Well, while we can dream, I'm not for unity for unity's sake. Unity comes from shared principles and strategy, which are built through discussion and dispute.

Can't see the post. Are there screenshots?

Thanks, comrade!

Btw I did not see one single comment defending joining this war

Well, you're looking at content curated to your taste. Sadly, this isn't the mainstream sentiment about the war in our country. Though, to be fair, I don't think most people here give a shit about it in the first place.

In March 2000, an interview came out with the president of the Associação dos Agentes da Polícia Federal (Federal Police Agents Association), where he mentioned something called "Comando Delta" (Delta Command). This group was an informal association of rich and powerful men acting in a coordinated manner to defend their private interests, putting money in the campaigns of certain politicians they liked or sabotaging those they didn't.

Ironically, it was growing up in a petite-bourgeois family in a country with massive inequality and receiving a Catholic education. I was very religious as a child, but became an atheist in my early teenage years. Still, lots of what I came in contact during my Religion classes stuck with me: the talk of how rich people won't get to heaven, Jesus beating the shit out of merchants who were defiling the temple and hanging out with the marginalised, it struck a chord with me. Even as I distanced myself from the church, than the Bible, then religion altogether, I think those ideas influenced where I ended up.

No. Of course, Brazil is a huge country, there's a variety of headdresses in different indigenous tribes, but they tend to look more like these:

The history of the Roman Empire. It's a terrible hobby to have: anyone else interested in this is either an academic, with a level of knowledge leagues above my own, or a fascist.

No, they're saying he hated Trotsky because Trotsky was jewish.

China's reforestation project gives me a lot of hope. The devastation of the Amazon rainforest is reaching a tipping point, where savannization will kick in. It's good to know we can still prevent this if we get our shit together.

Because it's the name they've chosun.

I'd say no. Trotskyism is incompatible with Marxism-Leninism and, to be honest, extremely ineffective as a means of political action. You'd be better off trying to create an ML organisation.

Read a book The only book The book of God Universe in Disenchantment

I was learning Chinese, but I had to stop taking lessons because I had no money. Should start again next year!

I'm still waiting for my Switch to be jailbrekable. :(

Lenin's The State and Revolution. Right into chapter one he brings up Engels' analysis of the formation of the state:

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

This was extremely useful in my radicalization process, as it explained states have class characters and thus why we need a dictatorship of the proletariat.

As for The Republic, Plato just took all of that from Egypt. It’s one of the best examples of Western plagiarism.

I didn't know that! Where can I read more on it?

Well, yes, but also, no. Personalities do indeed exist. They are shaped by the material environment around us, especially during our infancy. But the fact that they are shaped by material conditions doesn't mean they no longer exist. You won't magically change your behaviours just by changing environments. That's a mechanist view of the relationship between person and environment. You can see, for example, how siblings, despite being raised in much the same environment, are different in personalities.

That depends on where you are. I, for example, live in Brazil. Right now, going around with a hammer and sickle isn't a great idea.

Ooooh, yeah, his most recent video. I haven't watched it yet, thanks!

Which one was it, camarada?

To answer this question, we need to talk about what is a state. Quoting Engels:

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

"Because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. Thus, the state of antiquity was above all the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital."

The bourgeois state is a tool to oppress the working class, and therefore cannot be used to liberate it. It is designed to prevent workers from gaining too much power. Elections are stacked in favor of the rich, who have the assets to campaign, who can use their dominion over the press to spread their lies, who can outright buy votes. And even when workers manage to get representatives in power, the bourgeoisie will sabotage them, by character assassination or actual assassination. See, for example, what happened in Chile when Allende tried to implement socialism by the vote. As Lenin put it:

"The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution for it of a new one"

If you want to go deeper into this subject, I recommend reading Lenin's The State and Revolution and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.

Well, that depends on what is necessary. I've always wanted to be a filmmaker and that's what I graduated in, but if there's something else in need of doing, I could change areas.

Well, yes and no. I'm learning Chinese to move to China, but I won't stay there permanently, a few years at most. I know this is silly, but I love my country. No matter how bad it gets, I couldn't live anywhere other than Brazil for too long. I want to stay here and fight to make it a better place.

Are they even worth wasting time on? I don't know about the U.S., but here people like that are basically an online vocal minority.

The realist in me says Greece. The optimist in me says Brazil. Em frente, camaradas!

Oh, I got a few fun options:

No Sino-Soviet split;

Luís Carlos Prestes manages to drum up enough of a mass movement to succeed in Brazil;

No coup on Chile, so Cybersyn continues;

Kirov doesn't get assassinated, succeeds Stalin.

As a person from the Global South, I think your arguments, while entirely correct, as not as potent as they are when talking to, say, an American or European: countries like Denmark or Sweden have a standard of living so much higher than the average Brazilian's that the comparison just doesn't really matter, getting to China's level would already be a huge achievement. Personally, I don't want my country to follow the same path to socialism China is on (after all, the material conditions here are entirely different, it would be foolish to try to apply the Chinese experience 1:1), but seeing how much progress you guys have made in such a short time stupefies me. I also really admire China's enforcement of its national sovereignty. Our government here is completely unable to stand up to meddling by foreign powers (mostly, but not only, the U.S.). Dilma's impeachment, while not entirely an American initiative, came through their material support, and subsequent governments brought us back under the U.S. tutelage. China is in no way perfect and it still has a long way to go in to fully realise socialism with Chinese characteristics, but I do think there's a lot Western socialists have to learn from the Chinese experience. It's why I'm studying the Chinese language and hope to move there soon, to learn more about the Chinese material conditions and what the successes and failures of the CCP.

I had a Physics teacher who joked that "monarchism is the best political system because, when things are going badly, all you have to do is behead the monarch".