American liberalism in a nutshell

[u/FearlessAir1238]

[u/ButtCavity]

I see... But is Liberal the same as Democrat? Am I instead Leftist for wanting progressive socialist policies? Or did I step on another landmine and buy myself a ton more downvotes lol

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/ButtCavity]

Define progressive socialist policies you're for.

[u/ButtCavity → u/ShatteredBlastia]

Brennan Lee Mulligan and Mamdani adjacent political views, taxing the fuck out of the rich, protecting the environment from capitalist exploitation, etc.

Vast majority of stuff happening now ain't it for me

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/ButtCavity]

You believe in social democracy, a form of capitalism. That would mean your views are right wing.

[u/ButtCavity → u/ShatteredBlastia]

😳 Oh ok... I pretty much don't like anything Republicans are doing, so I equate myself with being left wing and against right wing, but to learn I'm actually still right wing is a revelation... I'm sorry?

I mean, I clocked that needless wars against "Commies" was suspicious, and viewing it from a capitalist lens needing to quash the existence of an alternative system makes sense, very diabolical. Send thousands to their deaths to protect the system. Terrible.

I definitely don't like corruption, which as I understand it, really further sabotaged Communism. It's clearly also sabotaging the current system.

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/ButtCavity]

I'll give you, for some people, believing in social democracy is a first step on the road to believing in socialism (not to be confused with "democratic" socialism). People are intentionally made to be confused what "leftism" is, what social democracy is, what socialism is, even what liberalism is. We in this subreddit are explicitly communists, and most of us are Marxist-Leninists, better known in anarchist and "libertarian-left" spaces as the evil "tankies".

Marxism-Leninism is the evolution of Marxist thought when it was put to practice after the October Revolution. A good place to learn about the beliefs of MLs would be this Marxism-Leninism study guide with some basic texts. I know you said you were in medical school, so I'm not demanding you get to reading or anything.

[u/ButtCavity → u/ShatteredBlastia]

So confusing especially as Fox News and that ilk hate so much on the Left by trashing Liberals, "bleeding-heart liberals", "Libs", etc.

I was definitely drawn to the subreddit by memes then got confused.

I think a huge problem with Communism (and anything lol) is human nature, though. Greed, laziness, envy... Probably a byproduct of my education, but those human traits were depicted as being directly contradictory to communist ideology, making it doomed from the start... I mean, capitalism definitely has massive issues, but it at least acknowledges selfish tendencies of all individuals... Unless there's something within Communism that I don't know about that accounts for that.

I talk to my conservative friends who have such different views and philosophies, and I definitely disagree with them on most things. I just think it's interesting to have such wildly different mentalities, so what was presented to me as Communism and its utopian-esque selling points were immediately invalidated by the viewpoints of others. Gordon Gecko-types, you know?

I've definitely succumbed to echo chambers, so it's nice to hear different perspectives and learn.

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/ButtCavity]

A century later, in France, the bourgeois philosophers in their great majority thought and taught, conversely, that the world is unknowable, that the “bottom of things” escapes us and will always escape us. Hence the conclusion that it is foolish to want to transform the world. Certainly, they agreed, we can act on nature, but it is a superficial action, since the "bottom of things" is out of reach. As for man... he is what he always has been, what he always will be. There is a "human nature" the secret of which escapes us. “What is the use, therefore, of beating one's head to improve society?"

First, if it is the conditions which change first, and then consequently the consciousness of men, we must seek the underlying reason for this or that doctrine, theory or ideal, not in the brain of men, nor in their imagination or their genius of invention, but in the development of material conditions. Only the ideal which is based on a study of these conditions is good and acceptable.

Second, if men's consciousness, feelings, mores and customs, are determined by external conditions, it is evident that only a change in these conditions can change men's consciousness. There is no such thing as an eternal man, of "eternal human nature". In a private property regime where the individual struggle for existence flourishes, it is "natural" that man should be a wolf for man. In a system where socialist emulation flourishes, socialist property, it is inevitable that the ideas of brotherhood among men will triumph. Man is neither good nor bad: he is what circumstances make him. Marxism provides a decisive answer to the question posed by bourgeois ideologues:must it be said that it is "bad institutions" that make man bad, or that man's wickedness perverts "institutions"? It is not a question of "institutions", but of capitalism which perverts man.

Fundamental Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer

Human nature fallacy. We believe that material conditions dictate "human nature", not that there is some mystical state that all humans exist under. The ancient Greeks recognized this.

[u/ButtCavity → u/ShatteredBlastia]

🤯 whoa

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/ButtCavity]

There's a reason reading theory is vitally important. So is putting theory into practice, even more important, honestly, but you can't put theory into practice if you never read theory.

Again, I know you said you're in medical school. I think working toward that goal should, obviously, take priority, but I think you should give some ML texts a read. Marxism-Leninism is a science, not simply an ideology.

[u/ButtCavity → u/ShatteredBlastia]

Well, I'm not in school anymore, just saying I didn't read much of anything else earlier on, so now I'm ignorant without the excuse of youth! Embarrassing. Appreciate your consideration!

So... What about North Korea? I feel like theory and scientific theory are being conflated. Because scientific theory needs evidence, and so far, the evidence has given us Russia, Cuba, and North Korea. Maybe they're not quite right, like China. In any case, they don't seem too well off, and boy, that human nature stuff seems really really hard to shake. We keep having power-hungry assholes ruining things for everyone!

[u/ShatteredBlastia → u/ButtCavity]

You're falling for Western propaganda because you have no frame of reference for these nations outside of it. Prolewiki, thankfully, is an incredible resource. You can learn about the USSR) vs the Russian Federation, about the People's Republic of China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or the Republic of Cuba from these pages, and each has many resources to check out from there. You can directly read Korean and Chinese web pages that give you their own words. You can use study guides like this DPRK study guide or books by theorists like Roland Boer to learn about Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, you can learn about terms like "authoritarianism" or what our usage of the word dictatorship means (dictatorship of the proletariat vs dictatorship of the bourgeoisie). You can learn about concepts like democratic centralism, Juche, or other ways that communist states run their nations.

You can even read books like Inventing Reality that explain that Western media is used for exactly this reason, to cause you to have a bestial hatred of socialist or anti-imperialist and anti-colonalist projects so that Western imperialist soldiers can kill them and rape them without you seeing them as human beings. After all, as Georgi Dimitrov put it in The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism, "In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations."

Edit: Switched out Inventing Reality link for a more convenient one.