When studying Marx and Marxist authors in isolation, there seems to be so many ideological struggles that one may take independently without critique from others. So, if socialism/communism is not completely inevitable, how do I form appropriate arguments for the use of Marxism to advance the cause of the proletariat against that of the ruling bourgeosie without falling to arguments about inevitability, "the greater good", the capitalists being "evil", et cetera? Are there any more advanced comrades here with experience showing the ideologically backwards, or even intermediate, the way of proper Marxist analysis?

Darwin, although a materialist at heart (maybe) wasn't very dialectical. Darwin's major faults are his binary steps of evolution, you take the right step you continue to exist, you take the wrong step you vanish, hence evolution is the result of taking all the right steps. So the panda took a wrong step somewhere, but maybe easter bugs did too, helping out humans grow things by eliminating other bugs. Now they are becoming extinct because of pesticides and insecticides. Maybe bees will too.

Do we know that humans made right choices or not? They created capitalism and this seems to be accelerating us towards extinction. What about pre-capitalist choices, like that of 10k years ago to select seeds, cultivate them, modify them, create monocultures and sentence other plants and life in general to extinction to do so. To what extent do we perceive human choices as natural phenomenon and to what extent is the dialectic with the material world and those choices acceptable or rejectable?

Can capitalism be the result of a sequence of other bad choices humanity (or certain parts of humanity that became dominant post 15th century) made? It is hard to believe that capitalism is the only poor choice humanity ever made.

Humans did exploit other humans and oppressed other humans before capitalism or even its very fundamental conditions existed (private property for one). Inequality and social stratification did exist in pre-capitalist societies, large and small, but not universally as anthropology and archaeology came to discover. Injustice as a result of inequality we can say it was more prevalent everywhere before capitalism.

But we must accept the possibility that humans can organize and revert all the bad choices made, decrease or eliminate inequality and injustice, eliminate the need for war and violence, instead of waiting for some deity to materialize and force that condition. Or at least, have this i"deal" of such a true communist society to struggle for and design the path to. (something about this statement I feel really uneasy with).

:)

For random stuff, possibly even fictional, and the people come up with a short dialectical materialist analysis, as a common exercise for everyone?

I would propose a prompt, in r/WritingPrompts style, but I don't really know what could be interesting topics on the matter. I would just love to see your analytic skills, and possibly pick it up on how you are doing it. :)

Maybe I got a prompt: What's the value of this idea? Did I miss the point of dialectical materialist analysis?

I am relatively new here, so please excuse my newbiness, I mean no harm or disrespect. Nor have I researched enough on how the original community was expelled by the CEO of reddit.com inc.

If I can identify with something concretely and not negotiably, is a firm believer of dialectical materialism, so I am not posting questions as an outsider to dialectical materialists. I am only posting questions to dialectical materialists, so idealists don't waste our time responding.

I do not wish to play devil's advocate, I usually hate the attitude, but I can't help to have questions that fit the profile. As a first step I'd like to state that the theory of Marx & Engels and the evolution of Marxism is not one and the same, for reasons that relate to the questions. So here we go.

In the time Marx lived and struggled and in specific when he wrote Capital, the world was smaller, in population, and also scientific knowledge of the world itself. Since then sciences such as anthropology and archaeology evolved rapidly being really young at the time. This and other scientific knowledge was not yet available, so Marx can't be held accountable for things not yet known. He could also not be accountable for things that happened after his theory was established and based on his material reality.

Even during his life time his ideas and theory affected an amazing portion of working people around the earth, the way they organized and struggled, and the early effects of this influence as partially witnessed during his time. Labor struggle did continue to be influenced and carried on past his time. This struggle had effects on how capital dealt with labor, and also how the state/s tried to remain in power to best serve capital while not collapsing under labor pressure.

Not a static picture A and picture B kind of comparison, but a dynamic process that had its qualitative and quantitative differences in various parts of the world, I think we can safely say that the social democracy was a dialectic product of struggle and capital domination. Not only did the state evolve but also capital evolved in identifying the enemy and source of trouble, as well as the uncomfortable shape of the evolved state. So anti-communism was born through this dialectic process and resulted in the things we very well know now.

Although Marx may have developed the theory to be as scientific as possible, and it is the role of scientific theory to interpret material reality but also form predictions, we can't expect Marx to have metaphysical abilities to see the future and the details of the dialectic he helped form, as this itself would have been a violation of his own philosophy. Marxists on the other hand did apply theory, sometimes in an idealistic way, to interpret dynamic political/economic processes of the decades that followed.

It is clear through class analysis that the logical proposal for the working class to overpower and defeat the ruling class would be to organize, better, more massively, and more effectively. The other class now being affected by this growing organization (syndicalism) isn't it expected to defend itself by organizing better itself?

Can it be possible that the state didn't provide adequate defense and be sufficient organization for the class due to its evolution in the late 19th and early parts of the 20th century in some parts of the world, primarily where capital was mainly based and centered? Would they seek better organization of the nation/state or would they seek further unity among its class globally and try to organize as to be able to control the nation/states?

Marxists seem to have resisted such consideration but I believe that if Marx himself was around he would entertain the possibility of such development.

If so, what is this federation of capital, how does it relate to its influence on different states, and what are the new roles of states within this new framework of capital defense against labor? It appears to be very effective both in accumulation of capital, labor defeat, and on its original goal of anti-communism. But can we revert and conclude it exists because of its effects?

If such possibility exists, how does it effect labor organization and goals overthrowing this federated capital rule?

Summary: Programs seem to be instruction sets that are limited by a contradiction in data ownership.

2/1                   (CONTRADICTION DIALECTICAL-MATERIALISM DATA OWNERSHIP)

A noticeable inner contradiction between programs is in data ownership. Programs must maintain ownership of their data to maintain stable; otherwise their data (and by extension code) could be arbitarily modified, thus destabilizing the system. (Binary data is publically accessible through a controller, so the program itself will not be the only subject.) 

The data ownership contradiction can only be formed when two or more programs exist in the environment. 
Zettelkasten                       NIL

An example of the data ownership contradiction <zettelkasten:2/1> is a program being executed through a program read-eval-print-loop (abbreviated to REPL, also termed a "shell"). There is an inner contradiction of control between the program REPL and the executed program; the executed program commonly maintains most control over its data, while the shell only maintains control of the program's execution. 

The development of the data ownership contradiction
===================================================
In the early stages of computer development (the time period 1920 to 1960), programs were not designed with data protection methods; computer hardware could only allow for one program to run; so the idea of multitasking programs was not thought about. Programs were executed directly on computer hardware. 

2/1/1         (CONTRADICTION DATA OWNERSHIP)

The contradiction of data ownership cannot be reconciled by both programs. A program that held the most ownership of data would need to be developed to maintain stability among other programs. As a consequence, data would need to be developed to secure the ownership of data. 

Zettelkasten                       (2/1)
Modern computers have been developed to operate with an "operating system", a type of program that manages other programs. The operating system must become the dominant force among the contradiction of data ownership <zettelkaten:2/1> in the system of programs to maintain stability. 

2/1/2       (EXCLUSIVE-CONTROL CONTRADICTION MECHANIC)

Compilers developed ownership of data out of neccesity; When multiple programs can be executed in a computer environment; programs must be able to reliably read and write data, otherwise the program would not work reliably and thus produce useless goods (information).
Zettelkasten                       NIL
2/1/3                                    (EXAMPLE CONTRADICTION)

Compiler<->Program
------------------
One instance of this contradiction is the compiler<->program-code contradiction. When the compiler is run, the compiler seizes control over the program data. After compilation, the compiler relieves control of the program and thus the generated machine code program has control over it's data. 

Zettelkasten                       NIL
2/1/4                                         (EXAMPLE CONTRADICTION DATA-OWNERSHIP)

Interpreter<->Program
---------------------
A similar instance is the interpreter<->program-code contradiction. The interpreter seizes ownership over the program upon execution; but the interpreter does not relinquish it's ownership over the program.. instead the interpreter itself executes the program's code. 

Zettelkasten                       NIL
The result of the data ownership contradiction <zettelkasten:2/1>  can vary depending on the target the contradiction applies to. 

2/2   (RESULT DATA-OWNERSHIP JUNCTIONARY-PROGRAM)

When the data ownership contradiction between programs is applied to storage data (files and streams); the result is a junctionary program to compromise the data with multiple programs. 

Examples:
* The concept of files are a result of programs being inable to resolve the data ownership contradiction. The operating system often becomes the winner of the contradiction (in practice, it becomes the manager of files.)
* Streams are the product of programs being unable to access byte storage; programs must assume that they do not have ownership over storage data.

Zettelkasten                       NIL
Program code is made of data; so the data ownership <zettelkasten:2/1> contradiction can be applied to program data. When applying this contradiction to program code; we find that a stable program owns it's program code. If the program can not maintain ownership of it's code; the program will become unstable. (The instability manifests often as security vulnerabilities. 

A program becomes the state.
----------------------------
As the result of the data ownership contradiction <zettelkasten:2/1> ; it would be logical for humans to develop a program to maintain the most control over the other programs to keep a computer stable. 

2/3/1                        (CONTRADICTION PATTERN)

The contradictions of data ownership among programs and the introduction of multithreading form a qualitative contradiction of governance over data; a similar pattern to the states 

* Windows and UNIX OSes both police data ownership in a decentralized manner; programs lacking the neccessary data ownership must call program code to retrieve operating systems' data. 

Zettelkasten                       NIL

Here is the document as Common Lisp code. (The original formatting.)

Use my typesetter.lisp to run the code.

I wanted to see what others thought when reading the introduction. I immediately thought of all the "science" done in the US that said smoking wasn't bad for you or that climate change wasn't caused by human activity. I'm sure there are many other examples, but Lenin is specifically talking about social sciences. Does anyone know of any examples of this? I like to try to connect theory to historical or current events because it helps me understand better, but I'm drawing a blank right now. I've included the intro that I'm talking about below.

"Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of “pernicious sect”. And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital."

Posting in response to interest shown in this thread. I will fill out structure here later today, but let us use this post as a provisional place to plan a study group.

Questions to consider:

• Location in theory. Where to start? A particular author or work?
• Method of discussion. How frequently should discussion threads be posted? By work or chapter?
• Other choices. Should we attempt to make discussions and reading choices relevant to current events? Should discussions have leaders? etc...

As /r/genzedong stands in the shadow of Reddit's raised fist, our community faces tough choices about how to address the situation. Reddit is one of the most valuable resources we have; its large user base and integrated community allows for targeted outreach, education, and agitation. On the other hand, the ubiquity and popularity that Reddit currently enjoys is not evergreen. Reddit, as a noble house in our modern, digital feudalism, will eventually be exhausted by the broader contradiction of which it is a part: that between the masses of internet users and tech companies' centralized, feudal control. This process is already underway, as seen by developments in Web 3.0 and federated forum structures like lemmy.ml.

Nevertheless, there is still much more runway for these contradictions to sharpen before the change becomes qualitative and we enter a new epoch of digitally represented commons. So, given our position at this stage in the contradiction, we must facilitate its resolution by establishing stable channels by which we can shepherd our comrades into decentralized communities like lemmygrad.ml, or whatever platform eventually emerges as a leader. We must recognize both aspects and bridge them - investing in lemmygrad.ml at the same time that we maintain a focused yet sufficiently nebulous presence on Reddit that, at key moments and places, offers a path away from its feudal lands.

Freedom from the feudal structure also allows us to overcome the barrier between in-person organizing and digital organizing. While there is no replacement for concrete action inside a united party in the real world, it would be folly to neglect how the nature of the commons have shifted as our technology and society has developed. Federated forums are helpful infrastructure and may play a key role in developing scalable party communications and outreach. This requires our attention.

This is not an excuse to not read the theory...