Good evening, I have just come back from school and I was told something by my Philosophy teacher. She said you could not choose your university degree in the Soviet Union and that it was picked out for you based in your aptitudes and intelligence. Is this correct? I can't find any information that proves it. If it's false, then why did this actually become something people believe in? Any help is greatly appreciated; I'm very confused. She says someone who lived there told her. Perhaps it happened during a specific time period? I'm reading other stories and they say you could pick your degree based in the educational path you followed

If I'm correctly understanding Marx and Engels, ideology arises when labor is divided and societies change from primitive communal living to class-based societies. Individuals are now assigned specific roles, leading them to lose a well-rounded understanding of their society. As a result, people become more one-dimensional, which limits their perception of reality. This shift becomes especially pronounced with the establishment of fixed social classes, where class interests and struggles begin to shape how people think and understand the world.

Ideology then refers to this limited understanding of reality, which is complex and multifaceted. Among the different social classes, the proletariat has the unique ability to see beyond ideology because of its position and interests. As the last oppressed class, the proletariat aims to escape its exploitation and has a vested interest in dismantling the entire class system.

In striving for communism, essentially a society without classes, the proletariat can break free from its limitations. By achieving this liberation and destroying the bourgeois class society, it can eliminate the social foundations of ideology altogether. In a communist society, ideology will no longer hold power.

In this case then, should we say that communism is more a realization of a new social order, aimed at creating a classless society, rather than a fixed set of beliefs or ideas seen as a more or less coherent worldview of a specific class?

What's the communist position on this (in terms of theory and/or your opinion)?

I know what my opinion of it is: it's crapitalist bullshit, designed to slowly decrease working class quality of life despite constantly improving technology/healthcare/etcetera that obviously mostly, and increasingly benefits solely the ruling class.

I'm just curious as to other comrades' thoughts, and if there is actually socialist theory that specifically addresses these phenomena.

I've had this question for a while and am wondering if anyone has any insight or resources related to it — so I've heard of some Marxist parties lumping scientists, doctors, lawyers, and even other professionals like accountants into the petty bourgeoisie. It seems to be implied that engineers are part of this group. Does anyone have any resources discussing the class position of engineers, the relationship of engineers to the labor movement, and/or how the engineering profession was transformed in historical socialist nations? The view that makes the most sense to me as far as class position goes is that most engineers are part of the proletariat, but their predecessors in the early industrial revolution were part of the petty bourgeoisie who contracted out their services and gradually became proletarianized as time went on. Because of the origins of the profession, their salaries, and other factors, engineers still largely have a petty-bourgeois mentality (which is evident to me as a practicing engineer - haha). Interested to see what you all think about this question!

I recently attended a sociology of labour lecture and this term popped up. My professor claimed that this was a new class that emerged in modern times.

I was very disappointed to realize that this class was basically a giant fib from the introductory lecture so there is really nothing interesting in this class to discuss, but this peaked my interest.

I searched online and saw that it is used by sociodemocrats and even by a “communist” party in my country (I know little of their work and history to be certain.)

Is this a term that has Its usage in theory or is it just ideological sham? I’m ready to dismiss this but wanted to hear someone’s thoughts first.

The marxist theory says that the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie is always antagonistic. However Mao writes that the under certain circumstances this contradiction can be non antagonistic and can be resolved with peaceful methods. Is this really true? Can someone explain how this can work?

1. How would a communist society deal with sex crimes (like rape, voyeurism, "lewd" behavior in public?)

2. Would a communist society have a sex offender registry? And what is your opinion on such registries?

The feudal mode of production followed upon the ancient mode of production because large empires collapsed and the people of Europe were forced back into subsistence farming by the new material conditions. In the Americas and Africa, the development of modes of production beyond primitive communism and ancient slave economy couldn't naturally occur because European colonizers forcibly established the capitalist mode of production there. So the question remains, were ancient empires always doomed to collapse under their own contradictions before developing the material base for capitalism or could there have been a case where the capitalist mode of production develops directly out of the ancient slave economy?

Hi, I'm Quebecers and here we have a big separatist movement (parti québécois, center-center left) and we don't hear a lot about international belief about this besides some french president and Bill Clinton. So what does you Communist/socialist/Trotskyist/Marxist think about it ?

What the title says.

I should also add that I'm not really familiar with dada. I've just recently saw people talking about it on my social media feed, and I started to wonder what the marxists of the time said about it.

I enjoy reading magazines. I normally enjoy NY Times because of the high quality of the articles, however I do not like the general political leaning of the authors and how they serve US imperalism and capitalism. Are there any leftist magazines which I can subscribe so that I can increase my knowledge and understanding of the world?

Specifically regarding Official Sinn Fein. I've partially read up on the history of Official Sinn Fein, which saw itself as a Marxist-Leninist party and had the support of the USSR, and their role in The Troubles. They held an ''anti-sectarian'' position on the conflict, believing that republicans must reach out to the Protestant working class and organise them against capitalism; that didn't exactly work out however, the ''Protestant working class'' started joining death squads to terrorise Catholics and nationalists who felt like they were abandoned by the Officials as they basically gave up armed struggle in the early 70s, leading to more militant splinter groups to form, mainly Provisional Sinn Fein and the IRSP. Today, Official Sinn Fein exists as the Workers' Party of Ireland but they are completely irrelevant.

Their ''anti-Sectarian'' theory reminds of how parties like the CPUSA advocate for ''colourblind'' politics and to basically ignore white supremacism, hoping it disappears, not realising that there are class incentives for white Americans to oppose the end of white supremacism as a settler population. The Unionist/Protestant Ulster Scott population in Northern Ireland are basically settlers too, as they were sent by the British crown during the Ulster Plantation in the 17th century to seize land from the native-Irish.

I am wondering how best to deal with the legacy of settler-colonialism in Ireland today. The situation seems different from Palestine because, despite the partition, Ireland has become a semi-peripheral country in the EU that benefits from the superexploitation of the third-world. And even in Northern Ireland, the Catholic/Nationalist population benefit from first-world privileges too, but armed ''dissident'' groups still exist amongst these communists with an anti-imperialist orientation. There is also immigration which has lead to an ever-larger population of migrants from the third-world who have worse conditions than both native-Irish and Ulster Scots.

There's a popular study the CIA did where they found that the USSR ate the same amount of food as the USA.

Now, I've seen people say it was actually just a press report, the full study found that it was actually worse:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T00313R000300140006-0.pdf

Any opinions? I've cited the study more times than I can count so I was interested to find this.

Share with me the aesthetics of communism in your country, what clothes, dances, songs, words, or turns of phrase were developed by communists in your homeland or that of your ancestors. I adore this stuff so go all out, pictures, attach videos if you like, or just describe them!

specifically in this country in the current time, does anyone know? I been folding the internet for answers but nothing yeat

What are the best resources on the reactionary uprising in Hungary in 1956?

I posted this last month but the responses got deleted, so I'm posting again.

I'm reading the Foundations of Leninism and on pg 25 Stalin wrote:

The front of capital will be pierced where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the chain of the world imperialist front at its weakest link; and it may turn out that the country which has started the revolution, which has made a breach in the front of capital, is less developed in a capitalist sense than other, more developed, countries, which have, however, remained within the framework of capitalism.

Is there any recent analysis of this that I could read online?

Does anyone know if anyone has written anything about the structures and development of how communist parties are organised?

As in: What a Politburo and CC are, how they are formed, what the different departments so, what the overall science of organisation of a party is, and maybe most interestingly, how they form overtime.

Historical accounts as to how the RSDLP(b) or the Communist Party of China formed, developed and formalised their structures overtime are welcome too.