Hey! I live in Belgium and doing Marxist Econ research, plus doing library events on the side. Feel free to send me a message anytime too!

South Vietnam flags are very popular in the US as well.

Just wanted to say good luck with studies! Russian is tricky but I think in conversation people tend to be very forgiving of mistakes. I’m thinking also maybe watching films in Russian might help with learning how to pronounce words. There’s lots of Soviet films available on YouTube.

1. Im not sure I agree with your definitions of communist and socialist sectors, since a socialist mode of production already means a focus on use value. So the definition of a communist sector is redundant.
2. “When looking at the USSR, it had basically no capitalist sector” - depends on time period!
3. “Denmark and the UK both had small communist sectors in things like their healthcare.” - is a regulated capitalist sector really equivalent to a socialist sector?
4. “We simply state that unless there is a DotP established, the capitalist sector will erode them away.” - I would also argue that without a DotP, the socialist sector is always subservient to (the booms and busts) of the capitalist one

It looks really nice

Ive heard so many American liberals say that modern Russia is communist lol

Hadn’t had troubles with TSA so far, if it helps

Nothing surprising. Has been the trend for a while

I would recommend the book Everything for everyone (https://www.commonnotions.org/everything-for-everyone) which is a fictional account of a near future communist New York.

I would also recommend to not try to seek out an unbiased account of communism, which does not exist. There are a lot of assumptions that go into it and will be of course influenced by the authors biases.

Im not sure what you mean when you say you don’t want historical content, since that is what documentation is. Other than that there are fictional stories if that’s what you are looking for?

Maybe check out Everyday Utopia by Kristen Ghodsee? She writes about different egalitarian communities in history

i liked it. i would recommend if you like theme of banality of evil; definitely watch it with headphones or good audio set up

Students around Belgium are starting to occupy campuses this week. Hopefully it goes well

im going to the ptb event in brussels

very hyped for labour day

Yeah I totally got that vibe as well

why is settlers a bad book?

Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, defined by the dominance of finance capital (over industrial capital) and its export from the imperial core to the periphery.

Neo-colonialism is a specific case of a relationship between an imperial core country and a periphery country, where the periphery country is nominally independent, and the imperial core country uses indirect means of intimidation (instead of direct colonial rule). I would also note that the terms neo-colonialism and colonialism center the colony/periphery, while imperialism centers the imperialist state. So it is still the same phenomenon, the terms just focus on different parts of the relationship.

For context: Germany is one of the biggest arms suppliers to Israel, accounting for around 30% of the military equipment imported to Israel (the other 70% being USA).

How does avoiding any diplomatic solution to the conflict and encouraging Ukrainians to sacrifice themselves for “democracy” actually stop Russia from wiping out Ukraine? It seems that the EU has only exacerbated the destruction of Ukraine, no? And no I am not a big fan of Putin.