Do you think that you can help bring about the revolution or do you just want a minor less risky role? What kind of role can you participate on and die with a smile in your death bed when you think about how you lived your life?
I don't have the ambition to be in the spotlight. I'll just help the movement grow by continuing my organizing and I hope I can witness a socialist state in my life.
If a revolution would break out, I would fight. If I die, at least I died for a worthy cause.
Without getting into too much detail. Workplace actions that directly benefitted and elevated coworkers, especially those that were vulnerable. You can watch in real time as people build a stronger class consciousness.
I just wanna grill (for my comrades, can't fight on an empty stomach)
Definitely. Popping up to provide suppressing fire between flipping burgers or turning kebabs. Using a nice cedar plank to apply a makeshift splint before impaling a fascist on a barbecue fork.
I always feel like I haven't done anything and I'm so far from contributing meaningfully.
But, reflecting on it and without going into specifics, I've already done a lot of organizing and helped people win different things. I'm not on my death bed but it does give me a smile. I feel like it wasn't totally meaningless. So thanks for asking this question. There's always more to do and I hope to contribute more in different forms, but I'm trying to focus on myself and hopefully get my life in order so I can help better.
It's important to contribute and show solidarity, but the revolution doesn't require a savior and it doesn't help anyone if you help others only to then need help yourself.
I live in the US, so just in some small part, contributing to the anti-war movement, and helping spread Marxist ideas and dissillusionment with its capitalist dictatorship.
IMO if there is a list of countries that could have a revolution, the US would be dead last...but at the very least we can add our voices to those demanding an end to US wars, in whatever way we can.
Yeah, this makes sense, but you are Statestian? Damn, with a name like Muad Dibber, I always thought that you were some guy from Eastern Europe 🤣.
Muad'dib is a dune reference.Plus it's more of a zensunni name.
The books are very good, all 6 of them. Not sure about the ones Brian wrote, but I'm sure they're at least half-decent.
Not sure about a "smile in your death bed" but there are roles for anyone to play in a revolution. Most people can't have the energy (or free time) of a Lenin or Mao, but you can still join an union, party or other kind of organisation and do as much work as you're able to from there.
Thankfully I'm able to help out in minor ways like that, to the best of my limited capabilities.
If I don't end up a deadweight or a counterrevolutionary, that'll be good enough for me.
what you said reminds me of what Stalin said in an interview with Emil Ludwig, link here
Stalin: You are being modest.
Ludwig: No, that is really so, and for that very reason I shall put questions that may seem strange to you. Today, here in the Kremlin, I saw some relics of Peter the Great and the first question I should like to ask you is this: Do you think a parallel can be drawn between yourself and Peter the Great? Do you consider yourself a continuer of the work of Peter the Great?
Stalin: In no way whatever. Historical parallels are always risky. There is no sense in this one.
Ludwig: But after all, Peter the Great did a great deal to develop his country, to bring western culture to Russia.
Stalin: Yes, of course, Peter the Great did much to elevate the landlord class and develop the nascent merchant class. He did very much indeed to create and consolidate the national state of the landlords and merchants. It must be said also that the elevation of the landlord class, the assistance to the nascent merchant class and the consolidation of the national state of these classes took place at the cost of the peasant serfs, who were bled white.
As for myself, I am just a pupil of Lenin’s, and the aim of my life is to be a worthy pupil of his. The task to which I have devoted my life is the elevation of a different class — the working class. That task is not the consolidation of some “national” state, but of a socialist state, and that means an international state; and everything that strengthens that state helps to strengthen the entire international working class. If every step I take in my endeavor to elevate the working class and strengthen the socialist state of this class were not directed towards strengthening and improving the position of the working class, I should consider my life purposeless.
So, you see, your parallel does not fit.
As regards Lenin and Peter the Great, the latter was but a drop in the sea, whereas Lenin was a whole ocean.
I really wish I could back in time and talk to Stalin and the crew🥹😔
Stalin would probably scold you for wasting your time machine on him instead of bringing about communism
Agreed, at the minimum one could at least bring as much knowledge (books, etc) regarding future sciences, technology and industry, agriculture, weaponry, medicines, the history as it's to come to pass, etc. along.
I'd also bring as much documentation as possible of how the Soviets fell (were betrayed from within), and how the Chinese model has succeeded especially since Deng and now with Xi- I'd bring as much information also, about the emergence of BRICS. I'd do my best to convince them to expand the Soviet model of development (which hopefully would adopt many aspects of the Chinese), to expand that prosperity and cooperation with not only the rest of the Warsaw pact (ideally I'd travel before WW2, that said) but to communist and trustworthy anti-imperialist states in the global south- ideally starting with Eurasia as the most "secure" continent to do so. (Personally I'd be hoping that a sort of "comintern/warsaw pact+ASEAN or SCO/if we're really optimistic, a sort of "greater Soviet federation" would emerge- spanning not just Russia and eastern/central Europe, but China, India, Iran and Afghanistan, the Turks if they could be brought into the fold, from there the Arab world and southeast Asia, eventually down into Africa and Latin America- basically, a generally contiguous, defensible, and ever-expanding union of Soviets, ideally with ever-increasing integration and cooperation, intense focus on development, exponential growth through scale).
And I'd bring whatever actual technology was possible, over as well. The current technology ubiquitous in daily life (computers, phones, routers, even- hell, even game consoles or TVs, speakers, etc. to ideally provide a glimpse of what Soviet soft power could be like and the technologies/ecosystems necessary to conquer the hearts and minds of the world with it. A generator as well (presumably one would hope that it could be reverse engineered), solar panels and batteries, information on radar systems, and whatever older tech I could get my hands on that were building blocks that brought our society to where it is now- calculators, pagers, older TVs/radios and other such electronics, DVDs, cassettes, floppy discs, older cameras (digital and pre-digital), maybe even some older punchcard system if I could get my hands on it, you name it.
It would naturally take a long while to reverse engineer and bring to production- but whatever can be carried over, by all means I'd do so.
Go back far enough (pre-WW2) and I think there's a possible chance that by this point in time (2020s) in the changed history, that a global, or at least Eurasian, Soviet/Comintern will have emerged.
I'm flattered by the comparison, but unlike Stalin, I've barely made any steps to strengthen the working class.
Well… those are pretty low aspiration, ngl 😅. What makes you feel that you would be any of those 2 things, comrade?
I'm a very materially comfortable first-worlder. I have a lot to lose from the immiseration of my class that would materially put my skin in the game, as opposed to simply relying on some sense of morality to carry me. I'm worried I might be compromised; although I suppose recognizing this already puts me ahead of many so-called leftists in the Great Satan.
Lately I've been thinking about whether I could in some way contribute to a better understanding of the American diaspora, its conditions, and its relationship to modern-day imperialism and colonialism, and increase the revolutionary sentiment or potential of this demographic. I feel like I'm nowhere near educated or experienced enough to make this type of contribution to theory right now, but I still identify this as kind of a gap in the current theory as I understand it.
Otherwise, I think I want to largely focus on accessibility and writing translations, as well as doing the more sort of typical rank-and-file organizational work. I think I would like to contribute to a sort of decentralization or spreading out of revolutionary activity in my country, since the current organizing in my experience is way too centered on the capital, and so ends up locking out a lot of people from the countryside or from other parts of the country.
Any fash or an important fash, like let’s say taking cough cough a CEO from a weapons company in Minecraft?
Sorry Hatsune Miku, but we're making China Edition the only edition of Minecraft now
yo you hear about MEGA? link here.
I read kohei saito read some journals or writing of marx before they were released, and he mentioned marx near the end of his life was studying the natural sciences and specifically ecology.
makes sense, his ideas fall into place with it quite well, and we know he sent darwin a copy of kapital vol 1 and a letter saying his work was incredible.
To save CPUSA history before it (may) become largely extinct and/or forgotten!
By documenting it and compiling all the studies and books that have been written about us and creating new research and insight into the organization's history.
Also, popularizing it and educating people about us.
What kind of role can you participate on and die with a smile in your death bed when you think about how you lived your life?
Honestly, never failing to speak truth and stand up for what's right- ie. spreading knowledge- is good enough for me. It's nothing fancy or particularly accomplished, survival is hard enough, let alone prospering, and I have people I care about- but I won't sell my (metaphorical) soul, and that's something- if it comes down to it I feel rather confident at least I would also die for it when and if the time comes, though in all fairness I've always had varying degrees of a death wish (not suicidal; but at least part of why is I can't "afford" it, and I'm not remotely near done with life either).
I'll die with a smile if I've set things up so my partner can live a better life once I'm gone- and (while they've got their own lives) that goes similarly for my siblings. Personally I think those are the main things that will either haunt me on my hypothetical deathbed, or leave me satisfied.
That's the answer for what will leave me satisfied- naturally I want my contribution to be a whole lot more. But baby steps, I suppose. Personally I'd like to get a foot in the door in China, eventually move fully and ideally help/convince as many of my loved ones to come along for the ride, or at least to consider it an option as things get worse in the imperial core- especially as where things are headed here are incredibly worrisome as an understatement (I'm ethnic Chinese coming from an immigrant family and technically one myself, so naturally there's a lot of concern- frankly I think we're in a situation not entirely unlike the Japanese before internment, if not worse- the circumstances of the Jewish people in Weimar Germany; also my partner and I are trans, etc..)
Alongside that, I'd like to bring the lessons of the Chinese system- and the development of BRICS, etc... back here. An infinitely better world is right at our fingertips, yet the west refuses to accept it. Prosperity for all is possible- and the monstrous system we live in and that the west imposes on the rest of the world is a failing and thoroughly (long since, but increasingly more so) debunked model of existence. Diplomacy, peace, win-win cooperation, actual equality and global democracy- and genuine democracy at home, ie. a democracy of material conditions- these are all not only possible, but they are triumphant, and the west is doing everything, as they always have, to kill it (and our entire species in the process if need be) before it comes fully into itself.
I'd die for any of the above. At least I'd like to think so.
bringing in insights or a synthesis from the natural sciences to ml theory or vice-versa
honestly though if I could author a piece on science for the people or another marxist and natural science publication I'd die satisfied
