fart simpson posted:

ive tried like three times before but this time I’m actually past the first section of capital vol 1. about half way through so far and it’s actually become very funny reading

stumblebum posted:

on another note, what the gently caress is the deal with the lumpenproletariat? like its a term that seems to come up nearly as much as classes that i do have a grasp on (prole, bourge, peti-boos, labor aristos, peasant, literal aristos) but i keep not gleaning what their actual definition is. more specifically, i get the feeling that its a label that somehow includes both precariat and labor aristocracy? like subsidized imperial-core non-proletarian workers are the same class as a hobo getting beaten by cops on the street?? that doesnt seem right, and i'd like to know whether/how im wrong on that impression

Zodium posted:

i've been out of country visiting with extended family this week, and got caught up sitting in between some younger family who were discussing economics. it was a typical heated discussion that was essentially about government against free market, with one side advancing the argument that today's problems are caused by crony capitalism, and the other side advancing that they are caused by a lack of regulation. using a simple marxist thought experiment, I was able to calmly show how, over time, a competitive capitalist market necessarily, through competition alone, eliminates competition, and then evolves into political control and imperialism, and thus that both sides were simply touching different parts of the same elephant. this not only brought peace to the dinner table, but led to a couple of them approaching me afterwards to say that what I had explained seemed "on a whole other level" from what they had been exposed to on social media and asked to stay in touch.

Zodium posted:

i've been out of country visiting with extended family this week, and got caught up sitting in between some younger family who were discussing economics. it was a typical heated discussion that was essentially about government against free market, with one side advancing the argument that today's problems are caused by crony capitalism, and the other side advancing that they are caused by a lack of regulation. using a simple marxist thought experiment, I was able to calmly show how, over time, a competitive capitalist market necessarily, through competition alone, eliminates competition, and then evolves into political control and imperialism, and thus that both sides were simply touching different parts of the same elephant. this not only brought peace to the dinner table, but led to a couple of them approaching me afterwards to say that what I had explained seemed "on a whole other level" from what they had been exposed to on social media and asked to stay in touch.

stumblebum posted:

on another note, what the gently caress is the deal with the lumpenproletariat?

quote:

Thus it is declassed elements of all classes from whom Louis Bonaparte founds his characteristic party organisation, and whom he gathers around himself as trustees and officials, etc. [...] In this social rubbish specific class characteristics are erased. They are free of ideological, etc, ties to the particular class whose rubbish they are, insofar as they can rise above them and manoeuvre between them. On the other hand, they show not the revolutionary, but the counter-revolutionary abolition of these class characteristics, the negation of bourgeois class principles which remains within these principles. For example, the thief carries out the abolition of bourgeois property on the basis of bourgeois property. He abolishes others’ private property by establishing it for himself, that is, individually. The well known phrase of Proudhon, “La propriété c’est le vol”, “Property is theft”, is equally applicable in reverse, “Le vol c’est la propriété”, “Theft is property”. And so these declassed elements from all classes are at the same time flesh of the flesh, bone of the bone of private property and bourgeois society, and thus are capable, while they destroy its political domination, of defending and protecting its social domination against the class or classes that represent the revolutionary abolition of bourgeois society [...]

Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, Mao Tse-Tung posted:

Apart from all these, there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all. In every part of the country they have their secret societies, which were originally their mutual-aid organizations for political and economic struggle, for instance, the Triad Society in Fukien and Kwangtung, the Society of Brothers in Hunan, Hupeh, Kweichow and Szechuan, the Big Sword Society in Anhwei, Honan and Shantung, the Rational Life Society in Chihli [17] and the three northeastern provinces, and the Green Band in Shanghai and elsewhere [18]. One of China's difficult problems is how to handle these people. Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.

18. 18 The Triad Society, the Society of Brothers, the Big Sword Society, the Rational Life Society and the Green Band were primitive secret organizations among the people. The members were mainly bankrupt peasants, unemployed handicraftsmen and other lumpen-proletarians. In feudal China these elements were often drawn together by come religion or superstition to form organizations of a patriarchal pattern and bearing different names and some possessed arms. Through these organizations the lumpen-proletarians sought to help each other socially and economically, and sometimes fought the bureaucrats and landlords who oppressed them. Of course, such backward organizations could not provide a way out for the peasants and handicraftsmen. Furthermore, they could easily be controlled and utilized by the landlords and local tyrants and, because of this and of their blind destructiveness, come turned into reactionary forces. In his counter-revolutionary coup d'etat of 1927 Chiang Kai-shek made use of them to disrupt the unity of the labouring people and destroy the revolution. As the modern industrial proletariat arose and grew from strength to strength, the peasants, under the leadership of the working class, gradually formed themselves into organizations of an entirely new type, and these primitive, backward societies lost their raison d'etre.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

Mao argued that the lumpen vacillated between revolution and reaction, thus it is a vanguard matter to proletarianize them, to seize their declassed condition for the benefit of all. Personally, I think that it is here where we get a shift towards a new categorical problem, more closer and relevant to our present-day economies. A good bunch of people nowadays could be seen as lumpen in the 19th century (especially in the service sector), but wouldn't be actually so because they were proletarianized either by discourse, organic intellectual effort, education or simply emerging class consciousness.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

i say swears online posted:

really good post, and this part is something i hadn't really put much thought into before. would this be someone like a liquor store employee on a poor side of town? or a debt collector, or someone that hawks reverse mortgages?

Mechafunkzilla posted:

It's more like individually employed domestic workers/servants, who (for Marx) don't produce surplus value and therefore aren't really a part of the working class.

The Voice of Labor posted:

if the qualifications are possessing no capital and being too broke to have class consciousness, most of america is lumpenproletariat

Mechafunkzilla posted:

those aren't the qualifications

Mechafunkzilla posted:

those aren't the qualifications

quote:

redsails.org
From Opium Wars to Oil Wars
Domenico Losurdo
8–10 minutes

“Gaddafi’s death is a historic turning point!” proclaim the chorus of leaders of NATO and the West, who do not even take the trouble to put distance between themselves and the barbaric assassination of the Libyan leader or the lies deployed to that end by the leaders of the “rebels.” And yet, it is indeed a turning point. However, to really understand the significance of the war against Libya in the context of the history of colonialism, it’s necessary to take a longer view…

When British gunships appeared before China’s coasts and cities in 1840, the aggressors had several hundred cannons’ worth of firepower at their disposal, and could sow destruction and death on a large scale without fear of retaliation from enemy artillery, since its range was much shorter. This was the triumph of “gunboat diplomacy”: the great Asian country and its millennia-old civilization were forced to capitulate; thus begun what Chinese historiography aptly calls “the century of humiliation,” which ends in 1949, with the coming to power of the Communist Party and Mao Zedong.

In the present day, the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) has created for many Third World countries a situation similar to that faced by China at that time. In the course of its war against Gaddafi’s Libya, NATO was able to easily carry out thousands upon thousands of bombings while not only not suffering any losses, but in fact not even facing the risk thereof. In this sense, rather than a traditional army, the NATO military force resembles a firing squad — the final execution of Gaddafi, rather than a fluke or an accident along the way, reveals the deeper meaning of the operation as a whole.

It is a fact: a renewed disparity in technology and weaponry has revived the colonial ambitions and temptations of a West that, as evidenced by its exalted self-conception and the false consciousness it continues to flaunt, refuses to really come to terms with its history. And we’re not speaking only about planes, warships, and satellites. Even starker is the advantage Washington and its allies enjoy when it comes to their multimedia carpet-bombing capabilities. The “humanitarian intervention” against Libya is a textbook example: the civil war (unleashed in part by the prolonged work of Western agents and military assets, so that so-called “rebels” from the very beginning had even aircraft at their disposal) was presented as a massacre perpetrated by the ruling power against a defenseless civilian population; meanwhile, the NATO bombing raids that most recently rained hell on the besieged, starving city of Sirte, deprived of water and medicine, were framed as humanitarian operations for the benefit of the Libyan civilian population!

This work of manipulation can now rely on, in addition to the traditional media of information and disinformation, a technological revolution that complements the Revolution in Military Affairs. As I have explained in previous talks and articles, it’s authors and press organs close to the State Department that celebrate the fact that the US arsenal has now been enriched with new and formidable tools of war; Western newspapers of avowed Western faith report, without any hint of self-critique, how in the course of the “Internet wars” manipulation and lying, as well as the targeting of ethnic and religious minorities, have become the order of the day. This is what is already happening in Syria, against a leadership group now more targeted than ever for resisting Western pressure and intimidation, and refusing to capitulate to Israel by betraying the Palestinian resistance.

But let’s return to the First Opium War, which ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking. This is the first of the “unequal treaties” — that is to say, imposed via gunboat. The following year is the US’s turn. They also send in gunboats in order to achieve the same result as Britain, but manage something more. The 1843 Treaty of Wanghia (in the vicinity of Macau) enshrines for US citizens residing in China the privilege of extra-territoriality: even if guilty of common crimes, they are still outside of Chinese legal jurisdiction. Needless to say this extra-territoriality privilege is not reciprocal; it does not apply to Chinese citizens residing in the US: colonial peoples are one thing, the race of gentlemen is quite another. In the following years and decades, the privilege of extra-territoriality is also extended to Chinese who “dissent” from their country’s religion and culture, who convert to Christianity, and who ideally become honorary citizens of the North American republic or the West in general.

The double standard of legality and jurisdiction is an essential element of colonialism even in the present day: “dissidents” — those who convert to the religion of “human rights” as proclaimed by Washington and Brussels, those potential Quislings in service of the aggressors — are awarded the Nobel Prize or other similar prizes. Immediatley afterwards the West unleashes a frenzied campaign in order to remove the awardees from the jurisdiction of their country of residence, a campaign made more persuasive by embargoes, threats of embargoes, and “humanitarian intervention.”

The double standard of legality and jurisdiction becomes especially clear whenever the International Criminal Court (ICC) intervenes. From its reach are removed US citizens and any of the star-spangled soldiers and mercenaries they’ve stationed around the world. Recently, the international press has reported that the US is ready to block Palestine’s admission to the UN with a veto, partly in order to prevent Palestine from having recourse against Israel at the ICC: one way or another, in practice if not already in theory, it must be clear to everyone that it’s only the colonial peoples who can be tried and condemned. Its timing is in itself eloquent. In 1999, despite not having obtained authorization from the UN, NATO begins its bombardment of Yugoslavia; shortly thereafter, without wasting any time, the ICC proceeds to indict not the aggressors and those responsible for violating the international legal order that emerged de facto after World War II, but Milosevic. In 2011, twisting the UN mandate to care for and protect civilians, NATO resorts to every means to force regime change and secure control of Libya. Following a tried-and-true pattern, the ICC proceeds to indict Gaddafi. The so-called International Criminal Court is a kind of judicial appendage of the NATO firing squad. We could even say that the magistrates in The Hague resemble priests who, without wasting any time consoling the victim, proceed directly to the legitimization and consecration of the executioner.

One final point. With the war against Libya, a new division of labor has emerged within imperialism. Traditional colonial great powers such as Britain and France, availing themselves of Washington’s decisive political and military support, focus on managing the Middle East and Africa, while the US increasingly shifts its military sights to Asia. And so we return to China. Having put an end the century of humiliation that began with the Opium Wars, the Communist leadership understands that it would be foolish and criminal to miss a second rendezvous with technological and military revolution: while it frees hundreds of millions of Chinese from the misery and starvation to which they had been condemned by colonialism, the mighty economic development taking place in the great Asian country also plays a role as a defensive measure against imperialism’s permanent belligerence. Those who, even on the “left,” line up behind Washington and Brussels in order to systematically vilify the Chinese leadership show that they care neither for the cause of improving the living conditions of the masses, nor for the causes of peace and democracy in international relations.

The Voice of Labor posted:

1: possessing no capital

meeting that includes someone in the working class and excludes them from the owning class

2: being too broke to have class consciousness

within the working class we are looking for the members of it who are ultimately detrimental to its aims, those who lack class consciousness. there are two paths towards this, being materially satiated enough to be able to fygm or being materially deprived enough to not really give a gently caress or to not have the luxury of giving a gently caress.

so, yeah, in lieu of something more cogent, I'm going to contend that those are in fact the qualifications

FirstnameLastname posted:

the fygm people have capital, dummy

Zodium posted:

i've been out of country visiting with extended family this week, and got caught up sitting in between some younger family who were discussing economics. it was a typical heated discussion that was essentially about government against free market, with one side advancing the argument that today's problems are caused by crony capitalism, and the other side advancing that they are caused by a lack of regulation. using a simple marxist thought experiment, I was able to calmly show how, over time, a competitive capitalist market necessarily, through competition alone, eliminates competition, and then evolves into political control and imperialism, and thus that both sides were simply touching different parts of the same elephant. this not only brought peace to the dinner table, but led to a couple of them approaching me afterwards to say that what I had explained seemed "on a whole other level" from what they had been exposed to on social media and asked to stay in touch.

In Training posted:

that's more like a proletariat without class consciousness living in an alienated and antisociall system.

In Training posted:

that's more like a proletariat without class consciousness living in an alienated and antisociall system.

The Voice of Labor posted:

within the working class we are looking for the members of it who are ultimately detrimental to its aims, those who lack class consciousness.

there are two paths towards this, being materially satiated enough to be able to fygm or being materially deprived enough to not really give a gently caress or to not have the luxury of giving a gently caress.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

This is the point, I think, where a strong class analysis of our day as part of a not-made-for-academics comprehensive work would be really, really good. Maybe something is in the works already, hopefully

The Voice of Labor posted:

1: possessing no capital

meeting that includes someone in the working class and excludes them from the owning class

2: being too broke to have class consciousness

within the working class we are looking for the members of it who are ultimately detrimental to its aims, those who lack class consciousness. there are two paths towards this, being materially satiated enough to be able to fygm or being materially deprived enough to not really give a gently caress or to not have the luxury of giving a gently caress.

so, yeah, in lieu of something more cogent, I'm going to contend that those are in fact the qualifications

AnimeIsTrash posted:

would you say that programmer for the raytheon corpoeration while being a member of the proletariat has no willingness to develop class consciousness because they directly profit from the system a lumpenproletariat?

dead gay comedy forums posted:

Mao argued that the lumpen vacillated between revolution and reaction, thus it is a vanguard matter to proletarianize them, to seize their declassed condition for the benefit of all. Personally, I think that it is here where we get a shift towards a new categorical problem, more closer and relevant to our present-day economies. A good bunch of people nowadays could be seen as lumpen in the 19th century (especially in the service sector), but wouldn't be actually so because they were proletarianized either by discourse, organic intellectual effort, education or simply emerging class consciousness.

quote:

'This exercise is about more than our desire to read and understand Wretched (as if it were about some abstract world, and not our own); it's about more than our need to understand (the failures of) the anti-colonial struggles on the African continent. This exercise is also about us, and about some of the things that We need to understand and to change in ourselves and our world.'-James Yaki SaylesOne of those who eagerly picked up Fanon in the 60s, who carried out armed expropriations and violence against white settlers, Sayles reveals how, behind the image of Fanon as race thinker, there is an underlying reality of antiracist communist thought.

crepeface posted:

listened to the 1.5 hour RevLeft episode where they discuss the first two chapters of Wretched of the Earth based on the discussion in this thread

https://pca.st/episode/f2ce2461-ab36-44f0-9f30-75f1f7b2a0f5

really good, makes me want to add it to the giant stack of books I'll probably never get around to reading.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

Through Mao's foundation there, the Black Panthers argued in their preliminary class analysis that this did apply in the United States as well even though it forms the core of capitalism, as a consequence of slavery: that idea of leftover I mentioned earlier can be understood here as well, because without a comprehensive structural effort to integrate those masses of laborers into society, they would necessarily form an underclass.