#Historical Materialism!

[tamamita]

Make no mistake

Tamamita

[grimmborg-in-the-bog]

Am i a 10th century baddie yet?

After four years of having my viking clothes mostly done, i've finally been made to finish them. My basics were all done back then, but this is more of a fancy summery fit that took a lot more work (especially the weaving)

Dress is based on the Vangsnes pleated dress, it's a super thin wool dyed with madder (the colour is a little uneven sadly)

Woven band is from a similar grave to vangsnes, but in Køstrup, because the vangsnes band is all swastikas

My brooches are NOT historical but just what i have rn :(

Half the beads are made by me, the other half were bought. it might be a bit much ngl but i felt very fancy

[magical-musings-of-morgan]

my most autistic trait is probably that, as someone raised by christian nationalists, I cannot STAND the cheap flimsy potshots antitheists fire at christianity. you guys are Doing It Wrong. you dont even know about the council of nicaea OR christianity's long history of antisemitism. get off the stage you're embarrassing yourself.

[eliounora]

my pet peeve is those "historians thought they were very good friends" jokes, like obviously for sure there are homophobic historians, but the study of same-sex desire and relationships of the past is also quite complex and you can't often go and simply label people's relationships or identities of time gone by, and sometimes it's more complicated and elusive than "they were a couple" or even "they were in love"

[themuseumlady]

tape, cardboard, and newspaper!!!

to go a bit more into detail on this - from what I understand, this was on display* in a house for a number of years. This particular piece comes from the home of the harbormaster (a lovely man), and was exposed to light and about 50+ years of cigarette smoke. The boat in the photo is an early ferry in my area, and the cardboard it is mounted on seems to be some sort of church(??) yard sign(???)

we are still deciding the best course of action for this piece, but in all honestly, as a smallish museum/historical society with a laundry list of pieces with urgent conservation needs, we don't have the manpower to do anything other than keep it in a dark and temperature controlled space.

There are a lot of things that make me sad when I see pieces like this, because its so easy to see how important it was to its former owner, and it hurts me that we can't pour all of our time and resources into every piece that needs help. There are pieces even in this intake (which I cannot show because they contain identifying information about my location) that will be prioritized as they demand more immediate conservation efforts. Time can be a cruel opponent - and all we can do is our best.

anywho!!! all this is to say Support your local historical society!!! they are trying their darndest to preserve your local history and can't do so without community support! (and support does not always mean money!!! genuinely just interacting with your local historical societies can mean so much)

*I am unsure the specifics of where/how long it was on display for

[elbiotipo]

Just stop fucking thinking about "evil" countries and "good" countries. I do not hate the USA because it's "bad", I do not hate Usamericans, period. There are no "evil" or "good" nations, that is fascist thinking. I see the United States as a powerful country that enforces its imperialist interests because of historical conditions, and as such it must be resisted, challenged, and eventually changed or dissolved, and this to the benefit of the oppressed people all over the world and in the United States itself. This is not a fucking fantasy novel with good and evil kingdoms.

I was born in the Third World and in Latin America, and so I understand the position I'm in and struggle to change it. Usamericans should also understand the position they're also in and also work to change it. This is basic stuff.

[leftistfeminista]

Chilean Marxist, Marta Harnecker's magnum opus has been uploaded to Marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/harnecker/1969/historical-materialism/whole-book.pdf

Introduction to Elementary Concepts of Historical Materialism

Authored by Marta Harnecker, 1969 Translated by the Theoretical Review periodical of the Tucson Marxist-Leninist Collective, 1978-81 Preserved by marxists.org Edited by anonymous using libre software, 2024 January 4, 2025

Her books The Elemental Concepts of Historical Materialism and Notebooks of Popular Education were widely used by communist parties and workers' organizations in Spanish-speaking countries for the training of their militants during the 1970s and later. 

Her work is mentioned in By Night in Chile By Roberto Bolaño

As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolano's first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Junger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study "the disintegration of the churches," a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned—after the destruction of Allende—the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy.

It is telling that even in the abstractions of Marxist theory, the 1st question the Junta Admiral asks is "Is she good-looking?". Revealing of the extremely objectifying views misogynist Junta officers had towards Marxist women, especially those with intellectual achievements. Which went beyond "locker room talk" to the official Junta policy on how they should be treated.

[latinalivinghistory]

I have a lot of opinions on this but I would love to know what other people think.

[cuddlytogas]

maybe it's just the Radical Rediker talking, but there's something pointed in the way that, say, popular pirate media like Pirates of the Caribbean dilutes the pirate's freedom to "bring me that horizon" as opposed to, say, "plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power" (Bartholomew Roberts).

broadly speaking, most pirates chose the life in order to escape and revenge the hard labour, corporal punishment, overworking, and unequal pay of merchant/navy/privateer ships; or the privations of their sudden unemployment once a war was over, ignored as soon as their ability to die for the state was unneeded. yes, many were thugs, but, consciously political or not, they were responding to a particular, material reality.

the pirate's desired freedom was from the effects of exploitative modes of statehood and capital production. but popular media usually shifts this into a general desire for freedom: freedom to roam, freedom to love (usually merely a cross-class white, heterosexual union), or freedom from the personal pressures of social norms. it's a vague, ahistorical, post-Enlightenment, libertarian ideal rather than a response to a real social and economic situation.

to be clear, this only really applies to specifically the late golden age of piracy, in the first quarter of the 18th century. earlier generations of pirates/buccaneers often displayed nationalist/religious motives, and were lauded, tolerated, or even encouraged by the French and English states for aiding their fights against the Spanish and Portuguese. only the last gasp of age of sail pirates had a truly anti-national energy, and both figured themselves, and were figured by the imperial powers, as the enemies of all nations.

but if we are to valourise the late golden age pirate, at his best, his ideals were for true democracy, and the abolition of nation, hierarchy, and labour exploitation; not "the horizon". he was striking out in response to specific political, social, and economic oppressions, rather than a general individual restlessness, and that reality - and its similarities to our own - are important.

I dunno, I just... have a lot of thoughts about the defanging of piracy in modern media. obviously there were a lot of things bad about them, too, and the level of egalitarianism varied between individual people and ships. but again, if we're going to be valourising them anyway... there were idealists. and they weren't subtle about they wanted.

"I shan't own myself guilty of any murder", said William Fly in 1726. "Our captain and his mate used us barbarously. We poor men can't have justice done us. There is nothing said to our commanders, let them never so much abuse us, and use us like dogs. But the poor sailors --"

[gringolet]

notes on hair and uniforms on the hms camelot in 1811!

i have a lot of thoughts on the matter

[unnounblr]

Posting this as its own post now, because I thought it was a banger, but to me, the thing that always makes me think that the idea that having a Jewish state would make things safer or better for the Jewish people is a really stupid one is that that isn't really true even in our own scripture.

King David was supposed to be the best, most morally good king, the most godly and holy, and he's the one who exercised state power to have one of his own soldiers killed so he could keep fucking the guy's wife.

So. That particular state of Israel, evidently wasn't a very safe place to live in if you either had, or were, a fuckable enough wife.

...God, thinking about this, and now part of me wants to do, like, a Marxist reading criticizing some of the kings of Israel and their uses and abuses of authority and power from a historical materialist perspective. Has somebody done that already? Here, I mean.

[poison-doll]

utterly fascinating to me to watch the idea coalesce of a contingent of 'transradfems' who are purported to be whole-hearted and uncritical adherents to second wave feminists, a group of people that as near as i can tell entirely does not exist. it's an idea that seems to be born just from the forthcoming book trans/rad/fem, which is like . . . pretty plainly a transfeminist analysis of dworkin & wittig & redstockings & mackinnon's work ? ? ? contextualizing the bioessentialist paradigms of the patriarchy ? ? ? theorizing around the disposability of trans women as another form of the way in which all women are disposable ? ? ?

like it's just kinda wild to hear the title of a book and that it recognizes second-wave feminism as having, potentially, literally anything at all to offer modern transfeminist movements and immediately deciding that there is a coherent group of trans women who are all evil man hating idiots like. we're really just reinventing transfeminazis!!

[marxist-lelouchist]

Short post this time:

Perhaps the single most misunderstood element of Marxism is the concept of abolition.

Marxism will not involve abolishing anything.

Things wither away as they become utterly incapable of competing with the newer form.

Nobody is going to sit down and declare market economics to be illegal.

They are going to become so incapable of competing with the new form of production that they will simply shut down.

The nuclear family will not be declared illegal.

It will simply cease to be the only way that people form romantic relationships.

And, of course, nobody will abolish the state.

As the structure of society develops and moves beyond any class structure, any state in the way any of us have experienced will cease to have a purpose.

As there is no other class to oppress and control, it would simply become a tool of managing the productive forces and dealing with any potential unexpected crises.

Abolishing things is really not how Communism works, it transcends them and they fade away in irrelevance.

[thozhar]

In ancient China in the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius (551-479 B.C.), a representative thinker of the slave-owner class, spoke of “sages” with “innate knowledge,” asserting that some people were born “the very wisest,” others “the very stupidest,” and they will never change. After Confucius, many representative thinkers of the landlord class also spread idealist apriorism in various ways.

In Europe, Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher of the slave-owners and the nobility, talked about the “immortality of the spirit,” declaring that man had gained all his knowledge in a “world of ideas” before he was born, and that learning was only the recollection of knowledge possessed in a previous existence. Although the bourgeois German philosopher Kant admitted that experience was also a source of knowledge, he held that “we find existing in the mind a priori, the pure form of sensuous intuitions in general” before getting to know a thing. All these idealist philosophers throughout history, though they put it differently, without exception deemed knowledge to be a priori, denying that it originates from practice and is a reflection of the outside world.

There can be no differentiation without contrast. In the contemporary epoch, political swindlers like Liu Shao-chi also completely denied the role of practice in man’s cognition, raving that certain men were born “geniuses.” All this talk is simply a repetition of history’s antiquated idealist apriorism. What is different is that they tried to sell it under a Marxist signboard, unscrupulously quoting out of context in order to overawe people. By studying some books on the history of philosophy and learning about the struggles between the two lines in philosophy and what forms they took in different periods, we can link past struggles with present ones and learn to distinguish between the materialist theory of reflection and idealist apriorism and be better able to see through the lies and sophistry of all such sham Marxists.

On Studying Some History of Philosophy, by Tang Hsiao-wen

[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, #34, Aug. 25, 1972, pp. 5-7.]

[gooberscollage]

1950s McCall and Simplicity Pattern Illustrations taken from Blueprints of fashion : home sewing patterns of the 1950s by Wade Laboissonniere

[haridraws]

hey just wanted to pop in to say I LOVED reading I Shall Never Fall In Love!!! as a they/them myself with an interest in historical queerness it is right up my alley, and I really liked all the 'behind the scenes' stuff you included at the end! plus the way you draw expressions is amazing, it makes the characters feel so alive. I actually lended it to my mom once I was done reading the first time, and she loved it too! She hasn't read a lot of graphic novels, but she is a big fan of Jane Austen (I basically grew up watching Pride & Prejudice (2005) lol), and we had a great time talking about it ^v^

I feel like oftentimes people writing queer historical fiction think they have to choose between historical accuracy and having their characters be happy, since so often the stories we hear about queer historical figures are ones of tragedy. It's heartwarming to see someone write a story about queer people in history leading full and happy lives. Thank you for creating such a wonderful story and a beautiful piece of art <3

thank you so much for this message.... every time someone tells me they enjoyed the book and lent it to a family member it replenishes my life essence slightly!!! Yeah, it's interesting! I don't think there's one 'right' approach for queer historicals or fiction generally, but I'm personally drawn to making stories that feel hopeful in the end. Just because queer and trans people were (and are) living in an imperfect and often hostile world, it obviously doesn't mean there were no moments of happiness. Like... we have loads of evidence queer people historically would deliberately destroy letters to not leave a paper trail, so the records that survive are often legal ones of punishment. But EVEN IN THOSE, there are so many unquestionable glimpses of queer people's full, ordinary, and often happy lives.

Anyway I'm sure you know all this, just using this as an opportunity to talk about it since I find it really interesting. And I really think there's value in pointing people towards our real history of queer resilience - and complexity, and complicity - not exclusively looser fantastical stuff where the history is just set dressing.