Unironically repeating an emotional anecdote with no facts or statistics from a Miami-based Cuban Exile group, you know the slavers and fascists, as a point against Cuba is very silly. Those who fled Cuba just want their plantations and slaves back, even if you find queer descendents of slavers that doesn’t make their cause just. Cuba is better than Miami for gay rights, lmao.

You right-wingers really have no media literacy, do you?

No, he said it was a horrible crime, Cuba decriminalized homosexuality in 1979, then went on to become one of the most progressive countries in the world for queer people today. Cuba didn’t execute masses of gay people, nor did the USSR, you’ve made shit up on both accounts. That’s all anti-communists do, really, your little gesture at the end I mean.

The capitalist farmers, little more than slave drivers, decided to resist collectivization by setting fire to their crops, murdering workers, fighting the Red Army, and killing their livestock, which ended up creating famine conditions. There wasn’t a widespread order to “kill all kulaks,” but there was widespread killing of kulaks that decided to violently resist having their mechanisms of slave-driving taken away.

As for Cuba, they didn’t have a widespread execution campaign of gay people, either. Gay people were fined, imprisoned, and sent to re-education camps, a fact Castro himself has apologized for and maintains that it was a great injustice committed by the revolution. Homosexuality was de-criminalized in 1979 in Cuba, and today Cuba’s Family Code is among the most progressive in the world, far surpassing the US.

You really have no clue what you’re talking about, otherwise you wouldn’t be praising the Russian equivalent of the US confederacy nor would you be speaking of Cuba as though it still persecutes gay people like the US does today. As a queer person myself, this “rainbow imperialism” nonsense coming from you only serves to support the US Empire. Without the Cuban Revolution, gay people would likely still be persecuted just as they were under the fascist slaver Batista regime, a practice ended by the revolution and the dramatic equality it stood for.

I am not going to shed any tears for slavers, nazis, fascists, or the bourgeoisie as their property gets redistributed. There’s no “mask” there, that’s standard leftism of all stripes.

Yes, it includes Nazis, the White Army, capitalists, etc. Gay people weren’t executed, the punishment was 5 years imprisonment, which is still awful but was better than other countries at the time. Calling me “murderous” for supporting socialist countries is laughable when you make shit up, lmao.

I don’t put on a “mask,” I’m openly a communist. I make it clear that I’m a Marxist, specifically a Marxist-Leninist. I have more patience than most, I’d say, but that doesn’t mean I “hide” anything.

I’ve read dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and continue to read. The overwhelming majority of those who lived in the USSR want it back, this is a well-known phenomenon. Over 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism in the USSR, prostitution, drug abuse, poverty, disparity, all skyrocketed while life expectancy plumeted thanks to the utter destruction of the economy and the elimination of social safety nets.

Well over 90% of Chinese citizens support their government, even from western survey. Socialism in China lifted 800 million people out of poverty, and is combatting climate change and regularly improving conditions for its people, without relying on imperialism like western countries do. This is charting a genuine alternative to the naked plundering of the west towards the global south.

I am not going to trust one person’s anecdotal experience vs the legitimate and long-term study I’ve done, the people who lived in the USSR, PRC, etc that I’ve spoken to and spoke positively of them, and the ongoing process of decay capitalist countries are in while socialist countries are steadily developing and improving. Go ahead, rely on the assumption that I must be stupid or ill-read to support a worker-centric economy rather than the absolute system of plunder that is crumbling. Keep doing Nazi apologia by equating a system of industrialized mass murder with a system that doubled life expectancy, democratized the economy, provided free and high quality healthcare and education, over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%, and more. Stay in your right-wing echo chamber formed by anecdotes and refuse to read anything.

Saying the world would have been better off without communists directly states that the ones who killed 90% of the Nazis in World War II and took Berlin should’ve never existed, the Tsar never overthrown, Cuba to remain a fascist slaver colony under Batista, China to remain under the feudal Kuomintang dictatorship, Vietnam to remain a colony of France, South Africa to remain an Apartheid regime, etc.

It isn’t a strawman, it’s the direct consequences of what you said.

Ah, gotcha, that makes sense. Federation is interesting.

Oh wow! I always wondered if my comments actually get people to check out the pages and books I link, I’ve tried to focus more on explaining things in my own words unless a book or article is extremely relevant and quotes necessary (people sometimes saw my older style of quoting Marx, Lenin, Engels, etc as book worship, which is fair critique IMO).

That’s actually really interesting!

I don’t think that’s actually it, it’s just a new market, so capital floods in there as the rate of profit is initially much higher. Older markets have lower and lower rates of profit, but new ones can manifest much greater returns before the fad becomes oversaturated.

Simple failures of capitalism at play, nothing nefarious. If the wealthy wanted to fully automate society, the US wouldn’t be de-industrializing over time. Capital can’t plan for the future on its own, we need socialism to take control back from it.

The world would have been better if the Nazis won WWII? If the Tsar had remained a brutal dictator with life expectancies and literacy rates both in the low 30s? Mask-off moment for you, holy shit.

I wouldn’t really call that an echo chamber, then. An echo-chamber is where you are only exposed to one side of viewpoints, that’s largely impossible for Hexbear users but is entirely possible for, say, Lemmy.world users. The alternative is to let liberals, fascists, etc roam freely, harassing users and creating an unsafe space for marginalized comrades that use Hexbear precisely to avoid such situations for a tiny portion of their lives.

They are less echo-chambery than Lemmy.world, in my opinion, as Lemmy.world largely aligns with the status quo and as such cutting out communists means you aren’t exposed to communist perspectives at all, while on Hexbear, which is less broadly federated than Lemmy.ml, you still can’t avoid engaging with liberalism when off of Hexbear.

In other words, Hexbear is a place carved out for communists by communists, but Hexbear users can’t actually avoid interacting with liberals. Lemmy.world, on the other hand, aligns with the status quo, and cuts out viewpoints that go against that, meaning they can avoid engaging with communists to a far greater degree.

They also ban fascists, liberals, etc. Hexbear is pro-animal liberation, they don’t want to see glorification of mass consumption of meat all the time. This is a silly point, you can’t actually go your life without seeing meat being eaten, but that doesn’t mean you have to see it everywhere you go. Same with porn, porn is censored, does that make it an echo chamber?

I think you ignored my points, why does Hexbear count as a “true echo chamber?” What does that even entail?

I have, actually, and I recommend you read up on how socialism actually works, including how it doubled the life expectancy of those in the USSR, tripled literacy rates to 99%, ended famine in countries where underdevelopment made famine common, brought free, universal healthcare, full free education, more vacation days and lower working hours, and more.

The PRC today is Socialist, and is responsible for the largest reduction in poverty in history, as well as some of the most rapid levels of economic development in history.

Communism is good, fascism is horrendous. Fascism was horrible for 99% of people, in countries like Germany there was industrialized mass murder, workers were kiloed en masse for organizing, and the rights of women and minorities were curbed. Socialism is good for the 99% and bad for the 1%. The Tsarists, capitalists, etc had their property confiscated and even were killed, while the 99% achieved great feats.

You definitely should Blackshirts and Reds. Further still, equating communism and fascism is a form of Naxi apologia, it originated with Double Genocide Theory which attempts to trivialize the holocaust and demonize socialism to make Nazism seem not as bad as it actually was.

I don’t really remember that, but reading is always good.

If we are being annoyingly accurate, labor-power is a commodity to sell from the perspective of the wage-laborer, but capital in the hands of the capitalist. The wage-laborer sells their only commodity, labor-power, for a sum of money, to then buy their means of subsistence in the form of other commodities thanks to money’s use as the universal commodity. From the capitalist’s perspective, though, they use money to buy means of production and labor-power as commodities, then through combination and production, they are used as capital, to then be sold for greater money thanks to the surplus value created.

From the wage-laborer’s perspective, it goes commodity -> money -> commodity. But from the capitalist’s perspective, it goes money -> commodities -> productive capital -> commodities of higher value -> greater quantity of money.

In simpler terms:

Wage-laborer: C-M-C

Capitalist: M-C(mp +L)…P…C’-M’

Something isn’t capital just because it’s used for production. Something being capital is a social role, and is fundamentally tied to production from the perspective as a capitalist, as something participating in this circuit of accumulation, not just simple commodity production predating capitalism.

This is why the wage-laborer has no ability to endlessly expand their money in a greater and greater fashion, while for the capitalist this circuit must repeat itself for there to be commodities for the wage laborer to buy. This is how they steal surplus value, why capital grows, and why it concentrates and centralizes while disparity rises.

The wage-laborer has no capital.

Feeding people is good, actually.

Yep, that explains a lot of people’s thought process on the Left. Since there’s a lot of overlap in terms, there’s a lot of hats you can wear without being inconsistent, depending on the context.

Among communists, a popular saying is “no investigation, no right to speak.” If you have only surface-level knowledge of a subject, then anything you contribute to broader conversation on said subject just contributes to the miasma of misinfirmation and miscommunication. Personally restricting yourself from speaking authoritatively on subjects you don’t really know or understand greatly enhances the types of conversations you can have, and deepens understanding.

I personally apply this principle as best I can to myself, and I suggest you do the same. Here’s a good resource compilation for studying Xinjiang and the situation the Uyghur people are actually in in China, including the background leading up to the correction programs, the allegations of genocide from the west, as well as the only evidence coming from one person named Adrian Zenz, a christian nationalist that hasn’t been to China and believes it is his duty from God to punish China. This Adrian Zenz is a member of the US-propaganda outlet “Victims of Communism.”

Overall, I hope this helps a bit.

Communism isn’t fascism, and to conflate the two is a serious miscalculation. Communism/socialism are historically worker-centric systems and ideologies, while fascism is best described as capitalism, only when the bourgeoisie needs to employ violent and extreme measures to protect their ownership of private property. As a consequence, communist-led violence is violence against the minority of society, the oppressor capitalist class, while fascist-led violence is against the majority, the working class, as well as the marginalized in society.

I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.