Oof! Somebody took Karl’s kool-aid.

So, first off, it’s not the capitalist system that is at fault for the miners not having a back-up plan after the coal mine dries or coal is not marketable anymore. It’s due to corrupt politicians and lack of foresight from the constituents, that’s at fault there. But that’s to be expected. Most people are unable to plan their life with more than 5 years ahead, imagine a whole town working for commodities company where they don’t have enough education to understand the complexities of the market. It’s simply nearly impossible. The only place that I know that did something like this is Norway, where they have a trust fund coming from all the oil money, so when their oil dries up, they can still live out of that money for a while.

And as you can see from my previous paragraph, that’s not something that communism or socialism can change. That’s human nature. Cuba is not a shit hole because the US embargo, it is because Castro wanted its own SimCity. The same goes for Russia during the Soviet era, or China even now. Corruption is endemic of the politicians. And that’s a fact. No system survives corruption.

Finally, addressing the whole “history is a class struggle”. That’s to say a lot. You could say that human history has inherent class struggle, and that’s fine. But in reality, history is not defined by class struggle, more than could be defined by change of ethos, power dynamics or even whimsical change of heart. It’s too simplistic to say that everything has been a class struggle, because it simplifies human emotions and desires to materialistic possessions.

I upscaled the original cover and tried to make it wider. It's a little messed up in the left corner, though.

Hi comrades, how do you go about applying Dialectical Materialism in your daily life? What tasks have you successfully solved using it?

I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of it right now by reading literature on it, right now I'm at Anti-Duhring (excerpts of it). I find it sometimes hard to apply what I've learned in personal cases, such as a discussion with someone, and so on.

No I think you misunderstood. I agree with your idealogy. But to talk shit about liberals, when we are liberals who actually lean left (unlike Democrats who are moderates in disguise), well that’s just plain dumb. It makes you sound like a Trumpanzee. I’m a liberal, and I’m also a proud socialist. And so are you.

Edit: Y’all are missing the point. There’s no reason for all this infighting. Communist, Socialist, Liberal, or whatever; we need to stop arguing over the differences and band together to stop the rise of Fascism. Some of these replies make me worried that a lot of you will vote for 3rd parties in the next election and effectively hand the votes over to Trump. Please don’t do that.

The language in the article is just eugh though. Some funny bits:

Mr Xi has called food security a guozhidazhe. That is the high-flown phrase which he uses to denote “the main affairs of state” or “national priorities”. To that end, the supreme leader and his underlings emphasise the need to grow grain, rather than frivolities like fruit or flowers, on China’s limited stocks of prime arable land.

When food priority is on the task list of the state, it's bad apparently

In and around Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, officials are focusing on Mr Xi’s current priority. That means growing grain. They are making their obedience visible. Mr Xi visited the fertile Chengdu plain last year, recalling how it was known in history as “heaven’s granary”. Those words, along with Xi-isms about food security and cropland, now appear on village walls and roadside propaganda posters.

Xi is eating all the grain. Food security is a Xi-ism now

Hi comrades,

As the title suggests, how do you manage your time spent online? I personally don't use any social media aside from Lemmygrad, but I'm still struggling with being online too much, even if it's lurking here or on other websites. I try to focus on offline things, such as books mostly that I download. My biggest problem is the refresh feature, even smaller sites such as this one just become an issue because of refreshing for new posts or discussions.

As a Linux user, I can say I tried to make my desktop as offline-focused as possible. I don't use any "cloud" services etc., though I still find myself dealing with this. Perhaps it's the interface.

I do like the Small Web movement, especially protocols like Gemini or Gopher. From what I see, they're filled to the brim with conservatives and anarchists, sadly. I do lurk on YouTube via Invidious, which is probably the biggest time-waste, though there's much valuable niche content on there. Sometimes at least.

Speaking of this, I sometimes take breaks from politics to not get overwhelmed. To get updates, I usually use RSS and the Hexbear News Megathread. For the most part, it's enough. Though FOMO (fear of missing out) hits here too, as what if I'm not up to date with something important globally.

What's your experience with this, comrades?

Hi comrades

I want to start handling my nutrition and fitness better. I usually work out at home and can do pushups etc., I would say I'm quite underweight.

While I'm reading the guide by CriticalResist on Prolewiki, I decided to count my calories. I barely reach 1500 calories a day which at this point I'll go malnourished. I just feel full very quickly. I do not eat processed sugars and avoid sweets, and I'm basically vegan at this point.

I exercise too and can do push ups, squats etc with no problems whatsoever, though as expected I cannot build muscular mass, most likely because of my nutrition. I don't have the money to go to a gym so I want as much as possible to work out at home, I saw that calisthenics might be a good option? Though they seem unreliable for building muscle mass and strength. I want to put more weight but not fatty weight, which had happened to me in the past. I do eat healthy, but I eat way too less because I feel I just get full quickly. This might be due that in the past I was overweight and conditioned myself to not eat much, but now I'm basically starving myself.

How would I go about increasing my caloric intake while putting muscle mass (preferably at home)?

Cambridge University is teaching students that the Anglo-Saxons never existed as a distinct ethnic group, in an effort to “dismantle the… myths” of English nationalism, the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Liberal academics have long decried the term for its association with “whiteness.”

Cambridge’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) will seek “to dismantle the basis of myths of nationalism – that there ever was a ‘British’, ‘English’, ‘Scottish’, ‘Welsh’ or ‘Irish’ people with a coherent and ancient ethnic identity – by showing students just how constructed and contingent these identities are and always have been,” the British newspaper reported, citing information from the university.

By denigrating the idea of a distinct Anglo-Saxon identity, the university said that it aims to make its teaching more “anti-racist.”

The controversy over the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ began in 2019, when Canadian academic Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm resigned from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists over the “inherent whiteness” of the field. Rambaran-Olm, who is not white, went on to write that “the Anglo-Saxon myth perpetuates a false idea of what it means to be ‘native’ to Britain,” and that the term is “historically inaccurate.”

...

This is such IdPol but it's funny

Hello comrades!

I want to outline a few potential projects the Lemmygrad community could benefit from and expand its reach. I think they could foster real growth and be not only of help, but actively create counter-spaces to the Right in various domains.

FOSS in this case means free and open source. For more information, check out this.

Privacy Guide

I'm personally interested in tech privacy. The biggest places around are r/privacy, and PrivacyGuides, the de facto flagship website for privacy and security advice.

The sub-Reddit is known to be overtly against China and non-western FOSS communities. It's mostly a circlejerk of Westerners screaming "We don't want to be like 1984 China!" without any kind of material analysis. Besides, Reddit is Reddit and we know how that goes.

Now, PrivacyGuides. It is definitely a helpful resource, but there are a few issues with it. First off, the administrators frequently promote Apple products on their forum, one of them, Jonathan, even being an Apple fanboy. Apple products are non-FOSS and shouldn't be trusted, especially since they're in PRISM and collaborate with the NSA. This leaves out all the drama they've been through since they split with privacytools.io, the latter claiming PrivacyGuides stole thousands of euros from them.

What I'm saying is that I think there's a need for a more community-based approach, with a strong Marxist tendency to counter liberals and conservatives (and sometimes ancaps) in the privacy field. This has the potential to educate people, even radicalize perhaps. This is related to the second project.

edit: We could also add an Internet etiquette guide for Lemmygrad members. This could include safety procedures while posting, general privacy advice and more, in order to not get targeted by the US.

Hosted Services

Lemmygrad can expand itself and offer hosted services for its members. They can include a Git forge, e-mail (although this one is debatable if it's worth it because of security practices), PeerTube, and any other service that is deemed useful by the community. I think the format outlined below could be useful.

I'm tying up my idea here with the concept of public access unix systems, or short for "pubnixes". They've recently had a revival, the tradition dating back to the '80s. In a nutshell, someone provides a Linux/BSD server and gives user accounts to people who request them. It has a strong focus on using the shell, and anti-corporate service alternatives. Sadly, it's dominated by either conservatives or anarcho-capitalists, rarely seeing a ML on there. I think this can be improved a lot upon, because Marxists have missed this opportunity to radicalize people in the "Small Web" communities. We need a healthier and better overall version of the Web, and I think it can provide a useful outlet for not only radicalizing new comrades, but educating everyone on technology and how to use it safely and in a healthy manner. If you're interested in checking out the Small Web movement, check out this manifesto. Gopher and Gemini, being the two most popular non-WWW protocols, are completely dominated by conservatives and such. A ML presence there could help turn the tide in the small/sustainable computing sphere.

I'm also thinking of setting up a mechanism of democratically run services, trying to destroy the "benevolent dictator" mechanism the software administrators have. I'm only aware of one attempt so far at this, here.

Healthy Computing

Speaking of healthy, this could be a potential third project, a mental wellness guide for technology. Of course, with a strong focus on FOSS projects. I think we need better structured resources for people to access, more "polished", in order to garner attention as viable alternatives to what liberals and conservatives are pushing online. There is a lot of pseudo-science regarding mental health in general, and especially regarding computing, so it could be a fully featured guide to say the least.

This could tie in with other resources written from a ML standpoint for people, perhaps countering the whole "self improvement" movement with diverse explanations and such.

Zine

I think Lemmygrad could publish a Zine. ML-themed findings from the Web, personal essays, stories, and anything fitting. Then it can be easily printed. Monthly releases would be neat. Could also include the news of that month, and so on. Could make a fitting alternative for paid Leftist monthly newspapers and such.

Contributing

I want this to be up for public debate so everyone can contribute with ideas! I'm personally versed in hosting things, but additional help is very much needed. If you want to contribute with an idea, or are skilled in contributing directly to any of these projects, let's get in touch. Perhaps we could get the Revolutionary Technical Committee involved in this if they're willing to contribute to a Marxist technological "front".

What do you think of what I've outlined above? Let's discuss.

RARBG has shut down today. If you go to their website, you will be presented with the following message:

Hello guys, We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site. The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all.

Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES. Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard. Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an unanimous vote we've decided that we can no longer do it.

We are sorry :( Bye