He’s a gaffe machine.

Tanks. Lots and lots of T-34s.

To be clear, capital - the value produced from society that is cycled back into society to develop further surplus - isn’t the problem, it’s capital within capitalism. Capital doesn’t have the “insatiable appetite” but rather capitalists, who control most of the capital, do. How we handle capital is a large part of what defines the system.

“What? Me? On equal ground with the dirty commoner? Good heavens, no!” - bourgeoisie

Human psychology suggests that major life changes require a lot of time to process the internalization we have while going through them. We have to unpack things and question our own assumptions and be honest with ourselves on things we thought we’d never have to be honest with ourselves about.

I think that most people becoming socialists are coming from the toxic ideology of liberalism. Liberalism is a mental cage, designed to keep people captive in the predominant mode, all while thinking they’re actually free! When becoming a socialist, it’s a real struggled to free oneself from the shackles of liberal thought. It’s really, really tough. And it takes a lot of time, just like any change.

During a transition period from liberalism to socialism (technically, Marxism), people go through large periods of doubt and frustration and pessimism. But don’t let that get you off track. It’s natural and normal. You’re just starting to see the world for what it is, rather than what the powerful want you to believe it is. And the world is confusing and wild and lots of ugly. So it’s alarming.

Keep the course. Stay steady on. You’ll get out of the murky waters eventually. Once you can use material dialectics to analyze news and current events and history and movies and … then you’ll start realizing that the world was always this way and there’s no real sense in getting down about it. Live your life, do your part and push things a little further along.

None of the timings of things are up to us. It’s only on us to be ready for when the moment’s right. And to be humble enough to also be ready for that moment to be after we’re gone. Regardless of the circumstances, a socialist’s job is always the same: educate, agitate and organize.

Thanks. I’ll check that out.

I don’t think there’s real evidence the Uyghur thing is actual genocide. Nothing points to that. We might be able to say that China is overdoing it and has fallen into the territory of negatively effecting the culture and identity of those people. But it’s certain not actual genocide. They’re dealing with serious issues of terrorism on their borders and the ideology of those terrorist factions has latched onto their culture and identity. Sussing all that out is an impossible task. Yet they must do something because too many innocent people were being killed by bombings.

I don’t agree with China’s methods there. Simultaneously, I can recognize that when the USA has similar issues (9/11 attacks for example), they chose outright war and killing millions of innocent people in the name of defeating terrorism (which they, predictably, never accomplished). So, um, if given these two bad options, I think China did better.

But, more importantly, I think China’s trajectory is much better. As capitalism gets more desperate, it’s been closing borders, allowing helpless immigrants to drown in boats, destabilizing countries, etc. Meanwhile, China continues to improve their methods of dealing with sticky situations and not just rolling in the tanks at the first sign of trouble (like they used to).

Anyway. That’s the extent that I know about that stuff (lots of listening to David Dumbrill’s stuff on YouTube).

But you are right that conversation is impossible while the “Uyghur issue” exists.

WRT innovation following the economic need, that’s sort of universal and logical. It wouldn’t make sense for the startup Google to begin writing a search algorithm for the Internet if there’s no Internet. The development of the Internet created new possibilities but then created brand new problems: how we going to find all this new content?

WRT capitalism’s different natures at different times, this is NOT STRESSED ENOUGH by leftists! In the early days of capitalism, it was a massively progressive, innovative and yes, even positive force in the world! It no longer is. What changed? What changed was exactly what you said: when it’s goal was to supplant the old system and establish a new one (aka revolutionary), it was a positive force. Now that it’s goal is to specifically STOP any and all revolutionary changes globally, it became a negative force.

The key is technology. As technology moves humanity from scarcity to abundance, in each area, one after the other, we have two choices: 1) accept this and allow ALL people access to the things or 2) build artificial scarcity (paywalls, patents, military conquests, coups, etc) so that this new abundance can be monopolized and controlled. This is the very heart of what is being fought against.

The important thing here is not just that capitalism changed from a positive to a negative force in the world, but to also note that so will socialism. Socialism, after it fully supplants capitalism, will fight against changes towards communism. It will betray its own objective. Indeed, all socialist projects already have this tendency. The struggle will always continue.

Not saying we should trust it or anything but NordVPN does have a “no-logs” policy.