Long walk through the park is quite nice - no cars, no pollution, just lots of birds chirping and strangers passing by

In a sense, yeah. BG3 can be much slower, and you do still have to rely on a party, though I only played DOS1.

BG3 is pretty good for that to be honest - good character customization, there’s a learning curve to be sure so its not a power fantasy until you get past that.

Roblox cultural victory

Showering only every 2 weeks during summer back when I was living in a peasantoid lodge where getting water and a bath/shower ready is a major pain in the ass.

Almost as if commodity production-based economies aren’t there to provide for the people but to make profits and waste resources. It’s a shocker

Been in the same exact position :(

Hope you get to make up for the lost time

At least his critique is clear and coherent.

If validity of theory was based on what its writers had done, then Marx would be worthless and Urban Guerilla doctrine would be invaluable.

Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.

Yes, trade isn’t exclusive to capitalism, I never claimed otherwise. However, there is a distinction between commodity exchange for exchange-value (capitalist trade) and international distribution of goods to satisfy needs (socialist distribution), whether through planned allocation or transitional forms like labor vouchers.

Wage labor is specific to capitalism, it’s a sale of labor-power as a commodity, exchanged for a wage, with surplus value being appropriated by a class/managerial apparatus. This is THE fundamental relation of capitalism, and you’d be better off reading theory than blindly quoting it.

Though I will give a concession - socialism is such a meaningless term that it means like 4 different things depending on who says it: liberals would say it’s social democracy, ML’s say its state capitalism, Marxists and Leninists say it’s socialist mode of production (post-transition period) and Posadists would say it’s when nuclear annihilation. A word doesn’t make a thing so if you consider state capitalism to be socialist - fair, all power to you. However - Marxists, Leninists, Liberals would all collectively disagree. You did drop a Lenin quote to strengthen your argument so let me do the same:

• Lenin, The Tax in Kind

No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.

In the same text he also calls NEP USSR as state capitalist due to the concessions he had to make for the transition, which is explicitly made distinct from Socialism.

And I’m adamant that it’s a mischaracterization. Identifying the dominant mode of production is not a “one drop rule”, it’s literally foundational Marxist analysis - modes are defined by prevailing relations of production, not how it’s managed or ideological labels put onto them.

You’ve done a really good job misrepresenting my argument, keep it up.

That is another western chauvinist talking point.

Yeah, any critique of 3rd world communist countries is western chauvinism, therefore we should avoid looking at those countries through objective materialist perspective and uncritically support them just because they’re third-worldist - that’s something an imperialist crakkka like me should know.

That any development of industry (the primary task of countries who’ve just freed themselves from colonial rule), is a “betrayal” of socialism, because it didn’t go according to whatever the given critic laid out as sufficiently socialist enough, and that only the western critics of socialist countries have the correct plan.

I’d like you to point out where I said that industrialization is bad. The argument is literally about how the development was achieved and I concluded that it was through (state) capitalism and capitalist mode of production rather than socialism, even saying how it’s good that they managed to build up wealth. I explicitly didn’t moralize this either, this is literally how these countries materially functioned.

My critique also comes strictly from Marxism which is essentially the basis for communism regardless of culture, but sure.

China specifically can’t be called state capitalist in the slightest, considering that the CPC stands above the political system

You’re confusing political power with class relations, the key isn’t who holds political power but what social relations of production are. If a state (CPC controlled or otherwise) oversees an economy where wage labor, capital accumulation, commodity exchange persists, then it’s still state capitalism.

What no theory does to you.

Yeah, if you’re operating within Stalinist ML bubble. Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s inherently “true”, and it can be healthy to read other communist sides/perspectives. Some recommendations would be Marx’s writings, Lenin, Bordiga if you want a lesser known but still respected Leninist who’s critical of ML’s/Stalinism.

No one claims magic here, and it’s true - a transitional DOTP period must happen, but it’s not a license to preserve the capitalist relations indefinitely. The fundamental relations of production that I’ve mentioned must be consciously dismantled over time as a precondition for socialism, that’s what the proletarian dictatorship is literally for. If not, then it’s only a matter of time until the state reverts to bourgeois control disguised as “socialist”.

Nationalizing capital while leaving value production intact leaves capitalism functionally preserved, read Critique of the Gotha Programme by Marx where he makes this explicit - converting private to state property without abolishing wage labor/value mediation and calling it Socialism is literally Lassallean nonsense.

Capitalist production is not magically nullified by the presence of a party member or state shareholding either: workers still sell their labor-power, surplus value is still extracted, production is for market sale or in other words, capitalist mode of production prevails at full force. Legal oversight is a managerial form, not an abolition of class relations.

Meanwhile the success in question: The 3rd world communist countries have managed to more or less industrialize and build up wealth, but under (state) capitalist system with all the bells of whistles which are markets, commodity production, wage labor, etc. In other words, they used capitalism to build up wealth.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually think they had some absolutely amazing policies for the workers like free housing and social benefits, and good on them for building themselves up. However, this has nothing to do with socialism (socialist mode of production in this case) or communism as it was achieved with, and is therefore a win for capitalism - the same system that drove colonialism and the system that had already built up wealth for ‘non-socialist’ feudal/agrarian countries in the 19-20th century.

EDIT: Damn, judging from the amount of upvotes, it genuinely feels like walking into a bar and everyone drawing a gun and pointing at you. This is probably the most antagonistic I’ve been towards ML (or MLM/Dengist/Maoist) ideology and it’s kinda disappointing how there’s no actual non-ML Marxists to be seen here.

I love how the conversation went from “all billionaires are bad eat the rich!!” to “hey this good billionaire is talking smack about a bad billionaire, time to defend them from criticism because they did good thing”

Doing nothing is praxis

If you’re torrenting and got some extra hard drive space, a good practice is to copy paste the game into another location and play for there. That way, you can modify or have the game update all you want without stopping seeding (as you need all original, unmodified files to seed), and you also have a backup in case something goes really wrong.

If an open world is just there for collectibles/unlocks or just feels otherwise unnecessary to the primary selling feature of the game (like story), then yeah its a hard pass.

Otherwise, if the open world is actually a core part of the game like in most MMO’s such as Old School Runescape, then it can be quite enjoyable.

In a number-go-up kind of sense, yeah - it’s inherently gamification of social media and it is fun for some of our brains. However, I also think that karma or any other kind of “engagement accumulation” turns social media from a place of discussion into a competition for attention, where you’re more incentivized to post solely for upvotes. Only a small minority takes posting seriously like this I admit it, but it does make the experience worse for everyone.

That’s not to say the mindset doesn’t exist without karma, only that it gets amplified.

Honestly, this applies to EU too. There are still communists out there in real world (mostly found in university groups, labor unions or just some very niche book clubs), but way fewer than when compared to 20th century thanks to the efforts of red scare, the hellscape of “socialist” regimes, etc. There’s also the fact that if you want to be a communist, you need to go way out of your way to seek the theory and groups and actually study rather than having the ideology imposed onto you (but exceptions apply, like how Marxism-Leninism and Maoism can definitely be cultish).

Also, “liberal framework” in my comment was referring to viewing politics as choosing between good or bad, treating the system as being a fair, neutral arbiter, and it’s how majority view electorialism since that’s what is imposed onto us. Doesn’t really have to do anything with progressives being referred to as liberals in the US, but just taking liberal democracy at its face value.

no way, bernie is actually based??

(Though to be honest, I don’t get Bernie hate that much - sure, he’s a bourgeoisie liberal and the perception around him being some revolutionary socialist is just outright false, but he lowkey might be the only ‘sane’ liberal out there in the US)