this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations

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The purpose of this community is sort of a "work out your frustrations by letting it all out" where different leftist tendencies can vent their frustrations with one another and more assertively and directly challenge one another. Hostility is allowed, but any racist, fascist, or reactionary crap wont be tolerated, nor will explicit threats.

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I'm astonished at how sensitive the mods must be over there.

Apparently you're allowed to say whatever baseless slander you like about the eeeeevil tankies but the minute someone says "Hold up a sec, you claim to be anti-authoritarian and yet you support authoritarianism either explicitly or implicitly?" and they have to shut it down immediately.

Regardless, I think I made a pretty solid counterargument to the typical complaint about communism being authoritarian.

Mfers skim read the Wikipedia entry on Hannah Arendt and start thinking they're justified in slinging accusations about "muh authoritarianism" smh.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never, ever trust that anything you put on another fed that isn't like... Hexbear, will be allowed to stay. Some of these mfs real redditor-like; and that's not praise

[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They agree with fascists on every.... valuable.... part of their worldview.

stalin-gun-1stalin-gun-2 WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN VALUABLE PART OF A FASCIST'S WORLDVIEW??

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

‘Valuable’ as in important; crucial to fascism, such as respect for the profit motive. To see one fascist describe it:

Hitler […] also recognized the importance of the profit motive. Deprived of the prospect of having his efforts rewarded, the person of ability often refrains from running risks. The economic failure of Communism has demonstrated this. In the absence of personal incentives and the opportunity for real individual initiative, the Soviet “command economy” lagged in all but a few fields, its industry years behind its competitors.

State monopoly tolls the death of all initiative, and hence of all progress.

For all men selflessly to pool their wealth might be marvelous, but it is also contrary to human nature. Nearly every man desires that his labor shall improve his own condition and that of his family, and feels that his brain, creative imagination, and persistence well deserve their reward.

Léon Degrelle, 1992

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

its industry years behind its competitors

Is he talking about before of after Hitler shat his pants realizing Soviet's industry far outmatched Germany's?

human nature

Ah, nothing beats the classics 🍷

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's funny isn't it, now that we know how it all turned out. Tragic af. I doubt it could've been avoided even if the Nazis knew that communist organisation is/was superior. As we're seeing again today, the yanks are oblivious to the power of using dialectical materialism to organise over a billion people.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

even if the Nazis knew that communist organisation is/was superior

If they did, they wouldn't be Nazis. There's a good reason the likes of Krupp supported Hitler and NSDAP, and it wasn't just their shared hatred of minorities

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

“The profit motive is the only reason people do stuff”

Atlas Shrugged hogwash

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still see it on there. But I barely understand how this site works to be honest. Am dum millenial here

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

killing enough people so there's enough to go around

You see stupid tankie, material wealth is just a big limited pile of stuff that is just there to take, so less people = more for everyone, easy! 🤡

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Libs:

"Chiner killed a bunch of its own people and that's how they lifted themselves out of extreme poverty!!"

Also libs:

"Chiner is sitting on a demographic timebomb [which is false, btw] which will cause their population to crash and it will tank their economy!!"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Is the demographic timebomb thing not true? Isn't it happening to S Korea and Japan RN? China is promising but it's not immune from hard expectations like those two nations and crushing city labor, how will China avoid the demographic timebomb from a Marxist perspective?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

"Demographic timebomb" is 90% a capitalist dogwhistle to rob people out of retirement benefits and heap some more austerity like in France for example. In centrally planned socialist economy it won't be hard, and even the consequences of one child policy will be very possible to mitigate. Hell even capitalist countries don't collapse because of that, like Japan constantly whines about "demographic crisis" for 2 generations at this point.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There are real problems that need to be dealt with, no? For example in G7 countries the ratio of older to younger people means there will be a larger need for health care professionals and that would take up a larger proportion of the workforce away from say, working on infrastructure.

If I'm understanding you correctly, that's not really a meaningful problem (it is for capitalists as that decreases certain types of growth and profit) or at least one that can't be readily solved through central planning?

Also also, is it related to pitting the supposed interests of different age groups against one another rather than cooperatively solving issues that arise?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Sounds like we should look in and see what Cuba is up to, I’m sure it’s nothing but un-freedom and suffering and illness

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, there are some, that's why i said it was 90% capitalist dogwhistle, not 100%, but again this problem is not fundamental, and it's mostly related to redistribution - something that capitalism can do, but is usually unwilling, and even if, only by showering the capitalists with tax money which could resolve the problem easier, faster and better if it was being used straight up for the retirement pensions and public works. And that's for the capitalism, planned economy can plan this even better with big picture in mind.

If I’m understanding you correctly, that’s not really a meaningful problem (it is for capitalists as that decreases certain types of growth and profit) or at least one that can’t be readily solved through central planning?

Yeah.

Also also, is it related to pitting the supposed interests of different age groups against one another rather than cooperatively solving issues that arise?

That too, we currently can see it in the real time, young people are targeted with anti-retirement propaganda (and often even straight up ageist one), while older ones are told the young ones are to blame because they are "lazy and entitled" for not wanting to work for peanuts and have many kids.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the response and clarification!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Fuck yeah, thanks for explaining

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The demographic timebomb is a threat to the profitability of capitalism, which is predicated on infinite growth. Fewer people means less labor to exploit and less consumers for products, both of which are devastating to the growth of profit.

A socialist society doesn't much care about profit or growth, so long as the working population can produce enough goods for everyone. China is one of the biggest producers and consumers of industrial automation and robotics, so its entirely possible that by the time the population starts shrinking overall or the working population ages into retirement the productivity of the remaining working population will be more than enough to sustain everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Aside from how other people have responded to this, which is all really solid stuff, the "demographic timebomb" looks like... China having a median population age almost identical to that of Europe's by 2050.

How terrifying!

(Also note that the average age of Europe is skewed by certain countries having significantly younger or older populations, so what this will look like in 2050 for individual countries in Europe will be of more interest demographics-wise.)

I wonder if the libs are equally concerned about the "European demographic timebomb"? Maybe Gordon Chang can pivot and start writing about the coming collapse of Europe when his immanent-collapse-of-China grift collapses?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh that's really weird, it's not showing up for me when I go into that thread? (Hence why I had to paste a screenshot of my comment and edit it into the image.)

Looks like you're in a dum millenial contest but your opponent is me 💀

Edit: If I type the hyperlink in your screenshot into my browser, I can access the comment - but it looks like it's only visible from the lemmygrad end or something? I wonder if federation works bi-directionally and one side has defederated but lemmygrad hasn't or something like that? Weird.

Edit 2: Damn, this gets weirder. Different instances show different comments — some comments are consistently shown across instances, some comments only appear on certain instances, and the up/downvote counts are wildly different across the instances too. One comment will be at -5 on one instance and yet it will be at +7 on another.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does it say, 'removed by mod' on lemmy.ml?

If not, it may be a bug or maybe you blocked the user? Blocking a user hides all comments that branch off from that user's comments.

If it was removed by a mod, it could be due to the perceived call for violence. Depending on the mods location, that kind of thing can result in unwanted attention.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

This is where it gets weird.

I'm using Connect on android and my instance is Lemmygrad.ml (which is what the app says I'm connecting via when I go to the thread) but when I copy-paste a permalink to the top-level comment my browser directs me to an instance that is discuss.tchncs.de (?) and my comment isn't shown nor is there a message stating that it's been removed.

When I access the comment thread via my browser and manually navigating to it from lemmy.ml, I can see my comment in the thread (plus a lot more comments) and the vote counts for comments that span both of these instances are significantly different. The same goes for navigating to lemmygrad.ml.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That instance has deferated from us so you won't see your comment when viewing from rheir instance.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Okay. If discuss.tchncs.de has defederated from Lemmygrad, viewing the thread on their instance won't show any Lemmygrad responses. The fact that you get sent to the tchncs.de page is strange. The permalink (the rainbow web button) usually(?) takes you to the instance on which the post/comment was made. Here, that should be lemmy.ml. I could understand if the OP was using a tchncs.de account, but they're posting from kbin.social. I would have thought that the permalink would take you to the post on lemmy.ml but visible on kbin.social if it didn't take you directly to lemmy.ml.

Is Connect a browser or a lemmy app? If it's an app created by a tchncs.de user, maybe the default permalink is through that instance?

Either way, it doesn't look like it's been removed. It looks like you're being redirected to an instance that defederated from LG. If tchncs.de is federated with LG, that's even stranger and I'm all out of ideas.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah I've noticed similar weird things too. Apparently federation is still in it's infancy and we're not very knowledgeable either I guess

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

the comment is still there, and it doesn't seem like it was ever removed based on the modlog

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

fuckin hate libs

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

Regardless, I think I made a pretty solid counterargument to the typical complaint about communism being authoritarian.

Nah, not solid, a great post 🥰

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

I got banned for saying "fuck cops" so

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out comes "authoritarians" again, like that word means anything.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Proud authoritarian, here. I think the proletariat should have political and economic authority over the bourgeoisie.

Might as well be a redfash Nazi I guess.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

and yet people claim the lemmy.ml mods are "based" lol okay

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What sub was that in? Mayeb it was removed by the mdos.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Authoritarian" is their favourite word. Completely, utterly meaningless. But everyone "knows it when they see it" so it makes for the perfect shibboleth to separate them from those evil authoritarian tankies.

The only good thing about the word is if someone tries to use it in an argument unironically, I know they have 0 idea of what they are talking about. A shame that is something people in the west seem to be proud of that though.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

But Nazi literally stands for National Socialist???? Take that Tankies!

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