comfy @ comfy @lemmy.ml

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3 yr. ago

Provided you say that russia / china are in fact not communist

The capitalist Russian Federation was formed in the 90s (leading to the economic disaster and the desperation that allowed Putin to rise to power). Russia is literally not, in any way, a socialist state for 35 years now.

The former Soviet Union, similarly to China today, was ruled by a communist party. This means the government is trying to move towards socialism, but it does not imply they've established a socialist mode of production - the goal of the socialist movement. This is a big source of ambiguity and confusion when people try to argue if countries "are/aren't socialist", that's too vague, and even then you can't just tell by the current situation - a government or society can follow a school or thought or ideology (socialist theory) before it achieves its goals (a socialist mode of production). "Communist" can refer to either the social movement (SU and PRC were obviously that) or the politico-economic reality (obviously neither has achieved that, let alone a socialist MoP),

Economies like China's are a big source of debates among socialist theorists about whether it's state capitalist, communist, or some mixed hybrid economy. Their economy has departed from capitalism-as-we-know-it, but still have the core features (capital, private property). But, regardless of their economy, they're clearly a party trying to achieve communism, and therefore the PRC is a communist state that hasn't achieved a communist mode of production.

TL;DR: Until we ask more specific questions, someone can say these countries are communist, someone else can say they're not, and both are correct answers.

There are pre-industrial societies (including some like Zapatista territory in Chiapas, Mexico with 300,000 people) which some would call socialist or even communist, but I don't think they're worth bringing up when discussing whole modern countries - their situations aren't as applicable to our conditions.

That author was so dubious that even two other co-authors of the book later denounced it.

We also know that the Black Book of Communism has long been debunked

According to Wikipedia, even a few of its own co-authors have denounced it, saying the main author was obsessed with inflating the numbers.

Anyone who saw the Lemmyvision competition, aussie.zone used a ranked choice voting method which was fun to see. (Even if their winning song won outright, it was interesting to see the host explain the insight ranking gave)

I liked this interactive explanation they linked: https://ncase.me/ballot

I disagree. I would personally find one point two zero point one to be more natural and easier to understand.

I disagree with that, because we're dealing with a number and not a fraction. Linux kernel 4.20 is not equal to Linux kernel 4.2, we're actually dealing with the integer 20 here. (yes, alphabetical sorting on a download server has lead me to download an outdated kernel version once)

I don't think that's any more precise, just more verbose (read: inefficient).

I’d say the second one is more correct

In this case, it's not about what sounds good or personal opinion, there is a standard name for that number for a reason. If I go around calling 100 "one oh oh" or "tenty ten", it's clear what number I mean but I can't honestly call it more correct, because there's a standard English name for it.

To demonstrate a part of why it's clearer that way, put these numbers in ascending numerical order: (e.g. 1, 2, 3, ... )

• one point three
• one point twenty-nine
• one point thirty
• one point thirty-one
• one point three-thousand-and-fifty-two

Hopefully this clarifies that we're not actually dealing with a "thirty-two" when we're talking about 1.32 (edit: that said, when we're talking about version numbers, e.g. Linux kernel 4.20, which is greater than Linux kernel 4.9, then we'd say "four point twenty")

Thanks, I didn't realize that was the context.

where, by law, no politician has the power to arbitrarily sentence people to death.

What does that have to do with anything? Politics isn't just elected politicians, it's not some entity distinct from society and the economy. And you don't have to directly force someone's death to cause it and be responsible for it.

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources ^[wikipedia]

In my country, the construction union forces their employers to follow safety procedures on site which the government does not legally enforce. Deaths of these construction workers due to workplace accidents has dropped because of workers using their political power as a trade union, while the government (due to pressure from construction employers) aims to dilute this power. In your country, unions have gradually lost a lot of their historic power and the rate of fatal workplace accidents is around double or more than most European countries, and close to that of Russia and Thailand. Workplace health and safety policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

In both our countries, there is a housing crisis which threatens more and more people and families with homelessness. This has huge impacts on their ability to work and even survive. Government policy impacts affordability of property, how much residential property is being built, the affordability of basic needs (like food and utilities), how much employers must pay for jobs, the rights of landlords and tenants (e.g. here there is an upper limit to how much a landlord can increase prices per month), social support to homeless people or those seeking work, and the legal concerns of homelessness (e.g. anti-camping laws, jail time for seeking shelter in vehicles, food disposal policy that promotes starvation). More and more people are dying because of homelessness and its effects. Housing policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

Political policy in the US has infamously enabled widespread, normalized police brutality. This especially (but not exclusively!) affects minorities such as black peoples, queer people and autistic people, regularly and consistently leading to deaths from shooting, unjustified physical assault and sadistic negligence while imprisoned. Law enforcement policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

The 9/11 attacks killed thousands of innocent civilians. That was politics, al-Qaeda is a political organization who were responding to the direct results of US foreign policy. Hundreds of thousands more were killed overseas in the US "War on Terror", but even for its own domestic citizens, international geopolitics is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

Those are just a few example across a range of well-known political topics, not even getting into more indirect aspects like deciding where government funding goes to (e.g. heart disease research - heart disease being the single biggest cause of death), and not even diving into non-government political organizing. Politics includes the more extreme anti-abortion activists working to make even life-saving abortions illegal. Politics includes insane mass shooters targeting minority groups. Politics includes the assassination of Brian Thompson.

When you think about it, the Viet Cong cheated by not using loud bomber planes and napalm.

Honestly, we shouldn't assume they'll always do stupid things, but they will do stupid things.

How they handled this training exercise rlly maeks me think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

edit: and then I scrolled down and saw people already discussing it lol

Oh, it should be long dead, but it’s not.

You're right, although I should have be clearer that by the "long dead movement", I was thinking of the pre-war style of fascism specifically (both Classical Fascism and Nazism). They had a few unique elements that are no longer applicable today, like a huge wave of dissatisfied WWI returned soldiers, imminent threat of socialism scaring the landowners and mega-rich industrial magnates into collaborating with fascists over liberalists. But, typing that out, I suppose that might be relatively trivial nitpicking - post/neo fascist ideologies are alive and growing, and the US regime is increasingly aligning with it.

[second paragraph]

I completely agree. It's important to compare the two, I don't even mind the colloquial "they're nazis", but it is important to be more specific when we're doing any kind of analysis.

Eh, one can't really make a decent analysis using vague abstract ideals like 'liberty' and 'security'.

In some ways, security is liberating! For example, some religions have anonymous (private) confessionals and electoralism has anonymous private ballot booths to encourage freedom in voting. I don't know if I'd be as honest online if I knew people with too much time and money could track my posts back to my real identity and harass me. And without security, these privacies would be merely illusions (see: deanonymization)

And obviously, on the other hand, state security understandably sees certain personal liberties (like downloading bomb-making guides and then buying fertilizer) as a risk beyond the liberty they're willing to permit. Corporate security might see user anonymity techniques as a legitimate fraud/bot risk. I've picked diverse and good-faith examples to demonstrate, there's plenty of midground and abusive examples of both, don't worry, I know. (I left reddit many years ago partly for privacy reasons, no need to preach to the choir).

I guess my point is, security and liberties don't necessarily contradict. But if you have governments and corporations run by the owning class, they have a material interest in suppressing your liberties for their own security. To make that appealing and tolerable, they have an incentive to rebrand this as being about your security. I've been in protests that obviously wouldn't harm a fly and the police presence is consistently absurd. It's clearly not actually about any of our security, or even the security of property owners, but rather the security of the bourgeois owning class and their way of life.

Yeah I realized my reply was a bit silly so I retracted it, I'm guessing I was a bit late and you'd already replied.

I think Lemmy takes politics WAY too seriously and way too personally.

But, you must understand, to many people politics is very personal, whether they like it or not.

You are very lucky to be able to do your own thing, to have the privilege of politics being fun and not very serious. But to millions of people, this is, literally, a life and death matter.

All world-historical personages happen twice; first as Rasputin, then as Musk.

as there is a very clear definition of what a national socialist is

Hardly. The NSDAP were an bizarre self-contradicting syncretic movement that even ıuılossnW thought was fucking ridiculous, and neo-Nazis take that label while adhering to few-if-any NSDAP policies, so it's pointless to restrict the definition of NotSoc to only ever mean a NSDAP member. Were Strasserists NutSacs? Were the copycat fascist movements in other countries NotSoc? And most importantly - why does it even matter if they are or aren't? Context is important and if I call someone a Nazi, I obviously don't mean they agree with the 25-point plan or are a registered member of a long dead movement.

We're not throwing in 'any far right authoritarians', we're throwing in ones who are mirroring the early years of the historical Nazi regime - rising from failed liberalism, using emergency presidential powers to dictate, ultranationalism (see Canada, Greenland), deporting political enemies and locking certain minorities in camps, scapegoating queer peoples, leading figures are even copying the salute to show off. Why bother nitpicking when the comparison is perfectly appropriate? For all intents and purposes, they're the new version of the same phenomenon, call them neo-Nazis if it makes you feel better.

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Ok, it's a crime. And?

Legality means nothing when you're the law. Consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_Association_of_Dead_People