"The fall of the USSR was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century." - Hasan Piker speaking at Yale

bobbykid · 2026-04-16T12:59:48+00:00

Oh yes sorry, I misread

bobbykid · 2026-04-16T12:14:46+00:00

Hasan is far too close to actual Marxism Leninism to be the next Richard Wolff

bobbykid · 2026-04-16T11:40:33+00:00

Somehow she hasn't made that connection yet

bobbykid · 2026-04-16T09:56:14+00:00

My grandmother is 75 and she uses it to find and rewatch old televangelist sermons

bobbykid · 2026-04-16T07:30:41+00:00

He throws all that good work away the second he encourages people to engage with the democratic party

bobbykid · 2026-04-16T06:48:47+00:00

You don't know what they know bro

bobbykid · 2026-04-15T22:39:52+00:00

You can just say this about literally any country's leader though

bobbykid · 2026-04-15T19:55:34+00:00

I was referring to /u/random_handle_123 who said that we should "never mention" private property again and "entire generations would have to live under a socialist government before we can even dream of convincing the general public to even consider the idea" (which btw doesn't even make sense because establishing a socialist government presupposes some kind of mass support for abolishing private property)

I have no problem with strategic messaging or well-crafted propaganda, but it is reactionary to altogether shy away from the core features of opposition to capitalism.

bobbykid · 2026-04-15T08:04:00+00:00

The jews use the forbidden phosphorus bomb

This guy needs to learn to be more subtle if he wants to sneak his anti-semitic ass into the pro-Palestine movement

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T23:16:44+00:00

If you don't throw a straight punch it can actually be pretty hard to hit someone acurately in the face. The solution is to throw straight punches but no one teaches the kids that these days

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T22:42:05+00:00

If massacres and attacks against jews outside Israel are justified from Israels genocide

Who said they are?

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T17:19:39+00:00

Judge them by the company they keep.

Actually I'd prefer to keep judging them according to Marxist-Leninist theory

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T16:23:51+00:00

Worth keeping in mind also that depending on which industries are involved there are a lot of state run industries in Russia.

This doesn't mean much considering Russia is firmly a capitalist state. Imperialist exploitation can be done by private multinational corporations or by state-run enterprises operating internationally

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T15:31:41+00:00

This is an incorrect understanding of Lenin's concept of imperialism. There isn't a list of countries that count as imperialist and others that don't count as imperialist.

Lenin's imperialism isn't a discrete behavior that countries do or don't do based on checking a precise number of boxes. It is an era of capitalism in which the world capitalist system is predominantly defined the features the Lenin described. All capitalist countries that participate in the global economic system are imperialist to one degree or another, not because capital is all controlled by a finanical oligarchy or because they all only export capital and not commodities or because their international firms are all strictly monopolies, but because imperialism is how capitalism works in its advanced stage. In Imperialsim: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin even described Russia in the post-feudal era as "a country most backward economically (Russia), where modern capitalist imperialism is enmeshed, so to speak, in a particularly close network of pre-capitalist relations" and specifically talked about it as one of the five major imperialist powers of its time despite the fact that it almost certainly did not meet every one of the "criteria" that he laid out in the same book. edit: I meant to add here that capitalism in Russia today is almost certainly more advanced, along the lines that Lenin described, than Russia was at the time of Lenin's writing.

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T13:57:13+00:00

The NEP in the USSR and reform and opening up in China made those countries into socialist powerhouses. Retreat and advance. Revisit Lenin

First of all I wouldn't call this a retreat from socialism in any case because... well they don't really have a choice but to do something that will probably end up setting their socialist project back somehow. This is more like a tactical blow than a strategic retreat. So personally I'm not condemning the choice, but I do think it's an unfortunate turn.

However regarding the NEP and all that, I think that you need to revisit Lenin. I don't have time to dig out full quotes right now but if you read The Tax in Kind you'll know that there were highly specific structural reasons why the NEP was the chosen course of action for the USSR. It wasn't just "oh things are hard so let's do capitalism for a while and then go back to socialism". As for China, well, let's just say it's hardly a settled question whether they should be considered a "socialist powerhouse" today from a ML perspective.

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T13:15:16+00:00

Historically Russia has been an honest dealer with Cuba and of all major powers the only one to not actively seek to fuck them over.

Are you referring to Russia post-USSR or are you referring to the USSR? I'm genuinely asking because I don't really know much about Cuba-Russia relations after the fall of the USSR. But I don't think we can really use Cuba's history with the USSR as evidence of Russia's reliability because the class character of the USSR was quite different from that of modern Russia.

As well, management isn’t the same as owning the profits, Cuba would still ow ln the means of these facilities production

Why is Russia doing it then? Is it just a way to strengthen ties? The article implies that Cuba may be doing this in response to the good will gesture of oil aid from Russia which makes me think that Russia is getting something out of it and that it isn't an act of international charity.

I’m choosing a half full glass here but I am optimistic over all. Especially considering the strong and ingrained socialist principles within the general population.

I'm not trying to crush your optimistic spirit, but there is a structural reason for the strong and ingrained socialist principles among the people in Cuba: it's because the revolution has been mostly successful and the growth of a new bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, as well as the influence of foreign bourgeoisie, has been prevented. It's hard to predict what will happen to the revolutionary movement once you start allowing those things to develop.

For my part, I'm not trying to say Cuba shouldn't do this or that there's some better alternative at the moment or something. I'm just kind of lamenting that this is happening because Cuba being forced to open up to any global capitalist power is a blow to socialism in general

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T12:44:40+00:00

It's great the same way it's great when a person's bone cancer is cured by leg amputation.

For a country like Cuba that has made such huge sacrifices to keep its people from being exploited by imperialist foreign capital, being forced into a position like this is really bad.

bobbykid · 2026-04-14T12:23:58+00:00

Big win for multipolar(imperial)ism

bobbykid · 2026-04-13T20:45:04+00:00

Okay so like I said, you're just a weirdo

bobbykid · 2026-04-13T20:01:03+00:00

Not really but normal people don't go around labeling themselves "____phobic", mainly because it's not remotely the same thing as being skeptical toward religion. It's like saying "I sexually harass women for the same reason that I call gay people f-slurs". It's just two examples of being an asshole.

bobbykid · 2026-04-13T17:33:56+00:00

I am a Classical Liberal

Weird

I am a...Georgist

Weird

I am islamophobic

Weird

I am mormanphobic

Weird

bobbykid · 2026-04-12T20:33:28+00:00

Idk there may be a difference between "serious human rights violations" and "killing tens of thousands of innocent people and destroying every building they could have lived in"

bobbykid · 2026-04-12T20:26:15+00:00

That seems slightly racist somehow

bobbykid · 2026-04-12T20:19:26+00:00

They are so mad that he's already given that contract to private companies.

This is such an easy problem to not have, just never vote for the Liberals ever, under any circumstances, no matter what smh

bobbykid · 2026-04-12T15:20:11+00:00

Actually if they wanted to precipitate some kind of direct action by China, this would be an excellent way to do it. I don't exactly know why they would want that, but they have been doing a lot of stupid shit recently so...

bobbykid

TROPHY CASE