#like new people = new class = proletariat

[chedelat]

ohhhh i can talk about him for hours. and my tags are actually pretty messy as i look on them so i try to explain what i meant here. and first of all: chernyshevsky was living in the nineteenth century russia, i think the context of his views is important here.

chernyshevsky was, i think, the main figure of russian nihilism. he was also, if you will, a feminist, and explicitly stated that, as long as women are opressed, love between a man and a woman is not possible. real love is not possible while women are subordinated to men and men don't view women as persons, it can be only between equals. the new people he described in his novel "what is to be done?" are those, among their other characteristics, who believe men and women to be equal. and there's also a chapter where the personification of love explains to a main heroine that 1) there was no true love in the "old"/"previous" world, only men's ownership of women, 2) her (love's) kingdom, or the next world, is to be achived only when women are independend and equal to men, and this "kingdom" is described as a socialist utopia too.

his views on the equality and love also included criticism of the institution of marriage (it was almost or totally impossible to get divorced at his time). chernyshevsky argued that marriage prevents women from choosing to be with who they love as they are forever tied to their husbands who view them as their property and, again, not persons and equals. (fun fact: he was deeply in love with his wife and because of his beliefs basically begged her to have lovers other than him if she ever feels like that. for the equality! and, well, for her being free to choose and follow only her heart and not social norms).

so. he describes the next world, the new people and their beliefs and says that, well, unless you reject traditional worldview where women are considered men's property, you can't have true love. and this rejection of traditional worldview (basically "old world") is the main characteristic of the new people -- and also his understanding of nihilism (and his contemporaries'. take turgenev for example -- he is not approving of nihilism but describes it in similar terms). so, nihilism here is a rejection of traditional order and traditional morals. such as women's inferiority, permanence of marriage, and capitalist/feudalist social order! and this rejection (i.e. nihilism) opens a path to a better society, while acceptance keeps everything as it is. there is a background character in chernyshevsky's novel who is trying to fight against the development of the socialist workshop the main herione (one of the new people) established. his actions are described as reinforcing opressive status-quo. i also think this character is middle class in some sense and generally a representation of the middle class and status-quo, to which this socialist workshop, in this character's own words, is a threat. so, here's wreaking havoc on the middle class too >:) (btw just in case: this character is even more background in the published version of the novel and the chapter about him was almost totaly cut off due to censorship. but it's still possible to find the original version!)

and another example of wreaking havoc on the middle class: by choosing true love instead of arranged marriage, main herione "wreaks havoc" on her middle class family that expected her to marry a wealthy and higher status man, and not a student without a coin in his pocket. her mother is shocked and angry, her plans are spoiled by her daughter's nihilism! she dared to reject the established order of things and refused to obey to her parents! everything turned upside down!

so, i was thinking about the parallels between chernyshevsky's novel and the next world mural for a plenty of time. and well, i think the connection to the nihilism of russian socialists can be made, but this nihilism is, basically, just their socialist beliefs.

(my remark about the context was made, obviously, to clear things up about the position in society women had at that time & place. now it changed and the problems are different and chernyshevsky is not as relevant obviously, so the message about true love and its political connotations are different in his novel and in de, but i love to find parallels between things i like and i feel like the sentiment might be somehow similar still. true love cannot be in the world as it is now!)

I think the next world mural is a nihilist mural

Russian nihilist were called "New people"

the belief that the world is beyond saving (too late for us)

"next world" could be interpreted as the world after the pale covers it fully, which is the goal of the nihilist innocence St Miro

they were doing all kinds of assassinations, sabotage, destruction etc. (wreak havoc)

Russian nihilism has a connection to socialism and anarchism (on the middle class)

(text sources: x x x )

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Are you a Tankie?? Do you think the USSR was a good nation? Do you maybe even defend Stalin somewhat, not just Lenin? Do you support Mao or ''commuist" nations in the modern age like China or North Korea? I think Commuism is a good ideology, but anytime it's been attempted alongside a government, it's been used as an excuse to control and oppress people. I think it can only work feasibly under anarchy because a government will never release control of its citizens.

I used to be an anarchist myself. I'm not going to say there's some magic phrase that will convince you to become a "tankie" like me, but I will say that if you haven't read some of the core works by Marx, Engels, or Lenin, you should give them a try sometime. "State and Revolution" especially. There is no magic "abolish the state" button that can be pressed to do away with all authority in one stroke. The material conditions must be changed first before the state can disappear.

I would also recommend checking out Pat Sloan's "Soviet Democracy", and pretty much anything by Anna Louise Strong but especially The Soviets Expected It, The Stalin Era, and In North Korea. On the subject of North Korea, you should also watch the democracy "Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul".

There is a lot of propaganda surrounding actually existing socialism in the West, and it is important to separate truth from fiction. People do not fight in revolutions only to turn around and accept new oppressors. Every currently existing socialist state is democratic, and that includes the DPRK. Democratic does not mean ideal, but it does mean that people have a say in who is running the government. Even more than that, in every existing socialist state the people have the right to recall elected officials at any time, something which is not guaranteed in most bourgeois democracies, including the US.

Can you imagine members of the ruling party meeting with the people directly on a regular basis to discuss and debate the issues that matter most to the people in the US or any other bourgeois democracy? Can you imagine government officials whose top priority is the material welfare of the most disadvantaged citizens? You look at government meetings in China, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Laos, and in North Korea, and that is what you see time and time again. That is the crux of politics in these countries, the material conditions of the people and how to improve them. They are dictatorships of the proletariat and thus the proletariat are the class for which the state exists to benefit.

Finally, you should read the 1986 paper "Capitalism, socialism, and the physical quality of life" by Cereseto & Waitzkin. While it is nearly 40 years old, it used World Bank data (clearly not a source biased in favor of communism) to demonstrate how on average socialist economies outperformed capitalist ones at similar levels of economic development in terms of actual material conditions for the average citizen. Being 40 years old, it also has the advantage of comparing data at a time when the number of socialist nations was at its highest. If you want to see more recent examinations that take a similar approach, you should read any papers by the economist Jason Hickel, but especially his 2016 paper "The true extent of global poverty and hunger", where he demonstrates that capitalism has by and large failed to improve material conditions outside the imperial core, and that the only nations that buck the trend in the developing world are the ones who have rejected neoliberal economic policy, most notably China, whose socialist economy has been responsible for the vast majority of people lifted out of poverty in the last decades.

[txttletale]

i am confused by some self described maoists opposing gun regulations and saying the proletariat must be armed, and i remember you once said most of this comes from misinterpreting one thing marx said about an already-armed proletariat, could you expand on that?

because my thinking is, 1) people are materially, demonstratively safer in places with less guns and less excuses for cops to shoot them and 2) ... it's not like places like the US seem any closer to a revolution unless I'm missing something, right? All of this to me sounds exactly like when some extremely online "communists" oppose a labour reform that will make material improvements for the working class because they perceive worse conditions as more conductive to a revolution, which is something that, if nothing else, is horrible optics for any communist to say since it sounds like they _want_ things to get worse, which rightfully would make any working person want to punch them

SRA and similar types drastically take the quote “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” out of context in a very silly way, interpreting it as 'basically the 2nd amendment', as marx just saying that the working class should all own their own gun as individuals--when in fact marx said this in a very specific context, discussing an organized working class in the midst of a popular democratic revolution against feudalism (such as the february revolution in russia or the xinhai revolution in china) in which the proletariat and bourgeoisie were united against aristocratic and royalist elements, and the need of organized proletarian militias to maintain their weapons even after the success of such a revolution to guard against betrayal by the bourgeoisie of the sort marx wrote of extensively in the case of the french revolutions. here's the quote in its full context:

During and after the struggle the workers must at every opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government. They must achieve these guarantees by force if necessary, and generally make sure that the new rulers commit themselves to all possible concessions and promises – the surest means of compromising them. They must check in every way and as far as is possible the victory euphoria and enthusiasm for the new situation which follow every successful street battle, with a cool and cold-blooded analysis of the situation and with undisguised mistrust of the new government. Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’ clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers’ suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself. To be able to forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

—Karl Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (emphasis mine)

it's a total and deeply unserious misinterpretation of what marx actually said, and imo it is indicative less of anything specific to maoism but of the usamerican individualist mindset, who cannot conceive of 'the proletariat' as conceiving of anything other than scattered individuals making personal purchasing and lifestyle decisions. to paraphrase the least annoying mcelroy brother, if you buy a glock you're not arming the proletariat, you're arming the justin. you and your SRA buddies owning guns is not an 'armed proletariat', it's an 'armed just some guys'.

& of course these people will make much hay about the black panthers' use of firearms while once again completely failing to understand what the black panthers actually were (an organization founded on marxist principles) and what they used those guns for (to patrol, in groups, around their neighbourhoods to prevent police from acting with impunity). not for personal 'self defence' but for organized, community self-defense. which kind of gets to the heart of it, a gun is not actually useful for 'self-defense', owning a gun doesn't make you safer, but because of this individualism the specter of the random street hate crime which you can epically john wick your way out of plays an oversized role in the political imagination of these people who, again, cannot envision what self-defense looks like on a community or class basis.

another argument that will be made is that "well, personal gun ownership isn't revolutionary action now, but if there's a revolution how do you expect the revolutionary party to become armed if not through preexisting individual gun ownership?" needless to say i think this is very silly. no revolutionary or guerilla movement in history has ever relied upon the personal gun ownership of its members, because that's a fucking stupid way to operate a serious fighting force.

now that doesn't mean i actually think that gun control legislation in the usa is prima facie a good idea -- i think if the last few years have hammered any point home it's that the cops don't need excuses to shoot people, and that any theoretical program of firearm confiscation would be accompanied by disproportional leniency for right-wing white gun owners and disproportional violence and brutality against latino and black gun owners. i don't think guns are ontologically evil, i think if you want to own a gun that's whatever--but i do think that SRA types are for the most part wilfully deluding themselves that their particular type of consumerism and hobbyism is serious revolutionary activism in much the same way that people who make a big deal out of buying from their local small business queer owned coffee shop are.

[mesetacadre]

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.

[tanadrin]

Ok this might be a strange ask, but. do you have any opinions on the marxist/leninist/whatever idea that, western capitalist states supply a welfare state and higher wages (and so on) for western workers through imperialism, in order to subdue class struggle in western states, so that the western proletariat basically has a hand in imperialism (that anti-imperialism in practice would materially harm the western proletariat)

i think that's wrong. i think it sounds like a way you can rationalize political disengagement in a both-sidesist kinda way and also accelerationism if you're into that; i think that kind of nebulously conspiratorial belief is also a way to sort of rationalize the red-brown alliance, the need to punish the bad sheep people who don't agree with you, and a way to discount anybody who uses actual substantive policy achievements as a way to point out that actually, yes, engaging with politics can produce positive outcomes.

it is factually incorrect, of course. there's no causal connection between the welfare state and capitalist imperialism. capitalist imperialism in the form that hardcore marxists are thinking of is kind of an anachronism anyway. much like "liberalism," they're using a lens of analysis which basically thinks history ended in 1917, that the systems and politics of the long 19th century have continued forever, and we have to sort everything into categories that are a century old even though the world has changed radically since then.

it is also, annoyingly, a rejection of the wins of leftism. leftism has done a lot of good in the world! i think leftism is directionally correct. many of the things we take for granted now in many wealthy countries--the 40-hour workweek, legal protection for unions and labor organizing, universal healthcare (outside the US of course), the existence of welfare programs in various forms, employee protections (weak in the US except for Montana; strong in many other countries), and, you know, the decolonization of most of the planet--these are all things leftists of various stripes fought and died for, and for good reason!

the reason "leftism" is weak--and of course by "leftism" people taking this position usually only mean their own particular flavor of revolutionary leftism, with everybody else being a scumbag liberal or a revisionist or a trotskyist sabateur or w/e--is because leftism keeps winning when it allies with aligned interests in an electoral context. that is to say, pragmatic progressive politics is historically quite effective (the thing Americans have historically called "liberalism" but which in international political language is closer to "social democracy," and is not Reaganism/Thatcherism), is quite willing to ally with people who share its goals including less self-defeating leftists, and continues to make new gains. see this page. there is no telos to history of course, and it's a constant struggle. but the revolution-only remnant needs to come up with a narrative to rationalize being left out in the cold, because without that rationalization their whole approach starts to come under indictment. so it can't be that their politics is ineffective--it's the sheeple bribed into shutting up by welfare!

[the-nyanguard-party]

sorry im new to your blog and im sorry if i sound really dumb and stuff with that.

this the post that i ment.

(1) one of my many problematic stances is i don't think the US military is ever a force for good or 'lesser evil' – @the-nyanguard-party on Tumblr

ok so my primary issue with "All militaries are evil" is that a state, including its military, has a class character.

from a marxist perspective, the state under capitalism is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. special bodies of armed men are organized to keep the working class under control and serve the interests of the capitalist class

in particular, the US military (as other imperial core, that is "first world," militaries) serves to forward their interests and preserve their place as an imperialist power. under imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, the financial monopolies of a few nations (the imperial core, or "first world") come to control and exploit the whole world. the military of an imperialist power serves to exert control over other nations, and to fight in inter-imperialist conflicts for redivision of the world.

on the other hand, marxists stress the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat in order to move from capitalism, through socialism, to communism. as the bourgeoisie is overthrown, the proletariat takes power and must preserve it through force, organizing in a socialist state that can supress attempts at restoring capitalism both from within and without. the character of this state is fundamentally different, being under the control of the working class and serving its interests. this state cannot be abolished as long as the bourgeosie exists, to do so simply leaves the way open for the restoration of capitalism. in particular, it needs a military to defend itself from capitalist states. this is my main problem with the sentiment of "All militaries are evil"

furthermore, even the bourgeoisie (or at least a section of it) of nations oppressed and exploited by imperialist powers may, depending on circumstances, fight to assert their independence. we remain critical of bourgeois nationalism even in this context - our ultimate goal that we cannot abandon is the overthrow of capitalism everywhere in the world, this is the only way out of imperialism - but we recognize they can play a progressive role in weakening imperialism and in making it easier for the proletariat to gain power. this is a nuanced topic, i don't know if i expressed it very well. i'll leave it like this for brevity's sake. ultimately, for people in the imperial core, your primary enemy is your own state and you should be against your own imperialism no matter what form the anti-imperialism of the nation yours is exploiting takes.

[gatheringbones]

[“In the old ideographic language of Vietnam, the word xa, which Westerners translate as “village” or “village community,” had as its roots the Chinese characters signifying “land,” “people,” and “sacred.” These three ideas were joined inseparably, for the Vietnamese religion rested at every point on the particular social and economic system of the village.

Confucian philosophy taught that the sacred bond of the society lay with the mandarin-genie, the representative of the emperor. But the villagers knew that it lay with the spirits of the particular earth of their village. They believed that if a man moved off his land and out of the gates of the village, he left his soul behind him, buried in the earth with the bones of his ancestors. The belief was no mere superstition, but a reflection of the fact that the land formed a complete picture of the village: all of a man’s social and economic relationships appeared there in visual terms, as if inscribed on a map. If a man left his land, he left his own “face,” the social position on which his “personality” depended.

In the nineteenth century the French came, and with their abstraction of money they took away men’s souls — men’s “faces” — and put them in banks.1 They destituted the villages, and though they thought to develop the economy and to put the landless to work for wages in their factories and plantations, their efforts made no impression upon the villagers. What assets the French actually contributed to the country in the form of capital and industrial plants were quite as invisible to the villagers as the villagers’ souls were to the French. At a certain point, therefore, the villagers went into revolt.

Ngo Dinh Diem and his American advisers, however, did not, or could not, learn from the French example. Following the same centralized strategy for modernization, they continued to develop the cities, the army, and the bureaucracy, while leaving the villages to rot. As it merely permitted a few more rural people to come into the modern sector in search of their souls, this new national development constituted little more than a refugee program. For those peasants with enough money and initiative to leave their doomed villages it meant a final, traumatic break with their past. For the nation as a whole it meant the gradual division of the South Vietnamese into two distinct classes or cultures.

Of necessity, the guerrillas began their program of development from the opposite direction. Rather than build an elaborate superstructure of factories and banks (for which they did not have the capital), they built from the base of the country up, beginning among the ruins of the villages and with the dispossessed masses of people. Because the landlords and the soldiers with their foreign airplanes owned the surface of the earth, the guerrillas went underground in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. Settling down among people who lived, like an Orwellian proletariat, outside the sphere of modern technology, they dug tunnels beneath the villages, giving the people a new defensive distance from the powers which reigned outside the village. The earth itself became their protection — the Confucian “face” which the village had lost when, for the last time, its hedges had been torn down. From an economic point of view, their struggle against the Diem regime with its American finances was just as much of an anticolonial war as that fought by the Viet Minh against the French — the difference being that now other Vietnamese had taken up the colonial role.”]

frances fitzgerald, from fire in the lake: the vietnamese and the americans in vietnam, 1972

[last-tarrasque]

what exactly does marxism-leninism-maoism add to marxism-leninism? i know part of it is the theory of protracted peoples war but honestly that seems like it would only work in countries with larger rural areas. this isn't me trying to disprove you or anything i just don't think i understand maoism. (i've also heard mixed opinions on abimael guzman from some people so i'm curious about him too)

That is a great question! The advancements of Maoism can be split into two main categories. The first category is the qualitative advancements with build on the core of Marxism, and mark the transformation of Marxism-Leninism into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The second is the advances which advance Maoism itself, but do not propel revolutionary science into a qualitatively higher stage.

In terms of the first category, three main advancements were made which qualitatively advanced the knowledge of revolutionary science along the lines of the three essential aspects of Marxism. These were made during the 3rd world historic revolution, that being the Chinese Revolution, up till the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. These are;

Advancements in the field of Political Economy: Chairman Mao Zedung was the first to seriously advance the study of imperialism beyond the great discoveries of Lenin and analyze Imperialism in it's modern Semi-Colonial form. This investigation led to the discovery of Bureaucrat-Comprador Capitalism and Semi-Feudalism, the ruling classes within Semi-Colonies.

Advancements in the field of Class Struggle 1: Following the analysis of Bureaucrat-Comprador Capitalism and Semi-Feudalism, along with analysis of both the RUssian and Chinese Revolution's, Mao discovered a crucial revolutionary stage for all countries under the boot of feudalism and imperialism, that of the New Democratic Revolution. The NDR is a national revolution against Feudalism and Imperialism headed principally by the Proletariat, in alliance with all progressive classes of society, including the national bourgeoises (For example the CPC-Kuomintang united fount against the Japanese, or the united front against the Tzar in Russia) The NDR must be completed before socialist revolution can occur.

Advancements in the field of Class Struggle 2: Another Key advancement of Mao was the discovery that, contrary to popular opinion at the time, class struggle continues under socialism. Under socialism new bureaucratic bourgeoisie emerge from within the party and state structure (following the principle of one dividing into two) and from remaining inequalities in society (following the principle of unequal development). Following the defeat of soviet socialism buy such forces and the rise of Khrushchevite Revisionism, and even the rise of such Revisionism in the CPC, Mao and the socialist line in the party waged a struggle against Khrushchtevite Revisionism and later internal revolution, culminating with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The GPCR targeted both old feudal and capitalist structures as well as the new bourgeoisie who promoted the capitalist line in the party, and pushed the development of socialism to its farthest point so far (which is why it the 3rd world historic revolution).

Advancements in the field of Dialectical Materialism: Mao's book On Contradictions is edental reading for any serious communist, it contains Mao's contribution to the philosophical foundations of Marxism. It puts forward key concepts such as the relationship between antagonistic and non antagonistic contradiction, differentiates between principle and secondary contractions, and the universality and particularity of contractions. Mao also puts forward in other works how contractions should be handled. Contradictions amongst the people vs contradictions with ractionares, and importantly contractions between the masses and the party, which is solved with the mass line.

There is also the topic of People's War, however that is a topic I personally do not know enough about yet in order to speak on it with any authority. After all, no investigation, no right to speak.

[marxistcomedy]

Anyone working in counter-propaganda can testify to a curious experience: we’ll put in hours of careful research collecting an impeccable set of resources that undermines some warmongering narrative, and we’ll eagerly share it with someone who claims to despise racism in all its forms — say, an outspoken opponent of the West’s so-called “War on Terror.” Unexpectedly, we are met with a response that is somewhere between chilly reticence and downright hostility. What’s going on?

From our perspective, we’re offering water to a person who’s self-identified as thirsty, and yet they react as if we were trying to poison them! They turn on a dime to defend the same institutions whose lies they were denouncing just moments before. At this point the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing through propaganda and putting puzzle pieces together into a satisfying historical account gets brutally transformed into its exact opposite: a sense of crushing defeat. In response to this bitter experience, many researchers — serious people, with plenty of experience reading and writing, and sometimes even of being published! — lash out. They decide that people have been “brainwashed” beyond the point where they can be reached by words or rational appeal. They “realize” that the masters of propaganda have been far more successful than we first imagined: it turns out we’re not David fighting Goliath, we’re more like an ant facing an asteroid.

The same inquisitive nature that first led them to unravel war propaganda narratives begins to feed an even larger psycho-historical narrative, and nihilism takes hold. The tragic cycle begins to appear eternal: innocent, well-meaning, hard-working folks are, time and again, viciously tricked by the scapegoating of a new rogue in the gallery — Indigenous, Black, Spanish, Jewish, Soviet, Vietnamese, Cuban, Serbian, Muslim, Libyan, Syrian, Korean, Venezuelan, Russian, Chinese. Due to the sheer power of propaganda and mass-media, the masses helplessly fall for hatred and volunteer for war, even though it comes at a very high cost to ourselves, our loved ones, and our ideals (religion, environmentalism, etc.). Sadly, the innate human propensity to “hate the Other” seals our fate as a society… or something along those lines.

I am going to argue that this narrative is nonsense. It tries to pass off as universal and eternal something that in reality is particular and ephemeral. In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.

But am I not just worsening the problem, aggravating our hopelessness, by criticizing the critics in a way that suggests that no one escapes ideological self-flattery? I don’t think so. Paradoxically, it brings us all back to a more even and possibility-rich playing field.

The prevailing populist narrative grants the People (of the West) moral innocence by attributing to them utter stupidity and naivety; I invert the equation and demand a Marxist narrative instead: Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda (in Gramscian: organs of coercion and consent). We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.

[emphasis mine]

[intothedysphoria]

What I have chosen to do instead of starting my history/film studies essay

Billy Hargrove is a deeply complicated character who was born of two white mens’ want to get out of the very real and valid accusations of racism following the way they wrote Lucas’s character in series 1. However, because this is fandom and The Duffers, there is a tendency to simplify him. And that is fucking boring. This is why (in a very brief form) Billy Hargrove acts the way he does from the perspective of history, politics and sociology.

(Discussing topics less touched on because analysis of Billy in relation to queerness or abuse have been done FAR better than I would explain them)

Even just his name tells us a lot about him as a character. The surname Hargrove originates in Cheshire, in the north west of England. Based on historical context, the Hargrove’s likely moved from Cheshire to Liverpool sometime after 1770, looking for work in Liverpool’s ports, possibly making the move to America sometime post 1850. His mothers side are very clearly Catholic, possibly Irish-Americans. And the first name Billy is a traditional blue collar, working class name. Probably coincidental but a name popular in Liverpool.

Neil and the absolute piece of steaming shit that he is fits in chronologically with the rise of Californian conservatism in the 1960s and 1970s, and the “plain folk” stance that politicians like Nixon took in order to appeal to the white working to upper working class. This type of plain folk outlook blamed both the upper class from the north but also relied on the racist and classist politics of blaming African Americans and those in poverty for all societal ills.

Significantly, Billy in canon was living through a time of globalisation where exposure to the international was becoming more accessible than it had ever been. Just though watching the news it would have been easy to become disillusioned. The Troubles, Brazil’s military dictatorship, The Miners Strike, Israel’s colonisation of Palestine, Cold War propaganda, the AIDS pandemic. It would be very easy to drop into a counter culture subculture.

Do we have any proof that he cared about these issues? Not really. Do we have any proof that he DIDN’T care about these issues though- I’m going to say no to that as well.

Billy represents a more demonised figure than both Eddie and Jonathan for one simple reason though. He is the most stereotypical portrayal of a working class man. Jonathan and Eddie both have tangible connections to interests read as more middle class but Billy’s hyper masculinist presentation and relationship with his car makes him the perfect Proletariat villain.

In relation to why it is so popular to hate Billy in comparison to literally every other character in stranger things, even Neil and Karen, who were objectively terrible people, there could be a lot of different reasons.

One thing is undoubtedly true though.

You can’t ignore Billy Hargrove

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

The Platform Proletariat: How the artificial intelligence industry profits from an unprotected digital working class in Brazil

Workers perform crucial tasks for the development of AI systems, such as data classification and content moderation, but remain invisible and poorly compensated, highlighting the disparity between the importance of their work and the recognition received.

Workers on platforms like Appen, Tellus, and OneForma receive low wages and work in precarious conditions, without benefits, and under fragile contracts, reflecting a growing problem in the digital labor market. They’re often legally unprotected, with little chance to claim labor rights due to the absence of legal representation for companies in their countries, such as Brazil.

Despite discussions around the regulation of digital work and artificial intelligence, data workers are often overlooked, exacerbating precariousness and lack of rights.

The economic crisis caused by the pandemic increased reliance on remote work in countries like Brazil, where unemployment and the need to work from home drove people to join these platforms. However, since they are completely informal, there is no data on the exact size of this new working class.

The need for organization and mutual support among workers is vital to improving their working conditions and increasing bargaining power and improving the quality of the work.

Continue reading.

[a-snails-pace-1917]

A fundamental error underlying both people’s understanding of the Soviet Union’s development and failure,and China’s development today (despite both having drastically different economies) is the notion that socialism is a statist project.

What I mean by this is that they both rely on the idea that socialism as a mode of production (not this nonsense that it’s an ineffable “transitory stage” that has no basis beyond overdetermined readings of Marxism) can be set up and established by a state.

Socialism is a mode of production established after the working class has themselves seized bourgeois property and organized it according to their will. This is done through a revolutionary pseudo-state called the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is still not socialism even in this period,socialism means what Marx calls Lower-Phase communism (thus the absurdity of calling China,or also the Soviet Union socialist becomes apparent).

The Soviet Union was at one point a dictatorship of the proletariat,but was after the Russian civil war swamped by a bureaucratic elite and never escaped state capitalism,they just had a totally nationalized economy.

China currently is just a state-controlled capitalist economy run by an upper class of bureaucrats,technocrats,politicians,and even sometimes capitalists who work their way into the Communist Party!

The only defense of these one can give is that the USSR was actually very democratic (untrue in practice and not meaningful,bourgeois regimes can also be democratic,and a democratic state implies alienation from political power), or that China has a Communist Party that suppresses capitalism and is trying to transition into socialism eventually (why a party of capitalists and technocratic liberals would or could do this? Nobody can say).

The fundamental error of both is that socialism can only be built *by the working classes themselves who have taken power and seized property*. Socialism isn’t just a system like a model train set that anyone motivated enough can put together and watch run,it’s a completely new mode of production that comes about through a specific class situation! Only when the working classes actually take power and expropriate the capitalist class can we have any talk of successful socialism!

[txttletale]

You've spoken at length about how the Lancer setting is just wildly incongruent with what the authors think it is at length, and I agree wholeheartedly. My question is, largely for the purpose of if I ever want to run a game of it again, how would you make the setting carry that tone the authors think it has without too terribly much rewriting? Say, from the point of 'there was a revolution to overthrow seccom'? I love the 'gallant warriors of liberation in giant robots' and would like it if the game actually was that.

But the more the bureaucratic apparatus is “redistributed” among the various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties , the more keenly aware the oppressed classes, and the proletariat at their head, become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of bourgeois society. Hence the need for all bourgeois parties, even for the most democratic and "revolutionary-democratic" among them, to intensify repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e., the state machine. This course of events compels the revolution "to concentrate all its forces of destruction" against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it.

-- Vladimir Lenin, The State & Revolution

In the heady days after the revolution, the air buzzed with potential. The future was today. Hazy, gaseous dreams of liberation patiently awaited their turn to be forged into something you could touch. But those days didn't last for long. The coalition was already a fragile thing during the revolution, and now that it was faced with the levers of Union's imperial machine each hairline crack became a chasm. The corporate armies, who had marched under the banner of the enormous profits locked away behind Harrison Armory's legal monopolies, had reached their personal horizons and refused to move an inch further. The moderates and high-class intellectuals saw the wealth that Union funneled from its edges being distributed generously to the citizens of the Core Worlds and declared a new economic paradigm of post-scarcity and mutual wealth. The anarchist cells with their mysterious reality-hacking mechs were the first to come to the only inevitable conclusion: the revolution was not over.

Now that the old order had been surgically deposed, the new order was finding itself fitting comfortably in its throne. Humbled and stripped of its previous privileges, Harrison Armory was welcomed back into the halls of power under the smiling auspices of free enterprise. Groundbreaking legislation was still being written in the halls of ThirdComm--guaranteeing the right of worlds to self-determination, the rights of clones to live freely, even radical and heretofore-unthinkable proposals laying the groundwork for an end to NHP-shackling. But the old revolutionaries had grown weary and cautious (and, of course, had begun to personally experience the economic benefits of Union's vast hegemony). To enforce this legislation, they argued, would be a de facto redeclaration of war against the corpostates, a disaster for the trade networks on which our wealth depends. To those who still harboued the hopes of revolutionary change, this was a loud and clear signal: the war had not ended. The revolution was not over.

The All-Galaxy Revolutionary Front as it exists now is a set of strange bedfellows. The disciplined combat battalions of the Communist Party fly in perfect harmony, distinguishable by their red battle flags, mass-produced in collectivized forges with reverse-engineered corpo tech. The motley individual oddities that the anarchists call their mechs, their open-source physics-bending HORUS peculiarities, strike unpredictably, in and out of ThirdComm's sight. But the one thing which binds them all, as they fight for the liberation of the peripheral worlds, for the wealth of mines and factories to enrich the people of the planets they're built on instead of fueling ever-replenishing consumption in the distant Core, is that they still have those old revolutionary dreams.

This is what it means to be a Lancer: to be willing to struggle. To acknowledge that the revolution is not over.

[mesetacadre]

What might decolonization in the US after a successful socialist revolution look like? Would there be one big government still? A sort of union of socialist republics? Something else entirely? Honestly I don't know how to ask.

Post-revolutionary decolonization (and realistically, the only kind of meaningful decolonization that is ever happening) in the US is a complicated matter given the relative success of the USAmerican genocidal project. The native population is 1.1% of the total population as of the 2020 census, this means that unlike in other, incomplete, settler projects such as the Sahrawi Republic or Palestine, it isn't feasible to restore the relation of the native population to the totality of the country. Regardless of population proportions though, the main focus of socialist decolonization is the struggle against any conflict between nationalities by removing the economic basis of that antagonism, which would then allow to also begin to remove the cultural elements that reinforced that dynamic of oppression. The focus is not to create more landlords but native, it's to remove the structure around private property in general, and make sure every worker, native or otherwise, receives as is needed. Taking into account the already relative dispossession of native people even before a pre-revolution context, there will have to be a great effort to bring the conditions of native people at the same level of non-native people.

Regarding the form of the new state, this will evidently depend on the form of the US state as the revolution happens. In other countries this would not be such a pressing question, but given the role and strength of the USAmerican bourgeoisie, it's not hard to believe that for any revolution to take place, the US state would need to be considerably weakened. Keeping this in mind, the strategy followed by all hitherto socialist revolutions is to not further fragment the new state. Given the complexity of navigating the construction of the first elements of a socialist economy, with the simultaneous effort needed for security, it would be both counterproductive and hypocritical to explicitly seek the independence of a portion of the population, as a part of the political program, it would be taking two steps forward and one step back. The communist revolution is national in form, because it happens within the structure of the capitalist state, but it is also international in content, because it explicitly repudiates the division of the proletariat along national lines.

We must understand that nationality, as much as it is relevant today and as much as it influences the course of history, is a byproduct of the development of capitalism, and that since it arose from the infrastructure to justify and protect it, it will also have to seize to exist and be replaced with proletarian internationalism for the duration of the transition to socialism-communism. Keeping this in mind, it would be hypocritical and regressive to, after taking control of the state and beginning the transition away from capitalism, to then turn around and divide the working class of the new country into even more national categories than they already are divided into.

The early USSR is a good comparison because of the sheer quantity of national diversity contained within the bounds of the corpse of the Tsarist Empire. The policy of the bolsheviks was neither of Russian supremacy or of immediate splintering into hundreds of nation states. Even during the very complicated and desperate context of the civil war, Finland was allowed its independence without much fuss from the CC, even if they were immediately incorporated into the German sphere via Von Mannerheim. When the 1936 constitution was being discussed, it was Stalin himself who went against the wishes of many bolsheviks to prevent the republics from gaining independence if they wished. No republics requested this however, because the oppressive mechanisms of capitalism and feudalism that had kept them under the Tsar's thumb for centuries had been replaced with an economic system that assured the equal development of all peoples within the USSR. The USSR itself was also not absolutely centralist, and the many constituent republics had varying degrees of autonomy, reflecting in some aspects the structure of democratic centralism.

I don't think the answer is to replicate the USSR, of course. The context and general state of things are very different, but there are lessons to be learnt from this successful, albeit flawed, tackling of the national question. Again though, we can't really speculate on the way that the US will look right before a revolution, and consequently the structures and problems a revolutionary government will have to start from.

[the-nyanguard-party]

in a socialist state, what makes a capitalist a capitalist? if the state owns the means of production then how can capitalists who also own the means of production exist? sorry, i'm just a little confused on the logistics of this. do they both own it somehow?

well the proletarian state is not necessarily immediately capable of bringing all economic activity and resources under its control. wealth may be hoarded, it may be taken abroad. private economic activity may continue, even in an irregular fashion.

the petit-bourgeoisie, particularly in the agrarian sector, tends to continue to exist for some time under socialism and takes time to proletarianize. attempting a rapid forceful expropriation and proletarianization of these people may cause more harm than good by prematurely intensifying antagonisms that could be worked out through other means. particularly problematic if you are a country like the USSR or China built on the revolutionary alliance of proletariat and peasantry - the peasantry in question takes this role of agrarian petit-bourgeoisie, though they can be gradually proletarianized and their property brought under collective and state control

the bourgeoisie that has been expropriated may continue to struggle to restore capitalism, and due to the interconnected nature of the world capitalist system they have access to resources and connections abroad to help with that. i suppose this is not the main point of your question, but also to some degree some proletarians without a properly developed class consciousness can also join their side, particularly if they expect to personally benefit from it in some way. while the economic base is the principal aspect of the base-superstructure dialectic, the superstructure still exerts some degree of influence and has some inertia that can't just be ignored (and neither can foreign influence - the bourgeoisie of countries like the USA spend a lot of effort and resources in trying to foment counter-revolution in socialist countries)

in underdeveloped countries, the proletarian state may deliberately allow for the bourgeoisie to engage in a form of state-capitalism under the control of the proletarian state in order to develop the productive forces. this was the principle behind Lenin's New Economic Policy, and also the Socialist Market Economy of China

does this make sense? I'm not very good at explaining stuff

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 26

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The perception of the the fundamental contradiction in German idealism led necessarily back to materialism, but — nota bene — not to the simply metaphysical, exclusively mechanical materialism of the 18th century. Old materialism looked upon all previous history as a crude heap of irrationality and violence; modern materialism sees in it the process of evolution of humanity, and aims at discovering the laws thereof. With the French of the 18th century, and even with Hegel, the conception obtained of Nature as a whole — moving in narrow circles, and forever immutable, with its eternal celestial bodies, as Newton, and unalterable organic species, as Linnaeus, taught. Modern materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which Nature also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favorable conditions, people them, being born and perishing. And even if Nature, as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. In both aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer requires the assistance of that sort of philosophy which, queen-like, pretended to rule the remaining mob of sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary. That which still survives of all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its law — formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of Nature and history.

Whilst, however, the revolution in the conception of Nature could only be made in proportion to the corresponding positive materials furnished by research, already much earlier certain historical facts had occurred which led to a decisive change in the conception of history. In 1831, the first working-class rising took place in Lyons; between 1838 and 1842, the first national working-class movement, that of the English Chartists, reached its height. The class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the history of the most advanced countries in Europe, in proportion to the development, upon the one hand, of modern industry, upon the other, of the newly-acquired political supremacy of the bourgeoisie. Facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of capital and labor, as to the universal harmony and universal prosperity that would be the consequence of unbridled competition. All these things could no longer be ignored, any more than the French and English Socialism, which was their theoretical, though very imperfect, expression. But the old idealist conception of history, which was not yet dislodged, knew nothing of class struggles based upon economic interests, knew nothing of economic interests; production and all economic relations appeared in it only as incidental, subordinate elements in the "history of civilization".

The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange — in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. Hegel has freed history from metaphysics — he made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man's "knowing" by his "being", instead of, as heretofore, his "being" by his "knowing".

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