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  • Every fucking time Socialist Alternative shows up, it’s fine until some edgelord dipshit unfurls the fucking huge Soviet flag with Stalin and Mao silk screened on it.

    I'm not super familiar with Socialist Alternative, but aren't they a Trotskyist org? What are they doing waving Stalin flags?

  • The failure of the revolution to take root in Europe (largely a result of the historic betrayal of Social Democracy in the Second International) created conditions for the consolidation of a nationalist clique and a bureaucratic degeneration of the workers state that formed from the victory of the October Revolution.

    What path should the USSR have taken instead? (genuine question)

  • If he hadn't been, would the USSR survived? That focus on technology, factories, and efficiency, no matter the cost, seems like the right approach when there's Nazis at your doorstep, conquering all of Europe and conducting mass exterminations.

  • i’ll freely admit i’m not reading books on the subject

    Let me first clarify a few points then.

    Marx and Lenin were also "authoritarian." You should read Engles' On Authority, it's not long and explains his position on the matter, which was consistent with Marx.

    "Stalinism" isn't really a thing, nobody calls themselves that, it's just a pejorative for Marxism-Leninism, which was Stalin's stated ideology (in fact, he's the person who coined the term). Marxism-Leninism ("Stalinism") is the most prevalent ideology among self-described communists globally, particularly in the global south.

    If Sanders just wanted an authoritarian figure to compare Trump to, there are no shortage of right-wing ones who have much more in common with him. The choice of Stalin seems to be intentional, to distance himself and his own brand of socialism from Stalin and other M-Ls.

    I believe this is a flawed strategy, in the same way it would be to accuse a witch-hunter of being a witch. The problem is that you're accepting the premise that witches are real and need to be hunted, and at that point it becomes a question of who can better make the case that they're not a witch - which is going to be the witch-hunter, because that's their job, they know how to play the game, they made the rules. In the same way, right wingers are always going to be more convincing anti-communists than someone who calls himself a socialist, they made the rules of the red scare and they know how to play it. The real way to defeat the witch hunt is to have enough people who aren't afraid of being called witches, and the way to defeat red scare stuff is not to accept the framing and punch left, but to say, "So what if I am a Red?"

  • I take drive by downvotes as a compliment, the meaning I get from them is, "I don't like this because it challenged my beliefs in a way I can't answer." Great! That's what I was going for.

  • Oh, libs. When will you learn that the right is immune to these sorts of accusations? Nobody is swayed by this "Trump is a communist" rhetoric, the only people who agree with it are people who already hate Trump and would clap along with any comparison or accusation as long as it's negative. Trump has "Only Nixon could go to China" powers.

    It's the same sort of thing as the Dems trying to attack Trump as weak on immigration and pass themselves off as border hawks. Liberals can't help but to concede this whole moral framework to the right and argue purely along technical lines of efficiency.

    Of course the liberals clap along because it owns the "tankies," and in their minds, if they just punch left enough they'll convince everyone that they're "one of the good ones" on the left, as if they're not going to be labelled Stalinists anyway, like they did with Obama.

    It's bad enough that it's not true, but even worse is that nobody buys it (who wasn't already "vote blue no matter who").

  • Of course, there are more recent things that we can look at to understand modern American christofascism. However, I would argue that twisting around Jesus' words to justify bad things has a very long history, and that you can point to the time of Constantine and the ways in which Christianity came to support Roman imperialism as a starting point. It may not be a direct line, but it's part of the same tradition. By the same token, you could point to how Christianity was used to support colonialism much later. At some point, people should stop being surprised when this happens because it's been happening for 1700 years.

    I’m just not interested in condemning the Romans of 1700 years ago

    But you praised Constantine for preserving the empire. If you're going to apply that moral framework then I get to apply my own too.

  • you’re demonizing the Roman Empire as if we’re in any way special in its slaving and conquering in the ancient world.

    I said nothing of the sort. All I'm saying is that there were early Christians who opposed some of these things, and that movement was co-opted and started supporting them.

    That said, historically speaking, it’s not at all obvious that you can ascribe to Constantine the idea of an orthodox Christianity

    As I said, however much responsibility you want to ascribe to him, it remains true that this sort of thing goes back to his time.

    In any case, theologically speaking, this idea of a pure original Christian message of Jesus that needs to be rescued by later impurities is a fundamentally protestant one, i.e., it’s a very particular way of understanding Christianity that doesn’t have any essential claim to be the only legitimate way of understanding Christianity. Not coming from a protestant (or a Counter-Reformation) background myself I don’t even particularly feel the need to refute it, I find the very question basically irrelevant.

    I also find it irrelevant, which is why I never said anything like that. I don't believe there was a "pure" Christian message that needs to be "rescued." No, early Christians were weird cranks with many wrong ideas about many things, which is part of how they were able to be co-opted. Nevertheless, they were weird cranks that said and did some ok things some times, especially relative to the empire.

    You're trying to create this false dichotomy where either early Christians were the pure, divinely inspired carriers of God's teachings, or else everyone at the time was equally bad, and the only measure of goodness is stability and survival. This is reductive nonsense. Early Christianity was a relatively progressive, flawed movement within the empire, and it was able to be subverted and co-opted by the empire into supporting many of it's worst practices. This is not a "fundamentally protestant" perspective, nor does it treat the Roman Empire as "special" in regards to other states in the ancient world, both of those claims are baseless strawmen.

  • Regardless of how much responsibility we assign to him, it's true that this shit does in fact go all the way back to his time.

    If you ask me, the Roman empire was built on conquest and slavery and extending it 1000 years isn't really something to brag about. He co-opted a movement that had originally opposed many of the empire's harmful practices and turned it into a bastardized form that supported the state so long as it payed lip service to Christian icons. Nowadays, Christians do similar things, and they're drawing on a very long tradition to do so. That tradition doesn't absolve them of personal responsibility, but it does provide some insight in terms of understanding how Christianity turned into basically the exact opposite of Jesus' teachings.

  • Just over half of U.S. adults (52%) say they favor allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus

    Nationwide, a slightly larger share of Americans say they favor allowing teacher-led prayers referencing God (57%)

    It's right there in OP.

  • I grew up in one of those states and it's part of why I'm a certified America Hater today. I genuinely don't think people who haven't been exposed to it, even within the country, but especially outside of it, really have a grasp on how prominent and powerful religion is in the US. Hell, I didn't fully understand it myself until I lived outside of the country for a time and saw what normal is like. This country is a madhouse.

  • Usually you don't go, "You forgot to respond to this" if you don't actually have anything there you want the other person to respond to. If you do not know how to have a conversation with another person go learn how to do that and get back to me.

  • What's there to address? You're just asserting what you personally like.

    The more the capitalists are able to gain power (through making a bunch of money), the more they'll push the government to cut those social services and to remove regulations. The system you describe is viable only to the extent that the capitalists can be kept in check.

    Many existing socialist countries (Vietnam, China, etc) have implemented a market economy, as it's necessary to participate in the global economy, and it can be useful for economic development, at least to a point.

    I'm not really sure what you want me to answer here.

  • Ignoring the core principle of Capitalism, free markets, makes it impossible to actually talk about Capitalism in theory or in practice.

    The confusion comes from the fact that the word capitalism has two meanings. The original meaning, which the other person and myself are using, has nothing to do with free markets:

    1854, "condition of having capital;" from capital (n.1) + -ism. The meaning "political/economic system which encourages capitalists" is recorded from 1872 and originally was used disparagingly by socialists. The meaning "concentration of capital in the hands of a few; the power or influence of large capital" is from 1877.

    It was only later, in reaction to socialism, that capitalism began to take on this meaning you're using, where it's supposedly disconnected from class interests and is just about some abstract economic principle. But using the second definition, it's impossible to talk about capitalism in practice because, as I said, such a system has never existed and will never exist.

    Your argument against can be used for every other economic system as well, so it becomes a matter of pros and cons which will never declare a clear winner and always demonstrate a mixed economy is best for everyone involved.

    Huh? Economic systems where the interests of capitalists are prioritized are best for the capitalists, economic systems where the interests of workers are prioritized are the best for workers. Also, aren't you declaring a clear winner when you say you can, "always demonstrate a mixed economy is best for everyone involved?"

  • They're talking about capitalism in practice. In practice, economic policy is shaped less by ideology and more by they relative power of economic classes. When the rich have power, they get policies that favor themselves enacted, and vice versa. It's only in theory that capitalism is about "free markets," in practice, the rich support free markets if they alternative is something that's more harmful to themselves (like taxes and nationalization) and oppose them when the alternative is beneficial to themselves (subsidies).

    "Free market capitalism" is a purely theoretical idea that has never existed, and will never exist, because someone's always going to have enough power to get the government to intervene in the economy to promote their own interests. Generally, left-wing people talking about capitalism mean capitalism in practice, not the theoretical idea.

  • Yeah, the way we can show all minorities that we're in this together, that we'll stand by each other even when it's unpopular and inconvenient, to stop the state from splitting off groups and trampling them underfoot... is to split off Palestinians and support candidates who want to trample them underfoot because standing up for them is too inconvenient.

  • Historically, you're completely wrong.

    1. Hitler came to power with the support of capitalists (here meaning "people who own substantial capital" rather than "ideological supporters of capitalism"). They saw him as a way to maintain order against socialism and to break the power of unions. A similar story happened in Italy, and in other fascist countries.
    2. Many capitalists did in fact benefit from fascism. There's some confusion about fascist economic policies, but you should know that the term "privatization" was first coined to describe the economic policy of Nazi Germany. When they nationalized companies, it was because they were minority owned, and often they were redistributed upwards to the capitalists.
    3. Labor rights suffered tremendously under fascism, with labor organizations exterminated, allowing capitalists to impose much worse conditions, lower pay, and longer hours on the workers, as well as using prisoners for slave labor. Any attempt to challenge these conditions would be considered treasonous, undermining the war effort.
    4. Even when their countries were defeated militarily, many capitalists got off scot-free. For example, the pharmaceutical company Bayer (which merged with Monsanto in 2016) was once a part of IG Farben, which manufactured Zyklon B for the gas chambers. After the war, Bayer rehired Nazis to high level positions, including for example Fritz ter Meer, who had been on IG Farben's board of directors and became chairman of Bayer, despite being a convicted Nazi war criminal.
  • Classic XCOM is really fun imo, but it does suffer from some quality of life issues. It's possible to fix some of that with mods though and imo it still holds up. I've definitely put more time into the reboot of the series, but the original has a grittier feel, a bit more "open world," where you're gonna miss UFOs and you're gonna have to cut and run sometimes, and there's also a lot of exploits and tricks you have to figure out on your own (intended or otherwise).

    Xenonauts is a more direct remake and it's good, more balanced and polished, but when I play it sometimes I just say, "I'd rather be playing old school XCOM." Hard to put my finger on it, and it might just be that I already know the tricks for the original, or that the jankyness makes it fun. Xenonauts does hold up on it's own but it's hard not to compare the two.

    Generally games have gotten better but I'd say there's a handful that have withstood the test of time (especially with basic UI improvements).

  • No "only" but primarily. Domestic billionaires are the primary enemy, they're the ones who directly benefit from making things like rent and healthcare more expensive, they're the ones who benefit from keeping unions weak and disorganized, they're the ones who benefit from mass surveillance and the police state. Foreign billionaires might benefit from doing those things in their own countries, but for the most part we have more to fear from our own rich people than from other countries' rich people.