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Cake day: March 2nd, 2024

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  • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldYes
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    5 months ago

    Those words can mean those things, but communism is also used to describe a political system. After all, part of the definition of communism is statelessness which is entirely about the politics and not the economics (source).

    Also, just as democracy might be used to describe a political system, it commonly taken to mean liberal democracy, and thus in most contemporary contexts implies an economic system of capitalism.

    So I just think it depends on the context what people mean by these terms. Of course you can try to define communism only in economic terms, but since the term is so abused and “inflated” it’s hard to claim it has any singular or absolute meaning.

    Depending on who you are talking to, communism has practically opposite meanings, for example, in public schools in the U.S. they teach that communism is when all economic activity is controlled by a centralized state, which is ironically the exact opposite of how Marx defined communism.

    The same can be said of democracy.





  • I’m not sure how much solace we should take from inauthentic political posturing, but we should certainly try to use being a political football to our advantage (since we can’t help that we’ve been victimized this way, but we can try to make something of the national spotlight being put on us).

    To that end I think it’s beneficial for us to raise our standards and demand more than just words from politicians claiming to be supportive allies. Biden wants to be seen as supporting trans folks? Well, we demand the VA cover gender affirming surgeries. That’s a specific transphobic VA policy that needs to be overturned, and Biden can show he’s an ally by doing something about it.


  • I get why people are so freaked out about voting third party, especially when mass political actions like voting don’t seem to handle nuance well. So advocating a simple slogan like “vote third party” might be irresponsible, but people seem almost irrationally afraid of third party voting in contexts where it should be entirely rational to vote third party.

    For example, in a swing state it’s clearly useful to vote for the Lesser Evil (in recent U.S. elections that would be the Democrats, of course). But in states where there is a supermajority and there is almost no chance the state will flip, for example California which will certainly go to the Democrats or Arkansas which will go Republican, voting third party becomes helpful because it might enable the third party to receive federal funding.

    There are various objections I have considered to this strategy, the one I think that comes up immediately is that if you vote third party it takes a vote that might otherwise contribute to changing the status of a state as stronghold or swing state, basically those margins matter and you should always be pushing the margin even if not likely to make a difference (just on the slim chance it does make a difference).

    In that instance I think it’s just a matter of weighing the good: does the good from voting for the third party justify the slight risk of not being part of an unexpected shift in votes? This is clearly contextual, see recent upsets in Georgia (who went to Biden in 2020) and Pennsylvania (who went to Trump in 2016). I think the responsibility is on the voter to research their state demographics and those probabilities and make a decision. If you want to do less work, sure, just vote for the Lesser Evil.

    What I don’t understand is the kind of blind dogmatism that refuses to acknowledge that there even could be reasons to vote third party, and that doing so is wrong a priori.