Are you a genuine Gorby fan?

The Party for Socialism and Liberation. They are doing a good job, but party building takes time and effort.

Sure, that’s what orgs like PSL are doing.

Congress represents capitalists and works for them, not the working classes. Any plan that cannot address the class conflict and the nature of the capitalist state instruments to uphold their class interests is doomed to fail.

It’s actually cheaper to do single payer healthcare, but because profit rules all the empire does this.

Yep, great point! Gotta connect class interests.

This isn’t true, though. Trump just isn’t quite as hawkish on Russia as many liberals would like, but if he was actually compromised he would be lifting sanctions and wouldn’t be attacking Russian allies like Iran and Venezuela.

The dems aren’t interested in dismantling the private healthcare industry. It’s too profitable and their donors need it.

People can demand it, but that isn’t how we could ever get it. The privatized healthcare system makes too much money and the left in the US Empire is only recently beginning to recover from the Red Scare and systematic dismantling by the state in the 20th century.

Specialized instances are the major draw for me. I almost never use /all sort because of that.

I wouldn’t trust quizzes when it comes to political ideology. Quizzes try to take your latent beliefs and force them into categories, but these beliefs may be contradictory. Ideologies (in theory) attempt to proceed from a given baseline, and find correct answers given that baseline. For example, Marxism and its various tendencies all proceed from the acceptance of dialectical materialism, the scientific approach to socialism, and Marxist economics as the basis. A quiz may think someone is a Marxist, even if they don’t actually agree with any of those, assuming they have similar policy preferences.

Not sure how this answers the question, or why you’re announcing blocking people. You can just do that quietly, it sounds like you’re just trying to provoke people.

I don’t agree with the lists categorizing socialism as “state capitalism” and trying to force Marxist analysis into an anarchist framework, when the conclusions of Marxism fundamentally point towards one unified system of collectivized production and distribution while anarchism is more about local communalism and horizontalism.

I do think labels are helpful for coming to a coherent understanding. Rejection of labels and focusing only on details can lead us to not notice how these details intersect and interconnect, leading to counterposed beliefs simultaneously held. Some people will reject the convo outright based on label, but these people likely aren’t going to be swayed anyways, and are looking for an excuse to end the convo. That’s why I just openly state that I’m a Marxist-Leninist, it helps explain my views in a more concrete way than needing each bit to be teased out over the course of a convo.

IRL though I tend to not bring up that I’m an ML unless I am at a protest or event or otherwise trust the person deeply.

Thanks for the kind words, comrade! Glad you’re here! 🫡

Historical anarchism isn’t the same as modern-day anarchism, though. As production and distribution became more complex, different forms of organization came about to suit the level of the productive forces, giving rise to class society. We cannot use historic hunter-gatherer anarchism as proof of modern-day anarchism working at scale, as the material conditions are entirely different. That is, unless you’re talking anarcho-primitivism, in which case I think being able to manufacture things like insulin is necessary.

I’m a Marxist-Leninist! Not really based on “preference,” though, but on the overall coherence and practicality of Marxism-Leninism. I agree with the dialectical materialist method, Marxist economics, the Leninist analysis of imperialism and organization, and socialism as a scientific field. I support AES states (Actually Existing Socialism, where public ownwrship is the principal aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state), including the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, and Venezuela (which is more almost AES IMO but on the right track).

One thing I would suggest is viewing the state not as something outside class struggle, but deeply involved within it. The state under capitalism has a bourgeois class character, it exists to reinforce capitalism and keep the working classes suppressed. Under socialism, however, the state exists to keep the working classes on top, and this is necessary as we gradually collectivize production and distribution to establish communism. This is the Marxist conception of the state, and how we can achieve statelessness realistically by eroding the basis of the state, class struggle.

If you want a place to start with Marxism-Leninism, I made a basic Marxist-Leninist study guide. Feel free to check it out!

Hey comrade, just want to mention that I made a new, cleaned up guide and that the one you linked is going to go through a major revision sometime in the future. And thanks for the kind words!

Public transit is more efficient at moving a large number of people at once in similar directions.

Communism is good, necessary, and achievable.