Well, it’s been a very big topic in American politics since Oct. 7th, as the majority of Americans have now become aware that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians with our tax dollars, and most of our politicians are complicit. Even the right-wing has largely woken up to this, though there is some extra baggage in their case.

You been living under a rock?

Communism is a post-socialist mode of production established by resolving the contradictions within socialism. States eradicate themselves by eradicating the basis of class, and this happens by collectivizing production and distribution.

The contradictions within socialism will not be resolved without people acting on their own initiative to resolve them. The state siezing the means of production and claiming it is doing so on behalf of the people forms a new basis of class, it does not eliminate it. It is simply taking the means of production from one set of private hands to another more centralized set that is only somewhat more responsive to the people’s will. The people must act of their own initiative to forcibly decentralize the power of the state until no hierarchy remains in order to eliminate class.

Cooperatives are petty bourgeois collectives of private property, not socialist property. The idea of competing small cells of worker-owners is petty bourgeois in origin and stands opposed to collectivized production and distribution.

Who says they have to compete? Realistically they would form federations to organize production and distribution on larger scales. Cooperatives in Italy do this, though they face strong resistance from corporations and the state as they do so. If you have eaten Parmigiano Reggiano you have eaten something created by many small cooperatives banding together to collectivize production and distribution. The cheese is made with milk from many small cooperatively owned farms that pool their resources together and share in the profits.

states exist to establish the supremacy of a class

Already we’re dropping the pretense of eliminating class, which is the entire premise of communism. A system which establishes supremacy in any form could never hope to eliminate class.

Independence from socialism is a petty bourgeois notion, not proletarian.

And again you are uncritically equivocating socialism and the state. Socialism can and does exist independently of the state whenever workers collectively organize production and distribution anywhere and for any reason. Cooperatives are socialist, not petty bourgeois, because the workers themselves have collectivized the means of production. Small businesses that are privately owned are petty bourgeois.

These [socialism and the state] are one and the same in the context of a socialist state transitioning towards communism.

Always transitioning towards but never quite getting any closer and never will without the people themselves acting collectively to dismantle the state. The idea that the state will just “dissolve,” or even more ridiculously disassemble itself, is absurd.

This slogan sounds nice, but ultimately just means that people should have a right to undermine socialism against the will of the people.

Again, people collectivizing the means of production on their own terms does not undermine socialism, it undermines the state. It’s funny you suggest people acting on their own initiative undermines their own will, and not the state cracking down on them. I thought from our previous interactions that you were more reasonable than this.

a union in a socialist system is somehow “class collaborationist” for being official and supported by said socialist state requires a ton of heavy lifting on your part.

A union in any system that stops short of supplanting the boss and siezing the means of production is class collaborationist. Such a union in a capitalist republic is essentially just a bureaucratic arm of the company that serves as controlled opposition, and in a “socialist” republic is a bureaucratic arm of the state that exists to ensure the working class acts in the state’s interest. You think the latter is acceptable because you believe the state truly represents the will of the people, but I believe that only the people themselves are truly representative of their will.

If it’s not independent then it’s not proletarian. The state doesn’t crush independent unions because they’re opposed to the socialist system, but because they are a threat to the authority of the state. I believe people have a right to self-determination, and preventing workers from organizing on their own terms violates that right. The means of production should belong only to those who actually do the work of production, not private individuals and not the state claiming falsely to represent them in the abstract. I’m a syndicalist in that I believe that the purpose of unions is eventually to overthrow the hierarchy and establish a cooperative, not to settle and become a class collaborationist union or an arm of a class collaborationist state, though it is preferable to no union at all.

the working class is in control of socialist authority

Independent unions are illegal in China with only the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) permitted by the Chinese state and the Chinese Communist Party to operate. Seems to me like you got it backwards, the “socialist authority” is in control of the working class. Any who attempt to organize on their own terms are met with state repression. Your insistence that the Chinese state only oppresses capitalists, fascists, and saboteurs is provably false.

Were there not an Israel the USA would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.

• Joe Biden, 1986

Private property is theft.

It’s a bad argument anyway, since street-blocking protest crowds almost always part to allow an ambulance through. If an ambulance is stopped, it’s usually the cops blocking it.

I’d say that’s a unique case. The Revachol Citizens’ Militia sold out to the Moralintern in exchange for legitimacy and vested authority, but by the end of the game they’re about to betray the Moralintern and side with a workers’ uprising. Afterwards they’ll probably still be a police force, but they’ll get their legitimacy from an independent Revachol rather than an occupying force, which is at least better.

Has every gen Z forgotten that laughing at meaningless numbers was a whole bit in an early Spongebob episode?

You don’t have to believe me, I just found it amusing. I remember seeing it and I can also see the hammer and sickle in this one is sharper than the rest of the image, meaning it was pasted over something. Don’t know if OP edited it or found it already edited, but I know the original is out there somewhere.

I swear I saw the original version of this meme with the anarchy symbol instead of the hammer and sickle, though I can’t find it anymore. MLs don’t do anarchist erasure challenge: impossible.

The last image is likely referring to this. Contracting prisoners out to private companies is a common practice all across the US, but particularly in Alabama and other former chattel slave economies. Southern slave plantations continued operating during reconstruction by using prison labor. The reason we have the largest per capita prison population in the world is because slavery never truly ended, it just adapted.

Would

What do my YouTube recommendations say about me?

Dictators don’t just pop into existence with total authoritarian control, it takes the support of already powerful people to erode the checks on their power bit by bit, which Donald Trump has been doing with the support of his billionaire donors. Fascism emerges out of capitalist republics and has to overcome various obstacles to achieve total authority for the leader. Trump does not yet have total dictatorial power because there are still checks on the presidency that he and his movement have not yet succeeded in eroding.

It’s to help them feel smug and superior.

In your hypnagogic state you experienced extremely short-term source amnesia.

You can have my ternary operator when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.