Ask Lemmygrad

Hey, I want to precise that I'm not ML but I want to understand how it is nowadays. TBH I'm interested into politics but since I'm a bit young I don't have all the prerequiste to read all types theory ( I read only simple ones such as The Communist Manifesto), and I prefer to ask concerned people. So I'm wondering how Marxism-Leninism sees political ideas such as Dengism and Juche ?

(Sorry if there's some problems with how the question is asked, English isn't my native language)

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1144268

This discussion is meant to share ideas, and bring activity to this community

Mainstream media is often accused of being a government propaganda tool, and there are many things they would never show. I've thought about this after seeing the clip titled "You are a disgrace! Canada PM Trudeau savaged by German MEP at EU Parliament" on YouTube. Taking a quick look at YouTube, I see it's not covered by any of the popular mainstream propaganda outlets. There are probably many other clips like this that they would never show.

What are your favorite ones?

I'm looking at recreating some of the stuff in a paper which analyzed the news discourse around Xinjiang Cotton (H&M made a stink about it some time ago among others) to compare the difference between Western and Chinese news entities.

They use a tool called Wordsmith 8 which seems to be the de facto tool for this kind of thing if you don't want to use a traditional programming language like Python or R. I wanna use R but I kinda don't wanna do it alone and was wondering if anyone had experience or knew anything about linguistics. My background is in the life sciences with some programming so I am a bit out of my depth, more so my theoretical knowledge in ML is lacking and I wanted to analyze (after getting the technical stuff done) through a ML point of view and if someone had any way to help with that I'd really appreciate it.

Comment or message me directly and maybe we can figure someone out!

Apparently it is available on Hulu which I happen to have. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it, but it would be extremely convenient now. So I don’t think for one second that Hulu would host anything which is even remotely praising of Stalin, but I’m wondering if it is at least tolerable for a socialist viewer. Is there any historical accuracy at all? Does humor and entertainment outweigh the ideological position of capitalist Hollywood at all? Will I just get mad if I watch it, or can I enjoy it in the sense that no western media will ever do justice to the history of the USSR and its ok to laugh a little?

Hello! I would like to start off by apologizing because I know a thread like this gets posted every other day and it can border on (or actually be) concern-trolling, but I wanted to get a rough survey of opinions here on a topic.

Specifically, do you have any criticisms of China's contemporary culture? Its government? What are they?

I'm of the opinion that there are a lot of low-hanging fruit in this regard, like the patriarchal social order that [whatever one might say about its status in other nations] is certainly an ongoing problem for the matter of women's liberation. I also think it's both socially backwards and bad for national security to not have gay marriage, because we're all familiar with how the US loves infiltrating student movements.

I also rather regret how the CPC seems to be trending towards expanding the role of the profit motive rather than shrinking it. See these statements:

http://en.qstheory.cn/2023-05/04/c_882761.htm

http://en.qstheory.cn/2023-05/05/c_882998.htm

Do you agree with these points? Do you have your own criticisms? Am I totally off-base? Let me know!

(btw I'm also familiar with the idea of sharing criticism with comrades but finding public criticism to be counter-productive, but I don't want to spend all day listing caveats)

Been trying to learn about both color revolutions in recent history, as well as the Mongolian People's Republic, but both seem rather scarce on info. Was the protests that led to the collapse of the Mongolian People's Republic as big of a scam as the events that led to, for example, the USSR?

When I browse the all section, it's overwhelmingly and Facebook humor. I haven't really seen any niche hobby communities either. Do good communities all block lemmygrad or are they nonexistent?

I've heard that 'One Divides Into Two' as a foundational idea in Dialectical Materialism, and I feel like i understand dialectical materialism relatively well. But I'm confused as to why 'Two Combines into One' is not correct? Isn't a foundational idea of dialectical materialism how contradictions are resolved? Why isn't that the same as combining into one? And how is the resolution of contradiction a division into two?

Thanks!

It’s just annoying that there’s no real leftists to vote for in a country where we let money control elections (cf. Citizens United decision). I might have a “vote” but it doesn’t feel like I get any say when the election is between bourgeois parties.

Obviously not voting and voting for the actual fascists are bad options, but just voting for the liberals isn’t great either. What do y’all think?

Is this a misguided idea? That different ideologies, such as 'vanilla' Marxist-Leninism are more applicable to more industrialized countries, or perhaps countries closer to the imperial core, while ideologies such as MLM are more applicable to the most imperialized, agragrian/feudal countries of the world?

Was oppenheimer a communist? Or a right-wing leaning/rightist?

Excluding something like the suspiciously-timed Bucha Massacre, how would I deal with the regular atrocity propaganda? Maybe some comparison to other attacks by Ukraine would be fine.

Note- hopefully I don't sound like I'm acting in bad faith intentionally.

As the title said. I'm only curious as I am in a pickle on whether I should be wary of dogmatism and the like when talking about modern China.

I often come across videos I want to post here. I'd gotten used to reddit's video upload feature, which I think is relatively new to reddit. In the absence of this function on lemmy, does anyone have any good video upload sites they can recommend? Like an imgur for video?

Sorry if this has been asked recently but I searched and didn’t find any good results.

So as the title suggests: are there any marxist friendly mastodon servers? I don’t care if its as steeped in red as Lemmygrad but rather a place that I won’t get banned immediately for being a “tankie”.

I'm a member of a union that includes both office and field workers. It works well for all the big, common negotiations. We all want better wages, healthcare, retirement, hours, etc. But when it comes to working conditions, we have clear differences. The most recent example of "return to work" shines a light on this.

The field workers, understandably, don't give a shit about "return to work". Some even resent the office workers for having the ability to work from home. Meanwhile, some office workers will likely quit without the ability to work from home. My company has recently decided to completely remove the ability to work from home. In response, the union is completely split on how to react.

How should I approach the internal discussions? I'm hesitant to advocate for pushback because not everyone will benefit. On the other hand, no resistance at all feels like a concession of worker's rights.

TLDR: Work from home taken away. Should a union pushback?

In the US, I’ve heard that countries like the USSR and North Korea prevent citizens from leaving. Is this propaganda or do AES countries tend to prevent more people leaving than others?

I think since having become divorced from religion (at least with Christianity, I still find Dharmic spirituality interesting, but I still don't believe in the supernatural), the idea of death has become a bit more difficult for me.

I tell myself that I am okay with dying, since it's inevitable, and out of my control, but I think deep down, when I really think about the end of my existence, there is some deep terror there, perhaps related to the fear of the unknown. I can think of all kinds of fantastic quotes about death and finding peace with it, but when I think about what it will feel like to die, it instills great terror within me.

It's not even a fear of the pain or anything. Just a fear of what may or may not be next. I think part of it too is some sort of fear of missing out. A fear of not getting to see the great things that are to come in this world. A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn. So much to learn, and so little time. I think it also has to do with the thought of being forever separated from my loved ones. From my partner. From the person who I share my life with and have created my life with. Imagining being separated from her for an eternity, it brings me to tears.

Interestingly, this is a fear I've always had, ever since I was a child. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and asking my dad what happens after death, what death feels like, where my friends will go after death, and remember him becoming almost frustrated with my questioning, because these are obviously answers he doesn't have and are honestly fairly strange thoughts for a child so young to be pondering.

For some reason, death has always been something on my mind since I was a child, and a very emotional thought at that. I think my brief stint of being religious from early childhood into mid-teen years was an emotional 'band-aid' of sorts, but since I've come to the conclusion that I truly don't know what death will feel like or what will happen after death, these thoughts have again started racing through my head, giving me moderate emotional discomfort.

Have any of yourselves come to term with death? How have you managed to find peace with it besides "just don't think about it"?

Once again, this is an actual question; and I'm hoping to broaden my horizons and have a good conversation or two. I'm relatively new to commie subs, still trying to read political theory to figure out which one I like the most, so this might come off as uneducated. But why am I seeing so many positive posts about Stalin, followed by some comments that boil down to "Stalin was good, if you think he wasn't, that's just western propaganda" I'm thinking of the post that mentioned the 1921 Soviet Famine as a specific example. I know that Stalin didn't create the famine, it was a byproduct of almost a decade of war, unrest, and a ton of other factors. But Stalin did do some bad shit. Things like sending 14 million people to gulags to work as slave labor, and killing millions more in his purges. I would argue that he used communism to become an authoritarian. Similar to how Putin is ruling now, stuffing ballot boxes, starting wars, and pushing propaganda. (I realize that we get pushed propaganda, too in the form of faux news, MSNBC, and most media outlets. I don't wish to have a discussion that boils down to "we do it too, you just don't see it")

Seems like they had to sign an NDA. The thread came up when I was searching various tags, so I have no more context. Hopefully turns out to be a big (vegan) nothingburger.

I've tried to search for opinions on what's going on in Ukraine, but most posts are incredibly old. I'm not too educated on the matter myself (well, aside from keeping up most of the time with what cities are under whose control and all of that). I haven't really heard much about the geopolitical side of things, and it's hard to know what's disinfo or not; That's why I'd like to ask: What is your stance on the Ukraine war?

To be honest I have never dived into the drama and don't read either of them. I'm just interested why they are hated so much in our circles, yet loved by the more right leaning ones.