“I trust the United States government and so should you!” -Alphane Moon

How’s that relevant? Do you have counter evidence for any of the points I made or are you just desperately trying to prove you’re not a dupe?

I do check out RFE/RL and its sister outlets from time to time. It’s pretty obvious that their agenda aligns 1 for 1 with American foreign policy objectives. To be fair though, the US wouldn’t fund RFE/RL if it didn’t effectively dupe people into believing it was an unbiased source.

I think you mean it’s designed to prevent partisan interference. RFE/RL’s purpose is to support US foreign policy which makes it inherently political. It is undeniably a propaganda outlet and therefore comparable in function to RT. You may trust American propaganda over Russian propaganda but that doesn’t mean the former is not propaganda.

What an absurd response. This is akin to saying RT isn’t Russian state propaganda.

If you have to defend Nazi’s because the SC will give them a more favorable decision then the legal system is already fucked beyond repair.

Well that’s exactly the problem. If people use AI generated images for commercial purposes they may accidentally infringe on someone else’s copyright. Since AI models are a black box there isn’t really a good way to avoid this.

The problem isn’t just publishing though, it’s academia as well. Scientists are incentivized to publish in “prestigious” closed access journals such as Nature. They are led to believe it’s better for their career than publishing in open access journals such as PLOS One. As such, groundbreaking papers often get paywalled. Universities then feel obligated to pay outrageous subscription fees to access them.

This is true for board games as well. The classic example being Monopoly.

They were actually banned from reddit for posting “John Brown was right” memes implying that the radical abolitionist was correct to kill slaveowners. They can be excessive and annoying but they’re certainly not fascists.

I somewhat agree. I do take issue with the notion that the Nordic working class has been bought off though. That makes it sound like they’re conscious advocates of imperialism which I don’t think is generally true. Rather I’d argue that free from hyper exploitation, they can’t develop a meaningful class consciousness. As such, it’s difficult for them to see how their long term interests are put at risk by the capitalist system and how a socialist system could maintain their high standard of living without requiring imperialism.

I doubt the Nordic working class are receiving a meaningful share of the value stolen through imperialist means. Instead, I think the Nordic bourgeoisie are able to accumulate wealth without having to hyper exploit their local populations thanks to imperialism. This ameliorates the local class antagonisms and creates the superficial appearance that a capitalist system can maintain a stable high standard of living for the working class.

Of course, if imperialist exploitation can no longer ameliorate said antagonisms, class conflict will re-erupt in Nordic countries. The danger here is that parts of the working class may be convinced that their standard of living is predicated on imperialist conquest which is the basis for fascism. The good thing is I don’t actually think that’s true. A more reliable way for Nordic workers to maintain their standard of living would be for them to suppress the interests of their local bourgeoisie and transition to an actually socialist model.

Saying the Democrats control the republicans is silly but saying that they use the republicans as a threat to stay in power is indisputable. They literally funded pro trump candidates in republican primaries under the assumption they would be easier to beat in the general election.

Well Marx used the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” to describe how a transition would work in opposition to what he saw as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”.

However, if you’re talking about people like Stalin or Mao, you’ll find self proclaimed communists with a wide variety of opinions on the subject. That’s in part because gets difficult to sort propaganda from the truth of the matter. I also mean both western and communist propaganda. To have a guy going by “Joe Steel” as the leader of your republic of socialist workers councils isn’t exactly a subtle attempt to get buy in from working class people.

Yes, most communists and especially Marxists believe communism must necessarily be fully democratic. It’s certainly true though that there is much debate about what types of democratic structures to use. Although most communists would probably agree that it would require a lot of trial and error to find an ideal system.

That said, communists generally seek to disenfranchise owners of capital from the decision making process up until the point they no longer exist as a class. Therefore in the transition to communism, full democracy may not be realized. This is the given reason for why Marxist Leninist countries generally suppress opposition parties but may allow for political affinity organizations around identity groups that suffer under capitalism, ie worker, youth, women’s organizations, etc.

Communist theory explicitly tries to dispel the idea that political and economic structures are separate things. As such, communists intend to create democratic structures that can distribute resources in place of undemocratic market relationships which empower owners of capital.

Liberalism on the other hand believe that market relationships are inherently democratic. Therefore they may think that any attempt to replace them with a planned economy are undemocratic regardless of how such planning would be decided upon.

You’re right, nobody has ever cared about Marx. No communist revolutionaries anywhere have ever called themselves Marxists. If they did, then their projects must have surely collapsed by now. That’s because Marx was very clear that his political theories were not made to be adaptable or revisable based on new information and changing conditions. No, that would be far too scientific for someone we can agree was clearly an idealist.

This is under the assumption that there is a surplus in society that can satisfy the needs of everyone. Marx’s point is that technological development and industrialization could make this possible. As such, the need to motivate people to work harder is not necessary.

Prior to such a surplus existing, the distribution of goods would be more akin to “From each according to their ability, to each according their contribution”. That ensures people are motivated to maximize their productivity as long as that’s still necessary.

I think what people don’t fully understand is that Marxism is meant to be scientific. That means that there will likely be many imperfect and failed attempts at building a socialist society before one comes along that is stable enough to outlast outside interference from capitalist states.

As such, most people I know who like the USSR are also it’s biggest critiques. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation about the USSR that most discussions about it online are just about delineating truth from propaganda.

Tell me you haven’t read Marx without telling me you haven’t read Marx.

Seriously though, Marx is like the guy you go read if you want a ruthless critique of idealism. I’d go so far as to say it’s the reason his theories became so popular in the first place.