We must provide critical support for AES states. It's true that these states can sometimes as or more authoritarian than many countries in the imperial core, but that's necessary to survive against the constant threat of coups and intervention. It isn't enough to "both sides" the issue - especially if there's a threat of intervention, the least we can do is to back them up. :xi-clap:

ACAB means ACAB. No matter what country or government, law enforcement draws out the worst kinds of people who just want to have power over others. A socialist project that doesn't seek to abolish the police can hardly be considered a socialist project at all. :acab:

When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. The capitalist system constantly perpetuates violence and death, and invents all sorts of nonsense justifications about why we should be ok with it. The reality is that they just don't give a fuck about us. The reality is, they're attackers in the class war. When the tables finally turn, we will not apologize or hide behind a bunch of "well, actually's." They'll get what they fucking deserve. :stalin-shining:

There are a million reasons why the death penalty should be abolished. Even from a pragmatic standpoint, studies have shown that it's impractical and has no deterrent effect on crime. And of course, plenty of innocent people have been executed - including many who were leftists and/or PoC - and once it's done there's no going back. More generally, the state shouldn't have that kind of power over the people, and it's way too easy for it to be misused and get out of control if it falls into the wrong hands. :geordi-no:

The core idea of Dialectical Materialism is that our beliefs and ideologies arise out of the material conditions of the physical world we experience. As our conditions change, it's only natural that our ideas should change as well. Which is why it's so frustrating that so much of leftist theory is so old, and so many leftists seem to performatively hold on to century-old grudges where everyone involved is dead and the conditions aren't relevant to the modern world. :logo:

Theory is important because a lot of the ideological problems people struggle with are not new issues. If you don't familiarize with the existing body of knowledge on a subject, then you're setting out to rediscover everything from scratch, which is an impossible task. Rather, what's more likely is that you'll develop views based on ignorance and propaganda. As for relevance while things may look different on the surface, the class struggle is still the same one that has been going on since long before Marx. :curious-marx:

Revolution is hopeless. The state is more powerful than it's ever been, and leftists are disorganized, poorly armed, and prone to infighting. The fact of the matter is, at least in the imperial core, there's not really much revolutionary potential. People always point to Vietnam and Iraq, but in those cases the people were poor rugged farmers struggling to not die, and it's just not viable to use them as a model over here. We just have to survive and try to fix what we can and not get carried away with unrealistic power fantasies. :AyyyyyOC-big:

Reform is pointless. It's called bourgeois democracy for a reason - they have all sorts of levers of control to prevent any real change from happening. The game is rigged. Even the least bad people in government are still shit, and even if they weren't, in order to get things done they have to somehow convince the people in power to do things that go against their own class interests. The only real point to engaging with electoralism is to radicalize people when it fails :doomer: