I was a far-right lunatic until about 2009, when I started turning left. I have read many (center-)leftist articles from Jacobin, Common Dreams, The Guardian, and, from Brazil, Carta Capital and IHU (Catholic liberation theology).
Lemmy (despite my suboptimal instance) and communist friends got me interested in actual Marxism, but I have not yet really studied it. So please recommend:
- The best Marxist Lemmy instance for my background.
- Marxist books or videos in approximate reading/watching order. For the next many months (I suspect six months) I will have very little time, though.
Bonus:
- reasonable tolerance of Catholic faith and individual morality
- contextualized on Brazil, Cuba, broader Latin America or China
Background: Brazilian Catholic male autistic ADHD IT analyst with an electronic engineering degree and MsC in computer science. I have a son with my wife. I highly value privacy and software freedom. I read English well, but Spanish quite poorly. Native Portuguese speaker.
EDIT: I got a lemmygrad account. I am still processing the other recommendations.
Elections in Brazil and America will never bring about Socialism, though. Fuethermore, Lenin was not in Russia, correct, but the Bolsheviks had been working towards building up the Soviet System via Dual Power that led to successful revolution, and Lenin had played a major part in that. Moreover, it was the propagandizing and organizing of the Working Class that led to an actual revolution, which theory played an instrumental part in.
The New Deal was brought about by elections, as were the systems in places like Sweden.
The New Deal was brought about during a time of mass poverty in the context of the rising Soviet Union in order to prevent a similar revolution, the fall of the latter has resulted in a thorough destruction of the former. Same with Sweden, where disparity is rising and safety nets are crumbling. Further, Sweden depends on Imperialism to fund itself.
It also was a response to mass protests and strikes that militant labor movement was able to organize.
Yep! I don’t think I said that outright, but the revolutionary pressure was there internally as well.
Neither of you points disproves the fact that the system improved due to democratic change without a revolution.
Like I said, the election will probably come before the revolution.
The system temporarily improved because there was a risk of revolution internally and a successful revolution externally. Without both, concessions don’t come. Moreover, justifying Imperialism, ie vicious exploitation of the Global South, is monstrous.
Again, the election is going to come before the revolution.
Again, I keep talking about what is practical and do-able and you keep going on with theory.
Again, I point out that you can work for the election and still desire a complete overthrow of the system.
I was educated by old school Communists who fought in Spain and fought the Red Scare at home. One of the stories they always told was that in 1968 they told people to vote for Humphrey over Nixon.
An election without internal revolutionary pressure or a recent example of a successful revolution won’t change anything, though. Theory must guide practice. By focusing on elections that cannot and will not change anything, and denouncing theory, you encourage people to stick their heads in the sand and watch as others change the world without them.
Read some of the stories of the people who lived through the New Deal era and tell them that ‘nothing changed.’
Like I already said, the New Deal was only possible because there was revolutionary pressure within, and a recent successful revolution outside to learn from. Where are these in the next US election? If you can’t point to them, then you don’t have a point at all.
Welfare state / new deal policies will always be precarious, because they leave things as they are: with capitalists in control of the economy and thus the political system.
Not only that, but many of these global north welfare states, are funded via imperialism (usually with a tax on imports of goods produced by super-exploited workers in the global south), which means these social services are just being carried on the backs of the global poor. Just look at where H&M has most of their production facilities for example. Poorer capitalist countries (which are the vast majority of countries), aren’t able to fund much if any social services in that same way.
Some links:
Nothing there refutes the fact that, in the US, we’re going to have an election before we have a revolution.
Also, if there is a revolution in the US, companies like Blackwater [or whatever name they have this week] are much better prepared to take over than the Socialists. It would be like when the Shah fell in Iran and the religious zealots took over.