9k:RD/ lightbulbs don't work (Q31,60)
Main entry
- At what moment does Communism "stop working"?
Marxism and God
Extraordinary events must have happened
/ (9k)Extraordinary events are unlikely
/ (9k)Unicorns are incredible
/ Something with no way of existing existing is more impressive than something that can easily exist (Douglas Gasking) / (9k)- A Marxism that exists is more perfect / A Marxism that exists is more perfect than a Marxism that doesn't / actually existing socialism (motif that a Marxism which has been realized to any degree is better than a Marxism which has not been realized) / (9k) -> in Stalin's Marxism [modern] the concept of "Bolshevism existing" or "Communism working" is equated with a physical workers' state itself.
- A Marxism that exists is more perfect -> in Trotskyism, "Marxism existing" is equated with parties actually understanding Marxism regardless of whether a physical "people's republic" exists, and not simply settling for a crimson materialism that doesn't contain dialectical materialism; Marxism is more "perfect" when it exists, but if blatant liquidators exist Marxism does not exist, or to be more precise, it shortly ceases to exist in a temporal process of collapse.
Dinosaurs and light bulbs
- Dinosaurs became obsolete / Dinosaurs don't work / Dinosaurs are over [sic] / Dinosaurs were effective for millions of years but then they failed to be effective and disappeared (worked millions of years ago; failed to work; went extinct) [sic] -> at face value, funny joke. most non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. but what I really like about this statement is how backhandedly true it is. if you think dinosaurs don't work you've failed to realize that birds are dinosaurs.
and if you think Communism doesn't work you may have failed to realize that Deng Xiaoping Thought is still a fringe form of Marxism. - Light bulbs don't work -> somewhat literally what was said at the time, and now we all have them.
- Bolshevism is effective in the same sense as dinosaurs -> dinosaurs are still very effective,
they just look different. - The effectiveness of Communism can be measured in how many years it lives / law of fractions (meta-Marxist conjecture)
- Pokémon is two-thirds as effective as Communism / Pokémon is half as effective as Communism -> follows from "Google was half as effective as Communism". Pokémon has been around 29 years. which is pretty impressive, really. but strictly speaking you can't yet say it works as well as Communism.
- Communism is more effective than AGI / Bolshevism is more effective than artificial general intelligence in that the Material System of Bolshevism has been realized at least once, but machine learning has never physically realized a computer implementing artificial general intelligence
- AGI is as effective as Trotskyism / Machine learning is just as effective as Trotskyism in that machine learning never produces artificial general intelligence and Trotskyism never produces a durable "orange" uniquely-Trotskyist dictatorship-of-the-proletariat
- Trotskyism boasts zero success (meta-Stalinism) / Trotskyism boasts 0% success / Whether Trotskyism is effective and functions as described can be judged by how many years Trotskyists maintain a real-world workers' state or stateless orange civilization; this is to imply but not state that as of 1991 the effectiveness of Trotskyism was zero, and as of 2026 the effectiveness of Trotskyism is zero
Related
versioning Communist Internationals like software packages
/ (9k) -> I came up with this idea not-too-seriously but it's actually surprisingly close to the kind of thing that really is useful. if you take all the Marxist movements that have ever happened and line them up by which ones they came out of and whether they got closer to or farther from success... well, you start understanding exactly where to look to stop movements from breaking down.
it's bizarrely like planning a tool-assisted speedrun or something. you have a particular "obstacle course" to get through which always has a few things about it that are similar, and you find the errors, and you figure out a more consistent route through.
Ideologies or fields
- / dialectical materialism
- / meta-Marxism
- / Trotskyism as meta-Marxism
- / Trotskyism
- / apparent forms of Marxism
- / apparent forms of Marxism