TΛVΛR

You can’t study communism without studying capitalism, yet somehow liberals think they know both better than us, having studied neither.

communism is not merely “good”, it is a necessity. But to get an understanding of what that means one has to make themselves familiar with the contradictions inherent to capitalism and understanding that capitalism is fundamentally incapable of overcoming them.

To give an example: Crippling economic crises arise within capitalism periodically because it is incapable of overcoming the contradiction between the “organization of production” in one company and the “anarchy of production” (unguided production) within all of society.

Capitalism can’t overcome this contradiction because the underlying reason for it is the contradiction between a socialized production and a private appropriation. This contradiction is the defining characteristic of capitalism however, so it can’t ever be resolved without abolishing the system. And we see this prediction of Marx play out time and time again.

Now you may think periodic crises are acceptable (why you would think that is beyond me as they are really truly not necessary). However there are many other realities that contradict capitalism like limited resources, limited capacity of our planet to absorb emissions, the inevitability of the global south’s independence and self-determination (very incomplete list)

Whatever type of capitalism you support, it requires some kind of externality that just isn’t real: infinite natural resources, an ocean that doesn’t care how much is dumped into it, an atmosphere that absorbs all emissions, a domestic working class that accepts exploitation, colonies / the global south to outsource exploitation to, etc. all of those things run out. This kind of “externality” is exposed as an illusion of bourgeois thought.

These contradictions (and more) are creating tensions like tectonic plates during a tectonic shift and we will surely see some more earthquakes. Possibilities include:

• Not being able to safe large parts of the planetary ecosystem.
• Countries falling into fascism to guarantee their national capitalists their profit rate as their main profit guarantor, the US, looses its imperial grip on the planet.
• More imperial wars

The alternative is: The abolition of the capitalist system, hence I spoke of necessity.

Or in Rosa Luxemburg’s words: “[It’s] Socialism or Barbarism”

Rarely two sides can both be right, but they can easily both be wrong.

Can I infer from your statement that you’re advocating against voting for Biden? Maybe you should figure out you contradictions

Kinda surprised to see Germany at 4

That is incorrect. Stages of grief do not only apply to terminal conditions where acceptance is fatalistic.

Say you suffer the loss of a loved one. Accepting that they are gone holds within itself the key to continue your live. Acceptance, plain and simple, is a necessity to deal with reality.

Similarly the acceptance that the capitalist system is inherently “broken” enables us to figure out how to deal with that reality, how to overcome its contradictions.

Denying that many of humanities problems are rooted in capitalism does not. The comparison is valid

I totally get your perspective too: you could swap acceptance and denial. Capitalists accept the justification of the status quo while MLs deny it.

In the context of grieve I think Yogthos’ perspective is more fitting: “Denial” is the denial that anything is wrong with the system and “Acceptance” of both facts, that the system is fundamentally flawed and that a pursuit of any idealistic one doesn’t bear fruit is the necessary precursor for conducting a sober analysis

Really?

Which good reason is there that would not be way better be dealt with with generalized legislation, like privacy regulations?

Just to be clear: You can reject both, but compared to the invasion of Iraq the justification for the invasion of Ukraine is sound

Even if you ignore the worst US lies, both were justified with “national security” (what else is a military for after all)

Well one is the response to a hostile superpower inciting a nazi-powered coup + civil war on your border with the aim of eventually regime changing you.

And the other one is you being the hegemonic superpower devastating a country on the other side of the planet without any threat at all, on a whim (well imperialism actually)

Ofc both amounted to one country imposing their interests over another, but whose were more justified? What threatens “national security” more? A civil war on the border or peace in some far-away country?

Like I said: Oppose both: ok. But it needs pointing out, that people who justify the invasion of Iraq are categorically more bloodthirsty and warlike than those who justify the invasion if Ukraine.

Ofc I realize you didn’t justify the invasion of Iraq. But you also alluded to the US as a protective power while calling out Russia as belligerent, implying Russia would be more warlike than the West, the most murderous power structure humanity was ever doomed with.

The metaphysical need to isolate things (like the aspect of regime-change in Ukraine/Iraq) isn’t practical in discussions about geopolitics.

It only leads to ridiculously irrelevant discussions, as evidenced…

Its so unfortunate that so many people, like yourself, have not been paying attention to Ukraine in the last decades.

With Russia finally having reacted violently, our war propagandists are having a field day with your brains.

Chances are you already are immune to historic fact and prefer some Neocon giving you their speculation on a foreign leaders psyche instead.

It was in fact the US-centered, imperial power structure which tried its hardest to make peace impossible.

On the off chance that you can still tell information from garbage read some influential imperial strategists from 2019 for an introduction:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html

This was my last, longer comment about her (party).

While it would be absurd for a Socialist to mistake her for a comrade, your scepticism towards her “problematization” (especially by liberals) is very warranted.

It depends on who you compare her to. 30 years ago, she was a Socialist, compared to that modern day Wagenknecht is very bad.

However if you compare her party to the German Bundestag, then 99+/-1% are more “problematic”. As an example: for the longest time her new party stood alone in the parliament in opposing weapons exports that facilitate an active genocide (her old left party recently managed to overcome internal resistance and silently join her in that conclusion, though I wonder if its members know).

I share and understand the frustration comrades have with some of her stances / rhetoric, but if you view imperialism or more specifically hyper-imperialism (as tricontinental calls it) as the main contradiction of our time - which I do - then both become clear: why she is in no way among the most “problematic” and also why she is constantly made out to be by the transatlantic media

So yeah a comrades criticism of her is very valid (as I guess they don’t support any other party in the parliament either), a liberals is - as always - massively hypocritical

Ppl might be reading this wrong (or am I?)

incident reported to OPCW by the Government of Syria

In this instance it looks like it was the Syrian gov who reported to the OPCW an incident where they were alleging the use of chemical weapons by ISIS against Aknaf group.

So it OPCW seems to say that the Syrian govs accusations are false

He even said Khamas

Germany is creepy as fuck right now. Its completely sliding into Military Keynesianism

The decoupling from Russian energy, the “derisking” from Chinese markets and the move towards e-mobility will crush German car companies (who are not competitive in that sector) are smashing the rate of profit (That’s a thorough sweep through most of the economic base in Germany).

It does already lead to cuts on social spending which in turn makes ppl turn away from centrist libs.

Who are they turning to? Well the left is nonexistent in Germany, so they are looking the same way that capital which is on the losing side of things is looking: the far right AfD.

Meanwhile the transatlantic center is desperately trying to look for growth potential and finds the arms industry, which is in line with their Zionism, Islamophobia, Russophobia and Sinophobia anyways.

So we now have discussions in Germany that we have to be ready for war with Russia in no later than in 5 years and are proudly opening up new arms factories.

The more the AfD rises in polls the more the center will lean into war with Russia to mitigate an economic situation that benefits the AfD as well as create a narrative that is supposed to keep the “Russia friendly” AfD out of power.

Meanwhile more and more authoritarian laws are enacted to protect the centrist parties from losing power while at the same time Ukranian-“solidarity” lets fascist elements seep in the centrist parties, predominantly the green party and its foundations (Heinrich Böll, LibMod, …)

I am not certain of all the mechanisms but I don’t see any meaningful material development that would halt this. Renewables don’t provide profit rates

aside from organising I am considering leaving the country within the next years, although I would hope that we’ll somehow be able to prevent recreating the 30s of last century as well as the 40s where Russia has to solve our fascism problem again!

Looks like Luxemburg’s Socialism or Barbarism again and I am not here for the Barbarism

Living there, was born there, agree with you!

We were exploiting the Euro-zone and now burn it all on the altar of transatlanticism. And all of that with a moronic smugness.

I hate it here. Nowadays German liberal elite has developed a disgusting kind of exceptionalism with a vibe akin to “we are the most humble people in the whole world.”

Ironically having been the perpetrators of WWII and the Holocaust nowadays reinforces the idea that “we are righteous”. We have transformed German guilt into a twisted sense of pride, where our “culture of remembrance” is a sign of our superiority.

(Ofc this culture of remembranc is inherently white supremacist, it’s a different issue)

As if a genocidal holocaust phase is a part of any countries development, other countries just haven’t had theirs yet. So naturally we know better than these “pre-genocide” societies, right?

These days we explain Jewish people what constitutes antisemitism, we explain to the world what constitutes a genocide …

Ofc there is more, we forge ourselves against the US and Israel (incidentally both post-genocide societies) bc it allows us to never question ourselves. Our lesson from WWII, our “humility”, is to accept these 2 entities as our sole judges, as long as they will deem us good we are good, no questions asked

Emacs keybinds are fine, used them for some years. But once I tried modal bindings I never wanted to go back, “key-chords” just add strain.

Fortunately emacs has many options for modal keybindings, I prefer meow over vim personally

Every president is Trump. Trump is the fucking face America always had. People who say Biden is better just don’t want to look into the mirror.

Thanks comrade! I have some disagreement about your strong admonition. We are talking about the only party credibly in the next Bundestag that’s demanding a stop of weapons exports to ultraright genociders - thats gotta be worth something.

Be sure that I agree with you that some of her statements border a reactionary de-legitimization of gender struggles and I oppose that.

But some of what queer.de writes here I can’t follow. They claim Wagenknecht is shifting blame for rising inequality onto queer people and the single source they give is this Wagenknecht quote:

Open-mindedness, anti-racism and the protection of minorities are the feel-good labels used to conceal rude redistribution from the bottom to the top and give their beneficiaries a clear conscience. And they are not contradictory: marriage for all and social advancement for the few, quotas for women on supervisory boards and low wages in areas where women work in particular, state-paid anti-discrimination officers and a state-induced increase in child poverty in immigrant families.

In my opinion their interpretation is completely unfounded, to me that quote sounds like a more or less accurate critique of pink-washing and is not at all blaming queer people for inequality. It seems like they have a gripe with Wagenknecht. That’s understandable, she never explicitly speaks out for queer people (to my knowledge) and only every decries the discourse as a “distraction”, I understand being pissed at that.

But a continued existence of this party only ends one way

What way is that? I can’t see that even “their continued existence” would end in some kind of purges?! I don’t look at it without concern but I believe the continued existence of her party is a good thing!

A part of it is because I have finally lost faith in the only party I ever supported “die Linke”. With their uselessness in opposing reactionary wars, from an anti-imperialist perspective, they have outlived themselves. Not only that they refuse to take part in leftist peace protest about Ukraine, when Israel began the hot-phase of their genocide the position of “die Linke” was terrible, I get that you have to condemn Hamas as a German party, but going on and on about them wanting to instate a Islamist dictatorship was proactively clouding the real cause for war and was playing Israels fiddle of necessitating the extermination of Hamas by all means. Eventually they were just about able to adopt a cease-fire position, against huge inner-party opposition, but AFAIK until this day they never demanded the end of weapons export to Israel. While at the same time they are demanding the gov to pressure Qatar to end their support of Palestinian resistance. Jan Korte, one of their members of parliament, is even demanding the gov to pressure egypt to open their borders to, de-facto, finally facilitate Israels plan of ethnic cleansing: https://www.fr.de/politik/linke-kritisiert-regierung-wegen-untaetigkeit-92741296.html

And on a personal level: I am involved in ceasefire protests. We contacted “die Linke” from the very beginning, they nervously refused everytime - even when we were still strategically moderate. Fuck that, if I have to have a liberal, at least I want one with a backbone and an anti-genocide stance.

As I have laid out elsewhere, Germany, and the EU as a whole, has taken a path of doubling down on war with Russia and “die Linke” and from what I have seen these last years “die Linke” won’t do shit about it, to me they are now just over the verge of being appropriated by imperialist forces. BSW, and Wagenknecht/Lafontaine in particular, are the only ones with a credible/longstanding anti-war stance and as an anti-Imperialist on that front they have more to show than any other party.

Sorry if I got a bit emotional, I used to feel connected to “die Linke” and I am disappointed.

I mean, If I can hope for the KMT to win against the DPP in Taiwan for strategic reasons, in this case I could bury the hatch with the SPD just deep enough to accept a strategic benefit would there be one.

But there isn’t: The defining difference seems to be that BSW will obstruct US-led Western Imperialism through rapprochement with RU and CN and will not give weapons to IL while the SPD will do the opposite of all that

It seems a little ultra to say they are between Strasserism and Nazbol.

IMO they are classic “Christdemokraten” minus the religious invocation, their policy is exactly that of Helmut Kohl in nearly every regard.

What is different is the media and societal context they are embedded in. Large parts of society are reactionary about immigration and the media love themselves a “red/brown” alliance, creating a feedback loop. And that they broke from the left created mechanisms of its own that play a role.

Its still concerning, but remember sending military to Mali and creating Frontex is well within the realm of socdem anti-immigration action.

I am concerned about what they say and some of the support they draw but so far their rhetoric has been qualitatively significantly different to the likes of the AfD (I think?) in that its not ethno-popular/“völkisch”

IMO what they say is well within what socdems say/do. But its not my rabbit hole, if you can educate me otherwise I definitely would want to know (German texts are fine too)

Good question, I remember being a bit insecure writing that sentence. Please don’t put too much trust in that comment of mine as I still have had little praxis to challenge my analysis. Anyways, my thoughts there were a bit convoluted, not sure if it came across correctly.

What I was thinking about when I wrote it was “you can’t have a traditional socialist party that successful”, where I meant only electoral success and only in the short-term. Yeah I’d make out mostly political climate as the cause for that.

I didn’t want to say that the pursuit of a Socialist party is not worthwhile, I think it is. Although I wonder if an obvious socialist party will be able to get off the ground or whether a “Black Panthers” approach (in terms of being not-too-obviously socialist) would be more promising.

Such estimates are always speculative without praxis to probe ones conceptions though.

There are two parties in Germany that bear the label ML (DKP and MLPD), both have next to zero visibility and are under the observation of the intelligence services. They are considered to be enemies of the German constitution (not surprisingly since that grants the right to private property). I believe they are only not banned bc their influence it negligible and a legal pursuit would bind resources and give them previously unknown visibility.

I would see both as some evidence for my claims but I have to say I am not speaking from personal experience I’ve had no interaction with either party (I wonder if I would admit to that online).

But yeah I personally know way more foreigners here who are Socialist than Germans. In France and Italy Socialism is way more present as a concept. We have no clue what the word means. For most of us it means nothing. And for the rest its what the the dusty, old men from the “Unrechtsstaat” GDR talked about when they wanted to steal from and control the people. its a failure of the past, not a success of the future. and speaking of it is dangerous, the economy is bad as it is.

We’ve had the “Radikalenerlasse”, the congress for cultural freedom, the CIA building up our media and intelligence services all purging Socialist knowledge from public consciousness while at the same time our “big brother” helped us to become the so-called richest nation in Europe. The material conditions have been comparably fine for us under liberalism, people fear falling back into the GDR trap.

Germany, having been in the center of US Crosshairs of cold-war efforts has left a nasty scar on us, it will take some time and probably a worsening of the economic conditions but most of all a big educational effort from us comrades to get back.

The way I see it, the next years will both make that a necessity as it was never before but also provide previously unseen opportunities for it.

Thats kinda how I see it. Sorry for digressing comrade