#the communist necessity

[beguines]

Despite a return to the name communism there still appears to be a refusal to accept everything this name was supposed to mean—because we were told it meant mass murder, totalitarianism, and most importantly failure. We want to reclaim it, we might even want to argue against the cold war discourse that speaks of mass murder and totalitarianism just to set the record straight, but we have been convinced that the catastrophe of 20th Century communism means we must start anew, that we can learn nothing from the past except to ignore this past altogether.

J. Moufawad-Paul, The Communist Necessity

[apas-95]

Just because the many human worlds can't meaningfully interact with each doesn't necessarily induce the abolishment of classes, imo. Each planet could just continue being capitalist internally. And obviously there's communism is eventually gonna develop in some of them, capitalism can't go on indefinitely, but that's not necessarily related to the vastness of space

I don't think you read what I said

[kilowogcore]

There's a persistent myth that capitalism embraces an' advances technology, but that ain't been true fer decades.

Capitalism can't handle modern technology. Modern tech eliminates scarcity, an' without scarcity capitalism can't make no profit. It's basic supply an' demand.

Through much a' th' 20th century technological progress could happen without threatening baseline scarcity, but not no more.

So now when new tech comes along, like say large language models or high-yield GMO crops, capitalism is either gonna suppress it or twist and corrupt it ta' harm workers.

This is inevitable. Capitalism will collapse if there ain't scarcity, so capitalists gotta invent scarcity if it don't naturally exist.

If yer lookin' forward ta' our glorious transhumanist technological future, like I am, ya' should wanna get rid a' capitalism.

(Art sampled from "Titans" Vol. 4 #11 by Tom Taylor, Lucas Meyer, Adriano Lucas, Wes Abbott, Chris Rosa, Brittany Holzherr, and Paul Kaminski)

[ehlnofay]

I like to think that disability of all kinds is very accepted and accommodated in much of orcish society, given their cultural emphasis on acceptance of the outcast and the socially excluded. Strength is valued, yes, but not only physically or in combat; strength of all kinds is prized, and not at the expense of the weak. Ostracising those with physical or mental limitations is entirely counter-intuitive (making them more vulnerable and so weakening the group) – by accommodating those limitations and supporting the individuals with them, the group as a whole is strengthened.

[hesitationss]

people esp white ppl in the community™️ forget that leslie feinberg has always been a communist!

[bsaka7]

finished my book but it's too early to go to bed like what do i do now :/

[amalashuor]

Everyone should pay attention here for necessity :

1-My dear friends, everyone who helped me, I am really grateful to you. My family, I and more than 20 people are grateful to you.

I am confident that you will help us with everything you have, so I appeal to you not to leave us alone in light of this famine, scarcity of goods and their exorbitant prices.

Help with whatever you have + Donate + Share + Tell a friend my story

2-I contacted my friend @save-gaza2 to check on him because he is in a very dangerous place.

These messages between us and him

They are in grave danger. I hope helps them quickly.🙏🏾

3-I spoke to you before about my sister @ashourmohammed, she is from Gaza and was displaced to the south, and all her money and savings were stolen during the displacement.

Please do not stop posting for her and help her continuously.

4-My dear friends, this is my sister @noor-yashour and her son Mohammed. She is in dire need of help. Everyone who has a disabled person, please help with a clear conscience.

This campaign is dedicated to buying milk, pampers and expensive treatments. Please help them a lot.

Tagging for reach, please message me if you want off the mailing list! We thank you in advance.

@gothhabiba @punkitt-is-here @comrademango @decolonize-the-everything

@postanagramgenerator @watermotif @stuckinapril @malcriada @appsa

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@toesuckingoctober @appsa @withthewindinherfootsteps @sillysymbol

[txttletale]

I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?

alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.

so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.

there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.

when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.

why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!

this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.

so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:

the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered

the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate

shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)

bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.

so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".

(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)

and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!

tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don't see a cent -- and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)

[mohammedatallah]

North Gaza is being destroyed and dying of hunger. 💔🍉😭

The siege is on people in all directions. The situation is very dangerous. There is no food, no water, no medicine, no hospitals, and no basic necessities of life. The necessities of life have disappeared.

@mazzikah

@irhabiya

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kyra45-helping-others

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@postanagramgenerator

[beguines]

It is interesting to note that the most prevalent left-wing anti-intellectualism—where critical literacy itself is treated as "bourgeois"—generally maintains the same elitism. By placing value on some imagined "authentic" proletarian intelligence and culture, it argues against the necessity for mass education and mass reeducation: it claims that the "dragging up" is elitist because it is secretly fearful of being dragged down. The proletariat must stay true to this imaginary essence, to its supposedly illiterate consciousness, that is understood as beautiful in its ignorance of anything but its spontaneous revolutionary values. The intellectual division of labour remains, cloaked simply by a clumsy attempt to argue that some illiterate but authentic "working class culture" (as if the proletariat possesses a homogenous culture) should be valued and preserved. It is worth noting that this class culturalism tends to be promoted by those people who already possess intellectual privilege; this politics is an attempt to replace theories of declassing with a quasi-theory of patronization.

J. Moufawad-Paul, The Communist Necessity

[headspace-hotel]

There are so many tumblr communists that consistently describe people with (in their opinion) distasteful or evil political beliefs as being into Marvel movies, Disney, Taylor Swift, "nerd culture," picrews, Steven Universe, and other things that are "cringe" or "normie." Does anybody know what the fuck is wrong with these people.

Like I have seen MULTIPLE posts now from tumblr communists about a "pattern" of Zionists liking picrews and being into steven universe. These are people that are proudly well-read on political subjects, post a lot of serious, usually abstruse political stuff, and talk extensively about injustice, oppression, colonial power structures, and the necessity of liberation, and yet they are totally fucking incapable of distinguishing their own ideology and morals from their petty distaste of uncool people.

How self-obsessed do you have to be to think "supporting genocide" and "liking fandoms I think are cringe" are seriously causally connected.

Half of these people are constantly posting about how everyone they meet IRL is a drooling barely-sentient NPC enslaved to capitalism and Disney movies and how their music taste is more developed and sophisticated than everyone else's, and they use the terms "midwit" and "normie" basically interchangeably with "liberal," which I think they understand as the political flavoring of "cringe"

[myceliacrochet]

PREGNANT 24-YEAR-OLD NEEDS EMERGENCY FOOD AND HER 1.5-YEAR-OLD IS SCARED TO DEATH OF THE BOMBING!!!!!!

Layla @laylaayman24 is just 24 and trying to protect her baby girl from bombing, the freezing cold, the rain, and infectious diseases.

LAYLA NEEDS FOOD AND ALL THE BASIC NECESSITIES FOR A HEALTHY BIRTH.

She needs nutrients for the baby, and donations have been extremely sporadic.

And Layla's toddler, Sally, needs to get out of this extermination zone for her heart as well as her physical safety!!!!

The children of Gaza are dying of heart attacks from fear.

Sally gets very scared from the bombing.

Layla's baby girl, Sally, needs our protection🧸

Hi friends, I hope you have read Layla's story about what her life was like before this nakba started and what it's been like for the past year. Here are some pictures from her camera roll of how life was before:

Now:

Let's get this family basic supplies and help them get out of there before it's too late.

Vetting: shared by 90-ghost and bilal-salah0

@knavewoods @katherinefh @variouscontent @thekittyburger @nursehoney @rose-rctt @stuffandthangs @chokulit @rooh-afza @rhythmlessgay @amyroze @a-wild-trans-wurmple @communist-cat-girl @raan-miir-tah @karnesisbear @its-feminism-not-terfism @blvvdyindustries @monstermashpotato @wellsbering @tolbachik @akajustmerry @comrademango @superdragonjpeg-thing @afropiscesism @ihavenotfallenyet @fly-sky-high-09 @insanitysmiles @wirehairwiredstare @pregnantseinfeld @seeyouguyslater @innovatorbunny @imjustheretotrytohelp @awetistic-things @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @sea-shame @faacethefacts @emocowboylover00

[mesetacadre]

UBI is, in the context of capitalism, a specially unstable reform of capitalism and the highest expression of the welfare state invented in Europe to counteract the pressure exerted on worker's rights by socialist Europe. In the context of socialism, it would be by necessity a very shoddy solution to a severe failure by socialism to function like it should. So can communists stop talking about UBI as if it's anything more than this?

[metamatar]

i have a question and sorry if it sounds incoherent. why is it so important to marxists to distinguish that marxism is not “moral” or “ideological”? i understand that marxism is grounded in historical materialism and that it aims to understand how existing structures and institutions function with the specific goal of abolishing them in favour of a marxist state, but when it comes to understanding how to move forward past capitalism, how can MLs claim that it’s entirely objective and scientific? isnt the fundamental purpose of marxism (abolishing the oppressor class and putting the proletariat in power) a subjective one, given that it to support that you need to believe that abolishing the oppressor class is desirable in the first place? how would ML “scientifically” help people decide where the line is drawn on subjects like the death penalty and incarceration if its committed by a communist party (given that the decision that the cost of killing/imprisoning people is worth the boon it would give in establishing a communist state is still based on subjective goals?)

i don't think modern marxists should claim they're not ideological. im sure some do, but imo the correct claim is marxism is not idealist. i think some of this confusion comes from a popperian view of science as "neutral" or "objective" outside of time. how the political economy affects the propagation of ideology and the process of science as practiced in reality is very standard marxist analysis now. some of the claim to objectivity is something that most people claim belongs to their favourite philosophical project see the rawlsian veil of ignorance in liberalism. marx is also writing in a world where theological and religious reasoning have a lot of primacy in philosophy and he is drawing a clean break from that by hewing to scientific characterisation of his methods.

idealism, in the kantian sense is a philosophy that argues that our ideals (about say, fairness, justice etc) inform how we organise society. marxism, as philosophical project develops in response to kant and hegel to argue that the political economic base, ie the productive relations of society actually inform superstructure of ideals. to quote marx in the preface to critique of political economy: "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

for clarity's sake the idea that changes in the mode of production (mostly due to technology) transform the relations of production which is the main driving force of history is historical materialism. the analysis of why existing structures and institutions must be abolished therefore has to be grounded in analysis where such structures are considered variously – unstable, internally contradictory etc. if you view historical materialism as true, your theory of change cannot be that you'll change the world because it is unfair (an idea.) you can view the world as unfair as a marxist and talk about it to propagate the necessity of your project but that doesn't actually give you a blueprint on how to change it.

capitalists are oppressors, but marxism doesn't view the problem in their oppressive or evil natures. capitalist economies demand even the most moral capitalist to exploit the proletariat. but! it is desirable to abolish there class relations not merely because they are unfair and exploitative but because these class relationships cause workers to develop class consciousness, recognise their power and abolish capitalism.

on your specific example, i don't think marxism can or should claim their are no moral dilemmas. historical materialism doesn't assert that there are no conflicting understandings of history. walter benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history is imo good reading here.

so i dont think your concern about why it's important for marxists to believe this makes sense, because this is what marxism is. if you don't find this convincing, you're not a marxist. you could be an anarchist, or a social democrat or a radical liberal.

[txttletale]

I saw in your replies to the home break in post that you are “a revolutionary communist but don’t believe in capital punishment”. Could you expand on that? /gen

i mean, it seems pretty self-explanatory. i'm a revolutionary communist but i don't believe in punitive killing. i think revolutionary violence is a tragic necessity (this does not make me uniquely accepting of violence, or my politics exceptionally violent, for in much the same way, liberals think the constant, unending stream of social and literal murders perpetrated by global capitalism and the bourgeois states are tragic necessities) but i think it's wrong to execute people

[beguines]

All of this new talk about communism that avoids the necessity of actually bringing communism into being demonstrates a fear of the very name communism. In this context one can be a communist in theory but not necessarily a communist in practice: when communism becomes a philosophical problem, or even a significant dream, it is no longer vital and the people speaking of its vitality are refusing to ask the crucial questions that would make communism apparent.

J. Moufawad-Paul, The Communist Necessity