SweetLava

This implies that the US never stopped committing genocide, and now even the most far-left American looks identical to the average Israeli leftist. At least in my view. But this view seems consistent with many others studying the same exact problem.

That begs the question, really: if we saw mass unionization and people going on strike in Israel, or if we saw a left-wing opposition win against Netanyahu and the far-right, or if a bunch of Israelis starting showing support for people in Africa... would we be cheering them on and getting excited? Does it really matter what they read, whether that be Lenin, Marx, Engels, etc., if many of their "Marxist" forefathers read the same work while gunning down Palestinians in 1947, or stealing their homes in 1948?

Better yet, if you were at a concert and your friends fell victim to an "attack" by some natives, would you have more sympathy for your friends, or for the people that attacked them? Regardless of whether or not it served some broader strategy?

And when you consider the many indigenous people who go on to serve in the US military, or the vocal minority that align with the current (and past) administration(s) of the US, would you use that as an excuse in the same manner Israelis point to Ethiopian, Arab and Muslim, Druze, etc. participants in Israeli society and/or military operation to the same extent?

Should we just ask right-wing Navajos what they think, and throw our hands in the air saying "see, indigenous people don't care, it's not a real genocide, our Communists are doing just fine"? Or should we ask Jay-Z about it, or maybe some old-school Chicano nationalists who want their own Aztlan?

I feel like most of the other excuses just remind me of the same Israeli (and former French Algerian) talking points, about how long the settlers lived there and how they have no where else to go, or statements/claims that anyone who doesn't like it should just go to Gaza, go to another country, die, "just don't vote"/"vote for the lesser evil"/"fix the system from within"/"settlers should just get along with the indigenous (and vice versa)"/"it's not a real nation and will never be"/"there's too many settlers"/"it's just impossible or unrealistic"/"liberation will never happen"/"why can't we all just work together"/"share the land"/"the natives aren't ready for independence"/"their resistance isn't good enough"/"they just want to get rid of (or kill) all the settlers", or they point to the well-assimilated non-white/non-french/non-jewish population who speak positively of and enjoy/support the governing colonial entity, etc etc etc.

Let's be real here. Does anyone actually believe a left-wing American organization is possible? Or should we look at Israel's Labor Zionism, or Rhodesia's Labor Party.

Better yet, should we be looking at the "Marxist" now running Sri Lanka, or to the Communist Party of Israel (Maki) and try to use them as legitimate examples?

The question itself might be misleading here. Considering Marx's dialectic was derived more from Hegel, the beter question would be 'how is there a contradiction inherent in concrete labor?'

So - how is that?

Here's the way I'm approaching the question. First, I'm disposing of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis and I'm replacing it with concrete-negative-abstract.

That is to say, there is a contradiction inherent in the concrete, and through the 'negative' process (the mediation process, the process that 'transforms' into the new, the sublation), we arrive at the abstract.

Where does Marx differ in his dialectic here? I know he critiqued both the Young Hegelians and the Hegelians in general for a similar problem. I'm still working out the details here...

On to the 'labor' question: concrete labor is based on the social divison of labor, into separate tasks (i.e., welding, farming, selling shirts, knitting sweaters); abstract labor is general form of labor, the aggregate sum of all labor activities.

Since I'm still uncertain on the differences between Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, I could be wrong on my assumptions following to the next issue.

Is the 'negative' in this case the labor process? Concrete labor, each specific role, is divided up for commodity production. When those commodities are put to market under capitalism (where the commodity form dominates), they meet a common exchange, the universal money-commodity. This is the basis of alienation and commodity fetishization.

Then through the labor process/valorization, labor is passed into its abstract form.

What am I getting wrong here? What exactly is the inherent contradiction? Is it that concrete labor has no value without entering capitalist relations (under an economy of generalized commodity production)? Since labor-power itself must have both a use- and exchange-value?

Or am I way off base?

a classic iykyk

tl;dr - I do NOT like Christian Zionists, give me the resouces to understand and address their bullshit

The Christians followers of this have been talking about the "end times" with very little explanation. I tried looking into their most recent ranting and raving about the red heifer theory, but I was shocked to find that the most popular results were from people who genuinely believe that shit.

I want an explanation for this insane theory. There's something deeply antisemitic about it and I want to get to the bottom of it.

I don't want to criticize this belief by brushing it off as a bunch of loonies, dismissively pointing to the beliefs as not worth my time. I want to know exactly what it is so I can properly address it, at least mentally.

As I talked about in one of my last posts, there was some concern that the modern leftist movements had infiltration issues with LaRouchites, Duginists, and other concerning viewpoints.

These were my exact fears and this website has published an article recently that proves some of my fears as based in reality.

Is anyone familiar with this magazine and its related party? They are not pro-NATO and also not on the side of Ukraine during this Russo-Ukraine War, and these points are valid.

(Archive Link Below)

https://web.archive.org/save/https%3A%2F%2Fsocialistmag.us%2F2024%2F02%2F18%2Fthe-fascist-mimicry-of-anti-imperialism%2F

As pointed out by Georgi Dimitrov, the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International defined fascism to be "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital". Yet, so many fascists claim that fascism and their movements are there to stop finance capital.

One instance I would point out here is that Michael Hudson has done a lot of writing on finance capital. When these discussions come about, you can see fascists by the dozen coming to agreement with someone who almost talks like a Marxist. It goes without saying that Michael Hudson has been hosted, on Geopolitical Economy Report, with Pepe Escobar, a journalist who has made mention to philosophical discussions with people like Alexander Dugin. Interestingly enough, Pepe Escobar has specifically mentioned, in an interview relating to geopolitics (of the current Israeli situation), that he would suggest reading a text about Jewish people. This book was anti-semitic in ways I have never seen before. Relating back to Dugin, I'm at a point where I see "geopolitics" or "multipolar" and assume some relation to the man, so I was already highly suspicious anyway.

So the question is: why do so many reactionaries and fascists try to claim the fight against finance capital is their fight? I haven't seen any evidence that fascists actually do anything to stop finance. It all gets blamed on immigrants or Jewish people or something else.

----------Unrelated Rant Starts Here----------

Additionally, what is the deal with all the attemps to form some type of red-brown alliance of sorts? Everything left-wing in nature always seems to hold mention, directly or indirectly, to something that comes out of the LaRouche or Dugin playbooks. These people aren't even Communists, they're just fascists.

The worst part is that we know American fascism actually claims to be uniquely American and thus not fascist at all because American fascism just isn't European. Franklin D. Roosevelt was almost like a competent Mussolini, yet purely electoral and allowed Communists to exist (but under scrutiny and surveillance), and even had a real plot against him by real fascists. On the opposition, it looks like we even have people reading Marx and Engels and Lenin at length, but still co-opting the messaging to do some PatSoc/NazBol/Duginist/Strasserist/etc. adjacent work.

If you sit in pro-China spaces too long, you find a bunch of fascists. If you sit in anti-China spaces too long, still fascists everywhere. If you speak up for Korea, same thing, attacked by anti-Communists on one end and your message is co-opted by neo-fascists claiming Korea is an ethnostate or a PatSoc state, and worthy of praise, on the other. These are the same tactics NazBols would use for recruiting back when Stalin was running the USSR, claiming Stalin as one of their own.

Now we have more anarchists and other leftists attacking Communist spaces for holding a bunch of "tankies" and people like us are getting lumped in with Jackson Hinkle and Haz.

If reading all the theory doesn't solidify our principles, if our organizations are still infiltrated heavily, if our message is dilluted by opportunists, and if we have people engaging in real-life praxis still falling victim to cult-like behavior and taking on fascist-adjacent viewpoints, then what do we have?

and I won't ignore people trying to minimize this either. If you look at any left-wing organizations in the "West" (yet another euphemism I hate since it just sounds like right-wing garbage pitting East against West, or Atlanticist fascist against Eurasian fascist), we notice that there are no serious organizations like there used to be. Definitely nothing like the Black Panther Party is alive today.

Then look at how quickly the fascists switch up and adhere to their new lines, like it was a script. From pro-Ukraine to pro-Russia; from pro-Israel to pro-Palestine; from anti-China to pro-China or vice versa. People who were screaming about Communists and (((globalists))) taking over the WEF and the global institutions are now celebrating Javier Milei's election in Argentina. When leftists bring up international orgs ran by the US? Well, the fascists already had their anti-WTO, anti-World Bank, anti-NED, anti-IMF lines ready to go, getting their voice out and their opinions boosted while the legitimate opposition was censored or removed.

Sorry for the rant. I just need someone to make some sense out of all this. It feels like the internet has been stuck in psyop mode for so many years that every form of opposition left, right, and center, has been infiltrated to the point of never challenging anything. Weird times lie ahead.