• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    21 hours ago

    I’d prefer if we could come to an understanding. The Red Scare isn’t over, and repeating its dogma stands in the way of progressing to a better, more equitable world. Attacking socialism and communism based on novels, while refusing to engage with academic literature on the subject, is making it difficult for those who organize in real life to do our jobs as activists.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        19 hours ago

        As a communist, organizing in the post-soviet world, any time I bring up how we can solve many of the basic problems of today via working class organizing and collectivizing production and distribution, inevitably those with understandings of existing socialism that stem from red scare interpretations wield these accusations like a club.

        The soviet union was tremendously progressive, though of course as all existing phenomena, had real flaws. As communists, we need to defend the real gains of existing socialism by highlighting them, while learning from real flaws. To get a real analysis, we need to reject the ruling class appraisal of existing socialism, which includes novels and other works pushed to people to serve as convenient conversation-terminators, like you did earlier.

        Did you learn anything new from my comments? Do you disagree with what I said? Why? I’m interested in the answer to all of these questions, not someone throwing a novel at me and refusing to engage with well-thought out and studied comments.