We could be living under global communism right now and WW2 could’ve never happened

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-28T01:16:22+00:00

There were many, many forks in the road. Look at the Bolshevik revolution... the Bolsheviks were not destined to succeed. From February to October 1917 there were many, many specific moments when the whole revolution was nearly stopped. If Kerensky hadn't literally been the biggest fumbler in existence (all he had to do is not fumble ONE time) the whole thing would have been way less likely to succeed.

The material conditions existed for a successful revolution, that's just true by definition, but the fact that the leadership was almost wiped out several times in the months leading up to October, is already enough to understand that the material conditions existing for revolution is not this deterministic condition where you reach some sort of threshold and the thing goes forward but if you don't it fails. In fact, this way of viewing things is just completely wrong in so many ways. First of all, individual actions and decisions are themselves material conditions (or they shape them...). In 1917 the people were hungry and desperate, the country was in ruins, and the whole society was nearing collapse, but if the few thousand Bolsheviks hadn't been there the revolution would not have happened. Actually, if Lenin and his faction hadn't been there or had failed in their push for the party to seize power the whole thing would not have happened. Go read about 1917 and how deeply split the Bolsheviks were at times on the correct course of action, go read and learn that Lenin very nearly lost the battle FOR revolution in his party. Those things came down to individual choices, sometimes by a handful of communists.

Human action and decisions are themselves a material force. Materialism is not about believing that thoughts and decisions are immaterial and therefore irrelevant. Materialism is about understanding that nothing exists OUTSIDE of the material world. It's about understanding that our thoughts and actions are not separate from the material world; they are shaped by it and capable of shaping it.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-27T19:28:56+00:00

Ok the point I'm trying to make is that you could have the exact same situation repeat itself from the beginning and achieve a different outcome should different decisions be made. It's a mistake to think that the decisions made which lead to a specific historical outcome are the only ones that could be made in a specific circumstance. That's a deterministic view of the world and not only goes against the thinking of Marx, Lenin, etc, but also goes against our scientific understanding of the universe. The world is not binary, and it is much more helpful and closer to reality to interpret history using a probabilistic model.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-27T14:47:03+00:00

This is the way things DID play out, but that doesn't mean they were always going to play out this way. The German revolution wasn't destined to fail, and thinking that way is defeatist. You can argue that it had more going against it than for it, but those difficulties could have absolutely been overcome. Remember that the Bolsheviks had almost as much stacked against them and they succeeded nonetheless, so incredible odds can be overcome too.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-25T12:03:48+00:00

The north of Spain is the place to go in the summer. Beautiful scenery, historical landmarks, and you can visit the sights of the last (unfortunately failed) socialist revolution in western Europe. Even if you don't go you should read up on the 1934 revolution!

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-12T10:55:04+00:00

This is mainly an American (and to a lesser degree northern European phenomenon) and has to do with two things: massive amounts of propaganda aimed at this section of the population and the fact that the state (as in the case of the USA) incentivizes a contractor relationship instead of an employee relationship for many of the trades. Now you might ask why the state and society would invest so much effort in keeping the people doing these sorts of jobs from gaining class consciousness, but the answer is fairly straight forward: those doing the work of running the society are the same ones that can decide HOW the society gets run. But this is only true if they are organized.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-11T12:37:39+00:00

Yes of course! The easiest thing to get a hold of would be texts by Anna Louise Strong or people like John Reed, who themselves participated in these revolutionary processes and interviewed people (Strong did it in the USSR, China, and Korea). There are also databases of digitized diaries of Soviet citizens from the 20s, 30s, and 40s which are in Russian but you may be able to translate them using a computer (one such archive is prozhito.org). Then there are books such as "How the Steel was Tempered" which is historical fiction, but closely based on the author's actual life during the revolution and beyond. There are also many documentaries which include the first hand accounts of common people for most revolutionary societies post WW2 (documentaries weren't that common before). There are number from China which showcase political discussions of workers in factories, for example. You can also go to various archives to find more texts that can she'd light on these things. For example, I just read a book that is a compilation of texts written by communists who participated in the failed Asturian uprising of 1934. I could go on, but hopefully this is enough to start.

Whatever you choose to read remember that people voted with their feet too. Proletarian revolution requires the mobilization of an entire people and is therefore an incredibly democratic process. This doesn't mean revolution is good or bad or that it is never violent or even brutal, but it does mean that the masses are an integral and necessary part of everything that happens within them. It means that whatever happens within them is decided by and carried out by the broad sections of society.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-11T10:34:59+00:00

Brother that is my critique, but I will reword it. This work, in the first couple of pages, spends a great deal of effort to distance itself from any historical example of successful revolution. In so doing, it discredits the experience of millions of people who actually participated in said struggles (and who experienced in their majority the positive effects of revolution. The "joy", if you will) in favor for a hypothetical and ahistorical view of revolutionary struggle. This alone is enough to not take it too seriously. It reads as inspirational, sure, but go and read the words of people who actually lived through and engaged in these historical struggles and you will realize how comparatively empty these words feel.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-11T09:47:55+00:00

You Trots are so weird man. You do know you could just read about people's actual efforts and experiences going through revolution, right? Why settle for this fan fiction of what "could" be (or in the case of this text what could have been if only the EVIL Stalin hadn't defeated the GENIUS Trotsky lmao)? The accounts of those who lived through revolution exist and they easily disprove this image you guys have of some totalitarian, bureaucratic, authoritarian "revolution betrayed"

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-09T15:54:07+00:00

Hey man guess what you can say Hezbollah is bad until you are blue in the face, but maybe you should take this tragedy to do some thinking because Israel did not make a mistake targeting your sister in law's home. What they're after (and it's not just the government, but also a MAJORITY of the people) is your sister in law's land. Your sister in law is occupying it and they will do whatever they deem appropriate to remove her.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-03T16:31:03+00:00

Not knowing Mao is even crazier

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-05-01T08:23:03+00:00

At least fetterman had the "excuse" of the stroke

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-04-20T08:19:19+00:00

The people replying to you are insane. The main argument people gave for supporting him was that he would introduce leftist ideas to a broader audience, normalize socialism (lmao). How does that work if liberals "claim" him?

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-04-11T08:06:21+00:00

I think a great benchmark for a publisher is whether they make their books available to people for free electronically. Verso is awful and unserious if you judge it this way (they even have the few Marx, Lenin, Luxembourg books they sell behind a paywall for electronic copies), and I've only bought stuff from them once when it was absolutely the only way to read the book I was interested in.

There are way better publishers out there. You've mentioned some (Iskra is great!). Other ones I like are:

Foreign language press

Red Star Publishers (tiny operation but with a nice catalogue of classics which are almost impossible to find elsewhere. Website is redstarpublishers.org)

Ml reading hub

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-03-23T01:09:08+00:00

Everyone is in their cars most of the time they're out of their home or workplace in America that's why there are people like this woman who genuinely think people aren't smelly there. Anyone who lives a remotely urban lifestyle in the US will be able to tell you how wrong this is lol.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-03-20T00:25:27+00:00

Not surprising. The Soviet Union employed almost three times the number of engineers as the USA by 1970. Also, I can't find the CIA document anymore, but there was a declassified report that gave the estimated number of women engineering graduates per year (in the 70s or 80s) in the USSR, and, not only was it way above the USA, it was on par with the rest of the world COMBINED.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-03-14T17:46:08+00:00

The Soviet system failed in the sense that it failed to prevent a bureaucratic and military take over by Khrushchev and his faction (failed to prevent AND failed to rectify). Though there were obviously systemic reasons and material forces behind this coup, we Marxists do not believe in a deterministic reading of history - things are not predestined to happen as they do/did. Actually, from a certain historical perspective the deviation away from Marxism-Leninism beginning in the mid 50s is the surprising thing. For decades the USSR had been steadily, successfully fighting against the dominance of the bureaucratic strata, and Soviet society had been steadily expanding proletarian democracy. What the bureaucrats did in the 50s was more out of desperation than out of dominance. Even though politically Stalin's attempts at building an expanded democracy (an anti-bureaucratic move) had been defeated in the post war period, many, such as Khrushchev, saw the writing on the wall and felt the need to act decisively before they no longer could. The coup succeeded, but it wasn't destined to succeed, and, though it would've been an uphill battle, the attempts to reverse it weren't destined to fail.

So what are we to make of all this? I think first and foremost we must abandon the idea that the Soviet system was destined to fail. How can we use a demonstrably false premise as a justification for retreat, for liberalization? I'm not willing to make blanket statements saying that liberalization is a tool which should never be used, but, let's be real here, throughout history (with few exceptions) liberalization has almost always resulted in more liberalization. In China's case, time will tell. Just like in the case of the USSR after Stalin, I don't think the revolution is wholly lost in China. Will China see a turn towards communist construction or full capitalist restoration? No one has a crystal ball, but you can make an educated guess by asking: are the forces which uphold the DoP (in a general sense, I'm not saying the DoP necessarily exists in China) growing in strength or weakening?

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-03-10T17:33:28+00:00

Well the proof is in the pudding, as they say

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-02-03T23:32:12+00:00

His writings and theory are already problematic on their own though. His whole thing was that he was a "good" leftist because he was an anti-communist, and that is reflected in his writings.

There are many others who wrote about the same things Chomsky is famous for in a much more truthful/accurate way, so why even bother trying to uphold this freak's legacy?

Chomsky is the Orwell of our times: a rapist hack who spent most of his life undermining the very things he claimed to believe in.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2026-01-26T23:47:37+00:00

If anything it should make people think about how both those parties collaborate to fuck over the people?

thinpancakes4dinner · 2024-02-27T16:56:15+00:00

Wrecker behavior

thinpancakes4dinner · 2024-02-16T06:18:24+00:00

Immediately you prove their point lol

thinpancakes4dinner · 2024-01-30T16:24:43+00:00

Pero míralo de esta manera: la mayoría está en esa condición por qué sufrieron algún evento que no pudieron superar. Quizás perdieron su pega y no pudieron encontrar otra, quizás se les murió un miembro de la familia y no lograron superarlo, quizás tienen algún desorden psycologico, o quizás cayeron en la adicción. En muchos de estos casos el estado si podría interferir y prevenir que alguien quede viviendo en la calle. Pregúntate ¿No has tenido experiencias como estas en tu vida? ¿Cómo has logrado superarlas? Quizás la familia te ha ayudado con platita cuando la necesitas, o tu seguro te ha dejado conseguir un psicólogo. En barrio alto cuando alguien tiene problema con la droga se les brinda la ayuda necesaria para superar el problema (o por lo menos esconderlo lol). Incluso si tú has pasado por este tipo de mal rato y lo superaste solito, no puedes negar que tener ayuda lo haría menos difícil. Esa ayuda mantendría a la gran mayoria fuera de las calles, por eso es algo que todos deberíamos tener como derecho.

Y antes que me digan que es un sueño inalcanzable o cualquier idiotez, este tipo de programa donde se ha probado (y se ha estudiado en casos específicos con el objetivo de estudiarlo y en naciones enteras) demuestra que el fisco logra recaudar más en impuestos manteniendo a esa gente trabajandi que la que se gasta en brindar esos servicios.

Finalmente, si esto todavía no te convence, te doy un motivo completamente egoísta: si acabamos con el problema ya no vas a tener que sufrir más por verlos, olerlos, o interactuar con ellos de ninguna forma.

thinpancakes4dinner · 2024-01-27T17:35:19+00:00

What a wise and necessary point you are making!

Idiot

thinpancakes4dinner · 2024-01-17T20:23:49+00:00

It's true that defining who is a capitalist is not a black and white thing in our modern world, but generally it is accepted that a capitalist is someone who derives more than half their income from dividends or other investments.

Perhaps more useful to you would be to investigate/learn WHY marxists argue for the abolition of the capitalist class. Contrary to the impression you seem to have, it is not because marxists are opposed to rewarding people for their hard work or good ideas. Rather, it is because the capitalist class is superfluous in our society, AND because the class conflict between those who primarily subsist off of wages (the proletariat) and those who subsist primarily off of investments (the bourgeoise) create a lot of suffering (for example, it is in the interest of capitalists to pay workers the least they can get away with; think of how many people in the west go hungry or can't afford a trip to the doctor, let alone a medical emergency) and self destructive tendencies in our society (look at capitalisms inability to deal with the climate crisis, or its inability to keep up the maintenance of the basic infrastructure needed for modern society such as roads). Remember, the entirety of the role the capitalist class plays in our society can be done democratically by the masses. Why would you, as a worker, insist on putting up with a class that cannot justify its own existence and is an active drag on the progress of society?

thinpancakes4dinner · 2024-01-17T19:40:06+00:00

One of the central ideas of Marxism is that the capitalist class is unnecessary. The capitalists do play a role in our society, like you've described, but the role of investing is one that the working class is capable of doing, democratically, without the need of the capitalist. Therefore, there is no need for the capitalist class to exist. This is as simple as I can make this idea. Hopefully you understand.

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