#read lenin

[scariercnidaria]

CRIME & PUNISHMENT: THE CULPABILITY OF THE FAMILY, PSYCHIATRY AND THE STATE

before we begin i would like to give a brief trigger warning for discussions of mental health, violence and crime including abuse and sexual assault, and misogyny. I have tried not to linger gratuitously on any one subject but they are mentioned, unavoidably so.

If you are forced (as I am) or otherwise choose to listen to local radio for long enough now, you will eventually hear an advert by my local police. The contents of the advert, it's more like a PSA, but they are something like the following... ohh when you see violent crime, it affects all of us. It affects all of us, it's very bad when violent crime goes on. Please report violent crime to the police, the police who will definitely do something about it. These are *our* streets, and you can help take them back. Report it to the police, who never commit violent crime themselves.

These are our streets. It was that bit that stuck out to me the most. These aren't their streets. The advert positions the listener in opposition to these outsider-criminals. Is inline with the typical conservative view of crime and also criminals being something that spontaneously and inevitably appears in a society, almost as if through abiogenesis, and the only thing to be done is to take a tough stance on law and order. Be tough on crime, whatever that means.

Of course the PSA was explicitly and specifically calling out for action against violent crime. I think most Marxists come to the table already having come to an understanding of the social nature of certain nonviolent crimes. Ask a communist or more broadly an anarchist what their views on shoplifting are and they should say its cool and based-- its not praxis and it's not moral but it doesn't have to be, it's simply a fact of life that not everyone will have the money to pay for things under capital.

Sometimes the liberal-progressive will agree with you up to a point where they hit you with the "no bc actually the companies take it out of their employees wages so youre not actually hurting the man" at which point you hit them back with the "that's illegal for them to do that" to which "yeah they do it anyway" and now the liberal has demonstrated an understanding of the contradictions of bourgeois law, so congratulations, but the crux of the matter is that shoplifting isn't praxis so it doesn't matter.

The tory kind of crime culture is something that must be combatted and sometimes goes overlooked by communists. But it is eminently important to certain layers of the population and must be addressed. Mostly petit bourgeois and their neighbourhood watch it must be said - but for those who are drinking deep from the law and order Kool Aid on lawbreakers/troublemakers/whathaveyou, they really care about it and we need to be able to explain our position in a way that isn't just whatabouting the white collar criminals in the banks and government.

Because while it may be true that wage theft is more impactful to the average person than robbery it still doesn't assuage the fears of those to whom we might propose, for some point far along in the future, to "abolish the prison industrial complex" or "stateless society" and hear "anarchy! anarchy!". The cult of law and order must be dismantled, brick by brick.

So: on violent crime. I want to return to a phrase I mentioned earlier; the "outsider criminal". This is a common distortion of reality, and pure idealism with no material base. Take any category of violent crime and largely you will find that it is far more likely for abuses to have been committed by people known to the victim than by a stranger. Most kidnappings are by one of the parents over custody disputes. Most severe cases of child abuse, torture and exploitation occur in isolated family units. Most rapes are committed by a friend, acquaintance or partner.

Flying in the face of reality, the fearmongering over the unknown emerged in 1979 beginning with the kidnapping of Etan Patz and followed by a spate of high-profile child kidnapping cases. CBS Evening News in 1982 informed the American public that "up to 50000 children were being kidnapped by strangers each year", a number that journalists, social psychologists and government officials had assured the public was highly inflated by the mid 1980s. But a hysterical wave had already overtaken the American people.

There was the perception that society was becoming increasingly unsafe, and something had to be done about it. But in reality by the end of the 1970s the crime rate was already falling. At the same time, deindustrialisation battered New York and some two million white Americans fled the city for the suburbs.

And with the social-cultural backdrop manufactured by the bourgeois news media it was nevertheless responded to with bulked-up policing at the same time as austerity. The Reagan administration gained consent to build a number of new prisons in California the number of prisons doubled in the decade of the 1980s, where previously it had taken 70 years to construct even half of that number).

These prisons did nothing for crime; the most obvious trend observable was that as the number of prisons increases, there are a greater number of prisons. They were an abject failure in their stated mission, but highly lucrative for shareholders.

Of course there are the social impetuses around the experience of being incarcerated that make recidivism more likely; the "networking opportunities" that lead to disorganised, petty criminals coming into contact and making connection with more experienced, organised criminals on the inside.

The skills decay, "gaps in employment" and legal discrimination faced by those with arrest records once they are on the outside. The disenfranchisement of felons. The income lost while incarcerated or stolen by police upon arrest, or spent on legal fees that must be recouped sooner rather than later. But often the psychological effects can be side-stepped by our movement.

There is perhaps a tendency to focus on certain kinds of offender (property crimes, non-violent drug offences), which is easy but tired, and can provide opponents with a "gotcha!" when confronting us with the question, for example, "what do we do about murderers and pedophiles?"

Of course the quick answer is that Leninists are not for the immediate abolishment of all carceral systems (but people did get paid in the gulags, so it isn't slave labour like usamerican prisons). But rhetorically that can feel like backpedalling, and it is useful to be able to explain the full and complex picture of crime in current society.

On the other-hand, there is also a tendency to shoehorn every single violent crime into the category of "mental health concern" while downplaying ideology as a factor. The western individualist petit-bourgeois centre cannot comprehend having a cause that one is willing to die or kill for. This incredulity serves to tourniquet both arms of politics: the courage and conviction of Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation is minimised, the ideology driving it reduced to fine print beside a suicide hotline, and the vile stochastic terrorism of far-right demagogues and incel forums are obscured behind lone-actors reacting to "male loneliness".

The case of right wing terrorism is particularly prevalent, because right wing terrorism itself is particularly prevalent at the moment. Conversely, in the era of the 70s when left-wing terrorism had its day in the sun bourgeois demagogues had no trouble denouncing the dangerous radicalism of the anarchist and Maoist coalitions. Meanwhile at present we see the woobification of mass murderers like Elliot Rodger or Kyle Rittenhouse or the Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris as misunderstood, victims of bullying, merely suicidal in their pre-actions instead of the fermenting Hitlerites that from their journals it is clear that they were.

It was Sue Klebold, in fact, Dylan Klebold's mother, who was the one to launch a media campaign in the wake to have her son painted as a victim. It was her book-- a NYT Bestseller-- and years later the TED talks too that were major contributors to this brand of disinformation. I don't think I need to tell comrades here that there are plenty of mentally ill people who are not violent, who are violent only against themselves, or who are violent in ways that are not better explained by an ideology that encourages the dehumanisation of other people.

This is not to do a "no true mad person" fallacy on it-- as in certain cases perhaps mental illness will be the framework through which someone's actions are best understood-- but pathologising categories of action as default, far from turning them into something able to be treated, lends itself to helplessness in prevention. In the cases of far-right terrorism, it is the ideology that is the catalyst.

The class instincts of the bourgeoisie will always be to protect their own, over the out-group. Capitalism sublimates other identities below the class-instinct, such that even women become defenders of misogyny, POC of racism, gay people of homophobia; all of whom by this mechanism defenders of capital. It is not necessarily *in*conceivable why; in a survival situation it is much more helpful to be a member of the bourgeoisie than a member of a proletarianised minority group, this ought to be clear.

But dialling the extremity of our cases back some, and revisiting a recent phenomenom in greater depth: what is this so-called epidemic of "male loneliness" but a different expression of capitalist alienation as Marx described all those years ago? If not the very same? Of course the solution to this problem is, in that case not a consolidation of the patriarchy-- expecting women to bear the brunt of violence is itself a kind of interpersonal reformism. Like "oh, if women don't like these men they should enter relationships with them and try to push them left from the ground up". To suggest that would be as ridiculous as suggesting the same for proletarians in collaborationist parties.

In a similar vein, it is clearly nonsense to suggest that it is the bourgeoisie who gets the shortest (or even an equally short) end of the stick under capitalism, as it would be to suggest that men get a shorter or equally short end of the stick under patriarchy.

Alienation does not compare to exploitation. Alienation precludes connection, fulfillment, wellbeing; but such a condition is not the sole burden of the exploiter (the proletariat experiences alienation from their labour far more acutely than the bourgeoisie; the women who the alienated men around them are unable to connect with suffer at least as much from that particular disconnect as the men do. Of course there are unique experiences, and to every party the suffering felt is real-- this is not being said to dismiss it).

But to recognise this fact is not identity politics, it is a recognition of the material realities and contradictions of capitalism and the various compounding and nuanced oppressions that reinforce it in order to create as an accurate a picture as possible of the Hydra we are facing. To deny men the ability for consciousness, on the other hand, to use their own experiences and relate that suffering to the broader ailments of society, and to subsequently divide the struggle on any lines other than class-- the superidentity through which all other forms of oppression express a material form, however, most certainly is.

The exact contradiction faced by working class men which leads to their alienation from each other and the rest of society is the combined experience of having a foot up when it comes to the patriarchy, while simultaneously being crushed under the boot of capitalism in their experience as labourers.

This contradiction will, depending on the man and the environment in which he finds himself, go one of two ways: either a redoubling of the patriarchy, which may compensate his individual lack of control in the professional sphere but represent a concession to bourgeois ideology that can only feed-back into greater alienation from his fellow humans, entitlement to the women around him; a rotting cope that cannot resolve, will not save him and will change nothing for his children. Or in the realisation of his position under capitalism, as in class consciousness. Only the latter is capable of providing a way forward.

Patriarchy serves capitalism historically as the commodification of women and their confinement to the domestic sphere provides a vast well of labour that is able to go unpaid, labour that is vital for the reproduction of the next generation of proletarians and used to be reflected in the wages of the husband.

Then came the proletarianisation of women (which is perhaps a misnomer-- certain layers of women, the poorest, among whom was particularly black and immigrant women, had always been working) and perhaps moreso with the right of women to open up their own bank accounts independent of a husband-- and thus accumulate their own capital, have their own inheritors. This of course was a progressive step as opposed to the formal slavery of women that came before. Now they were free to enter into wage slavery as the men were.

This-- the feminist 2nd wave-- and the rise of what we colloquially think of as liberal ideology (not the classical liberalism of for example Thomas Hobbes or Steven Crowder) was correlated with the decline of the family unit, a pattern that is real, and correctly identified as real by reactionaries but wrongfully attributed to the aforementioned ideological developments. In reality it was the greed of employers at the potentiality of a new and untapped source of labour in women that finally overrode the antiquated prejudices of the bourgeoisie, as they realised they'd be able to pay women less and pit the now even more saturated labour market against each other to drive wages down.

However, it soon became impossible to support a family on a single income as it had been throughout the 50s and 60s.

This, being the precursor to as reactionaries identify it "the degeneration of the family", was not-- as reactionaries identify it-- the fault of women but of manifold factors, including: the deindustrialisation ongoing since the 50s in places such as Detroit as auto manufacturers left or soon to go on in New York state, and the north of England and in Wales under Thatcher here at home-- which was in turn driven by the emigration of these manufacturing jobs to newly open and exploitable markets in the global south, the declawing of the unions, the inevitable slowdown of the post-war boom, and the market organisation of labour in the first place.

These developments were bound to place even more stress on what was already a fundamentally fragile social unit in the first place-- the nuclear family.

Even prior to it's decline and the successes of 1st and 2nd wave feminism, the nuclear family had been a tenuous and unstable building block on which to structure a society. Marx wrote of the flaws of bourgeois marriage-- community of women, union based on accumulation, the consequent alienation-- which had been evident even in his day.

And on the eve of what we may consider the old order overturned, the sunset decades of traditional Americana in the 1950s and early 60s, there was still the stereotype of the valium-addled housewife & mother and the disciplinarian salaryman husband & father.

But such a structure can only ever reflect the conditions of the society in which it exists; this society is of course the dictatorships of the liberal bourgeoisie and all its flaws. The contradictions between the "united front" of the parents over the children, while the mother/wife is exploited in the domestic, and in marriage generally, and finds dominion over the children, the husband/father too is exploited in his work, and finds dominion over the wife.

It is this that was promised implicitly to young men, and this that the more reactionary layers of them wish to RETVRN to, yet is impossible under the current conditions-- even if women were willing to enter into relationships with them. Every "trad" influencer you see online is being kept afloat by egregious generational wealth.

And the structure is one absolutely primed for abuses. "Nuclear" is an apt metaphor, the power struggle between the subatomic forces will necessarily lead to conflict and reckoning, fission and decay. The disenfranchised child is sole property of their parents, the wife property of her husband. Both husband and wife chained by bureaucratic and financial pressures and obligations that may not inherently cause but facillitate and exacerbate abuses, and forces each party to endure past the point when individually and free of constraint they would choose to leave.

When exploitation of a child occurs outside of the immediate family it is usually by trusted adults wielding social (or actual) capital. On the occasion it is perpetrated by a stranger, it is always the lack of agency felt or experienced by the child that is preyed upon and manipulated.

It is with this understanding of the family that we must approach one of the dominant paradigms in contemporaneous psychiatry-- that is, the parental blame game-- and its incompleteness.

It might surprise you now for me to say that I do not believe the family's flaws to be an adequate explainer of mental illness on their own.

Other than the biological approach, this is perhaps the framework of psychotherapy one is most likely to encounter. Not for no reason-- it is inarguable that the actions of caregivers during developmental years have a profound effect on later wellbeing. It just so happens that under capitalism and especially western individualism (which is an ideological cornerstone of capitalism itself) the purview of "caregiver" is reduced to the role of primary and secondary, of most commonly mother and father. That the onus for raising a whole human being-- multiple, even-- should fall on just two individuals is not a natural law but a result of current cultural conditions. It takes a village to raise a child, after all.

A child that is unisolated, is listened to and taken seriously, who is and has always been free to leave a situation in which they are uncomfortable, and who has a wide network of support that is simply not feasible under capitalist alienised-atomised living, is far more difficult if not impossible to victimise. There is a reason that Engels included childcare and early childhood education in his Principles of Communism, there is a reason the Bolsheviks instituted those, as well as freedom of divorce and abortion, almost as soon as they came to power.

That the blame should be placed entirely on one or both of the parental unit is not just a convenient scapegoat for the bourgeois influences out of the parents' control, but a fundamentally unhelpful tactic especially in reaching certain layers of the proletariat who come to the table with an understanding that their parents had done the best that they could in raising them, given the circumstances, and will not hear badly against them.

In a not insignificant number of cases this is not an incorrect one-- they may not consciously realise it but those circumstances of course are capitalism. "Man makes his own choices but does not do so in conditions of his choosing" - this was Marx's conception of human nature. It is the pedestal on which nuclear parenthood is placed which lends itself to disappointment.

But think as well of the bourgeois child, who grows up with all the advantages of wealth and none of the traumas of poverty. They are sooner raised by a nanny or governess than their own family, with the influence of the parents elevated to a non-presence hanging over the entire childhood. What does the child learn but that love and care is a commodity to be bought and sold, hired from the underclass?

Capital is substitute for connection. Perhaps in this way-- and in the simultaneous recognition of the lie of meritocracy-- it can be understood that capitalism does not merely reward sociopathy (which would imply that individual traits have any bearing of the makeup of executive boards), but *breeds* it.

It is not necessary for us to distinguish between whether or not an individual member of the bourgeoisie is "really" ASPD (the clinical term for sociopathy) or NPD (Narcissitic Personality Disorder). It is also not necessary to particularly worry about the stigmatising effects of "mis"-using such labels in such a way, as these labels were invented in the first place to stigmatise people displaying certain groups of behaviour.

(The technique for remembering which PD cluster is which is still "Mad, *Bad*, Sad", after all. It is difficult, knowing this, to believe the puported scientific non-bias of psychiatry as a practise, given the sweeping moral condemnation of some of its most vulnerable patients. It is impossible to destigmatise the word "narcissist"; it's like naming it "Irredeemable Abusive Asshole Disorder" and then being surprised when people throw it around as a pejorative against anyone they don't like. If they gave a shit they would have called it what it is, which is "essentially CPTSD but we don't like your coping mechanisms and we would rather discard you as a person entirely than attempt to understand the nuances". But I digress:).

For the members of the bourgeoisie whose actions may be described as sociopathic from the outside, they are functionally the same and might as well be called as much. I would indeed suspect, however, that a significant proportion of "sociopaths" among high level executives may not be so in the strictly clinical sense; diagnostic criteria and treatment for personality disorders still tend to operate off the assumption that once personality has developed it becomes intrinsic and unable to be meaningfully improved-- such was the original conceit of the distinction between Axis I and Axis II (major psychiatric VS personality disorders) in the DSM-- but more recent findings challenge this assumption. Through the dialectic-- the process of development of human thought-- we also understand that the self as everything is constantly in motion.

These informal sociopaths in executive positions, therefore, may better have their condition (and "condition" here as in the non-clinical sense) explained by various "ism"s-- classism that allows them to dehumanise their employees, sexism that allows them to dehumanise their wives and pay women employees less for the same work, racism that allows them to dehumanise their constituents or, in the case of redlining bankers, hopeful borrowers. Their own bourgeois ideology above all that allows them to justify it all to themselves: through meritocracy, through bootstraps-isms, through trickle-down economics, through American and broader western exceptionalism, through plain straight denial-- this particular magical thinking, *this* disconnect from reality, is not termed psychotic by the status quo.

Culturally we see certain allowances made for yet more aspects of bourgeois ideology too. Believing in aliens, or ghosts, or angel-number universal energy is considered cause for psychiatric concern. Believing in God is not. As Marxists we understand that all of these are idealism, but liberal ideology is unable to reconcile the contradiction.

With the pathologisation of discrete actions, which had started with suicide (of which there is still declared to never be a logical reasoning behind, even in the wake of Aaron Bushnell's protest, even in less clear cases where the Samaritans themselves recognise something called "Shit Life Syndrome", from which suicide could be construed a protest against the conditions of capitalism itself) and which has not yet extended to religiosity in general, it has yet diffused across all manner of behaviour-- some perhaps genuinely useful as markers of psychological processes that are more difficult to measure, as in sensory avoidance for one. But increasingly many others rendered completely meaningless by pop-psych content farms, according to whom for example sleeping in the foetal position is a potential sign of autism.

This is formal logic. That one or even several peripheral or correlationary traits makes a disorder. In reality, even mental illness adheres to at least one part of the dialectic. Many symptoms are common across disorders and many symptoms express themselves subclinically (in a non-disordered way). It is the presence of a sufficient quantity of symptoms that turns into the quality of "having" a "disorder".

It is the formal logician that sees their friend's breakup and instantly diagnoses the other party as a narcissist, no matter how small the action given as evidence. And it is the formal logician who is unable to see that this "narcissist" in reality suffers very little in his other interpersonal relationships, and it is simply the misogyny he has learned throughout his life that is the cause of conflict in his romantic relationships.

Look through the DSM and the ICD and you will not find a single disorder for which misogyny, or racism, or homophobia, or transphobia, or any other kind of bigotry is a symptom. They are, however, symptoms of capitalism-- and of class society generally.

You will, however, find disorders of which anti-authoritarianism are symptoms-- as in Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or ODD, which is varyingly just either ADHD or PTSD, primarily applied to black children or other children more likely to be considered aggressive, and attempting to challenge the diagnosis in any way is considered yet another symptom.

The Cluster B personality disorders also tend to get slapped on the record of patients that are considered difficult. A major consequence of psychotic disorders are that you de-facto lose the ability to argue for your own experiences (you are, after all, delusional). Genuine concerns over their own safety and desire to have locks on the door in the (real) case of a schizophrenic rape survivor in a women's shelter are brushed off as paranoia.

Any Marxist considering "Anti-Social Personality Disorder" must take into account exactly *which* society the personality is deemed to be "anti", especially given that the diagnostic criteria requires "disregard for the law-" *bourgeois* law "-and repeated criminal behaviour prior to the age of 18".

People with Narcissitic Personality Disorder are generally unlikely to seek treatment for it and it instead tends to be identified during treatment for comorbidities-- most commonly Substance Use Disorders, which itself straddles the line between crime and illness.

Crime for the homeless addict, or the single mother caught with a gram of weed in her nightstand, or the line cook on their eighth 10-hour shift in a row. Illness for the celebrity at private rehab, or the white suburban mother on enough Prozac to kill a horse, or the rich partyboy on college track. "Irrational", perhaps, in all cases; never a thought given to the conditions that make constant intoxication preferable to the throbbing mental illness of capitalism.

The line between crime and mental illness is, generally, less distinct than you might think. Treatment for psychotic disorders differs very little from incarceration. Institutionalisation is functionally the same as arrest-- except it is generally even more traumatising ("oh you believe that people are plotting to come get you and take you away, so we've arranged for a group of people to come get you and take you away")−− and you don't even have the right to a trial.

Science under capitalism is and always will be subject to the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. It is for that reason that treatment is restricted to that which will get you back to work the quickest. This is usually drug therapy instead of talking therapies, which require greater skill (and therefore are more expensive to train and produce) and take longer to show effects. In USAmerica at least it is also the case that doctors essentially receive sponsorships from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for prescribing a quota of a specific drug, whether or not it is in the patient's best interest.

I feel obligated to include The Mark Fisher Quote in here somewhere, but I won't dwell on it; "If it is true that low levels of serotonin cause depression, it still has to be determined *what causes low levels of serotonin*?"

The cases of depression and anxiety have been repeated ad nauseum. Schizophrenia is often thrown out as a counterargument by those championing what is essentially biological determinism, but even schizophrenia expresses itself less severely and less violently in less individualistic societies.

Schizophrenia at present requires family therapy anyway, for the people around the sufferer to adjust their behaviour and learn how to approach delusions. The most humane treatment for schizophrenia is still a wide support network such that interpersonal conflict can be spread out and it does not become a trigger. People should not have to endure neurological damage and seizures from taking enough meds to be productive in order to have the right to life. In all cases it is the alienation that kills you. The bid for human connection that is rejected or dismissed that leads to self-destruction.

What would persecutory delusions look like under a dictatorship of the proletariat? Without special bodies of armed men that *do* have the power to take you away? Of religious persecution in a society that has moved past the need for religion? Of grandiosity in a world where the category of celebrity does not exist?

When the punishment for doing worse is not unemployment and homelessess, perhaps suddenly recovery is not so impossible.

--

Liberal ideologues through their flattening of the entire scope of criminality, including and especially violent crime, into "mental illness", and mental illness onto the family, fail to see the forest for the trees. This is unsurprising, and par for the course with liberalism.

Right wing ideologues, on the other hand, blame crime and criminality on "not enough family", or "not the right kind of family". They believe that all that is necessary is for the correct values to be instilled in a child. But poverty is as with all things the great exacerbater. In reality it is not some metaphysical human need for a present father that makes a two-parent household superior, but the advantages of *two* potential streams of income, of *two* extended families, of greater options for childcare. This could be achieved as easily by two women or two men as by one man and one woman, but we need not stop there; it would be achieved even easier with proper social support, with the abolition of poverty, with a shorter working day, with communism.

[hiyathea]

this feels like some weird GMIL comic

[bubervitch]

just saw ‘resist fascism, buy local’ i’m going to kill you all and then myself.

[alanshemper]

Malcolm McLaren sold the Sex Pistols as anarchist, and that was accepted and commercially successful, after earlier trying to sell the New York Dolls as communist, which did not fly.

[potatototheleft]

STOP USING THE WORD "ELITES" AND JUST CALL THEM THE FUCKING BOURGEOISE

[hiyathea]

Personally, I like poulenc and shostakovich, I also like the international proletariat and not getting distracted from the class struggle by some culture-war bullshit about whether or not you listen to reggae.

i hate this sites music taste so much its literally Racism The Music Taste site. you guys dont like rap you dont like jazz you dont like country you dont like blues you dont like ska you dont like reggae you cannot CONCEPTUALIZE listening to foreign artists you dont even know what turbofolk is you cant conceive of music existing out of anglosphere you think that mcr is punk and its the end-all of definition of "punk" for you i hate everyone here like WHAT music do you people even listen to what the fuck is left

[squidswithguns]

*me seeing liberals discus politics* “read lenin read lenin read lenin read lenin. yes this has been addressed. by lenin. actually lenin did mention that. read lenin”

(i’m also trying to blow them up with my mind)

[kvetch19]

who wanna make a drainer marxist reading group w me

[hiyathea]

This is just liberalism, and it was posted by an anarchist blog. This is literally the bullshit that the democratic party spews without actually doing anything at all, and it was posted by an anarchist blog, and tagged 'antifa'. I'd call this slacktivism, but I'd just be describing all activism.

Truly, the worst product of fascism is antifascism.

[estherax]

Generating plasm and stacking matchboxes: how to build a better future through collective consciousness.

Alternatively - Steban and Ulixes were building Tatlin's Tower so I have to talk about the symbolism or I will explode!!

While completing the communist vision quest you get an opportunity to build a model of "The Tower of History", depicted on the last page of "A Brief Look at Infra-Materialism": a leaning tower wrapped in a dramatic helix. The scale model you make is a mirror image of Tatlin's Tower - a design for a grand monumental building to the Third International: the government organization advocating for world communism.

The main idea of the monument was to produce a new type of structure, uniting a purely creative form with a utilitarian form. Meaning it would function as an office building while also serving as a symbol of cultural significance. And let me tell you, this bad boy can fit so much symbolism in it.

Tatlin was commissioned to develop a design in 1919, after the 1917 February Revolution - a parallel to Disco Elysium's Insulinde we're witnessing post-Antecentennial Revolution.

Tatlin's work was inspired by high revolutionary goals, which are evident in the visual direction of the tower as well, expressing the ideological strive for achieving something that has never been done before, overcoming the odds. The structure "oscillates like a steel snake, constrained and organized by the one general movement of all the parts, to raise itself above the earth. The form wants to overcome the material and the force of gravity..."

The tower has meaning packed even in the materials. For example, the glass structures (marked A, B, C on the architectural rendering) were meant to serve legislative, executive and informative initiatives while rotating around their axes at different speeds. The material signified the purity of initiatives, their liberation from material constraints and their ideal qualities.

But here's the best part. The spirals.

"The spiral is the movement of liberated humanity. The spiral is the ideal expression of liberation: with its base set in the earth, it flees from the ground and becomes a symbol of the suspension of all (...) earthy interests." They are "the most elastic and rapid lines which the world knows" that represent movement and aspiration, continuing the themes of progress and freedom, but they also refer to something else.

In the process of building the matchbox model Rhetoric points out: "It's almost exactly as Nilsen's sketch imagined, a physical manifestation of the dialectical spiral of history."

The shape of the tower is a representation of dialectical development of history, first visualized as a spiral by G. W. F. Hegel. He pictured transformational change as "both linear and circular in order to be short-term responsive, i.e. possibly negating itself, and long-term strategic, i.e. a process of development."

Hegel's dialectics would later be reinterpreted through the prism of materialism by Marx and Engels to create dialectical materialism - the basis for historical materialism.

"Still, this idea, as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegels’ philosophy, is far more comprehensive and far richer in content than the current idea of evolution is. A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis, (...) a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line; a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; (...) the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon (history constantly revealing ever new aspects), a connection that provides a uniform, and universal process of motion, one that follows definite laws - these are some of the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development that is richer than the conventional one."

The tower embodies progress in materialist understanding of history while also indicating the connection to ideological plasm, a manifestation of "the proletariat's embrace of historical materialism", necessary to create a better future.

According to Nilsen, the proletariat of a revolutionary state can generate enough plasm to create extra-physical architecture that "disregards the laws of 'bourgeois physics' and instead relies on the revolutionary faith of the people for structural integrity."

This function of plasm implies that The Tower of History can be created only under revolutionary circumstances - without a sufficient amount of plasm even the matchbox model didn't stay up. The exact same sentiment is expressed about Tatlin's Tower: "We maintain that only the full power of the multimillion strong proletarian consciousness could bring into the world the idea of this monument and its forms. The monument must be realized by the muscles of this power, because we have an ideal, living and classical expression the pure and creative form of the international union of the workers of the whole world."

Nilsen called it "the highest expression of Communist principles, a society whose literal foundation is the faith of its people."

Tatlin's Tower was a symbol of faith in the revolutionary future, the global triumph of Marxist socialism. A monument "made of iron, glass and revolution."

It was never built in real life, and neither was The Tower of History in the world of Elysium.

But you can try to see if there's enough plasm between the three of you. And the matchbox tower stays up for a long moment, quivering with an improbable energy. You believe it can say up - and it does.

So you have to believe; whether it's for collective action or generating ideological plasm. Then, together, maybe you'll be able to build as much as 0.0002% of communism.

[scariercnidaria]

"this is the communism website" this website thinks communism is when you contact your reps hold them accountable but give your vote unconditionally to the dems anyway. this website doesnt even understand it as giving the left arm of the american bourgeois-democratic party the rope to hang itself with yet. this website doesnt understand that if they actually had a problem with What trump was Doing then theyd be just as mad at biden and obama & bush & clinton &c &c but theyre not so what theyre really mad at is that orange man rude on tv. this website thinks communism is when you throw bricks at places of business. this website hasnt even read lenin

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

James Somerton from my limited exposure to him seems like the pinnacle of a certain type of whiny racist mediocre white gay nerd guy who entered arrested development at age 20. The platonic ideal of the type of loser fags who go on r/gaymers to complain about how China won't let Marvel superhero men kiss and think they're oppressed for not watching Drag Race. The plagiarism is just the cherry on top. I'm so glad communism saved me from going down that path.

[naxalite1967]

Some of my favorite quotes:

"While the state exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state." — Vladimir Lenin

"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror." — Karl Marx

"When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." — Dom Hélder Câmara

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." — Stephen Jay Gould

"They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?" — Fidel Castro

"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." — Mao Zedong

"Those who come with wheat, millet, corn or milk they are not helping us. Those who really want to help us can give us ploughs, tractors, fertilizer, insecticide, watering cans, drills, dams. That is how we would define food aid." — Thomas Sankara

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell." — Edward Abbey

"Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence. And it only gives in when confronted with greater violence." — Frantz Fanon

"The reason Socialism never took root in America is because the oppressed masses don't see themselves as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — John Steinbeck

"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." — Che Guevara

"No altar, no belief, no holy book... have ever been able to reconcile the rich and the poor, the exploiter and the exploited. And if Jesus himself had to take the whip to chase them from his temple, it is indeed because that is the only language they hear." — James Connolly

"We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea." — Luis Felipe de la Fuente

"So I decided to become a midwife… I wanted to deliver a thousand babies. And as each one arrives, especially the little girls, I’ll be there first to whisper into her tender little ear: REBEL! REBEL!" — Emma Goldman

"All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self-justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour." — Howard Zinn

"The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them." — Carlos Fuentes

"Without authorities and specialists, everyone would be a hundred ways wiser. Without benevolence and righteousness, people would rediscover caring, the familial bond. Without power-schemes and profiteering there'd be no thugs and thieves." — Mikhail Bakunin

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you will be filled ... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep." — Jesus Christ (from the Gospel of Luke)

"I dream of a society where I would be guillotined as a conservative." — Mikhail Bakunin

"To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt." — Peter Kropotkin

"We Live in Capitalism, it’s power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." — Arundhati Roy

"Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before." — William S. Burroughs

"With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." — Oscar Wilde

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.

"You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere." — Ursula K. Le Guin

"Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread." — Louis Blanc

[lago-morpha]

Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency. Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism. People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work. Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution. We must use Marxism, which is positive in spirit, to overcome liberalism, which is negative. A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any private person, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist. All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.

Combat Liberalism - Mao Zedong (1937)

[milfstalin]

By 1965, the PKI had three million party members – adding a million members in the year. It had emerged as a serious political force in Indonesia, despite the anti-communist military’s attempts to squelch its growth. Membership in its mass organizations went up to 18 million. A strange incident – the killing of three generals in Jakarta – set off a massive campaign, helped along by the CIA and Australian intelligence, to excise the communists from Indonesia. Mass murder was the order of the day. The worst killings were in East Java and in Bali. Colonel Sarwo Edhie’s forces, for instance, trained militia squads to kill communists. ‘We gave them two or three days’ training,’ Sarwo Edhie told journalist John Hughes, ‘then sent them out to kill the communists.’ In East Java, one eyewitness recounted, the prisoners were forced to dig a grave, then ‘one by one, they were beaten with bamboo clubs, their throats slit, and they were pushed into the mass grave’. By the end of the massacre, a million Indonesian men and women of the left were sent to these graves. Many millions more were isolated, without work and friends. Aidit was arrested by Colonel Yasir Hadibroto, brought to Boyolali (in Central Java) and executed. He was 42. There was no way for the world communist movement to protect their Indonesian comrades. The USSR’s reaction was tepid. The Chinese called it a ‘heinous and diabolical’ crime. But neither the USSR nor China could do anything. The United Nations stayed silent. The PKI had decided to take a path that was without the guns. Its cadre could not defend themselves. They were not able to fight the military and the anti-communist gangs. It was a bloodbath.

Red Star Over the Third World Vijay Prashad, November 2017

The fourth way that anticommunist extermination programs shaped the world is that they deformed the world socialist movement. Many of the global left-wing groups that did survive the twentieth century decided that they had to employ violence and jealously guard power or face annihilation. When they saw the mass murders taking place in these countries, it changed them. Maybe US citizens weren’t paying close attention to what happened in Guatemala, or Indonesia. But other leftists around the world definitely were watching. When the world’s largest Communist Party without an army or dictatorial control of a country was massacred, one by one, with no consequences for the murderers, many people around the world drew lessons from this, with serious consequences. This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?” In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party? Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington. Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World Vincent Bevins, 2020

[chaosmenu]

soledad brother: the prison letters of george jackson