It definitely sounds like the title that the BBC would give if they dared talk about it, to be fair to you.

Ready for taking some heat, but I think engineers are actually a great example of a group of people that learns how systems work but often never think to apply this thinking to social questions. Rationality of engineering is very “apply advanced concept to concrete example and understand how limitations (conditions) and accuracy affect the system.” Which is beautiful and awesome. Just that the people who study it are often freaks who love bombs. And if they’re not, they still just cannot grasp the social question.

This is to say, I must defend engineers to an extent, but reeducation is likely a fine option because they mostly have all the bases to understand.

Ready for taking some heat, but I think engineers are actually a great example of a group of people that learns how systems work but often never think to apply this thinking to social questions. Rationality of engineering is very “apply advanced concept to concrete example and understand how limitations (conditions) and accuracy affect the system.” Which is beautiful and awesome. Just that the people who study it are often freaks who love bombs. And if they’re not, they still just cannot grasp the social question.

This is to say, I must defend engineers to an extent, but reeducation is likely a fine option because they mostly have all the bases to understand.

Although I can understand this argument, I don’t think it’s realistically so. Leninism COULD mean that, but in practice, it’s used only to exclude Marxist Leninists from the group. When someone says Leninist, they are so often referring to it in opposition to “Stalinists” that the umbrella model can’t really work.

When the contradictions grow and sharpen, there is a dialectical process where the positions then become clear afterwards, and one of those positions sincec Stalin has, up until this point, always been the consensus “ML” position. Right now, there is broad agreement on many positions. I think China is the main one currently, where some ML are saying that it’s not going fast enough. But ML still means something clear in this situation, just something with a growing contradiction (like everything else).

ML is a term which Stalin used to describe Lenin’s additions. Of course that’s how Stalin described it, not how Trotsky wanted people to understand it. That contradiction built up very quickly and made a split, and Trotsky dropped the term and so it’s meaning was no longer split. But again, it’s just a label. You are just opposed to ML and then feel like it shouldn’t be called that because you disagree with it but feel like you still agree with Marx and maybe Lenin.

If it sounds like I had an attidude, I had no intention for that. I was actually paraphrasing a famous speech of Parenti.

If you want to be an island with your own terms, I do have a problem with that. It is a ‘we’ because you are using language and it’s meaningless to create your own language for only yourself. You confuse the terms tin relation to each othergenerally as it exists in a social context and language. That’s why there needs to be a good reason that a person takes such an action, and they must be clear in that. I don’t think you did either of those.

In every one of those cases, the “minority” position group eventually named themselves something else. Left-opp called themselves leninists and then trotskyists (if they were that particular flavor or left opp). Left deviationists of late Mao eventually settled at MLM to distinguish between the majority opinion there of ML (ML MZT if you want to get fancy, but not necessary because it isn’t distinguished from ML in any real scenario relevant to today).

Other nations had different approaches but agree that they are currently ML with differences in conditions and therefore differences in concrete tactics.

But regardless, you are changing a word unecessarily. Everyone who knows anything about it knows what one means with ML. What purpose is there to changing the label for something concrete and existing to which it refers? Call it a Camel for all I care, as long as we know we’re referring to the foundation of historical materialism applied to material conditions, it doesn’t matter. So changing it should have some benefit, which I’m not convinced exists.

'“do your own Marxist analysis” then read Marxists? My question is, why would I do that instead of reading and critiquing Marxist analyses? Not everyone has to reinvent every wheel. I can look critically, it’s not like this is my first Marxist analysis. I’m gonna read and put more trust in the PFLP than anyone on Palestine, too.

If there is no good analysis, then of course. That’s the information I hoped someone would give: is there a good analysis somewhere? I’d rather learn and apply than have to create my own position on Sudan. It’s the purpose of parties really. But no party I affiliate with has said anything, and maybe, as you insinuate, there is no good analysis.

I’ll read some on socialist Sudan; I know little outside of what I already mentioned and the writings of the Communist Party of Kenya. You seem to disagree with them, if I’m understanding right.

Would you then like to set me on a correct path? What can I read? Everything I look into seems to be shitty analyses every time, lacking any materialist bases, which gets me nowhere. That frustration was the start of this, though I didn’t communicate it well.

My best bases is reading Nkrumah and Rodney, but I feel like those don’t help too much with the current conflict

Trying to self-crit right now, is the problem that I’m wanting a position to just adopt? Because that’s not my intention, I was hoping to get some links to good Marxist critiques/party positions to learn more.

What’s the point of having a group of like-minded people except to not learn everything on your own? Maybe my question is not worded well, and I will also take your critique seriously, in that I should investigate further.

But why would I begin by nothing? This is my first real moment of thinking I maybe have some time to learn something about it. I’m going to begin with a basis among comrades, look for resources from communists (and look, another comrade gave that knowledge about a communist party, though I will have to search further on my own).

Maybe it does show some “white leftist” attitude that I should critique, but don’t act like there’s not enough that I’ve been trying to learn and apply these past years. I didn’t want a fully digested take, I wanted to know what Marxists has said about the positions.

What is the Marxist position on this war? I know little and feel shitty about that every time I see news. -self crit. This was a shitty question, I shouldn’t have asked. If anyone has good resources, I want to learn more and that’s my point.

I saw a video the other day from the Dutch equivalent of John Oliver where he (a neoliberal who seems progressice because he likes gay people) talked about why the EU needed to become more like the US because the EU was falling behind. But to prove it, he showed a chart with the US, China, and EU GDP per person from the past 40 years. The US started growing more than the EU a few years ago, so he pointed there, ignored the enourmously high rate of growth of china compared to the others, and said “we should copy the US, because theyre growing faster than us”.

I thought that someone would have told him that that was at least dumb. Like leave china off the chart if youre gonna do such dumb propaganda.

Eventually, Taiwanese people will realize that their Chinese compatriots really do care about them and want them to join and become better.

Every time they are exploited by the US, they get the chance to realize that more. Chips will no longer be made there for US purposes in the future, and merging with China will become more attractive again.

China plays the long game and understands that the material incentive bends towards them over time, due to location, political economy, and the US’s inherent necessity to sacrifice at the borders of the “west” for its expropriation. Taiwan is becoming the border instead of benefitting from that border.

So, whole rant to say: Taiwan will choose China. Eventually. The US is in a race against a growing China. and China only has to continue the course and wait for Taiwanese realize it.

Would she?? I haven’t heard a single positive thing about her in the last 2 years from anyone I know in the US. I thought she just fell off?

I fully agree with this in the way that American politics works in reality.

I just think that many democrats genuinely see themselves as the good guys trying to be as far “left” as possible within the bounds of what’s politically reasonable. And when you have those in that mindset, and the people choosing to vote, what I was describing is how that phenomenon internally works.

I’m convinced democrats genuinely believe, wholeheartedly, that politics must be a scale from “left to right” within the bounds of America, and meanwhile the republicans are focussed on topics which they find important.

Democrats seem to think that, regardless of the specific topic, a shift right gets more votes for democrats. Like there is a literal line and you pick up more the further right you go, and this in the most literal way you can imagine

Republicans choose topics that fire people up and take the right wing position on them. It’s a much more successful method of getting support, and maintaining energy. They don’t give a shit about some scale, they just want to do whatever is the option that supports wealth accumulation and imperialism as best as possible. It makes sense, at least, if you’re a ghoul.

Democrats try to run on being trusted to understand the scale on which they sit, republicans run on policies they want to do.

It’s not the only reason they will win, but it’s the one most obvious between the two imperial-fuckers running for president

Just floating this to pulse how other, more knowledgeable hexbears feel, but I would guess Israel is planning to attack Iran further very soon and just in small enough waves to build up to bigger strikes not at once. Easier to not lose support from the west when it’s constantly low-level and rising. It also would make the whole “knowing where air defense is” easier for Israel.

Idk exactly, but I am just not convinced that the Zionist entity is backing down when it’s the classic cornered country, snarling and lashing out.

"Real politics happens well before the elections, and that’s why you will never have good options. You are always choosing betweens presets which have long been decided, and which are not going to solve the climate, queer, women’s, etc issues.

We need to meet that political power before elections, then, to have any effect. But that requires understanding the systems which we are up against, or else we will only be doing the result-less protests of the past 40 years again.

You interested in learning more about the systems?"

This is a discussion which requires the active participation of the lib (them backing down at this point makes it obvious that they are not the target group for us).

It includes the things that are probably most important to a lib willing to listen (replace as needed with “wage problems” etc)

It shows that you’re not asking to do repeats of the unsuccessful movements of westerners in the past years (because libs would latch onto that and be started wrongly or fill up ranks with useless people).

Follow-up convos about how the problems are based in imperialism and capital.

You have two maximums/minimums possible with the given data:

250thousand followers are following 3.3 million content creators each

Or

(3.3million x 250thousand) followers each follow 1 content creator

The last one is more than the total number of English speakers, by far, in the world.

There is no inflection point on this linear regression. So, if neither extreme is sensible, it would be astonishing if some value between was.

If you take the number of English speakers and divide it by 2 (so assuming half of all English speaking people are contributing to this phenomenon), then they are each, on average, following 1200 content creators.

Following 1200 people is hard, even when they are people you know. This is nonsense

I’m not gonna point at every point on the line, but you can just try any amount you think.

There are also, of course, combinations of different amount of followers. Where 1 person makes up for 4 by following 4,600, but the number is so absurdly large that it can really only be accounted for by bots or lying, or a combo

That’s what they said, you can divide the amount of creators followed per person by any number and multiply the people which are doing the following by that same number to get a valid option based on the data given. But at no point is that set of numbers not absurd.

Now taking bots into account is an interesting one, but idk if there’s THAT many bots out there