We are all bathed in propaganda and distraction and false consciousness, so many things that should be obvious in a better world would actually be shocking and rejected out of hand by most people if you just told them the conclusive facts. Liberals invested in the voting system already conflate it with democracy and repeat propaganda against “enemy” states when they deviate from this model, calling them undemocratic. Those same liberals are unhappy with their governments and do not feel represented (correct!) but simultaneously justify and entrench their own systems as great and buy the propaganda that the real problems are things like those who vote wrong or immigrants, etc.

Underneath this propaganda is the greater mover of white supremacy and the colonizer mindset. A false sense of superiority salves the wound.

Capitalism developed over hundreds of years and is inextricable from European colonialism. The shift to capitalist relations themselves being ubiquitous is just a couple hundred years old, but the conquest by the bourgeoisie goes back more like 500-700 years.

The idea of a “free market” is an invention of capitalism in the last few hundred years. Laissez-faire was coined by French businessmen in the late 1600s.

Most of the Roman low and medium skill artisans were slaves, actually.

But capitalism is best recognized by the proliferation of commodities, as it is made up of various wage labor capitalist enterprises producing large quantities of fungible goods for market. A chair is a chair is a chair and you can buy 50 varieties of basically the same thing at the furniture store. Under capitalism, all economic life is governed by this: you work a wage labor job and you buy everything else (commodities made by other wage laborers).

Rome did not have such a system. A vastly larger proportion of goods were made at home by oneself or by servants or by slaves. When goods were purchased they would have mostly been produced by slaves or petty bourgeois artisans or apprentices. Wage laborers still existed, but they were not typical.

An important part of Marxist analysis is to focus on the shift from quantitative to qualitative in social development. The high proportion of wage laborers is something that typefies capitalism, but wage laborers have existed for a long time. At some point there was a watershed moment - or watershed many decades - where the material forces that increased this proportion crossed various thresholds to create a new ruling class that became dominant and started throwing their weight around (capitalists). The capitalist class was in no way dominant in Rome.

Capitalism is not about individuals being greedy. Calling capitalists greedy is like calling fish greedy for needing water. The capitalist system requires constant profit maximization to prevent firms from crumbling, the capitalists are tasked with ensuring this, generally by (at first) maximizing exchange value of their product and minimizing costs (usually labor), then later using monopoly position to charge economic rent. In the heart of empire, financialization has meant trying to skip the first step via large financial investment up front, like with tech monopolies. The system itself forces exploitation, dispossession, colonialism, and ultimately crisis and war.

Historical empires conquered for reasons we often don’t really know specifically, as the accounts we have are written by victors with limited access and understanding. But ancient peoples were just as sophisticated as us and subject to material forces as us, so it was certainly not just being greedy. The economic base can force hands, for example. The Roman slave and debt system was unsustainable and required debt jubilees and war and invasions to be maintained, for example. For the ruling class of Rome, was maintaining the empire only greed or was it what they were taught to do as the moral and right thing?

The mode of production is never human nature. Human nature is a factor, but the mode of production is something that is socially constructed and subject to material constraints, like tools and the environment in which people live.

But socializing and sharing empathy is virtually universal, and the impetus to share food or shelter or community is something that capitalist society teaches us to avoid. So one of the things we strive for through the abolition of capitalism is the restoration of human connections and care that are currently robbed from us. So I can totally see where you are coming from re: the extent to which the communism we want to build constitutes a return. But it is even more a step forward, a transformation into the future constructed from the bones of the present.

Re: what Marx called “primitive communism”, which we might better call egalitarian societies based on hunting and gathering and sometimes agriculture, such societies have actually existed everywhere people have lived. You can find clear historical examples of such societies in the Americas and Australia, yes, but also in the Middle East, Ukraine, Great Britain, Ethiopia, Pakistan/India, China, etc. As you mention, any of these societies did not have written records or they were lost, but we can understand how they lived based on their homes, food, tools, dress, cohabitation, and spatial distribution of all these things.

Ranked choice wouldn’t actually fix the problem. If anything it would do PR for bourgeois democracy while the exact same major forces dictated outcomes.

“Tankies” is just “pinkos” and “commies”, words that are not really offensive or describe anything actually bad but challenge the chauvinist and reactionary positions of liberals.

Lemmy is tankie because it’s cool. You should try to be as cool as us.

It is completely uncomparable to those atrocities

The poles:

• The ignorant and propagandized, yet somehow confident. Please note that you have not done further investigation or acknowledged the experiences of people who have been to or live in Xinjiang.

• Those who do investigation and recognize the pattern of poor sourcing, US or AU gov funding of outlets, fake governments in exile, fake universities.

Consent of the governed exists basically nowhere, including so-called liberal democracies. There is no “do you consent to this government?” question that results in a major change if you or even a majority say no. All are subject to an oppressive state, the only question re: consent is whether you want that state organized for or against the ruling class.

Of course. Our precious political class has delicate sensibilities and nedds time for self-care.

Oh and Dem voters, no need to join organizations or take direct action. Just sit around being a little stressed out and blaming everyone else is plenty. You did your part! If you must do something, go to a one-off police escorted protest with no feasible demands or threats to do anything that would ever exert pressure.

It also still almost worked. This is how subservient and propagandized the US political electorate is. The idea of supporting mass murdering children was only a dealbreaker for a small minority, but enough to do most of the work in tipping the scales.

Kamala probably would’ve won with false promises to end “the war”, some token Arab speakers, and “I see you and hear you” pandering.

The capitalist party that writes its own rules and does not adopt literally any positions via bottom-up mechanism? No, nobody can take it over except other capitalists. So in a sense you are correct, as US progressives are still fundamentally of the political ideology of capitalism.

The party works against you but, ironically, convinces you to help it for your own and others’ interests. Instead, we must work together against capital if we want liberation and justice.

You can do useless things that take up very little time all you’d like. Doesn’t bother me.

But if you want to have political agency you will need to do something real with organizing other people who can take direct action as a bloc.

There was no opposition to genocide.

I know people with disabilities caused by police responses to our fight against genocide.

Genocide apologist, beg for forgiveness.

Hey now, that’s not fair.

Israelis and Boers would say that, too. And some Germans, still, believe it or not.

I agree with everything except the “it’s working!” part. Unfortunately, Bernie and AOC are very much insiders that prioritize their capitalist party over common people. They go to bat for their “backstabbers” every time, they tell you to support Biden and then Harris, they shy away from the word “genocide” while voting to materially support one. The function of the Bernie-AOC tour is to keep the disillusioned from leaving the party behind. Which is what is actually needed to fight fascism. We already have civic fascism, we export the worst effects of it to other countries. It’s just making a little visit home and there’s a risk people will understand this violence as a normalcy of the system and that we must organize ourselves against it rather than just spend 30 minures every four years for a certain flavor if genocidal racist.

When it comes to the left, which now has the bar set at, “does not tolerare genocide”, the Democrats cannot fail, they can only be failed.

You’re welcome for the civics lesson, citizen. Don’t forget to buy war bonds!

Those 90 million people are more correct about the nature of US electoral politics than any Dem voter.