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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 11th, 2023

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  • I think it’s better to think of it like this:

    How do you make your money? Do you need to make a wage? Or can you let your property (land, buildings, stocks, etc.) be your income?

    The real amount doesn’t matter, it’s whether you have to work to live or not.

    If you have to work, you are the working class. If you don’t, you are the owner/capitalist class. But your analysis is still somewhat correct: millionaires and small business owners are closer to the working class than billionaires, it does still matter how they make it though.





  • The criticisms are also that companies use slavery to acquire the materials to make EVs. And they don’t work well in the cold (see current cold snap in Canada), the lifetime of the batteries aren’t great, and we still need to destroy huge swaths of land to create cars, park/store cars, and drive cars.

    EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).


  • To add to this, to be a Marxist is to be non-utopian. And many arguments against Socialism/communism are arguing against utopianism. To be Marxist is to be a Scientific Socialist. Or in other words: you believe that society, the economy, etc, should be for the benefit of as many as possible, including through the democratic control by those who the economy serves. As well, this implies a need to criticize past decisions (socialist or otherwise), including your own decisions, and develop a better working view of the world.

    So anyone who blindly says the USSR or China is amazing, without consideration for the problems associated with the way decisions were made, the decisions that were made, or anything like that, aren’t being good socialists.

    I might call them the reactionary left.

    And to bring up critical consumption of media: there is a lot of misrepresented information about every non-capitalist state, and every non-american ally, for clear geopolitical purposes. While awful things certainly did happen in the USSR (for example), amazing things happened as well. When comparing the “bad” and “good” with the western (imperial core) countries, a more honest assessment can be made. Ultimately helping us all envision how a better world might look.

    And that’s dangerous for established power structures.




  • And what are you going to do about it? Be upset? That sounds like a waste of your time, emotions, and intelligence.

    Like I said in another response, I’m sure what happened is mostly true, but the framing is for political purposes. It’s important to be critical of the purpose of an article (to inform? Or to influence?) so you can focus your energy on the politics that you have influence over.


  • I remember the article. And I’m not saying that didn’t happen, in fact I’m sure the Russian Oligarchs are siphoning tons from the Russian people.

    But the fact remains, the article you shared is American propaganda being used to drum up support for more sanctions, or war, or some other purpose, which will just result in American Oligarchs sending Americans and/or their money to places they should never be. There is truth to the article, but the framing is for political purposes.

    You want to support oppressed people? Great! You want to denounce a tyrant? Great! You see folks across the Atlantic rising up in revolution against oligarchs? Also great!

    But being critical of how the media is presented can go a long way towards supporting the right causes, being upset about things that are worth being upset about, and making sure you don’t waste your energy pushing the agenda of some government which should be minding its own business.

    And the working people always suffer, and will always suffer, as long as our representatives don’t represent us.


  • Good point. North east US.

    And you are right they didn’t mention a storm, but that’s not my point. The article title clearly exacerbates the problem, and points the blame in a way that suggests the Russians are either too stupid or too poor to fix the problem. Why should any of us care about such a small thing for one? And two, what is their intention? It’s well known that NYtimes toes the state line when it comes to propaganda against American “enemies” .

    Really the only thing useful from the article is:

    “20,000 without heat in Russia due to infrastructure failure. Crews working to fix it.”

    But then why would anyone care about that?