There are many Marxists who look at the US/NATO war against Russia without historical materialism. They condemn Russia and the war in Ukraine as an "inter-imperialist war" between Russia and the US, but this is wrong mainly because they ignore the historical aggression movement of the "traditional" imperialist countries.

One such movement was the expansion of NATO, where the EU and the US were funding NATO and EU membership campaigns, especially in former socialist republics. They took advantage of nascent states and low institutional complexity to spread propaganda in these countries, initially through television and today through the Internet. They manipulate the public opinion of an entire nation, just to serve their interests.

And worse, NATO demands from these countries "political reforms" in order to enter NATO, which eventually resulted in extreme right-wing governments in these countries.

NATO has been expanding eastward into Russia, settling in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, then Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Bulgaria, with Estonia and Latvia bordering Russia. Furthermore, NATO has already stated if I'm not mistaken since 2008 that it intended to host Ukraine and Georgia, and not only that, it has frequently held military exercises with these countries. Both Ukraine and Georgia border Russia, Ukraine being the country that has the longest border with Russia.

In Ukraine, a government has been in place since 2014 that has openly advocated neo-Nazism and incorporated Nazi militias into its army. It promoted the persecution of ethnic Russians within the country and for 8 years the Ukrainian army assaulted the population of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. School children were taught to hate Russians with children's stories portraying the Russian nation and its people as barbarians, monsters, as every government does with its enemies.

And now, with the Russian invasion, Finland, which also has a long border with Russia, has joined NATO. We already know what the historical trend of this will be. In addition, NATO has an indirect presence in Asia, mainly in South Korea and Japan, due to the presence of US troops in these countries (more than 80,000 soldiers in all).

It is very clear that NATO has been expanding toward Russia since the late 1990s, setting up governments hostile to Russians in its member countries for the sole purpose of generating a conflict with the country. In this way, it becomes possible to fragment the whole of Russia, to facilitate the plundering of that country's natural and human resources, and especially to prevent a competitive country from outgrowing the USA.

The idea that Russian aggression is part of an "inter-imperialist" conflict attempts to equate the US with Russia, as if both countries are waging war for similar reasons, or as if both are in the same position. The US/NATO has been hostile to Russia for decades, it's decades of constant aggression. To any Russian, who has seen it up close all these years, the war was a surprise, but everyone knew it was inevitable.

Marxists who defend the thesis of "inter-imperialist war" to condemn Russia and the US on the same "level" ignore all this historical development, and on top of that they use the argument that in Russia there is a right-wing conservative party in power. Or worse, they say that Russia is a bourgeois state and therefore does not deserve support.

It is true. In many aspects the Russian government is anti-communist, even. But all over the world we have bourgeois dictatorships or conservative governments. To take only this criteria of support would result in condemning the "inter-imperialist" war between the U.S. and Iraq, equating aggressors and aggressed. Because both are bourgeois dictatorships, therefore they do not deserve special consideration.

In the case of the war in Ukraine the "aggressor-aggrieved" relation is more subtle, because in the immediate appearance Russia invaded Ukraine. The aggressor-aggrieved relationship is between Russia-Ukraine, right? That seems to be the view of our Marxists, apparently. Losing sight of the background of NATO's actions, this war becomes a meaningless thing, as if Russia is wanting to take Ukraine for itself, to export its capital and control Ukraine's markets. It is a very similar discourse to the one NATO reproduces, of the invader Russia.

So who does the "imperialist Russia" discourse serve? Exactly the NATO side. Exactly the usual imperialists, which we are sick of knowing, the imperialists of the North Atlantic, the US and Europe. This discourse is aimed at undermining support for Russia in other nations, and gradually manufacturing a consensus that justifies a war against Russia.

The two sides of the war are not equal, and they do not wage war for equal reasons. Russia is a bourgeois dictatorship, as in much of the world, but it is part of a positive movement regarding the world market, an alternative movement to the US hegemony that for decades has plagued the countries of the world with its political and economic interference. Russia's partnership with China also adds strength to this alternative movement to the US-dominated institutions, the domination of the dollar, and the arbitrary interference in other countries.

Title is self-explanatory. The benefits of this would be tremendous, if correctly trained and perfected, it would be the greatest tool to democratize knowledge about Marxism.

There are already several open-source large language models on the internet out there, but I think the biggest bottlenecks is the knowledge on deploying such models and computing power to run such a thing.

Thread to discuss about this subject

If you happen to come across right-wing media, propaganda and discourse, you'll notice here and then a mention of George Soros as an evil mastermind behind geopolitical events, "globalist agenda" and such.

Why do you think there's a focus on George Soros? We are aware of Soros' interference in global affairs through his funding of color revolutions worldwide, but why would the extreme right-wing have an aversion to Soros?

This discourse regarding Soros can be found in the Brazilian extreme-right as well.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/309348

> A comrade (that wished to remain anonymous) made an extraordinary analysis on CPUSA's ideological tendencies. I think this piece of text is extremely important for CPUSA members to begin discussing the future of their organization and strategies to fight against the visibly liquidationist tendency inside the party. > > We decided to share this article on ProleWiki because of their relevance for Marxists-Leninists inside the USA.

Recently, the YouTube creator Viki1999 published a video called "Why (I think) the labour theory of value is dead!" and exposing her arguments, which you can check by watching the video. I have written a criticism in the comments of her video, and I will adapt them here to publish here.

Viki1999's main argument is that the so-called labor theory of value (LTV) may not be useful to agitate workers towards revolution. In the middle of her arguments, she distances herself from her point to bash the LTV altogether, in what sounds like a liberal deviation from Marxism. I argue that she is blinded by imperialism.

She claims: > "Most Western nations have service economies. Huge part of the economy are people who serve people in diners. Quantifying the value of a service job is close to impossible. The same is true for haircuts. The value of a haircut is very hard to quantify."

First of all, this argument ignores that capitalism is a world-market, a service economy (or consumer market) can only function if there is production elsewhere. This argument is from a viewpoint of someone living in the imperialist core, ignoring the reality of the productive sphere of the world-market, mainly restricted to the periphery countries where all the cheap labor is available to be exploited. For a service economy to exist, there needs to be hundreds of millions of workers in poverty producing the goods for the consumers in the "service economy".

Still, there is a measure to "quantify" the labor related to service sector: time. Serving people in diners and cutting hair both have this measure. The work someone does needs to earn them enough value so that the worker can reproduce their lives, especially by eating and resting. If a work does not earn them enough value, i.e., if they cannot sustain themselves with their work, they cannot continue working otherwise.

The question then becomes, how come big employers have enough value to maintain thousands of service workers? The answer: imperialism. The value extracted from the proletariat in the periphery countries of the Global South is what maintains the the wages of service workers and the international labor aristocracy. By being a worker living in an imperialist country, you are certainly exploited, but not by the degree of exploitation which workers in the South face. Exploitation for a labor aristocrat is much less apparent, to the point some of them deny it altogether, like Viki1999.

> "Raising children is not compensated by the economy at all"

It's true. But does that mean raising children is not work? Or, rather, that it does not create value? Raising children creates workers, which create value. It's reproductive work that makes productive work exist in the first place. It follows that we should fight for it to be compensated fairly. Mostly women are exploited by this circumstance, and the LTV actually helps understand this condition so that the inherent exploitation becomes apparent.

Later in the video, she gives the old liberal example of "bucket of water in a desert" which supposedly would determine a high price for water based on its need, and that value is therefore subjective, a common liberal argument. But then she contradicts herself mentioning the example of unskilled workers, how the average working time and skill affects the value of the work and the commodities produced by work. The same goes for a bucket of water in a desert. A bucket of water in a desert can be overpriced by someone selling to another in great need, but this would be only an isolated exchange not at all representative of the value of extracting and transporting water, and of water as a commodity.

Exploitation exists in the Western imperialist countries including in the productive sphere, especially in the United States where it's more apparent (even on the skin color). One common example is Amazon and the exploitation of workers inside its factories. Another example is the production line of the packaging of many food industries, which harshly exploits cheap and even uncompensated prison labor (quick reminder that slavery in the US is constitutionally permitted in the case of punishment for crimes).

And later in the video, Viki1999 even claims "there are plenty of reasons to get rid of capitalists even if they don't take surplus-value," insinuating that capitalists do not exploit surplus-value from workers. This outrageous claim ignores the obvious reality that billionaires continue to enrich themselves while the mass of the workers in the whole world continue to live in poverty conditions more and more extreme (search for the Oxfam studies on global inequality). This enriching of capitalists and impoverishment of workers CANNOT be attributed to anything else except exploitation of workers on a global scale. For a handful of capitalists to be criminally rich, there needs to be hundreds of millions of workers criminally poor.

Conclusion: While I respect Viki1999's work, I have noticed that the content of her videos has been tending towards a liberal perspective and sometimes even anti-communist and opportunist tone. The fact that she thinks the LTV is not a good argument to use for workers living in imperialist countries such as herself does not mean that the LTV is false or incorrect. The fact that the LTV, up to this day, still correctly predicts certain phenomena of capitalism means it shouldn't be discarded, only updated to our material conditions, such as explaining how a service economy can maintain itself (e.g.: through imperialism).

At some points in the video she even considers that "value is subjective" using a common liberal argument and she even claims that capitalists "don't take surplus-value." One thing is to argue that exploitation is not a good argument to convince workers to organize a revolution in the imperialist core, the other thing is to argue that exploitation does not exist, which is an anti-Marxist, anti-worker claim, coming from someone living in the imperial core.

Either her understanding of Marxism is lacking in its theoretical basis, or she is purposefully deceiving her viewers to discard some nonnegotiable principles of Marxism and adopting a liberal worldview. I rather think that it is her lack of study, not an arrogant attempt at falsifying the only theoretical concise explanation for exploitation from the point of view of the working class.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/282917

> Our viewership is somewhat restricted to the capitalist-imperialist countries, probably because ProleWiki is mostly only offered in the English language

Had to post this here as well lmao

For years Facebook has been used to give voice to far-right groups, and this was never really addressed. The reason they are now combatting "extremism" can only be attributed to the fact that radical leftist discourse is becoming more and more common

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has appointed veteran transgender Shawn Skelly to the transition team that will evaluate the Department of Defense.

Shawn Skelly holds a master's degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. She worked for 20 years in the U.S. Navy, where she held the position of naval flight officer and retired as commander. She worked in the military conflicts conducted by the United States in the Middle East, such as the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War. Between 2013 and 2016, she held the positions of executive secretary and special assistant in the Department of Defense, being responsible for meeting urgent requests from U.S. military personnel acting in military interventions conducted by the Obama administration.

Shawn Skelly's appointment is a prime example of how identity causes are co-opted by U.S. liberals to interdict criticism and to clothe the most perverse aspects of imperialism with an air of progressiveness. There is certainly no shortage of trans professionals who excel in areas such as culture, education, health, and human rights who could coordinate positive initiatives for integration and emancipation. But the priority is to link identity politics and progressiveness to the idea of being able to send transsexuals to kill and die for the interests of the US plutocracy. It is an extremely effective way to block discussion of imperialism and interventionism and demobilize sectors of the liberal left and the identity movements, which prefer to turn a blind eye or even defend the agenda of interventionism if it is covered by the false varnish of identity politics.

Our community is growing larger and larger. Two weeks ago, we had finally passed the 1,000 users mark after years, and right now we are already at almost 2,000 users. Possible causes for this are the very recent US government censorship of Reddit. In the course of 3 weeks, Reddit banned the left-leaning r/chapotraphouse, r/MoreTankieChapo, and left the subsequent ideological refugees in r/MoreMoreTankieChapo also homeless.

Good news, we exist, and our community welcomes all revolutionaries, especially marxist-leninists. In this website, we uphold the past and current* socialist experences. We love hate speech, we are only against bourgeois ideology and reactionary language**.

We have been entering Reddit, albeit slowly, but we're still trying to make our way to be known before the r/communism and r/communism101 are banned and loses all its subscribers and consequently awareness of our space. We shouldn't worry about it, though, we can make an organized effort to bring comrades here later, also.

The thing is, we need a name, comrades. Most of the time I've seen the comrades share our community around was either saying "the communist Lemmy instance", the "Communist Lemmy", "communism.lemmy", or something along those lines. These are not easy to remember.

Comrade @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml suggested that we could do a public poll to decide a name, to be approved by both users and administrators.

Let's keep in mind the most voted one shouldn't necessarily be the chosen one, but would certainly influence admin decision. The reason for this is that while the majority may vote for simple and catchy names (which is good), it may actually be also useful to check for distinctive names that could make our community appear on top on search engines, for example.

What are you waiting for? Get going, comrade. We will need a name to begin our propaganda effort.

*Current socialist experiences include China, Cuba, Vietnam and People's Korea. \ **Reactionary language means any discrimination against historically oppressed peoples, like women, trans folk, non-white folk, etc. Racism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, and LGBT discrimination should not be allowed, not even ironically.

I created a matrix room for anybody on Lemmy to join. The main goal of this chat is to bring people together and use the internet for organizing.

Organizing locally is still the best way to get things done and this or any chat rooms over the internet should be considered complimentary because the material conditions and strategical peculiarities vary according to the nation you're in.

Tasks in mind:

• Bring comrades from other social media to communist Lemmy
• Promote periodic discussions, quality posts on Lemmy
• Do a collective research or essays on chosen subjects, translate them, and share through private social media.
• Produce propaganda to share on private social media.

Remember, our strength depends entirely on our historical and personal commitment to organization. We alone cannot do much, but together we'll have enough forces to make a difference.