party, they cannot be reformed from within because their entire base is the capitalist class. The state in the US isn’t a neutral state, because the state is a product of class struggle. The state in the US is a capitalist state, one with the specific characteristics of a capitalist superstructure. You cannot reform this into socialism, you have to break it and replace it.

We aren’t there, sure. That doesn’t mean any LLM generated image is inherently morally wrong or upholding capitalism, just like any hammer isn’t upholding capitalism.

How does using an LLM for a meme support capitalists in any different a way using a hammer does?

Comrade, this is a reactionary viewpoint. Marxism is not a moral philosophy. Arguments against capitalism are not based on the idea that private property or certain tools are “morally impure.”

Socialism is when no iPhone type of comment.

Start with chapter 1! The first 3 chapters are difficult, but set up the entire book. I also recommend David Harvey’s lectures to go along with it.

Then what is inherently wrong with slop for a meme? There’s plenty to criticize from a materialist standpoint, but it’s important that we maintain that standpoint.

It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible. I.V. Dzhugashvili, my favorite Georgian philosopher and political activist.

Definitely true! But when people say this they generally are playing on a false moral sin for Marxists to use items made under capitalism, as though Marxism is a religion.

Yep!

I also like this photo: An edit would go hard, I think, but you still gotta let people know it’s actually Stalin, otherwise they think we are trying to trick people rather than demystify him.

This is just liberal Zionism, creating a “both sides” aspect to a genocide and delegitimizing the resistance movement by pretending Hamas is just Israel’s puppet.

Accelerationism isn’t “make things bad by burning them down,” it’s accelerating the accumulation of capital and therefore the collapse of capitalism by supporting the most competent imperialists, which in this case would mean supporting the DNC. The communist take is to oppose both the DNC and GOP, the accelerationist take is to support the DNC.

Fascism is intrinsically tied to anti-communism, because fascism is in essense a violent and naked assertion of bourgeois control against the proletariat.

Why would this be about “Stalinism?” Stalinism isn’t really a thing anyways, Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism. This is a meme directed against imperialism and capitalism.

People have tried voting for hundreds of years. Not once has the working class had power, beyond perhaps the brief period of reconstruction before the capitalists in the north worked with the capitalists in the south to put a stop to it. The idea that the DNC can be “pushed left” is based on a belief that the state exists outside of class society, rather than being built upon it. The capitalist state isn’t a capitalist state because capitalists control it, but because it is shaped and reinforced by the capitalist system it rests on top of. You cannot change that by simply changing who runs it.

“Tankies” just means people who support existing socialist states. Typically we are Marxist-Leninists, but anarchists and socdems also fit this sometimes and are targeted.

We have to contextualize here that the entire conversation on this post is discussing how an anarchist society would function.

That’s odd, you kept making a strawman of my argument and kept berating me for not sourcing the strawman. After I sourced the actual point I made, I only got crickets.

Accelerationism means supporting the most competent capitalists and imperialists, to speed up concentration of capital and speed up collapse as a consequence. The Democrats are the more competent party when it comes to ensuring capitalism remains more stable. This would make them the accelerationist option. Accelerationism isn’t “burn down the system now,” it’s a specific (and wrong) strategy. As for claiming “all leftist thought is tankie-owned,” I did no such thing. I generally categorize the left as being predominantly Marxists and anarchists, those who oppose capitalism. I myself am a Marxist-Leninist, which is an ideology that has consistently managed to both take power for the working class, and wield it to do tremendous things like double life expectancies, eradicate homelessness, and more. Not sure what you mean by your assertion that I am painting myself into an ineffective corner, nor the bit on saying “clear all.” Marxist-Leninist strategy is time-tested and clear-cut. Capitalism runs into crisis from its own contradictions, so to make revolution we need to develop a working class party that builds up disciplined, educated cadre that struggle along with the rest of the working class directly against the system. With this party, we can make effective organizers, educate the working class, agitate among them against the capitalist system itself, and create unity among the working class that can become an unbreakable hammer, an unblockable spear. The party just becomes the spearhead, the actual working class is the one making the real moves and changes. You know, the old adage, Educate Agitate Organize!

What a pain in the neck Oh gee, why would I take you joking about me being like Charlie Kirk and being a “pain in the neck” any other way?

The closest direct source I found suggests that there is a negative correlation between system-justifying beliefs and collective anti-system action. If people believe voting legitimately is a means by which they can enact social change, they are less likely to organize against the system itself. This does not mean voting itself is against organizing, in fact organizers vote at higher rates than non-organizers. The importance here is that collective action is diminished when that is directed towards engaging with the system itself.

I’m trying to get you to formulate a more materialist answer to opposing AI. The AI question isn’t really settled in Marxism yet, but it’s essentially a tool.

I gave evidence, you pretended the evidence didn’t support my point because you continued to pretend my point was a different one entirely.

I think I’m decently effective. I’ve managed to convince people both in real conversations and online. I’d like to see what you mean by me being condescending, because if that’s true I would like to correct that.

When voting is treated like the absolutely most important means of political struggle, people do tune out and neglect to organize. The electoral system is a pressure valve, and political theater is a funnel to direct people’s rage away from the system itself and towards said pressure valve. Organizing is far more important than voting, yet societal pressures make it seem like the opposite is the case. That is the point Marxists are making, and this is why organizing in a working class party isn’t just optional, but necessary for progressive change. Every major reform and concession has been won through struggle. Not because the ruling class was bested in the marketplace of ideas or anything. The Stonewall Riots were the catalyst for progressive change, not a change in heart in the ruling class. Same as the Civil Rights Movement, where Dr. King was assassinated as he began pivoting not just from anti-racist agitation, but towards the Poor People’s Campaign, a growing socialist movement. It’s why the Black Panther Party was infiltrated, and its top leaders killed or imprisoned. That’s why we need to actually focus our political energies on organized struggle.

Anarchist thought is not merely about living in capitalism with anarchist principles, but transitioning to anarchist society.

Queer rights in China are highly regional, and steadily improving. Porn is indeed illegal, but piracy is less punished than in most western countries. VPNs are easy to get to bypass the firewall if you want to. Their surveillance is actually behind the west in terms of prevalence, it’s just more in the open and honest.

Unsure what you mean by “flying monkeys,” but if there’s one thing anarchists and Marxists near-universally agree on, it’s the necessity of directly struggling against the system itself, rather than treating voting as our primary means of political engagement. Collapsing leftist point of views into this unprincipled, nuance-lacking strawman doesn’t actually engage with the primary critique, which is that we need to organize outside the system and direct that organization against said system to gain change, be it revolutionary or even to gain reforms or concessions. And no, I don’t represent the entirety of leftist thought. I was responding to a sweeping generalization of leftist thought.

Yep! I never said voting causes apathy, I pointed to the way people treat voting as a cause of apathy towards organizing. Critical distinction!

I’m a Marxist-Leninist, but I did used to be an anarchist, and from my time as an anarchist I cannot recall any anarchists opposed to revolution as a means to establish anarchism, which is something anarchists and Marxists share in common. Further, Marxists are not “pro-dictatorship,” not in the sense of an individual with immense power, but in favor of the working class taking control, in favor of radical and genuine democracy.

I don’t want to live in a kill-or-be-killed world, I want to participate in a society run scientifically to suit the needs of everyone and maximize everyone’s individual potential.

The study directly shows a negative correlation between those who believe the system represents a valid path to change, and those who organize against the system. This is my point. I did not say “people who vote will organize less,” I said funelling people into electoralism and treating it as the primary means of change deflates revolutionary organizing. These are distinct and separate points, and since you cannot argue against my actual point, you make up strawmen.

I don’t think normalization is a problem so much as justifying the capitalist nature of it. We can see the difference between how AI is handled in, say, China, vs. how it’s handled under capitalism, so it’s important to actually attack the role AI plays in capitalism, rather than AI itself. The problem is the social relation, not the tool.

Read up on the Five Eyes system. Many western countries have intense surveillance that is not only highly sophisticated, but very under-published about.

These kinds of sweeping generalizations that collapse the entirety of leftist thought into simple black and white binaries is the exact behavior you’re trying to criticize, no?

No, you quoted me saying that treating voting like the absolute most important means of political struggle causes people to tune out. Not the act of voting, the treatment of the concept at a societal level. Stop making up strawmen.

How so?

It doesn’t just mean not needing to rely on them, it means the absence of them. Anarchist praxis is near exclusively revolutionary as a consequence.

Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said the act of voting makes people tune out, or that people should not vote. I said treating voting like the primary means of gaining effective change deflates organizational pressures. If you cannot respond to the actual arguments at hand, then do not invent new ones.

It certainly is very easy to make shit up about people! No examples provided, no links, just pure unfiltered strawman.

I’ve always figured Geneva is a radlib with good political instincts but way too influenced by particular streamers/content creators, BE in particular. A shame that Geneva blocked me for this very same Bad Empanada struggle session they always have.

So if it’s local, it’s fine? There’s no problem with the fact that it’s generated, but who owns the tools, then.

I’ve seen quite a few people in this thread that fit that description, and don’t believe that applies to me.

Maybe don’t spend time implying I should be assassinated then?

I think it’s pretty easy to understand that capitalists and workers are real groups with opposed interests, wouldn’t you agree?

They already do that in the west, though, at least in the US.