FIRST VERIFICATION QUESTIONS:
1. From the post on Hexbear today announcing the library page.
2. I consider myself a Marxist-Leninist. I grew up in a very conservative household, but we lived in poverty for most of my childhood. So when I started to develop a political viewpoint, I was naturally empathetic to the struggles of poor people, having lived it myself. Since I live in the US, that first lead me towards the Democratic Party and Liberalism. As the years went on, I slowly found myself identifying more to the left, first as a Social Democrat (around the 2016 election), and then as a Democratic Socialist. After I started applying the "Socialist" label to myself, I started reading more into it, and over the next year or so I learned a lot. By the beginning of 2019 I considered myself a Communist, and by the end of the year a Marxist-Leninist. Since then I have continued to read and research, but Marxism-Leninism has stuck with me.
3. I have read them, and I agree with them completely.
4. As I understand it, gender is a societal construct that groups together certain physical and behavioral attributes into discrete categories. To be entirely honest, I haven't read as much about the subject as I probably should. I do believe that Marxists should completely support the LGBT community. Discrimination based on factors that one has no control over is purely reactionary, and has no place in any Marxist space.
5. I personally uphold both Stalin and Mao. While of course not having absolute control of their respective countries, they helped to greatly improve the conditions of their people, in addition to providing very valuable contributions to Marxist theory. Neither are perfect of course, and both did things that were objectively wrong, but as a whole I believe they are important and positive historical figures.
6. I have a generally high opinion of all of them, particularly Cuba. I would definitely call them Socialist. I don't necessarily consider most of them to currently be in a Socialist mode of production, but I do recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat that exists in all cases, and the fact that they are trying to move towards Socialist production.
SECONDARY VERIFICATION QUESTIONS:
2. Initially I plan to correct some minor spelling errors and the like that I've notice while browsing different pages. Past that, I think primarily want to try and work on topics around Cuba and their revolution.
3. I see land back as a vital component of the Marxist cause. If a settler-colonial relationship still exists, then the oppression of indigenous people will still exist, whether it's under a bourgeois or proletarian state. National liberation also ties into this, colonialism and Marxism are not compatible with one another.
4. I have only read a little on the topic so far, unfortunately. I see it as a great improvement over earlier strands of Liberal feminism, and actually takes into account the status of regular working class women and not just bourgeois women, as has tended to be the case.
6. I think the left in the US is growing and getting stronger as time goes on, but I don't think we're going to make it to any kind of critical mass before things start to fall apart from climate change and the crises that will result from it as it gets worse. Therefore I think we should be doing what we can to materially help working people where we can, and at the same time start to put together the means to help support the people in the case of some sort of collapse of the government or any other event that would disrupt the regular flow of goods to people. I see the BPP as a big inspiration, especially in the first case.
7. I think Marxism has done better than other movements because of the focus on material conditions, the recognition that those conditions can differ greatly between different areas, and the ability to learn from past mistakes and account for them in future struggles.