Lithuanian here who signed the petition like a year or so ago.

There’s a decent chunk of Lithuanian gamers, but social medias and spaces that they inhabit are primarily in Lithuanian language such as Facebook, Lithuanian gaming groups on Discord/TikTok and things like that. Rarely there are some odd Lithuanians like me who venture out to the English speaking web to sites such as Reddit, but there’s no guarantee the initiative will be found or if the person will care enough to sign it.

Granted, take what I say with a spoonful of salt as I don’t actively seek out or look for Lithuanian digital spaces at all, this is based on my experience with friends and acquaintances.

Gonna have an unpopular take here, but pornography and sex work under our current system shouldn’t be celebrated as a “bastion of freedom”, given how it’s selling access to one’s body and sexuality as a product. Even if they agree to it consensually, the choice happens in a world where money decides what people can or can’t do, if one is going to survive or not. This makes the concept of “real consent” complicated, because the need of money, much like the need of food or essential goods can force people into doings they wouldn’t freely choose if survival wasn’t on the line.

Given this, one could definitely consider it commodified rape - it’s not necessarily violent like forced rape, but it’s still shaped by money, power, and pressure in a system where people’s bodies get turned into things to be bought.

The law does suck ass and shouldn’t be supported though, the issue stems with a system where our survival depends on money (with selling your body being a way to get by) and not individual morals. I fully agree with Yidit when he says that it’ll just cause sex work to become more dangerous by moving it underground.

Signed it, but I wonder how much of an actual problem is it in the EU. Whenever I hear of conversion therapy, it’s usually from within US.

At least his critique is clear and coherent.

If validity of theory was based on what its writers had done, then Marx would be worthless and Urban Guerilla doctrine would be invaluable.

Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.

Yes, trade isn’t exclusive to capitalism, I never claimed otherwise. However, there is a distinction between commodity exchange for exchange-value (capitalist trade) and international distribution of goods to satisfy needs (socialist distribution), whether through planned allocation or transitional forms like labor vouchers.

Wage labor is specific to capitalism, it’s a sale of labor-power as a commodity, exchanged for a wage, with surplus value being appropriated by a class/managerial apparatus. This is THE fundamental relation of capitalism, and you’d be better off reading theory than blindly quoting it.

Though I will give a concession - socialism is such a meaningless term that it means like 4 different things depending on who says it: liberals would say it’s social democracy, ML’s say its state capitalism, Marxists and Leninists say it’s socialist mode of production (post-transition period) and Posadists would say it’s when nuclear annihilation. A word doesn’t make a thing so if you consider state capitalism to be socialist - fair, all power to you. However - Marxists, Leninists, Liberals would all collectively disagree. You did drop a Lenin quote to strengthen your argument so let me do the same:

• Lenin, The Tax in Kind

No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.

In the same text he also calls NEP USSR as state capitalist due to the concessions he had to make for the transition, which is explicitly made distinct from Socialism.

And I’m adamant that it’s a mischaracterization. Identifying the dominant mode of production is not a “one drop rule”, it’s literally foundational Marxist analysis - modes are defined by prevailing relations of production, not how it’s managed or ideological labels put onto them.

You’ve done a really good job misrepresenting my argument, keep it up.

That is another western chauvinist talking point.

Yeah, any critique of 3rd world communist countries is western chauvinism, therefore we should avoid looking at those countries through objective materialist perspective and uncritically support them just because they’re third-worldist - that’s something an imperialist crakkka like me should know.

That any development of industry (the primary task of countries who’ve just freed themselves from colonial rule), is a “betrayal” of socialism, because it didn’t go according to whatever the given critic laid out as sufficiently socialist enough, and that only the western critics of socialist countries have the correct plan.

I’d like you to point out where I said that industrialization is bad. The argument is literally about how the development was achieved and I concluded that it was through (state) capitalism and capitalist mode of production rather than socialism, even saying how it’s good that they managed to build up wealth. I explicitly didn’t moralize this either, this is literally how these countries materially functioned.

My critique also comes strictly from Marxism which is essentially the basis for communism regardless of culture, but sure.

China specifically can’t be called state capitalist in the slightest, considering that the CPC stands above the political system

You’re confusing political power with class relations, the key isn’t who holds political power but what social relations of production are. If a state (CPC controlled or otherwise) oversees an economy where wage labor, capital accumulation, commodity exchange persists, then it’s still state capitalism.

What no theory does to you.

Yeah, if you’re operating within Stalinist ML bubble. Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s inherently “true”, and it can be healthy to read other communist sides/perspectives. Some recommendations would be Marx’s writings, Lenin, Bordiga if you want a lesser known but still respected Leninist who’s critical of ML’s/Stalinism.

No one claims magic here, and it’s true - a transitional DOTP period must happen, but it’s not a license to preserve the capitalist relations indefinitely. The fundamental relations of production that I’ve mentioned must be consciously dismantled over time as a precondition for socialism, that’s what the proletarian dictatorship is literally for. If not, then it’s only a matter of time until the state reverts to bourgeois control disguised as “socialist”.

Nationalizing capital while leaving value production intact leaves capitalism functionally preserved, read Critique of the Gotha Programme by Marx where he makes this explicit - converting private to state property without abolishing wage labor/value mediation and calling it Socialism is literally Lassallean nonsense.

Capitalist production is not magically nullified by the presence of a party member or state shareholding either: workers still sell their labor-power, surplus value is still extracted, production is for market sale or in other words, capitalist mode of production prevails at full force. Legal oversight is a managerial form, not an abolition of class relations.

Meanwhile the success in question: The 3rd world communist countries have managed to more or less industrialize and build up wealth, but under (state) capitalist system with all the bells of whistles which are markets, commodity production, wage labor, etc. In other words, they used capitalism to build up wealth.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually think they had some absolutely amazing policies for the workers like free housing and social benefits, and good on them for building themselves up. However, this has nothing to do with socialism (socialist mode of production in this case) or communism as it was achieved via capitalism, the same system that drove colonialism.

Love me some opportunism to appease reactionaries and get them to vote for you. Many such cases!

Though to be fair, the exact same sentiment is here in Lithuania, people hating Ukrainians cause they earn more while doing less or so the narrative goes, and it’s one of those issues that people complain about but don’t actually expect to be solved. Whoever gets into office likely won’t act on their campaign promises to put “poles first”, unless they really want to play into the whole “nationalistic hero batting for the cultural community of the nation” shtick.

I love how the conversation went from “all billionaires are bad eat the rich!!” to “hey this good billionaire is talking smack about a bad billionaire, time to defend them from criticism because they did good thing”

Doing nothing is praxis

Pretty much, Russia has definitely earned the reputation even back when it was being “socialist” - it’s an imperialist hellhole, one that also meddles in today’s politics by funding far-right parties like AfD.

Though, I personally take issue when the russophobia doesn’t stop at targeting the state and its ruling class who made these decisions, but to the Russian working class as well, all of whom are getting exploited in the standard capitalist fashion but also a section being conscripted to kill and die for their ruling class benefit and their imperialist interests. That’s why it doesn’t feel right to me when a country targets Russian nationals with discriminatory laws in a fashion that’s not too different from 9/11’s treatment of Arab people that most of us can agree was wrong.

You personally wouldn’t travel back and forth, but this doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone - there were and still are a decent amount of Russian nationals working/living here with their families, distant or otherwise, still living back home in Russia/Belarus. No matter your nationality, you might want to go back to your home country and visit your family. What if there’s an emergency/funeral you have to attend after visiting? It might not be a valid reason to go back (given how vague the articles are), and you might lose your residence because of it. It’s only one example of course, but there definitely are more scenarios like this one.

Also, reading one of the news articles, counter-terrorism prevention isn’t even mentioned once, and it wouldn’t make sense given how I already outlined how it would be easier to get tools for terrorism locally, much safely too given how you don’t have to go through security that scrutinizes you more due to war-time, not to mention it doesn’t prevent terrorism from foreign agents who don’t own a residence here. If anything, the article mentions how these methods are there to further sanction Russia, to show solidarity to Ukraine and “limit specific Russian/Belarusian citizen rights”.

Religion is just one of the tools used to deprive people of human rights. Without this tool, they’d just pick another like “return to tradition” or “national values” or “anti-something measures” and use it as an excuse.

I dunno chat, as a Lithuanian (as if it matters) this feels like a bit of an over reach in a war on terror in US type of way. This isn’t the only law that explicitly targets Russians/Belarussians as a security threat that has been enacted.

These people are often just nationals, citizens of their country and not automatically foreign agents. If they were here doing espionage, they would report back using encrypted channels on the internet which is much cheaper than traveling back and forth. If they were smuggling tools for terrorism like bombs, it’s much easier to smuggle them over the border or even obtain them locally than having the foreign agent themselves smuggle.

I can’t help but view it as discriminatory in a similar way how Muslim and Arab populations were treated post-9/11, it just doesn’t make much sense unless I’m missing something.

no way, bernie is actually based??

(Though to be honest, I don’t get Bernie hate that much - sure, he’s a bourgeoisie liberal and the perception around him being some revolutionary socialist is just outright false, but he lowkey might be the only ‘sane’ liberal out there in the US)

I don’t have enough hubris to say that I have all the answers, especially when it comes to the way forward - this is something that’s up to the revolutionary party collectively to decide, but I do disagree with the ML’s theory and methodology, especially with “Socialism in one state” or the ‘worship’ of State Capitalism. However, if you had a gun to my head, I’d probably manage to squeak out something possibly infantile like this:

When it comes to proletarian revolutions that attempt to build socialism, internationalism is a necessity (both to allow international trade to help meet everyone’s needs and weakening of the capitalist global order and reducing them as a threat) - once proletarian and an international party takes power, the focus should be in coordinating/exporting the revolution worldwide mostly via the support of proletarian movements, else it will get isolated, start playing for survival, have to adapt to capitalism and eventually collapse or degenerate as seen historically.

Also, instead of treating state capitalism and markets as a transitional phase that is constantly expanded/built upon, it should instead not be viewed as legitimate and rather something residual, to be replaced as soon as possible. In theory, this should allow for a certain amount of goods to be produced for use, and goods that are more scarce could be produced as commodities and rationed through money.

Once sufficient economic restructuring for transition towards socialist mode of production is done, that’s when the transition towards non-accumulative labor vouchers can be done, which should eliminate the law of value and capital relations.

I don’t think it’s particularly productive to back up controversial claims within the Marxist current with statements like “it’s clear that xyz” or “it’s without question.” These topics are controversial because they aren’t clear and are questionable claims.

I really appreciate this and you are right - the claims I made do go against ML theory, and whether something is right or wrong in this case is dependent on one’s views and perspectives (as in intra-Marxism) rather than cold, hard, unquestionable facts. I will definitely try to avoid such loaded language in the future.

In essence, I do largely agree with you - the material conditions in the historically socialist countries (USSR specifically in this case but can also more or less be applied to others) be it their peasant problem or being isolated due to international revolutions failing did require them to do what they had done and develop using state capitalism or “building socialism in one state”, and they were successful in that regard. Same applies to the anti-colonial national liberation movements - they were successful and historically progressive and indeed should be celebrated.

However, the issue that this is a win for (state) capitalism and all the baggage that comes with it rather than actual socialism, given how socialist mode of production was never realized and arguments such as “people’s billionaires who will get punished by going against the party” or “the economy was nationalized” don’t define socialism. Wage labor remained (therefore surplus extraction too), commodity production and markets both within the country and interaction with international capitalist world market had remained (Why Russia isn’t socialist talks about this). One could also make an argument that even in those countries where capitalists got done away with (which is a proletarian W) but state capitalism persisted, the functions of the capitalist remained and were carried out by mere managers, like how Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific points out:

Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.

And again to reiterate, rather than being a win for socialism, it’s instead a win for a regressive form of it which is state capitalism that’s comparable to social democracy.

As about your point about the rejection of AES, that’s not my argument at all - instead of rejecting any attempt outright and waiting for a perfect revolution, one should instead support all revolutionary attempts but, most importantly, realize when the revolution had failed/ended instead of clinging onto false hope which is something that ML’s tend to do at least from my perspective. Of course, when a revolution fails depends on ones perspective, but from mine it’s when the proletarian revolution (which must be internationalist) fails to spread and a country has to start fully focusing inwards for its survival within global capitalism and the inevitable participation in it, like what happened in USSR in 1920’s - at that point, it’s only a matter of time until the country falls to revisionism, degeneration of socialist ideas and the aforementioned full reintegration into global capitalist system.

That being said, I really do appreciate your responses, even though some of them might be too long for me to respond to.

Love how the exact same thing is now being said about the US lmao (the collapse part at least), I LOVE the media machine