On the other hand it makes you depressed about the current capitalist state of the world.

right there right now and wishing i hadn’t bothered to learn materialism since i know that i’m doomed to never experience a world where it’s the dominant sociopolitical theory.

It makes me hopeful. Socialism is winning, and it is winning because it’s historically driven.

I can’t even drive through nice neighborhoods anymore. What used to appear aspirational now manifests palpably as wealth inequality.

Nuance: it doesn’t get you depressed, it gets you angry. Then you get depressed because you experience righteous anger at an injustice but feel helpless to fix it.

Insight: you’re not helpless, because you’re not alone. That’s why just being in contact with comrades and allies can lift your spirits.

I find you have to look at the bigger picture. Capitalism is rapidly becoming discredited even within the western core. People might not have the political awareness to understand what to do about it, but faith in the system is collapsing. That’s a prerequisite for any meaningful change. Meanwhile, Western hegemony is collapsing globally, China is replacing the US as the dominant global power, while both Vietnam and DPRK keep going from strength to strength. The world won’t turn socialist overnight, but socialist countries are going to be at the centre of the future global economy, and the west will now longer be in a position to suffocate them.

Ah, I was once like that. Now I’m sustained by vengeance and spite and catharsis at capitalism cannibalizing itself like starving cockroaches. There’s a good chance my loved ones and I will die but capitalism’s death is guaranteed.

revolutionary optimism is literally baked into dialectical materialism: if you look at the state of a thing as being negative, then you focus more on improving it than its currently (and inherently transitory) negative state. if you can’t improve it, then you see how you can use the worsening state to later improve it. this certainly is the case for all exploitative class relations, but also applies to just about everything else as well.

Anything you wanna talk about, comrade?

Capitalism and patriarchal colonialism gave me PTSD + chronic depression and reading mao, finding lenin, reading my way through stalin and understanding dialectical materialism as someone who barely finished highschool gave me hope again lol.

Dialectical materialism tells us to evaluate social systems by whether or not the internal contradictions are causing it to grow or decay. I think that’s beautiful.

I don’t think it’s good to tell yourself that a line of inquiry has to make you unhappy. I mostly hear this from people who watch a lot of youtube, which doesn’t provide much analytical help or emotional catharsis.

Part of understanding Dialectical Materialism is in understanding that the small but growing thing (if properly protected so that it can continue to grow) rather than the big but crumbling thing, represents the future. And it is from this that Revolutionary Optimism is born, as the seeds of a given systems destruction and replacement exist within it’s own contradictions, and is grown through the growth of those vary contradictions. Revolutionary Optimism isn’t blind optimism, it isn’t just having “faith” in it, but is actually a thing of reason, as the small but growing thing starts small, but doesn’t stay small, the big but crumbling thing is big but doesn’t stay big, the contradictions get worse and the seemingly impossible Revolution becomes inevitable. This dialectic exists in the Revolution itself as well, gorilla warfare involve taking the supplies, weapons and ammo ETC of the enemy such as to support it’s growth, and in this way it grows while the state shrinks, until eventually the Revolution begins switching to conventional warfare and operates as a new state that slowly replaces the old state.

The depression you speak of isn’t from Dialectical Materialism itself, but rather from awareness, Dialectical Materialism can grow an awareness (though it isn’t the only way to become aware of the horrors of the system), but also within Dialectical Materialism exists it’s solution, to the root cause of the depression that is the very oppression itself.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism is an irreplaceable and vital tool for achieving the cure. (Revolution) Once you start you cannot stop, only partial understanding leads to errors, of which certain ones, or too many, can be fatal, and every opportunity to put it into Practice, to actually use it, is vital as the Theory can only be properly understood through it’s application to Practice, otherwise you risk slipping into ultra-leftism and/or utopian thinking.

You need to not only read the philosophy, economics, and history in general (though you still need that too), but it is also important to read about the actual successes, as within those works is the experience of those Comrades who actually succeeded, which can also help with Revolutionary Optimism both by showing how it can be done, but in showing that it can succeed even in the most hopeless of circumstances if we Communists play our cards right.

If you find yourself depressed, you might want to look at what you are reading, if you are reading too many depressing works that go over all the horrible things that happen, then maybe you should counter balance that by reading of the victories of the past and current Socialist countries that actually achieved some stage of Socialism.

I think if capitalists want us to give up, depression that they own everything and seem indefeatable is what they will amplify to make us give up.

For me, it gives a certain amount of hope even when things feel bleak. Because the nature of things negating/contradicting themselves is a reminder that even the most seemingly embedded of exploitative systems is going to negate itself eventually. It won’t be without struggle, but it will have to happen. Things cannot stay in the same form forever.

One of the major things you must do, is to force yourself to have revolutionary optimism. It’s not really a choice.