volodya_ilich

We need to actually appeal to people sometimes, actually talk about difficult subjects that affect people

One side wants to talk about housing, public pensions, public healthcare, public education, salaries, discrimination against women and minorities, and work/life balance.

The other side wants to talk about immigrants being bad and evil, and about how trans people in films are turning their children gay

The most voted party in the wide front coalition is LFI, earning more votes than Macron's party. Macron is refusing so far to name a president from the LFI, for the first time in the history of the 5th republic of France.

"Half of the western world being transphobic and swallowing lies about someone's gender is totally exclusively Putin's fault! Every problem with society is due to Russian bots!"

When socialists say they want to collectivize private property, they use a meaning of private property which equates to "means of production", or "capital". The goal is that there won't be owners of capital earning money simply by employing other people to work the capital and stealing a part of what they produce (surplus value).

In your example, summer cottages and family farms aren't means of production, so there's no reason to redistribute them. Pensions and retirement were guaranteed to everyone even in the USSR, where women retired at 55 and men at 60, so I can guarantee socialists want you to have a pension. Small businesses that employ other employees would have to be collectivized eventually, which could mean that the owner simply becomes one normal worker in the business, working alongside the previous employees instead of above them. Regarding the apartment, you don't need to rent out an apartment if the rent of your apartment costs 3-5% of your income (as was the case in the Soviet Union). Land ownership and inheritance are a bit grey. Obviously nobody wants to collectivize your nana's wedding dress, or your dad's funko pop collection. Obviously we would want to collectivize if you inherit a big factory, or 20 flats that your mom rented out. For things in the middle, it becomes a bit more grey, so there's no easy answer. I bet everyone would agree that uprooting people isn't generally a good thing.

And even then UBI is just another form of maintaining this "unemployed reserve army". Guaranteed jobs for every citizen capable and desiring to work, on exchange for a living wage, would automatically eliminate the people's need to stay at shitty jobs or accepting shitty wages, since they can't be easily replaced; it would increase production of goods and services much more than UBI, therefore tackling possible inflationary tendencies... It's really a much better patch to capitalism than UBI

I don't think oppression of the global south is a valid criticism of Norway

You not thinking so doesn't make it less true. Norway engages in unequal exchange every bit as much as the USA.

used by their representatives in the Party

Nah, mate. Not the USSR nor Cuba were like this. You simply couldn't find wealth disparities in those countries as you can in modern capitalist ones, not even remotely close.

All good mate, thanks the discussion!

I personally don't know what collective you've been engaged with, but I can tell you in my experience Marxists take racism and feminism very seriously, and that while revolution is a necessary step for the emancipation of the oppressed, it's by no means the only one since we have a lot of biases and behaviours ingrained in our cultures and societies.

A general premise of Marxism isn't necessarily a bloody revolution, it's just that the owners of the means of production normally won't just give those away to the workers without resorting to violence. In the USSR, there was a civil war started by the tsarist supporters. In Cuba, there was a war first against the Spanish, then against the American and Batista. In my home country, Spain, progressive policy during the democratic Spanish Second Republic was trumped by a fascist coup that plunged the country into authoritarianism for 40 years. In Chile, reformist Salvador Allende was also toppled and murdered by a fascist coup (CIA-backed). Mosaddegh in Iran was also deposed by capitalists. I could go on and on listing examples but I think my point is clear.

I don't know of any revolution (by revolution, I mean a change in the class-structure of a system) which has succeeded without the former ruling class exerted violence to keep their power. It's not that revolutionary Marxists want violence, it's just that historically, there doesn't seem to be a possibility of emancipation for the working classes without having to respond to violence from the ruling class.

And again, historical examples show how, generally, once these revolutions triumph, they're not as oppressive and violent against individuals formerly in power as the term "extermination of the capitalist class" suggests. I already showed you with Kulaks how they weren't murdered en-masse, simply expropriated and at worse forcibly relocated. Another example would be the last emperor of China, who wasn't murdered, but instead was forced into prison for rehabilitation and reeducation for 10 years, came out of prison openly saying that he regretted his actions as emperor, and went on to become an influential person within the institutions of the new China.

Fair enough, I appreciate your consistency, and actually support your viewpoint

True but left rhetoric was rampant throughout the 2010s and it polarized the right into the facist shithole it is today

Again, no. The funding that pro-fascist media like Fox or Ben Shapiro or the Daily Wire get is what polarised the right, not a few SJWs on the internet and the #MeToo movement.

The far left never eliminated Ukrainians, it's the literal protofascist Putin that's invading Ukraine.

If you're referring to Holodomor, there's no evidence that there was an attempt to particularly affect Ukrainians, and hunger took place in other parts of the USSR. There are no other similar events leading up to it, or afterwards, to make me believe that the USSR wanted to exterminate Ukrainians, and as a matter of fact the second president of the USSR was Ukrainian. There was no war in Ukraine since WW2 during the USSR, until the dismantling of the USSR and the establishing of capitalist regimes in the region.

Saying that the USSR eliminated Jews is purely conspiracy and outright false, there's no historical example of that, and Jewish people were overrepresented compared to other ethnicities over the whole history of the USSR in government and high-education positions.

Similarly, poles were never eliminated. There was oppression in Poland during the Stalinist oppression as much as there was in the rest of the USSR, but there was no extermination of Polish people for being Polish.

Funny that being so concerned with Poles and Ukrainians, you don't mention the USSR ending the occupation of Ukraine by Polish nationalists in 1917-1918 during the Polish-Ukrainian war.