butchstalinist

[butchstalinist]

There's more articles on RedSails on the topic of dialectics, but this is one of my personal favs for a baseline explanation. : )

do you have any posts explaining dialectics?

if not, what is dialectics? i have several friends interested in the study, but not so interested as to read Lenin or Stalin, im hoping to 1.) study more for myself, and 2.) have a simple explanation i can send to people

you are very good at these things

Dialectics revolve around contradictions and how to resolve them. I'll take an example first and then define it more precisely.

There exists a contradiction between the interests of the proletariat, a class defined by its exchange of its labor power for a portion of the value produced, and the capitalists, a class defines by its private ownership over the means of production and its dominant position over the proletariat through salaried work. It is in the proletariat's interests to reap the full value produced by its labor power, and it is in the capitalists' power to continue extracting part of that value and sustain that relationship through the myriad mechanisms of class domination. If you take both of these facts, fundamentallt at odds with one another, informed by history and its previous, comparable class societies, you can arrive at the conclusion that, fueled by that constant and irreconcilable contradiction, the proletariat will aim to rid itself of the "leech" that is the capitalist class, and with it create a new society on the foundations of its class interests

The dialectical process, that oft repeated thesis, antithesis, synthesis, is not putting two concepts together, it's not thesis and antithesis, nor is it taking the common elements of each concept or object. It's placing the contradiction, the dialectical relationship between them, at the center of the analysis, and synthesizing a new conclusion, which might or might not have common elements with the contradictory elements. A dialectical relationship is like a conversation (hence the name), the elements influence, limit, allow and develop each other. It's similar to the kinds of relations that govern the biosphere. For instance, the soil and the vegetation on a slope. The soil, via its chemical components, allows and disallows, or rather, facilitates and hampers, the kinds of vegetation that can grow on it. At the same time, the vegetation, through its mechanical stabilization via its roots and through the organic matter it contributes to the soil (hummus), also modifies the soil to be closer to what it prefers. If there was no vegetation, soil on a slope is washed away after a few rains. If there is no soil, there can be no vegetation. The vegetation and the soil allow each other's existence, and they also modify each other.

[butchstalinist]

“Life cycle of the mushroom.” How and why wonder book of mushrooms, ferns and mosses. 1965. 

[butchstalinist]

just been exposed to the horrors of tumblr fyp and saw the funniest post

[butchstalinist]

Hot girls break their backs trying to find a pdf of some rare book which had 500 copies published in 1932

[butchstalinist]

trust me, my anti-fascism is more radical than yours, because unlike you commies *I* use a symbol invented by german social democrats, who are famously able to resist fascism very well.

i simply don't understand why you'd be sceptical of my radicalism when I'm wearing the awesome cool symbol of uh... anti-communist social democracy.

[butchstalinist]

I saw a Marxist on here recommend Hanna Arendt's essay on totalitarianism and I'm confused. I've never read it but isn't totalitarianism as a concept initially coined to describe Soviet Russia as a dictatorship and compare it as similar to Nazi Germany, as well as leveraged in American academia against communism as a whole??? She was one of the more known writers on that to my knowledge and the totalitarianism model was later critiqued to be very flawed. Maybe I'm missing something on her paper though?

Yeah if any Marxist recommends Hannah Arendt that's a sign you don't need to take anything that they say every seriously. On top of everything that you say, her worldview and views on society were So based upon her extreme racism, such intense racism that it was a cause of concern for many of her (also-racist) contemporaries, that I really do not think that any of it is salvageable as an intellectual framework

[butchstalinist]

"Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle."

-Vladimir Lenin

[butchstalinist]

What are your thoughts on the whole Xiaohongshu migration, if you have any?

I think it's good for people in the US to be breaking down cultural barriers that have been put up artificially to divide us. I think that the US media is probably going to spin this in some Sinophobic direction, but it's going to be a bit harder since they can't pretend that there's some secret Chinese influence like they did with TikTok. This time it's obvious to everyone involved that the app is Chinese and people are still flocking to it anyway. It's a big middle finger to the US government, saying "we aren't scared of China, we aren't mad at China, you're not going to manipulate us so easily".

[butchstalinist]

Joseph Stalin's mugshot, 1911. This was his second arrest by the Tsar's police. He had been exiled to a small village after his first arrest in 1908; he escaped, disguised as a woman, and was arrested again, this time for terrorism and robbery. After this arrest, he was sent back into exile.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

[butchstalinist]

"marie antoinette used to play pretend poverty" big deal there's a ton of university art students in new york doing the same thing

[butchstalinist]

Gerard du Bois

[butchstalinist]

Gu Yuan (1985)

[butchstalinist]

not everything needs to be saved

[butchstalinist]

libgen getting culled again and this time followed by smokescreen reporting on its alleged uses for ‘ai training.’ depressing as hell.

[butchstalinist]

Cuban Revolution, January 1959

[butchstalinist]

the hitler youth of today speak in a unique marvel dialect of redditor english

[butchstalinist]

US vs China trade partners 1980 and 2018