That is a vulgar materialist conception, from those who do not grasp dialectical materialism, as well as those who reject it deliberately. Class reductionism doesn’t recognize secondary contradictions that rest upon the base of primary contradictions, seeing each as separate and butchering how contradiction actually works as an engine of change in dialectics.

You can trace a bit further and find the source, capitalism, specifically the imperialist stage of it that the US has been in for a while and is crumbling.

PYONGYANG, September 16. /TASS/. North Korea has warned of the possibility of using nuclear weapons in accordance with the provisions of the law on policy regarding the state’s nuclear armed forces in response to the actions of the US and South Korea, the Korean Central News Agency reported, citing a Defense Ministry spokesperson.

The 2022 law provides for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of an attack on the country’s leadership and nuclear command and control system, as well as in the event of a threat to use nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against North Korea.

So, as usual, the DPRK is maintaining deterrence by outlining their hard red lines.

Sure! Those are good steps. They aren’t complete, though, and that’s why work still has to be done beyond simply saying “men and women are equal legally, so there’s no more problems to be worked out.”

How do you get people to be “excellent” to each other? Social programs addressing historic inequalities are the solution.

That’s not how quotas work, though. Policies that aim for supporting women and increasing the number of them as a ratio does not mean qualifications do not matter. Performance absolutely counts, but systemic barriers to employment also exist that lower the number of women in fields like tech.

Secondly, the fact that reactionary groups form as a resistence to social progress does not make social progress a bad thing. Again, trying to give full legal equality without addressing lingering impacts of historic issues leads to those issues persisting for far longer than they need to. Under the banner of “equality,” reactionary groups merely defend existing inequality.

The solution is to address historical inequalities that persist to this day actively, through social programs. Legal equality is merely the first step to achieving actual equality.

Legal recognition of equality still does not address lingering issues from historic inequalities. There is no place on Earth that is free of this historic impact, and active measures to address these inequalities are necessary to create a new level playing field by which legal equality can translate to actual, de facto equality. I include the UK in that.

This just upholds existing problems though by pretending they don’t exist. It’s the same exact argument against reparations and DEI, full equal treatment cannot exist without addressing the lingering impact of historic inequality.

The big systemic fights have not been won, though.

Yes, I’m a cis man and I am a Marxist feminist. Feminism is not exclusionary to cis men, and Marxist feminism is critical as patriarchy is a secondary contradiction that rests upon the primary contradiction of class society. Attacking sexism attacks capitalism, and attacking capitalism attacks sexism. They are connected.

This isn’t true, though. Economics is a material study of social relations that objectively exist and are reinforced by how we produce and distribute. Bourgeois economics tends towards idealism, turning it from materialism. We cannot simply “conjure” a new system. Systems are material processes, and so we must take a scientific, rather than utopian, approach.

Reddit isn’t particularly left-leaning, it leans more liberal. Lemmy is definitely left-leaning, as it is developed primarily by Marxist-Leninists. As for bots on Reddit, it’s profitable.

Kiev was already under scrutiny from western media pre-2022 for their war crimes in the Donbass region. Once the war escalated with Russia entering the war, the same media apparatus flipped 180. I doubt Ukraine attacking civilian planes will lose them support among the west.

This is also a good example of how reform itself isn’t strong enough to overcome the capitalist class itself. Both the DNC and GOP serve capital, and are united against even social democracy like the DSA. To establish socialism, to actually do it, we need revolutionary means.

That’s why I am asking what counts as “world-changing,” as most people would consider the first man in space to be world-changing.

Surviving in space and successfully returning from orbit is absolutely an incredible achievement that spurred on the space race.

Vostok 1 was the capsule that contained Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. All of these were critical advancements in space flight and science. What is the criterion for “world changing” that doesn’t include the numerous critical advancements in space?

Sputnik, Vostok, the artificial heart, the math behind modern multi-stage rocketry, and space rovers were all invented by the Soviets.

Okay, then returning, vulgar empiricism is inferior to dialectical materialism because the dialectical materialist understands how change occurs and develops, while vulgar materialists fail to. I gave an example of how at a macro level this manifests in either focusing on reformism or revolution and development.

Why don’t you propose an example of how you would use the scientific method in practice to test for a better system, and we will see if you make metaphysical errors in your approach. After all, my point is that philosophy is simply how we view the world, and we all have a given philosophy, even if we don’t acknowledge it, and it determines how we interpret the objective reality of the world.

I’m not talking about political philosophy, but how we actually interpret empirically tested data. I never made the claims you believe me to be making.