This is where a book club or theory discussion group would be very helpful. Just getting a different perspective on the same text can facilitate understanding, and I find it also helps to connect the theory to examples of historical or current events.

Some good reading and marxist analysis of AI and art on this blog: Article 1, Article 2.

Lemmygrad is a more serious site, I agree, and that’s why I use it instead of hexbear. However, I do still think we can improve. I’ve noticed a decline in the frequency of the type of theory discussion posts that I really liked when first coming to lemmygrad, and an increase in low effort posts, probably coinciding with the reddit exodus last year.

One thing I really like here is that certain matters are considered settled in the lemmygrad community. For example, each time a new “is Russia imperialist?” thread pops up, prople quickly link to past threads with excellent answers or post another version of those answers. I just think we could do that sort of thing - debate, come to a conclusion, adopt it as our stance backed by our arguments and proper sources, and present it when asked - with many more topics which still just “hang in the air” somewhat.

In today’s world, socializing online is not some distinct separate thing, it’s an integral part of daily life for basically everyone.

Yes, the western masses benefit from imperialism, but they are also exploited and it’s the communists job to successfully link the struggles against this exploitation with wider anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World.

It is easier to just sit idly in the status quo, but do you find that to be an acceptable level for communists to be at? We’re not talking about the masses in general here, we’re talking about self-identified communist spaces. I want and expect more from them, and a critique of their current errors is a first step to changing them.

Those communits weren’t somehow “at the forefront of organizing” before, and then decided to start publishing articles. They became the forefront of organizing by publishing these articles, having these debates, and putting the things they figured out into practice. This is a centeal thesis of Lenin’s What is to be Done?

Yes, the current western left is not going to form a vanguard tomorrow, conditions will still need to change. But at some point a vanguard will need to be formed by western communists, no one else can do it for us. These barriers aren’t permanent, and they can be overcome. A part of that includes ideological struggle and debate within communist spaces.

It’s not about individual comms, and there is, of course, a place for being silly. The problem is that the “silliness” “spreads” to the entire site. Look at how people are “arguing” against Roderic’s point on the hexbear thread about it, in what’s supposedly a comm for critiquing bad takes. Most of the comments are random jokes, and most of the actual written out ones are blatant lies, strawman arguments, or similar (some of the really bad ones did get removed as far as I can tell). The same exact tactics anti-communists regularly use to shit on AES states or our ideology in general.

The actual origin of it is western anti-intellectualism which we have to overcome in our organizing. Of course hexbear won’t be a vanguard, but we’re not doing our job as communists if don’t fight against these tendencies.

Doesn’t specifically have to be a lemmy instance, but any online communist space could be a serious place where anti-intellectualism is not tolerated, and where discussions with proper sourcing could lead to actual debate where certain issues are actually settled. Instead, now you have most people just yelling out their opinions with no sources, not bothering to actually engage with the counterpoints being made, and any criticism is taken as a personal attack and kts substance is ignored. No actual debate is being held, and any issues that come up stay unresolved and get brought up again and again with the same results.

What communists in the past did in newspapers and journals, we should be doing online.

What he expects is for the western left to take itself more seriously if it’s to have any success at all, and dodging critique by hiding behind “it’s a site for memes” isn’t doing any good to anyone that actually wants change.

Not “expecting too much” from a link aggregation site is like not expecting too much from any western communists. The masses are online and online spaces are not separated from “real” life like that. No one is saying we can’t have any fun, but at the end of the day If we don’t take ourselves seriously why should anyone else take us seriously.

While I do find lemmygrad a bit better than hexbear in regards to this, it also still has an abundance of low effort meme posts and a lack of serious discussion.

It’s not hypocrisy at all, it’s a consistent position made to advance their imperial interests and white supremacy.

I’ve got basically the same story, except I disovered lemmygrad later on.

You are correct that there are still contradictions. What I meant was that the intractable contradictions specific to idealist thought disappear when we fully embrace materialist dialectics. Like you said, we can easily deal with contradictions, but liberals can’t.

But why do people think there is some sort of contradiction?

There are different definitions of “free will”, but the common one is purely idealist in a sense that our thoughts aren’t guided by our material conditions. It’s also often a religious position that god gave humans a soul and therefore only we have “free will”. If you drill down to the fundamentals of that position you reach a position that says our thoughts don’t (need to) obey the laws of physics and similar universal laws. It’s a position of idealist dualism that states our “mind” is not material and is separated from the material reality we exist in. It very often follows that material reality itself doesn’t really exist, except in our “mind” and then you reach a purely solipsistic position. That’s why there is a contradiction. If the definition you’re using for “free will” is basically just our material will, our thoughts, then the contradiction disappears, but I wouldn’t call that “free will”, as it will cause more confusion due to the definitions.

Here’s Lenin from ‘Materialism and Empirio-criticism’:

The materialist elimination of the “dualism of mind and body” (i.e., materialist monism) consists in the assertion that the mind does not exist independently of the body, that mind is secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the external world. The idealist elimination of the “dualism of mind and body” (i.e., idealist monism) consists in the assertion that mind is not a function of the body, that, consequently, mind is primary, that the “environment” and the “self” exist only in an inseparable connection of one and the same “complexes of elements.” Apart from these two diametrically opposed methods of eliminating “the dualism of mind and body,” there can be no third method, unless it be eclecticism, which is a senseless jumble of materialism and idealism.

Note that the “complexes of elements” used here basically mean our sensations of reality, but it’s a confusing term introduced by empirio-criticists to “smuggle in” idealism into materialist philosophy which is what Lenin is critiquing.

I’m not saying we have free will, or that our choices aren’t materially and socially determined, I’m saying that we still do make those choices, and I’m cautioning against mechanical materialism that turns into pessimistic or nihilistic fatalism. We are parts of the whole, and we are conscious of it. We are active parts of the historical process and our history happens through our actions. Do you dispute Marx’s framing I quoted above?

Just to preface this, I’m not arguing against the critique of the reactionary position in this meme, but speaking more generally and trying to round out understanding of the whole philosophical argument. We clearly know that the idealist free will position is inaccurate, but the mechanical determinist position doesn’t give us the full picture either.

While our lives are shaped by our material conditions, we should always keep dialectical materialism in mind and not fall into a purely mechanical determinism that becomes a pessimistic or nihilistic fatalism.

From Gramsci:

We can observe how the determinist, fatalist mechanist element has been an immediate ideological “aroma” of Marxism, a form of religion and of stimulation (but like a drug necessitated and historically justified by the “subordinate” character of certain social strata).

When one does not have the initiative in the struggle and the struggle itself is ultimately identified with a series of defeats, mechanical determinism becomes a formidable power of moral resistance, of patient and obstinate perseverance. “I am defeated for the moment but the nature of things is on my side over a long period,” etc. Real will is disguised as an act of faith, a sure rationality of history, a primitive and empirical form of impassioned finalism which appears as a substitute for the predestination, providence, etc., of the confessional religions. We must insist on the fact that even in such a case there exists in reality a strong active will, a direct influence on the “nature of things,” but it is certainly in an implicit and veiled form, ashamed of itself, and so the consciousness of it is contradictory, lacks critical unity, etc. But when the “subordinate” becomes the leader and is responsible for the economic activity of the mass, mechanicalism appears at a certain moment as an imminent danger, there occurs a revision of the whole mode of thinking because there has taken place a change in the social mode of being.

We should always keep in mind that, despite the limitations imposed on us by material conditions and history, we are parts of the whole and not just passive entities being directed by outside forces. Our actions and choices, especially collective ones, do matter and are what shapes our societies.

As Marx puts it:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

I’ve started reading it in December, and I’m also really liking it! Way ahead of it’s time compared to mainstream Russian politics and philosophy of the 1860s, and despite not coming into contact with Marx & Engels, Chernyshevsky’s own philosophy is remarkably close to dialectical materialism. It’s a book that should definitely be more widely known, especially among Marxists. A rare piece of great revolutionary literature!

Based on this comment, I think you’d also enjoy Gramsci’s The Revolution against Das Kapital (1917)!

Yes, I also quite like NYE, I don’t know why he chose to write about it in particular, maybe it was worse in his time. However, his point about about bourgeois holidays and commemorations of historical events that have no meaning to the vast majority of today’s people I find to be correct. There are several such “holidays” in my country which the bourgeoisie basically forces, and which the majority of people don’t care about. I guess getting the day off is still nice though.

I agree, it has that vibe a bit, and I have no particular problem with New Year’s, but his general point is definitely correct when it comes to some bourgeois holidays and commemorations of specific historical events that really don’t have any meaning to the vast majority today. I can think of several examples that are “celebrated” in my country.

Your comment here is way too favorable to the tzar. There was plenty of racism against the non-Russian peoples in the empire. Plenty of pogroms and other horrors committed. The “Great Russians” were very chauvinistic in their attitude towards the other nationalities, and were very privileged in what positions they could occupy, for example. An important part of Bolshevik propaganda was fighting against racism and “Great Russian” chauvinism.

From Walter Rodney’s ‘The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World’:

There was a group of people known as Russians, who ruled over Finns, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Mongolians, and Turks, to name just a few. The Russians monopolized political power and sent their governors and settlers into the countries of these other peoples. As in all colonial states, there was a legal distinction between the citizen (Russian) and the colonial subject. The constitution of Tsarist Russia explicitly based discriminatory measures on the racial or national origin or religion of those affected. It was in some ways like the distinctions made under Portuguese and Belgian colonialism, and under South African and Rhodesian apartheid. In other words, Russian colonial rule hardly differed from that of the Western European powers. The British sent warships; the Russians sent the Cossacks. When its colonial subjects revolted, as Georgian workers and peasants had during the 1905 Revolution, the tsar, as we’ve seen, agreed to a few minor reforms but ultimately crushed the uprising and reverted to the old system of colonialism.

Every colonial relationship in history has involved cultural domination, namely the imposition of language, religion and way of life on the subjugated peoples. In the Russian Empire, there were numerous other religions apart from the Russian Orthodox church. None of these were respected. The Catholics in Polish Russia were persecuted. The Jews were hounded wherever they were found, especially in the Ukraine. The Muslims were treated as enemies of Christian civilization. And those elements of the population who believed in their own family gods and traditional religion were the most despised of all, in the same way that European missionaries came to Africa and denounced African religion as devil worship and black magic. […] When faced with a more technologically advanced culture, such groups were victims of genocidal policies.

I’m not sure what point you’re making here. Russian colonialism doesn’t change the importance of settler-colonialism in general and specifically in the US. The USSR was built on a basis of national liberation, and not on the “Great Russian” identity which would be analogous to the US identity here.

Another difference is that the US is entirely settler colonial, a whole country founded solely by settlers, while the Russian empire’s colonies were all still tied to the metropolitan core in western Russia. The US was created through a revolt of the most reactionary settlers that wanted autonomy from Britain. The path forward for North America is strictly decolonial.