This comment chain began with:

If they won’t even accept Cuba is socialist then to these people there is literally no socialism anywhere in the world.

And everything I’ve said so far has been under the assumption that we were still talking about the same thing i.e. you defending supposed “Marxists” who believe that every real world example of socialism is either completely impotent or collapses into revisionism. Including Cuba. If that’s not what you’re defending, then you aren’t even having the same conversation as the rest of us in this comment chain. Do you sort by /Chat and not pay attention to parents?

This isn’t a project failing. This is every single project that has ever been attempted failing over and over again for 150 years. If we’re scientists, then we should learn from repeated test results and conclude that Marxism is incorrect theory. Why be a Marxist?

There are two scientific ways to approach a historical analysis of Marxism. Either AES countries are examples of Marxism working in practice, or Marxism hasn’t worked in practice and there’s no reason to be a Marxist. There isn’t some third option where you refuse to give up on a failure ideology that never works, simply because you have faith. That’s not scientific, that’s religious.

Which brings us back to the question: why be a Marxist? If this failure ideology collapses every time it is tried, it’s pointless. Lenin tried, and failed. Mao tried, and failed. Everyone that has ever tried has failed. Eventually, it doesn’t make sense to keep trying. This isn’t about feeling bad and crying because we lost faith in our religion, as good scientists we should be doing something different.

“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Some people are fine with pointless philosophizing and not actually changing the world, but that’s not scientific, and that’s not Marxist. If Marxism can’t actually build any real socialist projects, if every revolution ends in failure and there’s literally no socialism anywhere in the world, then it’s pointless. If we analyze past and present socialist projects and conclude they are all failures, then scientifically, why be a Marxist? When every experiment ends in failure a good scientist must conclude that Marxism demonstrably doesn’t work and is an incorrect theory.

Some people are fine with being dogmatic martyrs for ideology, but again: that’s not scientific, and that’s not Marxist.

You’re the one doing revisionism, completely overlooking the part of accelerationism where they seek to accelerate development.

Accelerationists believe that capitalism is a progressive self-revolutionizing force that is rapidly creating the conditions for its own obsolescence, and so we just need to develop capitalism more and more until it revolutionizes itself away. It views free trade as a system that breaks down nationalities, automation as a system that breaks down class antagonisms, and technological singularity as the ultimate end point of capitalism where profit and private property cease to exist. We enter an age of post-scarcity and transhumanism and algorithmic government i.e. the end of history. Capitalism collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

This is a really bad idea because unchecked capitalist development is creating conditions for human extinction. Maybe if there weren’t ecological limits the accelerationists would be right in the long-run, but in the real world we’re running into the limits to growth and capitalist development has put us on the path towards the collapse of civilization rather than merely the collapse of capitalism.

This is all in contrast to revolutionary defeatism, which predates accelerationism by almost 100 years. It is the recognition that the workers do not benefit from capitalist wars, that instead, workers should seek the defeat of their own capitalist governments. If the empire loses, the world wins. There’s no interest in developing the empire further to create the conditions for its collapse, there’s only interest in seeing it collapse. That’s like saying anyone who wants to end capitalism is an accelerationist. It’s nonsense.

Well at this point boomers are really old, which means the class character of their generational cohort is skewed heavily towards wealth. The boomers that weren’t horrible cretins are mostly dead by now, the survivors are mostly people with money and property.

In that sense, generational politics kind of exists.

It was obviously sarcasm.

You’re just illiterate.

Good. That’s exactly what they deserve.

Mali severed diplomatic ties after Ukraine provided intelligence to rebels, who then went on to kill dozens of Mali soldiers.

You didn’t even look it up, because you don’t care what happens to Africans.

Accelerationism would mean accelerating the growth of the empire to bring about its collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, so, voting for the best imperial managers to keep growing the empire. That means voting for Democrats, they’re better imperial governors. They’re better at doing war crimes and getting away with it.

What I want is for the empire to lose. That’s not accelerationism. That’s revolutionary defeatism.

I’d actually include xianxia and wuxia fandom in this too, Chinese pop culture is starting to penetrate the West.

Maybe we’ll see a cultivation blockbuster trilogy in the next decade.

None of our opinions mean anything, we’re both posting in an obscure underwater basket weaving forum, get over yourself. 🙄

China’s improving material conditions will do the heavy lifting for us. Life in the West will continue to get worse, life in China will continue to get better, and eventually people will shift their positions to align with that new material reality. Ironically, politically disengaged Westoids might be easier to convince than Western “”“socialists”“” because they’re not as ideological.

What goes around, comes around.

Liberals believe elections should have nothing to do with political motivations.

I don’t think you know what that means.

Accelerationism would mean voting for Harris because she’d be a better manager of the empire.

There was already an economic war on Iran, which was already killing people and destabilizing their government. Harris would have waited a few more years for the economic war to collapse Iran’s government and turn it into a situation similar to Syria, and only then would have started bombing. By then, Iran might not have been able to exert control over traffic through Hormuz.

Harris would have been a better manager of the empire. Instead, we got Trump, who is on track to lose to Iran.

Well. It was on the ballot. It just wasn’t likely to win because it wasn’t an issue considered important by the two major parties. You could have voted PSL or Green or one of the other parties, as over three million people did in the last election.

Besides, by that logic, Israeli aggression wasn’t on the ballot either! Do you think Harris would have stopped Israel from starting war with Iran? The war with Iran was already beginning in 2024 before Trump even got into office. Maybe it would have taken a different form, maybe it wouldn’t have happened this year, but Israel was going to attack Iran and the US was going to follow.

Sorry, I tried.

Wow it’s already been 2 years. 👵

Oh that’s really cool. I imagine an e-ink phone is way less distracting too - it’s slower and less bright/colorful.

How is it there’s a plant-based brand that’s literally called Morningstar, and it isn’t the subject of a million Christian nationalist conspiracy theories about their food being made from children or the company being run by Satanists or something?