GenZedong

Westerners and people heavily influenced by western culture tend to get really lost in "Idea" arguments. They worry about things like what are someones motivations, or what very specific "freedoms" does a certain AES state have. I think this is a remnant of anti-materialist, and self-defeatist thinking created by liberalism and injected into society as a whole.

Let us first define dialectical materialism. To look it up you’ll get,

“The Marxian interpretation of reality that views matter as the sole subject of change and all change as the product of a constant conflict between opposites arising from the internal contradictions inherent in all events, ideas, and movements.”

This isn’t wrong, but I’d like to expand on it. To be a materialist you must also be pragmatic. You must observe the way things physically are, and not concern yourself with idealist concerns, but rather tangible things. This arises specifically when considering how to achieve the goals of the socialist movement.

To achieve a goal, to be victorious in the revolution, is our focus as socialists. Rather it should be. Instead I see many, especially people like myself raised in the west, concerned with idealistic thinking. They will wonder how can we achieve our goals THE RIGHT WAY. As opposed to THE WRONG WAY. What is right, or wrong varies person to person. This conflict persists though.

As socialists, revolutionaries, we desire the destruction of the current status quo. If this goal is to be achieved we must take a pragmatic approach to it. We must be heartless in the face of our enemies. We must be conniving, and we must only consider the material effect of our actions in pragmatic terms. If you were attacked by an assailant and defending yourself would you consider how best to win the fight while harming the person the least amount? No. Not unless you wanted to be killed. As revolutionaries we are in a similar position.

There are only 3 types of people we must consider. Every person on earth falls into these 3 categories. Comrade, Enemy, or Irrelevant. Comrades are those who aid the cause of socialism, and anti-imperialism. They are not necessarily themselves socialists. Think Iran. They may not be socialist but at this time they fight against imperialism, and the global capitalist order. This makes them comrades. For now. Enemies. They are the opposite of comrades. Those who take material action to further the goals of capitalism, and imperialism. In the class war, like any war, there is only 1 way to deal with an enemy.

Then there are Irrelevant people. Those who do not take material action either way. They are the civilians who just go about their daily life. They may espouse views in support of either side, but take no action to back those views up. They are to be largely ignored usually. You can try to agitate, and awaken some to become comrades though that is another conversation.

When analyzing an event, or an action in the context of revolutionary materialism it must be simplified. Does the event/action further the goals of socialism? If yes it is to be supported, if no it is to be resisted.

Look at how China operates internationally. They don't purity test nations who they may ally. China will work with anyone if doing so strengthens the Chinese revolutions position. By doing so they strengthen the position of Socialism globally. Even if at times they work with nations that are in no way socialist. Yet inside their own borders they are much more ideologically strict. Because in this case it is necessary to protect the revolution from internal divisions.

Let’s apply this to some real world situations. Gaza. Hamas is fighting against a colonial, capitalist, ethnostate. In doing so they may have killed civilians, taken hostages, etc. Their actions though further the cause of anti-imperialism, and do direct harm to an enemy of the socialist movement. This means they are comrades.

The killing of the Russian royal family by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks did this to ensure the destruction of the monarchy, and weaken counter-revolutions that may arise in the future. They were socialists themselves. So they were comrades, and their actions were correct.

Now someone who is still in the trap of anti-materialist thinking may say, “Well what if they took them prisoner, and tried to rehabilitate them.” Something like this. It’s an irrelevant conversation that wastes time, and weakens the revolution.

We must not concern ourselves with anything except furthering the goal of revolution. Revolution is a destructive and violent thing. This may make people uncomfortable, but it is something they must come to terms with. We are fast approaching a time where in the US and Europe the conditions may become viable for comrades to directly undermine the current systems. To counter the rise of overt fascism people need to be in the proper mindset. I worry that many are still trapped in liberalized ways of viewing things, and this will hamper any efforts they take significantly.

I urge all who subscribe to the idea that socialism is the way forward for humanity to make efforts to be especially pragmatic, and materialist in all their analysis. I know many in this specific site already are, but elsewhere it’s much less common.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read through this. It’s something I have noticed a lot recently, and I needed to get my thoughts out in an organized format.

Gratifying, indeed.

No, Hamas didn’t end the ceasefire negotiations.

Israel is justifying its bombardment of Gaza by saying Hamas refused to return Israeli captives.

BT’s Kei Pritsker explains how Israel is totally distorting the narrative of the ceasefire agreement in order to continue ethnically cleansing Gaza.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7268399

I try not to delve into "conspiracism" (I know, I know, bourgeois do conspiratorial action, but I'm referring to the general overall attitude toward ruling-class actions or conspiracies; I believe that most conspiracies are out in the open and I'm not obsessed with "secret" actions or "deep state" doings). But I am interested in the current development of diseases and I try to get flu shots every now and then, despite my family looking askance at that. I'm trying to nip whatever I can in the bud before it affects my physical health over the life-span.

Do you think this channel is legit and who would you recommend in terms of keeping up with science-y news or stuff pertaining to disease, physical health, medical science, etc.?

Any YouTube channels are welcome!

We're starting off with a very short one for the first week. This text was published in 1915, two years before the October revolution, and is sadly still highly relevant in the imperial core.

This reading group is meant to educate, and people from any instances federated with Lemmygrad are welcome. Any comments not engaging in good faith will be removed (don't respond to hostile comments, just report them).

You can post questions or share your thoughts at any time. We'll be moving on to a new text next week, but this thread won't be locked.

You can read the text here.

Hello and welcome to the Weekly discussion thread this St. Patrick's Day. We would like to encurrage you to wear green, and grab a starry plough flag. And enjoy this our weekly discussion thread

• Matrix homeserver and space
  ◦ Theory discussion group now on Lemmygrad
• Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive, libgen

BERLIN—The headstones of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thälmann, and other revolutionary martyrs have been vandalized in a shocking desecration at the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in Berlin.

The metal plaques carrying the names and dates of birth and death of the leading Communists buried around the Memorial to the Socialists have been taken in an attack reported to German police on Monday.

The tombs surround a giant gravestone bearing the inscription “The Dead Remind Us,” and form part of an enclosed park within the cemetery whose walls bear the names of hundreds of other revolutionaries killed in the struggle, from those slain fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War to victims of Nazi terror in Germany itself.

Each year, on the second Sunday in January, crowds march to the monument to lay red carnations on the tombs.

Police say they have no clues as to the perpetrators but recognize a political motive is “clearly identifiable.”

Check out the rest of the article inside.

Many people seem to keep making the mistake of taking Trump's words at face value. This is partly the fault of the media, which hangs onto everything he says because he is their golden goose. Furthermore, there is the desire to keep finding some kind of logic in Trump's actions.

The problem is, we keep projecting our own logic onto the Trump admin. We think, "what would we do if we were American imperialists?" Which leads us, and many analysts (like yanis) to think about the Trump admin as if they were cavalry reinforcements arriving unexpectedly in the darkest hour of western imperialism to save it.

In reality, the Trump admin simply wants to impose unequal trade treaties on his allies and get them to spend more on weapons. His fearmongering and negging is his style of salesmanship.

The fact that the Trump admin keeps flip flopping on tariffs, resumed military aid to Ukraine, tried to pull that stunt with the "30 day ceasefire" (in ukraine) and the ceasefire in Palestine has broken down all show that the Trump administration has as much of a master plan as a shitty SV startup trying to attract VC funding.

What worries me is that the Europeans are falling for this con a second time! Trump literally did the same shit in his first term and got the euros to up their NATO spending! The fact that the Europeans can't even act in self interest or see through the tactics of a used car salesman is horrifying to see in first person. These people have nukes.

The United States is the biggest arms dealer on Earth, responsible for 43% of the world’s weapons exports from 2020 to 2024. The US transferred seven times more than China, and five times more than Russia. Ben Norton explains how the military-industrial complex profits from war.

After several months of hiatus, the theory discussion group will be moving from Matrix to Lemmygrad, and now you (yes, you!) can suggest texts (yes, texts!) for us to read

Requirements:

• Must be Marxist theory
• Must be reasonably short (a somewhat larger text can be divided across several weeks)
• Must not include any derogatory statements directed at rodents native to South America

Comments that suggest texts that fit these criteria will be selected based on upvotes. You can participate from any instance that's federated with Lemmygrad.

A: now it will advance along benefitial Axies to cut it into ever smaller Isolated Pockets until its Insolance is Punished.

B: China has complete fire planting control over the desert encirclement. The sand has two choices: surrender to the trees or die be blown away.

A: 30 planes , 7000 Artillery Pieces and 5000 Rocketlauncher have encircled Taklimatan & let it rain down relentlsly on him..he will be Molded into the ground!

Source

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7235699

Psst! Steam mistranslates its VNs!

Okay, but seriously, you can hear it from the 3:00 mark of the video onward.

For a few years now, different organizations and private companies have been announcing "Quantum supremacy", the ability for a quantum processor to do a calculation faster than a regular supercomputer would. The latest claimant to this record is the Zuchongzhi-3, a superconducting quantum computing prototype made of 105 qubits – the quantum equivalent of regular computer bits.

As a comparison, what is now the second most powerful supercomputer, Frontier, would take almost 6 billion years to do what Zuchongzhi-3 can do in a few minutes, the Chinese researchers said. The most powerful supercomputer, El Capitan, only went online recently, so if it can shave time off that is yet to be seen.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7216083

Marxists do not support, and have never supported, any form of gun control under capitalism.

On June 20, 1967, Comrade Huey P. Newton wrote "In Defense of Self Defense", an article in The Black Panther. In the second-to-last paragraph, he stated:

When a mechanic wants to fix a broken down car engine he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation, they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun. Only with the power of the gun can the black masses halt the terror and brutality perpetuated against them by the armed racist power structure; and in one sense only by the power of the gun can the whole world be transformed into the earthly paradise dreamed of by the people from time immemorial. One successful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self defense put it this way: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” (Brother Mao Tse-Tung)

As Marxists, we want peace- but to think that peace in our current, violence-ridden capitalist society can be achieved through a limiting of, or abolition of armaments for the working class is reactionary and silly. Lenin drives this point home in “The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution” in late 1916:

Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.

Violence is sewn into the DNA of all capitalist countries, especially the United States, and the ever-present problem of gun violence in the US is rooted in systemic poverty, alienation, militarist culture, white chauvinism, and the for-profit firearms industry; capitalism is the cause of these symptoms.

Any form of gun control legislation coming from the capitalist state is class warfare against the proletariat and, especially in the US, is inherently racist- history has proven this. J. Sykes, in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization's Fight Back! News, writes:

The right to bear arms was formalized by the Bill of Rights, which included the Second Amendment, though in practice this only applied to white citizens, and was driven primarily by fear of slave revolts.

In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that citizenship didn’t apply to people of African descent. Chief Justice Roger Taney, in arguing against equal citizenship to African Americans in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, worried that it “would give to persons of the negro race” the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

Further on, he continues:

The democratic right to bear arms was denied in practice to Black people in the South, though some still armed themselves. Indeed, throughout the Jim Crow period, there is a tradition of armed resistance in the Black Belt South that includes the Alabama Sharecroppers Union, the Deacons of Defense, and the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP leader Robert F. Williams.

The Mulford Act, banning the open carry of loaded firearms, was passed in California in 1967 (with the noteworthy support of the NRA) in a direct attack on the Black Panther Party, to roll back the rights they exercised in arming themselves in defense of their communities. Before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a firearm permit after his house was firebombed. Indeed, disarming oppressed nationalities to prevent self-defense has historically gone hand in hand with their oppression. Thus, we have to understand that the question of gun control in the U.S. is tied to the question of national oppression.

With the continuation of national, racial, and class-based oppression to this day, any form of gun control legislation, including the expansion of state-administered background and health checks, would perpetuate this oppression.

Now, let us address the question of past and present socialist states and firearms policies within them. Let us return to the former quote from Lenin: "Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap." When the capitalist state has been destroyed and the working class has seized state power through a vanguard party, the necessity for a mass arming of the people fades; though, this should not be misconstrued as a disarmament of the working class. The proletariat, under socialism, remains armed through the workers' state and its defensive apparatuses, such as the people's army and local militias that serve to protect the gains of the revolution from both internal and external reaction.

Let's close-off with some classics:

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.

• Lenin

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

• Marx & Engels

Sources:

• Huey P. Newton - "In Defense of Self Defense" (1967), The Black Panther

• Vladimir Lenin - "The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution" (1916)

• J. Sykes - "Gun control: the Marxist-Leninist view" (2023), Fight Back! News

• Party for Socialism & Liberation - "The Socialist Approach to Ending Gun Violence" (2024)

• Karl Marx & Frederick Engels - "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League" (1850)

India and "Israel" have become increasingly close under Modi and Netanyahu's rules - but they have much more in common than meets the eye.

Video games are not what they seem...

They have a hidden agenda and are the frontlines of a digital battleground where pixels and politics collide.

Western media reports that hundreds if not thousands of civilians are being slaughtered by US-European-Israeli-Turkish-backed death squads sweeping through ethnic/religious minority villages in Syria;

The Trump administration has remained silent and despite having carried out air strikes across Syria since taking office, refuse to strike the known location of the terrorist installed into power in Damascus by the previous Biden administration;

During President Trump’s first term in office, he played an equal role in aiding terrorists in the overthrow of the Syrian government precipitating this current catastrophe, including through military strikes, sanctions, and the continued illegal occupation of Syrian oil and wheat fields by US troops;

Silence and inaction are complicity and another example of continuity of agenda under the current Trump administration, just as it continued under his previous administration;

The Trump administration via US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues pressuring China and Thailand over Uyghur terror suspects and alleged “genocide” that is not taking place while ignoring ongoing genocide appearing on camera all along Syria’s coast - perpetrated in part by these very Uyghur terrorists;

Why could China rise from a backward country to the world's second-largest economy in just a few decades? What's the strategy behind this development miracle? Hear the perspective of a Chinese from China, in China.

Real and true poem written by a hundred people yesterday:

First they banned the Chapos
And I did not leave
Because I was not a Chapo

Then they banned GenZedong
And I did not leave
Because I was not from GenZedong

Then they banned the API
And I did not leave
Because I did not use mobile apps

Then they banned the Luigiposters
And I did not leave
Because I was not posting Luigi

Then they came for Luigivoters
And there was no one left
To upvote me