It’s hard to formulate a coherent opinion because reality is complex and multifaceted. And on the one hand, “purity” is an impossible goal in politics and can lead to various forms of sectarianism and moral judgement (as you can see in much of the liberal left who’s much more interested about optics and PR than about direct action and building collective power).

I mean, from some perspectives, calling China or USSR “socialist” is already picking a side. Neither really abolished private property, both have/had very wealthy ruling classes, and both came hard on the critiques from the left who were building popular power via the soviets (see Emma Goldman / Volin for early critique of bolsheviks killing communists and dismembering the soviets). In marxist views, the dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be the ugly/necessary phase on the road to communism (abolition of State and private property); a critique of those “socialist” States is that they are not working toward these goals but merely reinforcing themselves for their own sakes.

I mean, was the USSR good or evil? Both? Neither? From a geopolitical perspective (be careful with those analysis, the tools of the enemy usually produce the worst thoughts), the USSR provided balance to prevent total US domination. In a more local perspective, they supported many revolutionary movements throughout the world, but also destroyed some revolutionary movements around the world when it did not fit their interests (eg. Spain 1936). In the case of Ukraine/Russia 1917-1921, they crushed millions of people in the name of their so-called revolution and tried to bribe figures of the movement (such as Kropotkin, who died in poverty refusing privileges that were not given to the masses, or Emma Goldman, who at first fell for it before realizing). Later, under Stalin, they committed a bunch of actual genocides.

I personally don’t think we can say things are better or worse in China today than in the West. In some regards, they are much better (education/healthcare), and in some regards they’re much worth (pollution/slavery). A comparison can only be applied if very strongly situated (studying a specific aspect, from the perspective of a certain social group) otherwise it will be meaningless. There are strong social movements both in Europe and in China; as an anarchist, i believe my comrades are those who struggle all over the world, and my enemies are the States on both sides crushing the people.

Although i would object to saying the USSR was not imperialist, or that China isn’t imperialist today. From a very strict definition of Lenin they are not, but as i talked earlier about Ukraine/Chechnya, the USSR had colonial blood on its hands, a very clear process of “otherisation” and deprivation which is characteristic of colonialism. Just like today, it’s hard to look at military occupation in Tibet, the mosque destructions and muslim reeducation camps in Xinjiang, and not draw a parallel to (being a french person) French imperialism and colonial practice.

Nothing is binary and in communist/anarchist praxis, self-criticism is very important. While not exactly an anarchist/communist revolution, you may be interested to read about the Kurdish liberation movement and Rojava’s democratic confederalism. They practice tekmil weekly and that’s a very important part of life especially in the collectives / public administration. My personal rule of thumb is if a specific power/person is not capable to hear criticism from their left and below, they are not working in the interests of a global socialist revolution and in the interests of the peoples ; under that standard, both China and the USSR would fail the test.

Oh i forgot to link to a zapatista perspective about not being anarchist/communist.

Before delving into the topic, let’s be very clear about one thing: anarchism in most forms is communism, and vice-versa. There was not really a distinction when the socialist movement was born. Many anarchists consider themselves “anarcho-communists”, and many marxists are in fact libertarian and don’t defend a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. There is not really an opposition between anarchists and communists, but there is a strong historical opposition between free-thinkers and a marxist-leninist vanguard eliminating everyone who disagrees with it including many marxists. I’ll assume in the rest of this comment that’s what you meant with “relationship between anarchism and communism”.

From an anarchist perspective, i can attest to books others have recommended. Classic anarchist books give very good historical examples and arguments against the tyranny of a well-meaning vanguard ; i was lately reading Bakunin making that very argument about a scientist-run government, which i think is quite relevant today with Andreas Malm arguing for what we could call a green dictatorship of the proletariat.

More historically, [Bloodstained: one hundred years of leninist counterrevolution](Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution) was a good read. So were some books about the Spanish revolution, but i don’t remember the names (except Homage to Catalonia, which someone mentioned). Emma Goldman, in Trotsky protests too much (1938) made a powerful historical account of how Trotsky and Lenin rewrote history after massacring the Kronstadt soviet, and i remember reading some french translation of Volin, a great revolutionary from the russian/ukrainian revolution (but i don’t remember which text precisely).

For a case where “anarchism” and “communism” work fine together, you can read about the zapatistas. I personally would say there’s two interesting features making it work:

• the zapatista movement refuses identification with marxism or anarchism, saying their political orientation has much deeper roots, from much before the europeans divided themselves along those lines
• the zapatistas have a strong separation of powers: the militias (which tend to be more marxist and hierarchic) don’t have any political powers because they have the military power, and leave 100% of the political power to the communes (which tend to be more anti-authoritarian farmers)

All in all, the zapatistas have elements of authoritarian culture (especially in the people’s army, where discipline and security management is important) and anti-authoritarian culture as they have no State, police or prisons as we know them. Unfortunately, apart from oral history recounted by comrades, i don’t know of good sources for these specific questions/divisions/perspectives.

From an anarchist perspective, i can attest to books others have recommended. Classic anarchist books give very good historical examples and arguments against the tyranny of a well-meaning vanguard ; i was lately reading Bakunin making that very argument about a scientist-run government, which i think is quite relevant today with Andreas Malm arguing for what we could call a green dictatorship of the proletariat.

More historically, [Bloodstained: one hundred years of leninist counterrevolution](Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution) was a

Incredible community! Maybe some day i should try and participate there instead of writing ansible spaghetti code :P

I personally would love if voting was restricted to members of a specific community. That would truly help augment the signal/noise ratio. Practical example: it’s not uncommon on /c/anarchism to have stalinist fanboys come and mass-downvote all they can find… except our forum is not intended for them to consume/judge.

Well The Register’s article does not sound anti-Wikipedia at all. In fact i would argue it’s pretty much pro-Wikipedia, since this kind of nonsensical “vandalism” (as they say in wiki land) is entirely transparent and so was possible to identify at all.

Now yogthos is pretty much anti-Wikipedia because they see it as a pro-US propaganda machine. Which is silly, you just have to read articles on Julian Assange, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, CoIntelPro, or NSA to realize that many Wikipedia articles directly contradict US national interests and propaganda apparatus.

Unfortunately there is close to zero trustworthy hardware manufacturer these days. In the DIY world there’s still Virax or Festool who have a well-deserved good reputation. In the laptop/phone space there’s some manufacturers making efforts like System76/Librem and a few others, but they still have no power over all the components so obsolescence (planed or not) still applies.

But in the 2D printer world it’s just… mafia everywhere. Apparently print heads are remarkable high-tech that are designed around specific ink mechanical properties to handle, and there’s very few people/corporations with the know-how and the budget to produce these. That’s why you find an abundance of free-hardware 3D printers (a heating head is easy to manufacture) but exactly zero free-hardware 2D printer.

I personally would spend more money than i should on a free-hardware 2D printer. Printers are usually the worst pieces of hardware i have to interact with.

BTW thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole that Mastodon account is a gold mine ;)

I usually hate that meme of the macho muscly doge as symbol of perfection, but with all the glitter added i like it :P

According to Videolan org there is officially no motive communicated yet, but as the article points out there’s a correlation that some viruses used forked VLC as a means of reaching targets lately. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that someone, somewhere in an office who has no idea what “compiling” even means thought they need to block the (official) VLC website to stop the infections.

I recommend you read some history. Many popular uprisings have been led by women at the forefront. That organized workers movements gave them little space/autonomy (much like for non-white people) is undeniable, but to say that worker struggles were a “men’s right movement” is a REALLY far stretch.

I’m not from the USA but for example there two major figures of the workers movement in late 19th century / early 20th were Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons. That they’ve been mostly erased from history books tells more about who writes/distributes the books and their agenda than about a perceived lack of women in social struggles.

For example, when it comes to anarchism people usually recommend reading Kropotkin/Bakunin/Proudhon, slipping under the carpet the many theoretical contributions of women. If only to name one, read Emma Goldman ;)

If you’re into golang, mellium.im looks like a decent library (i played around with it but nothing serious). It’s evolving rather quickly although it’s still lacking behind in features, but the maintainer is friendly and very welcome to devs using the library to find out the pain points and missing features.

In Android land Java is the go-to language. But there’s already an abundance of XMPP clients on Android. Do you have ideas for specific features you would like to develop in particular that you could not find in an existing client?

I think the rest of the thread has good arguments on the topic, but the main idea is that regulations around sex work mostly impact sex workers and not the client. Even the criminalization of clients results in bad outcomes for the workers, so if you’d like to frame prostitution as a question of workers rights and public health, it’s important to center the debate around the experiences and problems of sex workers themselves.

To paraphrase someone else, as long as money exist there will be sex work. The question is what kind of labor conditions do we want for the sex workers?

I go for “more”. Any device manufactured today should be under legal warranty for 20+ years, and should be reparable for at least another 20 after that. That’s the only way to combat the current electronic waste problem (and it’s a HUUUUUUUGE problem).

Yes but it’s not just that. Is it easy to replace the battery? The screen? To replace broken connectors? Is the device itself robust to begin with?

Good point, but unfortunately recycling materials is really hard processes. Most IT materials cannot be recycled (at least with current techniques), and to extract the “recyclable” materials requires considerable amounts of harmful/polluting chemicals. For example, extracting gold from electronics is a common practice in electronic landfills, but the process isn’t eco-friendly.

I’m not saying extracting new resources is better for the environment, far from it. I’m just saying the situation is real bad currently.

We can! There’s an entire research field of “green IT” dedicated to that. However, there is 0 practical industrial application because the industry is focused on performance, not recyclability. Recyclable computers would probably be bigger and heavier, and we may not have 4k ultra-portable devices, but i personally think the tradeoff is worthwhile.

I believe the state should interfere in economics, protect its citizens from monopolies and ruthless profit oriented tactics and provide support for those in need

I’m curious how you consider that compatible with private property. Let’s take a practical example: in France there’s over a million empty dwellings, and there’s people sleeping on the streets. What do you consider is the most sensible course of action: let people sleep on the streets, or take over empty dwellings to rehouse everyone unconditionally?

If you believe human needs are more important than arbitrary religious beliefs like money/property then i’m afraid you are very much against the principle of private property which says that resources are “owned” by someone and only that specific person gets to decide how those resources are used.

I would go further and say that the concept we know as police never results in good outcomes for the population no matter who participates. Whether the surveillance/control they apply is “mass” or “targeted” is in my view not very relevant :)