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SET 1 1) Honestly can't remember where I found it from but I've been using it for a little while. I want to join because I want to be involved with sharing information from a Marxist perspective. I'm a big Wikipedia fan, but anything remotely related to politics always has a huge liberal bias
2) My personal political theory could probably use some more development. But in general Marxism is the only political analysis that makes any sense to me. The current system is so blatantly flawed and serious change is very much needed. The interests of the powerful few are fundamentally opposed to those of the masses. It's not fair and it just isn't sustainable. Something has to change and I'm excited by the current downfall of the US empire, I hope the people will seize this chance for revolution, and I hope it inspires the the peoples of the rest of the world.
3) I'm very much in favour of your political line and it's the main reason I want to join. I agree with your anti-imperialism stance, I wouldn't say I'm a fan of some of the states mentioned but I wholeheartedly support their struggle against domination by imperialist foreign capital. Obviously agree on the anti-opression stance. The goals are clear and Marxist, I'm a fan.
4) My understanding of transgender people is that usually in our culture certain expectations on gender expression are given to people based on their sex; a transgender person is someone who rejects those expectations in favour of their own expression, often one that aligns more with the gender normally prescribed for those of the opposite sex to them. Trans identities arise out of a contradiction between people's personal feelings and societal expectations. A person's sex, a person's personality, and societal ideas about gender norms all arise from certain material conditions. So yes there is of course a dialectical-materialist analysis of transness. Marxists should of course support queer people. They're a common fascist scapegoat and used as a tool to wage culture wars by liberals, conservatives, and fascists alike. Marxists should support every proletarian in every struggle they face, and queer people have more than their fair share of struggles.
5) Stalin and Mao helped build beacons of hope for the oppressed across the globe, and I look on them fondly for that. Mao was a spectacular revolutionary whose ideas worked very well for China, as did Stalin's for the Soviet Union, although they both had their flaws. It's useful to understand how and why they came to the conclusions they did and extrapolate from their successes when applicable to your own context, and to learn from their failures. So overall I think they're important figures worth learning about but I don't see much value in being a strict Stalinist or Maoist, their contexts will never be your context.
6) China, Cuba, and the DPRK I would certainly say are socialist. I can't comment too much on Vietnam or Lao because I don't know enough. Seeing China really start to blaze ahead of the West recently has really made me hopeful for the future and I hope as they advance more and more they'll progress further in their socialism. I'm amazed at how well Cuba has been able to stand up to bullying by the US, I really hope one day they'll be free from meddling. The DPRK is of course the country I've been propagandised against the most out of probably anywhere else, but in the last few years I've started to see more through the lies. I did a lot more reading after watching "My Brothers and Sisters in the North" and it breaks my heart how much the US has done to these people, I can't wait for the south of the peninsula to break free from the occupation.
7) Settler-colonialism is a form of colonialism whereby the exploiting nation establishes colonies and expands its own population into the lands of the exploited nation. It does this to have closer access to the human and natural resources it steals from the indigenous population and to increase it's army of reserve labour by filling new lands with people from home. This continues even when the colonists break away from the old home nation. The owning class that have established themselves in the new land will carry on their exploitation, both of any indigenous people that haven't been wiped out to make way for colonisers and of the proletarians that have established themselves there. Countries like the US, Australia, Israel, Canada, etc fit this description well. As to what should be done, it's difficult as most settler-colonialist projects are now very well established, and just sending everyone back doesn't seem viable anymore sadly. No reparations are ever going to be enough and will never fix what's already been done, but they do need to be made. An important thing would be reeducation of the colonisers because most don't accurately understand what's been done and why it was wrong. It again falls back to the need for a revolution to overthrow the systems that made possible and perpetuate the harms that colonialism has done and continues to do.
8) Honestly before October the 7th I didn't have a very good understanding of Israel beyond it just seeming a bit dodgy. In interviews I'd seen with Israelis they always seemed overly entitled to Palestine in a way that made me feel uncomfortable but I didn't know very much and wasn't very well educated on it at all. The last year or so though has prompted me to learn more, and the scale of the horror makes me feel sick every day. And not enough people seem to care. The willful ignorance of a genocide of this magnitude and the support given to it by my government and many of the citizens of my country has been what's really radicalised me and made me want to be more politically educated and involved. I really just can't get my head around how much evil there is in the world and how easy it seems to be to convince so many people to not care. I think the events of October the 7th were inevitable and it would be stupid to not expect or think it wrong of Palestinians to retaliate. What's been done to them is obscene, they cannot be expected to sit and take it. I think the evil of Israel is ineffable, and ultimately a reflection on the evil of the rest of the Western empire. I have huge, huge respect for the Palestinian people and their absolute unwillingness to back down against the brutality they've been faced with. I have nothing but respect for the Palestinians and their leaders, and nothing but contempt for Israel and their supporters
SET 2 1) It's a way of looking at the world, and normally used to look at society, politics, and the economy. It's materialist in that it places importance onto the real world/material reality rather than ideas. The dialectic part is about understanding change as occurring because of conflicts within systems, where opposing forces end up bringing about something new. For example class conflicts eventually leading to revolution and the bringing about a new mode of production with new class relationships. So there are 3 steps. First a thesis, some starting point. Then an antithesis, this is something arising from the thesis which is contradictory and leads to the negation of the thesis. And lastly a synthesis, the new state where the antithesis has itself become contradictory and been negated. The synthesis will retain some elements of the thesis and antithesis but with the relevant contradictions removed
4) I think the idea of the nuclear family is a natural result of capitalist individualism where families become a kind of individual unit separate from the rest of society. I think it's an issue that would be tackled at the same time as individualism generally. It would be dealt with by promoting collectivist values in education and of course a lot of deprogramming the capitalist ideology that's now made itself so embedded. As well as education, collective work environments would needed to be created and community projects and spaces incentivised.
6) This is quite a broad question because "anti-capitalism" can mean a lot of things. But Marxism I think of as more of a tool than an ideology. It's a way of analysing problems and figuring out the necessary solutions. It's a science. Movements like anarchism don't make a great deal of sense to me because it seems silly to have a specific idealised utopia in mind rather than taking the world at face value and solving problems that exist and planning development with those problems and people's needs in mind. Marxism can have a lot of flavours simply because material conditions in any particular place and time can be different, and different people will analyse them differently. This is the reason why we need democratic centralism. Once discussion has led to a consensus, the solutions concluded must be followed through with collectively.
5) I'm from Britain and the most pressing issue is probably the most pressing issue in most of the West. People's lives are getting crappier and crappier as the contradictions of capitalism get sharper, and the fascists are getting bolder and bolder every year. The ruling classes are needing to move farther and farther right to keep their positions safe, and they'll use any scapegoat available to keep attention off of themselves. And far too many people are falling for it. I can absolutely see a Reform Party government in the next ten years. Looking at the US feels like looking into Britain's future and that does not feel good. Now is the last chance to turn as many people as possible to communism before it's too late. Unfortunately there's little to no Communist presence and any vestige of real socialism in the Labour Party is long dead. Of the communist parties that do exist, a couple seem to be of the opinion that trans people exist solely as part of a bourgeois culture war, and the rest seem to not be much more than newspaper handing out clubs. I'm not in the country at the moment but I'm looking for something I can join when I go back.
7) Imperialism is when a powerful country extends its exploitation outside its own borders. It can be done for direct economic exploitation, when it steals natural resources or labour power, or political and cultural purposes. The imperialists will manipulate the politics and culture of another nation to serve the interests of its own capital. The IMF gives loans to countries in crisis but under the condition that that country abides by strict neoliberal policies, thus extorting countries into entering the US hegemony. The world bank funds development, but only the development of projects that will be useful to the neoliberal world order. Both of these institutions extort countries into shifting their financial policies in a capitalist friendly direction. They trap poor countries in debt and poverty, even if they enrich some elites in the global south. You cannot solve poverty and wealth inequality by shoveling money into the hands of a few capitalists and enforcing austerity. The belt and road initiative is a similar project ran by the Chinese government. It's typically seen as a win-win arrangement for both China and the invested in country. China does not meddle with the local politics. However it still can trap countries in debt. It probably isn't perfect but preferable to Western institutions 100% of the time. I wouldn't describe it as imperialism due to it's primary goal being win-win but its potential as being a way for China to export its foreign capital sounds a bit iffy. At the end of the day it's always going to be better than the IMF or world bank, and it makes me happy to see western hegemony being broken.
OPTIONAL QUESTIONS 1) Very in depth but I understand you want a certain kind of person and point of view. And that's the whole reason I'm applying so makes sense 2) I am familiar and comfortable with Python and Rust and have a bit of experience with JavaScript. I am also familiar with HTML and CSS. My familiarity with MediaWiki goes as far as being a fan and semi-regular editor of Wikipedia
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