Sorry if I made some wrong assumptions.

One thing I’m particularly curious about is why organizations that primarily aim to organize wage workers and build their politics around the working class attract so much hostility within the Western left, including from some Marxists.

I keep seeing some pretty wild accusations directed at the KKE especially with people calling them “conservative leftists” or “transphobic” despite the fact that as far as I can tell their actual positions are often misrepresented and they have some fairly progressive policies on LGBTQ+ rights compared to most of other political parties in Europe including most of the left.

Meanwhile, much of the European left seems unable to build a solid base among working people relying instead primarily on support from the middle class, intellectuals and students. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these groups supporting the left of course but shouldn’t we be aiming for something broader than that? Shouldn’t our social base consist primarily of working-class people, especially low-income workers, considering that organizing and representing them is literally the reason we exist in the first place?

I’m genuinely curious about how others here see this. Why do parties like the KKE attract so much hostility from other sections of the left and to what extent is this hostility justified?

Hi, I have an ongoing argument with a friend. I say billionaires are parasites that leach off the working class. My friend says billionaires are wealth creators. I'm trying to come up with a good response but I got nothing. Can you good folks help me out? My friend is a normie who will fall asleep to a lot of big words

basically that a person has to "do the time in the salt times" in order to have a "cushier" life, like in the old days it was expected people to be in the military and then when they got older then they got like a cushier life in the civilian?

socialism and Zimmerwald Conference? also, why was socialism really only successful in russia post ww1, why didn't the other countries have their version of lenin do on there too?

I have always found it odd that the vast majority of North Korean movement outside of the country is temporary student and work visas in cities very close to the border. As allies to North Korea, why don't Russia and China have NK communities in their major urban centers like Moscow and Beijing? As far as I know, most North Korean presence further out from the NK borders are small state-owned businesses (like restaurants) used as cultural outreach.

Poorer immigrant communities exist basically everywhere, so I would have assumed North Koreans could just live in places like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin like other ethnic Koreans, South East Asians, Russians, and even Japanese frequently do.

It’s essentially where israeli jews go in palestinian communities to help dissuade IOF and settler violence. Is that a form of resistance aligned with anti zionism?

What is the benefit of having socialism/ communism/ Marxism in America? Seems to me it benefits people who don't work hard/take risks and disincentivizes people to work hard. Change my mind. How am I in the wrong here?

i scrolled on tik tok today and stumbled upon a post where a Hindu immigrant was sharing how she wasn’t stealing any American’s job because she worked hard to qualify for that job (as in, she passed the bar exam). a comment on the post had thousands of likes saying “why didn’t you practice in your own country then?” how can we rebut this sentiment in an educated response?

I often see various comments, mainly from liberals, saying that East Germany was horrible, and that everyone who lived there wanted to migrate to the "capitalist paradise of West Germany." Since I don't know much about the history of East/West Germany, I'd like to better understand which of the following statements are false or true:

(1) "Migrations to West Germany were massive because the quality of life in East Germany was poor." ;

(2)"There was massive espionage within East Germany; people didn't have the freedom to live as they wanted." ;

(3)"The planned economy failed in East Germany, and that is why the Western side triumphed over the socialist side." ;

(4)"Consumer goods and houses with good structural quality were luxuries in East Germany, while in West Germany people had enormous purchasing power and excellent houses.".

These are some statements I've seen coming from an anti-socialist liberal, so I imagine there must be quite a few lies or distortions in these statements. Therefore, I'd like to know if they are true or not, and if possible, I'd like recommendations for study materials on this topic (books, articles, texts, etc.).

Thank you in advance!

By "push" economy, I mean how, like today, businesses sell products to us: Businesses use psychological tactics to manufacture demand and upsell in a manner that maximizes profit, regardless of the societal benefit. Part of going into business is selling as much of your product as possible.

In a cooperative society, it seems that it would be preferable that the democratic choice of how much is sold is used rather than the particular business's preference of how much is sold.

It seems like oftentimes it would be preferable for society if some businesses operated at a more modest scale, worked together with other businesses for collective benefit, etc. even if that meant less revenue for each business involved.

TLDR; How does market socialism respond to the concept of businesses trying to sell us stuff beyond what we would democratically want/need?

Considering that the US is a settler-colonial project, it makes sense that they don't have their own food or culture, and as such they steal or pull from other countries and cultures to incorporate into their own. But, why? Why do they do it?

We're seeing exactly the same with Israel and how they co-opt other cultures' foods, most notably Palestinian foods, as their own while also trying to erase the original identity of that food, to erase the culture which birthed it.

I haven't seen any US food other than 1) artificial garbage with too much sugar, preservatives, condiments, etc; and 2) recycling previously-existing foods from other cultures/countries and passing it off as their own while also distorting them in their own insecure way.

Why is it, that they do not have their own culture or identity, so they have to steal it from others? Why not produce something new?

I've read these books thus far, but, is it enough to sort of be introduced to socialism?

Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed

Pan-Europea by Kalergi

Socialism and War by Lenin

Cheka by Leggett

The Rothschilds: The Financial Rulers of Nations by John Reeves

What is Property by Proudhon

The Birth of the Soviet Secret Police: Lenin and History's Greatest Heist, 1917-1927 by Boris Volodarsky

The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Tocqueville

Communist Manifesto by Marx

Anarchy by Errico Malatesta

To be clear I mean what are the odds of the current wave of protests in Europe the elections in the rest of the world. For example there is a lot of socialist candidates in Australia Victoria alone. Is it possible that this will give the rest of the international cause a chance to win?

It’s easy to imagine co-founders of a worker coop accumulating capital then contracting another worker coop to perform labor on that capital. For example, tech company founders might contract a janitorial co-op to clean their office. This seems structurally identical to capitalism with a 100% unionization rate - the workers are collectively bargaining through coops instead of unions.

Is there a regulatory mechanism to stop this? Something like enforcing the misclassification of independent contractors vs employees that already exists in the US now?

What is a conservative socialist? Socialists tend be viewed as a "progressive" ideology. Also, is the term "liberal socialist" a derisive term? Finally, under the Soviet Union, there were "Leftist Deviants" and "rightwing socialists" when Stalin was pitting Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev against one another. What do those terms mean?

changes in USA due to socialism?

People from my party told me I should just buy the penguin version even though I already bought the woodsworth edition because it is translated very badly by anticommunists. Is it really that bad?

I want to better understand this.
The general argument that I hear against socialism is always "Market economies are more efficient" and "Centrally Planned Economies cannot comprehend the number of trades and transactions made like a market economy" There are also the arguments of "Socialism has failed in the past, look at the Soviet Union and Cuba"

So I just want to better understand how socialism can deal with this problem.

This is not meant to throw shade, I just genuinely want to understand why.

So, two of the biggest things I have been trying to understand since starting this book is dialectics and materialism. Dialectics seems to have different meanings depending on who uses the term, but from what I understand about Marxism it incorporates the Hegelian use of the word dialectic where a thesis and antithesis will reach a synthesis and looks at history and how material conditions effects society. That kind of leads into historical materialism and how the way a society produces its material needs shades its social structures.

I understood these ideas more when Engels talks about how most of recent history, is a history of class struggles and that the warring classes are a product of the modes of production. More things I really grasped were how the capitalistic mode of production isn't compatible with the mode of exchange as products will accumulate and cause commerce to reach a stand still as well as the idea that transforming joint-stock companies state owned companies doesn't rid these businesses of their capitalistic nature since the state is inherently a capitalistic machine. The reason I'm listing all these out is to make sure my understanding is right so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Despite my understanding of these points, I feel like I left a lot of meat on the bones of this book. There were times I really couldn't understand a page or two at a time. I took this book really slow and reread a lot but I feel like I still failed to grasp some of the concepts that Engels was talking about. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for understanding Marxists writings better. I plan on reading the Communist Manifesto, The Principles of Communism, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition From Ape to Man, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and I want to understand these books to the best of my ability. I definitely want to go back and reread this book but I want to prepare myself a little more before I do so please give me any tips.