Fair enough, I mostly agree. I can imagine that China, Vietnam, and Laos are on the list because of, uh, capitalist roading, and the DPRK is nationalist to a reactionary degree and kind of culty, but what criticism would you apply to Cuba? Do they do capitalist roading too? I don’t hear much about them in that regard.

Is it your stance that every nominally Marxist country is actually Marxist? That there are no revisionist countries even though, for example, the USSR spent most of its existence being revisionist?

I always thought that communism has been proven not to work multiple times throughout history.

The more accurate lesson would be that communist nations have been defeated by capitalist hegemony multiple times throughout history, mainly during the Cold War; the countries didn’t just implode of their own accord. Now, it’s fair to criticize them for this, if you have an ideology all about material conditions and then you aren’t able to survive those conditions, you probably messed up, but I think that’s a very different assertion from “communism doesn’t work”.

You probably want to replace “atheism” with “antitheism” in that context. I would disagree either way, but I think you’d have a point with antitheism.

I apologize about the language bit. I rarely get a liberal arguing about this who wouldn’t use such a term as “comrade” derisively.

Anyway, I explained the reason I shared it, which is that it is:

showing Stalin getting outvoted on a basic ideological issue by revisionists.

But that’s not precisely what you asked for, I just don’t have a good source on your real question.

As for your books, you may realize that I am a bit short on time and do not have the energy to read 4 entire novel-length books instead of specific pages or chapters.

Let me start by saying that the general idea of this response is fair, but I checked and I think it’s only 3 books, two of which are novella-length at best (I think the Losurdo one is a bit longer). I would furthermore like to encourage you to click on the link and glance at The Soviet World because it has a nice hyperlinked table of contents and most of the individual sections, clearly labeled by topic, are just a few pages each.

Is this the sort of thing you’re looking for?

Within a few weeks after the 13th Congress Pravda published Stalin’s report…. Stalin’s report also contained an attack on Zinoviev, though without naming him:

“It is often said that we have the dictatorship of the party. I recall that in one of our resolutions, even, it seems, a resolution of the 12th Congress, such an expression was allowed to pass, through an oversight of course. Apparently some comrades think that we have a dictatorship of the party and not of the working class. But that is nonsense, comrades.”

Of course Stalin knew perfectly well that Zinoviev in his political report to the 12th Congress had put forward the concept of the dictatorship of the party and had sought to substantiate it. It was not at all through an oversight that the phrase was included in the unanimously adopted resolution of the Congress.

Zinoviev and Kamenev, reacting quite sharply to Stalin’s thrust, insisted that a conference of the core leadership of the party be convened. The result was a gathering of 25 Central Committee members, including all members of the Politburo. Stalin’s arguments against the “dictatorship of the party” were rejected by a majority vote, and an article by Zinoviev reaffirming the concept was approved for publication in the Aug. 23, 1924 issue of Pravda as a statement by the editors. At this point Stalin demonstratively offered to resign, but the offer was refused.

-Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 144

This is from an explicitly anti-“Stalinism” book showing Stalin getting outvoted on a basic ideological issue by revisionists.

For the record, I do think that historical texts by “comrades,” as you sneer, can be interesting and insightful, but I mostly concern myself with texts by liberals (or otherwise anti-communist ideologies) because I know those are the only ones that won’t be rejected out of hand.

You’ll probably need to think beyond liberal dogma if you want to solve a problem with liberalism. “Paying for something is speech and therefore unimpeachable” is an insane thing to take as a fundamental element of how society is run when the end result is so obviously and demonstrably the rich using that ruling (which was always made for them) to buy elections.

People want to find some policy wonk solution to these fundamental problems (“Oh! Sortition fixes everything! Wait, maybe a parliamentary system. Ooh, ooh, how about . . .”) but they are just red herrings, silly schemes that distract you from critical thought about the assumptions that brought you here.

If diverse opinions were allowed, what was the entire focus on eradicating factionalism?

The general line according to Stalin (e.g. in “Foundations of Leninism”) was that there should be thorough and exhaustive debates among those with differing opinions within the Party but that, once a resolution was reached by a vote following the debate, further fighting on the topic as a Party official was essentially a form of wrecking, though of course matters were revisited periodically (for good and for ill). Even if you disagreed, you were then expected to go along with whatever the motion was in the interest of the integrity of the Party as an actor. This was “Diversity of opinion, unity of action” [edit: I got the motto slightly wrong, see cowbee]

I don’t really have a developed opinion on it (I guess I should have left this to cowbee for that reason) but I definitely have sympathy for this approach when I look at it in the context of glory hounds like Trotsky being constantly contrarian for the sake of political brinkmanship instead of, you know, acting in good faith and believing in things besides that he should be top dog. There shouldn’t be tolerance for people like that, and the long-term harm that Trotsky’s opposition bloc did to the SU is hard to fathom.

where it means that everyone must vote whatever the elite thinks

citation needed

I disagree about sortition, but I appreciate pushing back on elitist, misanthropic bullshit like you did. I think elections with a strong ability to quickly recall faithless representatives is a much better solution because it involves the decision-making of the whole community, rather than a community member chosen at random.

Seems like campaign finance reform is a more pertinent question then.

I’ve always really loved Zarbon. He has a cool design that fits his snobbish attitude and then when he sacrifices his looks to transform into his grotesque true form, to was a good foreshadowing of Frieza.

Also the Ginyu Force, of course. Ginyu himself is great and even the oft-overlooked Guldo is pretty interesting (and DBZ needs more weird bullshit powers like his).

I agree, but Merriam-Webster remains a bad way to try to squash claims of nuance. You are correct independent of the bad and redditor-esque method of argument you chose. You should know very well that texts with actual authority exist that better establish these things, like the DSM in this case.

You shouldn’t try to answer clinical questions with Merriam-Webster. It’s a very redditor thing to do and just as incorrect as that would suggest.

There is a substantial difference between “being suicidal” in the clinical sense and having decided to commit suicide. We have no reason to believe, lacking an avenue for the “self expression” of immolation, that he would have jumped from a bridge or hung himself in the attic. As far as we can tell, he looked at the present political situation and judged that the most effective thing he could do to accomplish what he believed had to be accomplished was by doing something that required the investment of dying. That’s not the same thing as “being suicidal”, though you and I both disagree with his choice for our respective reasons.

As far as I can tell, that’s mostly not what the study says. What it is saying is that the event of a judicial election and the pressures associated therewith demonstrably cause systemic disadvantage to defendants and appellants near election time, but it doesn’t actually address how the overall rulings of elected judges compare to appointed judges except for one study it mentions that does say, in your defense, that they [elected judges] reverse death sentences less often in the states that have the death penalty. However it goes on to say:

These studies leave open several important research questions. For example, they generally do not compare systems, and thus do not address whether some re-election or retention election systems have more of an impact on criminal justice outcomes than others, or whether reappointment processes may also have an effect.

And later says:

Much of the empirical research considering the impact of judicial selection dynamics on criminal justice outcomes has focused on elections. Further study is needed to understand the incentive structures created by appointive systems, particularly those that provide for reappointment. The few studies that have considered these dynamics suggest there may be reasons for concern.

For example, in one such study, Joanna Shepherd examined how the political preferences of those determining whether to extend a judge’s tenure impact judicial decision-making. Just as the public’s preferences may impact case outcomes within electoral systems, Shepherd found that the preferences of governors can have a similar effect in states where they play a role in reappointing judges. 92 Indeed, Shepherd determined that as governorships change hands, so too do judicial rulings; when a Republican governor replaces a Democratic governor, judges’ rulings in a variety of cases, including criminal cases, shift.93 Shepherd’s findings suggest that reselection pressures are a concern even outside the election context, and highlight the need for further inquiry into the dynamics of appointive systems.

And that’s really the full extent to which it addresses the subject of appointment.

I’m pretty sure Yog isn’t the one doing the deleting, though I don’t know 100%, but you can still see deleted comments in the modlog, so the context isn’t actually lost, just inconvenient (that’s how I know what all the comments were, since I got here after the deletions). Anyway, I’ve antagonized yog multiple times and he’s never deleted any of my comments. My view on him is that he’s very driven and determined with his agitating and gets a little caught up in his passion for it when he gets resistance from people, especially since a substantial amount of that resistance if from genuinely reactionary assholes. I can understand being frustrated with him, though.

The other fellow was being a real asshole, so I think perhaps the mod was primed to a very hostile reading (e.g. of our friend yog being a paid shill or something), since I think you were being obnoxious but it’s counter-productive to take mod action against something so trivial when just responding suffices.

If you’re interested in an answer, while I don’t entirely agree with Yog on most issues relating to China, Marxists are obliged to have quite a lot of evidence to back up their claims while liberals can just sort of coast off of cultural norms because their ideology is already hegemonic. I don’t keep a list of links because I don’t take notes for almost anything, but I definitely make sure to remember the titles (etc.) of useful articles so I can retrieve them in a circumstance like this. That’s very inefficient though, so it makes sense that yog would just keep them on-hand for common liberal talking points to prevent needing to look them up over and over.

“usually not as bad” requires a citation, since we can point to lots of evidence of systemic injustice in sentencing as it is. example

What you are describing is a judge pursuing an agenda and/or having an unconscious bias, which is what we have already. That’s the thing I keep getting with objections to voting in judges, problems that we already have presented as though they only apply to elected judges, or problems that would be demonstrably less bad with popular input.