Do you think in war you only attack what you directly plan on taking?

They didn’t seriously try to take the capital, and even if by miracle they did, the purpose is to end the war then and there. Right now they are focusing on attrition, wearing Ukraine down slowly.

Depends on how you sort, locally or by all, new comments or active.

Lemmy.ml isn’t really defederated. Individual users may block it, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing their viewpoints, it just stops them from seeing mine. You could make a Lemmy.zip account, and just subscribe to the communities across instances you want to see, then scroll by “subscribed,” making your own local feed.

I don’t know what you mean by “moderately conservative communists,” communists are definitionally radicals.

Monopolize does not mean that the group is small, but that the access is exclusive. The group that monopolizes can be large, and extremely exclusionary towards other groups. Anarchists in Spain monopolized authority, ran labor camps, and built up hierarchical structures over time to suit the realities of the Spanish Civil War.

Do you want to see communist content more? Lemmy.ml or something like Lemmy.zip can maximize federation. Do you want to pretty much only see content from leftists of various stripes, and want to defederate from non-leftists? Hexbear.net is nice too. It depends on what you want.

Personally, I think the best thing to do is scroll some instances locally without an account and see if you like the vibe, then transfer over to the one that fits you the best.

In the modern day, the PRC, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, and Laos are all Marxist-Leninist or juche socialist.

Communism posting is usually on Lemmy.ml, Hexbear.net, and Lemmygrad.ml.

Lemmy is pretty great. Growth isn’t as important when profit isn’t the goal, and I like having a lot of communists. It might appear more dead from your side because you’re not on an instance federated with most of them, though. Lemmy.world is definitely more similar to reddit.

Regarding Trump over Cuba, yes, it would indeed be a great crisis. He wouldn’t get elected in the first place.

As for dialectical materialism, it’s universally applicable. It’s used for science, historical analysis, etc. Even after the class struggle is resolved, there will still be contradictions, as all motion and development is caused by contradiction.

Not really.

Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.

• Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”

It applies just as much to billionaires in general as it does to imperialism.

Regarding Poland, no, the Soviets were not worse. The Nazis subjected the Polish to the holocaust, and was committed to exterminating millions of Poles. One historian saying “in many ways, the soviets were worse” doesn’t even mean the soviets were worse in total, yet that’s the implication you bring. Historical evidence backs up that the Nazi colonization of Poland was a prototype for the Nazi colonization of the Soviets.

As for Stalin and preparation for Barbarossa, again, reports conflicted. The Soviets knew that the Nazis were going to eventually invade, which is why Stalin had the Red Army prepare for German invasion. It wasn’t that Stalin didn’t mobilize the Red Army, it’s that Stalin refused to muster forces on the border, which was exactly what the Nazis wanted. The Nazis wanted to quickly route the Red Army and march straight to Moscow relatively unopposed, instead they ran through largely empty, wide-open land quickly, before running into extreme resistance.

If you don’t trust Goebbels, there’s plenty of other testemonies from Nazi officials, such as General Fedor von Bock in late July:

The enemy seeks to recapture Smolensk at all costs and is constantly sending in new forces. The theory expressed by some that the enemy acts without plans is not reflected in the facts […]. We’ve verified that the Russians have brought up across the front a new and compact deployment of forces. In many areas they seek to go on the offensive. It’s surprising for an adversary which suffered so many blows; they must possess an unbelievable amount of resources, in fact our troops still lament the power of the enemy artillery.

Here’s an excerpt from Domenico Losurdo’s book on Stalin:

Long read as an example of political-military ignorance or even blind trust in the Third Reich, the extremely cautious approach taken by Stalin in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of hostilities now appears in an entirely different light: “The relatively open concentration of Wehrmacht forces along the Soviet border, the violations of Soviet airspace and numerous other provocations had only a single purpose: to draw the main forces of the Red Army as close to the border as possible. Hitler wanted to win the war in one gigantic battle.” Even valiant generals were enticed by this trap. Expecting an onslaught, they insisted on a massive relocation of troops toward the border. However, “Stalin categorically rejected this demand, insisting on the need to maintain large-scale reserves at a considerable distance from any conceivable front line.” After the war, studying the material left behind by the German architects of Operation Barbarossa, marshall Georgy K. Zhukov recognized the correctness of the line pursued by Stalin: “Hitler’s command was counting on us bringing our main forces up to the border with the intention of surrounding and destroying them.”

Now, you may say that Zhukov was simply trying to play the political line. However, it’s abundantly clear that this is in fact exactly how it played out. The rapid conquest of largely open land was met with a rapid counteroffensive that placed the Nazis in a dreadful stalemate, and eventually a legendary counterattack. Had Stalin listened to his generals, it’s likely they would have played into the Nazi’s plans.

Are you under the impression that the Russian Federation is socialist?

Gramsci’s theory of hegemony helps explain this. The superstructure of a given society eminates the values and ideology of the ruling class. This often creates false consciousness.

Russia is clearly after the Donbass, not all of Ukraine. Elections will persist even after the almost certain conclusion, that being full annexing of the 4 oblasts. This is the sensible outcome, considering western Ukraine coup’d the president supported by the Donbass region in a Banderite takeover:

Since the Banderite coup in 2014, Ukraine has been in a civil war where Kiev has been ethnically cleansing the Donbass region. The Minsk agreements were both tanked by Ukraine and the west, meaning diplomatic solutions to the Civil War were tried, and failed.

Socialism/communism are systems, not individuals. Technically you could have, say, Cuba with Trump as president. It would be farcical, but one person alone is not the system.

As for communism having dialectics, that’s not the right conception of dialectics. Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of communists, not a feature of socialist/communist systems.

This is a very weird way of responding to me, either unblock me and respond, or don’t respond at all, IMO. Either way, I’ll address your new points.

As for it being a good thing if the proletariat is in control, your assertion that this isn’t materialist because it means we are depending on people with the “right ideas” is fundamentally wrong. This is like saying violence against Nazis and violence from Nazis are equivalent. Going off of Anark’s definition, the proletariat monopolizing power in their hands is unambiguously a good thing and a necessary step forward.

As for the idea that administration is a class in and of itself, this is not a materialist stance. Classes are not simply job categories, managers are proletarian too. Government officials earning wages are not a class, but instead proletarians. Their class goal remains the same as the rest of the proletariat, collectivize all production and distribution. Claiming that they are a class is not based on what actually determines class, but instead a conflation of hierarchy with class, which is an entirely different subject altogether.

As for the semantic terms being loaded, I don’t really think it matters as far as we are trying to get definitions across. However, subjectivist tactics of labeling concepts you disagree with with scary sounding words does impact how people react to said terms. Pointing out the subjectivist labeling isn’t really an argument against the terms, but instead against the intentions of the author. Considering Anark is a frequent abuser of Marxist theory, it makes sense for us to be skeptical of Anark’s claims.

I’m not Chinese, and it’s easy enough for Chinese citizens to get VPNs. You aren’t going to convince anyone with this level of argumentation, paid or not.

Why the hell are you jumping to racism and purity tests?