Ask Lemmygrad

Really in the mood for reading some logic and equations

There's a few courses about Marxism on here, has anyone seen these can attest to the quality?

Hi, There are many people I know and also many comment sections I see online that are just parroting Israeli and US state department propaganda and I feel like it is driving me insane. They seem to repeat arguments using almost every common propaganda technique available and it seems like the majority of people is just falling for it without any critical thinking and this is depressing as hell.

They are portraying fascism as the only solution to all problems and as a justified position but don't even want to name it as such, saying everyone else is the fascist.

I think I am going mad what should I do, I feel like arguing against it is like speaking to a wall most of the time.

Photo: Jerusalem Post

I been thinking lately about this. While Iran, an bourgeois state, can willingly choose not to trade with Israel, the PRC continues to trade with them. Why does this occur? Also, why did China recognize Israel in the first place?

I realize the title is confusing but I did not know what else to say.

A project for one of my semester 7 classes is requiring me to write a reflection paper on two conferences I attended. The problem? I have to have three academic sources to cite in this reflection, and the paper itself has to talk about “what impact the university has” based off these two conferences.

There were many conferences I could’ve chosen but I ended up choosing one that was about “multiculturalism, decolonization, and reconciliation through community” and the other was watching a documentary about Gay rights in Canada and then a panel was held with some of the makers of the movie.

The first conference made mentions about multiculturalism in Canada as a mere cover and not true justice, that they (the panelists, all radicalized women) were also being used in this way. One of the panelists even stated that decolonization requires a dismantling of the colonial system and a move away from capitalism, yet she did not state the alternative. When asked about China the woman, who is Taiwanese, stated that communism was a push against western imperialism but has its own form of imperialism. Another panelists talked about her experience with community gardens and how it connects people to the land and food production, this immediately reminded me of Marx’s alienation. This same panelist talked about how what they were talking about was risky as they could realistically be killed, but this was more in reference to her going back to, I believe, India.

So one of my sources is Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.

The second conference was difficult due to the fact that the bulk of it was a movie and I was unable to write any notes during the film, but it was about a man who was fired from his teaching job for being gay. This prompted him to go to the courts of Canada to fight against discrimination based on sexuality as it was not protected. That is inaccurate, it was protected in all provinces except one. First he went to the provincial court but the case was immediately dismissed with as much violent homophobia as you could think. Then it was brought to the Supreme Court where the case was won and sexuality was made a protected category under the Charter.

Anyway, the main important bits was that the people involved in the case were tacked ruthlessly with severe homophobia and that it took several years. One of the lawyers even invoked the memory of the Holocaust to make the case for protecting sexual minorities. During the panel everyone there agreed that, due to the current political climate, we could realistically see a sequel documentary based around trans rights. The director of the film also talked about the cuts to USAID being an issue for LGBT organization overseas, specifically in Poland.

I am sorry for the long explanations but I felt the need to provide this information as to give you all a better idea of what I am dealing with. My mind went to the “revolutionary academic” and how that is clearly not allowed, and thus I found a source kind of about that by Henry Etzkowitz called “The Second Academic Revolution.” I am mostly going to make my own point about how the revolutions described in that paper are not what I am talking about. I am having a hard time finding any pieces on academic revolutionaries, if thats even possible. I am also struggling with linking my second conference to the main point of the paper which, again, is about impact (whatever that means).

I apologize if this is too much to ask for, even steering me in the right direction would help, no need for actual sources if that is not possible or appropriate. I honestly have no one else to consult with on this.

If its any help I was also approved of using Lenin as a source for any of my projects, so nobody is off the table regardless of how “controversial” they are.

Thank you for any guidance you can give me.

If you're in the majority, you have the votes to be able to accomplish something with reform. It's not like we live in a monarchy, reform is possible under our system.

If reform isn't working to bring about your goals, either your goals aren't popular enough, or they are popular but the people lack the will and organization to vote for them.

If the people lack the will and organization to vote effectively, they certainly lack the will and organization to topple the government.

My area of expertise is managing complex systems and change implementation. I sincerely don't understand how revolution is supposed to work where reform doesn't. No one has been able to give me an answer that doesn't bill down to idealistic hope. How is this revolution supposed to be implemented, and why can't we build the foundation for revolution while simultaneously using the tools we have for reform? Wouldn't widespread support for reform be the best possible proof of consensus?

This is for the purpose of drawing comparisons between them and other MoP changes, like capitalism->socialism. This comparison could be useful for refuting the claim that the decades-long M-L state efforts to transition the MoP are a sign of failed revolution or capitalist corruption (e.g. "it's been [x] years and china hasn't established a worker's utopia yet!")[1].

This post will probably piss people (especially Americans) off. Here, I talk only about supporting socialist revolution in the USA, and do not care much for the morality or treatment of Americans in order to get there.

The US's position as the dominant capitalist power founded on settler colonialism means it will be the one of the last countries in the world to have a communist revolution. For the sake of all people of the world, it is also the most important country to have one in. The US would need to first lose its empire and have all Americans live as semi-feudal cyberpunk slaves before the possibility of communist revolution. Even then, Native Americans will probably still be treated like shit.

Because of this, revolutionary socialist parties have a difficult dilemma in the USA. They must fight for reforms that make life better for Americans in order to build public support, but because reforms are ultimately compromises by ruling capitalists, doing so makes US bourgeois 'democracy' appear responsive to worker demands and delays the future date of revolution.

Are there ways we can support revolution while circumventing this dilemma?

I think socialist-sympathetic petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie can fill such a role by playing the 'bad cop' to socialist parties' 'good cop' role.

In the USA, power as an individual depends almost solely on money. Thus the most effective way for any person to shape US policy is to found a startup to get rich, then use it to bribe politicians to do shit. Of course, this approach is fundamentally not socialist, and anyone who gets rich enough to do so probably won't hold socialist views anymore. For the sake of discussion, let's say one of us socialists founds a company and gets rich.

The more ruthless a capitalist you are, the more successful your business will be.^[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k] Businesses run by 'softies' with morals always lose market share to (and are ultimately bought out by) competing businesses with none. This means there is a natural pressure under capitalism to make life worse. If a socialist starts a business with the goal of providing an alternative to this, they are fighting a losing battle which ensures future irrelevance.

In this US capitalist environment, should socialist-sympathetic businesses accelerate the revolution by instead deliberately making Americans' lives worse? Doing so would produce more profit, which would ensure their continued existence and allow them to expand market share to make even more Americans' lives worse, thereby accelerating the revolution further.

Of course, said businesses should also funnel a portion of profits to covertly supporting socialist parties. Alternatively, they could transfer money to China, thereby supporting the construction of global socialism.

Of course, this approach walks a fine line. Socialist founders must be vigilant that their business strategy ultimately helps revolution rather than just becoming another part of the capitalist system. Founders must also be extremely careful not to get found out, as that would jeopardise both their business's attractiveness to capitalist investors, and look very hypocritical to the public.

I recently came across the name of a Communist party I hadn't heard of before, simply called KP (Kommunistische Partei). Until now, I was only aware of the DKP and MLPD. I'm honestly just curious as to why the KP even exists?

If any of my German comrades have insights or information about this, I would greatly appreciate it.

100 years ago it was Russia, war torn and poor. Where is it today, if there even is one?

Such as Wang Huning(王沪宁)，Zhang Yibing(张一兵)，Guo Jicheng(郭继承)，Sun Xiguo(孙熙国)，Tian Chenshan(田辰山)

It seems so many people understand a stateless classless society as being, basically, a commune scaled up. That's obviously not the case, but I can't figure out how exactly it would be administered, would there be some analogous form of police?

Was he a brutal dictator, or was he (somehow) not?

https://x.com/Currentreport1/status/1896455989706232156

Anti-communist writers Jung Chang and Jon Halliday assert in their highly controversial 2006 book Mao: The Unknown Story that the Nationalist general Zhang Zhizhong was a Soviet agent who, following the Marco Polo Bridge incident in July 1937, had been tasked by Stalin with escalating the already tense situation with Japan into a full-scale, all-out war.

Stalin ordered this, Chang and Halliday maintain, because he (quite reasonably) feared Japanese aggression against his own country and wanted to draw China and Japan (both of which were hostile towards the USSR) into a costly war with one-another in order to weaken them both. This certainly was the approach he took towards Germany in 1939 after the failure of collective security, so it's not without precedent (or postedent?). In addition, Zhang himself was a strong communist sympathiser who would later defect to Mao's side during the Civil War and serve in his government.

According to Chang and Halliday, Zhang deliberately escalated the situation by orchestrating the Ōyama incident (the killing of two Japanese soldiers in Shanghai) and spreading misinformation to the media about the Japanese attacking the city. This was done in order to pressure Chiang into giving him the greenlight to attack the Japanese garrison there, as Chiang wasn't nearly as gung ho about the whole idea.

The ensuing battle, in which over 700,000 Chinese troops faced off against 300,000 Japanese, saw the decimation of Chiang's army. It resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives (including Chiang's most elite German-trained troops) and the capture of both Shanghai and eventually Nanking.

What do you think? Is this some crazy crackpot idea invented to demonise Stalin, Mao, and communism as a whole; or might it have some basis in reality?

The movie, as is obvious to anyone who has even read it's Wikipedia page, seems to be a pretty obvious critique of capitalism. The problem is the solution the movie finds for the problems of capitalism. It wants the head, the ruling class, and the hands, the working class, to be mediated and united by the heart. If you've brushed on the history of fascist movements in the early 20th century this should be incredibly familiar to you. It promotes a "resolution of class conflict" not that dissimilar to the corporatism that was espoused by Mussolini or the many petty dictatorships of the Americas and eastern Europe.

Edit: if you only have the clip, please upload it to tankie.tube and share it with me

The criminal court system in the US seems incredibly unjust and results in the criminalization of many activities which ought to be basic rights. It railroads innocent and completely functioning people into the morally bankrupt prison system where they are put into dehumanizing circumstances and extreme scrutiny that gives prison authorities more excuses to add charges and prison time, continuing the cycle further.

"Defendants" - itself a backwards term in the context of presumption of innocence - are unable to defend themselves using their own brains, knowledge and skills because of the incredibly confusing and non-intuitive procedure and rules in the court. Unless they are a lawyer themselves, they must either hire or be assigned a professional by the court to work on their behalf, but those lawyers often have incentives that stop them from fully embracing the defendant's interests. For example the lawyer knows she must return to the court and work with the same judge and possibly the same prosecutors again, and therefore she wants to make sure she appears professional and makes arguments that are acceptable by court standards. Lawyers will often tell their clients that either the client goes along with the plan set by the law team or they find a new team to represent them, which results in a loss of agency for the client who may be facing decades in jail and never gets a chance to actually voice their opinion.

Judges, lawyers, court staff and police work closely together and form personal bonds that can often work against the defendant. Judges can make sweeping judgements in lower courts and bench trials based on pure opinion. Judges and even juries are legally allowed to be biased against defendants for actions in court that has nothing to do with the charges.

This is just a few things I've noticed from watching trials, but it is difficult to find any other opinions on these topics, at least on the internet, because it seems to be so skewed in favor of the court system. I cannot find much of anything offering the sort of criticisms that I've offered above in printed format. I'm open to the idea that I've just completely misunderstood and that these things are somehow fair, but I'm just not seeing it. Please tell me if you disagree with anything I've said and explain why because I want to understand why this is considered justice.

Have any Marxists written about similar topics? What would a good socialist "justice system" look like? Are there / were there socialist countries that have decent models? What differences would Marxists ideally want to implement to change the criminal court system? Would they abolish it altogether, and if so, what stage of communism would that occur?

Any thoughts you have are appreciated. Thanks