To all full-grown hexbears, NO DUNKING IN MY THREAD…ONLY TEACH, criminal scum who violate my Soviet will be banned three days and called a doo doo head…you have been warned
I don’t mean this as a dunk, but usually what has to get taught about leftist politics isn’t the specific claims of Marxism or what socialism is. Usually what western people have to be instructed with is current/former socialist countries are legitimate places and not cartoonish dictatorships. The nationalism brain worm runs far deeper than the capitalist one. And it’s that kind of sentiment that will entangle itself with their understanding of what western socialists advocate.
It’s pretty normal to accept anti-capitalist sentiment, even right wingers will use that kind of rhetoric, but it’s far less normal to praise the west’s enemies or to even view them as valid human beings. It’s why it’s so common for western leftists to first and foremost condemn the west’s enemies as doing socialism incorrectly.
That’s just what I experience most of the time when I get curious questions about socialism. I might get the odd question about how you motivate people without money, but the bulk of questions are about stuff like what haircuts are illegal in the DPRK.
Usually what western people have to be instructed with is current/former socialist countries are legitimate places and not cartoonish dictatorships.
To reinforce your point here, I cannot stress enough how important a step learning actual details about the USSR and China was for me. Because as you say, people don’t think of these as real places where countless real people had mundane, normal lives, they just imagine literal cartoon caricatures they passively absorbed from pop culture. Like one that stands out to me is reading a thorough description of the Soviet court system, where even though it took pains to stress how dysfunctional this feature or that feature was all I could think was “I’ve had family go through the courts in the US, I’ve seen firsthand what a completely mad and not at all functional system the US has, and by comparison what the Soviets were doing over half a century ago was meaningfully less dysfunctional than what we have now.”
And for China, ironically it was something from anti-CPC ultras (Sorghum and Steel) that helped me realize what China had even been doing at all, because even if they stressed this systemic failure or that one they still went into detail about what the policies in question were, what the material situation on the ground was, and why those decisions were being made, leading to a clear picture of China struggling against an impossible material situation and eventually succeeding. Like every western history is just “grr arrg mean devious celestials tricked the peasants and then Mao ate all the sparrows cause they’re dumb, grrr” but in the actual context even the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forwards starts to make sense in terms of the model emerging from rural communes that had implemented it successfully (or were claiming to have done so, at least) and the model of highly decentralized rural industry that’s far from the coast being extremely appealing given how vulnerable centralized coastal industry would be in the event of a war with the US; the Great Leap Forward didn’t work in practice, obviously, but there were clear reasons and pressures behind it instead of just the “lol gommunism dumb no food where iphone” bullshit that makes up the sum total of what liberals believe.
Yeah I sympathize with you here. I kind of arrived at communism in a non-standard way that didn’t involve much nationalism to jump over (I arrived at communism through an intense hatred of America during the Iraq War). But I did have to learn how other countries deal with things in different ways, based on the circumstances given to them.
Your court system example is good. I’ve gotten people to realize they were wrong about their warped view of other countries by simple things like showing them pictures of people walking around Moscow in the 70s, or showing them contemporary Chinese movies or music. There are some good videos on YouTube of people walking around Pyongyang and everything seems normal. That stuff is powerful, because there’s no warping it. People in socialist countries by and large have normal lives full of the same mundane things everyone else does.
i had a similar experience reading some anti-communist (i think) book in college, i forget the title but the primary antagonist guy was some bald guy with a scar on his head that would turn colors or writhe whenever he got mad, like the author was making fun of the scar, and this character basically resented the rural peasants for picking their noses all the time and just being generally ignorant uneducated people. like the whole point of the book was about how stupid and pointless it was to try to turn these idiot peasants into Modern Socialist Revolutionaries, but like all the reasoning and actions the ‘antagonists’ took made perfect sense to me the whole time. i forget most of the details since it was so long ago so its possible i just assumed the book was meant to be anti-communist and it was actually making some 5-d irony chess point that i would agree with if i noticed it. idk.
Yeah I agree with this totally, it’s why I try to hammer home that people focus on breaking down nationalism first and foremost, it is the primary issue.
imperialism is the current greatest threat to socialism worldwide, so much of a threat it even trickles down as brainrot in the minds of western people
Once nationalism is destroyed in a person they become incredibly easy to talk to about socialism though, they lose the kind of anti-tankie brainworms that exist and start taking internationalist stances. It’s so easy to reach someone that has genuinely not got nationalist brainworms.
If we could figure out a strategy as reliable at breaking this down as, for example, the strategy that has reduced military recruitment… Things would really start cooking for us.
I feel like nationalism (of rich first world nations) is a part of, or at least an extremely useful tool of, Imperialism.
What’s it truly like to live in communist north korea right now? I know that most of the buzz around how it’s a failed state and they’re starving the people are mostly propaganda, but it’s so hard to tell fact from fiction especially since there’s propaganda within the state as well.
I don’t claim to be an authority, but I have spent the last couple years trying to learn about the DPRK as much as I can from more independent sources (like from people from China who go there as tourists).
From a material perspective… very broadly it seems like it’s better to live in the DPRK than to be poor in the United States, but someone in the US who isn’t poor is probably better off than most DPRK citizens. That of course should not be a surprise, given how heavily the DPRK is sanctioned and how restricted their trade is. Interestingly from the time shortly after the Korean War (after the DPRK was able to recover from having every bit of its industrial capacity destroyed and ~20% of its people killed) up through the 80s, the DPRK was seen as the wealthier of the two countries on the Korean Peninsula.
Honestly, the only way to deny that the people of the DPRK are doing ok materially is to use the line about how whenever you see videos of people having fun a water park or whatever, they’re all just actors. For that, idk I think any application of critical thinking would tell you how ridiculous that is.
That said, there’s some truth to the famine thing, but that’s more an artifact of recent history. There really were famine conditions and suffering in the 90s. But that was more a function of some unique weather/climatic conditions plus the collapse of the USSR. The environmental and terrain conditions in the DPRK are not ideal for farming (cold and mountainous), so there’s a lot less margin for when things go bad. The famines could have been alleviated if the DPRK was allowed to have normal relations with other countries, but at the time the US and their allies used that suffering to try and put the screws to the DPRK instead.
I don’t know enough about the political situation to be able to speak to it with confidence.
What a cruel thing the US did to use the suffering of the north koreans as ammunition against north koreans
I’ve known people who’ve been there. I’ve known an Indonesian guy for instance who used to go on vacations to the DPRK to go skiing. Apparently it’s a fairly normal vacation destination for Indonesians because they can get into the country easily.
From what’s described to me, day to day life is pretty comparable to any other poor country in Asia. Life out in the countryside is probably the hardest. It seems like the worst aspects of living in the DPRK all relate to poverty rather than the cartoonish goofy dictatorship that westerners claim the country is like. They don’t have great internet access, but from what I’m told nearly every person in the DPRK buys USB drives full of pirated stuff anyway.
Other than their media, the DPRK is pretty normal, and in fact doing quite well considering their decades of sanctions and international aggression. They haven’t had widespread food insecurity in a while. Their healthcare system seems stable. They had energy instability for a while in the 90s they seem to have managed.
This is a fascinating documentary called My Brothers and Sisters in the North by a South Korean woman who had dual citizenship in Germany and then used that German Citizenship to visit the DPRK.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=nSd48emp0lI
She goes to a number of different places in the DPRK and visits people living much different lifestyles.
Things to remember when watching vids regarding inside DPRK is that they are basically under siege by Western Powers for almost a century now. So when they’re being interviewed, they’re basically talking to extensions of their oppressors and they’re very aware of that.
There’s also The Haircut by BoyBoy. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E
You’ll probably recognize some of the locations they went to from the documentary as there’s a basic tour every tourist goes on and then people who visit as part of the DPRK’s cultural exchange program get to visit more relevant locations to their project in addition.
Speaking of. If you can find a torrent of Aim High in Creation you’ll get to see a much more behind the scenes look of people in DPRK just doing their job and living their life. The facade of stiffness falls to the wayside and you get to see Filmmakers who aren’t typically dealing with tourists just being themselves and shooting the shit. See if you can tell when the Australian director is being inadvertently rude to them.
Oh, also regarding defectors. Most that you hear about are monetizing their story through USA backed Libertarian think tanks. Atlas Network being the big one. Freedom Factory is another if I remember correctly.
i swear. Propaganda, propaganda everywhere. We talk about America having “free speech” but it feels like the only ones able to speak and have their voices heard are the ones that are able to buy their way into the ears of millions through social media and mainstream media.
Manufacturing Consent machine goes
Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine - this is a quick little 5 minute primer on the topic, if you’re not familiar.
I see you’ve listened to Blowback, have you had the opportunity to watch Yellow Parenti yet?
Yeah, NK’s state media has always had a very off and somewhat idealist view of the DPRK. Most information you find on the nation doesn’t pass the sniff test. They also seem to be the oddball of the socialist countries.
This is one that made me question the western narrative on NK. An article about a stoner getting some North Korean weed and smoking in a restaurant like it was no big deal.. Very good read
The demonization of marijuana is such a bizarre thing. The US wanted to criminalize black culture so they deemed weed in the same category as meth or heroin, and countries in the imperial core and imperial periphery followed suit. But in places untouched by US influence weed is just … a part of their lives and culture. Just another plant that made you feel funny, like tea. And it’s refreshing to see places where weed isn’t just a drug that was decriminalized and made legal again, but actually had its legality preserved throughout and had no taboo associations stemming from it.
Anyway, fuck US culture for demonizing weed and shrooms. The US single-handedly destroyed a source of innovation for mental health research globally for having such a draconian stance on them and sheeple countries follow suit.
As someone with schizophrenia, I can say that the west demonizing psychedelics (shrooms and DMT specifically) has probably set back the treatment of schizophrenia really hardcore. There is a very heavy DMT presence in schizophrenia. I don’t know what role is plays exactly, but it is clear as day that DMT is partially responsible for the visuals. And people around me say I pretty much always act like I’m on shrooms. Psychedelic trials are essential to ever getting good schizophrenia treatment.
Also, the coca leaf was a lot like this before the west came in. Chewing a coca leaf doesn’t get you super high, it’s like a slightly harder cup of coffee, not even particularly addictive when treated right. America literally ruined every common plant medicine. Even starting to fight kratom even though kratom is essential for alleviating the fentanyl crisis in the nation. The US wants criminals, not functioning people
I don’t think anyone here really knows. The only people who know are defectors, and not only are defectors themselves not always reliable (Yeonmi Park being the obvious example), documentaries and interviews where defectors tell their experiences will often be edited to fit certain narratives. Not even necessarily for nefarious purposes, but for the same reason that spooky, ominous music plays when a documentary shows a lion sneak up to a gazelle. Telling scary stories about how kim jong-un will execute your family for wearing a tie he finds ugly will keep audiences more interested than “it really isn’t all that special over there, you guys” and since there’s 0 consequences for making up outrageous lies (since nobody is able or willing to fact check you), that’s what we get.
I’m more inclined to believe what I hear from the DPRK itself, but I don’t think anyone here can truly tell you what life over there is like.
I have distant second hand experience I guess. I’ve known two people who lived in the DPRK as transfer students, both Indonesian. They describe it to me as like most other places in Asia, just poorer. But you’re right, I have no idea what it’s like living there long term and I’ve never spoken with someone born there. It’s extremely rare to personally know a North Korean, so wild stories get passed around.
I don’t think anyone here really knows.
There are plenty of videos of people visiting. We know. It’s just a country, it’s full of regular people, they watch movies and play video games and read books and dance and go on walks and work normal jobs. They’re very poor and have infrastructure problems relating to the fact that they’ve been under siege ever since every major city in the country was leveled, but they’re doing pretty well with what they’ve got.
You could easily find footage of the DPRK from Chinese tourists to get a feel of everyday life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7vZ0NhutDM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdEeKHuBmc
It’s obviously not the same as actually living in the country, but that’s true for every single country on Earth.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
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I’m by no means an expert but some factors to consider are that there’s a very extensive economic sanctions regime in place against the DPRK.
What that looks like on the ground is that there’s very little oil because it’s hard to import, meaning that there are few cars and a heavy reliance upon mass transit and electricity instead (e.g. trolleybuses).
It also means that they don’t have as much access to things like cutting edge medical technology.
For farming, as manufacturing modern agrochemicals is often very energy intensive and reliant upon oil (do we even use the term petrochemicals? Lol. It feels like all of our chemicals are derived from oil these days…), they tend to be much more low-input chemical-wise and this affects yield as well as the environment (e.g. less chemical runoff in the waterways, all things being equal.)
There’s the focus on militarisation of the DPRK in the western media and this is a response to the Korean war and the very obvious attempts to destabilise and destroy their political system. Their recent advances in nuclear arms and ICBM technology has given them a degree of breathing room as it’s a pretty well established fact that this creates military deterrence that was otherwise being maintained through a very strong focus on a conventional military with a large financial investment in that. These days it’s not as high a priority to have such a strong army, for example, and they don’t need as much artillery aimed at Seoul to feel some degree of security knowing that nuclear missiles are going to fulfil the same purpose. (Am I cribbing my notes from Stephen Gowans here? You bet I am!) I would expect to see the DPRK gradually scaling down their investment in conventional military and reorienting their economic priorities towards infrastructure and other civilian purposes but I’d expect to see just as much military pageantry because they won’t want to expose their flank to the rest of the world unnecessarily. This means we should see better outcomes for the average citizen of the DPRK.
The west is preoccupied with the notion of Potemkin village narratives in the media. Everyone and their dog will point out how some building with no lights on is proof that an entire residential block is just for show or how the passengers on trains in the DPRK all appear to be actors or whatever. This is largely nonsense and a product of westerner tourists coming down with diagnosable cases of Main Character Syndrome and I wouldn’t give much credence to these stories. I mean, I’ve been hearing that China is on the cusp of collapsing for about 25 years now and that it’s going to happen within this year for real this time so I’m a bit reticent towards sensationalism in the media. When the media focus on the DPRK, one of the biggest names is Yeonmi Park who talks absolute rubbish. Plenty of what she says is either absurd, contrary to basic science, or easily fact-checked and disproven. Often her stories are not even internally-consistent.
She claimed that she was so propagandised that she didn’t recognise that Kim Jong-Un was fat. Like, she couldn’t conceptually grasp that he was fat. Not that she wasn’t allowed to talk about it or that there was propaganda explaining why but that she would look at a picture of him and she would be unable to see it.
I mean, come on…
Obviously there’s the famous Joe Rogan interview where she said that there was one train that ran in the DPRK (completely false), that it would only come once a month (again, completely false), and that people would often have to get off the train and push it (I’m sorry, what??). This is directly after saying that people would hang around the train station starving to death and there would be children who were so starved that all their organs fell out (???) and that rats would eat the corpses of victims of starvation and that people starving at the train station would hunt the rats for food.
If that were true we would have satellite images of it. If that were true people wouldn’t stand around starving to death at a train station, they’d be hunting and foraging elsewhere. If everyone was starving so badly then nobody would have the strength to walk, let alone to push a train (which is an absurd amount of weight to try and push regardless of how well nourished you and your fellow passengers are).
I have to admit that I don’t follow Yeonmi Park’s appearances in the media closely but if she’s the leading voice in the western media for what things are like in the DPRK and, at least to my knowledge, no journalist has confronted her about her inconsistencies, her outright fabrications, and her ridiculous claims let alone challenged her on any of them then I’d say that it’s a safe bet that the standard for journalism on the DPRK is abysmally low and it should be regarded with deep skepticism.
There are other things like how there’s an effective blockade on people from the DPRK leaving to go to other countries. This is something which was passed by the UN Security Council as a part of sanctions on the country, although the received wisdom is usually that it’s the DPRK government who imposes this on its citizens.
Same goes for starvation or lack of food. If you look at Security Council resolutions (not that I expect people to do this but…) you’ll find the US pushing for outrageous sanctions on things like oil and food imports and you’ll have China threatening to veto the resolution because this would cause destabilisation of the DPRK due to the measures being so extremely punitive, meaning that often before the final resolution passes it gets watered down enough that the average citizen of the DPRK isn’t facing abject starvation conditions but only because China is curtailing the US’ designs. I’d need to dig back into old resolutions to get a clear picture of this but there was the Deng Xiaoping era onwards where China pivoted and began playing ball with the west, in a dramatic departure from the Mao era, and they were not nearly as strong militarily, politically, or economically so I would venture a guess that China being firmer in its negotiations at the Security Council with regards to stuff like the DPRK is a relatively recent shift. But basically any country which is cut off from the rest of the world’s agriculture is only one environmental disaster away from starvation. Modern agricultural practices ameliorate this to a certain extent but if your country is cut off from them as well then you’re in a precarious position.
But yeah, it’s extremely hard to distinguish fact from fiction when it comes to the DPRK and you’re not alone in feeling that way. My default position for anything about the DPRK is false until proven true and to be wary of the interpretation of the facts, for example what I mentioned above where it’s a function of the UN Security Council resolution that prevents DPRK citizens from travelling abroad rather than some cynical plot by the DPRK government to control the movement of its citizens.
Am I cribbing my notes from Stephen Gowans here? You bet I am!
Lol I thought I saw this somewhere.
There are other things like how there’s an effective blockade on people from the DPRK leaving to go to other countries. This is something which was passed by the UN Security Council as a part of sanctions
I’m curious to read more if you have any links.
I’ve got you comrade, parsing through the UN website is worse than hell. Here’s the link to resolution 1718 which details the sanctions imposed on the DPRK. I’m parsing through to find the relevant bits on restriction of nationals but even if you just read through, any risk adverse nation will bar them to comply since the sanctions are so broad.
Edit:
Found them!
Travel Ban - Set out in paragraph 10 of resolution 1718 (2006) and paragraph 10 of resolution 2094 (2013)
All Member States are required to prevent the entry into or transit through their territories of designated individuals; individuals acting on behalf of or at the direction of designated individuals; any individual whom a State determines is assisting in the evasion of sanctions, violating the provisions of the resolutions, working on behalf/at the direction of designated individuals; and individuals traveling for the purposes of carrying out activities related to the shipment of items for repair, servicing, refurbishing, testing, reverse-engineering, and marketing.
Ban on DPRK workers abroad - Set out in paragraph 17 of resolution 2375 (2017), Set out in paragraph 8 of resolution 2397 (2017)
All Member States are prohibited from providing work authorizations for DPRK nationals in their jurisdiction in connection with admission to their territories. All Member States are required to repatriate to the DPRK all DPRK nationals earning income in their jurisdiction and all DPRK government safety oversight attachés within 24 months from 22 December 2017. Member States are required to submit a midterm report after 15 months from 22 December 2017 and a final report after 27 months from 22 December 2017 to the Committee of all DPRK nationals that were repatriated based on this provision.
imgur album with almost 400 pictures of life outside of pyongyang: https://imgur.com/a/BybJ7DQ
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jaka parker has videos of this on youtube https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=e6STm0seel8
indonesian diplomat, has no real commentary, no handlers. just shows daily life in the country. its not a rich place, it is severely lacking in industry due to western sanctions, but there are some interesting things going on, particularly in regards to housing and food distribution. a lot of places in asia look a lot like north korea, there is new development that is very good, and there is dilapidated rural areas. its important to understand that this region used to be worse off than africa. china has many similar issues, but have been able to rapidly advance due to deng’s reforms.
Ehh compared to Cuba North Korea has excellent industry. Honestly DPRK heavy industry looks pretty decently developed.
their methods of transportation definitely need some work, but theres a lot of stuff going on. ox carts next to trains and industrial equipment building skyscrapers.
Both my husband and I are children of expats from former Soviet countries. And while I think I’m fairly open to socialist ideas, I do get caught up on the fact that the people among our relatives who are most nostalgic for the Soviet Union are also VERY racist, homophobic, terrible to animals and just generally mean to everyone around them. And their food, in all its hyper-processed mystery meat and mayonnaise glory, kinda sucks.
Any tips for getting over that bias?
There’s a Chinese communist from the early days of the CPC - and I feel bad that I’ve forgotten his name - who I have read some of his thoughts on this. He said the first generation after the revolution will still have brains full of worms, even among the best and most upstanding comrades. This will get better over time, but you’re talking many generations. Because we are all products of our environment. We cannot escape the social conditions we grew up in. Being a communist doesn’t mean you are now some new person completely cleaved from any connection to the world around us and our personal histories. The Soviet Union did make attempts to fight sexism, racism, nationalism et al within their borders, but thinking you can just propagandize people into right thinking is idealism. The USSR had to start with the social conditions they inherited - and that society, which was part feudalist part capitalist - had a lot of sexism, racism, nationalism, etc (and of course cruelty to animals).
I’ll make a confession: I still sometimes have reactionary thoughts and ideals pop into my head. And it takes active, conscious thought to tell myself “what the fuck dude, cut that shit out”. If I was not actively engaged in checking myself on that, it is possible that the brainworms could come back. It’s something we are all susceptible to in some form, I think.
What you’re talking about was also very much the basis for the idea of the “New Soviet Man” and versions of this can be found even in Lenin’s writings. We can at least see that some forms of sexism were systemically combated to the point that even the now-former Soviet states have much higher rates of women in STEM and such.
He said the first generation after the revolution will still have brains full of worms, even among the best and most upstanding comrades. This will get better over time, but you’re talking many generations.
I can’t help but compare this to western leftists drawing smaller and smaller circles around who is leftist enough to work with.
This is one of the reasons I think we need to repurpose Christian rituals, at least in Christian communities. A symbolic washing away of your old self, confession, the importance of good works informed by study and the faith in the coming rupture, communion and fellowship and sharing of bread across social divisions, etc. We need communist churches
I think it really is a generational thing, especially with people who grew up during the liberalization era. Plus people wrongly try to make sense of the collapse of their lives, so they may fondly remember Communism, but associate their new shitty conditions with stuff like LGBTQ rights instead of everything else the west brought. This is why a cultural revolution was a necessary idea, even if not executed well. People didn’t retain the materialism of the ideology even if they are nostalgic for the world it created.
I always think about this conversation @kristina@hexbear.net and @BeamBrain@hexbear.net about her family and how her grandmother so quickly became pro-LGBTQ, while her more liberal parents are not as quick to change. https://hexbear.net/comment/3310448
Yeah she pretty quickly came over once she read some literature on it. I think the conditions of her time made communists more left thinking, I do really believe that if somehow the communists kept continuity and were able to stay in charge, czechoslovakia would be one of the most LGBT accepting places on the planet, along with Cuba. The biggest things that seem to help LGBT acceptance imo are urbanization and access to information. I really want to do a deeper dive on numbers and historical circumstances for LGBT people in every country so we can see what policies are best to aim for in the long term. Right now, a lot of queer research pretty much is just governments saying their allies are good for queers and doesnt attempt to predict trends
I think reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti would be helpful. He doesn’t make excuses and acknowledges the racism in the USSR. I think laying bare the actual shortcomings of the project places it in reality instead of the cartoonish evil depicted by mainstream Western history. It allows for a clearer understanding of the good alongside the bad and shows where we can improve in the next iteration of a socialist project
We’re all human and need to see where we can do better, and despite the issues of past socialist experiments, it seems to many here that this form of government is the most likely way for humanity to do the most good for all
I do get caught up on the fact that the people among our relatives who are most nostalgic for the Soviet Union are also VERY racist, homophobic, terrible to animals and just generally mean to everyone around them.
i’ve noticed this when talking to my cousins abroad but have no answer, because it’s kind of true and disturbing, but at the same time in the US, mean american people wander into my life all the time. I think that the US is just slightly ahead of Russia in what you might call the less-economic types of a cultural revolution (specifically, LGBT rights, animal rights, etc.).
Creating a socialist world is the only chance we have at eliminating that kind of bigotry. People are the products of the societies that created them. We can’t simply tell people to stop being bigoted. Education only goes so far. We have to completely destroy the conditions that lead to bigotry in the first place.
I used to have that same bias you had and that’s how I got through it
I think one of the most important things to keep in mind is that there are Soviet nostalgics and there are socialists (anarchists and communists).
Most people who are socialist out of politics and not out of a desire to see the old country relive its glory days are going to be very progressive on matters of race, gender and sexuality, animal rights etc.
Not all of them by any stretch of the imagination and, as an example, I’m in discussion with an anarchist outside of this platform who is saying really ableist and borderline eugenicist things so there’s absolutely a whole lot more work to be done and I’ll be the first to admit it. But generally I expect to see a fairly high standard of being progressive on these sorts of matters and I expect to see big, ugly intraleft slapfights that occur when someone is really backwards on these things (especially if it’s an organisation.)
For example, you could ask most socialists what word springs to mind when they hear the phrase Communist Party of Great Britain/CPGB and they’ll probably wrinkle their nose and say “TERF” lol.
For someone who is a communist, I’d expect that Soviet nostalgics and I would be 50/50 on finding common ground and on being in such disagreement that we’d butt heads and get into heated arguments over it. But it’s also worth mentioning that I feel that would be the case for most people around the grandparent age.
I mean, I live in a racist shithole and when I meet people (especially white people) I kinda just brace for the racism. I present as masculine so I’m also bracing for the misogyny, mostly coming from other men. This tends to intensify the further back you go by birth year. I know that certain politics definitely attracts types of people (you’re going to find more homophobes in a conservative party and you’re going to find more vegans in a professive party, obviously) but I think a lot of your experiences with Soviet nostalgics could probably be attributed to a generational thing as well as the fact that in some countries Soviet nostalgia is, in a sense, a “conservative” or pseudo-conservative position.
how does the toothbrush schedule work?
sometimes i wonder if we would even need toothbrushes if our food wasn’t full of processed sugar because corpos want to get us addicted to their slop (they put more sugar in than you can even consciously taste in some foods, to make your body crave more of it instinctually)
fluoride in the water goes a long way towards population teeth health. some people could probably get away without brushing, even with a shit diet, but it’s better to brush anyway because you can have problems besides cavities that are risk factors for other things.
I have two cows. What’s gonna happen to them?
Subsistence farming is very different from owning means of production and exploiting workers. Unless your two cows are a metaphor for owning land and cattle that are worked by peasants while you keep the surplus value literally nothing happens.
actual subsistence farming is pretty comfy too.
People have a bad image of subsistence farming because the only people who are subsistence farmers now are people in the 3rd world, where resources are directed towards cities and people in rural areas often lack clean drinking water (which is dirty due to the high population of said land)
Back in neolithic/bronze age times, the Indus civilization had an average height of 5’8" which meant they were eatin’ good. (That’s tall for the time). It’s also known that the Indus sites lacked a lot of the social stratification found in Western Mideastern sites. The average subsistence farmer today is probably like 5’5" due to malnourishment and dirty water.
It’s similar to how hunter-gatherers today are super malnourished people in shitty desert climates, even though there were hunter gatherers in lush green fields thousands of years ago
Subsistence farming with added modern luxuries under communism would be incredibly comfy and not at all oppressive
Ehhhh it depends what you actually mean by subsistence farming. Growing a good portion of your own food on a home scale? Sure, it can be simple and fun. Growing all of your calories and micro-/macro-nutrients for the year? Takes very intensive planning and management, and more physical labor than many are used to (even with technology). Of course it can still be a very rewarding lifestyle, but it’s by no means easy or idyllic.
If you want to see what it takes to grow your own diet for a year, I highly recommend the book How to Grow Your Own Vegetables and the associated exercises from Grow Biointensive. It’s an eye-opener, for sure.
they are cut into cubes and portioned out to everyone throughout the country
Uhhh, I guess there’s a CW on that article for having a homophobic term/a term that could be interpreted as homophobia.
The editor really dropped the ball by not adding an editor’s note to explain that clanger.
Uh, the people that milk them, slaughter them, cut them up, etc. now own them if they go to market. If you’re doing subsistence farming + a little bit to market that you yourself do, you own them. If it’s decided during wartime that cow production is a strategic necessity that has additional considerations for the purposes of defence, the state now owns them until it is no longer a strategic necessity (this largely applies to weapons production, and certain resource sectors. Cows are unlikely, but wheat and oil are very likely. Basically, you don’t want the entire socialist system to be held hostage by a tiny minority who happen to be providing a very broad necessary good. For instance, the amount of wheat a single wheat farmer provides is absolutely massive, meaning that a consortium of wheat farmers have a chain to yank to extort everyone else. In the case of wheat during non-wartime periods, I’d probably want a rotating cast of wheat farmers, maybe as a vocational “this is where our food comes from” school thing with a small core of permanent wheat farmers for institutional knowledge? Depends on the circumstances)
(this may also depend on the vegan-ness of your revolution, but I think generally meat should be seen as a luxury or limited good. It’s unlikely that American meat consumption would continue for particularly long regardless of the revolution though)
(this was a semi-serious meandering answer. Sorry.)
(tldr: it depends on the interaction of the cows with the rest of society)
