#marxism

[ellevandersneed]

to be honest with you most of the people reblogging this will have an invisible dividing line between what they think is unacceptable normality and what is the "true" acceptable normality for queer people, where "the statement of the 4th panel is absolutely untrue *except* for these exceptions to the rule" and a large percentage of those people will still apply the christian moral metric of goodness and of sin to those behaviors rather than a materialist perspective where behaviors are understood within an individuals wider context (how these behaviors have been shaped by family, friends, society, how these things have shaped mental health, how mental health shapes behaviors, how the individual reinforces their own behaviors through their own interpretation of their own condition, how all of these things shape how the individual interprets concepts like family, friends, society, mental health, etc.).

there always seems to be a disconnect between the concepts "bad behaviors are always wrong" and "pathologizing people is wrong" to the material conditions of the material world, where these are merely philosophical interpretations of material conditions (though their consequences can be very real for individuals or groups of people), more often than not themselves having been born from deeply religious societies and interpreted from institutions that were developed from already racist, sexist, ableist societies (psychiatry as a practice). not to suggest an inherent power of the concept over the individual, as this itself is just an interpretation of material conditions, but a critique of the ability of the individual as some kind of ubermensch meant to inherently make the "right choices" and rise above all of these material conditions, and that any person failing to do so is a "bad" person.

I think what makes the "Christian Moral Fascism" what it is is less due to the pressure it exudes towards individuals in the hopes of conditioning their behavior to match that of larger society, but that it supposes the individual is meant to rise above their material conditions completely in order to guarantee their place in heaven. Any given grouping of individuals with a particular philosophical framework that has not developed a state that is in complete service to that philosophy, where the state creates and either constructively and/or violently maintains a social system designed to conform individuals to its standard of morality, will place the onus of conformity onto the individual.

In the US, Project 2025 obsesses over the sanctity of the family because the intent is for the family to "return" to its position as a department of conformity, a microcosm of reality where women and children live in service to patriarchy. The US state's historical racist christian moral background suggests that the US collectively has been trying to evolve out of this framework of conformity, though due to differing interpretations of various moral and natural philosophers of the era in which the founding documents of the US were written, in addition to the US as an emerging dominant force of capitalism and it's population of slaves and immigrants, as well as its development alongside several industrial revolutions that allowed for ever faster transfers of an increasing pool of information, have made it difficult for the state to act as this apparatus for strict conformity, thus allowing for many differing moral interpretations of the world to develop, albeit most of them adopting some level of moral conformity to that which the state apparatus (education, etc), the "popular" image of the family, and pop culture help defined for them. These things, of course, shape and maintain each other.

A state is only as strong as its material conditions allow it to be, and it can easily be argued that no state on earth, now or in the future, can successfully enforce a complete moral conformity of all its citizens. Project 2025 intends to attempt this by, again, recentering the family as the mode in which social conformity will be administered, but it is doomed to fail in its aims, as reactionary social theory tends to get caught up in its own contradictions and delusions of grandeur. 1984 is easily the most famous example of the phenomenon of the fear of a state apparatus that has complete moral control over its population, and anarchist thought seems to be built heavily around this fear. The concept of the preturnaturally powerful state has, itself, been subsumed into popular culture at various levels and at verious points in history, and has been disseminated and reinterpreted countless times, formulating into new philosophies (US Libertarianism, for one).

The idea of a conformist culture as inherently fascist leads itself to a particular understanding of the state, or if I can be a little opinionated in my long ass tumblr essay, a liberal-developed anarchist understanding of the state: education has often historically been taught, as exampled by the University of Jena and its adoption of Kantian Thought, as something that follows a preexisting philosophical framework. "If we teach things in this order, from these perspectives, within this schedule, X will develop in the students." Schools themselves have predominantly been used as modes of moral conformity, through shaming, physical punishment, and isolation. Lenin interpreted the writing of Marx and Engels to mean that the ideal socialist state would exist as a method of oppression against the bourgeoisie class, in order to suppress the old heirarchy of power and philosophy in order to develop the new, communist society of the future.

Fascism is an evolving concept, developing alongside Marxist thought but always in a disorganized manner, not dissimilar to Anarchist theory. It can be interpreted as the extreme application of the more regressive, conformist aspects of an existing culture, compiled into one large, violent attempt to stop the march of human progress in regards to social, economic, and moral development. It has been used to describe the application of colonialist imperialism by the state onto its own citizens, though I think this still limits the scope of what that would mean, as what is defined as a "citizen" under a state changes shape when that state shifts over to fascism, and what is defined as a "citizen" often changes shape both de jure and de facto all the time under states that are not popularly defined as fascist. Fascism can also be used to describe microcosmic manifestions (physical discipline in schools, the banning of books of evolution, certain individuals being passed for promotion because of the color of their skin or the presentation of their gender, etc.). To me Fascism is less of an easily identifiable phenomenon (at least if I stick to trying to write about all of this within the confines of a tumblr essay) and more of a thing that is intertwined in nearly all culture, and is present in nearly all states. This is not to suggest that all states are evil because they are fascist, or that to eliminate the state altogether would somehow eliminate fascism (sorry to my followers with anarcho- in their user handles), but that the philosophy of the state must be aware and critical of its own fascist tendencies in order to successfully administer itself as something legitimately separate from fascism. In Marxist theory, good Marxist theory anyway, the state is intended to wither away, dissolve essentially, upon the complete distruction of class difference (thus bringing about a communist society). I do not believe the state will successfully do this unless it can be aware and critical of its own fascist tendencies. But I digress. (I've always wanted to say "but I digress.!!!)

What makes the above comic work (this is, in spite of its length and in spite of me sort of actively figuring out what I want out of this essay as I write it, not a total condemnation of the comic) is that, ultimately, there is no common sense. Common sense is a manufactured entity, not necessarily intentionally, but it is an individuals interpretation of the unspoken or alluded to "rules" of a wider culture, which is itself a collective interpretation by many individuals attempting to interpret either intentionally or unintentionally (or the near infinite processes of human behavior that exist within those two extremes) a set of rules for life (a philosophy). Because western hegomonic power is the current, dominant hegemonic power (though this is, hopefully, waning, evidenced by the Trump administration gaining power a second time(one last big hurrah for western fascism!)), and because western hegemony has to define itself as something quantifiable, and because that manifests itself as the direct descendant of "Greek thought compounded by Roman application (the father), helmed by ancient Israelite moral philosophy "perfected" into Christian mythology (the mother)" - common sense, within a western hegemonic context, becomes a strange bastardization of Christian morality.

Hell, even marxist theory falls victim to this line of thinking. Stalin's description of the development of history presupposes that each new stage of humanity is a direct evolution of a past stage (a development from the simple to the complex) - which draws from the same base that was used to determine that Christianity is the "perfected" evolution of Judaism, and Judeo-Christian thought is the "evolution" of religion in general and thus the "most correct" development in human culture, with the effects of this racist ideology being seen today with the latest genocide against the Palestinian people. The search for "the first religion" and western fixations on the concept of animism as a primitive cultural form (and thus non-complex, simple) arise from this basis.

This has been the historical justification for western hegemony as a whole, even beyond a religious perspective. The concept of Moscow as "the third Rome" following Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, is an idea that materializes in Russian pop culture from time to time, even appearing in Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished epic, Ivan The Terrible (1945).

Marx himself failed to fully contradict this theory of Christianity being a higher evolution of western culture compared to Judaism when composing his (pretty good until the final stretch where it gets embarassing imo) essay, On The Jewish Question, by giving the target of his critique, Bruno Bauer, credit by shifting the focus away from the religious Judaism to the "practical, worldly" Judaism, suggesting that Jewish practical thought (the application of moral philosophy towards affecting the material world as opposed to the application of moral philosophy for the sake of gaining a seat in heaven) has corrupted Christian society via its "hucksterism" and is thus the element of western society that needs to be abolished in order for human progress to develop further. Bauer suggests that Christianity can be defined as "the development" towards perfecting Judaism, that in order to achieve full emancipation from religion, Jewish people must not only break with Judaism but with the more developed Christianity, whereas Christians, having supposedly achieved the higher state of cultural development between the two, only have to break with Christianity in order to enter "the next phase" of human history. Again, Marx doesn't question the fundamental framework of this argument but shifts it towards a "materialist" perspective concerning Judaism as a material practice and the material conditions created by the application of its philosophy. He acknowledges the potential for Judaism to have evolved over time, but only in the practical sense. He argues that Judaism is limited in its scope because its morality is tied directly to material desire, and since material desire is easily fulfilled, it cannot develop on a theoretical basis (this he reserves for Christianity) but only on a practical basis. Marx fails to understand that he is limited by his own understanding of Judaism and his own biases concerning the development of human culture. This doesn't mean that his other theories should be discounted, a lot of marxists are already aware of the fact that he too, is a product of the context within which he existed. On The Jewish Question is useful because of its application of his materialist theory, as a means of identifying the development of ideas within society, how they shape society, how they are developed out of material conditions and subsequently shaped by conditions, and how the liberal secular state presupposes religion and abstracts individuals from it without abolishing religion, but it is much less useful in terms of where the problems of an abstraction from religion manifest from (Jewish culture being the root cause of capitalism, "Money is the jealous god of Israel..."). Thus, dialectical and historical materialism show their biggest weakness, in the fact that the applicators of materialist theories are themselves subject to the contexts in which they exist. The solution is in the problem though, and is why self critique is necessary and thus, a state can only achieve this "withering away" status towards communism by being aware and critical of its own limitations and its own fascism. Anyway...

What makes the comic fail, like how anything that's 4 panels long struggles to capture nuance, is that does not make the effort to dismiss or disprove the idea that "Christian Moral Fascism" is a separate phenomenon from "common sense" as opposed to "common sense" within a western hegemonic context (and I feel comfortable assuming this since I'm responding to an edit of a winnie the pooh parody comic on Tumblr) descending predominantly from a "Christian Moral" context.

Something I legit believe is an occuring phenomenon is that a lot of queer people regard themselves as being separate (queerness as a preternatural occurance) from the socioeconomical conditions they exist in, whether that be ultra-religious parents, Fascist government, or "common sense." I think a lot of people in general, beyond the umbrella grouping of queer think this; it seems like a pretty common thing to blame the preconcieved notions of wider culture on its more marginalized subsections (trans women getting shit for their "orientalism" towards Japan, is one I've seen in the past), but I still think its worth recognizing since the comic I'm responding to itself suggests that queer people should themselves know better when they end up drawing from "Christian Moral Fascism," so fuck it I'll do it too. More people actually should take necessary steps towards knowing better, though again, we are, all of us, productions of the conditions we exist in, and a lot of people will have to work to achieve a deeper understanding of the world around them in spite of their conditions. A lot of them will fail, either intentionally or unintentionally or in one of the near infinite combinations that exist between those two extremes. Anyway, common sense is bullshit, a large chunk of the people reblogging this comic are actively re-enacting the comic in all levels of their own lives, and, in spite of its supposed flaws, historical materialism (and marxist theory as a whole) is the best philosophical framework we have for understanding the world.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Did you heard Kim jung-un speech to the military?

All blame for the tensions in Korea lies entirely on the shoulders of the ROK and the US. Yoon has taken a hard-line anti-DPRK stance and has continued the submission of the ROK to US imperialist interests while firmly refusing to break from the reactionary trend in the ROK whose vision for the reunification of Korea mirrors the reunification of Germany: a bourgeois-led imposition of neoliberal economic reform, the auctioning off of state property to the highest bidder, and the subsequent impoverishment and imperial domination of the northern half of the country.

The DPRK has only responded in kind to the attitudes expressed by the ROK and the US. As Kim mentions in his speech, the DPRK is preparing for war on its own soil. That is not to say it is unwilling or incapable of fighting the war elsewhere, but rather that if open war comes once again to the Korean peninsula, it will come because the imperialist forces bring it upon the DPRK, and not the other way around. The DPRK is not preparing to invade, they are preparing to be invaded. Why shouldn't they be, seeing how averse to diplomacy and negotiation the ROK and the US have been in the whole affair?

The US only wants one thing: the dismantling of the DPRK and the dissolution of the Worker's Party of Korea. The ROK is in full agreement with this position. They share the firm belief that communism should not be allowed to exist and that it should be stamped out wherever possible. This is the position of all bourgeois nations, but it especially pointed with regards to the DPRK, which has been horribly maligned ever since it managed to hold its own against the terroristic carpet bombing of the United States, and further isolated as it has managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union and major hardships that resulted from it without ever once budging on its anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist position. The only comparable country in that regard is Cuba, and they don't have half their nation occupied by a belligerent puppet government.

If the US wants to make any attempt at even feigning interest in preserving peace in Korea, they must put forward at the outset and without conditions the promise of military withdrawal from South Korea. So long as the US maintains its occupation of the South, there is no reason for the DPRK to have any interest whatsoever in diplomatic negotiations. So long as the US continues to demand full compliance from the DPRK without any concessions of its own, there is no reason for the DPRK to comply.

[notreallyagoddess]

This reminds me on how in Brazil they (right wings) try to make people believe unis are marxist centers for cultural domination.

You cant even write a doc based on marxist theory, you wont even learn abt marxism if you are not from certain courses and even then its subpar. Like for a long time a lot of the "left" stuff was socialdem ideas at best if not centerleft lib stuff.

The uni CAN and SHOULD be for the working class but they are (just as all) of society made for the bourgeoisie to rule its ideology

i don't know why people think academic humanities are somehow exempted from the kinds of industry & military funding interests that guide research output in stem fields. ok i do know why but you are just wrong if you think that. do you know how many postdoc and tt apps i've sifted thru in the last month alone that are tied to collections funded off oil money, chemical company endowment funds, etc. do you know what happens if you try to write even historical analysis of these companies that is not flattering to them lol. archives can and do refuse access if someone doesn't like what you argue, funding is handed down from pritzkers and duponts and so forth. enviro humanities people all know what line to toe, it is a responsibility of faculty to inform their grad advisees of how far they can go without attracting censorious attention. do you know how many positions have posted this year at israeli universities. this is before you even get into the frankly insane number of archival and curatorial positions that essentially boil down to writing puff pieces about the usa's 'founding fathers' from the collections at their stupid vanity libraries please be so serious

[mephorash]

Something being "divisive" isn't an actual argument against it. Transandrophobia theory "divides the queer community" just as much as transandrophobic nonsense, yet is a factual, material phenomenon, so it must be supported. The problem with denying the unique, material forces specifically against trans men, transmascs, and all others affected by transandrophobia isn't that it's "mean" (it's mean to tell a white person to stop being a fucking racist cunt), it's that you are denying a minority group the ability to even acknowledge their class specific oppression. Being in a class of trans (adjacent) people most affected by infantalization, medical discrimination, and systemic erasure is something that can be materially observed!

[coolmaycroft]

I do remeber Geert Hofsteade and Richard D' Lewis's elaboratiing in societes that we'd label "The west" focusing precisely on measuring and categorization. He never really did say these things are ignored but he did say theirs is a less-holistic way to look at things which ignores the connections between those factors.

United States politics views everything in demographics ("X% of White Women voted for Biden! X% of Latinos voted for Trump!") instead of, well, actual political and social dynamics. Of course racism, homophobia and other social issues play part in politics. But they are shaped by larger things, and the demographics analysis that US pundits do love to miss those things and focus on sheer numbers and categorization.

This is dangerous because once you say "this demographic is responsible for these politics" you're in the fast track to fascism. As we've seen with liberal Usamericans blaming whole groups of people for Trump's victory. This kind of thinking can only lead to ruin.

Why I am talking about this, even if it's not my own country? Because the US way of political thinking spreads easily through its cultural dominance. It's an individualistic, essentialist way of thinking, which blames supposed characteristics of people instead of understanding their social and material history and conditions (because that might lead to actual change and even worse, Marxism!). If you want to understand why the right wing is rising globally, it's not because some nasty people got together to vote and the good people didn't vote. You have to understand how each society works.

[thespectrehauntingfodlan]

A cartoon from 1914 that could have been written today

[whereserpentswalk]

I fucking hate this "capitalism is when you make money, the more money you make, the more capitalism it is" mindset people have gotten. No, an artist selling their own work is not them engaging in capitalism, it's literally a worker owning their own means of production.

Remember capitalism is someone profiting off of someone else's labor though owning capital. It is not simply the act of profiting at all.

[memingursa]

Rabid Joe Biden about to bomb the Vatican

[leadergorilla]

I really understand how hippies became so popular as a movement during Vietnam.

The only thing the dems achieved with their election campaign was get an entire generation of suburban white kids to support the Arab world's fight against their own country. Good job, you're so frothingly racist that you got college kids named Tyler to start reading Mao.

This admin's dedication to genocide will be studied in the future.

[bolshevikitherat]

from the Lavender and Red Union, a group of communists who wrote this in 1975.

"GAY LIBERATION IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. SOCIALISM IS INCOMPLETE WITHOUT GAY LIBERATION."

[juegosintiperojuegocontigo]

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to:

Institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!)

Give a greenlight to Project 2025

Use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies

Institute military tribunals for his political enemies (and allies!)

Gun down “enemies from within”

Support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map

Use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies

Has gotten total immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? Whatever his Schedule F appointed judges choose of course.)

Already took away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take ages to list them all in this post

and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With the above listed ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter. Supreme Court Justices are for LIFE, and we’ve already seen the potentially irreparable damage this far-right activist court has done to the fabric of democracy.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT. Anyone that says they won’t is either a liar or already drank the Kool-Aid. Isn’t it interesting that every politician that supports it, including his vice president, wants Trump to win?

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Dems reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. Even Palestinians themselves want the Democrat candidate over Trump. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Am I a democratic socialist? Yes. Am I a realist? Also yes. In every single down-ballot race, and through my activism, I will fight for the rights of the oppressed and working-class. But the Presidency isn’t fucking winnable right now, and probably won’t be for decades. Pro-corporatist/anti-worker sentiment is baked into the fucking bones of this country and its people. A majority of eligible voters wouldn’t vote for Bernie, and he’s barely center-left. Voting for anything other than one of the two big parties is a useless feel-good gesture at the moment. Or you’re a dumbass accelerationist, and if you are, honestly go fuck yourself.

Let’s say you want a socialist revolution, full-tilt government takeover. I want that too, in my wildest dreams! We’re on the same page there. So how are you going to do it. How? HOW? What pro-worker activist groups are you working with? Are you encouraging your workplace to form a union? Volunteering for/donating to your local farmers’ co-op? Canvassing for pro-worker legislation? Hell, even something as small as distributing free copies of high-school/college textbooks, so that those of poorer means have a better chance at affording advanced education? Are you doing anything to help? Any praxis at all, rather than typing wishful thoughts of revolution alongside insults to people who aren’t as “correct” as you on the internet?

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while millions of Democrats and third-partyists care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[scouse1g]

[pinsforfingerz]

[jingerpi]

i know it sounds made up but studying Marxism will save you. like, understanding how and why society works the way it does and being able to have the knowledge that it wasn't always like this and one day this too will be surpassed will do wonders for your mental health. not to mention the tools for analysis and understanding can give you insight into yourself, because it does also do that, it's just that the knowledge and understanding that comes from studying socioeconomics derived from class struggle (rather than bourgeois intellectualism) recontextualizes so many of our issues and struggles that things no longer feel like they're explicitly you're fault nor do they stretch beyond our imagination infinitely into the past and beyond our futures. If you feel hopeless or confused, reading theory can genuinely help. it will solidify your understanding of the world and how to move forward, rather than simply pointing out all the problems (as many social media posts tend to) the answers are in theory.

the crazy thing is it's not just beneficial to our mental health but to our external, physical health too. learning these things can uplift the Proletariat as a class and start to bring us closer to those futures you'll become able to see. theory is a map to a better future, not only is it relieving to see there is one out there, we can actually follow it, and that's the best part.