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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Eh, I think Trotsky and Lenin have some responsibility. While I am in full support of October (and Leninists ideology), I think the Bolshevik repression of the 20-21 strike wave was a troubling development demonstrating separation between the party and the class. (Kronstadt began in sympathy with that strike wave.) Then in the 10th Party Congress, the Workers Opposition took up some of the workers demands and pushed a program to keep party and state separate. They urged union control of the economy and democracy. In response, Trotsky argued that unions would no longer be necessary at all! Even Lenin thought that was going too far. But this is when democracy came under attack even within the party and factions were formerly banned.

    Here is the text of the Workers Opposition manifesto. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm

    The text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. The headings, “individual or collective management” and “bureaucracy and self activity of the masses” seem prescient.

    Trotsky became a champion of democracy a little late, only after methods of repression he himself used were turned against him.



  • No.

    This is a load of shit. Why it has up votes blows my mind.

    Do some reading or watching of hunter gatherer societies and you’ll see lots of group survival activities. Teamwork in hunts, in preserving food, in crafting tools, and making shelter.

    If we were this self-centered, we wouldn’t have such advanced communication, which is how we were able to do all those group activities.

    Survival of the fittest is survival of those that cooperate.








  • Since 2000, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths is 21:1 (NYT). Rockets? The name evokes weapons from Lockheed or Boeing, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad make them in garages and basement tunnels while Israel has the most hitech interceptors available. It’s still comparatively slingshots to F-16s.

    Hamas was created in 1987, and has benefited from disproportionate treatment from the Israelis, who used Hamas to divide the Palestinian resistance. When Israel blows ckekd the negotiation tactics of the secular Palestinian resistance, what else were Palestinians to do? Palestinians in Gaza tried mass civil disobedience I’m 2018 with the Walk of Return, but Israel used live rounds and nearly 300 were killed and thousands wounded. How else were the Palestinians to seek freedom?





  • You’re absolutely right that there IS a difference between the two parties.

    But Obama’s healthcare plan was a rebrand of a Heritage foundation (conservative) plan that had been enacted at the state level by Romney in Massachusetts, and the most progressive part (the Medicaid expansion) was a last minute compromise to make the plan CHEAPER because the majority of the plan is a tax payer subsidized government enforced insurance monopoly. It hasn’t ended medical bankruptcies and it doesn’t cover everyone.

    Biden is actually better than I expected, while he gave in to the antics of Sinema and Manchin a little too easily and he’s still drilling oil and gas, the “Inflation Reduction Act” is the best climate and infrastructure legislation we’ve had, just 20 years late and still too little. Meanwhile he lets the courts roll him on student loans, on reproductive rights, etc.

    So yeah, the Democrats are better than the Republicans but they still SUCK.

    Since Eugene McCarthy in the early 70s to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, and recently Bernie, working inside the Democrats has not worked. But obviously neither has working outside. We need to keep trying, and I wish I had a better answer. But we need to do better than the Democrats.






  • While voting is a necessary but insufficient way to combat fascism, 96% of voting Ukrainians choosing to not support fascism is a good indicator that fascism is NOT on the agenda in Ukraine. A fascist coup by that 2% supporting fascism would be opposed by the vast majority of Ukraine.

    You completely ignore that fact with your hardon for attacking the identity of persons chosen by the Ukrainians.

    Edit to explain: I made no argument on what Zelinsky as a Jew or the Muslim cabinet member would be politically, which would be identity politics. This statement of fact (Zelinsky is Jewish) was relevant to the political preferences of the Ukrainian people. Fascists don’t choose Jews and Muslims to represent them.

    Zelinsky is a pretty terrible neoliberal, and I’m not actually a fan. But I am a fan a national self determination. So was Lenin.