If one lacks compassion, then of course they won’t understand how someone can choose to support their community even without the government making them do it.

Telling on yourself

Yeah, it’s so easy to solve poverty when you just kill all the poor people, take their grain, and distribute it to everyone who passes your purity test as a True Believer (which is everyone you didn’t kill)

That is a good summary.

I don’t block them. I just keep pressing them for an explanation of their personal philosophy. Not regurgitated, preconstructed points, actual personal philosophy. It usually goes “accusation of fascism/zionist”, “bad faith/strawman/red herring/I don’t have to explain it to you”, “you’re a nihilistic anarchist”, non-sequitur, list of actions they’ve taken irl but can’t/won’t break anonymity to prove (anybody can claim they’ve done anything in an anonymous forum), and finally inform me they’re blocking me. I mean, that’s great, block me online. I still exist in the real world and you’re going to have to face me someday. Unless of course you empower your own authoritarian regime that will keep my constant demands for your individual opinion and “nihilistic anarchist” viewpoints blocked from society. Which is what I think they want, zero challenge from any source or counter philosophy.

I see this refrain a ton but have not had the same experience and I fairly regularly get into arguments with them. I’m perma banned from some communities on those instances cause of the PTBs they are. The worst I received was my first ever “kys” message from one member’s alt(but them and their main were handled in pretty short order). But that was one message of harassment, out of the probably hundred or so people I’ve pissed off so far.

To be very clear, I don’t go into their communities looking for fights. But I have 2 big principles I’m not willing to waiver even a tiny bit on. Those being Hasan absolutely shocked his dog, and Harris would in fact have been better than trump.

But they exclusively criticise said countries, no praise for their achievements.

No, that’s entirely untrue. They (Die Linke in Germany FYI) have frequently praised China’s economic system and social progress, while still criticizing its authoritarianism and aggressive foreign policy.

As if the USSR wasn’t imperialist.

As if the PRC isn’t imperialist.

The old: if you’re not with me you Must be pro USA/Capitalism.

Is that all you got?

Also the millions killed I referred to were the direct orders from stalin to kill millions of their own people (holodomor included).

But that’s just propaganda from “the west” right?

Lol ok genocide lover, if it’s the URSS doing it, it’s okay.

Blocked.

So … fascists who idolize rapists

Do anybody care about anarchist/liberal opinion about MLs? ML ideology defeated nazis and has changed landscape of the planet, your ideology is cringe and non existent, keep seething. ML is a science and it will always exist

“With every mistake, we must surely be learning” -George Harrison

“Knowing enough to call me out on my bullshit is actually a red flag” lol fuck off clown

I keep hearing equally unrealistic things that hinge on magical one-off situations. “What if he has a stroke?” or “The Dems will win and it will all change.” It won’t. They’re not going to self-regulate any more than they did in the past.

In order to get close to freedom we’d at bare minimum have to go back to before Reagan.

Still not seeing any meaningful difference posted besides your tautological reasoning. All government is inherently authoritarian. That is how government inherently works and is defined. It can’t not be.

Saying some governments are magically different because they are isn’t anything logical. It’s repeating 1940s era propaganda made exclusively to make Americans feel like they weren’t so bad.

The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.

Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.

The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.

The Kim family does have outsized influence, but the DPRK is not a hereditary monarchy. For example, the position of President, held by Kim Il-Sung, was abolished and split into multiple positions upon his death. This is why he is remembered as the “Eternal President.” As such, both Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have held different positions. Both have held high positions, for example Kim Jong-Il had the title of General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, a position held by Kim Jong-Un presently. However, this is not the whole story.

The DPRK has a much more distributed level of power, and the Kim family is both widely supported due to its influence, and yet is not the undisputed top-dog, so to speak. What’s more, the Kim family is so venerated precisely because the legacy of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is lived memory, imagine if Lenin had survived and raised his children as successors. It would be no wonder that the soviets would have elected his children, but it would not be a monarchy either.

Finally, class. Class is not a level of material wealth, but a relation to production and distribution. The DPRK is overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, administration is not a distinct class in and of itself but a subset of broader classes, same with intellectuals. What determines class is based on that key aspect, the Kim family does not own capital but instead recieves wages from the state. Kim Jong-Un is largely used as a symbol, one that is democratically elected and directly trained by his father for the position.

This is why it’s important to actually study the real systems at play, rather than coast on pre-formed opinions drilled into us about the DPRK from western media. The Black Panther Party maintained good relations with the DPRK, visiting it and teaching Juche to Americans.

From Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:

The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.

How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.

To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability

As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.

The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:

The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.

I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.

Yeah, not good faith afterall. Learn to read, I guess.