#Italian Communist Party

[leftistfeminista]

General Secretary Camilla Ravera of the Communist Party, first woman to ever lead a political party, in prison under Mussolini's Fascists

Subheadline: IN CARCERE NEGLI ANNI DEL FASCISMO

Caption: Une fotografia giovanile di Camilla Ravera. Fin dalla giovinezza la Revera si è legata al gruppo di Antonio Gramsci e lo seguì quando questi dimostrò la socialità per fondare il Partito comunista italiano. Arrestata dai fascisti, fu segregata per 7 anni per mandato a confino dove trascorse anni e dove ebbe come compagno anche Pertini. Nonostante tutto è ricordo continuo coi compagni come un periodo felice della mia vita.

Translation:

Headline: Unity

Subheadline: In Prison During the Fascist Years

Caption: A young photograph of Camilla Ravera. From her youth, Ravera was linked to the group of Antonio Gramsci and followed him when he demonstrated his sociality to found the Italian Communist Party. Arrested by the fascists, she was imprisoned for 7 years for a mandate to confinement where she spent years and where she had as a companion also Pertini. Despite everything, she recalls her time with her comrades as a happy period of her life.

l'Unità (Italian: [luniˈta]; English: "the Unity") is an Italian newspaper, founded as the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1924.

Camilla Ravera (18 June 1889 – 14 April 1988) was an Italian politician and the first female lifetime senator. She was also among the driving forces behind Italian feminism.[1]

Ravera participated in the founding of the Italian Communist Party in 1921.[2] She was General Secretary of the party from 1927 until 1930 following the arrest of Antonio Gramsci.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Il signore delle formiche (2022, Gianni Amelio)

08/11/2024

[kneedeepincynade]

There are those who deliver death and those who deliver hope,learn the difference

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

😏 Serve dire altro? 🤔

🇺🇸 C'è chi bombarda i Paesi, e definisce la Cina una "minaccia", e chi - invece - lavora con i Paesi secondo il Principio della Cooperazione a Mutuo Vantaggio (合作共赢), per edificare una Comunità dal Futuro Condiviso (人类命运共同体) 😍

🥰 L'Amicizia del Laos, del Popolo del Laos e del Partito Rivoluzionario del Popolo Lao è molto importante per la Cina, per il Popolo Cinese e per il Partito Comunista Cinese 🤗

🚝 La China - Laos Railway, uno dei progetti più ambiziosi della Nuova Via della Seta, è la dimostrazione che solo attraverso la Cooperazione a Mutuo Vantaggio (合作共赢) è possibile costruire insieme la Prosperità Comune (共同富裕) ❤️❤️

❤️ 人类命运共同体 mostra che l'Umanità (人类, rénlèi) ha un Destino Comune (命运共同, mìngyùn gòngtóng) ❤️

🤧 L'Asia non è una scacchiera per i pericolosi e mortali giochi geopolitici delle tigri di carta statunitensi e dei loro leccapiedi in Europa, ma un terreno fertile per lo Sviluppo, la Prosperità e la Stabilità 💕

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan 😘

😏 Need to say more? 🤔

🇺🇸 There are those who bomb countries, and define China as a "threat", and those who - on the other hand - work with countries according to the Principle of Cooperation for Mutual Benefit (合作共赢), to build a Community with a Shared Future (人类命运共同体) 😍

🥰 The Friendship of Laos, the Lao People and the Lao People's Revolutionary Party is very important to China, the Chinese People and the Communist Party of China 🤗

🚝 The China - Laos Railway, one of the most ambitious projects of the New Silk Road, is the demonstration that only through Cooperation with Mutual Advantage (合作共赢) is it possible to build Common Prosperity together (共同富裕) ❤️❤️

❤️ 人类命运共同体 shows that Humanity (人类, rénlèi) has a Common Destiny (命运共同, mìngyùn gòngtóng) ❤️

🤧 Asia is not a chessboard for the dangerous and deadly geopolitical games of US paper tigers and their toadies in Europe, but a fertile ground for Development, Prosperity and Stability 💕

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan 😘

[depressedhatakekakashi]

Can i just say, cuz i saw the tag and it’s bothering me a little (as a lover of history)

Yes Japan allied with germany in world ward II, but they didn’t really do it because they agreed with germany. Like i’m not giving Japan a pass on anything they’ve done (they’re very much a coloniser as well)

But Japan joined germany out of anger a spit not out of shared ideology. Japan was angry they got short shafted after world war I where they fought alongside the allied forced and helped win some major battles, and then when it came to making a peace treaty they got nothing.

They didn’t get any labd like britian, france and the USA.

They didn’t even really get invited to be a part of the peace treaty like other countries on the winning side.

Japan joined Germany more out of frustration than being actual fascists. Like, yes. Their country has gone a really sort of terrible way in terms of government and they did commit a lot of war crimes and murder for the sake of getting rid of people they deemed ‘beneath them’

But had the other allied countries shown them even an ounce of respect after world war I maybe they would have stayed on their side.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Canadian Fascist Groups Still Banned," Vancouver Sun. October 16, 1943. Page 2. --- Special to The Vancouver Sun OTTAWA, Oct. 16. - The lifting of the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses and five other hitherto illegal organizations still leaves a list of 28 other associations and groups held to be unlawful under the Defense of Canada Regulations. Included in these are three subsidiaries of Jehovah's Witnesses, which remain illegal although the parent body has been set free. These are the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the International Bible Students' Association and the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society Incorporated.

TRACTS SUPPRESSED The IBS came under strong suspicion during the Great War of 1914-18. The Watch Tower societies are publishing organizations for Jehovah's Witnesses and while the Witnesses may now function as a legal organization the authorities have not yet come to the stage of releasing the flood of printed propaganda put out by the subsidiaries. One of these tracts which came under discussion in Parliament proved to include nothing but Biblical excerpts.

Leading the list of still-banned organizations are the Nazi party organizations in Canada: The Auslands Organization of the National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartel, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront and the Deutsche Bund Fur Canada.

Then there are the Italian Fascists organizations, which will still remain suppressed despite the change in the war status of Italy. These were the Fasci Italiani All-Estro, the OVRA, Opere Volontarie Repressione Anti-Fascisto-National organization for the repression of anti-Fascism); the Dopolavoro (after work organization); Associazione Combattenti Italiani (Italian war veterans); Ogel (Italian youth organization abroad); and the Italian United Front (a combination of Italian and Italo-Canadain societies in Montreal, under the control of Canadian Fascio).

BLACK SHIRTS ILLEGAL The ban also stands on Adrien Arcand's Black Shirts (the so-called National Unity Party) and on the Canadian Union of Fascists, the latter a small organization in Ontario and Saskatchewan which was already dying out when suppressed.

While the Ukrainian Farmer-Labor Temple Association has been freed, its youthful annex, the Canadian Ukrainian Youth Federation is still on the banned list, as is the Workers and Farmers Publishing Association, a UFLA adjunct.

The Communist Party of Canada has had many champions who want the ban on it removed, but no action has been taken.

Nor has the ban been removed from some of its off-shoots such as the Young Communist League, the Canadian Labor Defence League and other organizations such as the Russian Workers and Farmers Club, the Croatian Cultural Association, the Hungarian Workers Club, the Polish People's Association, all of which were banned for Communist tendencies.

Many of the banned organizations had separate publishing companies such as the Croatian Publishing Company, the Polish People's Press, the Serbian Publishing Association. These re- main under suppression.

The League for Peace and Democracy which started out as the league against war and Fascism during the Spanish war still remains on the banned list.

[hellsitegenetics]

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

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Closest match: Flueggea virosa isolate bfs chromosome A3 Common name: Whiteberry Bush, White-Berry Bush, White Berry Bush, and, I shit you not, White Berrybush

(image source)

[winterbirb]

Analysis: in the US-Italy power dynamic, the US is the senior partner. However, in the opaque etiquette rules of US Diplomacy(tm), it's considered deeply taboo to remind someone of their status as the junior partner. Thus, the culturally specific technique called the American Smile(tm) is used, wherein the American acts friendly in public.

However, no cultural analysis is complete without recognizing the inter-national history of the two participants. The U.S. and Italy have a long historical relationship, notably including World War 2, where one of the major war theaters was against Italy in Africa; with the combined efforts of the Allies, this ultimately led to the public execution of PM Meloni's fascist idol. According to generational analysis, Joseph Biden, born in 1943-ish, is definitely aware that the U.S. whooped Italy's ass. In Africa.

As the current circumstances of the meeting are about potentials for joint U.S.-Italy policy in Africa, it's quite probable that either one or both leaders were aware of this previous joint U.S.-Italy engagement. As with the senior-junior partner dynamic, the arcane rituals of American Diplomacy make vocal acknowledgement a taboo. But the American Smile(tm) acts as a sort of noticeable negative space, saying things through what's left unsaid.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met at the White House on Thursday, vowing to deepen economic ties and strengthen cooperation on challenges posed by China, while skirting differences [sic] over LGBTQ rights.[...]

Meloni and her right-wing coalition have staked out positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights sharply at odds with those of Biden, a Democrat who used last year's Italian election results as an occasion to warn fellow liberals about dangers facing the world's democracies. On Thursday, Biden welcomed Meloni and said they had "become friends," and Meloni later told reporters that neither he nor the several U.S. lawmakers with whom she met brought up LGBTQ rights. "Nobody asked me anything on this," she said. Meloni said she had a clear preference for Republicans, but that would not stop her from having "a great relationship" with Biden.[...] During a small portion of the meeting open to reporters, Biden complimented Italy on what he said was its strong stance on Ukraine. Meloni said she was proud that Italy has helped defend international law. [...] Meloni must decide in coming months over whether to maintain Italy's membership in Beijing's Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure plan, a program which Washington has been working to counter. [...]

The Biden-Meloni meeting took place less than a week after she hosted an international conference on migration in Rome, as Italy tries to cope [sic] with a high volume of migrants arriving by boat from North Africa. Italy was planning to discuss with the U.S. how to support [sic] the development and stability of Africa, Meloni's office said.

27 Jul 23

[stillnaomi]

Let us begin with a look at fascism’s founder. Born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith, Benito Mussolini’s early manhood was marked by street brawls, arrests, jailings, and violent radical political activities. Before World War I Mussolini was a socialist. A brilliant organizer, agitator, and gifted journalist, he became editor of the Socialist party’s official newspaper. Yet many of his comrades suspected him of being less interested in advancing socialism than in advancing himself. Indeed, when the Italian upper class tempted him with recognition, financial support, and the promise of power, he did not hesitate to switch sides.

By the end of World War I, Mussolini, the socialist, who had organized strikes for workers and peasants had become Mussolini, the fascist, who broke strikes on behalf of financiers and landowners. Using the huge sums he received from wealthy interests, he projected himself onto the national scene as the acknowledged leader of i fasci di combattimento, a movement composed of black-shirted ex-army officers and sundry toughs who were guided by no clear political doctrine other than a militaristic patriotism and conservative dislike for anything associated with socialism and organized labor. The fascist Blackshirts spent their time attacking trade unionists, socialists, communists, and farm cooperatives.

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti

[microtheory]

So imagine you’re at a dinner party. Nice enough person comes up to you, starts talking to you. Let’s say the conversation starts to go in the direction of politics. You talk for a while. At some point in the conversation you decide to ask this person, “So what are your particular feelings about politics? I mean, where do you land on the whole political spectrum?” Imagine the person replies with, “Well, actually, I’m a communist. Communism is the solution to all of our political problems.” Now, to us, being people living in the 21st century that have seen history play out the way that it has, no matter what you think about communism, we would instantly have a lot of thoughts about this person and probably a few questions we wanted to ask them. See, because the word “communism” carries with it an enormous amount of baggage to us in the 21st century, baggage, it’s important to note, that just didn’t exist when people were having political discussions at the beginning of the 20th century.

That’s what I want us to consider here at the beginning of this episode, just how much has changed, just how much has transpired since philosophers were having these political discussions at the beginning of the 20th century. What I want to do is try to take a step outside of our 21st-century biases and try to do our best to put ourselves in the shoes of someone viewing the political landscape back when communism was first being proposed as a potential solution. See, because when you do that, you can start to see the political philosophy of the time within its proper context. You can start to see how, in many ways, the goals of the reformed democracy that we talked about last time and the goals of the communism that was being proposed back then were actually incredibly similar.

Remember, at this point in the timeline of discussion about political philosophy there were three major conversations that were going on that were all trying to solve the same general problems that existed in political philosophy of the time. One was democracy; one was communism. And the general problem they were both trying to solve was “How do we ensure that in the future society doesn’t evolve into a situation where a relative handful of people have an inordinate amount of control over the lives of the majority of the population?” This had been a serious problem in the past. Democracies of the past had produced this situation time and time again, which was why there was such a serious discussion about a reformation of democracy that would preserve the true essence of a democracy, which was a government by the many, not a handful of people.

Well, communism was very similar in terms of what it was aiming to do at the time. Like we talked about when we did the series on the Frankfurt School, for neo-Marxist thinkers at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a short period of confusion when it came to what exactly was going on in the world. See, Marx prophesies that very soon the proletariat would realize that all they had to lose were their chains, and that, inevitably, they would rise up; they would overthrow the bourgeoisie, and they would implement a new system of economic order. Let anyone who agrees with Marx at the time cross their fingers and hope that it ends up being communism. But this communist revolution just wasn’t happening in the West in almost every case. So what exactly was going on?

Neo-Marxist thinkers went back to the drawing board. Why does it make any sense at all that people living in these abject conditions, working jobs that were in many cases completely brutal, why would those people stand for it? Why didn’t Marx’s prophecy come true? Well, very quickly the trend that emerged in neo-Marxist thought at the time was that control over a population of people extends far beyond the halls of Congress or the ballot box. Political control is almost always dictated by cultural control.

This is why the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci spends a considerable amount of his work exploring the concept of political control and, more specifically, the very important question of “When there is a dominant social group, or a dominant class within a society, how exactly does that group ascend to power, and then beyond that, how do they maintain that power once they’ve gotten it, especially when the social order that they promote with that position of power is oftentimes completely at odds with the well-being of the average person?” The fact is that sometimes when a leader is elected, they don’t pass policy that’s necessarily good for the majority of the population. Sometimes they support policy that really only benefits them or friends of theirs that are fellow members of a dominant social class. Gramsci wants to find out, why is it that these leaders are sometimes capable of getting massive support from the people for policies that are actually hurting the average citizen more than helping them? How is it possible that the proletariat can feel so comfortable participating in a system that keeps them in chains, in the eyes of a neo-Marxist thinker?

Gramsci begins his explanation by evoking and repurposing a word that had been thrown around all throughout human history, but it was a word that he thought in recent years was starting to take on an entirely new meaning. The thing that was responsible for allowing a particular social class to ascend to power and then maintain that privileged status was what he called “cultural hegemony.” Now, this concept of hegemony is going to end up being massively important to the political conversation of the 20th and 21st centuries overall. And by the end of this arc on the show, we’re going to have looked at it from a lot of different perspectives.

But maybe the best place to start is to talk about the origins of the word. The word “hegemony” originates in ancient Greece. The root of the word comes from the Greek word meaning “to lead.” Some translators think it’s closer to the Greek work for “to rule over.” But, either way, during antiquity there were things called hegemons. Now, in the context of ancient Greece, a hegemon was typically a state that had a significant military advantage over another state, the arrangement being that if the weaker state didn’t comply with certain demands from the hegemon, they would be annexed or dominated militarily or burned to the ground. Take your pick, I guess. In other words, the term “hegemony” implied the threat of physical dominance over a population of people. And this was the case all throughout human history.

But Gramsci’s going to say that in our modern world the definition of the word hegemony needs to evolve with the political reality we are living in. We are no longer living in a world where most political control is exercised by military dominance over a population of people. Since the advent of mass media, people in positions of power have realized that a much more effective way of controlling populations is by manipulating the cultural parameters that citizens have to navigate. The general idea is this: to be a human being, living a life in our modern world at all, you always have to be living that life immersed within a particular culture. But what is a culture other than an elaborate collection of norms, rules, structures, mores, taboos, rituals, values? These things are not exactly abstract concepts. They are acute. They are visible. This is the cultural custom of a handshake, to pay deference to somebody else. This is not talking with your mouth full. This is the sum total of every ritual we engage in on a daily basis that all come together to create a cohesive society.

But what Gramsci’s going to ask is, who exactly created all of these norms and taboos that we abide by? We can easily look to different cultures around the world presently and all throughout human history, for that matter, to see that a culture can function and flourish when things are completely different. The norms and taboos of a culture can be completely alien from the modern world that we’re living in and, yet, things still somehow manage to stay held together. So it makes Gramsci wonder, to what extent is the current set of norms and taboos serving to reinforce itself? To what extent are the citizens seeing the current set of norms and taboos not as a temporary instantiation of culture, but as just the way the world is. Once again, this is another example of this classic debate we talked about last time that’s going to become increasingly relevant. How much of the reality of the world can be explained by nature, and how much of the world can be explained by culture?

This is extremely important because, to Gramsci, if you can control the narrative and you can convince the average citizen that the current set of cultural norms is just the way the world is, then there’s not going to be much complaining. There’s not going to be much in the way of seeking justice and trying to change things. This is similar to a point we discussed from Simone de Beauvoir and The Ethics of Ambiguity. We don’t get mad at hurricanes. When a hurricane comes along and devastates multiple cities, people die; homes are destroyed, billions of dollars in damages, thousands of families displaced. And every one of those cases is a tragedy in its own right. But, as human beings, what do we do? We accept it. Why? Because there’s no sense in getting mad at a hurricane. There’s no human intent or will behind a giant storm. Nobody can be held morally culpable, so we chalk it up as an unfortunate series of events. Hurricanes are a part of nature. There’s nothing we could really do to stop it. Sometimes the world is going to be at large, and I just got to deal with that the best way I can and try to accept it.

To Gramsci, this is the old switcheroo that’s going on with cultural hegemony. Dominant social classes have the ability to dictate cultural norms. These cultural norms oftentimes serve to reinforce themselves, and people born into these cultures oftentimes view the normalized state of the world around them as nature rather than culture. Gramsci thinks this is a cultural story that’s being told. So often, citizens see it as just the way the world is and something they need to learn to accept. To Gramsci, this is why Marx’s prophecy hasn’t come true. This is why the proletariat continues to live in chains, because they’ve come to accept those chains as the natural state of the world that they need to come to terms with.

Cultural norms become to the average person what Gramsci calls the “common sense that they use to make sense of their place in the world.” When the common sense of your world serves to legitimize the dominance of a particular class of people and tells you that anything you don’t like about your socioeconomic situation, well, that’s just the natural order of things, then your very existence becomes reinforcing of cultural hegemony. You are reinforcing the political status quo simply by participating in the culture that you happen to be born into. This is why people that would otherwise never stand for being pushed around can find themselves getting worked into the ground in a factory, during the time of Gramsci, only to accept their place in the world as a necessary part of how the world works. “Parts of my life may be hard, yes. But you know what? That’s life. Life is hard sometimes.” That’s the sort of dialogue that goes on in the working class.

But, look, it’s not like -- okay, it’s not like Gramsci’s saying that life should never be hard here. The more accurate question would probably be, how hard does life need to be for a person? And how many hard aspects of life have been made into a normalized part of our modern world that we just accept, that disproportionately serve to benefit a dominant group within society? Being a neo-Marxist, you can no doubt guess what his first and most commonly used target is throughout his work, capitalism. So, to Gramsci, even people that are struggling within a capitalist system have, oftentimes, lived their entire lives immersed in a culture that promotes the merits of capitalism. This, in turn, creates a sort of economic Stockholm syndrome where, despite the fact they’re struggling, the citizens identify themselves and their place in the world in relation to capitalist ideology. When the entire way that you view the world has been given to you by a culture that benefits from maintaining capitalism, Gramsci would say, don’t be surprised if that education produces a few blind spots.

These blind spots are the point, okay? Cultural hegemony in many ways is accomplished by getting consent from the population to keep things the way that they are by making sure people are blind to other options at their disposal. Keep in mind, as we continue talking about cultural hegemony, that this isn’t always accomplished by an organized group of people that are actively trying to control things. Cultural hegemony can exist, and people can be a part of perpetuating that status quo just simply by acting out of their own self-interest. See, because their self-interest is always considered in relation to how the current system can help them, they unintentionally end up supporting things staying the same.

What Gramsci’s getting at is that for any single person or any social institution to appeal to groups that are in positions of power for the sake of your own self-interest, you must in some capacity there go along with the way that things are currently structured. So, for example, if you’re a politician or a social commentator that wants to make the world a better place, the only way you are ever going to be able to get your message across is by participating in the existing culture and using the tools at your disposal. This is an ideal situation for cultural hegemony and one of the goals of its final stages to Gramsci, to make the values of a particular culture seem so a part of nature and so in line with “common sense” that the members of that culture don’t even question them anymore; to get people completely entrenched in this world where they mistake the reality of their culture for the reality of the universe; to think the reason things are staying the way that they are is because people are weighing all their options, they’re thinking about it for a while, and then they’re making the best choice, not merely complying with the demands of a cultural hegemon that has control over them.

That said, just like the militaristic hegemon of ancient Greece, the goal of cultural hegemony is to stay in power. Now, over time, dominant social groups have realized that the most efficient way of doing this is by controlling people’s systems of values. Gramsci thinks by and large people acquire their systems of values by listening to and studying voices within a culture that he thinks are massively important, public intellectuals. Gramsci makes an important distinction here between two very different types of public intellectuals. There are “ruling intellectuals” and “organic intellectuals.”

Now, the “ruling intellectuals” are going to be the sort of foot soldiers for the dominant set of cultural norms that are currently in place. These are the people whose commentary on the world is going to reinforce the status quo. Keep in mind, again, this is in no way saying that these are bad people, necessarily. Most of them may not even realize what they’re doing. But Gramsci, nonetheless, wants to shine a light on the insular and, oftentimes, self-reinforcing world that many of these intellectuals come from. So often, it’s from academia. So often, these people are completely out of touch when it comes to what life is even like for most people in a culture.

Think about the common archetype of a philosopher throughout history. Philosopher decides they’re going to resign themselves from public life, lock themselves away in a tower, and just think about stuff really, really hard. That’s the path for creating better philosophy. You know, the last thing you’d ever want to do as a philosopher is have the basic thoughts of a normal, everyday person corrupting your unparalleled genius, right? Gramsci thinks this is completely ridiculous. Not only is this elitist and making tons of value judgements about how certain human experiences of the world are inherently better and can even be corrupted by other people’s experiences of the world, but aside from all that, Gramsci thinks this approach actually prevents you from ever being able to participate in discussions about politics at all, because political discussions always begin from the starting point of self-awareness and self-reflection, while considering how that self relates to all the other people around you. And how could anybody locking themselves away in a closet, thinking about stuff, ever hope to contribute to that conversation?

But, nonetheless, these ruling intellectuals oftentimes dominate the ideas that are available to citizens of a society. I mean, so often these intellectuals are the ones that write the articles. They’re the ones published in journals. They conduct the studies. They write the textbooks. So often these intellectuals control the education of the next generation of citizens, when so much of their prominence as an intellectual was only given to them simply because their ideas corresponded with the existing social order.

Here’s what Gramsci’s saying. Cultural hegemony is established by taking control of three things: the intellectuals of a society, the education within a society, and the philosophy that drives people to political action. So, in other words, if you’re someone that came up through the education system of an advanced capitalist society, Gramsci would say, don’t be surprised if there are some pretty glaring holes in your understanding of capitalism because, just statistically, most pieces of information you’ve ever had access to have been written by people that reached that level of social influence by participating in a capitalist system that benefits them. Your high school or university wasn’t taught by unbiased monks on the top of a mountain. That most likely, once again just statistically, you have come up in a world where you are far more likely to hear about the merits of capitalism and all the good that it’s doing for people in the world.

When conversations about the downsides of capitalism come up, you’re far more likely to hear them glossed over by other people. You’re less likely to have someone call you out for glossing over them. And the conversation’s likely to go in the direction of how the good of capitalism drastically outweighs the bad. When you hear people talking about socialism, when coming up in an advanced capitalist culture, you’re far more likely to run into conversations about the horrors of socialism, how it’s failed everywhere it’s been tried. And, if anyone brings up something good that socialism seems to have produced, it’s written off as a “broken clock’s right twice a day” sort of thing.

Now, here’s the really interesting part. This view of economics and how it plays out in the world may be absolutely true. Capitalism could just be a better economic system than socialism. But how would you ever know for sure? Because if you’re an intellectually honest person, you’d at least for a second have to consider that maybe your entire understanding of capitalism and socialism has been given to you by a handful of intellectuals you’ve entrusted your worldview to, that are intellectuals and gain their credibility simply because their view of the way the world is corresponds with the dominant cultural narrative that keeps the status quo going. Whether maintaining that status quo is good for a particular social group that’s pulling the puppet strings or whether it’s good for just keeping society stable, what if you’ve lived your entire life learning from a lot of really smart people that are all just telling the same side of the story?

Now, Gramsci would say that this is not just limited to capitalist societies, that it’s entirely possible to come up in a society that unfairly promotes the merits of socialism and creates the same sort of echo chamber of ideas. Gramsci’s goal was not to replace a Western world dominated by capitalist ideology with one dominated by Marxist ideology. His goal was to replace both of these narrow approaches with an ideology where the public has a general and intense level of skepticism about the status quo, no matter what the status quo looks like. The biggest mistake we can make, to Gramsci, is to see these ideologies as nature, or the way that things are. We should always be critical of the status quo. And the fact he’s so critical of capitalism is just him following his own advice about the status quo of the world he happened to live in.

To make a long story short, Gramsci thought that Marx and so many other Marxist thinkers that came after him were putting the cart before the horse, in a way. They were all so wrapped up in the possibility -- the inevitability of a communist revolution in the West. They were so wrapped up in waiting to see capitalism destroy itself that they completely missed the fact that different methods of cultural control could fragment a population to the point that a revolution could never take place.

Gramsci makes another important distinction in his work directly to these people that were calling for revolution, that for any meaningful social change to ever take place, regardless of what it is, there needs to be two wars that are fought and won: first, a war of position, then a war of maneuver. These orthodox Marxists of his time were far too focused on the war of maneuver, which was the actual communist revolution that they wanted to bring about. But Gramsci says, before that can ever happen, you need to defeat the cultural hegemon in a war of position.

Remember, a cultural hegemon will have control over three things: the intellectuals, the education, and the philosophy of a society. The goal of anyone trying to bring about any kind of social change, to Gramsci, should be to provide alternatives in all three of these areas. They should create a counter-culture, an alternative set of cultural norms and taboos, reinforced by the intellectuals whose job it is to actively challenge the status quo. He called this other type of intellectuals “organic intellectuals,” and it was their job to be skeptical of the existing order of things, to provide an alternative means of education that took cues from the counter-culture that was created, and to embolden the average citizen to take political action by giving them a philosophical outlook that changes the way they see themselves and how they fit into the world.

This is why so many attempts at revolution have failed in the past, to Gramsci. The orthodox Marxists that tried to organize it didn’t understand the “common sense” of the workers that needed to carry out the revolution. These workers saw themselves and their place in the world solely in terms of how they relate to capitalist ideology. The only way to shift their perspective enough to see the other side would be to fundamentally change the way they look at the world philosophically. See, an extremely important term in the work of Karl Marx that was used to describe the way he saw things was “historical materialism.” Gramsci was a neo-Marxist. When it came to these orthodox Marxists that we’re talking about, he distanced himself considerably from them. And a big reason why was because he thought they were paying way too much attention to the materialism part of historical materialism and not nearly enough attention to the historical part of it.

Gramsci may have supported communism, and communism may have played out in a particular way all throughout the 20th century. But Gramsci hated Stalin. He would have hated Mao. He would have hated Pol Pot. He saw people like these as opportunistic dictators, that took what could otherwise have been a revolutionary political philosophy, and they used it to create dictatorships where the population was forced to deify and worship the state. When, to Gramsci, a much more accurate reading of the work of Marx would have produced the true essence of his work, the spirit of revolution among people, the spirit of revolution among common people united under the desire to never again allow a handful of people to dominate and control the population. To those living at the time of Gramsci, communism and democracy seemed to be two extremely difference approaches to trying to solve the same general problem.

See, as we already know from earlier episodes, the feeling around this time in the world of philosophy is an intense skepticism towards reason. The Enlightenment gave us the hope that science was the answer. Science, when given enough time to develop, was capable of giving us answers to problems that throughout history have seemed completely unsolvable. When applied to the realm of political philosophy, for over a hundred years it seemed totally plausible that something like science, something as unbiased and without an agenda as science, could eventually study the way that people are, study their brains, study the way people work together within a society, and it didn’t seem crazy to think that science could eventually give us answers to some of these questions in political philosophy that seemed so difficult to answer.

But along came Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophizing with a hammer. Because at the end of the 19th century he asked the question, “What if the very act of conducting science at all carries with it cultural values that narrow and distort its findings?” We know there are many different ways of conducting science, depending on the specific field you’re in. We know that scientific revolutions have occurred where there have been wholesale transformations of the methods and assumptions that science is conducted through. What if these limitations and the unavoidable narrow scope that categorizing the universe must be viewed through is missing out on something crucial about what it is to be a human being? What if science, useful as it is, was never the savior that everyone thought it was? More on that next episode.

Episode #131 - Transcript - Gramsci, Cultural Hegemony - Philosophize This! - Stephen West

[g00seg1raffe]

A (comparatively) Brief Thought about Steve Harrington's Names

Lucky Stevie has full names in three different languages and they're all equally incriminating in different ways!

For context: Steve's parents meet just as the summer of '66 is ending, in a perfectly legitimate bar with absolutely no connection to organised crime in Chicago. They introduce themselves as Christopher (call me Chris, Christopher is shite) Harrington and Anita (but you, bello, can call me Tina) Martino. They are both lying.

See, America is it's own little world. Founded by desperate refugees and religious extremists, the USA is the New York of the western world - the perfect place to disappear, because no matter your sins, there's always someone weirder. And in this totally not shady bar in Chicago, these two strangers have a lot of sins.

Mr. Ciarán Ótis Marcin Ó'hArrachtáin is what some might call a terrorist. Those 'some' are, of course, all eejits who seem to be fecking delirah with the Brits treating the Irish Free State as a colony. But Ótis and Martyna didn't raise a spineless dosser, not on tales of the shite they saw in Nazi Poland. Ciarán wants to be just like his mama, so does the only thing he can at sweet sixteen and joins the IRA. It was a grand old time - until some spanner decided to start the boarder campaign, make some things go boom, then it all goes arseways and suddenly he's a wanted man. Now he's legged it all the way out to this bar in Chicago where he can find some mostly-legal work, set himself up as someone who doesn't need to check over his shoulder every five seconds - and maybe he can take a chance on this absolute ride of an Italian who's just walked in, Jaysus -

Sig.na Alessia Stefania "Pieterina" Serafini has made a name for herself as a mafiosa. Beloved, wild, ruthless granddaughter of Don Alessio - caporegime since nineteen and well on her way to consigliere - and, right now, in molti problemi with la Cosa Nostra. So much problemi that she's been effectively smuggled into the US, like that goddamn heroin shipment that started all these problemi... ah well. She just needs to lie low for a bit (a decade) with her American cousins on the less than legal side of Chicago before she can return to her cosca and the people she actually trusts not to stab her the moment she turns her back - and maybe she can have some fun with this bello, bello Irishman who's looking her way, dannazione -

So. Discussing the evolution Mr and Mrs Harrington's relationship is gonna have to wait (though I'd love to hear from you guys) - the important thing here is the family history.

================================================

Tina's side: Alessia Stefania "Pietrina" Serafini.

Tina's father is Vincenzo Serafini and her grandfather is Alessio Serafini. Her first name is the feminine of her paternal grandfather's name. Steve's middle names are also from them.

(In case it wasn't obvious, the Serafini family are heavily involved in the Italian mafia - potentially involved in the Ciaculli massacre in '63 - and also have ties to the American mafia.)

Tina's mother is Pietra Tedesco and her grandmother is Stefania Tedesco. Her middle name - Stefania - and her son's first name - Stefano - are from her maternal grandmother. "Pietrina" is a diminutive nickname for Pietra - they're saying she's just like her mother, and since they figured this would be easy and natural enough for Steve to remember, his agreed Italian 'cover' surname is Di Pietro.

(Pietra is the feminine of her father's Petri Tedesco - which is itself the new name chosen by the German runaway Peter Thälmann. No relation to German Communist Party Leader Ernst Thälman, no sir, nothing to see here.)

So: Stefano Alessio Vincenzo Serafini - or, when he doesn't want to advertise the mafia part - Stefano Di Pietro.

Chris' side: Ciarán Ótis Marcin Ó'hArrachtáin.

Chris' father is Ótis Ó'hArrachtáin, and his paternal grandparents Steafán and Keira Ó'hArrachtáin. He gets his first name from the masculine of his grandmother's name, his middle name from his father, and gave Steve his grandfather's name.

(Steafán and Keira worked their asses off their whole life to put their kids through school, ennabling Ótis to work at the Irish embassy in Poland, where he managed to smuggle a handful of refugees past the Nazis to Britain, of which his future wife, Hannia Marcinkiewicz, was one.)

Chris' mother is Anita Marcinkiewicz. He gets his middle name from her surname. Steve gets his Irish 'cover' surname from that.

(Anita and her son are very similar as teenagers and young adults - the same heady cocktail of jaded rage and a naïve sense of justice, motivating spiky teens in parallel shitty situations to commit near-suicidal acts of heroism, with similar results. Just what did Anita do? Nothing you can prove, of course...)

(Yes, Anita Marcinkiewicz and Anita Martino - a wild coincidence that kicks of conversation for our young lovers in Chicago. Not in any way manipulated by an omnipotent fangirl who wants her OCs to have something neat to make slightly awkward but unexpectedly wholesome small talk about over a Guinness and a Negroni in a bar in Chicago). (This is why Chris calls his wife Tina all the time when anyone else would get shot if she's feeling anything less than saccharine.)

So: Steofán Ciarán Ótis Ó'hArrachtáin - or, when he'd rather avoid any connection to the wanted terrorist - Steofán Ó Máirtín.

================================================

Of course, as half Irish and half Italian - or, well, 1/8 German, 2/8 Polish, 2/8 Irish and 3/8 Italian but who's counting. Aside from me -

The point is, he's Catholic as fuck. He can be non-practicing and still Catholic (bc fuckboi), he can lose his faith and still be Catholic (bc interdimensional hell monsters), he can be an atheist (bc Irish) and still be Catholic, ok - he is Italian and Irish, there's no cure.

So, yeah, he's definitely been christened. And sure, you can old give any old name to the government (fuck them anyways) as long as it suits your purposes. But your christening name is the one that God knows you by, okay, you don't want to lie to the priest and end up with the wrong name tag when you get to heaven (or if, I guess).

What I'm saying is the paperwork says Steven Otis Harrington, but some poor Father/Reverendo gets hit with Stefano Stiofán Alessio Ciarán Vincenzo Ótis Serafini Ó'hArrachtáin. Good fucking luck!

[kvetchlandia]

Members of the Manouchian Group, the Armed Anti-fascist Fighters of the FTP-MOI Resistance in Paris, Shortly Before Their Execution by the Fascist Occupiers, Fort Mont-Valérien, Paris 1944

The FTP-MOI was a group largely within the French Communist Party and made up almost entirely of immigrant laborers. They were the most active and most militant of the anti-fascist resistance groups in France. The Manouchian Group was largely made up of Eastern European Jews and also included anti-fascist Italians, anti-nazi Germans, anti-Franco Spaniards (including several veterans of the Spanish Civil War), Armenians and a handful of native French, although most French citizens were in the FTP, not its immigrant brach, the FTP-MOI. 23 members of the group were arrested in November, 1943 and 22 of them were murdered by the nazis at Fort Mont-Valérien in Feb, 1944. Those heroes pictured above, as they awaited their execution, include (l-r): Missak Manouchian (3rd from the left), József Boczov, Wolf Waisbrot, Szlama Grzywacz, Mojsze Fingercweig and Tamás Elek. The other members of the group murdered that day were: Robert Witchitz, Spartaco Fontanot, Célestino Alfonso, Roger Rouxel, Amédée Usseglio-Polatera, Georges Cloarec, Rino Della Negra, Cesar Lucarini, Antoine Salvadori, Emeric Glasz, Marcel Rajman, Yona Geduldig, Leib Goldberg, Armenak-Arpen Manoukian, Szlomo Szapiro, and Stanislas Kubacki. Golda Bancic, the only woman fighter in the group, was not executed that day, since the French wouldn't allow women to be killed by firing squad. Consequently, she was deported to Germany, where she was executed by beheading.

[leftistfeminista]

On the contrary, that historical process that began in 1789 with the French Revolution concluded its cycle and offers sufficient perspective for a complete analysis. There, too, a maelstrom was opened within the old European society, a new, radical and reckless ideological affirmation, which freed man from the shackles of feudal privileges and offered a new concept of the citizen, in contrast to the old formulas of a society built on inequality and privileges. There too, an uninterrupted process of wars developed to affirm these principles, in an alternating series of progress and setbacks, of revolutions and internal reactions, of dictatorial adventures and counter-revolutionary enterprises on the part of the united Europe. Like the Soviet Union of today, France then exported, with the flags of the Directory and the Napoleonic eagles, a new principle that would be the germ of all future history. When those chapters closed, when the Corsican despot finished his part, the picture that presented itself - whether he had been defeated or victorious - was completely new: the social structure of Europe had been completely transformed. Through the great contrast between the principle of absolutism and the revolutionary principle, a third form of people's regime was created, which does not have the peculiar character of one or the other of these extremes, but is and wants to be a historical expression of its own. France had affirmed the immortal principles of human rights and Europe, although having fought them, and fighting them, ended up assimilating them. "Even defeated Greece triumphed over its fierce victors." It was natural for this process to be more evident, especially in areas of greater friction and wear, in those countries where the struggle developed more violently, where the conflict was more intense. In the countries placed on the limits of the initiating and radiating nation, in Italy and Germany, the reaction-assimilation process was more immediate and rapid, opening the way to new political combinations and new ideological forms that, revived in the great revolutions of 1848, made up irresistible popular affirmations.

Eugene Reale Member of the CC of the Italian Communist Party

1947

[ass-arius]

hello fellow tinhats in the mcr tag I would like to add something bc I've seen a lot of people mentioning ties between the long live promo and both swarm tour/wwwy and there's something I haven't seen mentioned yet

A lot of people have brought up the cold war inspo, especially on reddit and I would like to contribute a little gem I found

Kristin Colby shared this post where many noticed the connection between the audience and the wwwy visuals

So I went to the op's (@/pau.lpzlms) page and found their videos from the show and noticed this (this is during famous last words)

Bad screenshot but it pretty clearly says Garibaldi Corps. I haven't found any mentions of it on Twitter or reddit but I did a little wiki dive.

It's easy to think this is actual historical footage of a war rally or something but the name "Garibaldi Corps" only shows results for corporations and companies with the name garibaldi. However the name Garibaldi is commonly used in Italian military, named after Giussepe Garibaldi, a hero of the Italian unification wars, but none of them are called "corps"

there are different brigades/battalion named after Garibaldi in different wars.

•cold war (8th Bersaglieri Brigade "Garibaldi")

A bersaglieri is an infantry troop made up of mostly marksmen or gunmen. This particular brigade was activated in 1975 in the peak of the cold war, along with its sister brigades manin and mamelli, also named after italian unification heroes. When the cold war officially ended in 1991, the garibaldi brigade became the first troop in the Italian army to become fully professionalized.

•world war ii (Brigate Garibaldi)

the cold war brigade was named partially in honor of these units that served during ww2. These were partisan groups composed of mostly communists as well as non-communist members of the national liberation committee and the Italian socialist party fighting against the occupation by n*zi germany in italy as well as italian fascists during the Italian Civil war. According to wiki: "they were the largest of the partisan groups and suffered the highest number of losses. Members wore a red handkerchief around the neck with red stars on their hats."

There are other uses of the name by Italian groups in the Spanish civil war, the American Civil War, during the polish wars in the 1860s, and a French brigade during ww1

It's interesting how the drum is being passed around the audience supposedly during the appearance from his grand immortal dictator, if the concert visuals do correspond with the poster. the ww2 garibaldi units were italian resistance groups against the fascist regime, meanwhile the cold war brigade was a mechanized troop created in response to the threat of the soviet union. In both cases, Russia is the enemy but the first group were rebels and the second are professional soldiers.

It could simply be that Garibaldi is a common name for Italian military units across history and so perfect for this worldbuilding they're going for but I do think allusions to both these specific groups would be very interesting

[kneedeepincynade]

The United States are uncapable of accepting that other nations are different and have different systems and this is exactly why the "pax americana" has failed and its why many nations prefere the much more accepting China

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

🤮 美国式傲慢 | GLI STATI UNITI NON PROMUOVERANNO MAI IL RISPETTO RECIPROCO E LA COMPRENSIONE RECIPROCA

🤹‍♂️ L'arroganza, mista alla confusione, scaturita dalle farneticazioni del Presidente Biden contro il Presidente Xi Jinping, nuovamente definito dal rappresentante degli imperialisti americani come un «dittatore» non deve essere solo condannata, ma anche analizzata con cura 🤔

💬 Dentro la sua frase, è contenuta la prova che gli USA non hanno alcuna intenzione di promuovere il 相互尊重 - Rispetto Reciproco:

💬 «Guarda, lo è. È un dittatore nel senso che è a capo di un Paese Comunista che si basa su una forma di governo totalmente diversa dalla nostra» 🤹‍♂️

😂 Almeno, questa volta, un rappresentante dell'imperialismo statunitense l'ha ammesso: per gli USA basta non avere un modello politico neo-liberale ed economicamente neo-liberista per essere definito "dittatore" 😂

😂 Cina, Russia, Iran, Corea del Nord, Cuba, Venezuela, Bielorussia, Siria - ogni Paese con un proprio modello differente dal neo-liberalismo statunitense, e con un sistema economico diverso dal capitalismo finanziario monopolistico diventa subito una "dittatura" agli occhi degli imperialisti americani 🤡

🚩 Il Partito Comunista Cinese, tramite tutti i suoi rappresentanti, ha sempre dichiarato che non esistono modelli realmente universali, che la democrazia può assumere varie forme, così come il modello economico, e che nessun Paese può egemonizzare il concetto di democrazia o libertà 😍

🐲 Come spiegato nell'Articolo "民主是全人类的共同价值": «La Democrazia è un Valore Comune dell'Umanità, non un monopolio di pochi Paesi, bensì un Diritto di ogni Popolo» | Essa non ha un'unica forma, bensì molte, costruite e fondate sulle condizioni nazionali e materiali di ciascun Paese, e non è un ornamento brillante da sfoggiare per raggiungere fini geopolitici, bensì una soluzione ai problemi reali del Popolo ⭐️

🔍 中华人民共和国全国人民代表大会 - Come funziona l'Assemblea Nazionale del Popolo? 🚩

🔍 协商民主 - Cos'è la Democrazia Socialista Consultativa? 🚩

🔍 人民民主 - Cos'è la Democrazia del Popolo? 🚩

🤮 Neo-maccartismo da "red scare" e sinofobia da "yellow peril" non promuoveranno mai una comprensione tra i morenti Paesi d'Occidente e la Cina 😡

🇬🇷 Quando, all'inizio di novembre, Kyriakos Mītsotakīs - Primo Ministro della Repubblica Ellenica, si è recato in Cina, il Presidente Xi Jinping ha ricordato che 互相学习 - l'Apprendimento Reciproco era uno dei principi fondanti delle Relazioni Sino-Greche 😍

😍 L'Apprendimento Reciproco porta, necessariamente, al Rispetto Reciproco. Questo non accade mai con gli USA, che intendono sempre esportare il loro modello genocida tramite le sanzioni unilaterali, i tentativi di rivoluzione colorata e persino la guerra 😡

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan 😘

🤮 美国式傲慢 | THE UNITED STATES WILL NEVER PROMOTE MUTUAL RESPECT AND MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING

🤹‍♂️ The arrogance, mixed with confusion, resulting from President Biden's rantings against President Xi Jinping, once again defined by the representative of the American imperialists as a "dictator" must not only be condemned, but also carefully analyzed 🤔

💬 Inside his sentence, there is proof that the USA has no intention of promoting 相互尊重-Mutual Respect:

💬 «Look, it is. He is a dictator in the sense that he is the head of a Communist country that is based on a form of government totally different from ours »🤹‍♂️

😂 At least, this time, a representative of US imperialism admitted it: for the USA it is enough not to have a neo-liberal and economically neo-liberal political model to be defined as a "dictator" 😂

😂 China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus, Syria - each country with its own model different from US neo-liberalism, and with an economic system different from monopoly financial capitalism immediately becomes a "dictatorship" in the eyes of the American imperialists 🤡

🚩 The Chinese Communist Party, through all its representatives, has always declared that there are no truly universal models, that democracy can take various forms, as well as the economic model, and that no country can hegemonize the concept of democracy or freedom 😍

🐲 As explained in the Article "民主是全人类的共同价值": «Democracy is a common value of humanity, not a monopoly of a few countries, but a right of every people» | It does not have a single form, but many, built and founded on the national and material conditions of each country, and it is not a brilliant ornament to show off to achieve geopolitical goals, but rather a solution to the real problems of the People ⭐️

🔍 中华人民共和国全国人民代表大会 - How does the National People's Congress work? 🚩

🔍 协商民主 - What is Consultative Socialist Democracy? 🚩

🔍 人民民主 - What is People's Democracy? 🚩

🤮 "Red scare" neo-McCarthyism and "yellow peril" Sinophobia will never promote understanding between the dying Western countries and China 😡

🇬🇷 When, at the beginning of November, Kyriakos Mītsotakīs - Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic, visited China, President Xi Jinping recalled that 互相学习 - Mutual Learning was one of the founding principles of Sino-Greek Relations 😍

😍 Mutual Learning necessarily leads to Mutual Respect. This never happens with the USA, which always intends to export its genocidal model through unilateral sanctions, attempted color revolutions and even war 😡

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collectivoshaoshan 😘

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 2

[ First | Prev | Table of Contents | Next ]

At the request of my friend, Paul Lafargue, now representative of Lille in the French Chamber of Deputies, I arranged three chapters of this book as a pamphlet, which he translated and published in 1880, under the title: "Socialisme utopique et Socialisme scientifique". From this French text, a Polish and a Spanish edition were prepared. In 1883, our German friends brought out the pamphlet in the original language. Italian, Russian, Danish, Dutch, and Roumanian translations, based upon the German text, have since been published. Thus, the present English edition, this little book circulates in 10 languages. I am not aware that any other Socialist work, not even our Communist Manifesto of 1848, or Marx's Capital, has been so often translated. In Germany, it has had four editions of about 20,000 copies in all.

The Appendix, "The Mark", was written with the intention of spreading among the German Socialist party some elementary knowledge of the history and development of landed property in Germany. This seemed all the more necessary at a time when the assimilation by that party of the working-people of the towns was in a fair way of completion, and when the agricultural laborers and peasant had to be taken in hand. This appendix has been included in the translation, as the original forms of tenure of land common to all Teutonic tribes, and the history of their decay, are even less known in England and in Germany. I have left the text as it stands in the original, without alluding to the hypothesis recently started by Maxim Kovalevsky, according to which the partition of the arable and meadow lands among the members of the Mark was preceded by their being cultivated for joint-account by a large patriarchal family community, embracing several generations (as exemplified by the still existing South Slavonian Zadruga), and that the partition, later on, took place when the community had increased, so as to become too unwieldy for joint-account management. Kovalevsky is probably quite right, but the matter is still sub judice [under consideration].

The economic terms used in this work, as afar as they are new, agree with those used in the English edition of Marx's Capital. We call "production of commodities" that economic phase where articles are produced not only for the use of the producers, but also for the purpose of exchange; that is, as commodities, not as use values. This phase extends from the first beginnings of production for exchange down to our present time; it attains its full development under capitalist production only, that is, under conditions where the capitalist, the owner of the means of production, employs, for wages, laborers, people deprived of all means of production except their own labor-power, and pockets the excess of the selling price of the products over his outlay. We divide the history of industrial production since the Middle Ages into three periods:

handicraft, small master craftsman with a few journeymen and apprentices, where each laborer produces a complete article;

manufacture, where greater numbers of workmen, grouped in one large establishment, produce the complete article on the principle of division of labor, each workman performing only one partial operation, so that the product is complete only after having passed successively through the hands of all;

modern industry, where the product is produced by machinery driven by power, and where the work of the laborer is limited to superintending and correcting the performance of the mechanical agent.

I am perfectly aware that the contents of this work will meet with objection from a considerable portion of the British public. But, if we Continentals had taken the slightest notice of the prejudices of British "respectability", we should be even worse off than we are. This book defends what we call "historical materialism", and the word materialism grates upon the ears of the immense majority of British readers. "Agnosticism" might be tolerated, but materialism is utterly inadmissible.

And, yet, the original home of all modern materialism, from the 17th century onwards, is England.

[ First | Prev | Table of Contents | Next ]

[sayitaliano]

Today marks 40 years since the death of Enrico Berlinguer, a very important Italian politician during our Prima Repubblica. Against fascism, he became part of PCI (Italian Left Wing/Communist Party), in which he acted as secretary-general until the end, caused by a stroke during an assembly on June 4th 1984. He had an important role in the international Communist scene as he firstly took distance from the lines dictated by Russian Communism, which had been the sample until then. He created an alternative version called "Eurocomunismo". He also tried to create the "compromesso storico" with Aldo Moro and DC (Democrazia Cristiana, another Italian Center party) and found a big coalition to get to the government. After his death, at the European elections, his party PCI got more votes than DC for the first time, despite under his guide PCI had been grown as a party too being the second more voted at the National elections after DC.

For more infos: