Is making profit like a biological imperative for the bourgeoisie,like do they have meltdown if they don't exploit others and its like heroin addiction for them

I have some questions that I want to discuss, I’m hoping that this group might help me find some answers or gain new insights into them.

1) Why are Trump and Elon Musk drawn to authoritarian leaders such as Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Netanyahu? They are anti-immigrant and enable fascist politics. Are there any deeper structural or ideological reasons behind this kind of politics?

2) How should we respond to AI? If people can no longer find jobs, how will they gain access to the resources they need to survive? And can we really regard AI as “intelligent,”,in what sense?

or is there a scope to question dominant assumption?

Hello everyone. Brand new socialist here, just escaped from MAGA. I'm looking to educate myself and to not only delve into socialism, but the political history of the US (and the world). This issue is, I'm very overwhelmed and don't know how to go about it. So I have some questions for more seasoned, more educated socialists.

First, what is the best way to absorb/keep up with politics on a day to day basis? Do you just go to one news source at the start of the day and then go about your day? Do you go to multiple? How do I know where to get my news sources? I feel like almost everything is corrupt. Right now I only us AP news.

Next, what's the best way to learn politics/political history? There are so many different pawns in the political zeitgeist, I feel like it'd take forever to learn all their backgrounds and what they've done/what they're doing in the world. I not only want to have all of the facts on current politicians, but on past ones as well so I have context. What are the best ways of learning these things in an efficient non-propagandized way?

Also, (in your opinion) should I take political science or history of US politics in school? I want to study politics in school, but I'm no good at math, so I'm hesitant to take political sci. Yet I'm not sure history would teach the structures of how these things work. I just want to understand how things work and where we've come from but I feel lost.

Is it good or bad?

Haven’t really read much theory if i’m being honest and i want to expand my breadth of knowledge into philosophy

Is it because the bailouts managed to keep the burgeoisie satisfied enough that they "allowed" a somewhat progressive version of neoliberalism to absorb the dissatisfaction with the status quo, instead of pushing for fascism? If so, what changed between that and Trump in 2016? Did that "progressive neoliberalism" become too threatening? Did the economic situation change?

So I consider myself a firm leftist that's still figuring out their specific positions and finding their own place on the left, so please, if this is an obtuse question, let me know - maybe I'm just confused.

Recently I finished my studies and found a job working for a non-profit medical society to promote awareness and research into certain illnesses. I help run their publication. Unlike so many other people, I have the privilege of enjoying my job.

How do I equate the fact that I work for an institution whose goal is fundamentally positive - helping to diminish deaths by diseases, and, in my case specifically, spread scientific news and research, and knowing I like my job, with a capacity to think my situation through critically - how do I not get entranced, not accept easy answers when those are the ones that seem available?

I come across exploitation in the form of the pharmaceutical industry and the fact that my journal is run by Elsevier - a horrific company - but sometimes I feel I have it too good and that pushes me away from thinking things critically. Knowing I help, that I'm not, like, working for a weapons manufacturer and actually for a non-profit, dulls me from critical thought and clouds my judgement. Does this make sense?

I know this has a few obvious answers. And obviously... having to not only work to live, but on disproportionately low wages is never pleasant for anyone.

but in a more day-to-day way, I notice my coworkers just seem... almost perpetually miserable, all the time, and whenever I ask someone about it they look at me funny as though I just challenged something as fundamental and obvious as gravity by asking. I don't think my job is a vacation or anything, of course. I enjoy what I do as a machinist, even if work is still work, and some days everything just goes wrong. But my coworkers, and people I know in general, seem to have a disproportionately negative reaction to virtually anything that has to do with work, practically everywhere that I have been. Even if they are not generally pessimistic people outside of it. I definitely feel a certain temptation to react that way, though I generally forget about it and go back to my daydreams pretty quickly after reminding myself... it's just work and it's gonna be over at some point anyway.

I hope I'm not truly asking a question so... obvious, but does this have an answer beyond just "work is supposed to be work"? Especially among the few of us who aren't even necessarily making the lowest wages that create that degree of struggle. And, if so, does it connect at all to capitalism?

I am an avid reader and have been getting into historical fiction lately. I’m reading through “China: The Novel” right now. While I enjoy it, I’ve been wondering if there are books similar to this one that explore socialist thought and history. Thanks.

Hi, I’ve been a social democrat for a long time now. But, as of late, I’ve been seeing socialist subreddits and I’ve realized that I don’t truly know what socialism is. If anyone has any good videos on the ideas, or videos that may convert me myself, that‘d be appreciated!

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To begin with, let me remind you that mathematics is not a science fortunately and that it is perhaps one of the largest organized, consistent symbolic formal systems for developing something: maybe intellect, maybe a certain form of thinking, maybe someone understands more clearly what exactly mathematics develops and can tell us about it.

And whatever it develops in us, there may immediately be a temptation to say functionally: well, then mathematics is needed precisely for developing this, Robert Wide.

The difficulty is that although there are interesting things in it, such as topology, or interesting theorems and models, and especially what seems important is the economic, technological, and research contribution of mathematics,

And yet it seems that this formal system stalls a person and makes it harder for him to think outside this formal system. Of course, one can say this about logic too, and about their similarity, and in general about any old systems of thought or let us call them closed or “controlling” ones. To some, dialectics may also seem like this, though to a lesser degree, and it is precisely dialectics that sets the task of sublating contradiction and arriving at generalization and understanding, that is, in an ethical sense it is a more encompassing system of cognition in the sense of its capacity — though often in verbal form to include something else and incomprehensible in its understanding. And if we abstract from formal dialectics, if you have ever heard these expositions, then the ethical idea and, as it were, real dialectics in full non-contradictoriness and some communication, for example as metamodernism, is the same dialectics or synthesis between sincerity and so-called postmodernity or irony.

Dialectics is still an example, not a proposed answer. Although it could perhaps be one of those considered.

Returning to mathematics. Despite its outstanding economic, technological, research possibilities and achievements, and as a result also social and political ones… it still remains rather abstract. One can say that it is the most complex, or one of the most complex, games of the mind, or games within the mind, or separate games within the mind. But for the mind itself this seems like something akin to sophistry or magic, though a very useful one. Or one can say that it is a magical system, or one of the magical systems of this world. But it is almost always something very abstract: it seems to me that this is often said about philosophers too, by those who do not delve deeply into philosophy; but those who do delve in, on the other hand, can understand that we often reflect on the most important questions or phenomena that we can feel or think. As far as I understand and it is not known how much the answers may still differ mathematics is a system of ultimate formal complexity, or of ultimate complexity for thought in general, since in one way or another what we formulate as philosophers often, though perhaps difficult, has a clearer representation of reality, even if it is Lacan’s Borromean rings. In the sense that philosophy, apart from again sophistry, usually does not strive to become complicated simply for the sake of complication because why? It seems that a person, after this stage of formal logic, can also learn other possibilities of thinking. But in mathematics, complexity and possibly even not necessarily, but possibly the degree of abstraction seems literally the quintessence of content. On the other hand, of course, this may also be good. In the sense of ultimate complexity, ultimate constructiveness, ultimate abstraction, in the sense that we as a culture have some content, some achievements that we may still have to comprehend, if some of them can be so complex that there are literally 400 pages of formulas of explanation.

But, like, why?

And returning to what we were talking about, this seems like ultimate sophistry or thinking in idle, in the sense for thought itself and for man, although culturally it brings enormous social results: both economics and technology and research and efficiency.

And even if we assume that mathematics is integral thinking rather than specific thinking, then although it is clear why mathematics should be developed: so that there can be a further possibility of development…

What for, and what from mathematics, and should it and it or they even be present in education?

Because even if we may have grounds to think so but even if mathematics is connected with integral, that is, general thinking, that is, as it were, some generalized function of it, the mathematicality of education then creates a situation in which a person tries to wipe the sofa with a processor without imagining what a sofa is.

And if not, and mathematics is more specific thinking, that is, in the sense that it also remains there and in a constant submetacognitive state: in the sense that it fundamentally cannot leave the box and its language and its formality or formalization… then such thinking is good for producing human-computers useful for working with ordinary computers, for example in a bank or somewhere else. As a result, man has, as it were, given his brain to mathematics, and how is he supposed to live further? Well, that is, then perhaps also the market, where this mathematized brain may be valued higher than the self-esteem or self-understanding of such a person, and so the puzzle comes together: successful recruiting into a successful company.

I will say right away that simply “progressive studies,” which may even be not thinking but to some extent dogmatic propaganda or propaganda at the expense of education hours, trying to lean on Marxism or performatism according to Butler, are, as it were… Well, people can learn something valuable, but on the whole it seems that this is simply the disintegration of education, or rather almost its absence, or its replacement by propaganda so that in an economic-political sense these people could be ever more perfect agents of this very propaganda, possibly even without fully understanding it. And how lucky we are that we can look at this from the outside, unlike the people and economies that this “progressive” propaganda may further repress. And the main complaint against it is probably economic, because a society simply without technical specialties loses economic opportunities; only oligarchs remain, and they would most quickly move to a new place. And in a universal human sense, this is potentially the next target and problem for the next intellectual stratum that will try to do something about this repressiveness. If, in general, there will be anyone left to do anything there.

In general, why was this clarification about “progressive” or agenda-driven education? So that this question is not in support of that very agenda, and, as it were, we understand in advance some of the existing difficulties there and have described them.

And still, the question: is mathematics needed? And such mathematized, formalized thinking — and then we are surprised by further formalizations and the resulting difficulties, such as bureaucracy and media simplification and corruption in many senses.

Additionally:

Maybe the form of my question is a bit of Soviet thinking or a way of thinking about something, and if you understand another or other better ways of asking or thinking about this, you can say so.

What the title says.

Financial Domination (AKA FinDom) is a fetish lifestyle in which a financial submissive sends gifts, objects, or money to a financial dominant, in exchange for the sexual gratification caused by the demanding of such; with the financial dominant being the authority in terms of agreement, conditions, & amount regarding the financial domination contract.

Given the inherently exploitative nature of such a fetish, would it be seeked to be criminalized or lessened under communism and/or socialism; like how landlording would be criminalized?

Conclusion: It would likely be treated as a mental health condition & "financial submissives" would be recommended to go to therapy.

Link to twitter post

Text in screenshot:

Yes China subsidises basic staple food heavilv so that their citizens of all income level can eat properly and healthily. How I know this? I have an R&D project for rice farming in Indonesia where the entire tech stack is Chinese. The contract is with a food focused SOE and during their first presentation, they showed a revenue of 53 billion USD and a net profit of under 500M usd. So I asked whv is their net profit so low, it's under 1% and their response is their marching orders is to never have a hiqher than 3% gross margins so that Chinese people can have cheap produce and meat. This is how US corn is 4 times cheaper in China supermarket than in US supermarket.

This concept seems amazing, If anyone has recent sources regarding this I would really appreciate it.

I asked the AI about it, and it says that it's indeed the strongest argument (a technical one rather than philosophical, such as appealing to human nature) against socialism because a planned economy cannot accurately calculate prices.

And the book The People's Republic of Walmart is not a good refutation of it because Walmart and Amazon still function within a capitalist economy.

I want to say that I am an anti-capitalist and don't like Mises and Hayek, but we need solid arguments against their ideas.

A lot of people (maybe just MLs?) seem to dislike the reforms Khrushchev did, so I'm curious as to what Stalin and co were doing before that was different. All I've ever heard about was the collectivization and purges and nothing about other important stuff. Also if there are any good videos or shorter books about Stalin or soviet history that would be very helpful.

Me and my partner have been discussing socialism a lot recently. I’ve been a socialist for years now (though haven't read a lot of theory) whereas he’s maybe a social democrat. He’s making progress understanding my ideology and why socialism could be a positive thing as of late, but it was hard fought to get him there. He has come to agree that it's a "more moral" system compared to capitalism and that people's basic needs should be met by default

However, the issue we keep coming down to is he truly believes that capitalism is better for innovation

This is relevant because he’s in hardware tech, has made a lot of his own patents, and is trying to start his own business with a new technology. He sees innovation as strictly a positive thing, whereas I wouldn’t go that far. I think in a lot of areas we already have enough technological advancement to just kind of be done with it, and tech can actually threaten the well-being of humanity

I kind of have my doubts about his beliefs stemming from some humanitarian place, and rather just supporting what he wants to do anyway. If it really was just a net positive for humanity and he cared so much, then why not just do the same thing for your country or the world under socialism? Maybe it wouldn’t be as incentivized for you as the inventor, sure. But it’s not like people lose the ability to solve hard problems in a socialist economy. Though I do see the point that people who aren't driven by altruism may not bother if there truly is a lack of additional incentive

So the bottom line is: he thinks innovation wouldn’t be encouraged to the same extent under socialism

I’ve went about arguing against this in numerous ways:

• Attack the premise that more "innovation" is always good. A lot of innovation under capitalism is shallow, useless to the average person, actively harmful, creates more alienation, and is just meant to extract more profits
• Argue that the state could still sponsor innovations in some capacity (and does in the case of China)
• Mention that socialism generally comes after capitalism, where many advancements will have already been made
• Use the Soviet Union as an example, where they still created many new technologies and innovated at a competitive rate to the US and in a very short time period

If anyone has ideas for how I could argue this better I'd appreciate it. It's possible that we've just kind of hit a wall from a values standpoint and I will be unable to convince him on this front, as it's very wrapped up in his ego and identity

Maybe this is also the "wrong question." I realize I could just accept the premise that capitalism is inherently better for innovation, but I'm not convinced it's necessarily true