this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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The only reason you wouldn't want to break things right now means you still think there is good in the system. The system is working as intended and absolutely needs to be broken so something better can be made.
Alternatively, there can be the simple recognition that breaking the system that exists will result in a mass casualty event as current systems keeping the masses alive break down, and the resulting collapse will be capitalized on (lol) by your local warlord.
I'm sure the local warlord will be a great bastion of anti authoritarian praxis.
There are already thousands and more dying by the second with the current system. There is already a mass causality event and it will continue to get worse as the current system makes the world less and less inhabitable.
And we don't have to have a "local warlord" the idea that people can put something better in place then fascism is ironically a right wing talking point. Though I blame the propaganda that has caused us to view our fellow as a enemy instead a comrade. But that's a whole other point.
Correct on all counts.
And yet, the reality is that the collapse of society will lead to even more casualties. The other reality is that I don't know of a single collapsed society that became altruistic, and did not devolve into local warlord killing each other.
A mass casualty event? Brother we've been in the mass extinction event for years, and every day we don't destroy the system that created it is another day the odds of the human species surviving the next couple centuries continues to fall towards zero.
Yes, I am certain that your life will begin improving measurably when the food runs out.
Just one more election bro, I know we have The Camps and everyone on earth has organs laden with microplastic and we've killed fully one third of the forests and the oceans are turning to acid, but now is not the time for radical change bro
I'm sure your life will (moderately, bipartisanly) improve when the oceanic algae is all dead and you can no longer breathe. At least then you won't have the air to speak this tired nonsense, and I'll only have to listen to our gasping coughs as we wait for the harm reduction to kick in.
Revolutions have had a history of dramatically improving living conditions for everyone as soon as the old system is abolished. The Russian revolution ended famine and doubled life expectancy.
Revolutions also don't have to result in violence (think of a mass strike across the entire country that never ends). But when capitalism gets desperate it will start a civil war if that is its only hope to maintain the old system.
And think about the mass suffering caused by mass poverty, genocide, minority oppression, political polarisation, endless war, boring work and the list goes on. If one revolution is all it takes to install a democratic society and fix so many of our problems, I know I'm on board.
Yeah, everyone except the people that end up against the wall.
More often than not, those people aren't the ones causing the structural problems in society. The really rich people with the power all escape before that point.
Source: my ass
Now you're just lazily regurgitating Orwell-style fed bullshit about how somehow revolution won't change anything.
"Everyone except the people that end up against the wall" yeah that's the point dumbass, the oligarchs cannot be allowed to fuck up the new world too
The oligarchs will escape. The people up against the wall will be those that are not wealthy enough to escape, but not poor enough to be desperate.
There's a reason that Orwell was banned in the US for being pro-communist and banned in the USSR for being pro-capitalist. That reason is because Orwell was anti-authoritarian.
Orwell's works are taught in school in the west because they are anticommunist fairy tales, and he was a sex abuser and professional snitch for British intelligence.
Yes generally peoples living conditions do not improve for people who have been shot dead by a firing squad, since they stop living. Although can you please be more specific, I'm not sure how that is related to our discussion.
Okay, I'm not sure if that is true or not but I don't think that is relevant anyway.
you've been boiled too slow
What an astute observation! I wouldn't even describe it as a boil, maybe a light simmer if anything. Because you know what? My life is pretty nice.
So now that we have established that fact, perhaps it would be prudent to consider how you reach the majority of the population that is in my boat (not literally, I mean, when I'm on my boat I'm generally reading a book on my own). But I mean the ones that think like this and don't read books by Kropotkin.
Liberals just cutting straight to the heart of what they care about
Yeah, no shit. I do things to improve my life. If you don't, then you're either lying or an actual example of capitalist caricatures of leftism, just looking for a handout.
Edit: And if you're not acting to improve your life and the lives around you, what's the purpose of revolution? Action for the sake of Action? That's point #3 on Umberto Eco's list of the 14 common features of fascism.
Your life is nice because of the death and destruction of those who your system deems to be lesser. If you can't be motivated to change things because you can't see the issue with the cost of your comfort, you're going to learn some very hard lessons once people you thought were on your side start fighting you.
Are you the caricature of someone who was given an extra money in a game of monopoly but believe to have earned your winning position through sheer strategy and "working harder"?
I was born in a small village ~200km SE of St Peter back in the soviet days. We got electricity when I was six years old, because my neighbor figured out how to tap into some nearby high voltage lines. After the collapse of the soviet union, I collected enough scholarships and got a visa sponsorship to get a chemical engineering degree in the US. Then I went on to grad school. Then I got the rest of my family out of there. Now I am somewhere in the top 10% of the US.
The only advantage I was born with is above average intelligence and the ability to put it to work. And a bit of luck for everything else to work out.
That is the cost of my comfort. And yes, I am sure that whether leftists or fascists take over, I will be persecuted. Fascists will persecute me because I am not a fascist. Leftists will persecute me because I have done reasonably well for myself, but not well enough to hop on a private jet when the shit hits the fan. That is also the cost of my comfort.
"I had it kind of rough as a kid so I deserve to thoughtlessly gorge myself at the imperial blood feast without being reminded of what it is I'm eating."
That's cool man, I'm sure all the other kids growing up in small villages will understand and forgive your supporting their brutal extermination. They'd probably look up at you with stars in their eyes and think "Wow, he came from a small village too, and if I work really hard and believe in myself, that could be me plugging my ears and justifying the ultimate crime one day!"
Inspiring stuff.
Nobody deserves shit. I made the choices I made and got to where I am. A number of kids I grew up with made different choices, and left that village for the first time to go die in Ukraine.
C'est la vie.
Individualist brain poison.
Okay, then don't get defensive when people decide your bad ideas don't deserve respect
yep indeed
In order to effectively break the system you need organized Revolution, and for that it must be supported by the masses, and for mass support it must help people, meaning the Revolution must be building something like a state within itself to support it's own Revolution, so when it is big enough, when it finally has overthrown the Capitalists, it will already be prepared to take over as a governing body. The only chaos then is in the Revolution itself, but a small moment of bloody violence in plane sight is nothing compared to the massive death, destruction, torture and despair, that the system does constantly out of sight, hidden away (as much as it even can hide it), that the small by comparison but more in sight and quicker violence of a Revolution which will finally end it.
Okay. Well, when this glorious mythic Revolution begins, we will see what happens. Until the second coming of the Revolution, were stuck in reality. Although it seems some of us might be stuck is a certain level of Revolution Revolution worship.
Revolution.
See, because the anglosphere is drenched in leftover christian thought, and because liberals fundamentally have a magical view of the world and society, you see revolution as something akin to the rapture: some grand external event to be prayed for and waited on. Meanwhile, since communists have a scientific view of the world and society, we see revolution as a machine to be built. What you're doing is the equivalent of walking up to a shipyard and going "Pffft, good luck magically manifesting your glorious ships, idiot." Just a fundamental misunderstanding of how history develops. Movements just spontaneously arise at full strength out of nowhere in the movies and video games we all grew up on, so of course reality must work the same way, right?
You want to talk about "we're in reality"? Yeah, we're in the reality where the working class in many countries have already achieved the building of a revolution. That's a concrete fact, not some article of faith you can pessimistically handwave away to justify your continued murderous apathy. We live in reality, so roll up your sleeves and get to work with the rest of us.
Okay. Well, when all your hard work leads to actual tangible results that are better than the status quo, then we'll talk.
Until then, less blabbing and more sleeve rolling
"Build a revolution for me and then I'll show up after"
Consumer brain is a disease on par with Alzheimer's. You'll never be anything but a dead weight to any social organization with that attitude. Look around yourself, opportunities to build have never been more abundant. I've helped create a recurring mutual aid event in the community where we exhange food, clothing and services, much of it homegrown and handmade. We have regular self defense training and educational lectures from people of different expertise. We're connected with the local ICE watch org, a growing anti data-center movement and Palestinian orgs for miles. We are beginning to host study sessions and draw up outlines for political education. We even have a direct member with a shot at city council, which would make our job even easier than it is now, which, I gotta tell you, is pretty easy these days. People are fucking done with all of it.
All of this and more can be yours. This is what I have achieved in less than one year of really, actively studying and trying after having spent the previous decade as a depressed addict. The only thing holding you back is this learned helplessness, this ingrained idea that someone else has to do it first because you are incapable.
Okay. I guess your world doesn't have a place for me then. If it's camps either way, I'd rather do it the easy way.
Hahaha holy shit dude what the fuck is wrong with you
Me: "You can actually build a better life with your friends and neighbors, here's what I've managed to achieve so far"
You: "Oh so you're gonna HUNT ME FOR SPORT? There's no PLACE for me in your SICK WORLD, huh? Guess I'll just support the camps then!"
I am glad that you were able to build a community of your friends and neighbors.
I do not have the time or resources to do so.
So you labeled that as me being a consumer brained idiot on par with Alzheimer's. Now you're surprised that my general demeanor towards you is negative?
I'm surprised you just openly declared your support for concentration camps, usually it takes more to get you guys to do that.
You're in top 10% of hitlerikkka and lack resources to organize?
It wont just magically happen on it's own, if we only wait for it we are more likely to see the inside of a US death camp as the Capitalist rulling class is getting scared and desperate and have been laying the foundation for the people to be moved further into Fascism for a long time. It is possible only with our willingness to organise together within one or more (cooperating) Revolutionary Parties to learn and use Marxist Leninist Theory to slowly awaken Class Consciousness within the population and prepare the way for a successful Revolution supported by the newly awakened masses. This has succeeded many times already, even though the USSR unfortunately collapsed, Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and the People's Republic of China are still standing against all the Capitalist Imperialist hostile odds, and China in particularly is more technologically and scientifically advanced then the US by now, and have provided enormous improvement to the lives of everyone they get involved with. It is why the Capitalist Imperialist "Core Countries" (Global North) are so desperate to smear them with endless lies and nonsense not based in reality or evidence, and the CIA/MI6/MOSSAD assert their control and spread such misinformation via "news" (Propaganda is basically just another name for this give or take), Hollywood, Social Media AI bots, Youtube algorithmic control, and even our very Video Games (do people believe Call of Duty is politically neutral).
With all of that they shape our very view of reality to make us support things against our own interests, and to avoid learning anything real about the countries that threaten Capital.
Edit: I was a little confusing about the point on propaganda, I mean that it is more or less another word for news, mostly involving the handing out of pamflets or leaflets, it has been twisted into being the same as saying "misinformation" very likely as a way of discrediting bottom up, glass roots style movements (what the working class has access to as a way of communicating among the populace) while leaving the Capitalists corporate "news" reputationally intact.
Propaganda was originally a branch of the Catholic Church, so the connotation is that it's as full of crap and dishonesty as apologetics.
I don't know about the history of the Church, but I do know that the word has been used for the handing out of legitimate and accurate information on a paper medium as a way of spreading awareness when one is censored by the State and cannot use the normal channels, and it has been used this way for a long long time before the use of it to mean the same as "lies" was popular.
Propaganda was short for "congregation for propagating the faith" in 1718, and meant a movement or organization for the propagation of ideology before the end of the 1700s. The modern usage refering to the information disseminated is from after WWI (which wasn't perjoritive at the time), when German telegraph lines to other countries were cut and they turned to high-power radio communication. The negative connotation comes from WWII after Germany's very effective use of it.
Nevertheless, propaganda has been used as long as humans have existed, and much like the subcategory "advertisement", is more effective with as many lies as one can get away with. There's nothing inherently untruthful about propaganda, but neither is it inherently truthful. It's manipulation, and can still be effective without lies. It's much broader than papers to circumvent censure.
"Propaganda" "Propagating", interesting, that makes a lot of sense. As for manipulation, it is a bit of a loaded term, when exposed to new information, one may make a different decision than they otherwise would have, you could say that the exposure to that new information had "manipulated" them, but that wouldn't make the information necessarily untrue or the "manipulation" as being a "bad thing" (metaphysics territory).
As far as lies go, you don't need them nor would they even be all that useful when what one advocates for is the truth anyway. (like Scientific Socialism(Marxism Leninism))
Thanks for the mini history lesson by the way.