Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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I was thinking recently, why didn’t the US use the name “Axis of Resistance” as a propaganda tool against its enemies? I dunno like framing the fight as the Axis vs the Allies yet again (I haven’t seen them doing that yet).
Aren’t Amerikkkans crazy nostalgic for WWII? So framing this as another fight against another Axis could be useful. Then again, they might be too sympathetic to the Nazis to ever do that.
The Nazis made the white colonizers suffer from their own twisted ideology and savage practices. Hating the Nazis does not mean that they are good people.
I think the thing that really gets me is when you read on reddit or even talk to people in real life (break-room politics, the best) you realize that liberals really, really don’t give a shit that the war is happening. So many comments of “I can’t believe we’re losing to IRAN” and disbelief that we didn’t just bowl over a country twice the size of afghanistan with double the mountains. If this occurred under Harris; we might have a few discontent grumbles but “Finally, we’re doing something about one of the largest powers in the middle-east! Trust me, Iran is at fault for everything so it’ll totally work this time”
Even more disgustingly, I could see them co-opting Palestine entirely and saying “Oh, we need to get rid of Iran to help the security situation in Gaza!”. That was my prediction if she did win. Why so many seemingly left-leaning liberals were eager to jump and blame Hamas at every corner.
Shit is fucking disgusting.
I was in a class full of Liberals, they just talked about how bad Trump and the state government was the entire time. I never heard any of them mention Palestine once.
Do they only care about the symptoms and not the root source of the problem? Donald Trump and Nazi German are doing what the British diaspora and European empire did, except that they are subjugating the global empires to the same cruel treatment. The forced sterilization, concentration camps, and death camps originated from the European empires and the US. I could not understand why many Western people are complaining about tariff by Donald Trump when they said that tariff against socialist Venezuela is not bad until it progressed into full economic sanctions.
All they care about is the political theatre between open fascist Republicans and the crypto fascist Democrats. It is like if Nazi Germany had two parties they would be the more “left-wing” one that would care more about social programs than the other, but still wouldn’t stop the Jews from being sent to the gas chambers.
The forced sterilization, concentration camps, and death camps originated from the European empires and the US.
I’ve actually explained this to a few Americans before and the response I got back a few times we just sheer denial, showing them the literal camps being built in Virginia and Florida, “It’s just like a prison bro”. A prison without trial? Got it. You tell them that and they just shrug.
Or, they outright tell you to your face “Good, we have too many people here anyways.”
Americans!! Gotta love em!
In the communist stage, how would inherently high demand but finite things be distributed? For instance, concert tickets for a popular music artist? Sure maybe fans arent so culty under communism than capitalism, but there will still probably be a higher demand for seats than there is supply. Would it just be first come first serve?
Leisure activities should remain in a to each according their contributions basis. Imo high achievers should have a priority, tickets for the kid with better grades, for the volunteers at the local red cross, for the construction worker that had an extra shift or got injured, etc…
Is there anything further you could expand on or have some more get support on this poiny?
This just sounds like ‘money’ with a different face, and those that can’t contribute will be penalised. This is where I get stuck with any ‘contribution’ system, as it will involve an ever more complicated system of totalling and tallying and tokens and cheques and so on. If we still are left with a wage system, we’ve failed.
Money system is not inherently bad, the way i see it. It’s only terrible as of now because it’s not proportional to one contribution to society, if carefully revised it could turn into a very good tool for resource distribution.
I am all for everyone getting their basic needs met without having to contribute anything, the collective work of all society should subsidize it, however we are talking about luxurious commodoties, like a concert, there i do not agree everyone should have access to it.
On another point, some degree of extraction of surplus value has to remain in order for society to further progress forward. If everyone took exactly or more than what they contribute how is society going to grow?
I think art, theatre, music are necessaries, once stability is assured. Maybe a percentage of tickets could be free and lotto, with winners being ineligible for a period of time. I guess it could be in blocks of pairs, for couples, fours, to allow for families?
Thats where I was hoping you can expand, comrade! If we still rely on the wage system, where others are paid more for their contribution beyond the common needs of others to pay for luxuries then I don’t know how revolutionary the future’s day to day will be. I struggle to see if the money-wage system is still in place how different it would be from today. The then joyful task of tallying and monitoring and weighing and counting and judging the individual contributions of all at scale with I expect the office to do all this work (and then enforcing and punishing and shaming?) then we are not really too far away from how the world works today. But the challenge of reward or punishment to work is a difficult one, so that’s where I’d love if people can give some insights, as my view is very pessimistic in that form of labor relations.
Today, festivals are luxurious, expensive, and artificially constrained to extract the most amount of capital for the least amount of effort. The idea then is to maintain a fine line from extractive food-drink prices, entry-stay fees, artist-lineup attractiveness, and to make as much profit and maintain as much of a reputation to do it all again. In a communist society, extracting money for profit is not the goal, and the luxurious nature of organising cultural events for society should be seen differently. We’re quite biased to the monopolies of festivals today and need to lean much more towards something like Aste Nagusia in Euskal Herria (basque country), you’ll love its revolutionary character.
The “extraction of surplus-value” is a, if not the, defining characteristic of capitalism, and a eureka moment in Marxist theory. I am interested in then how this productive force use converted into surplus ‘value’ - meaning working beyond the needs of society and our collective plan for the betterment of society to grow. It feels distinctly ‘line must go up’ so any material you have to help me there would be helpful!
Imagine explaining the music situation of today to a Russian peasant in 1926. Telling them that 75% of the world can watch a performance as it happens on the other side of the world. Or that a small thing the size of their pinky finger nail could hold enough music to go for almost 2 years.
Now think about how much of that change has happened in the last 30 years. What the music situation will be like in another 100 years is likely inconceivable.
I hope you all have a nice week :D
You too!
do you like card games?
game design for card games is fascinating.
I wanna make a board game one day.
Dead-ass.
Oh, that, and maybe a TTRPG as well.
Idk.
I’m obsessed with mtg and also ecology and really want to make a deckbuilder tcg based on nature and the animal kingdom
i wanna get into MTG but it always overwhelmed me, and am getting into more reading lately. i get dopamine hit when i finish a chonky book with a satisfying ending
Trying to get back into fantasy novels.
I need fun.
You should try Baru Cormorant, it’s a fantasy thriller with heavy economic elements. I’m like a quarter of the way through and really digging it. It’s basically about this young woman who is tasked by the empire to audit one of it’s corrupt colonies.
Was just looking at that book. Thanks for the rec.
You should also try “The Culture” scifi series. Start with “Player of Games” and immediately jump into “Use of Weapons”.
Use of weapons is one of my top 5 books of all time.
Entering the world of blue collar workers is ripping me out of my left wing marxist bubble I had in Belgium. All of my coworkers claim to be right wing. At our friday afternoon drink today several of them voiced their support for AFD winning in Germany saying they are glad they won and that the people have had enough.
Now, at first you feel like you need to get out of the racist group. But marxist organising for years has prepared me for this. Deep down I believe people are left wing and that they are led on to become right wing by scapegoating of the oppressive bourgeoisie class. So, naturally, you try to engage in their visions and concerns. By asking them some simple questions I managed to get to the core of their problems which were almost all the same: cost of living increase, imaginary enemy created by the media, working too many hours for too long, etc.
I managed to make a start in poking holes in the fabricated narrative they have inside their head. Too easy for left wingers it is to stick their heads in the sand thinking they just know better than all those racist blue collar workers who mostly vote right wing in this country. Which is a shame, as our very beliefs were founded by these same workers many years ago. The left managed to abandon the working class here resulting in them turning to racist parties.
This will be a huge task to fullfill but I truly believe that by empathic towards their concerns and steering them in the right direction, I can get these people to change their views. Of course this is possible because of my privileged position of a white man. But someone has to turn the tide. A specter is haunting The Netherlands. It is me.
My mom’s work friend is gay and Iranian and apparently he wants to go back to Iran cause he hates the states, I need to get this guy in contact with breakthrough news or something
Dewit.
Also, I know a bisexual friend in Austin who is a communist and Iranian.
How?? :( Seems I am the only ML west of Lubbock and north of San Antonio. Fucking oil boonies.
Are you referring to how one can exist as Iranian and communist in America, particularly in Texas, or how can one be communist anywhere in Texas?
I know that DSA, PSL (I think), and CPUSA have grown extensively there in the last few years, but it’s also a very big area, and I don’t know how much the growth translates into actual presence there.
FYI, my friend in the DSA there is apart of the labor committee, I believe.
No. Just commenting that West Texas is sparse of any Marxist-Leninists. We are very far from anywhere, let alone the rest of Texas. It’s a very opportune part of the state that is chock-full of contradictions and characteristics that can be exposed to the daily Proles. There just is not an organized and efficient local movement to do so here.
I know we give Oil, Petroleum, and Gas a lot of shit here considering the effects on local & global environments. But, this area is full of Proletarians when combined with the local service and miscellaneous industries here. Not to mention the ‘gas-sale/market’ contradiction is bigger here.
“West Texas”
Okay, that tracks considering that most of the new MLs there are either in the eastern side or maybe the mid-point.
Sorry for super late response, but yeah. It’s very isolated over here. It feels like I am the only ML here.
