There is a dialectic between theory (or head knowledge) and practice. To be a Marxist is to do both things, working through that dialectic to evolve yourself as a practicianer. Additionally, to be a Marxist in practice necessitates interaction with an organized group of other Marxists. This interaction will challenge you to resolve conflicts between ideas, theories, strategies and so forth and develop a practical version of democratic centralism for your organization.

Those who think that Marxism is just learning theory aren’t actually practicing Marxism. They become purists and commit the error of dogmatism. Many Trotskyists fall into this camp (I won’t say all Trotskyists, but I’m still looking for counter-examples). It’s why a Trotskyists probably knows Marxist theory better than I do but is also the most useless leftist on the planet (and can often even become useful to the bourgeoisie!).

If you only ever read theory and do not put it into practice, you are simply doing so for some personal reasons, like to feel smarter than others because you have an insecurity. This is not just useless but dangerous because people like this can sound really smart and like they know what they’re talking about for new leftists. But because they offer no real solution to the material problems of those around them nor any practical avenues for the proletariat to direct their anger and pain from capitalism towards revolutionary action, it drains the energy away from more serious praxis.

Praxis is the hard part. It’s why many don’t do it. But it’s what actually makes any of this make sense.

“The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” — Karl Marx

It also depends on what “two state solution” actually means. Traditionally, Israel has made such solutions impossible. The “you go your way, we’ll go ours” has been off the table because Israel doesn’t want that, they want the entire land and the expulsion of Palestine entirely.

A two-state solution, where there’s a kind of federation between them might actually work. The federation would have to abide by international committees and violations by either state would be subject to some kind of punishment (be it trade deals or even military action in severe cases).

The first problem, though, is the weapons supply and military training from the West. If that were cut off, it would take maybe a year of bloody gorilla fighting, but the playing field would be relatively equal at that point and then it’d be anybody’s guess who’d win out. Getting the USA to slowly wean away support would mean negotiating partially on their terms.

In other words, Xi could just be giving the USA a peaceful “out” here, if they take it. The USA can save face and support a ramp down of the situation instead of escalation. I don’t see that happening near-term, but lots can change in the next few years and this play by China might just be the thing that allows a better situation to happen here.

Does anybody have resources on AGI being a real possibilities beyond just a marketing term and, one day, just a mashup of various different things of AI?

I haven’t read anything about AGI that isn’t a “tech bro” kind of approach. Also, I don’t see how AGI is anything more than a marketing term where, once enough shitty jobs are replaced by it, they’ll hail it a success and that’s pretty much it.

I want an AI, for example, to analyze the material conditions of a country and plan a Communist revolution for me. Can I have that? Will capitalism produce this for me?

Jokes on you, bot, I live in America, I don’t have privacy!

He’s a gaffe machine.

Tanks. Lots and lots of T-34s.

Why not ask the Chinese government?

And those bears ain’t even hexed!

I love how, with the Snowden leaks and more, we know definitively that the US government is collecting all our data but people are super scared right now that China might be spying on them.

One thing’s for sure: capitalism seems to be miles ahead of any socialist country when it comes to propagandizing their citizens. Because the best propaganda is the kind that you don’t even know is there.

WRT innovation following the economic need, that’s sort of universal and logical. It wouldn’t make sense for the startup Google to begin writing a search algorithm for the Internet if there’s no Internet. The development of the Internet created new possibilities but then created brand new problems: how we going to find all this new content?

WRT capitalism’s different natures at different times, this is NOT STRESSED ENOUGH by leftists! In the early days of capitalism, it was a massively progressive, innovative and yes, even positive force in the world! It no longer is. What changed? What changed was exactly what you said: when it’s goal was to supplant the old system and establish a new one (aka revolutionary), it was a positive force. Now that it’s goal is to specifically STOP any and all revolutionary changes globally, it became a negative force.

The key is technology. As technology moves humanity from scarcity to abundance, in each area, one after the other, we have two choices: 1) accept this and allow ALL people access to the things or 2) build artificial scarcity (paywalls, patents, military conquests, coups, etc) so that this new abundance can be monopolized and controlled. This is the very heart of what is being fought against.

The important thing here is not just that capitalism changed from a positive to a negative force in the world, but to also note that so will socialism. Socialism, after it fully supplants capitalism, will fight against changes towards communism. It will betray its own objective. Indeed, all socialist projects already have this tendency. The struggle will always continue.