I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
Marxism and Christianity only share the fact that they contain frameworks for analyzing material reality(Marxism through Materialism and Christianity through representing reality as though it is divine, and thus explainable via the divine), and this post seems to not be willing to honestly engage with Marxism as a concept.
Marxists do not oppose incremental change. Marxists believe that minor concessions under Capitalism are insufficient to actually fix the underlying problems, and this point of view is built on a thorough understanding of the Marxist critique of Capitalism.
Marxists do not oppose reform, they just believe it is impossible to do successfully without sliding backward, because the state is built in a manner that supports Capitalism and resists change.
Marxism is an economic critique of Capitalism, a philosophical framework, and a call to action. It is a complete set of tools to look at the world, analyze it, and how to fix it. In this manner, it can be superficially compared to Christianity, but only on the surface.
That’s really it.
So Marxists are not opposed to incremental change, except they actually are. And Marxists are not opposed to reform except they consider it impossible.
What in the Ministry of Truth?
Marxists are not opposed to incremental change. They do not believe incremental change is a bad thing, and do not move against it. Incremental change is a nice-to-have, when revolutionary change is seen as necessary.
Marxists are not opposed to reform. If it is shown to be legitimately possible to reform a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, ie a Capitalist State, into a Socialist one, Marxists would be first in line. However, history has shown this to be extraordinarily difficult to outright impossible, akin to politely asking a bear to stop mauling you, so Marxists seek other methods. Marxists are Materialists, not Idealists.
Hope that helps!
Successful reform of capitalist countries to socialist: 3 - 10 ish depending on how you define it
Successful communist revolutions: ZERO
Curious how Marxists have not adjusted their beliefs when confronted with these statistics
Wrong, actually.
Successful reform of Capitalist countries to Socialist: 0.
Successful Communist Revolutions: 5-10.
Curious how Cryophilia thinks they are making coherent points when they just redefine established terms until it looks like they have a point.
Where are these 5-10 nations?
The USSR disbanded, same with Anarchist Catalonia and Burkina Faso, but China, Cuba, Chiapas, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea are all examples of states that all managed to establish a Socialist government via revolutionary means. I don’t consider the Paris Commune to be successful either, it was extremely short lived.
The overall success of these states is definitely arguable, obviously, but it is inarguable that they managed to establish a Socialist state via revolution.
It’s also worth mentioning that I am not endorsing these countries, just pointing out some examples of revolutions successfully changing economic systems.
I am sorry but China and North Korea are not socialist states. You are going to have to try harder than that.
That’s what the 5-10 bit was for, if you want to play the purity game and claim China and North Korea aren’t pure Socialism, that’s fine. There are still other examples, which I already gave.
Point me to socialist country that got there through reform.
In case you try to claim these the UK/Sweden/Norway is not a socialist country. They are hybrid economies. Hybrid economies are not socialist.
No true Scotsman