Some of the worst people in the country. I was raised evangelical, even the folks I know who were decent on an interpersonal level would never consider voting for anyone other than Republicans.

In the election mega on Hexbear, u/jack was pointing out that some PSL candidates got over 2% yesterday - which is a significant improvement over 2024.

An early exit poll showed 17% of people who voted identified as democratic socialist.

DSA-backed candidates performed really well, especially including the primaries earlier this year. And I’m including Angie Nixon in that, because she performed very well given the characteristics of Florida, possibly the most ideologically anti-socialist state in the union.

Plenty of polls over the last year show young voters in particular are very open the idea of socialism, even if they may not be working with a proper definition of socialism.

Anecdotallly, at a recent event for my union, in some personal conversations, there are quite a few brothers and sisters who are feeling very radical.

So my question is, in terms of tactics and strategy, where do we go from here?

I bring up all that above because I think they are indicators, and even the biggest anti-electoralist I don’t think would say we should ignore indicators. I am admittedly a huge weather station nerd. If I see my barometer drop and the winds start going east to west, I know a storm is coming. Right now our instruments are giving us a lot of useful information, but I’m thinking about how we interpret it and what do we do.

My early opinion is that we need to put more resources into educating and building up those US Americans who are sympathetic to socialism or identify as socialists but aren’t really educated on what that means or are involved in an org. I think we really need to build up leaders - everyone from savvy organizers to Marxist economists to people who can make cool art for their DSA chapter’s Instagram page to lawyers who can find little loopholes that can help us out. Obviously that’s a long term project and something we are already doing. But if you think of this stuff in terms of video game sliders, previously I had my “try and get people to not associate socialism or communism as ‘bad’” tuned all the way. Might pull that one down some and pull up “educating workers who already are down with socialism”.

But I’m just throwing that out there as an example of what I’m thinking, I’d rather hear from you all.

Article by Kate Wagner

When I was a baby socialist, I didn't get the "what is socialism" question very often; but when I did, I would just give the "it's when the workers own the means of production" answer and leave it at that.

Now that socialism (the word, if not the actual concept) has become a hot topic in recent months in the US, I've had the question come up a lot more frequently. But when it does, I find myself giving what I feel is a much more accurate and comprehensive answer:

• how socialism is not just an end state, but a process as well
• that a state that is controlled by the working class, acting in its interest as a class, is really the first step in the process
• so while the goal is workers owning and controlling the means of production (the end state), there is a long process to get us from capitalism to socialism (the process - and yes, I know the end state is communism but just keeping it simple); and how that process looks will be different in every time and place

So while I feel my answer to the "what is socialism" question is more accurate, practical experience is telling me this answer is just leaving people more confused and/or uninterested in learning more. So I'm seeking out constructive criticism and hearing from you all how you explain socialism to people who ask you. Honestly I thought this would be pretty simple but it's become more complex and nuanced than I expected.

Feeding these little guys my dead skin, happy to help.

I thought this was a good 3 hour rundown of the NEP and the context around it.

I've been listening to Mike Duncan's series on the Russian Revolution. It's good; I like Mike and while he's a liberal I don't think he's really anti-communist. Overall he's pretty fair and well-intentioned. That said, I'm on the section of the series that goes over the winding down of the civil war and the implementation of war communism. And Mike really has been emphasizing how brutal war communism was and does seem to lay the blame solely at the feet of the Bolsheviks (Mike seems to really lean on his "meet the new boss same as the old boss" historical narratives, here and other places). This Cosmopod ep really does a good job of putting the whole era in context. Further, I left thoroughly impressed at how, even though war communism WAS brutal, the Bolsheviks were able to turn things around so quickly with the NEP.

Some background... this summer I'm spending 2-3 weeks with my folks back in my old hometown, and will likely be doing so every summer for the foreseeable future. They have a bike trail that connects to much of the city right in their backyard, so I'd really like to take advantage of that.

However, given that I'm talking about a relatively short amount of time, I really don't want to spend much on a bike that will sit unused for ~50 weeks of the year. I was checking out Craigslist, and was surprised by the number of bikes I saw available for USD$150 or less.

Obviously when buying a used bike at this price, you're making some significant compromises. But I'd like ask, if you all were buying a bike in that price range, what parts / aspects of the bike would you look at in particular? What might be something that would be a big red flag?

I'm capable of doing some basic maintenance and repair if I have a guide, but I'm not capable of doing major fixes.

(and apologies for the North American defaultism in the price range, essentially I'm asking for what you'd look for in an old, used bike that isn't a waste of money but not necessarily something you'd want to ride more than just occasionally, feel free to think of that in your own local currency).

I found this quote from Lenin while reading China Mieville's October. Only the second sentence is in the book, so when I first read it I thought it was Lenin just pumping himself up. Which is fun, it's kind of inspiring by itself. But including the part about revolutions gives both context and additional meaning.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45224975

Hi Everyone, I created a new comm on Lemmy, "Ask Communists". The name of the comm largely explains itself, but just to add a few points:

• This is intended to be a comm for questions about communism,Marxism, socialism et al from everyone. So if you're not a communist but you have some questions you'd like to know more about, you're of course welcome here. So are comrades who have advanced questions like "in the M-C-P-C'-M' circuit in volume 2 of Capital, where does Marx put the transportation of the commodities, in the production phase or circulation?"

• All good-faith questions are welcome. Personally, as a former Reddit commie I got pretty dismayed at the state of subs like DebateCommunism, CapitalismVSocialism, or communism101. The first two would often devolve into endless, bad-faith debatebro comments that just talk over each other anyway. The last one, well, it got the point where nearly every comrade on Reddit I know got banned from it at one point or another. Hoping to avoid all that here. This isn't the comm for bringing over your anti-communist talking point that you don't really want to ask about but just want to debate people over.

• Likewise, for the communists, please approach answering good-faith questions with grace and patience. I love the lemmyverse, but I do recognize that sometimes we can pile on people who are trying to work things out but haven't really gotten there yet. Be nice.

Hope you all find this a useful resource!

The U.S. economy, hobbled by last fall’s 43-day government shutdown, advanced at an unexpectedly sluggish 0.7% annual rate from October through December, the Commerce Department reported Friday in a big downgrade of its initial estimate.

Growth in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — was down sharply from 4.4% in last year’s third quarter and 3.8% in the second. And the fourth-quarter number was half the government’s first estimate of 1.4%.

In the fourth quarter, consumer spending grew at a 2% clip, down from 3.5% in the third quarter and the 2.4% the government had initially estimated. Business investment, excluding housing, increased at a healthy 2.2% pace, likely reflecting money being poured into artificial intelligence, but the increase was down from 3.2% in the third quarter and from the 3.7% advance in the Commerce department's initial estimate.

Exports fell at a 3.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter, a bigger drop than the government first estimated.