Juice

The entirety of your political education is based on a graphic popularized during early 00's MySpace surveys. This should make you deeply concerned

These people just aren't serious, why bother

No mandarin offered though

Great bit. Really well formed criticism. "People advocate for degrowth but they fundamentally misunderstand the problem because they base their analysis on flawed bourgeois cultural logic. The reason they can't escape bourgeois forms of analysis, even as well meaning left-liberals, is because they are afraid to lose access to cheap consumer goods. Its a reactionary fear of alienation from the things that alienate us from nature and each other, hence the framing of our dilemma will lead to reactionary conclusions."

Wind and solar are (mostly) good from a risk/benefit analysis, and I think further investment in battery tech would make them even better. But the problem with nuclear, other than waste, is the fact that noone has tried building like a bunch of reactors that are basically the same. So the training becomes industrialized, repairs and manufacturing, over time it gets cheaper. In France, correct me if I'm wrong, they did this and it was really successful. In general the main problem with both technologies is lack of public investment, i think due to political consequences from oil companies, general bourgeois resistance to public works and investment, etc.,

I mean that's the challenge, to turn our correct principles into political reality. The left needs people to take the lead, to think differently about old dusty problems, and communicate and discuss and educate. Nothing is easy or straightforward, but its good to have comrades and work for the people

That's a really interesting way of looking at it! I think that the reason they get equated is that the material effect had been historically the same. Patsocs advocate for socialist policies, but ideologically restrict who does and doesn't get the benefit. Class reductionists advocate for socialist policies for all, but when the time comes to redistribute wealth, geez you know we really tried. So like the american socialist movements of the early 20th century, moved popular support for socialism all the way to a New deal. But Black workers were excluded from union membership or any of the benefits of the new deal, until the UAW started admitting black workers in Detroit decades later. So even though the messaging was completely different, the historical effect was the same. If workers have the power to demand truly transformative reforms, like new deal policies, then we have to actually push beyond that because the ruling class is never going to let it go down the way we know it has to. They will always fight back with extreme violence. Anything we win has to be defended and we can only defend it if everyone is on board to defend it, and not everyone will be on board if it leaves most people out. Maybe it wins temporary concessions for some, but we are communists, dammit! It's all or we fighting. Its not enough for the workers to be united. We have to be united in struggle, or we will never get there. At least that's what I think.

We all have a ton of issues to work through, I hope you will be patient with us as I genuinely think HBs are acting in good faith! But we are all developing in different ways and at different rates. I'm sure you're able to recognize some ways in which you could become a better comrade, and part of that is by interacting principally with other principled politicized workers.

Unfortunately, in my organizing I have not yet encountered the movement that will stand a chance against imperialism. So until I find it or it finds me, I have to try to build it, out of the paved over wasteland of the american labor movement. It takes more patience and personal development than I ever anticipated. But at least I know I'm not completely alone. Our only hope is in each other, in solidarity. Hopelessness is to lose sight of that.

Anyway, thanks for your patience and strength. Sticking with it helps us to recognize and confront issues we encounter with other comrades. Sometimes it seems like we are the only ones who see a real problem with the way others approach problems that crop up as a result of left organizing and, while it could be a sign that we just aren't compatible with a group's beliefs, it could also be a sign that we are just a little ahead of our comrades in certain areas, and we can bring them up to speed and strengthen the movement in doing so.

In other words, quantitative inputs over time add up to great qualitative change. It can be slow process but we have to believe it to be successful, as every successful socialist movement has recognized the political effectiveness of dialectical change

I would say no. Patriotic Socialism is more like the movement that inspired the Nazis to add "socialism" to their name. The CCP has a nationalistic quality, like you have to be born in China to hold positions in the party, but for example there is proportional representation, they really make sure their minority populations are properly represented in the government and party. Patsocs try to use the contradictions that arise as a result of trying to reform a nation, and movements that push for progressive reforms for all, to make it into progressive reforms for some, if not completely derailing any progressive agenda. Sometimes patsocs will make appeals to the nationalist character of China or Cuba to argue for patriotic socialism, but I've never seen it argued for in good faith. People are either confused or lying, regardless of what anyone thinks about the CCP, they helped the Chinese people organize and defend themselves. No patsoc movement has ever come within 1000 miles of relevance, let alone victory (unless you count Nazis which wouldn't be a victory for progress!)

"Patriotic socialist" is someone who combines false consciousness nationalist populism with non intersectional and exclusionary class politics. Like "dictatorship of the proletariat" but then will define the proletariat very narrowly and chauvinistically. Its a common grift. Socialism wrapped in an american flag (and all that it entails).

I hope you stay around because I see your perspective, and I think if you wait and let hexbears have a struggle sesh then they will be able to see it too. Because as a cishet white guy, it was actually really important for me to get to the line that these other commenters keep repeating: that the place where workers feel the effects of of their economic exploitation is usually some social distinction like race/gender/ethnicity/expression. I also believe that capital and value are real and temporal, condensed laboring time of workers, and if I understand all of this correctly, a huge amount of the cultural and social capital, basically anything new, or persisting from slavery and indigenous dispossession and genocide, as well as everything in between (carcerial and police repression, extreme exploitation of demonized immigrants), is composed disproportionately of the value of the toil, extracted through extreme violence, of BIPoC around the world.

OTOH, I don't relate to black comrades as a racialized social relation. We are all volunteers so the people who are working together are there because they got their ass out to work together to get something done, or aid in people's struggles, or plan and even just bullshit in off time.

It seems like there is what leftist believe that certain positions on race "need to" or are "supposed to" be, because of the compound legacies of imperialism and colonialism and patriarchy, etc., especially with regards to whites like me, but those positions can end up flattening the lived experience of people into a collection of historical figures and facts, an object instead of a person. But what this disconnect is, what it is called for example, if it exists, idk if there's a name for it. So like so many problems, people disagree over things they don't have the language to understand yet.

Anyway, I appreciate your comments, comrade. Thanks.

Okay so maybe this helps you, but I came from a very similar place as you and yeah I agree that morality and ethics are just used to shut down further discussion. "I think its bad!" Conversation over.

The problem I want to argue isn't with morality and ethics but (as other people have pointed out) there is a problem with the way that morality is defined/commonly understood and we miss it because the problem isnt with morality, but the problem of splitting things into categories and then assigning a relative "value" to those categories. Its a direct descendent of bourgeois enlightenment philosophy, Christian conceptions of good and evil, and catalysed with a healthy dose of residual cultural puritanism. However, it is the primary way that most people define most things, as having a subject/object value relation, rather than a dialectical one. Things are in a good group, which is my accepted group, and the other group. This is popular way of constructing an argument because it completely ignores projection -- if I can imagine the other wants to kill me then I can justify killing the other, which short circuits human risk calculation.

IMO dialectical morality and philosophy doesn't get anywhere enough study and attention, so what you end up with is a bunch of leftists who can do dialectical materialism, but still view morality as an objective value relation. Or we get accused of it (purity tests) and we have no response because we don't understand the problem with the way the argument is framed.

In a nutshell, dialectical morality would be something more like "good and bad define each other." I get a lot of this from the Dao de Ching, but its effective because it allows us to critique other people's moral arguments by escaping the limitations that are causing people to reach shitty conclusions, while not abandoning ethics as one of the people with the most consistently ethical beliefs, surely a contradiction that shuts down all engagement as well. Also, there are times when something is clearly right/wrong so a mastery of many different forms of constructing an argument helps us to be on the right side at the end of our analysis. We also know that dialectics helps to make class analysis as well, so the more time we spend in that headspace, the more natural it becomes.