SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]

Can someone explain the joke to someone who has always been shit at math?

no freedom of movement

Source?

• constant shortage of any goods

Think about why this might be, Friend. Really think hard about it. What large geopolitical things were happening at the time?

• being a dictatorship

Yes, of the proletariat

• (contrary to your first point) a housing shortage

Again, source? Also, wondering what you think happened before East Germany existed that might have contributed to this. Surely this changed over time

• a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

Because people working 3 jobs under capitalism have so much free time? What does this even mean?

• political pressure

Again, what does this mean? All Political cultures and institutions exert pressures on their population… That’s how politics works.

• control over the media

I’ll agree that the siege mentality of much of former socialism led to a lack of press freedom, which was ultimately detrimental, but again… Why might this have been?

• the fucking stasi

Quick, name the West German secret police!

Let’s assume for a minute that everything you’ve said is entirely true. If we’re to be thoughtful about this. East Germany was a historically poorer, agrarian, region of Germany, much less industrialized, artificially lopped off from the west (not by the USSR, btw, who wanted a unified, nonaligned Germany, like the allies had done with Austria), it was heavily sanctioned, had been bombed to shit, much like the rest of Europe, but was made to pay the USSR reparations, that it wasn’t as capable of paying, as a unified Germany would have been. The USSR even dismantled entire east German factories and shipped them back to rebuild their own industrial base.

How do you expect any country to not come out of that with considerable problems?

And the GDR did have considerable problems. I think you and I would disagree on what those problems were, but in the broad strokes, that much we can agree on.

But I would contend that, even with that in mind, East Germany ended up being a much more positive socialist experiment in many respects then say, Romania, which suffered a much more severe centralization of power, and cult of personality issues, then East Germany did.

In fact, looking at the makeup of the East German Parliament and its mass organizations, there was a much greater degree of representation of various social cleavages then in some other Eastern Bloc states.

While you could say argue that this was only ‘on paper’, that really depends on what period of East German history you’re looking at, as the electoral system was altered a handful of times.

Regardless though, this was an expression of the fact that East Germany had a more open Political culture due to its institutions being establisehed as part of an intended nonaligned, unified, German state. And due to the fact that it had received the socializing effects of industrial capitalism that gave it things like an incredibly progressive Queer movement, that other Eastern Bloc states, which were formerly feudal backwaters, hadn’t developed.

Tl;Dr - this shit is a lot more complicated than listing off bullet points for “why East Germany was Evil”, That I was taught in the 7th grade.

I miss Me_IRA

I’m doing my part! o7

Rent free

I enjoyed the trigonometry unit in my highschool geometry class, but that’s because it was mostly proofs, and those were just philosophy about triangles.

Richard Nixon’s head in a jar, from Futurama

As a colorblind person, this new color palette is so much fucking worse

Bro, all they did was give you info on the historic stance of the UN, on Taiwan. Is the whole United Nations a “CCP shill” too?

From the OP:

EZLN, the favorite example of Anarchists and revisionists of an alternative to Marxism-Leninism, has now collapsed due to lack of solid theoretical fundamentals.

From another comment:

Got in an argument with an anarchist who was pro-Zapatista and called me a redfash tankie. I doubt this will sway him in the slightest.

There’s clearly a dishonest interpretation of what’s going on, with a revolutionary movement in the global south, being used by western leftists to dunk on other western leftists.

And I’m sure it will. But it feels super weird to me that this is being used to dunk on anarchists.

The Zapatistas suffer from a problem of ideological eclecticism. There are MLs, Maoists, Anarchists, liberals, and indigenous nationalists all tied up in that movement, and it can’t be easily pinned down.

I wish I could find it, but I once saw an interview with Subcomandante Marcos where the interviewer asks him about international support, and he gives a somewhat exasperated sigh and a knowing look to the camera and says “yes, from the Anarchists”.

There’s a clear feeling from the Zapatistas, that while they’re grateful for the support from western anarchists, they’re also frustrated by this simplification of who and what they are by westerners.

So it just feels gross and weird to me, that one group of western leftists is using the very real, existential, struggle of a revolutionary movement (no matter how flawed), as an excuse to dunk on another group of western leftists.

Idk, maybe log off, actually

You’ve hacked up the quote to show only the parts you want to show. The rest of the paragraph you quoted reads as follows:

We will tell you the reasons and process by which this decision was made little by little in the following texts. I can only tell you that this evaluation, in its final phase, began about 3 years ago. We will also explain to you what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy is like and how it has been developing.

As others in this thread have been saying… They’re restructuring to address the situation with the cartels. We’ll have to see what that looks like, and if it will work. But it’s dishonest to characterize this as a collapse, as though they’re dissolving these political organs, and nothing else. Which they’re clearly saying isn’t the case.

Removed by mod

So, I want to engage in as good of faith possible, here.

The content of North Korean doctrine seems particularly discomforting to people here, lol. Not sure why this is the country people feel the need to stand up for.

It’s not about whether it’s discomforting, it’s about whether or not what you’re saying is even true. I have zero reason to believe what you posted has any basis in fact. You initially copy/pasted it with no citation.

Now, the links you’re giving are decidedly not Korean. The DPRK puts out works of theory and the like, fairly readily. All I’m asking for is a primary source for this.

But let’s assume it’s 100% true, for a minute.

Even if it is, and Korean socialism does look the way that these 10 points describe, why might that be? What would drive such an insular, personality-cult driven, set of doctrine?

Could it, perchance, be the fact that the United States set about occupying half of the Korean Peninsula? Reinstalling many of the Japanese colonial administrators the Korean people had just spent decades trying to kick out?

Might it have something to do with the fact that the US bombed the entire peninsula so heavily, that US pilots complained that they were no more targets, and that Koreans literally began living in caves and a result?

If you actually care about Koreans, and are unsettled by the centralization of power in the DPRK, then you ought to recognize that it’s US imperial policy that has irrevocably shaped the destiny of the Korean peninsula.

If there’s any reason to “Stand up” for the DPRK, it’s for the exact reasons you’ve laid out. If a society is too heal, and overcome the sort of backward despotism you’ve presented, then the answer is surely to not isolate it more. To not continue to fuel the siege mentality that drives the state ideology. But rather, to work for peace and unification, so that the whole of Korea might, once again, be able to shape its own destiny.

Can you provide a source for this? No use in responding if we don’t even know if it’s real