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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I’d say we’re as close to that as the Wright Brothers were to figuring out the Apollo moon landing

    So about 66 years then? I personally think we’re very far from creating anything on par with human intelligence, but that isn’t necessary for a lot of terrible things to come from AI tech. Honestly I would be more comfortable with a human-level or greater AI than something lesser still capable of agency.

    If an AI is making decisions with consequences I’d prefer that it could be reasoned with as a peer, or at the least be smart enough to consider its’ own long-term sustainability, which must in some way be linked with that of humanity’s.




  • They’re leaving out that philanthropy is a big part of his videos. Sometimes it’s game show style where the winner(s) get huge rewards and sometimes it’s direct charity like the “I built 100 houses” video. People watch them because they’re often feelgood stories.

    It can be a bit controversial as well because people who are more politically engaged often get frustrated by charity when they believe the problem the charity purports to solve is systemic. Whenever he posts philanthropy videos it triggers a huge shitstorm on Twitter of people expressing that frustration and a bunch of people coming to his defense.


  • Schmoo@slrpnk.nettoMemes@lemmy.mlPolitical mindset evolution
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    4 months ago

    The Bolsheviks and the Communist Party were not the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia predated the USSR, and was a cultural term for engineers, mental leaders, and other “educated” classes. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was made up of various members, not exclusively Intelligentsia. In fact, the close-link to the bourgeoisie that pre-Revolution Intelligentsia had caused distrust towards the Intelligentsia.

    I’ll concede on this point, the communist party and intelligentsia aren’t necessarily equivalent, though the intelligentsia did make up the largest organized bloc within the party.

    This does not make the CPSU a class, nor does iy mean it was not democratic. The US functions in much the same way, outside of fringe areas where third parties win.

    Party membership in the US is open to all US citizens with some exceptions. Some states even have open primaries allowing non-party members to vote. This system is flawed and is in some ways a facade since the parties are not legally required to hold primaries, but this particular element of the US political system is more democratic than the Soviet system.

    CPSU members make up a privileged class because they occupy a higher position in a state sanctioned social hierarchy. It represents a controlled social stratification, enacted ostensibly for the common good. I see this as a sort of paternalistic distrust of the proletariat as a whole by a subset of it.

    Yes, Marxism has never stated that people cannot have it better or worse. Anarchists seek full-horizontalism, while Marxists seek Central Planning.

    I’ll note here that Anarchism doesn’t necessarily state that people cannot have it better or worse either. Anarchism primarily positions itself as opposition to the centralization of power which can lead to social stratification, but differences in standard of living are allowable insofar as it is not a condition imposed upon one by another.

    Even at the peak of disparity in the USSR, the top wages were far, far closer than under the Tsars or under the current Russian Federation, and the Workers enjoyed higher democratic participation with more generous social safety nets, like totally free healthcare and education.

    The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely progressive for its time, and would even be considered progressive today, despite the issues they faced internally and externally.

    I am in full agreement here, though I would argue that this was achieved at a cost to personal freedoms (i.e. censorship and political persecution). Innocents were harmed in order to preserve the centralization of power in the hands of the communist party. I won’t go so far as to say the evils outweighed the good that was done, only that they were not necessary and ultimately led to contradiction and collapse.


  • Schmoo@slrpnk.nettoMemes@lemmy.mlPolitical mindset evolution
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    4 months ago

    The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they’re right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the “intelligentsia.” Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.

    At its’ highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.


  • To be clear, the Bolsheviks were definitely Communists and Socialists, and implemented a more democratic and Worker-focused society than Tsarist Russia

    I agree that the USSR was more democratic and worker-focused than Tsarist Russia, but saying they were definitely Communists and Socialists depends on your definition of those words. An originalist Marxist for example would vehemently disagree that they were communist because communism was envisioned as this pure ideal stateless society, the “end goal” to work towards. Statelessness is definitely no longer a requirement of communism for modern Marxists, but it used to be.

    US and Western Powers deliberately attempted to shove a wedge in the Leftist movement by trying to paint the USSR as “not true Communism.”

    While this is definitely the case, people at the time had legitimate critiques of the USSR that may have led them to see it as “not true Communism,” see above. Wedges are driven into splits that already exist.

    Because everyone seems to have their own unique definition of what Communism/Socialism is, saying that something is/isn’t socialist/communist should be taken more as an expression of that person’s values than a semantic argument. If someone says they are socialist and [insert government here] is not, what they are really saying is that there are aspects of [insert government here] that they disagree with to the point that it’s a dealbreaker for them.


  • What do the words socialist and communist actually mean to you?

    I think with the way you’re using the word socialist, what you actually mean is social democrat, which is a newer term people use to mean capitalism but with heavy regulation and strong welfare / social safety nets.

    When you ask people who are actually anti-capitalists and consider themselves some flavor of socialist or communist to distinguish between the two you will get as many different answers as people you’ve asked. In Marxist theory socialism is generally understood as a transitional state towards communism. Historical events led to communism being used mostly to refer to the authoritarian ideology championed by the Bolsheviks, so people started using socialism to differentiate themselves from that definition.

    The only thing you’ll get most leftists to agree on is that both socialist and communist mean anti-capitalist, and those who disagree are confused liberals.



  • The hate largely comes from the side of anarchists who refuse to work with MLs and spend their time trying to discredit the accomplishments of existing socialist states.

    You have been discrediting the accomplishments of anarchists while I have been acknowledging the accomplishments of marxists.

    While the left bickers, the right is rapidly growing in power in vast majority of western countries.

    I agree, but remember this conversation was started because you were insinuating that anarchists never accomplished anything.


  • This is getting repetitive and we’re just talking past each other so let’s just agree to disagree about the USSR. I just want to make the point - which I hope we can agree on - that the revolution wouldn’t have been successful without political pluralism within the ranks, and no future revolution will either. Dismissing the contributions of anarchists will only harm your cause.


  • What I’m pointing out is that all ideologies compete with others. That’s the reality of the world. If Anarchists are not able to defend the way they want to organize society then their ideology ends up being trampled by others. That’s the world we live in. Calling this victim blaming doesn’t change the material reality of the world.

    The Bolsheviks’ had the ill-gotten might to push their agenda, but might does not make right. The Bolsheviks lied to and used the anarchists to achieve what they did, but anarchists have learned from their past mistakes and will prove you wrong.

    USSR existed under siege from global capitalism throughout its whole existence, and that was the reason it was organized the way it was.

    Capitalist aggression did not make necessary the regressive views on social issues and science the USSR had (which resulted in famine), nor the widespread corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency of state officials. You cannot simply excuse all flaws of the USSR by blaming global capitalism.


  • You’re using the same argument capitalists use to dismiss socialism, namely that socialism clearly doesn’t work because all socialist projects ended in collapse or continue in a state of poverty. This is, in essence, victim-blaming. Just as socialism struggles under the oppression of capitalist hegemony, anarchism struggles under the oppression of both capitalists and statists.

    What Bolsheviks achieved was the betrayal of all who fought for the liberation of the proletariat. If power had gone to the Soviets as the Bolsheviks promised then the USSR would not have collapsed under the weight of its’ contradictions. You speak as if the USSR only repressed the forces of reaction, but it also repressed the very same workers it claimed to support when they tried to claim the worker control of the means of production they were promised.


  • Nah, I’m going by the actual tangible achievements, or lack of thereof as the case may be, of anarchists based on the teachings of their thinkers.

    The Bolsheviks discount anarchist achievements by claiming them as their own. Anarchists fought alongside the Bolsheviks because they promised to realize the anarchists’ goal of all power to the Soviets. When it became clear the Bolsheviks lied in order to selfishly establish themselves as the intelligentsia, a privileged class, the anarchists resisted and were violently repressed by their former brothers and sisters in arms.

    I would like to hear about your experiences growing up in the USSR as I know there were many positive aspects, but by betraying the values for which many of the revolutionaries fought they created a society with an unstable foundation, as evidenced by its’ eventual collapse. Anarchists did not reject real world solutions, they defended them with their lives and lost. The Bolsheviks have themselves to blame for the collapse.


  • You claim to know with great detail and certainty what anarchists believe without citing any anarchist thinkers. All you are doing is constructing a strawman of anarchists based on vibes hoping that none will be here to refute it. Anarchy is more than the absence of the state, and none who are knowledgeable posit that anarchy will materialize without effort. Anarchists are idealists not out of naivete, but necessity. It has been born out of history that when means and ends are not unified, the means become the ends. This was true of the Russian revolution when “all power to the Soviets” became hollow words and “war communism” became the new oppressor of the people.