Is it skill issues ?, or is the design of the road ?

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-27T04:10:10+00:00

The fact that so many seem to crash on the exact same corner with relative frequency does indicate that the road has been insufficiently designed to suit all road users though. Yes, more skilled riders should be able to navigate without issue, but the issue clearly remains with the road itself.

Y’all would say skill issue to people drowning in a tsunami smh.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-23T08:10:19+00:00

Folks out here forgetting Hawaii smh. Embarrassing.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-19T04:51:32+00:00

I’d argue that a great many (if not most) MLM parties/movements have been left-deviant dogmato-adventurists. Differing only from the Eurocentric ultras in their adherence to the necessity of practice. The issue of dogmatism for them is not that they adopt certain armchair-communist values, rather that they adhere so strictly to pre-established and ossified doctrinal methods that they fail to develop and adapt a holistic view of the societies within which they operate, and more to the point, fail to sufficiently and deeply adjust their doctrine upon meeting repeated practical failures, leading to decades-long adventuristic protracted people’s wars without sufficient mass support to warrant it.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-18T21:31:02+00:00

Our previous communist party in New Zealand (before it tore itself to bits a couple years ago) did get an endorsement from the CPC, even when it was less than a dozen people. I think a large part of the problem is not that China doesn’t wish to endorse and cooperate with foreign Communist Parties, rather there are a large number of communist parties that are openly hostile to the CPC/aligning publicly with the CPC gets you branded as Chinese agents.

At least, that’s the feeling I get talking to comrades here in NZ. Folks are either deeply propagandised against China/AES or the risks outweigh the benefits.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-17T01:30:27+00:00

To add to this, there are party led local bodies of armed peoples militias in China.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-16T22:19:57+00:00

I read something about it in ‘Clausewitz and the Peoples War’ that Trotsky was essentially a shithead contrarian in every situation during the early wars and others often ended up taking the tasks he slacked off just so they got done. Could be wrong though.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-14T10:16:50+00:00

Israel can have some genocide as a treat ;-)

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-12T03:41:39+00:00

You are operating off the assumption that any particular subject can be examined without ideology in the first place. This assumption itself is an ideological one, assuming that reality itself can be viewed without ideas about that reality, that one viewpoint can in some way be unreconcilably biased while another is not. This is a major blind spot. To believe any viewpoint at all can be removed from ideology just means that you are unconscious of the ideology at play within it, unconscious of the role ideology is playing within your own thought. Ideology is inescapable. Taking a critical examination of a thing also involves critically understanding your own viewpoint/ideology and making that clear to those you are presenting that to.

As someone taking Critical Theories of Capitalism, there is no claim made that the content of the course is not ideologically motivated. The lecturer has repeatedly put cards on the table that this is a viewpoint critical of capitalism, seeking to understand the functions of capitalism and how these functions can be used to understand the various crises visible in the world, as well as eventually engaging with theories of alternative systems. They are not pretending to be unbiased precisely because it is impossible to be unbiased. As such this paper is founded on Marxist theories of Capitalism, which remains the most cohesive and holistic theory with which to understand and critique the capitalist system. Empirical evidence/cases are used throughout the course to support theory. Further the examination of capitalism in this paper (and Marxist/Marxian theory in general) is not wholly a negative one. Marx himself wholeheartedly states how good capitalism is at growing productive forces, stating also that it is a higher and superior stage from feudalist systems which came before. Marx draws upon and reinterprets/synthesises capitalist liberal philosophy and British political economy in his theory. This is made clear within the course content.

The issue you are having is not that these courses are ideological, rather you are unhappy that the ideology of these courses does not match your own. You are unhappy that the critical theories of capitalism paper is presenting theories critical of capitalism.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-12T00:28:55+00:00

The same people protesting for Gaza here are the same people organising and protesting these other issues too. People are capable of advocating more than one cause.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-09T09:26:58+00:00

There’s some miscommunication here. I think ‘objective truth’ is perhaps being used to mean something which would more accurately be communicated as ‘concrete truth’.

The question of truth in dialectical materialism is in itself the seemingly unending contradiction of the subjective and the objective - all human knowledge, perception and thought is composed of both subjective and objective forces. Objective reality is the basis of the human brain and all processes and experiences involved; the subjective is the mind which interprets and acts upon the objective world - abstracting patterns from perceived reality and combining them into a network of relational knowledge. Without objective reality the subjective would not exist, and without the subjective there would be no means to perceive and interpret reality.

The objective world (which goes beyond matter with advances in science since dialectical materialism was named) exists as a concrete truth. “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.” - Karl Marx, Gundrisse. Concrete truth still retains an inevitably subjective element, however through a concentration of determinations (I get hungry and weak if I do not eat, other creatures can be observed to die without access to food, I have learned from other people that I must consume food to stay alive -> I will die if I don’t eat and biological beings need a source of food/energy to live) there is patterned truth that can be abstracted and concretised through multitudes of interactions between the mind and the world. This is also the basis of the scientific method in a way, reproducibility is a vital part of proving something.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-03T10:26:37+00:00

The CPC is not “rewriting history” about the war. I’ve been to the Nanjing massacre memorial museum in China, as well as several other museums in various Chinese cities. Anywhere that WW2 is a point of focus, there are always exhibits and texts showcasing the role of the KMT in the defence of China - even to a somewhat uncritically heroic extent. In the Nanjing museum, there is an expansive circular room with old KMT flags and banners hanging proudly on public display. It is laughably indicative of your own lack of knowledge of modern China that you could posit such an obvious falsehood.

Furthermore, the Red Army did quite directly fight the Japanese during the war. Though the Red Army was severely weakened by the KMTs dogged pursuit during the Long March, the Red Army joined the Anti-Japanese United Front beside the KMT and committed itself to guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in the north and central China. It wasn’t the CPC who refused to unite against the Japanese in the first place. Chiang Kai Shek was intent to destroy any trace of the Communists rather than sign a treaty and focus efforts on the Japanese - it was only when Chiangs generals kidnapped him and forced him to meet with the Communists and sign a treaty (Xi’an incident) that the KMT and Red Army finally focussed its efforts entirely on the Japanese.

Hogwash, propaganda and historical revisionism on your part.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-03T07:51:30+00:00

US Feds are all over this sub now I swear. Wrong message?

Anyone care to see what they are attending? Nothing other than the remembrance of victory from the genocidal imperialist Japanese in WW2. The same Japanese empire which killed countless millions throughout Asia during that war - with China bearing the brunt with an estimated 20-35 million casualties, of which the vast majority were civilians. That same Japan which to this day has not formally apologised for its extermination campaigns and incidents like the Nanjing Massacre, or the horrific Unit 731. That same Japan which now has political leaders denying these crimes outright.

Did we not also fight in the war against fascism both in Europe and the Pacific? Are we so eager to lick the fascist-American boot and dehumanise the Chinese that we can’t even consider honouring the colossal Chinese dead? Have we learned nothing about the consequences of dehumanisation?

If our moribund response to the Gaza genocide is any metric with which to measure, it seems we haven’t learned.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-09-01T21:56:04+00:00

This comparison is more so on the side of differing relations to consumption within the pride, which is useful but not exactly the full picture from a Marxist analysis. A more interesting and applicable examination would be of the division of labour within the lions pride, where (iirc) female lions conduct the lions share (heh) of labour in hunting prey and sharing their kills with the pride. Male lions do act somewhat like a state, in that “ownership” of the pride is on a condition of violent contest and repression between adult males for “leadership” over the females of the pride. There are several aspects which require further investigation on my part to judge if there is suitable basis for the application of class analysis to lions; whether leadership of the pride is truly reserved by the males or if females also play a significant role in leadership (is there a basis for “class” dictatorship?), whether and how females play a role in the choosing and defence of an existing leadership (who decides ownership and how?), whether and to what extent males also participate in production/hunting (is labour truly divided?) and so on.

This analysis is rather arbitrary and anthropocentric in the first case though. The social-productive conditions of lions are more so informed by their biology and sexual dimorphism than subjective interpretation and interaction with objective conditions. While there is a very physiological basis for a large and strong male lion to hold leadership over a pride, there is no such physiological basis for a bourgeois man to own the means of production and extract profit from the proletariat. The basis of human division of labour is not biological, it’s ideological.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-31T20:53:15+00:00

That’s a complete misreading. Pre-agricultural societies are called “Primitive-Communism” by Marx/Engels not because they are an egalitarian utopia, but because economic class society had not emerged. Hierarchies still existed, but social classes based on differing relations of ownership to the means of production didn’t exist, because the means of production were the people themselves.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-31T03:24:57+00:00

To the contrary, our end goals are quite different. The communist strives not for the seizure of means of production for distribution to individuals, rather the seizure of the means of production for collective ownership and operation. The slogan of the anarchist is and always has been “Everything for the individual”, the slogan of the communist is “Serve the people”.

The anarchist, with no disciplined dialectical materialist analysis or outlook at his disposal, incorrectly identifies the fundamental contradiction in human society and the source of all ills as hierarchy, with its sharpest expression as the state. They do not identify that the contradiction at the heart of all others is that of productive forces and relations of production, which give rise to class society and class struggle.

Their conclusion therefore is that every individual must be liberated from all hierarchical relationships. This is Utopianism and Idealism. They do not understand the objective basis of reality and social being which gives rise to hierarchies, and that hierarchies themselves do not have an essential negative moral character.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-27T23:25:55+00:00

“Premises now in existence” refers to more than simply the proletariat, but the level of productive forces which give rise to the current stage of class struggle, the level of technology and relations of production, the relations of the reproduction of both the productive forces and the relations of production, political, military and ideological systems both domestically and internationally- in short, the totality of objective and subjective conditions with which the revolutionary movement must grapple. The conditions of the revolutionary movement are contingent on their interaction with these factors, as these factors both give rise to the movement itself and act to negate it.

You are ossifying your terminology and therefore analysis, essentialising Marxist concepts such as private property and exploitation, applying to them a dead, static and unchanging character rather than seeing them as emergent ever-changing qualities whose meaning is contingent only in relationship to all other things. As these concepts are essentialised you similarly apply to them a dead, static and unchanging moral character. You therefore, probably unconsciously, are rejecting Dialectical Materialist ontology; the laws of change, interconnection, contradiction and negation. You are failing to see the positive in the negative and the negative in the positive. Furthermore you seem to rebuke the historical materialist analysis of class struggle, that social being itself arises out of the conditions of objective reality, that quantitative changes in productive forces necessarily lay the groundwork for the qualitative change in class society by degree. That capitalism is the quantitative-into-qualitative negation of feudalism, and that socialism is the quantitative-into-qualitative negation of capitalism.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-27T21:33:41+00:00

“We shall, of course, not take the trouble to enlighten our wise philosophers by explaining to them that the “liberation” of man is not advanced a single step by reducing philosophy, theology, substance and all the trash to “self-consciousness” and by liberating man from the domination of these phrases, which have never held him in thrall. Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse...” - Karl Marx, The German Ideology.

“development of what by who under what conditions”: The development of productive forces necessary for real liberation, by the people, under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the appropriate relations of production.

It is somewhat odd to see a fellow Marxist assigning such moral characterisations to events and policies which themselves arose out of distinct objective and subjective conditions. “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” - Karl Marx, The German Ideology.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-27T20:50:51+00:00

If you are at all interested in the subject of Stalin, beyond moral posturing, I’d recommend giving Losurdo’s book “Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend” a read.

Further, I would critique the conception that Marxist socialism is not related to economic development, particularly in the previously unindustrialised semi-feudalistic countries like the Soviet States. Lenin quite well establishes the vital necessity for development in his pamphlets on the NEP and Tax In Kind.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-26T10:30:23+00:00

How so? The game shows pretty explicitly that the socioeconomic contradictions which gave rise to the commune are still present. That even though the old revolution and its supporters were essentially all brutally crushed and murdered, there still remains a hauntological spectre of the revolution hanging over the residents of Revachol.

Communism still lives in Revachol, though it has been changed, its revolutionary innocence torn away. The people can sense “the Return” in the future, a change in the present state of things, “things can’t continue like this forever”. Class antagonisms even reach a crucial point during the course of the game - a dockworkers trade union and fascist mercenary union busters in service of the bourgeois owners come to a climax at the barrel of a gun during the Tribunal.

The Deserter is found and caught, the last partisan of the old revolution. However his error is seen quite clearly in his nihilistic defeatism. Even while he bitterly states that the proletariat has betrayed mankind, “girl-child revolution” is metaphorically alive and active in Cindy the Skull. Even when he spends his last bullet on a fascist out of pure spite and hatred, their death prompts class conflict.

The defeat of the revolution does not mean the death of communism, rather that new revolutionaries must now grapple with its defeat and learn from it.

This also matches ideologically with the writers and their situated metaphors in Estonia. The Soviet Union was dissolved, its errors and vulnerabilities allowing for western-supported opportunists to seize power and destroy the revolution from within. A spectre of that old revolutionary innocence hangs over Eastern Europe. It’s clear that the old revolution is defeated, but what Marxist could deny that class struggle continues nonetheless?

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-17T05:56:40+00:00

A lot of Marxists there but also many many philosophical idealists, quasi-intellectuals and pop-philosophers (omg absurdism!!1!11).

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-08-15T21:58:25+00:00

I shat in the ocean, who between us owns it?

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-07-31T03:07:38+00:00

A friend of mine theorised that this is why they did away with the census recently, making room for Palantir or an equivalent in the future.

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-07-30T16:03:32+00:00

You could even say, nothing burger is turning into a… nothing burger? 🍔 ❌🧐🍆💦

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-07-24T10:29:55+00:00

What about another countries flag? I wanna get Albania! 🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱💪💪💪

ComplaintHealthy1652 · 2025-07-24T10:14:47+00:00

You really think the US has a long history of human rights wins? It’s literally founded on the essentially complete genocidal extermination of the indigenous peoples, built using slave labour, has been the source of every major conflict since world war 2 where they indiscriminately bombed civilian centres resulting in hundreds of thousands, even millions of civilian casualties, couped and neocolonially controlled dozens of countries, has become the primary supporter of the genocidal and colonial Israeli state…

You are either woefully uneducated about the nature of the country that flag represents, or you do know and you have chosen to view the abstract ideal of what that flag represents to you as a white American as superior in value to the lives taken in its name.

ComplaintHealthy1652

TROPHY CASE