No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26817410

ininewcrow 43 points 2 years ago

Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.

George Carlin

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TankovayaDiviziya 4 points 2 years ago

After college, I realised this after working in a stressful job. Much of what they teach us in school about being on time, wearing uniforms, obedience to authority and meeting project deadlines, it is to prepare us for the cut throat working environment and conditions. Of course we have to be taught common manners, how to be polite and all other basic things, but a lot of it is to train us to be efficient and unquestioningly obedient workers. The legacy of Prussian education system still lingers.

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Tyfud 34 points 2 years ago

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sudo 11 points 2 years ago

No one is going to give you education.

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Cowbee 26 points 2 years ago

If you want to make sense of the current political moment, and why electoral politics under capitalism can never, and will never, serve anyone but the wealthy capitalists, look no further than the most influential political theorist of the 20th century: Vladimir Lenin. A thread.

I highly recommend reading this thread. If you want an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, I made one you can check out here.

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something_random_tho 9 points 2 years ago

At the risk of getting downvoted to oblivion, honest discussion. Obviously capitalism isn’t working in America. But in Russia, starting under Lenin, tons of people still suffered and died, and still do to this day, no? So is Lenin’s ideology really better than the US economic system, when either he failed to implement it, or he did and it still resulted in serious issues?

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BrainInABox 12 points 2 years ago

But in Russia, starting under Lenin, tons of people still suffered and died

Starting under Lenin? You have an extremely fucking rosey view of the Russian Empire under the Tsar.

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Cowbee 10 points 2 years ago

By and large, Socialism was an incredible improvement compared to the Tsarist system, though not some fairytale perfect wonderland, and Socialism was far better than current Capitalism is in the Russian Federation. 7 million excess deaths occured from the transition from Socialism to Capitalism, as the previous safety nets were dissolved or sold off at bargain prices to foreign Capitalists.

The Bolshevik revolution was positive, suffering was dramatically reduced with its implementation, not increased. With Socialism came a dramatic and sustained improvement in worker's rights, equality of the sexes, a doubling of life expectancies, an end to famine, incredible scientific achievement in a country that began the century as an underdeveloped agrarian backwater, and a democratization of society in a way that far supercedes the former Tsarist system and the future Capitalist system in the Russian Federation.

I don't know what you mean by "to this day," to this day Russia is now Capitalist, it hasn't been Socialist since the beginning of the 90's. If you want a nuanced critique of the USSR, Blackshirts and Reds is a good option, it's the second item in my reading list if you want a link.

Moreover, Russia transitioned to Socialism when Russia was a feudal backwater and the US was transitioning to the world superpower, it was always far behind in world power and yet did a better job of maximizing resource usage in favor of the Workers, despite the US's Imperialism.

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anomnom 4 points 2 years ago

I think the previous commenter was also implying that since the Soviet system collapsed it was also not going to work.

Also what about the scarcity of resources that still plagued the Soviet Union when it collapsed (and seems to have been a big factor)? There were an awful lot of bread lines and defectors for an optimal system.

I have no delusions that capitalism is the solution either, especially as automation takes the power of labor away (what little is left anyway after the political weakening it's gone through since the 80s). I firmly believe some form of socially conscious democracy is absolutely going to be necessary for humanity thrive and survive it's own past actions (poverty, wealth inequality, environmental neglect, etc.). But that means surviving late-stage capitalism and not falling into a massive war that ends in a subdivision of ideologies like the last 2 world wars.

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Cowbee 5 points 2 years ago

The Soviet system lasted nearly a full century, and worked very well for the vast majority of its existence. If someone wants to make the claim that collapse is inevitable just because the USSR was dissolved, they need to do the legwork to prove it as such. We can discuss what went right and what went wrong in the USSR, including how and why it dissolved, but without legwork assertions like "collapse was inevitable" can be ignored and not taken seriously as there's nothing to take seriously.

As for scarcity of resources, that's something that can actually be addressed, but I want to clear up the rest of that paragraph first. For 1, I never said the USSR was "optimal," and no Marxist believes it to have been a perfect wonderland, just a much better system with its own flaws, albeit lesser flaws. For 2, social services aren't a bad thing, especially not in a system that saw by far the most devastation from World War II. The fact is, addressing hunger was a priority for the Socialist system as full employment was one of the benefits and necessities for that form of economy, unlike Capitalism, so even if we assume everyone acted selfishly there was no need for a "reserve army of labor."

Now to actually address scarcity of resources. The fundamental issue with the Soviet system and resource gathering was that it could not depend on international trade for anything. The Capitalist countries all made deliberate choices to provide unstable or unfavorable trade with the Socialists, so they had to develop all of their resources internally, even ones scarce in the regions controlled by the Socialists. Even then, GDP growth was some of the highest in the world while wealth disparity some of the lowest. Further, much of the economy was spent on millitary research and development in order to keep the US at bay.

As for your final paragraph, I don't think we actually disagree here, though I imagine your "socially conscious democracy" is different from what you think the Marxist-Leninist states look like. Surviving Imperialism as the highest form of Capitalism requires, above all, an end to the US Empire as the world's greatest Imperialist power, and an uplifiting of the Global South. We can't move beyond Capitalism globally while the US Empire still functions the way it does, by "dollar recycling" off of all the other countries and owning 800 millitary bases globally to keep the Dollar standard going.

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RememberTheApollo_ 1 point 2 years ago

Does being a mafia state and an oligarchy under an authoritarian still qualify as capitalist? Not trying to dismiss the argument on those grounds, but when the economic system is almost entirely captured by a few powerful individuals in a kleptocracy is that even capitalism anymore? The US is just now getting slapped in the face with our economic system almost completely captured by oligarchs that are inserting themselves into political control.

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Cowbee 1 point 2 years ago

The US is at a much higher and more developed form of Capitalism, also called "late-stage" Capitalism. This is a part of Capitalist development.

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 4 points 2 years ago

a lot of macroeconomists want to divorce capitalism and governmental corruption, but that's because they're capitalists.

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emeralddawn45 3 points 2 years ago

Ask yourself how much you actually know about Russia, and how much qas taught to you by people who wanted to maintain capitalist superiority. Then do some research outside of a lemmy thread.

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Shanmugha -2 points 2 years ago

Nothing will work until people get a few basic things straight. Two simple thoughts humanity still avoids:

I want to live well
It is my responsibility to make my life well

Until each and everyone understands that and starts acting accordingly, no amount of -isms or whatnot is going to make anything better. Now, some can argue like "but today's world is much better than slavery", to which there is a simple answer:

slavery has not died yet. Oh, the language was removed from legislature of some countries? Go tell people who are enslaved (literally, like documents taken away, chains on hands etc) how good that is
more generally, exploitation is still a thing. Who cares what language it is spoken about?

So... yeah, Lenin and the gang did exactly zero things better, tons of people continued to suffer and die and there was no end to it long after Lenin died

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explodicle 6 points 2 years ago

Those two rules are purely individualistic, though. What about problems that we all need to coordinate on in order to make our lives well, like climate change?

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Shanmugha -1 points 2 years ago

You picked quite an easy example :)

to live well, will it be better/easier to have climate stable or to be forced to adapt to unknown future?
so let's go do something about it

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 1 point 2 years ago

i'm much more of a malthusian tho

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GuyFawkes 16 points 2 years ago

Hence why Republicans are anti-education.

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sunfur82 4 points 2 years ago

Exactly. In fact, didn't Trump once say he loved the uneducated? An informed electorate, one that's capable of critical thinking, is the one thing every dictator would fear. Makes it harder for them to manipulate the masses. Which would explain why Trump wants to close down the Department of Education.

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QuarterSwede 13 points 2 years ago

There’s a reason the rich don’t send their kids to public schools.

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ILikeBoobies 3 points 2 years ago

Because then they would have to make public education good enough to not give them an advantage

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Potatisen 4 points 2 years ago

Americans should crowd source to get this in every newspaper and on social ads across the country. Don't know if it'll do anything but... Fingers crossed.

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blazeknave 0 points 2 years ago

This real? He was a rich racist dick. Didn't take him for a man of the people.

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TimeChild 6 points 2 years ago

Stuff You Should Know did an episode on him and I don’t know how people come to that conclusion. The Wikipedia on Franklin gives some background on it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_(Peanuts)

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