marxism

some good fucking food (despite endnotes)

Weak support for the title and "no labor aristocracy in the west" can get fucked, but otherwise i'm close to agreeing with greek comrade with general sense of unease

Why did Marx believe in Communism?

Marx had argued that capitalism is initially founded on private labor and private appropriation. In other words, capitalism is founded on small enterprise. People labor within their own businesses (private labor), and they then appropriate the wealth of their own business for themselves (private appropriation).

Over time, Marx argued that capitalism has a natural tendency for the scale of enterprises to grow. This leads to small enterprises to be replaced by big enterprises, or, in other words, private labor being replaced by socialized labor. Dozens, hundreds, even hundreds of thousands of workers cease to work in isolation and begin working co-operatively in larger and larger enterprises.

Despite private labor being gradually replaced with socialized labor, appropriation of the fruits of that labor remains private. A bigger and bigger part of the population labors collectively, but a portion of the population separated from them, that is continually growing smaller and smaller, decides what is done with all the wealth they produced.

Marx saw this as a societal contradiction, and only sustainable when it’s not at a very large scale. If society becomes too “polarized,” if the contradiction between socialized labor and private appropriation grows too large, then it would no longer be sustainable, there would be a break, and the only way to resolve it would be to replace private appropriation with socialized appropriation, in other words, to nationalize enterprises so that the collective laborers also control what is done with the fruits of their own labor.

Marx believed that capitalism, as it develops, has an inherent tendency for enterprises to grow larger all the time due to technological advancements. So he did not see this as a question of “if” it would happen, but “when.”

Why did the Soviets Implement Communism the way they did?

Marx’s argument inherently implies that there is a relation between the amount of enterprises that could be nationalized and the size of those enterprises, which is also related to the total amount of development of the economy. It would actually contradict Marxism to nationalize all enterprises immediately, because the purpose of nationalization is to resolve the contradiction between socialized labor and private appropriation. Nationalizing a small enterprise would only introduce a new contradiction, between that of private labor and socialized appropriation.

However, the problem is that the separation between a “small” and “big” enterprise is not clearly defined and there is not agreement between Marxists. While Marxists tend to argue that we should have a scientific approach to political economy, it is very difficult, and probably not even possible, to entirely abandoned moral viewpoints as well.

A lot of communists become communist not solely because of economic arguments but also moral ones. Utopian socialists even prior to Marx focused their arguments on criticism of the bourgeoisie and their exploitation of working people. In fact, because it is difficult to actually explain to people Marxian political economy as it is quite a lengthy and complex subject, a lot of Marxists often have adopted these moralistic slogans as an easier way to rally people.

These moralistic slogans, however, have an impact on people. Because the line between “small” and “big” is somewhat vague, people who are heavily influenced by the moralistic rhetoric may be inclined to exaggerate what counts as a “big” enterprise to include as much as possible, without really trying to analyze the question in a scientific way.

Personally, I see the Soviets since Stalin as having done exactly this. They nationalized almost everything in the economy, and were clear in their writings that they were trying to “abolish the exploitation of man by man.” They never once tried to present any sort of scientific arguments to why they thought this was actually economically achievable, but were largely moralistically motivated.

The only thing they did not nationalize was the kolkhoz sector, and that was because it was so underdeveloped, so isolated and dispersed, that they could not even figure out a plausible way to achieve it. Even then, in their quest to abolition “exploitation of man by man,” they still intervened to collectivize them into farming co-operatives.

Why did the Chinese abandon this model?

Initially, when Mao came to power, he adopted market economic policies, and in fact criticized the USSR for not using the markets enough.

However, the USSR’s rapid collectivization seemed to be having initial positive impact on their growth, which was partially true but also partially exaggerated as the USSR tried to hide some of the problems that came with it.

Ultimately, this led Mao to change his mind and adopt Soviet policies towards rapid collectivization, embracing a sort of “communist wind” that communism could be fully completed in a short amount of time.

When this led to economic hardship, this caused communists in China to split into two camps.

The first camp is Mao’s camp. He argued the problem was a “cultural” one. The political system, the shared social ideology, the culture, etc, all these things he viewed as having been corrupted by capitalist elements. Hence, he believed China’s adoption of the Stalin Model from the USSR could be made to work if they had a “cultural revolution,” a radical transformation of the country’s culture.

The second camp, Deng’s camp, instead did not believe the Stalin Model could work at all. China was even less developed and more poor than the USSR, in fact when Mao took power initially they were basically the poorest country on earth. The idea they had developed enough to achieve the full abolition of private property was just an absurdity beyond words.

The first camp initially had an advantage because all the moralistic rhetoric was on their side. They could condemn anyone who talked about China having to maintain some private economy as “betraying the revolution,” of “supporting exploitation of the workers,” of being a “capitalist roader,” etc. The second camp was seen initially as the killjoys.

However, the first camp gradually fell out of favor when their Cultural Revolution failed to make the Stalin Model work, and the Cultural Revolution itself was a disaster, leading to a lot of chaos, which caused mass death, and ultimately towards the end and caused the economy to start to decline.

This culminated in the Gang of Four declaring that they didn’t even care about development, they it was “better to be poor under socialism than to be rich under capitalism”! This really shows the moralistic bent to Mao’s factions, they were more interested in the morality of abolishing all aspects of capitalism rather than just building a system that actually works.

Eventually, people got tired of the chaos and instability and this lead to Deng Xiaoping’s faction gaining power, and they implemented the policy of “grasping the large, letting go of the small.” In other words, to privatize all the small-to-medium sized enterprises that Mao had nationalized, but to maintain public control over the large enterprises.

This does create a conundrum, though, because most of China’s enterprises are small enterprises. If they privatized them, they’d privatize most their economy. Some would conclude that means socialism is impossible for China, which is actually a position some Marxists even to this day hold, some Marxists think China is just too poor to have socialism and that only western countries are developed enough for socialism.

However, the argument against this actually goes back to Rudolf Hilferding’s writings back in 1910. Hilferding argued that enterprises are not equal. If you nationalize, let’s say, a bouncy ball factory, this will give you less influence in the economy than if you nationalize, let’s say, a rubber factory. Why? Because the bouncy ball factory, as well as millions of other factories, depend on the rubber factory, but almost nothing depends on the bouncy ball factory.

Hilferding thus argued that nationalizing large enterprises at the “heights” of the economy like a rubber factory gives you far more authority and influence in the economy than nationalizing the small bouncy ball factory, and hence, he did not think you actually need to even have the majority of enterprises nationalized to control the economy, only the overwhelmingly majority of large enterprises, because everything else depends on those enterprises and thus would be “indirectly socialized.”

That’s how China still is to this day. People will often point out the fact that 60% of China’s GDP output is from the private sector and conclude that means China “abandoned Marxism.” What they don’t also realize that is 60% of China’s GDP output also comes from small-to-medium sized enterprises, meaning that the overwhelming majority of large enterprises are public.

Why Do Some Communists Love China in Mao’s time But Attack Everything Else?

The Stalin Model even in the USSR was showing cracks pretty early on, leading to the Soviets to try and reform it and change it after Stalin’s death. Mao was still alive at this time, and he saw how the Soviets were gradually moving away from the model that he had come to believe in, and so that’s why he started to formulate the idea about the Cultural Revolution to prevent that from happening in China.

Mao did more than this, though, he also accused the USSR of having abandoned socialism, of being overtaken in a bourgeois counter-revolution. In fact, under Khrushchev, Mao described the USSR as a “Hiterlite dictatorship” of “the big bourgeoisie” and said it had become a “socialist imperialist” and “capitalist state.”

If the USSR had become a capitalist state equivalent to Nazi Germany, then what did that make its allies? It made its allies aligned with Nazism, it made them horrible and worthy of condemnation. Vietnam and Cuba both sided with the USSR, which made them fall other this very same condemnation.

This also meant the USSR was something worth combating, and this led China under Mao to begin supporting Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia because they were opposed to the USSR.

After Mao died and his faction lost control, the PRC gradually adopted a non-interventionist approach in order to focus on economic construction rather than ideological dissemination. While they still even supported the Cambodia guerrillas for a short period of time, this too gradually died down, eventually causing the Cambodian guerrillas movement to wither.

Some communist guerrilla groups in various countries, such as Peru, India, and the Philippines, did not like this idea that China stopped supporting guerrilla movements, because they are guerrilla movements and want support from China. So they started to argue that China had undergone the same transition Mao said the USSR underwent, that China today must be an imperialist capitalist regime, and that’s why it’s not lending support to them.

This makes these guerrilla groups, the modern day “Maoists,” view themselves a direct continuation of Mao Zedong and the Sino- side of the Sino-Soviet Split. They see the USSR as having been overthrown in a bourgeois counter-revolution, and that Mao tried to stop it in China but China was overthrown in a bourgeois counter-revolution as well.

Since the USSR was supposed equivalent to Nazi Germany back then, they also condemn its allied, they claim Cuba isn’t a socialist country, and they claim Vietnam isn’t a socialist country, still to this day. But they will then turn around and defend the Khmer Rouge as “genuine” communist revolution.

So, in their mind, the only “true” communist revolution was USSR until Stalin died, and China until Mao died, and then everything else has been a bourgeoisie Hitlerite dictatorship. (To my knowledge, there is no group that says they like Mao’s China but not the USSR at any point in time, they usually say they like the USSR up until the death of Stalin.)

They don’t actually acknowledge that the reason every socialist country abandoned the Stalin Model was because they couldn’t actually get it to be long-term sustainable, and instead insist that Mao’s Cultural Revolution could’ve “saved” it if only they “had done it early enough.” They think Mao’s only flaw was that he “discovered” the Cultural Revolution too late, and if it was implemented for a much longer time, then at some point, the Stalin Model would actually start to work… somehow.

There was a Maoist revolution in Nepal but just like China, they ended up abandoning that model very quickly. I would presume if the “Maoists” in the Philippines or in India ever take state power, they would abandon it fairly quickly as well. They refuse to acknowledge why it was abandoned and delude themselves into thinking it was just a cultural failure.

from this quora post

Juche was inspired by Marxism-Leninism but not the same.

From what I understand from reading a few books on the subject, Juche seems to be an ideology that is supposed to be specific to socialism in the same way liberal ideology is specific to capitalism.

The fact is, most people don’t deeply care about economics and philosophy, most people aren’t going to sit around for hours and hours each day reading through hundreds of philosophical and socioeconomic textbooks to gain a deep understanding of these subjects.

Most people instead just form very general opinions. Capitalist societies thus focus on not propagating a very deep and complex philosophical and socioeconomic ideology, but a very simple one, liberalism, which talks vaguely about “individual freedom” and is easily understandable by the general public without having to read a single book on the subject.

Marxism is very very complex, and even in societies that try to teach in public schools, most people still don’t fully end up grasping it. It’s sort of like how people regularly say that they have forgotten all the mathematics or the foreign language they were taught to speak in public school, they only memorize certain phrases to pass their exams and then entirely stop caring to remember it once they graduate, because ultimately most people just don’t care.

Juche is supposed to a simpler ideology specific to socialism in the same way liberalism is a simpler ideology specific to capitalism, that is supposed to promote socialism not in terms of some deep complex socioeconomic and scientific theory, but in terms of a much simpler ideological formulation based on a few key principles which everyone can understand.

The main takeaway Juche has from Marxism is the idea of humanity “making their own history.” This was a term Friedrich Engels used to compare capitalist society to the potential future human society.

Before humanity came to harness fire, they could only react to fire. If they encountered fire in nature, they might run from it, but they could not control it. Over time, humanity has learned what causes fire, how to create it, and how to utilize it for human purposes.

You can think of electricity as well. Humanity used to just see lightning and run, or get a static shock and not be sure what caused it, and ignore it. They could only react to it. But as we’ve developed a greater understanding of electricity, we can now control it, to utilize it for the benefit of human civilization.

Engels had pointed out that there is a similarity between natural phenomena and social phenomena in this regard. In the same way that when humanity had lacked an understanding of natural phenomena and could thus only react to them, humankind does not fully understand its own social structure.

Take, for example, the laws of supply and demand. Capitalist societies do not fully grasp all the causes to supply and demand, and they thus are incapable of actually predicting them. As a result, individual businesses can only react to market forces. They do not control the market but instead react to changes in the social system that are far beyond their personal comprehension or control.

Things like this cause human societies to be somewhat “anarchistic.” Even the central government in capitalist societies cannot fully understand or predict what is going on capitalist societies, it instead just reacts to changes in the economic system and tries to make general corrections, but it does not control the economic system. As Engels once put it, "What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."

The “anarchy of production,” in some sense, takes on a mind of its own. If you build a capitalist society, you cannot fully predict the outcome. It may sometimes grow, may sometimes crash, may lead to rapid industrialization, and may even lead to rapid de-industrialization. You just have to hope it turns out well.

A socialist system attempts to overcome this anarchy of production by making human economies deliberate. The whole socioeconomic sphere would be meticulously and scientifically planned from the ground up.

If, for example, you see a potato with a specific price in a store, the potato producer may say they set that price as a reaction to the market. The potato business themselves may have no idea why the market price of potatoes is what it is, but they don’t really even need to know, they just have to make sure they can sell at or below market price and balance their internal budgets, and they’ll be fine.

In a planned economy and socialist system, if you wanted to know the price of potatoes, you could pull up a spreadsheet of potato production that goes down its entire supply chain and all the resources that went into it and the algorithm used to compute all those resources and understand exactly why the potato was priced the way it is.

There would be no market it was reacting to, rather, the price would be deliberate, and there would be a full accounting of why the price is set to what it is.

The entire socioeconomic system would be deliberate, it would all be meticulously scientifically and rationally planned. The political system would not just be a body that reacts to changes in the economic system that are largely outside of its control, trying to nudge them in the right direction, but instead everything that occurs in the economic system would be a deliberate and intentional plan carried out by the political system.

This is what Engels meant when he talked about, in socialism, humankind would “make their own history.” The development of human societies would become something entirely deliberately carried out by the conscious will of humanity, rather than much of it being the result of unintentional developments outside of anyone’s control.

Korean communists particularly liked this notion because it fit in well with their strong beliefs of national liberation. Korea was colonized by Japan, and as Japan was falling, the USA invaded Korea and outlawed any attempt at forming a grassroots democratic government in Korea and began to carry out massacres against pro-democracy protestors (e.g. the Autumn Uprising), then established a puppet autocratic regime that would only increase the massacres against those who wanted democracy (see Bodo League Massacre, Jeju Uprising Massacre).

Korean communists did not want to be subjected to foreign powers outside of their control, they wanted the Korean people to, well, “make their own history,” and not have it made by foreign powers.

Even if the Korean communists managed to kick out the foreign imperialists, if they established a capitalist system, there is no guarantee the foreign imperialists could not take over the country through economic means, through buying up Korean means of production and subjugating the country through economic dominance.

This led to the “self-reliance” aspect of Juche, which is really just a rephrasing of the idea of the Korean people “making their own history.” Marxists see political power as ultimately resting in control over production, so the only way to make sure the Korean people, as a whole, can “make their own history,” is if the Korean people as a whole control their own economic base, i.e. the economy is controlled by the Korean public and not foreign countries or some elite faction of the Korean public, but the Korean people as a whole.

Juche basically takes all the complex ideas of Marxism-Leninism, the thousands of books about philosophical and socioeconomic writings, and puts these aside. The general public does not need to fully understand this, because from their point of view, if Marxism-Leninism is correct and correctly predicts that socialism is the next stage of human history, then rallying people around certain basic principles of socialism should be enough.

They instead take the idea of building an economy where the people are the creator’s of their own history, the “masters of their own destiny,” and make this the central point to rally upon. It simplifies socialism down to just the liberation of humankind, with the abolition of one class exploiting another, with one country exploiting another, and the replacement of all of this with a system in which everyone participates in creating their own future, in writing their own history.

The Juche idea is, in a word, an ideology that the masses of the people are the master of the revolution and construction and they have the strength to push them. In other words, it is an ideology that man is the master of his destiny and he has the power to carve out his destiny.

While it is inspired from Marxism, it is not Marxist, but its own independent ideology. It does not necessarily fully replace Marxism either, as people in Korea still study Marxism. However, Marxism is more-so relegated to the social sciences, it becomes not the ideological center of the state but instead something people study who are particularly interested in the social sciences, it becomes relegated to academia so to speak, while Juche instead has replaced Marxism as the ideological center of the revolution in Korea.

We have seen something pretty similar show up in many Marxist-Leninist states. Marxism-Leninism is so complex and so academic that it’s often supplemented with other ideologies because it is difficult to get the general population to fully grasp it. In Cuba for example, they ended up merging Marxism with “humanism,” where humanistic rhetoric tends to play a supplementary role in the state’s messaging in order to appeal to people in general. The Cuban constitution both describes the Cuban state as one working towards the construction of both “socialism” and “humanism” and that it follows “humanistic principles.”

Lenin himself in his book What is to be Done? had made it clear he didn’t believe the general public could come to easily understand the deep complexity of Marxist ideas because they were developed through academics who had spent their life researching the social sciences. He thus advocated that the socialist revolution would have to be led by a “vanguard party” where the people in the Party are compromised of those who have the deepest understanding of these ideas.

This inherently implies that there are gradations in society of how well people understand Marxism, with some people understanding it well, and some people not all, and many people in between, and that somehow the “vanguard party” has to appeal to the masses which, if the vanguard party is defined as those who understand Marxism well, then by definition the masses outside the party they are trying to appeal to don’t understand Marxism well.

This has lead every Marxist revolution to seek some way to resolve this contradiction, some way to build a socialist system with broad population support, where by definition only a subsection of the population even understandings the ideology the whole revolution is centered around.

Different socialist and communist parties have tackled this problem in different ways. In Korea, it has been tackled by replacing Marxism with a more general ideology that ultimately calls for the same end-goal but without all the complex academic baggage and that appeals to broad sentiments of the Korean people for national liberation and autonomy. In Cuba, they have tackled it by merging Marxism with other philosophical ideas so that they have a broader pool of rhetoric to pull from depending on who they’re talking to.

from this quora post

https://invidious.reallyaweso.me/watch?v=YqIAF8uXhRA&listen=1

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3265315

Fun little biography of Marx

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5342816

Do you think that you can help bring about the revolution or do you just want a minor less risky role? What kind of role can you participate on and die with a smile in your death bed when you think about how you lived your life?

podcast well established with lots of good episodes

book in progress

interested to hear your thoughts....

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3082851

excerpt:

Due to its interconnections with imperialism, racism, and capitalism, international development needed to be thoroughly transformed. Sankara discontinued the United States Peace Corps program in Burkina Faso in 1987. A Mexican American agroecologist invited to visit rural villages at the time recalled that a small group of American volunteers had driven a 4×4 vehicle over a meticulously dug irrigation canal, destroying hours of labour. Sankara was reportedly furious. The episode revealed the duplicities embedded in the Peace Corp programme during the Cold War years: naïve, inexperienced American youth sent to various destinations across the world for personal skills and career development and a fair bit of soft power diplomacy as ‘good will’ from the anti-communist US government. But too often good intentions devolve to dangerous outcomes, and often with little accountability. Sankara requested that the Peace Corps funds be channelled into an account overseen by a Burkinabé group or collective. This suggestion was rejected, and Sankara discontinued the programme in Burkina Faso. He was convinced that “Aid must go in the direction of strengthening our sovereignty, not undermining it. Aid should go in the direction of destroying aid. All aid that kills aid is welcome in Burkina Faso. But we will be compelled to abandon all aid that creates a welfare mentality” (Sankara, “One Color: African Unity,” August 1984).

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5149526

Video: https://tv.cctv.cn/2024/07/20/VIDEURgvhNytIhzH9EIPlHJ3240720.shtml

https://english.news.cn/20240720/9db9a2e30b8e4775855f29da1c75946e/c.html

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chinese president, went to the Embassy of Vietnam in China on Saturday to mourn the passing of General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong.

Praising Trong as a staunch Marxist and a great leader of the CPV and the Vietnamese people, Xi said that Trong had devoted himself entirely to the CPV and the country, to the Vietnamese people and to the cause of socialism in Vietnam, and had been deeply respected and admired by the party, military and people of Vietnam.

Xi recalled that over the past decade, he and Trong had maintained close contact and developed a deep camaraderie, and that last year they jointly announced the elevation of bilateral ties to a China-Vietnam community with a shared future that carries strategic significance, a milestone in bilateral ties.

"The passing of Comrade Nguyen Phu Trong has deprived us of a promoter of China-Vietnam relations and a companion for the cause of socialism, and we are deeply saddened," said Xi.

He said that Trong's outstanding contribution to the relations between the two parties and the two countries and to the cause of the global socialist movement will always be remembered.

Xi stressed that the CPC and the Chinese government firmly support the CPV in uniting and leading the Vietnamese people to develop socialism that suits Vietnam's national conditions.

It is believed that under the strong leadership of the CPV Central Committee, the Vietnamese people will surely be able to turn grief into strength and continue to make greater achievements in the cause of reform, opening up and socialist construction, Xi said.

He said he firmly believes that China and Vietnam will continue to work together to make profound and solid progress in building the China-Vietnam community of a shared future.

http://www.news.cn/politics/leaders/20240720/eff201917dba40b28fc4d30958b61c43/c.html

习近平吊唁越共中央总书记阮富仲逝世

　　新华社北京7月20日电（记者杨依军）7月20日下午4时许，中共中央总书记、国家主席习近平来到越南驻华使馆，吊唁越共中央总书记阮富仲逝世。

　　习近平来到越南驻华使馆吊唁大厅。大厅里，摆放着阮富仲的遗像。习近平、李强、赵乐际、王沪宁、蔡奇、丁薛祥、李希送的花圈，中共中央、全国人大、国务院、全国政协、中央军委以及中联部、外交部、国防部、北京市委和市政府、有关人民团体送的花圈摆放在遗像前。

　　习近平走到阮富仲遗像前驻足默哀，向遗像三鞠躬，在吊唁簿上留言并签名。

　　习近平指出，阮富仲同志是坚定的马克思主义者，是越南共产党和越南人民的伟大领导者，他把毕生精力献给了越南党和国家，献给了越南人民，献给了越南社会主义事业，深受越南全党全军全国人民拥护和爱戴。十多年来，我和阮富仲同志交往密切，结下了深厚的同志情。具有里程碑意义的是，去年我们一道宣布构建具有战略意义的中越命运共同体。阮富仲同志的逝世使我们失去了一位中越关系推动者和社会主义事业同行者，令我们非常悲痛。我们将永远铭记阮富仲同志为两党两国关系和世界社会主义运动事业作出的杰出贡献。

　　习近平强调，中国党和政府坚定支持越南共产党团结带领越南人民走符合本国国情的社会主义康庄大道。我相信，在越共中央坚强领导下，越南人民一定能化悲痛为力量，在革新开放和社会主义建设事业中不断取得新的更大成就。我坚信，中越双方一定会继续一道努力，推动中越命运共同体建设走深走实。

　　越南驻华大使范星梅表示，习近平总书记前来吊唁，中共中央第一时间向越共中央发出唁电，体现了中国党、政府对越中两党两国关系的高度重视，体现了习近平总书记对阮富仲同志的特殊感情，越方深受感动，深表感谢。阮富仲同志生前高度重视对华关系，为发展越中友谊付出巨大心血、作出巨大贡献。越方将继承阮富仲同志遗志，落实好越中两党两国最高领导人达成的重要共识，坚持将发展对华友好合作作为越南对外政策的战略选择和头等优先，推动具有战略意义的越中命运共同体建设继续向前发展。

　　蔡奇、王毅等参加吊唁活动。

I'm taking this semi seriously even though it's almost fully a joke. Like obviously Charli is not a political genius, and is of course corrupted by being way too rich, British, straight, white, cis. Idk I still believe she is a genuinely wholesome person, watch the (terrible) Hulu documentary about the making of How I'm Feeling Now if you don't believe me. And wholesomeness is one of the spirits of socialism. Not like Disney wholesome, just having some sense of what it takes to be a good person and putting some thought and effort into improving at that skill, that's wholesomeness to me.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5125651

Hey.

I put in the code, but it doesn't bring it up.

Can someone help fetch it for me?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5079215

Here (found these on a Discord I frequent):

Enjoy.

Looks like Latin America and my time in Bolivia.

The People's Forum is hosting summer school for people interested in becoming revolutionary organizers! I think this class is incredibly important and relevant in our current moment, and I wanted to plug it here because I think a lot of you will be interested in it as well. The classes are hybrid in-person (NYC) and virtual (Zoom), and recordings of previous classes as well as other materials are available online.

Classes are Tuesday/Thursday from 6:30pm-8:30pm ET, and Saturday at a time I don't fully remember, but I think is 1pm-3pm ET. And of course, you can always review the recordings at a time that works better for you! That means the next section is tonight (Thursday, July 11th)!

I saw the first class on Tuesday, and it was immediately obvious that the content and presentation of this material are extremely valuable, and I hope you all feel the same.

Register for free at the link below:

https://peoplesforum.org/events/revolutionary-summer-school-2024/

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2921799

I've just finished reading "How Marxism Works" by Chris Harman, as part of Prolewiki's Absolute Beginner Reading List, and I wanted people's thoughts on its section about Marxism and Feminism. This edition is from the year 2000, and this section feels like the weakest section in the entire pamphlet.

It feels like a very surface-level dive into the topic, and I'm wondering if I'm simply picking up on a lack of familiarity by the author. I will admit, as well, that this is a weak topic for myself. I know that there were Bolshevik women who had to advocate for their inclusion in the state after the October Revolution. Their admission led to huge social progress and amenities for working-class women, but there is no mention of them by name in this section. There is no mention of intersectionality, either, from the 'Feminist' side of the section, but lots of focus on the "separatist ideas" of Feminism. No mention of works such as Angela Davis's Women, Race, & Class (which is on my reading list).

Queer Marxism, Feminist Marxism, often feel like an under discussed subsection of Marxist thought (to me anyway, as a cishet man, who could probably do better about seeking this information out). I have to imagine that, being a woman, being queer, being non-white, and looking at Marxism and its focus on class can feel like an alienating experience to some. To have your struggles collapsed and folded together into the "Class Struggle" with no real mention or notion of what life will look like for you and your intersection with society at large after the elimination of the class society must feel like someone telling you to "take it on faith" that things will improve for you. That somehow, in a post capitalist state, the biases and prejudices are simply washed away from the minds of the masses. You would need to take a step further, to study the history of places like the Soviet Union and its efforts in decolonization to get an idea of what that looks like. This could also be my own shallowness showing regarding theory, however.

So, what are your thoughts? What are some historical perspectives I should be seeking out that flesh out this section? What are some works of Theory within the realms of Women's Liberation, Black Liberation, and Queer Liberation I should consume to expand the foundation for my world view?

Thanks!

Separation of concerns is a basic concept in computer science. Djikstra's original explanation sounds strangely similar to dialectics, to me

I mean, it's not exactly the same (dialectics are much richer) but it is indeed interesting that we only "discovered" this in 1974. Although to be honest, the idea is probably older than Hegel.

Das Kapital basically follows this structure. Various aspects of the capitalist mode of production are viewed in isolation, from one limited perspective. Only after examining each perspective, and the interrelation between them, can one really understand the entire system.

Saw this comment on the commie side of TikTok. My gut tells me this is ultraleft bs, but perhaps my fellow hexbears can educate me on this discussion which I’m sure is not new.

I don’t see how a poor American on food stamps is responsible, even though a systematic analysis reveals that international superexploitation is a thing.

The American proletariat can and should organize in any case. I don’t see how Americans can build any sort of socialist movement if any organization at all is accused of being hypocritical.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2805670

To give a bit more detail, I've been attempting to bridge the gap (however wide or short it may be) between Queer Theory and Marxism. I feel as though the two most common views of contemporary Marxists on queer theory are incorrect.

1. Reactionaries who proclaim that Queer Theory is somehow monolithically idealist, usually having never read a shred of it, should be dismissed out of hand. No need to elaborate further on this.
2. We should be critical of those who simply combine Marxism and Queer Theory (whichever tendencies of both they most align with) like toppings on a sandwich. Queer Marxism is something that needs to be developed, yet it requires more than upholding both as distinct yet compatible entities. We must synthesize them, likely transforming both to some degree in the process.

I don't wish to fall into the trap of naïve originality, aka writing theory on a matter without studying that which has already been written. So, I'm looking for two things. Firstly, any freely accessible (I don't have the funds to buy/subscribe) theory on the question of Queer Marxism. Secondly, your personal thoughts (Brief or lengthy as they may be) on the subject.

Thanks in advance, –Zero

I regularly see trots being memed about because "they do nothing apart from writing newspapers", but to me from their viewpoint (and as an anarchist) it totally makes sense and is a sympathetic view how it should be the workers leading the fight towards a revolution and the vanguard should stand aside and take the role of advisors (hence the newspapers) rather than leaders.

I feel like i'm missing something but i don't know what.