Cowbee

@Cowbee@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The quantity and quality with respect to how de-Nazification was handled in the West vs the East was entirely different, and you are erasing that because the East still had some Nazis, while the West was infested with them. This is affirmed by the links I sent, to which you merely read the titles. The lawyer piece, for example, talks about the entire process of de-Nazification with an emphasis on how the Nazi lawyers were treated.

  I could do the same low-effort character assassination you levied against me, but if you’re not even going to read the abstracts or intros of the articles I link, this conversation was never going to go anywhere in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I already explained how this can cascade into a different relationship at a rate more advantageous than the average proletarian, as you already saw fit to distinguish classes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Some do, they just claim Hamas is equally evil for resisting genocide, the good 'ol “two wrongs don’t make a right” adage.

  As for East Germany, would you mind stating how your thesis about the government taking an active role in rooting out Nazis somehow made the East more open to fascism isn’t a statement on East Germans being incapable of ruling themselved, and just going along with whoever? You linked literature, sure, but avoided addressing that the West never de-Nazified yet East Germany was thoroughly purged of Communists? Rather than blaming the rise of fascism in modern eastern Germany on the previous antifascist government and the dull acceptance of the eastern Germans due to alienation from politics, why not take an active look at the dynamics at play as the West took over the East?

  As for Psychology, no, it isn’t idealism, but your analysis was. In the absence of materialist analysis, you shifted to an assertion that existing in different modes of production shuts off the higher instincts of man. It is true that material conditions shape the ideas of man, but you pivoted that to the idea that existing in a Socialist state dulls the mind, which doesn’t have materialist backing.

  Socialism is not “the same fucking river” as Nazism, not to any capacity. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds, it’s a good introductory book and a quick read.

  As for Nazi Germany’s approval ratings, that’s not really true, as clearly Holocaust victims weren’t polled. Support for Socialism both within post-Socialist states and currently Socialist states is best explained by the real material achievements they made for the Working Class, as one western study said of China:

  “Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread in China, these findings highlight that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being. Satisfaction and support must be consistently reinforced. As a result, the data point to specific areas in which citizen satisfaction could decline in today’s era of slowing economic growth and continued environmental degradation.”

  I’ll leave you with a Parenti quote I think is fitting, from the same book I recommended:

  During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

  If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  One proletarian has the strength of two average proletarians. Does he constitute his own distinct class, as he can leverage that for somewhat higher pay, and therefore eventually become petty bourgeois? No. Again, we can see specialized labor as a substratum, but to confuse it for a class in and of itself goes against the Marxist conception of class.

  Now, if you define class as relations of hierarchy, there’s no dissonance, and we can consider managers their own class. But at that point, we have to be careful not to trip over each other’s understanding of class when discussing Marxism vs Anarchism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Is an Engineer a class? They make better money than assembly workers. The answer is no, Engineers are a substratum of the Proletariat, worthy of their own analysis, but not as distinct from the rest of the Proletariat. That’s why Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc all viewed managers as proletarian, doing a separate kind of labor, and even distinct living conditions on average, but retaining the same labor relations to the Means of Production.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  People claiming simply to have an “understanding of the cultural context” when speaking of the Palestinian Genocide often do so to avoid criticism for not condemning Israel. What this does is run cover for the IDF. We aren’t on Feddit, we aren’t in Germany, we are in an open space where such a phrase has been used by Zionists plenty, hence why I gave you a warning.

  Secondly, your point is that East Germans simply have been culturaly underdeveloped and are incapable of ruling themselves, as an explanation for why demographics shifted so far to the right. Again, this is avoidance, I quite clearly pointed to the rooting out of Communists in the East and the regular fostering of Anti-Communists in the West leading to current conditions.

  As for fascism, it’s best described as Capitalism in decay. It’s the same system of Capitalism, only when conditions are dire and the bourgeoisie needs to rely on violence to protect its own interests. All this talk of “shutting off higher mammalian and human insticts” is more Idealism than anything else, it fronts the idea of “fear states” as a genuine mechanism when the fear comes with the fascism.

  Further, Communism isn’t to be grouped in with fascism and Capitalism, it’s diametrically opposed. The nostalgia for Socialism is very high in the overwhelming majority of post-Socialist states, and the approval of government in current Socialist states is high. There’s no evidence that they were and are run by “fear.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Class isn’t “power hierarchy” in Marxist analysis, though. That’s an Anarchist interpretation, one I won’t say you can’t hold personally as valid, but that’s not the Marxist critique. Engels and Lenin specifically called managers Labor aristocracy as they are necessary aspects of large industry, and not a class in themselves. Class instead is a social relation to ownership of the Means of Production.

  In the “Administration of Things,” as Engels puts it, there are to be administrators, and production along a common plan. It’s through this that large industry under Capitalism paves the way for the transition to Socialism, and then Communism, socialized production requires an informed plan.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not conflating anything, drag quite clearly has stated that “Marx was an Anarchist.” This is wrong.

  As for the “Professional Managerial Class,” it isn’t a distinct class, but a subsection of the proletariat. You also see the term “Labor Aristocracy” used by Engels and Lenin, but crucially, you don’t see the conflation of this substratum of a class with a class in and of itself. The insistence that managers make up a distinct class is more of an Anarchist thing than a Marxist one, as adopting such analysis would be similar to calling plumbers and elictricians their own classes in and of themselves, rather than substratums.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t call you a fascist Zionist, I said the whole of Germany is infested with fascist Zionists. I didn’t even know you were German. Though, “understanding the cultural context” is often a dogwhistle, so you may wish to drop that language.

  It’s convenient to blame the people for not being “culturally developed enough” to oppose fascism, and it blunts the active role of Nazis in the West, and erases the de-communization of the East following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fascism wasn’t “erased” from West Germany because children askdd hard questions, Nazis were key figures and great effort was made to make it appear as though West Germany was truly distanced from fascism. Lo and behold, Germany unwaveringly supports Israel and the ethnic cleansing campaign.

  Fascism can only be truly beaten by advancing to Socialism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For drag, any state running production is Capitalist. They denounce the PRC, USSR, Cuba, etc as Capitalist, despite robust democratic control.

  Further, administrators of public property do not constitute a distinct class, just as managers within a company are not a distinct class from the workers. There exists intra-class hierarchy and inter-class hierarchy, and these are not the same.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a poor assessment, and looks down upon the people of East Germany as “stupid” and “compliant.” The West was never truly de-Nazified, but the East was absolutely de-“commiefied” after the fall of the Berlin Wall. East Germany was purged of its Nazis, and then purged of its Communists. In purging the Communists, the resurging fascists go unopposed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You could be more specific than that, but when I say Nazi collaborators, I do mean them.

  “On the other hand, in the Soviet occupation zone and later East Germany, denazification was considered as a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society, and the country was stricter in opposing Nazism than its counterpart.”

  The Soviets took anti-fascism seriously.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  drag refers to any Socialist system with a state as “State Capitalist,” which is a misnomer I reject. I support the NEP and I support the PRC’s Socialist Market Economy, I support Cuba, Vietnam, etc, but drag in particular is saying even a fully publicly owned economy is “state capitalist” if it has a government.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Emulating tribal societies is good if that works for you, though I think it’s a bit myopic if you think Socialist states haven’t learned from what went right and what went wrong in the USSR. Modern Socialist states like the PRC have adapted to modern conditions and are steadily building higher and higher stages of Socialism, eventually Communism in the Marxist sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m all for Left-Unity, and believe Leftists can all work together. Discussing correct theory and practice is important, just like the work Leftist groups like PSL, the PFLP, and more are accomplishing, as well as Socialist states like Cuba and the PRC. I don’t think I’ve ever said I don’t believe in Left-Unity, and I’ve never once said Anarchists aren’t Leftists, just that I myself am a Marxist, not an Anarchist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t turn my nose up if the creation of a fully publicly owned and planned global economy along democratic lines was possible to do immediately. It isn’t, so I don’t “support” that just like I don’t “support” unicorns.

  Now, I’m sure you’re actually using Communism to speak of Anarchist-style Communism, but I’m not an Anarchist, I’m a Marxist, I want Marx’s conception of Communism, not the Anarchist conception.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a Communist, specifically a Marxist-Leninist. I’m not an Anarchist, but I’m not a “State Capitalist” either. I advocate for gradually building towards a fully publicly owned and planned global economy along democratic lines, ie Marx’s conception of Communism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Concentration camps were mass execution factories for Jewish people, LGBTQ, Communists, Socialists, disabled people, Slavs, and more.

  The prisons in the GULAG system were genuine prisons, and the political prisoners were largely Tsarists, Fascists, Nazi collaborators, war criminals, and more, and political prisoners were a minority of those imprisoned in the USSR.

  That’s like saying a fish and a tree have some similarities. It’s true, but at the same time fundamentally tries to draw far more similarities than implied.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Dessalines is vegan, for what it’s worth. Gave me a few good recipes for seitan!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Quite an introduction, and quite a lot of slander. I’m a Communist, Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, etc, regardless of how you want to call me. I’m certainly not a genocide denier, and I’d say all governments are “authoritarian,” what matters is which class is exerting its authority. My goal is in fact to dispel myths surrounding Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Communism, etc.

  If they check my Hexbear account, they’ll see more conversation surrounding gaming and casual conversation, haha.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Nazis industrialized mass murder, and deliberately killed millions in the Holocaust. The Soviet prison system was in no way comparable to the Nazi concentration camps designed to murder and kill, this is Holocaust trivialization. Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please consider supporting Lemmy development⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one good thing about all this⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No problem! 🫡

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A bit of salt makes it taste more savory⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In my experience, when communities don’t make an effort to hash out important questions and form a principle line to follow, they fail to quell the more socially reactionary among themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A bit of salt makes it taste more savory⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey, found this comment from searching my name (I’ll fully admit that I do so from time to time, out of morbid curiosity). I’ll clarify 2 things:

  1. I only have 2 accounts. @Cowbee@lemmy.ml and @Cowbee@hexbear.net. I swap between them, but take care to never mix upvotes (I keep my Hexbear upvotes pretty purely on comms on Hexbear and Grad, and use Lemmy.ml for everything else).

  2. I do push Marxism-Leninism. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I don’t attempt to hide that. My goal is to create more comrades and to develop a more “correct line” among comrades on Lemmy. That’s the big purpose of my Lemmy.ml account in general, my Hexbear.net account is more for relaxing, talking abojt video games, or following the news. Helps me compartmentalize. I wouldn’t call it pushing shit, but I do push Marxism-Leninism, and do so openly.

  I can also address @SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world’s claims. The “alt” they can’t see me on is my Hexbear.net alt. I cannot mass downvote them with it both because we cannot downvote on Hexbear, and because I can’t even see Lemmy.world accounts.

  I cannot verify that others are not using alts to up or downvote comments, but at the same time I don’t think anyone can verify that the reverse is true, either, except perhaps admins looking at up and downvote history.

  What this means is that SoftestSapphic has nothing more than a gut feeling asserted as an unchallengable truth, the idea that the “tankies” are using deceptive measures to manipulate public opinion. Moreover, said user regularly gets banned for general hostility even on non-Lemmy.ml communities, just check their modlog. No proof is ever offered for their claims, but they will certainly parade their theories around in an attempt to discredit me, which is why I am even responding in the first place.

  Hope that answers everything!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one good thing about all this⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a direct comparison to what calling the PRC “West Taiwan” means. It means you uphold the Nationalist Kuomintang as the wrongfully overthrown dictatorship that should have never lost the Chinese Civil War.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one good thing about all this⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No problem!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one good thing about all this⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It varies by instance, some are more Marxist, some are more Anarchist, some are more liberal, some are blends of 2 of those. However, the 2 biggest factors are that the Developers are Marxists and thus Marxists have been building communities here from the beginning, and the rejection of Reddit, a highly corporatized social media platform, in order to jump to a smaller FOSS platform, fits neatly with general anticapitalism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one good thing about all this⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one good thing about all this⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s kinda like if the Confederacy, upon losing the Civil War, fled and occupied Cuba, and was propped up millitarily by, say, the UK as a millitary foothold to keep the US in check back when the UK still had Imperialist chops, then saying the Confederate-occupied Cuba is the real US.

  The fact is, the Communists and Nationalists had a 2 decade long civil war, and the Communists won against the Nationalists, who then fled to Taiwan, where the Nationalists have maintained that they are the legitimate government of China.

  As with any revolution, such as the French, American, Vietnamese, Russian, Cuban, etc, I don’t think it makes much sense to declare the French Monarchy, British Empire, French Colonialists, Russian Tsarists, or fascist Batista regime the “rightful” rulers of the countries the people themselves overthrew, and that extends to China.

  As for Taiwanese people, the overwhelming majority support maintaining the status quo, with few wanting hard independence or reconcilliation. This may change now that the US is pivoting away from them as well, but both the PRC and ROC seem to be content to maintain the uneasy status quo for the time being. War would be devastating for Taiwan in particular.