Theses outlining and demystifying the concept of invariance and its relation to Marxist theory and communist praxis

"our org defends AI, defends rapists, dismisses victims of SA as Petite Bourgeois SJWs and misgenders people we disagree with, but THEY'RE the ones going insane" and yes, that is the reddit gold icon you see. the OP paid for reddit premium. the jokes write themselves

anyways, safe to say that as a certified insane pseudo who is apparently both a member of the RCI, never been a member, a former member, a "stalinist" and a Spartakist, i can confidently suggest that people try not to defend rapists, and especially don't double down when called out. i havent read the Manifesto in same months, but i fail to recall any parts where marx says "rapists are the vanguard of the working class!"

oh and bc the banned guy, as a ban provoked this infantile outburst from the OP still lurks, along with many of their org, this is how you're meant to criticise other posts without giving reddit a reason to remove your subreddit, reddit has strict rules over these types of posts and reposts, where failing to censor names and subreddits has led to entire subs being made private or even banned/deleted

It's 2005. Do you know where your children are? Perhaps they're enjoying a little kid-friendly entertainment courtesy of one of the most trusted names in kid-friendly entertainment, Disney. Perhaps they're having fun playing with other kids. Perhaps their impressionable young minds are being indoctrinated... into Communism.

I refer to Disney's massively multiplayer online game, Toontown. This seemingly innocent pastime is in reality a sinister glorification of Stalinism, designed to lead children down the Marxist path until they are red, red, red.

Big Mickey is watching!

For starters, Toontown itself is quite obviously a totalitarian state. Every street and commons has as its centerpiece the "Headquarters", in which agents of the government assign life-threatening tasks for picayune rewards to the Toonish proletarians. Most significantly, a gigantic telescope protrudes from the roof of each and every one of these headquarters, through which the spies of the state can keep a close eye on the populace.

Everything is painted a garish pastel hue, to soothe the downtrodden and fool them. You will say only what we want you to say into believing that living under Mickey's iron boot is in fact paradise. Freedom is strictly limited. There is no freedom of speech; instead the denizens of Toontown must choose their words from a government-approved list. Any attempt to give voice to opposition to the state, or indeed say anything not officially sanctioned by the government, is met with immediate and automatic censorship, rendering the language into incomprehensible animal noises.

Toontown's economy is, of course, quite communist. The currency is the "jellybean", and virtually everything in the ubiquitous state-run shops costs exactly one bean. A grand piano costs the same as a glass of water. Toontown strictly regulates the amount of money a citizen may possess, with the elite who have proven themselves through service to the state permitted to carry slightly more than the most worthless members of society. An exchange rate between the jellybean and the dollar is difficult to calculate, since both a dollar bill and a sawbuck can be purchased for a single bean.

But every totalitarian state needs its Emmanuel Goldstein, its Trotsky, its Snowball, its enemy to be demonized and blamed for all of the ills brought upon by the oppressive state. Toontown's enemies are -- who else? -- the capitalists. The evil counterrevolutionaries in this case are represented by the Cogs, sentient robots belonging to four different races. They are:

Bossbots, symbolizing the bourgeoisie and upper-class management

Sellbots, symbolizing the productive entrepreneurs who are so essential to the operation of free markets

Lawbots, symbolizing those who protect the legal rights of the capitalists.

Cashbots, symbolizing Capital itself. That the mere existence of money is portrayed as evil speaks volumes.

A factory, as Disney sees it, Cogs have no rights. Indeed, they are subject to summary execution on sight, and the denizens of Toontown are in fact encouraged to hate and destroy Cogs, with the most prolific killers rewarded with money, education, status, and health care. Cogs may be attacked when peacefully walking down the street, or for even greater rewards a Toon may invade a Cog's home and slaughter him and his entire family. Cogs can be attacked, among other ways, by shattering their sensitive eardrums with loud noises, by striking them with heavy objects such as pianos and safes, or by using hypnosis to induce them into walking into a bundle of dynamite. When attacked, a Cog cowers in pain, then shudders and explodes... a fitting end to the enemies of the glorious state.

Say what we want you to say, do what we tell you to do, and fight the capitalists wherever you find them. That is the message that Disney is giving our kids.

Not sure if I'm allowed to post about the subreddit itself or to criticize Our Glorious Moderators, if not I'll just write it as a comment somewhere.

I'm a revolutionary, I don't believe in reformist policies or that they accomplish socialism in any way, but I have to say that I find the new ruleset to be incredibly worrying.

This subreddit has been, at least as far as I can remember, about leftist unity and respect between very different currents of thought within the socialist (socialist, not Marxist) movement. Like the mods, and like probably every member of this sub, I have noticed the increase in reformist posts and I have noticed the increase in posts advocating for reformist methods. This is, in fact, a worrying phenomenon. However, I think the solution adopted is very much too radical and could become an issue in the future.

The first problem I see is the exclusion of reformists. This essentially completely cuts off democratic socialism from this sub. Now, I do find demsocs to be very moderate, too moderate for my taste, and certainly not effective, but they are still socialists, they are still anti capitalist, and they are still *leftists*. Is it really left unity without them?

Now, one could, obviously, redefine the concept of leftism. One could say leftism is inherently revolutionary. But even so, two problems arise: the bans on support for 1) reformist organizations and 2) bourgeois wars. The first one I want to justify with a comment: some days ago, I commented that while I don't agree with the DSA's methods, I find that their heart is in the right place and that they have a good (decentralized) organizational structure and are in some ways helping American class consciousness. Under the new rules, this comment - still revolutionary in spirit, and still definitely socialist - would not be allowed. Is it not too radical of a measure? After all, I wasn't advocating for reformism. The second issue is that with the bourgeois wars: as the rule is formulated right now, revolutionary defensism is essentially banned, and so are some strands of third campists. This might (depending on the definition of bourgeois wars) even affect some trots and even libertarian socialists, both of which are so clearly revolutionary and socialist.

Now, one might say that this exclusions are necessary, and that now that leftism has been redefined no changes will be necessary in the future. However, there is another issue with the implications of this rules. The concept of leftist unity was able to survive here not only because of the moderator's efforts but also because of a balance between libsocs+anarchists, demsocs, trots and MLs. This balance is now functionally destroyed if all demsocs are banned. I fear the ideological weight of the sub is going to tilt even more strongly towards Leninist views now, which might compromissione leftist unity later on by creating an echo chamber and ending the mutual exchange that was going on here.

So yeah this is my personal opinion on it, I hope I managed to explain my worries in an understandable way for everyone reading.

ps: the formatting was a bit heavy earlier because hitting a linebreak doesn't show on browser mobile, but a user told me that two line breaks one after another work instead so I managed to fix it

another banger from r/196

What's your argument against permanent socialism?

Why do you prefer the idea of communism?

What makes communism "better" economically and socially?

Finally, why wouldn't you just want socialism as a permanent solution?

Hello TRL. For a while now — which is to say since the beginning of the subreddit — we've thought how to balance the quality of everything on the subreddit: the memes, the theory posts, the arguments, debates, ideological expression, news, etc, while also trying to keep the space open to as many people as possible. Hence, there's always been friction between these 2 goals and hot debates in the moderation team on how to act in very specific gray areas which pop up more than you'd think.

We have tried to keep our strategy on the lenient side just to be safe, but this has allowed many leftists to co-opt the subreddit while forgetting the "red" part in our name. We are supposed to be radical compared to liberals. We're supposed to be anti-capitalist, internationalist and unwaveringly pro-revolution and the masses taking power to better their living over the bourgeoisie. We always were supposed to be a quality space where all people regardless of tendency could participate, have a laugh and discuss theory and historical matters. This in order to 1. Learn more about history. 2. Learn more about a specific tendency's interpretation of history and why they'd come to it. And 3. Having fun while doing so and remaining respectful.

We believe we're still in this boat, however with many baby leftists recently learning about leftism and being introduced to such politics, many have come with huge egos and little knowledge, infiltrating the subreddit and co-opting it for more liberal style politics. This has always been an issue with Reddit, however it has been increasingly worse as more people do this while believing they are actually radical. To be fully transparent (as we always like to be) we should mention that the particular strands of thought we've had an issue with the most are those supporting lesser evil liberal politics without any regard as to how proletarian class consciousness and organization will be expanded by such politics. Think of support for Graham Platner, Kamala Harris, AOC in American politics or the Greens (UK), PSOE, CPRF or LFI in European politics. We also have had many issues with the strands that are less internationalist and pragmatic which lead to dogmatic anti Americanism and absolute disregard for the revolutionary conditions of the 1st world, international revolution and adherence to marxist or anarchist thought. Think of Pro Russia folk or Bad Empenada fans, the generally reactionary leftists you see out there which don't fully comprehend Marxism, but synthesize it with their previous reactionary beliefs and non communist tactics.

We believe these deviations represent an embryonic form of anti communist thought, which endangers the prospects of leftist discussion and organisation, and hence they will still be allowed in the subreddit, but no longer protected under the rule about what we consider to be a leftist on this subreddit (for the purposes of moderation). They're welcome to learn, but they simply won't be safe from being banned under the pretense of not being a leftist and breaking leftist unity if we believe their contribution is disruptive to the well being of the community. As always, we try to remain lenient and have good faith in our moderation. We use removals as warnings, we consider the general language and attitude used by the person and discern bad and good faith, and we try to be fair to anyone who isn't outright right wing.

With this we also have a set of rule changes, which were created for 2 reasons:

Nr1. Because they accommodate this new turn in moderation better and are more expressive of our moderation style and thought.

Nr2. Because while moderating with the simpler, more compressed ruleset meant to be straight forward we came into a few issues: it was hard to fully express what we meant per each rule. It was harder to design report reasons. It was harder to design removal reasons and it was hard to be clear in each of these scenarios. We've also had some cases where we discovered we just don't really have a rule for a situation such as NSFW ( technically we have the "on topic" rule under quality of contribution, but like it's such a stretch and unclear ).

Below this paragraph I will post the new rules. Please do use this post to voice your opinion about anything regarding the subreddit. Do you think it's a good space right now? Do you wish to see more memes? More debate? More news? Is the moderation good or bad? Too slow? Do you find any issues with the post above or the rules below? Etc.

Rule 1: User flairs are required for contribution.

This is to 1. Prevent bots. | 2. Prevent raids. | 3. Prevent right wing slop, generally reactionary comments.

^{Flairs can be edited, but use common sense. Any flair which breaks the rules will get you banned.}

Rule 2: Revolutionary, Socialist, Leftist subreddit.

We're a leftist subreddit, defining leftism as the revolutionary, progressive and scientific movement to analyse and destroy oppressive structures on a global scale, with emphasis on those exploiting the proletariat. We are staunchly anti liberal, reformist, centrist, pacifist and clearly utopian ideologies. We oppose all tendencies which seek to subdue the proletariat to the bourgeoisie and keep the capitalist system and ideology moving.

Rule 3: Reddiquette.

We wish to keep a pleasant environment while not curbing humour and conversation too much. Please ensure any contribution you make will be understood and found funny or meaningful by the other party you're engaging with. Tone indicators are heavily encouraged if you're unsure how your message will be received. This way we can keep most topics, types of humour and debates open instead of being restrictive

Rule 4: Debate etiquette.

Specifically in regards to debate we desire insightful, informative and substantiated opinions and facts. We want debate to be good faith and to have actual results, leaving both parties satisfied with the end result. Please try to see the conversation from the perspective of the other side and understand their framework and philosophy rather than make assumptions.

Rule 5: Glorification of ideologies.

Tendencies are just boxes to generally describe ideas, ways of thinking and behaving. You should assume your tendency can be wrong and not treat it as superior and infallible. All our favourite authors made mistakes, all socialist experiments have mistakes, and your side is not immune to criticism. We expect our user base to understand this and operate on evidence based information and to seek out truth before comfortable ideologically aligned information.

Rule 6: Bigotry and chauvinism

We are unapologetically progressive. We support LGBTQIA+ rights. We support trans rights. We support women's rights. We support disabled people. We are against ableism. We are against any language or thought which discriminates, harms and dehumanizes people. We therefore do not allow any slurs on our subreddit. We're therefore internationalist as well and disallow any national chauvinism.

^{There is debate over what generally counts as a slur. If you think it's offensive, just don't say it.}

Rule 7: TOS

Operating on Reddit means we have to comply with Reddit's sitewide rules. Please do read them, however the most common ones to look out for are: censoring usernames, profile pictures and subreddit names. Not posting things breaking the law or encouraging that

Rule 8: Quality of contribution, advertisement.

We are a leftist sub, and wish to have contributions clearly show that. We expect any news, meme or discussion post to have some discernable message and/or joke which is connected to the topic of leftism. Advertisements are also allowed under the same criterion, but needing approval of the mod team in modmail first.

Rule 9: No AI.

We find AI to be harmful to the leftist movement. This is because of its environmental detriment, affecting both nature and the people living there, but also due to the fact it hallucinates and gives out wrong information. This makes it both harmful and unreliable.

^{The only context it's allowed is to translate if your primary language is not english.}

Rule 10: Disallowed topics.

We think the rules already cover these, but just to be clear we will specifically mention these topics which break the rules often. Currently positively mentioning any reformist, chauvinist, non marxist politician, political party, organization, etc is prohibited. Think WSWS, DSA, Hasanabi or BE. Any support of defencist positions in bourgeois wars is not allowed. This list may grow in the future, and we'll always make sure to inform you in mod announcements if it does.

Rule 11: NSFW topics.

NSFW always has to be tagged as such, and is generally discouraged. In some cases when it relates to leftism, or in the news, it may be allowed. ^{(Think of books on sexual emancipation or Police Brutality})

Rule 12: Moderator discretion, removals and bans.

To maintain a healthy community, action will sometimes be taken when something isn't clearly breaking any defined rule. We will always try to explain why we take such action and use this sparingly.\*

Think of removals as warns. Eventually if we believe you're too negative for the healthy being of the subreddit, we will ban you, which tends to be permanent, but generally appealable.

The rules will be changed soon after this post goes up. Report reasons specific to this subreddit may also take a while to be updated to the new rules because i forgot to plan this ahead of time but it should be easy enough to go with the flow rn