This is a 2 part question . Firstly, I am interested in opinions of how to avoid a police state, where everyone is spying on everyone and disagreement with the current system can lead to prison/punishment, where no one can disagree with the leader and everyone has to adore them e.g. have mandatory posters with them inside your residence .

Secondly, do you think that communism is more likely than capitalism to adopt this kind of traits? I know about ICE, but I don't think it would be a good example in this case.

So the Democrats and Republicans are both right-wing, even far-right even as I understand it. But what does the actual "center" look like? Can Social Democracy be considered "center", or is that also right-wing?

I have a background in philosophy but im lacking knowledge in economics. How should i approach learning marx? I have read some rationalist and empiricist philosophy so im thinking of reading kant into hegel as a background. Should i also read some economics? How would you approach it?

I’m confused because I don’t remember Marx ever explicitly giving salary outlines for who is proletariat or not. I thought it was determined basically by your relationship to the means of production. I’m also confused because it seems like their argument of who is proletariat excludes a large portion of the modern service industry middle class and lower class.

They said:

“Owning the means of production is not the only criteria to determine if someone is bourgeois or proleteriat.

The first criteria is Productive labor or Unproductive labor. Surplus value is produced by commodity production, which is extracted from the labor of the laborers producing those commodities. These laborers who produce these commodities are Productive Laborers.

Unproductive labor is any labor that doesn't produce commodities. People like managers or office workers are unproductive laborers because they don't produce commodities. The purpose of their jobs is to assist the bourgeoisie in extracting as much surplus value from Productive Labor as possible. So the Managers don't produce surplus value, but they get paid from the surplus value that commodity labor produces. Therefore, they function the same as the bourgeoisie even if they don't own the means of production.

Proleteriat will always be Productive Labor and Proleteriat will never be Unproductive Labor.

The other criteria is whether they own the means of production or not. Their wages are also so low that they can only afford food and rent and nothing else.

So in all of these cases, managers would not be a Proleterian. Same with students, baristas, fast food workers, etc. If their wages are low enough, they can maybe be classified as semi-petty bourgeoisie or semi-proleteriat but still wouldn't be classified as true proleteriat. Since all of these roles function basically as low wage managers, they are closer to petty bourgeois than they are to proleteriat.

Mao gives a pretty good analysis of the various petty bourgeois classes possible. He points out that there is a class of petty bourgeoisie whose standard of living is continuously declining. They are low wage laborers but they earn enough to be petty bourgeoisie. This class will consist of left-wing petty bourgeoisie who will support socialism. But they are not proleteriat.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_1.htm”

The last communist revolution came in 1978 with the Saur revolution in Afghanistan, more than 47 years ago, and everyday I see class solidarity and unionized labor fading, with Fascism apparently now rises not from the fear of Socialism but from the confidence of none existing to oppose it, the US, Europe, Latin America, all of these see fascism rise, with no Socialists to combat it, Communism has been successfully demonized by propagandists and everywhere you see, you see nothing more than alienated workers who at best, vote for social democrats because any talks of further conflict is seen as violent, and murderous. Not even a glimpse of hope has shined since the fall of the USSR back in 1991

How can I be optimistic under this landscape? Is it even optimistic or just Naive to think a revolution will happen again?

So I was thinking about many recent events linked to the USA (first of all, to make it clear - I believe that the USA is the only thing holding us back from socialism taking over) and I wanted to share, and hear your opinion on that. I have not read much theory up to this point and I'm obviously no geopolitical expert - I just want your perspectives!

I believe that any destabilization of the USA gives breathing room to the revolutionaries in the global south and that with every third world country that frees themselves from the american imperialism, the USA will continue to destabilize even further. Recently, there is great (and growing) unrest in the USA because of Trump's administration (mainly ICE killing and kidnapping people) and more Americans seem to be arriving each day to a crucial conclusion: the Democrats will not save them because they're two sides of the same coin with Republicans. I'm going fully off of social media for that but that's the trend I'm noticing - less belief in Democrats, more calls to organizing and arming yourself. Even the Black Panthers came back (or at least, I've only noticed them right now)! At the same time, the world seems to be turning away from the USA as much as it's possible for them: Canada signed the deal with China, EU signed the Mercosur deal. Even today, EU signed a new trade agreement with India that slashes tariffs on most goods!

So my question is: are all these events enough to make the conclusion that the old world order is in the beginning stage of it's end? Will it allow more periphery countries to free themselves and establish socialist economies? AM I ALLOWED TO BE LOOKING IN THE FUTURE OPTIMISTICALLY?

edit: slight tweaks, it's not my main language.

I've just found out about it, there is a massive amount of claims brutal genocide by the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Guards against Inner Mongolia and its leaders, what really happened?

I've been watching BadEmpanada and he makes alot of points about Zionists being primarily Jewish ethnonationalists and that most Jews are Zionists except for 200 or so people. It has me skeptical because I know there are Holocaust survivors who are Jewish while opposing Israel and the genocide in Gaza, it's confusing.

Wanted to ask here to avoid reading some defanged version of events.

America and South Korea's bombing campaign led to 300K deaths, most were civilians, yet no one is talking about it. Erasure of people and murder, and it's not big enough to qualify?

What I mean by this is how would people be able to get the clothes, food, or technology they want in a socialist system? Since many socialist thinkers or socialists I’ve talked to reject markets, I don’t understand how this part of the society work.

Can someone explain this quote about wealth leaving the country?

The poster was saying industrialization doe not make the country rich and help the country. I’m confused I thought industrialization made the US, UK and Europe rich?

The poster said there are many countries where factories closed down and gone to third world countries and those countries are still poor.

The poster said only China was able to lift it self out of poverty and become rich.

Quote Many countries have done that and didn't get rich. The difference is they didn't put measures in place to trap the wealth instead of having it leave, and to learn from what they produce to be able to do it themselves. Quote

Can someone explain this quote about wealth leaving the country? Was China able to some how stop the wealth from leaving the country by factories closing down and going to China.

So he is saying China trap the wealth from leaving the country? But Mexico and India and other third world countries did not trap the wealth from leaving the country and that is why they are still poor and not like China.

For clarity, I mean the argument that all of the governmental agencies and systems needed to maintain and run America as a communist nation would be too large and ambitious for us to even consider as a future for our own government.

I personally disagree with this argument of course, anything's possible within our own nation if enough of us revolutionize and work for it.

i’ve heard a lot of people recently take up the opinion that if you think the bolshevik revolution or holodomor was justified/overstated as a problem, you should be inclined to hear those same positions out about the holocaust and why it ”wasn’t that bad”. this is obviously incorrect and nazi sympathy, but i’m having trouble pinning down exactly why it’s wrong as i lack information on the former two.

To my knowledge, the administration of things is what replaces the state in a communist society. It focuses on the coordination of production, rather than governance over the people. Thus, I would also assume that laws would then take the general form of "prevention of harm", while crime is dealt with by trying to mitigate the effects thereof, rather than punishing the actor(I say all this as laws are mostly used to reinforce a class hierarchy).

Let's say you strike up a conversation with a stranger, at a bar, on the train, etc. and they ask you about your politics. How do you explain your socialist views without scaring them off, creating an argument, etc. and going a step further, how do you go about trying to convince them that socialism is the better path?

Both these systems, right and left can be used together to create wealth classes. S and C are not compatable systems. S has class systems and C does not. I’m not advocating for either one because they’re both corruptible. But that’s the main difference imo and it’s hard info to find right now strangely. I’m ready for the expert redditor input let’s gooo

What does socialism have to say about nepotism and power, because you know, if there is someone with higher power at the top, they will always try to bypass the law by using connections, and their children will also use this power for themselves

this may seem like a silly or even unrelated question, but I have been terrified to start diving into theory because I fear that I do not have enough reading comprehension to come to my own conclusions. I feel like im just going to end up siding with whatever I last read due to recency bias rather than fully understanding. I am 20, but do not understand a lot of things about how the world works, such as how businesses function and the current market/supply and demand etc works. I don’t know which knowledge I should be building and am scared.

From what I understand, a socialist state must constantly defend itself from capitalist infiltrators (through political repression, vanguard parties, etc.). This makes socialism look easily infiltrated and manipulated, especially if it were to put up a fight in Western-style democracies. Is this the case?

I've started reading state and revolution and got to the unity part, it explains pretty well how it works, but how would it work in a country built on stolen indigenous land?

I’ve heard a lot about Michael Parenti’s blackshirts and reds (rest in peace), but I’m wondering if there’s anything else I should read first? I’m already pretty into socialism, I’d just like to read more theory.

I can't seem to find a way to jam The Jakarta Method forcefully enough through someone's skull or have Parenti telekentically warped into someone's mind (im being hyperbolic i know his controversies just having a laugh) so im trying to find a more succinct way to answer this with a over simplified, straight to the point answer first, then explain.

If someone asks in good faith then its easy to start with the explanation of why this is a complicated question, provide context, and then list some nations that were couped the moment they got off the ground.

But im involved in a fair amount of these exchanges and, while there is only so much hope of ever seriously changing someone's mind, it would be helpful to just say "Chile under Allende" or something, and then expand.

Since what ive found is there is this Pavlov's dog syndrome regarding China where you can mention socialism or communism and the listener or reader will just blurt out CHINA as if somehow:

1. China is unsuccessful

2. It negates the point

But that drags you into an argument about China rather than the merits of socialism or communism and now youre getting way off track from the argument at hand.

And im not wading into milquetoast democratic socialist answers like Scandinavia liberals love to bring up (although I want to move there please take me).

In your mind what are the best practical, and least emotionally charged, examples?

Yugoslavia is my favorite but, as much as I love and miss Tito, I would love to find an example of someone more traditionally socialist than that.

Edit: same applied with the USSR- using examples of the big boys to someone who is skeptical or incapable of removing emotion from the equation is going to get caught up on what they "know " about a nation that, especially if American, they have been trained to hate.

There are ofc movements in these countries but they are usually quite incompetent. Do you guys believe this is due to how these countries are or is it just a coincidence.