I just got done listening to ep 6 “wtf is a socialism?” 1/3 of the way through ep 7 “Ls of former socialism”

Some things I’ve learned so far: Democratic Socialism is like only doing a cancer treatment halfway - the cancer will always come back because capitalists will always find ways to roll back the progress made for the workers/people. That’s because it’s the way capitalism is built (squeezing the most money out of all resources, workers included) and the concessions they give are just to stem the progression towards revolution.

If anyone questions the violence of a revolution, remind them that there is inherent systemic violence in a capitalist state. Ex: homeless population, the way poc and poor people are treated, and police aggression at protests, just to name a few.

Questions: Socialism is Communism, just an earlier stage?

Other thoughts: I was humbled hearing Hakim’s childhood knowing my country did that to him.

I liked at the end of ep 6 where they talk about how you don’t have to be a martyr, just contribute to communist causes in whatever way you can. Maybe because I’m just really delving into this, but sometimes I’m like “I don’t think I can start a revolution, but it feels like I have to.” Maybe that’s normal idk

  • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    in terms of developmental stages as laid out by marx, socialism is the lower stage of communism, after a revolution has happened and the workers control the means of production, during the class-dictatorship of the proletariat, before the state has withered away. During this phrase there are necessarily some trappings of the old society.

    But that’s the developmental context of the word socialist. The word socialist has many other contexts, some good, some bad. The nazis called themselves “national socialists” but Marxist-Leninists and Democratic socialists don’t consider them such, viewing them as fascism masquerading as socialism (something fascism is incidentally very good at, since it capitalizes on the fury of downwardly mobile petit-bourgeois by channeling their anger against scapegoats instead of capitalism, i.e. channeling their potentially revolutionary energy into counter-revolutionary energy.)

    The original sense of the word “socialist” which predates Marx and Engels was Utopian Socialism, which was born out of the European enlightenment. It was an idealist, non-materialist tradition of viewing that a vaguely defined Socialism (the end of class exploitation) would come about purely out of the development of technology, and/or the altruism of the capitalist, and/or people simply convincing others that it was the right system through civil debate. This utopian socialism came from people like Owen (a capitalist who tried to be nicer to his workers than other capitalists) and Fourier, but further developed through people like Lassalle in the Gotha programme, which Marx criticized. Marx and Engels took Utopian Socialism and made it “scientific” (in the 19th century sense of the word) by arming it with the economic critique of capital, synthesizing it with historical materialism, and emphasizing the need for the proletariat to become class conscious, militant, and organized, and banishing the illusions that socialism would simply come about peacefully through reasoned debate or reformist transition.

    • Pandantic [they/them]OP
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      1 year ago

      (something fascism is incidentally very good at, since it capitalizes on the fury of downwardly mobile petit-bourgeois by channeling their anger against scapegoats instead of capitalism, i.e. channeling their potentially revolutionary energy into counter-revolutionary energy.)

      Sounds pretty much like the current state of the far right here in the US.

      Thank you, this was very helpful.

      • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Sounds pretty much like the current state of the far right here in the US.

        Thank you, this was very helpful.

        You’re welcome. Not just the US right, but elsewhere as well. You tons of fascist movements like this. You have Hindutva in India, Rusich in Russia, Banderites in Ukraine, Bolsonaroists in Brazil, Taliban in Afghanistan, Dutertists in the Philippines, etc. etc. etc. I won’t make an exhaustive list of fascist movements or fascist-lite movements in every country. You get my point. Umberto Eco has a list of warning signs of fascism. Engels also, in my opinion, predicted the whole thing of fascism masquerading as Socialism in “Principles of Communism” way back in the 1840s, before fascism was ever a thing:

        Engels is talking about restoring feudalism and patriarchy here, which isn’t quite what fascists want, but they do “conclude from the evils of existing society” that the past must be restored through purifying violence, whether or not that is actually possible or practical.