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this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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Usually its when I either offend the libs on world or the fake leftists on ml/hexbear. Sometimes if I'm particularly skilled I piss off both of them at the exact same time (usually by advocating for true liberation for the working class not under a so called "vanguard" but by and for the workers themselves)
There will always be a vanguard, whether it's formalized into an entity that can be structured democratically and transparently or whether it's left unformalized and therefore subject to cliques, natural power imbalances, and a lack of accountability. The reason for this is that humans vary quite widely in political education and skill, those with more experience with organizing and those with no experience already form a natural hierarchy, and without formalizing this structure you run into danger. That doesn't mean the Vanguard isn't of the working class, rather, it just means that the Working Class as a whole is the real driver, and the Vanguard is the pointer, spear body and spearhead.
The essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness does a good job of explaining the necessity of formalizing structures in order to keep them truly accountable.
I don't really know what you're trying to say by saying Lemmy.ml and Hexbear are "fake Leftists," are you just trying to say Marxists are fake Leftists?
I was saying that people who unironically support China arent actually leftist
Why not? It's a Socialist country if we consider Marxism to be validly Socialist. It's certainly not Anarchist, but I don't think Anarchism is the only validly "left" category of tendencies.
A "socialist" country with billionaires and wealth inequality? With capitalism and imperialism? That sounds like fascism to me
Socialism in the Marxian sense is an economy where public ownership is the principle and driving aspect of the economy, in China this is very much the case, where the vast majority of large firms and core industries are in the Public Sector. There is wealth inequality, and there are billionaires, yes, but this is an aspect that is improving over time, a process that we can track. Socialism is always a long and drawn-out process that can only truly be advanced by building up the productive forces dramatically.
I don't know what you mean when you say China has "Capitalism." Capitalism and Socialism are descriptors for the broader economy as a whole, not individual portions of an economy. There is private ownership of Capital and markets, correct, but this alone does not equal Capitalism, just like a worker cooperative in the US is not an example of Socialism. If you're interested in a Marxist perspective, I wrote a post going over how Marxists identify a system as Socialist vs Capitalist, and frequent errors made by non-Marxists (in the eyes of Marxists).
As for Imperialism, I would like you to elaborate.
As for fascism, that's certainly not the case. Even if China was Capitalist, that does not inherently make it fascist, which is a specific form of Capitalism. I highly recommend you read Blackshirts and Reds if you haven't already.
By imperialism I am referring to Chinese neocolonialism in Africa. As for Fascism I am referring to the Chinese system of private owmership mixed with indirect government ownership (of which the workers own none of it). In addition the vast majority of the Chinese economy is private, that makes it mixed economy at best.
China's involvement in Africa isn't neocolonial, though. Moreover, the vast majority of large firms and key industries are publicly owned, the private sector largely accounts for small businesses, which have little to no control over the economy at large. I don't know what you are referring to as "worker ownership" if public ownership doesn't count, that's the core thesis of Marxism, ie reaching a fully publicly owned economy.
I recommend checking out the post I made and the book I linked. The very notion of a "mixed economy" is wrong to begin with, as no economy is pure, modes of productions are determined by their overall totality. Either every economy is mixed, which fails to account for the dramatic differences between feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism, etc, or we adopt a more sensible notion that economies are made up of their constituent, interlinked aspects and thus portions cannot be simply cut away and considered "socialist" or "capitalist," they all exist in context. That would be like saying a board of directors is Socialist if they all have equal ownership, you can't cut them away from the workers just like you can't cut sectors out of the broader economy in which they function.
As for fascism, that isn't an accurate description of fascism at all. Fascism has always served the bourgeoisie as a means to put down leftist organizing in decaying Capitalist countries. You don't have to support China to be a Leftist, there's lots of valid critique, but calling it "fascist" is wrong.
Thing is, it's easy to offend people. It doesn't take skill, or effort. And it's not constructive; nobody in history has ever said, "you know, your comment about Communists all being retarded really changed my mind. I'm going to read Atlas Shrugged and become a capitalist!"
Usually when I say stuff that pisses people off, it's because (a) a joke fell flat, or was not obviously a joke; (b) I was reacting emotionally and said something I intended to be hurtful; (c) I express an unpopular opinion. As I get older, the reactions to (c) more often make me scrutinize my opinion, to make sure I'm not just stupidly parroting something my fascist dad taught me when I was a child.
I used to play devil's advocate, but it doesn't feel good. It's one thing if both parties go into it in good faith, and it's clear neither is just trying to be a troll, but now? I don't do it without establishing good faith first, and if I suspect someone's just trolling... I just block them. Straight up. It's easy, and I have one fewer irritants in my life.
So, that's me. Why do _you_do it? Are you intentionally trying to rile people up, and if so, why? Are you angry at them? Or do you say you're offending people just by expressing sincerely held opinions, and the snowflakes are getting triggered? Is everyone but you a hypocrite?
I mean, I believe everyone is a hypocrite, but there's a spectrum, right? There's a level where you are trying not to be a hypocrite, but it's impossible to exist and not be at some level. Then there's blatantly lying, saying one thing and doing another. A spectrum, and a lot of it boils down to good faith, and sincerity. Are you angry at faux liberals who you feel should be violently agitating for seizing the means of production, and are calling them out in their bullshit? Or just trying to make them angry so you can hurt them, just a little?
I'm an Anarcho-Syndicalist, I offend ml and hexbear users sometimes just by pointing out that China is a fascist dictatorship. I offend world users by telling the truth some aren't ready to hear. These truths include the simple facts that you cannot reform capitalism out of existence, liberal democracy is democracy for the capitalists, a bloodless revolution is not possible, and compromise with fascism only brings fascism. Sometimes I offend people by being unapologetically Queer, sometimes by being unapologetically Anarchist, but I have learned that apologizing for my beliefs is utterly nonsensical.
Interesting. I think anytime you make statements that aren't scientifically - or, indeed, even epirically - provable and claim they're "facts", you're going to get a reaction out of someone.
They have been proven by history