One of my first conversations and confrontations about my Communism... in a thread..

* Fellow traveler sees me watching a video clip on Leninism...

Him: You're a Communist? In this day and age? That's rare. Where are you from?

Me: India

Him: Is Communism still a thing there?

Me: Pretty much. Many communists around if you want to find them, it's a third world country, it is still a feudalistic cultural epitome as well.
Him: So what do they do? Revolution?

Me: No. India's communist parties follow the electoral line. Though there are many hardline Maoists that believe in Armed struggle. The CPs also have trade unions, they do a lot of societal transformations, etc wherever they are in power.
Him: So Communism is viewed as a good thing?

Me: Yeah. At least, there is no antagonistic anti communism like you have in the west.
Him: All Soviet Bloc countries in Europe are poor. How do you guys still follow Communism after communism did that?

Me: Communism didn't do that. The Eastern bloc countries turned poor en masse after they abandoned Socialism btw.
Him: Well yeah, that's because those living on welfare had to get a job, duh!

Me: Under Socialism, jobs were a fundamental right. When they turned neoliberal is when their jobs went and they were left high and dry.
Him: But you have to admit that Communism is about making everyone poor!

Me: Let me ask you. Do you want to be rich?

Him: Yes.

Me: ... and the person next to you?

Him: Sure that would be great!

Me: and perhaps everyone in this aircraft as well?
Him: theoretically, sure!

Me: Then that's communism, btw :) Have a look at the UN figures for Soviet Russia and you will see an economic graph that never went down despite being the most sanctioned country in the world. Cuba...
Cuba... produces the best doctors in the world, has no starvation, the best electoral system in the world, and the highest life expectancy in Latin America. And also notice how no Communist country has ever produced terrorists that have pulled buildings or killed anyone!
Him: But Stalin, Mao... they killed billions!

Me: Billions? And the world never saw a population drop? USSR and China eliminated those who threatened their Revolutions, which I find no different from massacres and wars started by the West to keep their hegemonic power intact.
Him: Isnt China really Communists doing Capitalism, mate?

Me: But it's also a planned economy. The government also has board members in every private company, there are national targets, things to achieve as a nation.
So you could say that they have a controlled Capitalist model, which enriches the state to send resources back to the people, to employ and enrich everyone. It's a Communist Party that's using Capitalism for rapid growth by using the benefits of socialism.
We the Communists believe that just as Capitalism has come and replaced an economic system before it, it itself will collapse under it's own shortcomings and will be replaced by Socialism which then will be replaced by Communism. There is no visceral hatred for economic systems.
... The challenge is always to make economics more democratic: from the rule of one family in slavery, to the rule of the church in feudalism, to the rule of rich folks who own capital to society collectively owning capital, to finally humanity living in a state of abundance...
... the abolition of class differences, where from each as per their ability to each as per their need.
Him: Sounds utopian :)

Me: To quote Marx... Philosophers have merely interpreted the World...

Him:....the point is hower, to change it?

Me: Exactly.
That was the beginning of many such encounters. Some successful, some not so much. I never try and make someone a Communist like some kind of evangelist. I just tell them what it has done this far and what it can do in the future.

Towards that World Revolution with my Comrades..

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)