A tale as old as time.

Jokes on them, I never learned about this airlift in history class.

Just because they shouldn’t doesn’t mean they didn’t. The Law on Cooperatives, which came about in 1988, allowed for private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. The reforms created by Perestrokia set the conditions that allowed for oligarchs to come into power. Take Boris Berezovsky, for example. From Wikipedia:

In 1989, Berezovsky took advantage of the opportunities presented by perestroika to found LogoVAZ (Russian: ЛогоВАЗ) with Badri Patarkatsishvili and senior managers from Russian automobile manufacturer AvtoVAZ. LogoVAZ developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars.[39] The dealership profited from hyperinflation by taking cars on consignment and paying the producer at a later date when the money lost much of its value.[40]

There obviously is a lot more historical development that led to this point in USSR history, but Perestrokia really set the stage for capital accumulation, it would seem. Early on in these reforms it seems that many of the oligarchs were also members of the Soviet state; again, see Wikipidia.

The majority of oligarchs were promoted (at least initially) by the Soviet apparatchiks, with strong connections to Soviet power-structures and access to the funds of the Communist Party.[4][12][13] Boris Berezovsky himself was Head of the Department of System Design at another Academy of Sciences research centre. His private company was established by the Institute as a joint venture.[14] Mikhail Khodorkovsky started his business importing computers under auspices of the Komsomol-authorised Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of the Youth in 1986, briefly serving as a deputy secretary of the Komsomol for a district in Moscow in 1987. His move into banking two years later was funded with the support of Komsomol alumni working in Moscow city government. Later, he served in the Russian government as an adviser to the prime minister and a deputy minister of fuel and power while still running his business.[15] Vladimir Vinogradov was the chief economist of Promstroybank, one of the six banks existing in the Soviet Union,[16] previously serving as the secretary of Atommash plant Komsomol organisation.[15]

Yeah I came here to say scratch.

Out here asking the real questions.

According to the glossary of Lunia Oi’s Dialectical Materialism book:

Content and Form (Category Pair)

Content is the philosophical category which refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from. The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas. Content and Form have a dialectical relationship with one another, in which content determines form and form impacts back on content.

Consider a Comic Book. The Form it takes is that of a book, but its content being mostly images accompanied with dialog impacts its form. A comic book of similar page length to a typical book will be considerably easier and faster to read even if all other aspects of the two are the same. Should you try and make a “comic book” without significant illustrations the object is no longer a comic book. If you were to produce a comic book with a similar word count to another book, the size of the comic book would be considerably large compared to the book of similar word count (content impacting form).

Essence and Phenomena (Category Pair)

The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things and ideas. The Phenomena category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions. Essence always determines which phenomena appear, but phenomena do not always accurately reflect essence in human perception; in other words, it is possible to misinterpret phenomena, leading to a misunderstanding of essence, or to mistake phenomena for essence.

This one is tricky so I’ll quote the book directly:

Essence should not be confused with Form. Form represents the stable internal relations of the component content of a subject, whereas Essence represents the synthesis of all internal aspects as well as all obvious and stable attributes which define the existence, motion, and development of a subject.

Phenomena are simply external manifestations of a subject which occur in specific conditions. The Essence of a subject is not dependent on conditions, whereas in different conditions, the same subject will exhibit different Phenomena. For example, COVID-19 is, essentially, a specific virus strain. That is to say, all of the internal aspects and stable relations that define the existence, motion, and development of COVID-19 are synthesized as a virus which we call COVID-19.

The Phenomena of COVID-19 which we can observe in patients would include symptoms such as fever, coughing, trouble breathing, etc. The Essence of a cloud is water vapor in the atmosphere: that is the synthesis, the coming-together, of all the internal stable relations and aspects which will determine how a cloud exists, moves, and develops over time.

The Phenomena of clouds are all the things we can sense: the appearance of big fluffy white things in the air, shadows on the ground, and, sometimes, rain.

Essence defines Phenomenon: the internal attributes and stable relations will produce the Phenomena which we can observe. A cloud is not essentially defined as a fluffy white thing in the air; that is just the appearance a cloud has to our human senses in certain specific conditions.

The book is called: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism: Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Part 1

It’s a fantastic resource. You can get the PDF or epub for free. I highly recommend it.

I was just having a conversation with a relative yesterday about open-source; he’s a real blue-collar guy. I told him he should open up any manual for any device he has in the house and flip to the back to look at the open-source disclosures inside. That open-source has already beat the corporate private system because not a single piece of technology gets produced without some kind of open-source software. By the end of it, he really got the potential of open-source as a system for building functional and practical shit. Through the lens of the John Deer tractor right to repair struggle. China shows us that open-source coupled with a socialist worldview outperforms capitalist “competition breeds innovation” any day of the week. You can’t tell me there isn’t a John Deer farmer who wouldn’t pick up the IDE if it meant that they could contribute to the maintenance, functionality, and performance of the $10,000 combine they use every single day. That kind of sector-wide multidisciplinary skill set doesn’t exist currently, but it absolutely could.

“Issue”? This is just a design choice. Im sorry this was causing you distress. Who cares about URL legibility? Lol.

Also what the fuck do you mean “you have to wonder what the Lemmy dev team is focusing on.” You can go read their monthly updates! You can go read their github page and track their actual issues.

Lol piss off.

They’ll be happy to know that OpenAI and Sam Altman have heard their cries and will be adding “sexy mode” (or whatever they’ll call it) into cGPT. Signs of a truly healthy product, one that absolutely delivers on all its other claims.

When the exploited exploit back.

Let me know when you post that link; I’m curious as well.

At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.

~ V.I Lenin

Yeah I can’t even see how this is electoralisms fault here, he’s already got the bag and now he’s just running laps for Zionists? How long did it take AOC to complete the transformation? This is like a any% speed run at this point.

The MLs over at DSA need to start asking themselves some hard questions about their strategy, because good luck fighting against this kind of opportunism from the inside.

Electric?

Look into EMACS and Org-Mode, it can help you do just that.

Is that a signature in the bottom right?

Even when you factor in the fallout from a nuclear bombing?

What a feast for the eyes!

I’m a collector of old(-looking) commie/lefty websites and graphics.

Is there a way for me to see your collection 👀.

I like “The People’s Web(ring)” and “USSWR, The United Socialist Sites Webring” mentioned below

I feel the People’s Web could be a way to refer to the concept of the commie side of the indie/alt/personal/non-corporate/etc. web in general and USSWR for the webring :)

I floated the idea of “The Peoples Network” a while back in another post, and then I found out that chuds have captured that name. It’s also apparently the name of a multilevel marketing company.

I do like the sound of “The People’s Web” as a subsection of the Indie/alt web movement, though. I did manage to acquire the domain abolish.capital which I’m just itching to use as more than just a whole ass copy of the manifesto.

it’s to bad .web tld are not a thing (yet). I feel like I’d need to grab a good thepeoplesweb.tld. I could probably get www[.]peopleswebr[.]ing.

It is done!