The book Socialism Betrayed is an excellent book if you want to understand the reasons for the collapse of the USSR (Chernobyl was not a major factor, but I wouldn’t say it had zero impact). Or, if you would prefer to read a book not written by Marxists, Revolution From Above would fit that and IIRC the authors of the later largely come to the same conclusions as the former.
Much like the collapse of the Roman Empire, it’s a very complex topic that isn’t easily boiled down into easy answers.
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I thought this was a good interview Hasan did with a Cuban doctor (YouTube link). They specifically get into the allegations that these doctors are “exploited”.
When my dad was a kid, my grandparents did absolutely nothing for Christmas - no decorations, no tree, etc - until Christmas Eve, then they went all out. Then they’d pack it all up the day after Christmas. I feel like if the Christmas “season” was only a few days, I’d hate it much less.
I genuinely hate the aesthetics of it. I can’t stand Christmas music or Christmas movies (the music especially is just so bad). The “Christmas episodes” TV shows run are so incredibly corny. I find the decorations to be tacky and ugly. I feel like I’m suffocated by so much cheap plastic crap that will be thrown away after the holidays.
I suppose that all wouldn’t be so bad if the “Christmas season” didn’t stretch out for so long. It’s now well underway before Thanksgiving, and I’m being conservative with that. That means at least 10% of the year - so 10% of my life, too - is spent under the Christmas regime.
But on a deeper level, I think it points to a real sickness in society. Capitalism has so thoroughly destroyed our real social connections to each other. It breaks those human bonds and creates atomized individuals who are only supposed to care about themselves. But that’s not who we are as a species - we are social creatures who have a couple hundred thousand years of cooperation with each other in order to survive.
On some level, capital “knows” ripping us away from our social being is not only unnatural, but atomizing us so thoroughly harms social reproduction. Christmas has become a way of resolving this problem. BUT, it’s capitalism… so the solution can’t be something like “give workers the month of December off so people can spend real quality time with each other”.
So capitalism has created this artificial holiday structure where “family”, “giving back”, and “what really matters” is centered, but it’s all done in the most superficial way possible. It’s all kabuki. Capital creates an imitation of social connection and still manages to make it about accumulating more capital. Spend money on presents. Don’t like the commercialism around presents? That’s ok, spend money on airfare or gas to see your family. Use up your meager PTO at the end of the year when it’s slow and costs your boss less. But I think getting workers to spend money is still just the secondary objective of Christmas. It’s much more about getting people to forget how deeply separated we are from each other. To pretend for at least 10% of the year that everything is normal, capitalism is normal and being disconnected from each other is normal so long as you watch a couple movies once a year that are supposed to remind you that “what really matters is family” - the feeling though, not the reality.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
(Copying what I said on the lemmy.ml cross post because I’ve been thinking about this for a while and want to get it out).
I genuinely hate the aesthetics of it. I can’t stand Christmas music or Christmas movies. The “Christmas episodes” TV shows run are so incredibly corny. I find the decorations to be tacky and ugly. I feel like I’m suffocated by so much cheap plastic crap that will be thrown away after the holidays.
I suppose that all wouldn’t be so bad if the “Christmas season” didn’t stretch out for so long. It’s now well underway before Thanksgiving, and I’m being conservative with that. That means at least 10% of the year - so 10% of my life, too - is spent under the Christmas regime.
But on a deeper level, I think it points to a real sickness in society. Capitalism has so thoroughly destroyed our real social connections to each other. It breaks those human bonds and creates atomized individuals who are only supposed to care about themselves. But that’s not who we are as a species - we are social creatures who have a couple hundred thousand years of cooperation with each other in order to survive.
On some level, capital “knows” ripping us away from our social being is not only unnatural, but atomizing us so thoroughly harms social reproduction. Christmas has become a way of resolving this problem. BUT, it’s capitalism… so the solution can’t be something like “give workers the month of December off so people can spend real quality time with each other”.
So capitalism has created this artificial holiday structure where “family”, “giving back”, and “what really matters” is centered, but it’s all done in the most superficial way possible. It’s all kabuki. Capital creates an imitation of social connection and still manages to make it about accumulating more capital. Spend money on presents. Don’t like the commercialism around presents? That’s ok, spend money on airfare or gas to see your family. Use up your meager PTO at the end of the year when it’s slow and costs your boss less. But I think getting workers to spend money is still just the secondary objective of Christmas. It’s much more about getting people to forget how deeply separated we are from each other. To pretend for at least 10% of the year that everything is normal, capitalism is normal and being disconnected from each other is normal so long as you watch a couple movies once a year that are supposed to remind you that “what really matters is family” - the feeling though, not the reality.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
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As a Christian, my worldview is inherently superior and correct in all instances
I know you are being facetious but there is something called presuppositionalism that is gaining steam in the evangelical / Christian nationalist community right now. For most Christians, they try and “prove” their faith through apologetics or their own (incorrect) interpretations of science and history. Some will skip that and say that whether or not Christianity is true is irrelevant, because there’s a “judeo-christian” foundation to our society, so our government should reflect that.
Presuppositionalism just says “assume Christianity is true”. Presuppositionalist feel no need to prove Christianity is true or even that governance should be democratic. To them, Christianity’s truth is a given that isn’t up for discussion, so the discussion starts around how to make laws that reflect Christianity i.e. a theocracy.
Take abortion for example. To a presuppositionalist Christian, they don’t have to provide any sort of secular justification as to why it should be outlawed. It is against God’s will, and our God is the true god, so it should be outlawed. If people vote to legalize it, then they shouldn’t be allowed to vote on it.
Presuppositionalism is also behind all those theobro fascists shouting “Christ is King!” That is a very specific, presuppositionalist statement. Christ is King over the earth to them; it is an assertion they are making and they don’t care about backing that up; they only care about implementing their King’s will on “His” earth.
Communism killed 100 million billion trillion people.
Also that ethnostates are bad.
Yes, definitely. I do think there’s something to in-person meeting but on Zoom or even just in a discussion group on something like Discord is great too.
What an odd thing to say….
We are almost 3 years away from the election. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone, republican or democrat, say they endorse a candidate other than her.
are there any methods on studying socialist/communist theory that makes it easy and fun?
If you’re able to find an IRL Marxist / socialist reading group, those are pretty great.
For Capital specifically, I think working though companion pieces helps. I like the podcast Reading Capital with Comrades. Michael Heinrich’s companion book is good, though it only covers the first 7 chapters (the most important part).
I will also take this moment to plug another book: Stasi State or Socialist Paradise by Bruni de la Motte. The author was born and raised in the GDR and speaks from firsthand experience. It’s a very comprehensive primer on East Germany and a great resource for someone who want to learn more about it.
I think this is something that’s not being considered enough. This really struck me a few months ago when Trump was talking about Portland being some lawless, smoldering ruin when everything there was just fine (except for the ICE presence ofc). Obviously Trump lies about everything but the way he talked about Portland was odd, like he really believed it. Also just a weird thing to lie about, when it’s so obviously not only not true but incredibly not true.
I think the people around Trump were feeding him false info about Portland. Probably telling him things like “sir Portland is literally burning to the ground and crime is out of control”. I honestly think they are probably feeding him a steady diet of AI slop videos and telling him it’s what’s actually happening in the world.
GM, hands down. Ford is also very good. I would personally feel very safe in either one. I am hoping to buy an Equinox soon.
They both just have an entirely different philosophy from Tesla. Tesla, being from Musk, has these ideas of the car (trying) to be this cool piece of tech that does everything for you, but without putting in the real work to make that happen. Musk wants to take the human out of driving entirely and we’re just not there yet.
For GM and Ford (and really, everyone who isn’t Tesla), they see self-driving more as a way to assist you in driving on the highways, not some replacement. If you take your eyes for the road for more than a couple seconds it starts to warn you. Then it takes increasing measures to get to you to pay attention, eventually it will just pull itself over the to shoulder.
BYD doesn’t have that in the US at least (I don’t know about China) because you need to to have the US highways all mapped out in detail and keep it updated.
As someone who has followed the self-driving car news for nearly a decade, I can say that Tesla’s is dogshit. Even going back to 2017/18, people who understand these systems were saying that while Tesla was first out the gate, their system had inherent, unresolvable issues and they would eventually be surpassed by the legacy manufacturers who were taking a slower but more measured and thought-out approach to self-driving, with systems that would surpass Tesla in short order.
Fast forward to today. Ford and GM both have self-driving systems for highways that are truly remarkable. GM’s Super Cruise has 700 million miles recorded and no reported accidents, which is truly incredible. Now that we have such safe and reliable systems, Tesla has no business selling cars with Autopilot, IMO it should be banned.
Honestly, I am hoping it really is just him whine bragging like he always does. He seems bothered that Americans don’t realize how “great” the economy is, so maybe he’s gonna try and talk about that. Anything that isn’t a declaration of war against Venezuela (or anyone else for that matter) I will be relieved by.
Slower growth was a problem from circa 1975 to 1985. By the mid-80s, the Soviet economy had problems but none of them were catastrophic (and tbf, consider how various capitalist economies right now have very serious issues but those economies are not collapsing). That was the view of Western intelligence in the mid 80s btw - that there were problems but that everything was more or less fine.
A former unnamed CIA director once told historian Eric Hobsbawm that had Andropov lived another 15 years, the USSR would still be around today. I do think as late as the Andropov era, the leadership in the USSR had a good understanding of their problems and were starting to put the country on a better path. Then Andropov died and a lot of the changes made by Gorbachev and the leaders around him really threw a bunch of spanners into the works.