Coal mining enthusiast
If you maintain public control over the large firms and industries, and the proletariat controls the state, you remain on the Socialist road.
Agree, there has to be DOTP directly after the revolution which has to retain some capitalist features, mostly for economic survival purposes.
However, once the military struggle against capitalists are over and economy is sufficiently reorganized, a country has to quickly abolish the value form and actually turn to a socialist mode of production, else it risks either backpedaling to capitalism and/or turning revisionist. This is precisely what happened to USSR, given how they couldn't transition to socialist mode of production due to their peasant problem + Stalin's delusions of "Socialism in one state".
If there's an active maintenance in post-revolutionary period of capitalist mode of production, then the country is capitalist even if the production is nationalized or owned by workers.
Markets themselves are not necessarily Capitalism.
Historically markets predate Capitalism, so yes, but they're never socialist or communist given how socialist mode of production does away with commodity production. If commodity production is abolished, then commodity exchange (markets) can no longer exist. This does mean that market socialism is capitalist as commodity production remains, the law of value remains, all that's different when compared to Capitalism is that the state regulates it which doesn't magically make it socialist.
Anarchists would still have to deal with scale in terms of trade, production and centralization - after all, not every commune would be able to produce penicillin, insulin, chips, phones, steel, etc as a hobby. In other words, they would still have to replace capitalist system to a decent enough extent to be able to meet all their needs.
Capitalism is a global system, it is based on exchange value and things being produced and sold for a profit, not for use (which is known as commodity production), and if you want to trade internationally, you have to follow this capitalist mode of production. Communism, on the other hand, aims to abolish the production of commodities (money included) and instead produce goods for use. Notice how these two systems differ so much, international trade between actual communist and capitalist countries becomes impossible given how differently they value things.
Now consider how today's capitalist nations are so dependent on trade, and it's because trade allows nations to prosper, to grow, to have increased standards of living and gives the nations access to materials they otherwise couldn't have produced within their local borders. If a nation goes full isolationist, it loses access to all of that and the nation becomes crippled.
So there's three ways for communist countries to go about the global capitalist system:
- Go full isolationist, which would cripple a country substantially.
- Participate in the capitalist market, meaning the country would be forced to produce commodities and participate in capital exchange which would make them, in one definition or another, capitalist. This also heavily risks the country to fall into full capitalism with time (as seen historically).
- Support worker movements internationally en masse and hope they succeed with achieving their revolutions. If they succeed, only then can exchange value be safely abolished, goods be produced for use instead of profit, and international socialist/communist trade can actually happen with people having their needs met.
It's clear that international communist revolution is pretty much the only viable way forward, and the only opportunity to do so failed (with Spartacist uprising, Hungrarian Soviet Republic, etc being crushed, leaving USSR standing pretty much alone).
So to answer your question with all this nonsensical wall of text in mind, no. Actual communist/socialist mode of production has never existed (therefore whether communist ideology works hasn't been proven), as any experiments so far had essentially been capitalist.
Coal mining, I fucking love mining coal
Not an anarchist, don't agree with its theory but I'm glad to see posts like these actually encouraging people to read.
Never said Anarchists are against democracy as a whole, only that they're against liberal democracies and I'd argue even more so than other anti-capitalists.
After all, it is a form of rule, it directly supports a system that has private ownership/state monopolized violence/social hierarchies, the majority vote can still lead to oppression of the minority (like we see with US, UK, right-wing regimes across the world, erosion of workers rights), etc.
It is critical of liberal democracy, yes, but not all democracy like for instance, democracy in labor unions.
Not really feeling like writing a wall of text, but essentially, liberal democracies are just a form of a class rule of the bourgeoisie (the class of factory/land/business owners) given how much disproportionate power they have over the proletariat (the working class) through their media control, the need for campaign financing, the level of entry needed to even get into politics and connections needed, etc.
Notice how even with liberal democracy that we're told is the greatest thing since sliced bread or "rule by the people", the working class is weaker than ever in the west and the world is drifting towards fascism. It's not by accident, if there's any actual meaningful change to be had, one needs to act outside the democratic system, action which is inherently undemocratic.
I simplified it, but this isn't some radical looney tankie take - any Marxist or even some Anarchists might share the general sentiment.
I'm on Linux, using Bottles to run pirated games. It adds a little bit of sandboxing, compatdata is usually a weird environment for malware to effectively work in (unless the malware is written specifically for it), if the game is really sketchy then I'd just disable network access for bottles flatpak too just to make sure.
All in all, I do sometimes have a little bit of paranoia and look through processes to see if there's anything running and periodically go through some folders to see if there's anything weird or unusual there, I'd still consider my machine to be safe.
As for the last question, PDF's are an attack vector and should be used with caution. As for other file types, it depends on the software you use to run them - if it's something pretty barebones that just plays it then it's usually fine, but if its something more complex and reads some custom data embeded into those files, then it can be a vulnerability. Not a security expert though, but it's the gist I got from looking at some historical vulnerabilities.
We're definitely not getting out of Capitalism, especially when:
- The loudest anti-capitalists don't even know what capitalism is exactly (why read and study it when you can go for vibe based approach) or are outright pro-capitalist but instead pushing for a more "humane" version of it and sometimes fighting actual anti-capitalists.
- Most people are content with accepting the worldview they were born into (the liberal/Capitalist one) instead of actually attempting to examine reality for what it truly is, seek answers and do a double take on who they should be supporting, especially nowadays.
Interesting, verbatim searches work perfectly for me. Maybe it's some search engine that doesn't support them? I personally have bing/google/duckduckgo selected.
Searx is good enough if you set up plenty of engines - I do look up quite a lot of stuff and not once in the past 3 months did I go "yeah I need to use google for this".
Usually with Linux, once you start out you're gonna get a ton of issues and you'll have to troubleshoot them one by one. However, afterwards it should just be a smooth sailing.
Also as a word of warning from my personal experience, official support isn't something you should be that concerned about. When it comes to software, when some corporation makes some official version for a specific distribution (like Ubuntu), it usually is made by some B-team and doesn't work that great. If the program is good, it should be available on most major distros rather than just "an official version for just one" if that makes sense.
Also good call - if one distro is causing a fuck ton of issues, just give another one a try. The main difference for users between distros is what kind of software setup they are going with, and some setups are just prone to issues on some hardware or wasn't tested properly. Still, I do hope Fedora treats you better.
It’s not that the entire system needs to change for this to work, it’s that this working changes the entire system.
Would it really? Capitalism is fundamentally a system of economic social relations, workers sell their labour power to the capitalism and so on - that's the fundamental of it and all the various institutions inside (e.g. the police, financial sector, etc) aren't essential/fundamental to the system. They can be changed/tweaked or abolished when the need arises, but the economic social relation between the two main classes cannot be.
Creating some self-managing community that focuses on eliminating the need for police doesn't fundamentally challenge the system (economic class relations), neither does it really challenge the police as an institution given how they'll still exist outside that community and, as you point out, is able to crush this community anytime if it ever becomes a legitimate threat.
Community self-management would quickly result in the redistribution (and hopeful removal) of the inequalities
The community would still operate under capitalist system which reproduces inequality - after all, the community does need money for things like food, rent, utility, essentials, etc. This requires participation in wage labour/markets which means there's still income inequality, inequality in time one has to participate in the community, some people possibly having extra leverage due to private property ownership or their income/education, therefore new hierarchies spawning as a result, etc.
A commune like that under a capitalist system would be good as a survival strategy where the least well off can be supported and be kept over the poverty line (therefore reducing the need for theft but not eliminating it), but it wouldn't remove economic or social inequality - it will just seep back in from the outside.
The entire system would need to change for this to work though - there ain't no way that in an unequal society such as ours where not everyone's needs are met (and crime essentially staying as high as it is today) community self-management would be sustainable.
Often crime is committed out of frustration (like violence born of inequality) or necessity (theft), so imagine being in a community in some larger city and having to deal with this every other day - I'd argue most people would just grow apathetic.
I mean you say that, but...
- Western world has been living in liberal democracies for 100+ years, yet labor unions are weaker than ever (both in numbers and power), especially when compared to the union zeitgeist 100 years ago.
- Worker rights are no longer a hot button issue people rally behind, nowadays it's pretty much all about immigration, LGBT rights, taxation to a certain extent and whatever else. It's legitimately difficult to find a representative in most countries who cares about expanding worker rights and giving more power to unions - best you can hope for is someone who won't suppress them.
- Relying solely on voting to get expanded workers/union rights leads to passivity from the workers (as in them stopping to do anything outside electorialism to fight for themselves), and there's no guarantee they won't get rolled back later anyway as history shows, with infamous examples being Thatcher and Reagan administrations.
I could go on and make this unreadable, but essentially electorialism isn't the way to go when it comes to workers rights or especially when it comes to abolishing capitalism entirely.
That being said, your comment isn't entirely without merit as there's not that many movements nowadays actually fighting out there for better working conditions outside electorial politics. There are some international efforts though, like International Communist Party or Class Struggle Action who have helped to organize, keep strikes alive or spread propaganda to help the workers in their fight - small scale action but action nonetheless.
That's never gonna happen, especially in Germany where the historically largest parties (both socdems and conservatives) can be essentially boiled down to "nothing ever happens". Hell, I even doubt that Die Linke would be able to do much if they were somehow magically the majority in the government.
If you want a better future, elect people who understand this properly and fight for workers rights.
Oh you sweet summer child...
To add to this, Capitalism directly benefits from "traditional family values" where everyone is straight, reproducing, no abortions, women stay at home raising children via their unpaid labor, etc. As grim as it sounds, children to the capitalist system are just future workers ready to be exploited, so any movement that even remotely threaten to make a dent in that (abortion rights, queer rights, women's liberation) get demonized and are vehemently fought against.
There's a reason why the current pro-natalist movement is getting quite strong nowadays, and if you look at who supports and promotes them, 99% of the time its business owners.
While I do like your writing style and think you're quite talented at it, that's just a bunch of ML revisionism/State capitalist (Dengist) apologetics that misrepresents Marx.
Not gonna thoroughly debunk it cause it's a wall of text, but ownership =/= mode of production. Marx never said that public ownership alone makes something socialist, what matters is how things are produced: Is it for exchange or use? Is labor still waged? Does surplus value still exist and get extracted? If yes - that's still capitalism therefore not Marxist.
You also claim that "Marx didn't think you could abolish private property by making it illegal" which is true cause else it would be idealism, but then you use this to spin it into "that's why we need to let firms develop then make them public" while in reality what Marx meant is that we should abolish capital relations, not co-exist with capital and preserve businesses until they're "ready".
You're also trying to spin the "by degrees" quote from the manifesto to act as if Marx argued for gradual market-led process of evolution from Capitalism to Socialism (or in other words, keeping Capitalism and Markets for decades after the revolution) and not a revolutionary process of abolition of Capital entirely.
That isn't Marxism, but maybe I'm just too ideologically pure and idealistic. Still, I think being more honest that it's not actually "classical Marxism" wouldn't hurt.