I’m probably twice your age. Over 50 people in my family, that I know of, were killed in the gulags and I grew up hearing about just how great communism was from my Polish family, who lived under communism till 1989.
I too though had a Marxist phase as a teenager and I so strongly believed people were capable of being better if only they would read Marx and follow his ideas.
And then I grew the fuck up and stopped believing in magical opposite world realities suddenly coming into fruition.
Power corrupts and those with power over us will always be corrupted. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
60+ and still an edgy teenager with a misanthropic mass shooter ideology who speaks with authority on subjects without any study or investigation very impressive. For someone who allegedly read Marx your ability to not understand a single point Marxists make and instead spout off right wing talking points and strawmen is equally impressive.
This person seems to be speaking from personal lived experience, which, to me, is more valuable than theory alone. Assuming they’re telling the truth, of course.
There’s a reason anecdotal evidence generally isn’t worth much. Talking about your experience is great but using it to extrapolate to the sweeping remarks this person is making is dangerous and generally should be avoided.
I’d argue that lived experience (material reality) is the only thing that actually matters, and that theory can be confabulated by anyone. edit: again assuming that this person is a real person, not saying that their history is the only one that matters, just that real world lived experience is more important than theory
Here’s another anecdote then. My polish family got saved from the Nazis by the russian army taking Poland, got a university education, the women got to be independent and have their own housing and material security.
Their religion was suppressed and they were unhappy about that but Polish Catholicism was extremely misogynistic and repressive.
Oh they also got vaccines and healthcare and shit.
It was no utopia but they were treated well enough that they regretted moving away for a long time.
This is difficult to respond to, but I’m going to try anyway.
I don’t think your family’s limited prosperity was worth the extermination of the other guy’s family. Killing the Nazis is a very low bar for goodness. Americans also killed Nazis, and now look what’s happening in the US.
If you have a bad situation, seeing someone else in a bad situation doesn’t make your bad situation better, it just means that there are now two bad situations.
It wasn’t just my family though, women were massively liberated in the USSR relative to basically everywhere in Eurasia at the time. Loads of people die in prison, maybe their family was Nazi collaborators, maybe mine was KGB agents, maybe we’re both lying.
We should stick to verifiable facts when discussing history.
I don’t think exterminating 50 families is worth it even if 50 other unrelated families get uplifted. At least, I don’t think you can call it good or better. And I don’t think any one specific theory or ideology is necessary for women’s liberation. Women have historically liberated themselves using a myraid of different ideologies.
I don’t think you can count theory alone as a “verifiable fact.” The verifiable facts are the historically accurate first-person accounts of history which have been measured against corroborating witnesses and physical evidence. Marx wrote a book about his own thoughts and predictions. Some of these thoughts can be measured against reality and some of them cannot. Anybody can write down their thoughts, and the more intelligent you are, the more you can twist your words to make them sound good. Material reality and the lived experiences of real people matter more to me than what an intelligent person can make up or predict.
I find it hard to believe that every single person who died in a gulag was a Nazi collaborator, because not all of them were. Although we can’t do it on Lemmy, it is possible to verify familial histories and first-person accounts. You’re right about the fact that a lot of people lie on the internet so this whole discussion is kind of silly.
This is a wildly false comparison, social science theories can’t be compared to physics. Now you’re just being very silly on purpose.
I cannot have a lived experience with gravity which is contrary to the existence of gravity. It is literally impossible. Why am I wasting my time explaining this? You know how silly this is.
They definitely can social science is just as much a science as “hard” sciences and extrapolating anecdotes to make general statements is equally garbage in both fields.
How much do you know about quantum mechanics and how gravity works differently at that scale and thus the need for an entire new field called quantum gravity?
Your lived experience of gravity as an attractive force of on earth roughly 9.8m/s^2 would be in direct opposition to quantum gravity
Holy ad hominems batman, lmao. For someone who also clames to know about logical fallacies, you really don’t seem to be doing to well on that front either.
You’re the one who tried to play the age card to dodge the fact that your worldview is misanthropic garbage based on nothing of substance while you entirely misunderstand Marx and Marxist points then fight those misunderstandings as if they are the points themselves. No Marxist advocates for “if everyone would just…” or benevolent dictators or any of the nonsense you’re spewing. I really think we should leave this here.
I hope you don’t commit to your misanthropy too hard and end up on the news.
No Marxist advocates for “if everyone would just…”
But the whole reason this conversation with you started was because you didn’t like that I said communism doesn’t work because people aren’t capable of it. And we haven’t been capable of it yet anywhere either.
So if you’re not arguing for ‘if everybody would just’ but also believe people are actually capable of communism… then what?
Work with me here, I’m really trying to understand you.
And ffs, with your attitude here, if anyone’s likely to get on the news for something relating to this, it seems like you’re closer to going all ‘gulag for the non-believers’, than I am to bothering to seek out any of you morons irl to be pissed at.
I’m probably twice your age. Over 50 people in my family, that I know of, were killed in the gulags and I grew up hearing about just how great communism was from my Polish family, who lived under communism till 1989.
I too though had a Marxist phase as a teenager and I so strongly believed people were capable of being better if only they would read Marx and follow his ideas.
And then I grew the fuck up and stopped believing in magical opposite world realities suddenly coming into fruition.
Power corrupts and those with power over us will always be corrupted. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
60+ and still an edgy teenager with a misanthropic mass shooter ideology who speaks with authority on subjects without any study or investigation very impressive. For someone who allegedly read Marx your ability to not understand a single point Marxists make and instead spout off right wing talking points and strawmen is equally impressive.
This person seems to be speaking from personal lived experience, which, to me, is more valuable than theory alone. Assuming they’re telling the truth, of course.
There’s a reason anecdotal evidence generally isn’t worth much. Talking about your experience is great but using it to extrapolate to the sweeping remarks this person is making is dangerous and generally should be avoided.
I’d argue that lived experience (material reality) is the only thing that actually matters, and that theory can be confabulated by anyone. edit: again assuming that this person is a real person, not saying that their history is the only one that matters, just that real world lived experience is more important than theory
Here’s another anecdote then. My polish family got saved from the Nazis by the russian army taking Poland, got a university education, the women got to be independent and have their own housing and material security.
Their religion was suppressed and they were unhappy about that but Polish Catholicism was extremely misogynistic and repressive.
Oh they also got vaccines and healthcare and shit.
It was no utopia but they were treated well enough that they regretted moving away for a long time.
This is difficult to respond to, but I’m going to try anyway.
I don’t think your family’s limited prosperity was worth the extermination of the other guy’s family. Killing the Nazis is a very low bar for goodness. Americans also killed Nazis, and now look what’s happening in the US.
If you have a bad situation, seeing someone else in a bad situation doesn’t make your bad situation better, it just means that there are now two bad situations.
It wasn’t just my family though, women were massively liberated in the USSR relative to basically everywhere in Eurasia at the time. Loads of people die in prison, maybe their family was Nazi collaborators, maybe mine was KGB agents, maybe we’re both lying.
We should stick to verifiable facts when discussing history.
I don’t think exterminating 50 families is worth it even if 50 other unrelated families get uplifted. At least, I don’t think you can call it good or better. And I don’t think any one specific theory or ideology is necessary for women’s liberation. Women have historically liberated themselves using a myraid of different ideologies.
I don’t think you can count theory alone as a “verifiable fact.” The verifiable facts are the historically accurate first-person accounts of history which have been measured against corroborating witnesses and physical evidence. Marx wrote a book about his own thoughts and predictions. Some of these thoughts can be measured against reality and some of them cannot. Anybody can write down their thoughts, and the more intelligent you are, the more you can twist your words to make them sound good. Material reality and the lived experiences of real people matter more to me than what an intelligent person can make up or predict.
I find it hard to believe that every single person who died in a gulag was a Nazi collaborator, because not all of them were. Although we can’t do it on Lemmy, it is possible to verify familial histories and first-person accounts. You’re right about the fact that a lot of people lie on the internet so this whole discussion is kind of silly.
Feel free to believe that but social sciences are a science and there’s a reason anecdotal evidence is not valued highly.
Should we discard all of quantum mechanics because of your lived experience with gravity? Obviously not.
This is a wildly false comparison, social science theories can’t be compared to physics. Now you’re just being very silly on purpose.
I cannot have a lived experience with gravity which is contrary to the existence of gravity. It is literally impossible. Why am I wasting my time explaining this? You know how silly this is.
They definitely can social science is just as much a science as “hard” sciences and extrapolating anecdotes to make general statements is equally garbage in both fields.
How much do you know about quantum mechanics and how gravity works differently at that scale and thus the need for an entire new field called quantum gravity?
Your lived experience of gravity as an attractive force of on earth roughly 9.8m/s^2 would be in direct opposition to quantum gravity
I’m sorry, this is too silly. Have a nice day.
Holy ad hominems batman, lmao. For someone who also clames to know about logical fallacies, you really don’t seem to be doing to well on that front either.
Well done spelling those big words though!
You’re the one who tried to play the age card to dodge the fact that your worldview is misanthropic garbage based on nothing of substance while you entirely misunderstand Marx and Marxist points then fight those misunderstandings as if they are the points themselves. No Marxist advocates for “if everyone would just…” or benevolent dictators or any of the nonsense you’re spewing. I really think we should leave this here.
I hope you don’t commit to your misanthropy too hard and end up on the news.
But the whole reason this conversation with you started was because you didn’t like that I said communism doesn’t work because people aren’t capable of it. And we haven’t been capable of it yet anywhere either.
So if you’re not arguing for ‘if everybody would just’ but also believe people are actually capable of communism… then what?
Work with me here, I’m really trying to understand you.
And ffs, with your attitude here, if anyone’s likely to get on the news for something relating to this, it seems like you’re closer to going all ‘gulag for the non-believers’, than I am to bothering to seek out any of you morons irl to be pissed at.
And just so we’re clear, because at this point my expectations for the people reading this are fairly low, ‘great’ in this context, is sarcasm.
As in, they did not actually find living under communism to be ‘great’.