volodya_ilich

joined 4 months ago
[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So you must certainly agree with me that the US is consequently a terrorist state

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

The solution is obviously not exclusively from pricing models, we need other energy sources than renewables for the time being, that doesn't mean we need to have market-based electricity pricing.

Imagine the state installing as many solar panels as society, guided by experts, democratically decides it wants, basically deciding as a society the energy mix instead of hoping that companies will install enough if we bribe them enough with taxes to do so, and if it's profitable. Then, it decides a pricing model based on a mixture of subsidy and incentivising consumption during production hours.

Problem solved, innit?

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Do I really need to explain the concepts of taxes, subsidies, or fixed prices regardless of demand, to an adult?

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 5 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Cheap electricity is great for consumers, but not necessarily for producers. Some people might say, "well, screw producers," but even if you take profit out of the equation, electric utilities need to be able to at least cover their expenses, and you can't do that if the amount of electricity you're generating relative to the demand is so high the price actually goes negative (meaning the utility is actually paying the consumer). Again, that's good for consumers, but I'm sure you can see how that's not a sustainable business model.

Fully agreed: let's eliminate business from the issue, and create national, for-service electric grids, that produce the cheapest renewables at all possible times in the most efficient way possible, disregarding hourly profit and taking into account exclusively the cost in €/kWh produced over the lifetime of each energy source.

Suddenly it's obvious that the problem isn't with renewables, but with organising the electric grid as a market

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

abundance of electricity when people need it the least

Isn't peak consumption around middle of the day for most countries?

it's not economical

Mfw electricity being cheap to generate is not economical

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ok, that's really good insight, so it boils down to France not respecting the 1935 treaty by refusing to declare Czechoslovakia as a victim of aggression?

As a Spanish, I can relate too well (sadly) to the part where the president of Czechoslovakia says "I did not dare to fight with Russian aid alone, because I knew that the British and French Governments would make out of my country another Spain", I assume they're talking of how the Soviet Union was the only country to sell weapons to Republican Spain in their fight against fascism, even as the Nazis and Italian Fascists were militarily and economically helping the reactionaries in Spain, and how France and England didn't do anything under the guise of "non-interventionism".

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Sorry, I was going with Wikipedia there, care to elaborate more on what happened then?

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

invading poland side by side with the nazis

Again, literal Nazi revisionism. The invasion of Poland was mostly a peaceful process, and the only aim was to establish pro-communist forces in the area that would ensure Poland would join the USSR against the Nazis when the Nazis attacked. The same was attempted in Finland, and what do you know, Finland actually did join the Nazis during the Continuation War. And what do you know, the USSR retreated its troops from Poland after WW2.

Poland could have entered a military alliance with the USSR for the former 10 years, Stalin went as far as offering to send ONE MILLION soldiers, together with aviation and artillery, to military allies if France, England and Poland joined in a military alliance against the Nazis. But I guess they would rather see the Nazis massacre the communists first. That strategy didn't work out as planned now, did it?

They didn't want to get rid of the Nazis

This is incredibly ahistorical revisionism. The USSR prepared for the war against Nazi Germany for many years before it started. In the second half of the 1930s, seeing the Nazi rising to power (Nazis being overt enemies of Communism, as proven by what they did to Communists and to Unions in their controlled territories), they ramped up the weapon production and their military industry, and I'll say it again in case it didn't register: they spent the entire 30s seeking out military alliances with France, England and Poland against the Nazis. They offered military help to Czechoslovakia in 1938 during the Munich agreements in which Sudetenland was given to the Nazis.

Why do you think they had a NAP?

They had a non-aggression pact because Germany was an established industrial power for 100+ years at that point, while the USSR had had 19 years from 1921 after the Russian Civil War and WW1 to rebuild the country and to industrialise. They desperately needed every year they could get to reduce the industrial gap between them and the Nazis, as proven by the immense human cost to the USSR in the war against Nazis.

The Soviets literally saved Eastern Europe from an even worse fate, at immense cost of human lives (25+ million human lives lost in the USSR to Nazism), god knows how many millions more of Slavs (and other groups like Jews and Roma) the Nazis would have genocided if it hadn't been for the Soviets. Have some respect before spewing anti-communist, nazi propaganda here, please.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

because they wanted to do imperialism

You're just showing you don't know what "imperialism" is. The USSR never engaged in resource exploitation or unequal exchange with other countries, its terms of trade were always comparatively fair, especially if you compare those to the terms of trade of the western world.

The USSR didn't have any imperialist ambitions. For fucks sake, the literal first thing the Bolsheviks did in 1917 after the October Revolution, was to implement a constitution which gave the full right of self-determination and unilateral secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire, it's literally how Poland gained independence, as well as many other countries like Finland or Ukraine. What did Poland immediately do: invading Ukraine and modern Belarus and attacking the RSFSR during the Russian Civil War because of its expansionist nationalist desires of going back to Polish-Lithuanian borders. Maybe that helps explain why the USSR didn't trust Poland not to join the Nazis, especially after 10 years of Poland, France and England rejecting to form military alliances with the USSR against Nazis? Finns, after the winter war, quite literally joined the Nazis in the continuation war, going all the way to participating in the siege of Leningrad.

After the war, most of these countries that the USSR invaded went back to being their own countries as the USSS retreated all its troops. Such imperialism, amirite? The influence of the USSR in the politics of Eastern European countries after WW2, isn't any greater than the influence of the US in western Europe, so unless you're claiming that the US was carrying out imperialism in western Europe (and would have carried it in Eastern Europe too if it weren't for the USSR), then no, the USSR didn't carry out any imperialism.

immediately started spewing whataboutism

You literally have no idea what "whataboutism means, I gave a detailed explanation on why calling the Molotov-Ribbentrop a "deal with the Nazis", and stopping there without further context, is revisionist and honestly very close to Nazi propaganda. You're just saying "whataboutism whataboutism" because you're actually incapable of refuting anything I've said.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago

I mean, that's fucking amazing. Seriously, thank you.

Since it's mostly just text (and links, which are also kinda text), maybe it would just be easier to have a pastebin or something?

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Yeah, kinda insane how mask-off the "euvsdisinfo" thing is. At least they did the thing better with the Adrian Zenz and Uyghurs, using established media as a smokescreen to hide the fact that it was all Radio Free Asia. But I guess the US propaganda apparatus is bound to be more refined.

Thank you for the links to your other posts, interesting stuff. I don't think you're a sicko. To me, it's important to analyse the actual history of the systems we defend (and the ones we want to emancipate from) in order to better understand what we're fighting for, what we're fighting against, and how to avoid certain mistakes in the future. It's great that we have people like you in the movement.

Have you compiled all of this information (meaning these short-format, well-sourced posts) somewhere easy to access?

 

Hi, comrades.

Some time ago I finished "The Empire Must Die", by Zygar, an interesting book about the history of the early 20th century Russian Empire leading to the Russian Revolution, that covers the period until the October Revolution.

Although very unambiguously anti-bolshevist, the book provides a rather good recount of the historical events that led to the Russian Revolution, and the most important people within the revolution (sadly with an emphasis towards liberals like the Cadets, or the Socialist Revolutionaries who were more utopian than scientific socialists).

Now I'm interesting on reading about the history, or possibly the evolution of the institutions and the form of government, from 1917 to the death of Lenin. Is there any book you gorgeous people can recommend me about that time period?

Thanks a bunch!

 

Sup fellas.

I'm a Spanish guy who, for the past decade, has been getting increasingly radicalized. I've been mostly so far interested in reading because I wanted to have a solid theoretical background and learn more about the Ws and Ls of communism, from a theoretical and a historical perspective, and while I'm still very much into reading socialist literature, I want to take the step to organizing and activism locally. I was just wondering if anyone here has any resources for any Communist/Socialist/Marxist organisation in Spain or with presence in multiple western-european countries that anyone can recommend me to contact.

Thanks a bunch!

 

Martin Luther King was a well-known activist for Black peoples' and worker's rights. After many years of fighting racism and oppression from the establishment, he shared insights on some of his findings of the unjust opposition to rightful change, which may surprise a few of us who are still learning about his figure:

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

We've recently seen widespread liberal rejection of grassroots progressive movements such as Black Lives Matter, the protests against western collaborationism in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and many so-called "progressives" dedicating more time to finding the mistakes committed by non-western regimes than those of their own nations, and calling "Tankies" to those who are a bit further to the left than us. Let us consider if we ourselves are the moderates that Dr. Luther King was talking about, and let's push for the change we actually want rather than bickering about who's "too far to the left"

 

In 1943, Britain imposed a disgusting famine in the Bengal region of India. Starvation and disease took more than three million lives, as the British kept exporting food from the region despite the terrible conditions of the region, with government officials showing complete disregard for the deaths of the locals. Churchill himself said "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion" or that sending relief support during the famine wouldn't do anything because they were "breeding like rabbits".

In this day and age we often forget about the deaths caused by western capitalist nations in other parts of the world, but this is extremely unfair to the victims of these tragedies. Thank you for reading.

 

Last week, I found a used book in a store, called "what the Soviet worker receives besides their salary" (or something like that, translated it literally from my language). It's a short, 40-pages pamphlet written in 1959 by the then Soviet Minister of Finance, A. Zveriev.

On a section regarding housing, the pamphlet claims: "The workers and employees of the USSR pay insignificant rent compared to that paid by workers in capitalist countries. If in the latter, the rent expenditure absorbs 25 to 30% of the family budget, in the USSR, the rent including communal services doesn't rise, on average, above 4 to 5% of the family budget".

Leaving aside how much they paid in the USSR for rent, I want to dedicate a moment to examine this 25-30% expenditure of the family budget in rent in developed capitalist countries. I looked up the data for my western-european, developed country, and for the bottom 50% of families by budget, the housing expenditure actually ranges from 45% to 35% of the family budget in 2023 (latest data available).

Let's forget about the fact that family budgets can't be compared from 1959 to now because nowadays there are more workers per household as a consequence of the mass-incorporation of women in the workplace and young adults staying with their parents because of housing prices. Even if we forget about that, after 65 years of technological and scientific progress, in which the population of western capitalist countries has actually stabilized, the prices of housing as a percentage of family budgets have risen by about 50%, compared to the numbers given in an anticapitalist pamphlet written by a literal Soviet finance minister.

There is no reason for this other than the commodification of a HUMAN RIGHT such as housing. If Cuba and the USSR solved housing for everyone 50+ years ago, there's no actual, physical or economical problem preventing us from doing so. It's purely a desired consequence of our current system.

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