Like the title says, I'm new to Marxism and have only read a couple works relating to socialism. I don't think I know enough about Marxism to firmly define myself into any "type" (although council communism sounds pretty interesting.) Second Thought and Yugopnik are what got me into Marxism, but more recently I've been listening to Socialism For All's audiobooks and reaction videos while driving. In his reaction video to The Deprogram's China Episode, he makes some interesting points about how China could become "social imperialist" and succeed the US/NATO as the new imperialist global hegemon, among some other things. From an outsider's perspective, I don't consider the current China socialist because of the fact that private property and many other capitalist elements still exist within it, but I do appreciate how much it has been able to develop over the past few decades, like poverty reduction and massive infrastructure projects that wouldn't be possible with typical liberal democracies. People excuse the private property and "restricted" capitalism as necessary evils until China has the conditions to create socialism, but I have doubts about whether China's still even working towards socialism or whether the Chinese proletariat actually hold power over the bourgousie. China doesn't support communist movements internationally, and the liberalized economy has gone on far longer than the NEP in the soviet union despite both being created for the same reason, and I can't seem to find a good reason why it's lasted this long. (I also have concerns about privacy and the fact that access to the outside internet is restricted, although that's not really related to this topic.) I'd stumbled across this reddit thread a while ago, and while I know reddit isn't the best place for serious discussion, I think that the person in the video does make good points, as do the people in both the r/TankieTheDeprogram and r/ultraleft threads and I honestly don't know what to think or who to take seriously in that discussion. I would appreciate if anyone could give me a genuine response to these concerns, thanks.
Edit: Thank you all so much for the responses! I've learned quite a bit reading them, although I haven't had a chance to check out the links people have sent yet. I'll try to update this post with any new questions and respond to comments whenever I have time.
#demonspotted #fuckoff
missed a bit of the first half because ADHD + cleaning shit but WOW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5oT3c8nBQ8 go to about 13:30 they have a Very Special Announcement to reassure their liberal audience that they "don't endorse Iranian or Russian regional dominance"
So they're still trotting out this bullshit KKE interpetation (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/KKE_Model) of imperialism. What on earth is their "support" of China based on then? Do they just support what they see as the lesser ebil imperialist? Absolute garbage, none of this would hold up to scrutiny from their opponents. I hate vibes!! I hate vibes!!! ๐ตโ๐ซ
I feel like I'm gradually shifting toward a point of view that goes something like: Streamer/podcaster/youtuber (or I guess we could summarize it as "content creator") marxists should be de facto assumed to be untrustworthy.
I've written at least partial defense of one or more of them in the past, I think, but frankly the fact alone that the majority of them are not mouthpieces of a revolutionary movement, but are instead completely divorced from one and are simply doing an attempt at marxist theory takes, that already means they've got nothing to ground themselves on, no matter how good their intentions are.
At least when that's an aspect of somewhere like here, we're checking each other at the door regularly and none of us are being elevated as "the takes giver". But these people are both elevated as thought leaders by fandom level audiences and can very easily have no connection to praxis at all, which makes no goddamn sense for being a thought leader.
So I would say, the basic litmus test should be something like: Are they part of a revolutionary movement and are speaking directly from experience gained from that organizing about things that pertain to that experience? If not, they can still make valid points, but the authority of their position should be treated the same way you would some random person you chat up on the street.
Most of us would probably gain far more from translating and reading Xi Jinping speeches than listening to podcasters bullshit about theory for an hour.
10/10 take.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11896481
You can always go for the podcasts that are simply professors talking on zoom for multiple hours. Only thing that doesn"t make me like, angry
Eww, gross, thanks for showing this.
No, no, thanks for not settling for #vagueposting I really need to make this stuff more accessible for people. It kind of makes me apprehensive because of how cranky people have gotten with me over criticizing entertainers. So it's gotta be extensive no random potshots that only make sense to people with 1000 hours of communism and oil trade social media
Yea no worries, I know a decent bit about communism but very little about streamers.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: