• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    2 hours ago

    Oh you’re a Bordigist, that explains things. Either way, socialism is a transitional status between capitalism and communism characterized by public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy and the working classes in control of the state. Between capitalism and communism, elements of each are present, and do not themselves determine the identity of the mode of production but that which is rising and thus principal.

    Trade on an international level, even with capitalist countries, is not a determining factor for socialism. Trade internally, even if not entitely tied to labor or necessity, is not a determining factor for socialism. You’re throwing dialectics away entirely in favor of a metaphysical outlook on production and distribution. While we’re recommending reading, why not add Gramsci’s On Comrade Bordiga’s Sterile and Negative “Left” Criticism.

    • Silver Needle@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      Before I answer I want to know what you mean by dialectics. That words gets thrown around harder than a dodgeball in middleschool

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        2 hours ago

        I feel you can already get the gist of what I mean when I pointed out your metaphysical error, but in short dialectics is a method, with materialism as an outlook. Metaphysics sees subjects as “either/or,” while dialectics sees them as “both/and.” Movement is the result of contradictions, the unity and struggle of opposites. The rise of something paired with the dying away of something. Dialectics recognizes interrelation, the unity and struggle of opposites, as motion insepperable from matter and vice-versa, as things come into being and cease to be, as unending change.

        In other words:

        1. Dialectics does not regard nature as a collection of static, isolated objects, but as connected, dependent, and determined by each other.

        2. Dialectics considers everything as in a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always rising and something is always dying away.

        3. Dialectics is not a simple process of growth, but where quantitative buildup results in qualitative change, and qualitative change result in quantitative outcomes, as a leap in state from one to the other, the lower to the higher, the simple to the complex.

        4. Dialectics holds that the process of development from lower to higher takes place as a struggle of opposite tendencies that forms the basis of their contradictions.

        • Silver Needle@lemmy.ca
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          1 hour ago

          So it is your claim that we need some sort of political realism. We have to make use with what exists and anything which posits a beyond is metaphysical territory? We might as well stop at doing social democracy because it doesn’t get any better than that with the means available to us. I hope I did not strawman your argument