You aren’t talking to a Marxist-Leninist, Geneva doesn’t identify as such and does not read theory nor practice in a communist party. I do think Geneva’s critique rings hollow, considering that.

That pretty much confirms my personal stereotypes on Marxist Lenninists. Talk constantly about how we need to act more and think less to achieve something while simultaneously doing nothing to enact positive change in the world.

This is bullshit. MLs say we need to act and think more, and do so by organizing in communist parties. From the Black Panther Party to PSL in the US, communist parties have been doing real organizing work, and that’s not to mention the orgs that have already succeeded like the CPC.

You guys are stuck in the authoritarian mindset, just like capitalists are stuck in the capitalist mindset. You can’t imagine any real alternative to the status quo

This is blind, vibes-based critique. “Authoritarian mindset” isn’t a thing. The problems with organizing in the west are not due to lacking in imagination, to the contrary, western “left” anti-communists let their imagination lead them to opposing real, existing socialism.

you just idealize people that pretended to do so in the past (Lennin, Stalin, Mao). But power and exploitation is still just that. Regardless of if private oligarchs enact it or the state.

This is further bullshit. Marxists of the past that successfully established socialism weren’t “pretending” to do so. Ironically, it’s yourself that is idealizing them into “Great Men of History,” and cutting out the billions of people that organized to create real socialism. MLs do not idolize Marxist figures, we study them, their contributions, their struggles, their successes and their failures, so that we can continue to sharpen our theory to guide our practice. Marxism is a science, not a dogma.

You people need to grow up and actually try to do something that changes the world for the better, not just argue with anarchists online.

I agree, though most of us that are committed enough are already organizing in real life too.

Yes, lmao. To be fair, I do that frequently with other topics. When someone posts something general enough that I’ve already responded to it in-depth before, I usually fall back to previous responses of my own. I don’t have time to actually hand-write in-depth responses for everything, but what I can do is spend effort on something I haven’t seen before, and modify older comments to suit particularities and update the information if I’ve learned anything new or changed my stances.

I have a full-time job, a family, and hobbies, activist work, etc. to balance, so Lemmy is usually something I do when I have a few minutes of nothing else.

As an example, this comment is brand-new, while this comment is a modified version of an earlier effort-post I made.

You do condemn those fighting the empire, though. That’s why it’s necessary to both read and practice, not coast by on instinct alone. You have decent political instincts, but instead you obsess over Bad Empanada thought and treat it as a substitute for reading, and posting as a substitute for practice. It’s ultimately online progressivism at best, and is why it rings extraordinarily hollow when coming from you, especially as you haven’t given any indication of reading or practicing, let alone both.

Marxist texts should be studied academically and scientifically, but not dogmatically and inflexibly. Marxism is a science, not a dogma. Not everyone needs to read theory and be a revolutionary, such would mean revolution is impossible. However, if one is to be a revolutionary, they must read theory so as to guide their practice.

I won’t speak for Geneva (Geneva isn’t a Marxist) but Marxists advocate for revolutionary party building. You can’t force a revolution into happening, but you can absolutely prepare for one and build the organ needed to carry it out. Herr’s a good diagram:

This explains the role of the party in forming a vanguard. This is the historically proven revolutionary strategy that has established socialism in many countries around the world.

Usually, both Marxists and anarchists are aligned on believing systemic change is necessary, not just individual and local charity to patch holes in the existing system.

Yep, great point! Iran most of all values its independence, which is a blessing and a curse.

No? That’s not how the withering of the state works. The state is a product of class struggle, by collectivizing all production and distribution class is ended, leaving only “the administration of things.” There’s no point where the state “gives away power,” the state is not outside of class struggle but a product of it. Without class struggle, there’s no need for the elements of society used to protect the ruling class, which in socialism is the proletariat.

No problem!

It’s certainly going to have an impact, I’m trying to temper my expectations but this could very well be catastrophic for the US Empire and a massive miscalculation.

Oh, that’s an interesting idea! Good luck on your project!

Absolutely! I’m personally hoping for regime change in some of the gulf states as dominos from this failed terrorism.

Haha, fair. Only problem is that Geneva can’t see my comments because they blocked me for calling them out on this shit before.

Europe has millitary bases in the area, the PRC does not. This isn’t particularly complicated. Stop obsessively following Bad Empanada.

Yes, that’s correct, they are buying from China as well. Just wanted to point out that they aren’t entirely dependent on China for production, which would limit them as the war goes on.

Iran has domestic missile and drone production, quite a lot of it in fact.

It’s highly likely that the PRC is supplying intel to Iran, given their effectiveness in the war thus-far. The PRC isn’t going to put boots on the ground in Iran and risk World War III, the PRC benefits from the US Empire’s self-driven destruction.

Haha, fair. I’ve only skimmed it for info. The big takeaway from the soviet chapters is that it was limited by being the first socialist state, and so they tried a lot of brand new things, some of which ended up being mistakes or mishandled. This isn’t anti-soviet messaging though, the point is that existing socialist states have learned from the soviets, and advanced upon them. When we measure the USSR’s democracy contextually, it was very impressive, but socialists have advanced beyond it. This is a good thing, though, as we must always strive for improvement.

(Side note: the physical copy is 130 USD! Piracy-heads stay winning.)

Do you consider the people of the USSR to have worshiped Lenin? What about the PRC, and Mao Zedong? The majority of defectors from the DPRK reported that they truly believed Kim Jong-Il was popularly supported. My question here is where you draw the line between respect and worship, and to ask you the follow-up question: do you believe it’s possible to greatly venerate a leader without counting it as worship, and if-so, how is that fundamentally different to how socialist leaders are venerated?

The problem with reporting on the DPRK is that information is extremely limited on what is actually going on there, at least in the English language (much can be read in Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and even Spanish). Most reports come from defectors, and said defectors are notoriously dubious in their accounts, something the WikiPedia page on Media Coverage of North Korea spells out quite clearly. These defectors are also held in confined cells for around 6 months before being released to the public in the ROK, in… unkind conditions, and pressured into divulging information. Additionally, defectors are paid for giving testemonials, and these testimonials are paid more the more severe they are. From the Wiki page:

Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in the DPRK, argues that defectors are inherently biased. He says that 70 percent of defectors in South Korea are unemployed, and selling sensationalist stories is a way for them to make a living.

Side note: there is a great documentary on the treatment of DPRK defectors titled Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul, which interviews DPRK defectors and laywers legally defending them, if you’re curious. I also recommend My Brothers and Sisters in the North, a documentary made by a journalist from the Republic of Korea that was stripped of her citizenship for making this documentary humanizing the people in the DPRK.

Because of these issues, there is a long history of what we consider legitimate news sources of reporting and then walking back stories. Even the famous “120 dogs” execution ended up to have been a fabrication originating in a Chinese satirical column, reported entirely seriously and later walked back by some news outlets. The famous “unicorn lair” story ended up being a misunderstanding:

In fact, the report is a propaganda piece likely geared at shoring up the rule of Kim Jong Eun, North Korea’s young and relatively new leader, said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of Korean studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Most likely, North Koreans don’t take the report literally, Lee told LiveScience.

“It’s more symbolic,” Lee said, adding, “My take is North Koreans don’t believe all of that, but they bring certain symbolic value to celebrating your own identify, maybe even notions of cultural exceptionalism and superiority. It boosts morale.”

These aren’t tabloids, these are mainstream news sources. NBC News reported the 120 dogs story. Same with USA Today. The frequently reported concept of “state-mandated haircut styles”, as an example, also ended up being bogus sensationalism. People have made entire videos going over this long-running sensationalist misinformation, why it exists, and debunking some of the more absurd articles. As for Radio Free Asia, it is US-government founded and funded. There is good reason to be skeptical of reports sourced entirely from RFA about geopolitical enemies of the US Empire.

Sadly, some people end up using outlandish media stories as an “acceptable outlet” for racism. By accepting uncritically narratives about “barbaric Koreans” pushing trains, eating rats, etc, it serves as a “get out of jail free” card for racists to freely agree with narratives devoid of real evidence.

It’s important to recognize that a large part of why the DPRK appears to be insular is because of UN-imposed sanctions, helmed by the US Empire. It is difficult to get accurate information on the DPRK, but not impossible; Russia, China, and Cuba all have frequent interactions and student exchanges, trade such as in the Rason special economic zone, etc, and there are videos released onto the broader internet from this.

In fact, many citizens who flee the DPRK actually seek to return, and are denied by the ROK. Even BBC is reporting on a high-profile case where a 95 year old veteran wishes to be buried in his homeland, sparking protests by pro-reunification activists in the ROK to help him go home in his final years.

Finally, it’s more unlikely than ever that the DPRK will collapse. The economy was estimated by the Bank of Korea (an ROK bank) to have grown by 3.7% in 2024, thanks to increased trade with Russia. The harshest period for the DPRK, the Arduous March, was in the 90s, and the government did not collapse then. That was the era of mass statvation thanks to the dissolution of the USSR and horrible weather disaster that made the already difficult agricultural climate of northern Korea even worse. Nowadays food is far more stable and the economy is growing, collapse is highly unlikely.

What I think is more likely is that these trends will continue. As the US Empire’s influence wanes, the DPRK will increase trade and interaction with the world, increasing accurate information and helping grow their economy, perhaps even enabling some form of reunification with the ROK. The US Empire leaving the peninsula is the number 1 most important task for reunification, so this is increasingly likely as the US Empire becomes untenable.

Nodutdol, an anti-imperialist group of Korean expats, released a toolkit on better understanding the situation in Korea. This is more like homework, though. I also recommend again the aforementioned Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance for learning about the DPRK’s democratic structure.

No problem!