ComradeRat

Basically all of them afaik. Most of the big epidemics spread to humans from 1. domesticated animals 2. kept in very close/tight quarters

Sorta. It's very materialist. It treats economics as the foundation of historical development. Interest groups attract people based primarily on material concerns. Classes hence struggle against each other (afaik without scripting) and create alliances with other classes and do revolutions. What its really missing imo is the environmental aspect to be truly 'marxist' tho (the 19th century is when concerns about "what happens when we run out of fertiliser/trees/fish/etc" started really growing as a result of unprecedented extractivism, and these are recurring concerns in Capital)

I wonder if it is because with the game becoming less popular again

A lotta the reason people keep talking about marxism in vicky3 is because the devs of vicky3 outright said they uesed some of Marx's economic theories because it makes for good game design.

Also something something reality has a marxist bias.

Khrushchev? What good has Khrushchev ever done?

-Deng, 1980

In addition to what others have said, remember that the US (and its client-states such as Canada, Britain, France, Sweden, Japan, etc) which have 'democracy' and 'welfare' have these things because and so long as the global south is under their boot. The majority of intense class struggle, the actual "propertyless-except-for-their-labour-power" proletariat, the majority of environmental degredation and all the repressive measures needed to maintain "order" in spite of this naked exploitation have largely been exported to the neocolonies, where such rights and democracies are more obviously nonexistant or fraudulent.

And even in these states, in times of crisis the mask of democracy falls off immediately (e.g. responses to anti-ww1 protests, responses to anti-vietnam war protests in the 70s, responses to environmental protests in the 60s, or responses to indigenous land rights struggles basically all the time.) The freedom of speech is also only freedom from government persecution for free speech. It is not protection from private persecution for speech.

Note that e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Google, and other entities, despite being larger than some nations, are private, are autocracies run by a CEO appointed by money through its physical representatives, the shareholders. There is nothing to stop an employer from firing you from excercising 'free speech' to criticise their practices (if one is even lucky enough to live somewhere where the employer requires a reason to fire someone). As, on the average, all of these CEOs, shareholders, owners, etc share class interests, and the managers, supervisors, etc have delusions of sharing class interests, this works out to a fairly extensive network for suppression of dissent.

Much as the feudal king didn't have to raise the national levies for every uppity peasant, the bourgeois has no need to raise the national armies in response to every uppity citizen-worker. The feudal king would leave such small matters to local lords, priests, or voluntary action of middling landowners; the bourgeois leaves such small matters to the petite-bourgeois, managers, and the 'middle class' generally.

In general wrt 'convincing libs', in my context (imperial core, cannot speak for non-core folks' experiences) I focus more on showing them that our country is evil, that our system is evil than trying to show that e.g. China is good. The fact of the matter is that no matter how good China is, it falls short of the imaginary-utopian America/Canada/France/'The West' the average lib has in their head. No actual real state with flaws will ever measure up to their imaginary utopia; it needs to be shown to be false first.

17Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite: 18“Go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who rules in Samaria. He is now in Naboth’s vineyard, where he has gone to take possession of it. 19Say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Have you not murdered a man and seized his property?’ Then say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!’ ”

I think the issue is mixing religions together as one homogeneous thing, with groups of people who only knew religion through oppression and never saw a religious preacher doing something other than stealing people's money and diddling kids, and they can't seem to comprehend when an another group holds on to their religion, like if your only experience with religion is the KKK crucifying black people you'd assume native tribal religions are similar if you didn't do research on it.

I 100% agree, but it pisses me off a lot when marxists do it bc i have higher hopes

To quote

It won' t do!

It won't do!

You must investigate!

You must not talk nonsense!

Yeah you got it

Lotta people have baffleingly wrongheaded views of Marx's critique of religion, reducing it to m*taphysics

Marx criticises religion basically from the second he enters history; but he is basically silent on metaphysical stuff like "does God exist" because *he doesn't care the point of materialism and revolutionary philosophy is specifically to drop useless metaphysical debates for e.g. the formation and organisation of the state or the restriction of peasant rights to forest wood. But if we must discuss useless metaphysical questions, Marx comes out swinging in favour of the existence of all gods in his doctoral dissertation: "Take for instance the ontological proof [of god]: "that which I conceive for myself in a real way is a real concept for me", something that works on me. In this sense, all gods, the Pagan as well as the Christian ones, have possessed a real existence...If somebody imagines he has a hundred thalers...he will incur debts on the strength of his imagination, his imagination will work, in the same way as all humanity has incurred debts on its gods."(MECWvol1p104 Marx's emphasis)

In 1842 he points out: "And as for Rome! Read Cicero! The Epicurean, Stoic or Sceptic philosophies were the religions of cultured Romans when Rome had reached the zenith of its development. That with the downfall of the ancient states their religions also disappeared requires no further explanation, for the "true religion" of the ancients was the cult of "their nationality", of their "state"."(ibid p189); note the fluidity of Marx's definition of 'religion' and its lack of relation to "they believe in invisible entities" and its deep connection to "they believe in reified alienated social relationships".

Three other neat quotes (mostly early Marx because he drops metaphysical bullshit like this for important stuff like factory reports by the 50s):

Up till now the political consitution has been the religious sphere, the religion of national life, the Heaven of its generality over against the Earthly existence of its actuality.

(MECWvol3 p31)

Man, even if he proclaims himself an atheist through the medium of the state, that is, if he proclaims the state to be atheistic, still remains in the grip of religion, precisely because he acknowledges himself only by a roundabout route, only through an intermediary. Religion in precisely the recognition of man in a roundabout way.

(MECWvol3 p152)

In order, therefore, to find an analogy [for commodity-fetishism] we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.

(Capital, p165)

Marx's critique is not "man in the sky silly", is not "people just don't know the truth and i must preach it"; it is that religion is the result of class society, of sanctification of oppressive social structures and the recognition of humans through an alienated structure. In more abstract terms, Marx believes religion is the result of social relations not being understood by humans except through abstract mystifications such as the gods, the state, the market.

It should be made very explicit that in capital, Marx shows that our society, the society in which the capitalist mode of production predominates, is deeply 'religious', believing in all manner of mystical and not-real things like value, interactions between commodities. Marx even argues that the market operates in such a way that it appears to basically everyone as an all powerful all present all knowing entity which exists as an independent subject outside of them. This is what religion is. It will not disappear when people profess their undying belief in Isaac Newton; it will disappear when they stop recognizing themselves and other humans as people through Jesus ('christians') or the state ('citizens') or the market ('property-owners').

Marx is also much more ambivalent on religion than most marxists seem to think (as the Capital bookclub on this website has been seeing through his Biblical references). Marx uses the Bible as both a historical source and for theoretical inspiration throughout his lifetime. There were multiple copies of the Bible in his library when he died. Why? Because "Religion is the opiate of the masses" is reduction of Marx's ideas to absurdity. A fuller version of the quote reads:

Religion is the general theory of [the world of class society], its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point of honour, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality...Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world...It is the opium of the people.

(MECWvol3 p175)

I.e. "religion is a mixed bag"

In terms of Soviet policy, I haven't studied their policy regarding the orthodox church and I refuse to have takes on stuff I haven't investigated unless I need too. Regarding non-christian religions: the USSR did a colonialism and pissed off a ton of the marginalised peoples of Siberia and northern Russia with their r/atheism-bro nonsense, because they enforced this atheism even on local 'grassroots' practices, indigenous practices. Talismans were confiscated, sacred sites destroyed to prove that "the gods aren't real. And like it's gotta be re-iterated--many of these people supported the soviets and even integrated socialism into their religious practices (one example; some of the Buryats started revering the Paris commune matyrs as revolutionary spirits, others created ritual around fulfilling quotas) but this wasn't good enough for the r/atheismbros so they squashed it and pissed the well intentioned people off.

would a socialist state with a party that strictly adhered to Marxism–Leninism but allowed religious freedom among its citizenship be stable?

Cuba allows Christians (even Catholics afaik) into the party, has for decades. Cuba has close ties to liberation theologists throughout latin america, because Cuba is thankfully not run by r/atheismbros. Cuba is the most stable ML state I am aware of.

I haven't read/listened to a whole lot of theory, what literature would you recommend to better understand dialectical materialism?

Frank Black-Elk's "Observations on Marxism and Lakota Tradition" in Marxism and Native Americans is amazing and short (and pirate-able on libgen). He (and a few other native folks) argues strongly that native knowledge systems (he argues specifically regarding the Lakota) are dialectically materialist because of their spirituality. Aikenhead & Michell's Bridging Cultures is a good in depth examination by native scientists of the empirical basis of indigenous knowledge. If you must read something filled with Marxist buzzwords, Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic is an absolute masterpiece despite his annoying takes on the USSR (which don't come up much or at all in this book). This is also a good article: https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/02/karl-marx-and-radical-indigenous-critiques-of-capitalism/

I am not an expert on the subject, and frankly it wouldn't shock me either way. However, it is interesting to note that Beria is the only one of Stalin's "team" whose files still haven't been declassified. Stalin, Molotov and Khrushchev archives etcetc are all open; Beria's is still sealed. It isn't even because of secret police classification: the preceding heads' archival stuff is also accessible to scholars. (Source on this is Sheila Fitzpatrick's On Stalin's Team.)

To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge instead of entering into an argument and struggling against incorrect views for the sake of unity or progress or getting the work done properly. This is a fifth type [of liberalism].

...

Liberalism...is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. ... It is an extremely bad tendency.

Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism.

Marx isn't anti-religion because "lol man in the sky silly". Marx is anti-religion because it is the product of an inverted world, a class society. Marx believes that, if class society is abolished, if the topsy-turvy (this is the word he uses in e.g. "On 'The Jewish Question'" or the rest of "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law") world is turned upright, religion will wither away into nothing. Marx believes this is only possible when all the social relations that underlie society are laid bare in an understandable form (i.e. with communism), and that it will not disappear until the topsy-turvy material world disappears.

As Marx states in the former essay, Marx doesn't believe religion can be abolished by decree (and he points out that state secularism is often just reskinned Christianity). In both essays, Marx actually details how the state itself, money itself, are religions; for Marx religion is the work of human mind alienated from humans and dominating them.

In the full quote (which emizeko posted) Marx outright refers to religion as the general theory of this world (i.e. the topsy-turvy world), as an encyclopaedic compendium. Elsewhere (either in Contribution to the Critique or in On the Jewish Question) Marx refers to religion as a register of the theoretical struggles of mankind. Based on Marx's usage of various bible quotes and themes in his work (even Capital), it seems likely that he treated religion as he would e.g. liberal economists or members of parliament (i.e. with critical analysis and an eye towards useful stuff for his own critique)

is the root cause of a great deal of all the world's problems

Idealism. Claiming that ideas are the root cause of a great deal of the world's problems is the opposite of materialism.

Materialist analysis has never treated religion very kindly.

It has actually treated religion very kindly and respectfully. Like Marx read the bible repeatedly in multiple languages. He told his wife to seek spiritual edification in the jewish prophets rather than a secular church. His analysis of religion is constantly and consistently respectful and to the point with the notable and glaring exception of people who say "i'm a christian/jew/etc" and then ruthlessly exploit their workers. And even then, Marx's disrespect is usually quoting scripture to show how far they've gone from it rather than "lol u believe in man in the sky".

Marx actually admits to an existence of a ton of abstract, non-material social things in Capital which exist, objectively, without a material form. The entirety of communism is a belief that Marx had could become reality. As many indigenous folks have argued (for example, deloria jr. in "Same old Rock" in Marxism and Native Americans) Marxism is itself a religion that demands taking a lot on faith (revolutionary optimism is faith; belief in revolution is faith; belief in an eventual better world in the future? Faith.

And if you read indigenous activists, theorists and so forth (e.g. Coulthard Red Skin, White Masks) you will see it argued very strongly that indigenous religions/spiritualities are materialist in that they are methods of describing and organising empirically obtained information, disregarding theology which no longer holds true to investigation. When you research religions besides Christianity in the global north in particular and organised hierarchical monotheistic religions which developed to support material inequalities and sufferings it becomes very evident that this is how most of them work, except for the religions of the nobility who write things down and get obsessed with literalism.

If you don't mind my asking comrade what sorta investigation into religion (past or contemporary) have you done? What sorta investigations into the structure of science and how it works (e.g. Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Siltoe ed Local vs. Global Science or Aikenhead and Michell *Indigenous and Scientific Ways of Knowing Nature) have you done?