AlbigensianGhoul

the linked tweet is some scary rhetoric too.

Ukraine will definitely be able to protect Europe from any Russian forces, and it doesn't matter who commands them. We will protect. The security of Europe's eastern flank depends only on our defense.

Ukrainian soldiers, Ukrainian guns, Ukrainian tanks, Ukrainian missiles are all that protect Europe from such marches as we see today on Russian territory. And when we ask to give us the F-16 fighters or the ATACMS, we're enhancing our common defense. Real defense.

We went from "Europe will protect Ukraine" to "Ukraine will protect Europe" really quick didn't we? Are Ukrainians now aware that they're just dying to maintain an union they're not part of? Can't the all-mighty Europeans protect themselves anymore?

I'd just reduce the legal workday limit to 6 or possibly 4 hours but make paid overtime bureaucratically accessible to small companies that still require their workers at 8. I think a lot more people would have a time to get educated about their own material conditions if they actually had the time to read about it. Not foolproof as that is susceptible to gig economy fucking it up but that's a start I guess.

Another idea would be to just break up all the media conglomerates within the united states as all these branches of Paramount or WBD just talking to each other on full broadcast like they're different people is really harmful to how Unitedstadians see the world. Add in book publishers too as they've also been doing some nasty work of getting the rights to old historical books in foreign languages and horribly mistranslating it, and their whole business model is that of book landlords.

But honestly I think the USA as a state just needs to go at this point.

They should really just abstain from literally any product that has the tag "made in China" on it, and any other "made in " for that matter. That includes most non-perishable goods available cheaply in the USA like clothes, electronics and household appliances. Also guns. I hope they don't like cars given all the petroleum coming from scary Muslim countries.

But also the 8 hour workday limit historically was a demand and a victory of the First International ( section 3 ), so if they don't like those foreign communist ideas they should go back to 14 hour workdays.

Tech people tend to fall a lot for capitalist talk because they're the popular kids right now. People from Russia have also been barred from contributing in projects, so that is already a reality.

1. defend the usage of a Nazi slogan
2. refuse to elaborate
3. leave

You will be desperately missed, please don't go!

Honestly, thanks for this. Seeing people around the world prodding more and more Ukrainians to go die and kill in the meat-grinder because of some misguided sense of nationalism for country whose language they can't even type is truly a weird sight. And whenever some politician even advocates for pragmatic peace talk necessities like temporary ceasefires, they're derided as pro-Russia. I think another solution you didn't mention is also to petition governments to pressure Ukraine into letting more Ukrainians to migrate and welcoming those who come, specially the poorest ones (as well as migrants from other countries). There is no sane reason that men aged 18 to 60 who do not want to participate in the war should be forced to remain there against their will, and if Germany can spare the tanks it can also spare housing, food and language courses.

the old users must be so annoyed about the new kids thinking they own the place, but as a new kid myself I am very glad they set up all the groundwork for us to ruin the fun.

But the site on the-federation.info looks like this, so I'd take it with whole bag of salt.

I also don’t like the idea of linking increased literacy to willingness to learn.

And never would I. But without literacy one is almost unable to educate themself independently. We're not that far removed from a time where huge most colonised countries had less than half of their population able to read their own language. Now being able to read is basically compulsory for most professions or just living in urban areas in general. I see no point in propping up "big Marxists" if their resources don't even have Spanish editions and people have to rely on those grifting translation editors with huge prefaces and postfaces that read like "but remember kids, communism is just a theory!".

Again my issue is not with the concept of authority, but with conflating modern "English-language popularity" with it. Specially considering how inaccessible the "popular ones" actually are to the average world proletarian when compared to how developed the native-language capitalist propaganda machines have become. It just seems off to me to take the argument that "we should be careful about trusting individual self-proclaimed Marxists and instead should work more to propagate and organise the material that already exists" and make it about "anti-authority that leads to anarchism".

Crowd-sourcing is not a new idea, but crowd-sourced encyclopaedias that fit on your pocket are. And there are many already-written books and articles (some written by Parenti and others) to get in there in an organised fashion, with other new resources such as hyperlinks, rather than hoping that yet another Ivy League economist (or worse, a Breadtuber) figures out new ways to say to Unitedstadians that Capitalism is a terrible system. That is work basically anyone here can do given enough free time. Capitalists have this obsession with making "the next big thing" when what we need is already there, and I don't think we should fall for that trap too.

No ill will here, just thought my argument was being misunderstood there.

I don't think my perspective on it is related to "anti-authorianism" but rather accessibility and the new media landscape. Parenti and Wolff are good writers and very useful too, but at the end of the day they write only in English and their target audience is mostly North American or European. They also have to work within the constraints of capitalist academia and publishing which makes it difficult for many worldwide to even read what they have to say (i.e. copyright laws). The old forms of media (books, newspapers, TV, radio) have a very high barrier for entry and are costly to propagate whereas on the Internet getting the points across is borderline free. That is not to say that there should be no authority, but rather that in a society that is now so dependent on crowd-sourced websites like Wikipedia, that authority can be less dependent on publishing deals and available for those who would otherwise not be able to read a book from an North American economist.

For instance, I had never heard of Parenti until 2 years ago due to him only writing in English, and that is similar for most of my third world colleagues, so I wouldn't say his authority extends that far into the world out there. This is why I jokingly said that Prolewiki is the next Marx, as most people now are on average actually literate enough to have reading binges on places like that and the MIA, if we put in the effort to develop and moderate it properly.

Yeah, but I don't think they're trying. This is a tactic frequently used on forums like 4chan where they just flood you with copy pasted nonsense to waste your time and discourage discussion. They know what they're doing and are acting like that intentionally, which is why I'm worried about this becoming normalized on lemmy.ml. Hopefully it dies out just like the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

"Cool argument, but this link debunks you. Checkmate."

Edit: On a serious note, I think those two are breaking the main instance rule on spam.

I think with mass literacy, bilingual normalcy and now the internet that we're reaching a point where "big public figures" are less desirable. There is even some problems with trying too hard to have some, as we all know a couple internet celebrities who might as well be astroturfed feds co-opting these roles. Maybe the prolewiki is the next big Marxist.