#the proletariat will rise

[gothmusiclatinamerica]

I did an off-topic video this week!

There has been some speculation going around about what exactly has been going on with Bandcamp and the union that the workers are a part of, Bandcamp United, over the past few months. I just thought I would summarize it to the best of my abilities.

The links to follow BandcampUnited and support the healthcare fund are in the video description.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

The thing about the broadly left-of-center in the United States that I find striking in this moment is the conceit that they did literally everything they could and it didn't work, and this just proves the United States is worse than they ever imagined

I suspect this is one of the main problems with their strategy. They cannot pretend not to hate the United States long enough to make it stick. Every time they try, it is immediately recognized for the lie that it is, and then when their lie fails to catch, the mask then drops immediately, and they revert back to their miserable and bitter selves

[hobohobgoblim]

It's going down.

[silverhalla]

LUCANIS SAYS UNIONIZE LET’S GOOOOOO

[porttohuume]

Vappu is coming vappu is coming vappu is coming!!!!!! My fave celebration of the year!!!!!!!

[christinariccidaily]

Day 852

Strike!

[apas-95]

i largely agree with your politics but tbqh the way you present your ideas is not really radical, frankly it's worryingly eschatological/messianic. which sucks cuz otherwise you seen like a pretty rational individual

I don't think 'making claims about the future' is inherently messianic or eschatological, though I understand this is often a sticking point regarding Marxism - if we understand dialectical and historical materialism to be genuine scientific knowledge on human society, which we should, then the ability to predict future events with confidence is simply part and parcel of its existence as scientific knowledge.

The claim 'the tendency of the rate of profit to fall drives capital inevitably, through various ways, into cyclical crises of various scales, with the largest-scale examples consisting of global economic crises and world wars, the approach to which can be recognised and quantified prior' should be seen as no more messianic than 'the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere causes runaway heating which, while increasing the general planetary average temperature, alao leads to localised extreme weather events and rising sea levels, which can be recognised and quantified prior'.

Fundamentally, while a lot of people are willing to accept Marxism as providing *empirical* understanding of human society; that is, as a means to understand and decompose present and historical social issues; it is a lot harder for people to accept Marxism as providing genuinely scientific understanding of human society capable of predictive power. The reasons behind this are, generally, due to the nature of enlightenment philosophy and the bourgeois conception of science, wherein bourgeois social 'sciences' are incomplete, piecemeal, and reflexive (since, as Marxism demonstrates, a geneuine scientific analysis of human society, beginning from the political-economic basis of society, is harmful to bourgeois society).

When I say 'revolution in the imperial core is not going to occur today, but is an essential inevitability in the near future' I am saying, essentially, nothing more than the well-proven principle that 'revolution will occur where the chain of imperialism is weakest'. The condition for revolution in the imperial core is widespread revolution in the periphery states, the condition for widespread revolution in the periphery states is worldwide economic crisis and war, and the condition for worldwide economic crisis and war is the decline of imperial profits and the collapse of imperialist alliances. There is a fairly clear chain of events here, each of which has not only turned out in the past (the first world war being predictable before it ever occured) but is currently turning out in the present (look back even on my own blog towards discussions of inter-imperialist war and note that Marxists had predicted a ground war in Europe by 2025 well prior to the actual commencement of the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, as well as the inevitability of an economic crash circa 2020).

As proletarians, there is, also, largely nothing that can be done to influence these events without the existence of large proletarian political organs capable of leading the proletariat in conscious political action - the existence of which is contingent on historical circumstances. The imperial core does not have serious proletarian organs with a mass basis, and will not have those organs until conditions exist to facilitate them - said conditions being the collapse of imperialist profits and the worsening of domestic repression in core states. This does not mean that the eventual emergence and victory of those organs will not require constant, arduous work from communists to build up and maintain, to whatevee degree is possible, a communist movement until fhat time arrives - but it means that, for instance: Marx in the 1800s was never going to lead a socialist state, leaving that work to a future Lenin.

Almost assuredly, no existing party in the USA will carry out revolution - but the leaders of the revolutionary movement that will emerge under the pressures of war against Russia, China, the EU imperialist bloc; and of climate crisis and economic collapse; will likely be the ones gaining experience in political work at this time. Marxism speaks of classes, not individuals - it is not, really, messianic to say 'the bourgeoisie will go to war when faced with economic crisis, and the proletariat will resist when faced with war', nor is it, I reason, very eschatological to say 'the world is going to get much, much worse in the near future, however, there is a possible way to escape the horrors of war that does not end in nuclear annihilation'.

However, if it's what you'd prefer, I could call myself God-queen of violent benevolence, and emanate a vision of revolutionary salvation - whichever works.

[mesetacadre]

In April 15th, 1920, the National Committee of the Federation of Socialist Youths met in Madrid to, taking the initiative over the PSOE, take the decision of joining the Third International, founded by the Bolshevik party. After a convoluted process that lasted until the 14th of November of 1921, the Communist Party of Spain (Spanish Section of the Communist International) was born, pejoratively called "The party of the 100 children" by its opponents.

The Komintern's policy in its early days was one of the "only front", stating that capital could only be beat via the united effort of all communists in all spheres of life. Its motto became "Towards the Masses!". In Spain, this period was marked by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship between 1923 and 1930, during which almost every political group was banned. The social-democratic PSOE and UGT avoided this by remaining "neutral" towards the dictatorship. Some members of the PSOE even collaborated, like Largo Caballero, who became Rivera's Minister of State. The Communist Party maintained its sole struggle during this time, gaining popularity among the Spanish proletariat.

When the dictatorship ended and the Second Republic was proclaimed in April of 1932, in the midst of the effects of the 1929 capitalist crisis, the 1931 strike in Sevilla and 1932 general strike, the PCE had found itself unable to work outside the dynamics imposed by the dictatorship's repression, and only began to regain its force after the selection of José Diaz as general secretary in September of 1932. The party corrected some of the left-communist and sectarian mistakes that characterized the period of the dictatorship.

The PCE took on an even bigger role in the organization of our class after its crucial role in the October insurrection of 1934 in Asturias, during which the proletariat took power in the mining basin and most of Oviedo, via the Peasant and Worker Alliances, expressions of the aforementioned only front strategy decided by the Third International. The government of the Second Republic, carrying out the needs of a section of the Spanish bourgeoisie, brutally repressed the Asturian revolutionaries, with general Francisco Franco at the helm of the military's intervention. Among the victims was Aida Lafuente, a militant of the Communist Youth and an example of bravery.

This glimmer of worker power was contextualized in the Black Biennium (1933-1935), a period of the Republic when reactionaries accessed the government and expressed the most violent tendencies of the Spanish bourgeoisie against the more than 30,000 political prisoners they took, and against the rapidly developing workers' movement.

It was during this time in Spain and the whole world, when the Third International identified the generalized rise of fascism and reactionarism, and adopted in its 7th Congress, during the summer of 1935, the policy of the Popular Front, failing to link the anti-fascist struggle with the struggle for workers' power, instead advocating for alliances with "socialist" parties and other bourgeois-democratic parties, placing the fight for socialism-communism in the background.

Half a year after this decision, the Popular Front alliance won the elections in the 16th of February, 1936. Shortly after, and only a year after the 7th Congress, sections of the Spanish and international bourgeoisie countered this victory with a failed coup d'etat by fascist generals in the 18th of July, 1936. They had the backing of the nazi-fascist powers in Europe and the complicity of the "democratic" capitalist powers, who were anxious about the strengthening proletariat in Spain. Curiously, the plane that carried Franco from his exile in the African colonies to Tetuán in north Africa, the Dragon Rapide, originally took off from London.

The biggest supporter of the Spanish Republic was the USSR, that, through the enormous effort of the Third International and the Communist Parties in 52 countries, against the banning of volunteering by many of those 52 countries, organized the enlistment, falsification of documents, logistics, arrival and other matters for the arrival of around 35,000 workers, peasants and intellectuals from all over the world. Under the single banner of the International Brigades, and for the first time materializing the historic slogan Workers of the World, Unite!, the Volunteers of Liberty, as they also came to be known, gave their mind and their body to the cause of the Spanish people, armed with the teachings of marxism-leninism. They knew that it was no longer a fight for only the Spanish. As J. V. Stalin put it in October of 1936:

The workers of the Soviet Union are merely carrying out their duty in giving help within their power to the revolutionary masses of Spain. They are aware that the liberation of Spain from the yoke of fascist reactionaries is not a private affair of the Spanish people but the common cause of the whole of advanced and progressive mankind.

In July of 1936 there already were Brigadiers present in Spain, for the occasion of the Popular Olympics (in boycott of the Berlin Olympics) organized by the Red Sport International and the Socialist Worker Sport International in Barcelona, they were among the first to take up arms against the coup d'etat. The Executive Committee's Secretariat of the Third International formalized in the 18th and 19th of September the creation of the International Brigades, which began to arrive in Spain the 14th of October of 1936. Despite the propaganda levied by fascists and bourgeois historiography, the importance of the International Brigades is undeniable today.

After the integration of the Brigades into the Popular Militias in the 22nd of October, the Brigadiers began their training in Albacete and saw action for the first time the 8th of November in Madrid, with the 11th and 12th Brigade. Militarily, the Brigades were present and indispensable in every major battle of the war, but they also played a moral role. After every capitalist power had abandoned the Spanish people to their fate with the policy of non-intervention, the compact and disciplined columns that marched through the streets of Madrid singing songs like The Internationale, Young Guard, or The Marseillaise, made up of workers who barely knew the language but were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, decidedly improved the morale of every militia and civilian in Madrid and in Spain.

But even greater than the support of the Brigades were the more than 300,000 strong military detachments sent by Germany and Italy, with the implicit approval of capitalist democracies, including the Popular Front in France, whose efforts of non-intervention focused exclusively on the republic. And it was the strategy of the popular front that forced the PCE to sideline the revolutionary potential of the hundreds of thousands of militants, instead preserving the legitimacy of the bourgeois republic.

By 1938, the republic was on its last legs and, wishing to evidence the foreign involvement on the fascist side, declared to the League of Nations in the 21st of September that they would disband all volunteers enlisted after the 18th of July, 1936. The 16th of October, 2 years and 2 days after the arrival of the Brigades, the League of Nations' International Committee arrived in Spain to verify the disbandment and departure of the Brigadiers. No such inspection was ever made on the fascist side.

According to the International Committee's report published on the 18th of January, 1939, there were a total of 12,673 Brigadiers in Spain, less than half of the total number of volunteers at around 35,000. They began to depart Spain on the 2nd of November, 1938, through the French border. During the process of departures, some Brigadiers were murdered in Spain, others died protecting the fleeing republicans and hundreds of thousands of refugees at the crossing in France. This was when Mexico, and especially the Communist Party of Mexico which pressured the government, took on around 1,600 brigadiers, mainly Germans, Poles, Italians, Austrians, Czechoslovaks and Yugoslavians, who could not safely return to their homes due to the advance of fascism within their countries. The debt owed by the workers of the world, especially the Spanish, to the Communist Party of Mexico is immeasurable, along with every other Communist Party that helped and the Third International.

The dissolution of the International Brigades did not achieve the result desired by the Republic. Instead, their retreat towards the end of the Battle of the Ebro only accelerated the morale defeat of the republican militias. Most of the brigadiers who survived the war but could not be repatriated in time did not have a pleasant fate. Most of those ended up in the French concentration camps of Gurs, Argèles-sur-Mer, Saint-Cyprien and Barcarès, Septfonds, Riversaltes, or Vernet d'Ariège.

Their fight was not in vein. The experience gained by the few who survived at a high cost proved essential in the development of their own parties, and soon enough, anti-fascist resistance. Everywhere that people took up arms against the fascist occupation, whether inside or outside the concentration camps, ex-Brigadiers were present, continuing the fight they started in the 18th of July, 1936, well after the war that had began that day was history.

Back in Spain, while the moribund republic thrashed for the last few times, the bourgeois republican government, headed by the social-democrat Juan Negrín, began to isolate the PCE with the support of the trotskyists and anarchists. It came to a close after the coup d'etat by the republican general Casado, during and after which the communist militancy was oppressed, and the fascist fifth column that had remained in Madrid opened its gates to the fascist military. This is how the fascist dictatorship began in Spain, with a betrayal by the Popular Front's social-democrats and by the democratic-bourgeois powers of the world. They couldn't help but mirror the collaborationism happening on the world stage; the UK was actively looking for an alliance with Germany, and every other capitalist country was making business with the looted property. All for one purpose that united them; the destruction of workers' power in the form of the marxist-leninist parties that around the world were beginning to challenge the capitalists, with the Third International at the helm.

These are the lessons that Spain and the world learnt during and after its fierce resistance against fascism. No popular front with bourgeois-democrats is sustainable, and their class character will always prevail above the superficial differences with fascism. The only viable tool is the organization of the social majority within the Communist Party, with proletarian internationalism and an altruist disposition as principles. No matter how much social-democracy may fear fascist privatization, and no matter how much they disrespect bourgeois democracy, the class interests that guide them will always prevail when faced with a capable mass of organized workers.

The progressive Popular Front in France, the "appeasing" government in the UK, and the nominally anti-violence liberal democracies, did not ever attempt to do anything else than giving carte blanche to the fascists and hindering their rivals. The betrayal of Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were all made with the same reasoning: the alliance with fascism to destroy communism. There are no reasons that make the opposite possible today. When reactionarism picks up traction in lockstep with the deepening capitalist crises, all of these bourgeois-democrats some "leftists" like to place their hope in will not vary substantially from the script they followed 85 years ago.

Quedad, que así lo quieren los árboles, los llanos, las mínimas partículas de la luz que reanima un solo sentimiento que el mar sacude. ¡Hermanos! Madrid con vuestro nombre se agranda e ilumina

Rafael Alberti, A las Brigadas Internacionales

[homo-nouveau]

Shit I text my mum: had a really hard day at work, need a hug :(

Shit I text my dad: they're in our walls, the proletariat will never rise out of fear of disconnection and discomfort. We are so accustomed to tragedy due to the influx of-

[elbiotipo]

"global socialism, which isn't as far away as it seems in my opinion" oh? I'd love to hear what you mean by this, at this point I'll take anything that can give me some hope 💀

It's not any specific thing, just my understanding of history.

Capitalist countries are not producing anything of value right now, just financial speculation and capital accumulation. This cannot be sustained. You cannot have an economy based on capitalist speculation and social media. The only way the First World has been able to continue this is by plundering the third world and moving their industries away to China and other countries. It's very simple; when the third world and China stop supplying the US and the first world and instead begin producing on their own terms, the capitalist order drawn by the US just will not sustain itself.

The only countries that are having any success are those that place the economy at the service of its people, the ones that actually create things instead of speculating on them. I've said before that China, by placing market forces under the control of a socialist state, was undergoing the largest experiment of all human history, and what happened there would define history for the rest of the century. So far this experiment seems to be succeeding beyond any expectations and people in the rest of the world are realizing it. China still has the potential to fail, and I dislike and outright hate many things about their government. It is still, again, the country that will define human history this century, and if it truly commits to socialism, it might open a new chapter on it.

I do subscribe to some ideas of Latin American and Argentine thinkers that see imperialism as the main issue to be solved to truly build socialism, because we live in an interconnected world after WWII, a world that was drawn by the US and the European empires as the global bourgeoisie with the third world as the global proletariat, so to speak, and this is a world that will not last forever. The world will eventually smash this system and socialism will rise from it.

I also believe that with the interconnection of the world, the next revolution will be global in scope. Global trade networks were built to sustain capitalism and imperialism, but the connections they have created between countries mean that for a truly successful socialist project, it will need to be global in scope. There are many nations, there are many places, but there is only one country at the end, Earth. My grandchildren will live to see the Socialist World Republic.

[catnip-kitty]

Why Gay Sex is Dialectic, an Essay

As a petite proletariat (twink) who reads theory, I was pondering the nature of homosexuality in terms of dialectical materialism, in particular, how gay sex fit into Engel's three laws of dialectics.

Just as Engels posits that internal contradictions or tensions drive change in the law of unity and conflict of opposites, the same could be said for the homoerotic tension of a top-bottom relationship. While tops and bottoms appear to exist as binary oppositional roles, they coexist internally within a relationship. While the duality may give rise to differences in preferences, desires, and dynamics these differences can be resolved through negotiation between the partners. The act of say gex, is thus, the ultimate act of such negotiation, a synthesis of contradictions.

Furthermore, the law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes could be seen the complications to that top-bottom dynamic. The roles of tops and bottoms can be redefined through the process of negotiation. In fact, surveys from Autostraddle [1] show that the majority of people in a gay relationships are switches, not strictly tops or bottoms. This indicates that the physical designation of top or bottom is thus the result of an accumulation of decisions and preferences, culminating in the qualitative dynamic. This is exemplified by the ways in which masculine-feminine attributes or sub-dom dynamics play a role in gay sex — these attributes, which can be seen as mostly qualitative assignations are the result of the accumulation of quantitative changes.

I would further propose that, through the collaborative dialectic process of negotiation, the social dynamics of gay relationships can change, including that top-bottom dynamic. Engel's law of the negation of the negation captures these changes precisely. The traditional associations between masculinity and feminity, subordination and domination are, to an extent, being subverted in many 21st gay relationships in contrast to the strict gender roles seen in Greco-Roman times [2] or the Tokugawa period [3]. For example, I want a femboy to top me. Whether through the process of resolving contradictions in homosexual intercourse, the top-bottom dynamic or between other qualitative attributes, the process of negation and transformation dialectically results in a more egalitarian understanding of say gex. This is the socialist means of reproduction.

In conclusion, gay sex is praxis.

[1] Riese. “Tops, Bottoms, Switches: One Last Look at All the Survey Data.” Autostraddle, 7 Aug. 2018, www.autostraddle.com/tops-bottoms-switches-one-last-look-at-all-the-survey-data-424953/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2024.

[2] Hubbard, Thomas K. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome : A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. Berkeley, Univ. Of California Press, 2010.

[3] Leupp, Gary P. Male Colors : The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley, University Of California Press, 2011.

[tilbageidanmark]

Luigi Mangione is becoming the face of the "Upcoming Class War", a symbol for the rise of the proletariat ready to depose the ruling classes - not only in the USA, but all over the world.

Rise, like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many—they are few.

"YE ARE MANY - THEY ARE FEW.”

Remember: There are only 2800 2799 of them - 8 billions of us.

DOWN WITH ALL THE OLIGARCHS!

(As seen in Venezia.)

#2800Billionares

[microtheory]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[howi99]

What would an interaction between Jaune and the protagonists of Disco Elysium be like? I wondered what an interaction would be like.

They will be students

Jaune: *point to Henry, who is in the middle of conceptualising socialism with Nora* Is he... Is he okay?

Kim: *sigh* Honestly? I have no idea. Yesterday i saw him jump inside a trash container to get a pair of jeans, assault another student who was being mean to a faunus and-

Henry: WE NEED TO EAT THE RICH! THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT SHALL RISE AGAIN!

Kim: -ah, i see that he changed his ideological opinion... Again.

Nora and Henry: *chanting* EAT THE RICH! EAT THE RICH!

Jaune: ... At least he didn't seem to hate Weiss.

Kim: He is kind of a hypocrite. She gave him food, he would now die for her.

Jaune: That's... A bit excessive?

Kim: *nod* Yes. It is.

[last-tarrasque]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[apas-95]

The view that the bourgeoisie are absurdly weak, and that the proletariat need not organise into vanguards, or establish states, or even engaged in armed revolution, is wrong; and equally wrong is the view that the bourgeoisie is absurdly strong (and the proletariat absurdly weak), and that the proletariat cannot possibly govern if they still exist, that a proletarian state cannot control the bourgeois under it, and that any socialist society which does not completely abolish all other classes (which is to say, immediately establish communism!) is necessarily corrupted. These are both two sides of the same 'left' error.

To be correct in our practice we need to have a dialectical approach towards the relative standing of the classes - historically, the proletariat are the rising class, and the bourgeoisie the waning half of the contradiction; but at the same time, the immediate state of the bourgeoisie is that of a class equipped with vast armies, weapons, and social systems. The proletariat must exert great force and use great discipline to overcome the bourgeoisie at any given moment, but once the ball's in their court, it's best to play the long game - the slower and more drawn out we can deal with petty tyrants, the weaker they will be, and the stronger we will be.

Mao said:

Over a long period, we have developed this concept for the struggle against the enemy: strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously. This also means that we must despise the enemy with respect to the whole, but that we must take him seriously with respect to each concrete question. If we do not despise the enemy with respect to the whole, we shall be committing the error of opportunism. Marx and Engels were only two individuals, and yet in those early days they already declared that capitalism would be overthrown throughout the world. However, in dealing with concrete problems and particular enemies we shall be committing the error of adventurism unless we take them seriously. In war, battles can only be fought one by one and the enemy forces can only be destroyed one by one. Factories can only be built one by one. The peasants can only plough the land plot by plot. The same is even true of eating a meal. Strategically, we take the eating of a meal lightly - we know we can finish it. Actually, we eat it mouthful by mouthful. It is impossible to swallow an entire banquet in one gulp. This is known as a piecemeal solution. In military parlance, it is called wiping out the enemy forces one by one.