Buck Turgidson posted:

Algund Eenboom posted:

https://www.crossbordertalks.eu/2022/07/29/russia-political-capitalists/ Cool

droll posted:

How is a gig worker abused by a customer differently to a restaurant server?

Algund Eenboom posted:

croup coughfield posted:

a business owner with no employees is the simplest and most direct example of the class.

edit: it does bear mention since for some reason some people look to political and economic theory for guidance on personal and moral matters ("who am i allowed to yell at"): someone who operates an etsy store but also works for a wage is not of this class. thats a proletarian with a side hustle. if the etsy store pays all their bills and they dont have to go work for a boss, thats a different story

croup coughfield posted:

the etsy-pintrest industrial complex is doing marketing and payment middleman work and the artisan is paying them for it. you can still try to sell your art locally or through your own online presence or what-have you. whether or not thats feasible due to the business practices of the aforementioned cartel is another conversation

saying "well my wife and i cant be a part of the bad classes because we're good people!" is doing the exact thing i was rolling my eyes about in my edit.

regardless of whether or not you perceive social class as some kind of referendum on someone's personal morality, you're still only focusing on the money. like the amount or whatever. a person belongs to a particular class not due to their money, but due to their relationship to the means of production in a capitalist society. telling me your wife is a contractor with no further context (like where her money actually comes from) tells me nothing about her class or class interests. telling me how much money you make is irrelevant beyond whether its enough money to be your primary source of income. much more important is how you make that money. who pays you and why? do you get your income from multiple clients/customers or just one? what is the nature of the obligation they're paying to discharge and who has control of that obligation? its these pressures that direct an individual's interests and consequent behavior.

you really gotta stop conflating politics and personal morality. no offense.

croup coughfield posted:

the sole proprietor cannot be ejected into the street to die with no recourse based on the whims of the boss. they own their means of production and have total control of the firm. thats what makes the petit bourgeoisie the petit bourgeoisie.

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

it sucks that most westerners thinks stalin is tied with hitler for historys greatest monster because his writing is incredibly accessible, digestible and just plain fun to read. Foundations of Leninism is a perfect entry text but good luck not freaking out the squares by recommending it

croup coughfield posted:

i think the most important thing we can do as socialists in the imperial core is sit in arrogant judgement of socialist nations and their ideologies. also, we should spent the rest of our time bitching about other tendencies

croup coughfield posted:

i dont care about your opinion.

unwantedplatypus posted:

Voting isn't a sin guys. Casting a ballot for a dem isn't a morally corrupting act. Electioneering for bourgeois politics is a waste of time; but if your position is actively that people shouldn't vote; well that's pretty stupid. Why not? Use every lever you have to push society in the direction you'd prefer.

unwantedplatypus posted:

And I don't feel any need to develop a thicker skin to fit in with forums culture. The forums culture here is part of why the userbase is older, maler, and full of computer touchers. I do and have discuss marxist ideas when I'm not being dogpiled for caring about things or deviating from thread opinion. This entire "discussion" is because I wanted to talk about a recent CPUSA event and the first post was bitching about them being libs because of their stance on voting. I somewhat defend them, and suddenly we're talking about my supposed opinions on voting and its efficacy rather than the event run by American communists. This is the culture you want me to fit in better to? Nah

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

the author of the article published on the CPUSA website about that was ricardo alcaron, who was one of the original cuban revolutionaries and later the country's foreign minister and ambassador to the united nations, and i think the reasoning behind that was to continue the relative period of normalization that began under obama. unfortunately, that ship sailed when trump won and biden has largely kept the renewed sanctions regime intact. my sense is that the main website has taken over for the role that "political affairs" used to have, and it's interesting reading through archives of that, as it's where they used to publish articles by members of foreign communist parties.

quote:

Many leaders of labor, civil rights and other democratic grassroots movements, including democratic socialists, are leaders within the Democratic Party.

To call for a vote against Clinton is to separate oneself from this electoral coalition.

Secondly, it’s dangerous to declare so-called “safe states.” This election has been volatile and another terrorist attack, mass shooting or some calamity could make the outcome unpredictable.

In some blue “safe states” the GOP and right wing controls the governorships and state legislatures and in some cases have elected Republican U.S. Senators and have been busy passing voter suppression laws. Since voters often vote down a straight line a Clinton landslide in those states is need to sweep out of office the maximum number of GOP right wingers who now have a lock on sate governments across the country.

Trump has been dismissed at every turn as a “passing phenomena” and “unelectable”. He has not only survived, but his extremist message resonates among millions and he has erased Clinton’s fundraising advantage.

Left and progressive activists shouldn’t make the same mistake as the pundits. Trump is a clear and present danger, an unpredictable candidate in an unpredictable election.

“Safe state” advocates forget the role of Ralph Nader and the Green Party in the 2000 elections. They were the difference in the vote in New Hampshire and Florida. The rest is history.

Thirdly, mandates are real. This election will be a national referendum on racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia. The aim should be a landslide defeat of Trump and a decisive rejection of hate.

The election of Clinton as the first woman president would make history. A landslide would not end sexism, but it would represent a mighty blow just as the election of President Obama was a blow against racism. It would advance democracy.

MLSM posted:

Would this thread recommend Louis Althusser, specifically his books For Marx and Reading Capital? I know the dude was crazy and killed his wife but I keep seeing his works recommended on places like verso and others.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

What's a good source for the history of the American labor movement?

croup coughfield posted:

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Maybe there is a better thread for but how did the terms "authoritarianism" and "totalitarianism" come to be ascribed as characteristics of communism?

quote:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.

animist posted:

yeah that's what inspired on contradiction

e: oh also I enjoyed those totalitarianism pdfs posted a few pages back, ty whoever posted those

animist posted:

lmao wait it was this page I just have goldfish brain

Rhugor posted:

It has been years since I’ve listened to Rev Left, but I remember them being pretty anti psychology due to a host’s bad personal experiences. They kinda failed to make the connection that capitalism kinda forces the field into directions and treatments that aren’t always best or most useful, and doubled down on their own personal experience.

Again, its been awhile since I’ve listened and it may have changed, but the outright immediate dismissal of a science as essentially bad always sat poorly with me.

Materially, as someone that works in the field, its pretty blatant that most “mental illness” diagnoses are exacerbated or caused by bad material conditions, poverty and alienation. Clinical depression and anxiety are basically “what does alienation do to a person physically and mentally?”.

I might be biased due to working in the field, but its also the easiest method for Agitating and a ton of therapy is just pointing out contradictions and helping people resolve them. Anecdotally, it has moved a significant chunk of my clients from complete political apathy to “hey yeah what is up with our societal and cultural contradictions?”.

Unfortunately, I’m in a rural area so there’s no real left organizing to point people to as everything “left” in NA is mostly Urban focused if even coherent at all.

Fish of hemp posted:

Today. USSR is not Russia.

I mean if Žižek is wrong about NATO and Europe (and a liberal), that leaves Russia as the dominating military and energy power in Europe. How this would be better for the cause of marxism than NATO backed Europe?

genericnick posted:

A Russia that has a political system that makes it exceedingly difficult to scrounge up the soldiers to militarily dominate its nearest neighbor. But, sure, their going push on to Berlin.

MLSM posted:

Lol

This nonsense was debunked quite well on the same page:

Cuttlefush posted:

are you serious

Epic High Five posted:

You cant just say you would argue something and then not argue it in the Marxism thread, that's secular heresy

croup coughfield posted:

its been 30 years, i don't think theyre gonna do the meme

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Group_(NATO_Parliamentary_Assembly)

Westerners can join the NATO socialist working group.

croup coughfield posted:

he thinks the russians would retvrn to socialism if we give the petroleum oligarchs more gas profits and i think thats stupid and not worth arguing with

PERPETUAL IDIOT posted:

Does anyone know of a good book or even long article about life under Socialism in the Seychelles? Seems like a very interesting case study.

croup coughfield posted:

my man was a good general and a passionate socialist revolutionary with deep love for the people. he was an accomplished theorist as well. he was just also a loud-mouthed weirdo and if cspam posters cant empathize with that i just dont know what to say

gradenko_2000 posted:

I mean yeah it was my dad that introduced me to WSWS and got me a book from David North, SEP chairperson, so if we have to genuinely do this I think I could hack it

they've also had a good line on COVID throughout and I can respect that

EDIT: they've also done a bunch of good articles exposing the Nazism suffusing the Ukrainian state

mawarannahr posted:

here’s some source material

croup coughfield posted:

cmon

Adjectivist Philosophy posted:

I think it's tough to argue in the materialist analysis thread that the class of people experiencing an above average amount of material stability are the ones "who actually got it the hardest, y'all" (e: a little bit of hyperbole in my part for sure)

Calico Heart posted:

If people would like a light and comedic touch of jovial leftism this fine Christmas, may I present: "Scrooge wasn't THAT bad!" It's a video I made chronicling the bizarre December tradition of op-ed writers defending Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. If I may say so myself, I think it turned out pretty well! It even has a few surprise appearences from some very special guests!

Any watchtime/subs/likes/comments are much appreciated and feed the algorithm beast.