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.
I don't really think this is a counter-argument, but a counter-thesis. When we look historically, the Russian "Socialist Revolutionaries" once celebrated an "end to theory." They believed that getting into the weeds on which strategy was correct and which direction to work towards fundamentally weakened the party. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, maintained that theory was strictly necessary, Lenin's famous line going "without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice." Today, we can easily see that the SRs were wrong, and the Bolsheviks were correct, and successfully their methods of analysis and revolution were applied elsewhere, like China and Cuba.
I addressed this first, because your core crux, that "only voting matters," is something every Marxist would reject. You rejected theory while quietly supporting your own, perhaps unknowingly, and this ends up working against your entire thesis. Marxists maintain that Revolution is necessary, because we have watched the success of Revolution and the failure of Reform through the 20th and 21st centuries.
I (the OP) reply with from old lemmy.eco.br account because I don't see these comments from my new lemmygrad account.
You mention Brazil, so I have to tell of our recent history.
We elected leftist president João Goulart in the early 1960s. When he tried to enact reforms, a coalition of businessmen, Catholic theocrats and treasonous generals overthrew democracy in a USA-backed coup. The dictatorship lasted 21 years.
In 2002 we managed to elect president Lula da Silva, an intelligent working class moderate leftist. However, he bet on class conciliation (not class struggle). To be elected and then to govern, he formed a broad political alliance and made big concessions to the right. By 2016 there was a huge effort to overthrow his sucessor President Dilma (leftist woman economist, former guerrilla). Biased judges convicted Lula in later broadly discredited trials. Corporate media harshly campaigned against the Workers Party (PT). Corrupt hipocrites in Congress worked hard to worsen our economy, which was in a big fiscal crisis. For example, they established full pensions for women at the age of 52 and men at the age of 57, for those with documented jobs since the age of 18, in an old aging population. Politically motivated corruption trials dismantled some of our best companies. They broke the economy, blamed Dilma, then impeached her on made up charges. When casting his vote for impeachment, congressman Jair Bolsonaro praised Ulstra, the Army Colonel who had tortured Dilma decades earlier when she was captured by the dictatorship. Now in power, those same right-wing hipocrites pushed for men and women to only retire at the age of 65 -- 13 more years (for women) than the previous year when they were opposing Dilma. They settled for 62 for women, 65 for men, still far less "generous" than they were in Dilma's opposition.
Before the next election, Lula, the most popular candidate, was imprisioned and then the "winner" was obscurantist far-right Bolsonaro, a loud fan of the military dictatorship. Bolsonaro made a very bad administration, lost the following election, then planned and put in motion another military coup involving the assassination or "neutralization" of the elected President, Vice President and a Supreme Court justice. We just barely escaped it, and Lula still has to fight an overwhelmingly right wing media oligopoly, far-right disinformation in the digital platform oligopoly, a terrible right-wing Congress, and impeachment threats. While far better than Bolsonaro, in this scenario Lula accomplishes far less than the people need. He cannot even stop the assassination of indigenous and land reform activists, let alone enact the long dreamed properly progressive taxation and democratization of the media (including digital platforms) oligopolies.
In Brazilian history, the parasites in the economic elite concede nothing without a fight.
I'll remove my original commnet. However, I still believe that the US is much closer to the next election than it is to a revolution, unless you count a right wing coup as a 'revolution.
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.
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.
So we agree. The New Deal changed people's lives without needing an actual revolution.
Thanks for helping me prove my point.
I have been having this same argument with people since I was in high school. I've seen plenty of elections come and go, and not one revoultion in over 20 years.
I'll stick with the thing I can see, and leave it to you to dream your dreams.
Good-bye.
It needed revolutionary pressure from within, and an external revolution to serve as example. Without each, there have been no real mass concessions. You have seen no revolutions, but also no concessions, and when faced with the reasoning you say it's better to not understand. That does make sense if you've been making this same false argument for 2 decades though, if you never attempt to understand anything why would you ever learn?
If you're going to try and put words in my mouth, please serve them with guacamole and chips.
Good-bye
You specifically railed against theory, explaning and understanding, what else could you have meant?
If you're going to twist my words, put them in a friendly pretzel shape.
Twist them yourself. What do you think theory even is? Theory is an attempt to better understand our present conditions and figure out the correct course of action with that in mind, and must be married to practice. It's like the scientific method. By rejecting theory, you reject analysis of conditions and strategic actions, which is why you either don't know what theory is, or are railing against understanding and strategy. Simple.
So, you're saying I'm right? That we should go out and find the actual best candidates in the next elections and work for them.
Thanks for proving me right. Again.
The best candidate last time was Claudia De La Crúz, but as we all know she lost and Trump won. Electoralism can't be allowed to actually change anything, the mover and shaker is working class organization. Without an organized working class, elections can't change anything, and theory helps us understand why that is and how to best go about that.
The reason theory is important is because it highlights that nothing can change without working class organization, and therefore putting electoralism in the primary you won't succeed at all, as has been proven over the centuries. Revolution on the other hand does work, and continues to do so.
The best candidate was Bernie, but the Socialists failed to outorganize the DNC.
It's hilarious that the same people who couldn't get Bernie past the DNC think they can win a revolution.
Bernie wasn't running, and Bernie is a Social Democrat, not a Socialist. If you had read theory, you can understand why electoralism isn't a valid path, but revolution is, and that largely stems from the fact that the Electoral system only allows those that uphold the system to participate to any real degree.
Claudia De La Crúz, got even fewer votes then Bernie, even when he wasn't running.
Please, keep telling me about your powerful revolution.
Indeed, the 2 party system forces people to make concessions beyond what they actually support. If you read theory, you would understand that candidates who garner votes are not the same as the ones with mass public support.
Funny how your theory keeps telling you how powerful you are when you can't get 0.01% of the voters to support you.
But yes, I'm sure all the people who didn't vote for Bernie or de la Cruz will rush into the streets any day now...
Any day now...
History actually tracks with what you are sarcastically suggesting is impossible.
Keep telling yourself that.
Keep your nose out of history books and in the sand.
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.