Drewfro66 @ Drewfro66 @lemmygrad.ml

He/They. Marxist-Leninist, Butcher, DnD 3.5e enthusiast and member of PSL N

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3 yr. ago

Others have answered your question, but I think you're coming at the problem from the wrong angle.

I used to think about politics and economics how you are now: that there are different systems, and different people disagree on which is the best system, either because of their internal values (liberty, security, equality, prosperity, etc.) or because they believe that one system inherently performs better than another (efficiency, robustness, fairness, etc.).

Becoming a Marxist is realizing that while we, the working people, are sitting around bickering over whether command or market economies are more efficient, whether parliamentary or Presidential systems are better, whether our voting system should be Ranked Choice or Proportional or FPTP, the wealthy - the owning classes, the Capitalists, the ruling class - are stealing from us, are extracting our labor.

Politics is not about different people having different ideas about how to best organize society. Politics is about different groups acting in their material interests. The rich support policies which give them more power in society, while the poor, by all rights, should be doing the same.

I support a system where working people hold all power in society. I don't care how that society is organized aside from that - I have some ideas, but there are smarter people than me for organizing logistics. Power and material interests are the only things that matter; and no system is incorruptible. Society needs to be lead by explicitly and wholly ideological organizations who will resist any attempt to undermine the power and supremacy of the working class, even if it is "legal" or "fair", and they are justified in using whatever means necessary to do so.

Genshin Impact

American Catholics are just Protestants who like kneeling

I think you're being overly simplistic - sure, ideas and debates have a place in politics. And "political power flows out of the barrel of a gun" doesn't mean "Whoever has the most guns wins" (though this is the case most of the time) - but it does mean that a group with no guns has no power.

Like the other commenter said, the quote is partially metaphorical - it just means that force is the basis of political power. The people willing and able to apply the most force will almost always win in the end.

Think about in America. If, tomorrow, 75% of Americans were in favor of abolishing the police, would it happen? Maybe, but probably not - because the people with political power, the people with guns and the will to use them (cops, troops, fascists, small business tyrants) support the police.

History is shaped by material conditions; ideas play a part in this, but material interest is the primary driving force.

Mao Zedong; his quote was "Political power flows out of the barrel of a gun."

The quote is not a moral statement or a call to action, but a scientific analysis of Historical Materialism: the Chinese civil war was not fought with ballots or debates, it was fought with guns, on both sides.

Ultimately, the people with the guns hold all political power in society.

People who get mad at this episode because "That's not how evolution works!" miss the point of Star Trek.

Chronotons and dilithium crystals also don't exist. The science of Star Trek only exists to facilitate interesting stories, involving character drama and philosophical quandaries.

Warrior Cats. Talked about it with a friend the other day, I think an animated show would work best

I really enjoyed the first six Dragonlance novels - after that, not so much.

Like, I get it, America does a lot of bad shit, but you have to consider what its absence would do to the rest of the world. There are more than a few nations that would commit atrocities untold to attain the position of the World’s Sole Superpower.

Even from a Liberal point of view, the absence of the U.S. would finally allow international bodies - the UN, INTERPOL, the ICC, etc. - to do their jobs and collectively enforce norms in a multipolar world. America does not stop countries from committing atrocities. We can see that in Palestine, Burma, Costa Rica, and the Donbass today. America facilitates atrocities and protects their perpetrators from repercussions.

"If America wasn't doing it, someone else would" is not a valid argument. It's the same as a landlord saying "Someone has to landlord, and if it wasn't me, it'd be someone worse". It's lesser-evilism.

Not to mention all the ways this cat can get skinned, and the different implications that each end could have

Various Communist parties have gone through this logical process before. We do not want a violent revolution; reactionaries force this path by continuing to support unjust systems. Ironically, if every person (like you) who thinks "The Communists have some good ideas but I don't believe in using violence to achieve them" gave the Communists their full support and was willing to use violence to achieve them, the violence would not be necessary. It is the same quandry as the vast majority of Democrats hating Biden and preferring a progressive or Socialist but voting for him anyways because they've convinced themselves that he is, somehow, the "stable, electable" candidate. If everyone who was sick of the two-party system just woke up tomorrow and stopped voting for them, we would live in a better world; but when only 10% of people vote for third parties etc., they're just "spoilers".

The reason why this exists is California Prop 65, which required that companies get their products tested for possible carcinogens or have a label that states that they could cause cancer. Companies generally responded by just foregoing the tests and accepting the labels, making them functionally worthless (since the vast majority of products with the prop 65 warning are perfectly fine, just untested).

Yes

Average lemmy.world take

If America collapses, that would be good. Yes, Russia is trying to make it happen. No, Russia is not good. Yes, it's still good that Russia is trying to destroy America.

People should not have trust in the American "democracy". Just because Russia is trying to foment this distrust does not make it ontologically invalid.

Uncritical support for the Lemmy development team.

People need to actually read the article. By "Blatant Antisemitism", they literally just mean "Pro-Palestinian".

India has always been this bad. You're hearing about it now because India is aligning itself with the East (BRICS) over the West. This wave of bad press is the officiation of the divorce

It's a little ironic to think that Trump twisting the arm of the more Hawkish party into a basically pro-Russia geopolitical position due to his personal business interests might be the only thing that saves the world from World War III.

Yeah, what about them?

Instead of picketing the streets and striking their jobs, they should try picketing Musk and striking him in the head

If Trump is jailed, he wins the election. You can run for office from jail. If anything, it will improve his image among people likely to vote for him.

If a Blue State bars Trump from running, that doesn't matter, because he wasn't going to win that state anyways.

A Red State would never bar Trump from running, because it would be political suicide for any Republican to stand against Trump in such a way.