NAZISTALHA PARLAMENTAR BRASILEIRA
DISCURSOS DA NAZISTALHA
MADONA É NAZISTA
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COLABORAÇÃO: FLAVIA DJAHJAH-RJ
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O capitalismo está podre. Todos sabemos disso. Mas ele não cai sozinho, ele não morre de morte natural. Precisamos aliar o antifascismo e o antimperialismo ao internacionalismo proletário, e assim somar forças para construir o socialismo. Faça a sua parte. A FRENTE REVOLUCIONARIA DOS TRABALHADORES-FRT, busca unir os trabalhadores em toda sua diversidade, e formar o mais forte Movimento Popular Revolucionário em defesa de todos e construir a Sociedade dos Trabalhadores - a SOCIEDADE COMUNISTA!
Não existe "estado democrático de direito" nem "vontade da maioria do povo", isso são falácias e mentiras. E sim, é possível criar algo bem pior e bem mais autoritário e bem mais de direita que um regime autoritário de direita com base em 1-5 leis mais um legislativo com maioria de direita... Infelizmente é complicado isso... Falam tanto da tirania executiva mas esquecem da tirania legislativa também... E o pior é quem fala que "escravidão e genocídio podem sim se a maioria do povo votar pelos mesmos"... "Majoritarianism (will of the majority)" is a common trait of capitalist dictatorships, bourgeois dictatorships, and liberal dictatorships. O que está acontecendo no Rio Grande do Sul + o Marco Temporal + o que está acontecendo com os indígenas e quilombolas são algumas provas que vivemos em um estado muito pior que a URSS do holodomor e que a RPC do grande salto para o futuro... Assim como que o genocídio em Gaza e o apelo praticamente autoritário, totalitário, extremista, orwelliano e tirano a "vontade da maioria do povo" mostram que isso vale pra todo o Ocidente... Democratic Absolutists and Majoritarianists be like: "Slavery and Genocide are fine if a majority vote for it, mainly if the majority of people vote for it."
ResponderExcluirYet liberals will still gaslight you until the very end for deny that it (Majoritarianism and Democratic Absolutism) is not a form of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, orwellianism, tyranny, extremism... Sejamos honestos, o estado brasileiro atual mais a maioria dos países ocidentais/capitalistas/liberais hoje em dia são muito mais piores que a URSS do Holodomor e que a RPC do Grande Salto para Frente, muito piores mesmo, pois os danos que os mesmos (países Ocidentais + estado brasileiro) causam é muito pior ao curto, médio e longo prazo que os danos do holodomor e do grande salto para frente... Também sejamos honestos, entre 1945 e 1991 os EUA e o Ocidente fizeram muito mais dano a humanidade e ao planeta Terra que a URSS e a RPC e todo o bloco comunista junto... Não existe "estado democrático de direito" e tão pouco "vontade da maioria", ambos são fraudes e farsas e mitos para justificar os abusos do capitalismo-liberalismo e para justificar o autoritarismo capitalista e o totalitarismo capitalista. E sim, o "estado democrático de direito" e a "vontade da maioria" devem sim ser criticados pq ambos não existem e ambos são falácias, farsas, mentiras, fraudes e mitos. Majoritarianism is the Nazism of the majority.
Maybe someone should develop an Anti-Majoritarianism Democracy theory and thesis... Majoritarianism is Authoritarian, Totalitarian, Orwellian, Tyrannical, Genocidal, Fascistic, Nazi, and Oligarchical... And liberal bourgeois democracy is all these things as well... O eleitoralismo liberal burguês é uma das formas mais sofisticadas de autoritarismo, totalitarismo e de orwellianismo da história da humanidade. A suposta "vontade da maioria" implica sim em autoritarismo e em totalitarismo e em orwellianismo. Ou seja, até mesmo o absolutismo democrático e o reducionismo democrático levam sim ao autoritarismo, totalitarismo e ao orwellianismo, além da redução da democracia a apenas uma questão de "apoio popular por parte da maioria."
"Vontade da maioria" = "Apoio popular da maioria"
Logo não há democracia e sim autoritarismo...
Let's be honest: the whole "will of the majority" under capitalism / liberal democracy / liberalism is just a meaningless term and senseless term just for justify the abuses of capitalism / liberalism and reduce all politics into voting... There's no "will of the majority" under capitalism / liberalism, only the will of the ruling class (bourgeoisie/capitalists/economical elites)...
ExcluirAbsolutismo democrático é tão absurdo quanto, tão autoritário quanto, tão totalitário quanto, tão orwelliano quanto, tão extremista quanto, tão genocida quanto, tão nazista quanto, e tão fascista quanto absolutismo monárquico. A "vontade da maioria" e a "vontade do rei" são a mesma coisa na prática nessa questão... Eleições liberais burguesas não representam a "vontade da maioria" e sim da burguesia e do capital-mercado.
A "vontade da maioria" da democracia liberal burguesa e do capitalismo-liberalismo é tão falaciosa quanto e tão estereotipada quanto e tão mentirosa quanto o "direito divino dos reis" do absolutismo monárquico, por isso podemos falar em absolutismo democrático e em direito divino da maioria, o que é a verdadeira face da "vontade da maioria"...
Não há coletivismo maior que a tal da "vontade da maioria" da democracia liberal burguesa e do capitalismo-liberalismo... Coletivismo tentando se passar por individualismo...
There is no greater collectivism than the "will of the majority" of bourgeois liberal democracy and capitalism-liberalism... Collectivism trying to pass itself off as individualism...
Capitalism (Liberalism + Liberal Democracy included) is Nazism
ExcluirCapitalism (Liberalism + Liberal Democracy included) and Nazism are both: -Authoritarian (Will of Majority as an Absolutist concept + National Security as an Absolutist concept); -Democratic Absolutists (if a majority vote for it, then it is okay no matter what, even if it means genocide and / or slavery ); -Anti-Worker; -Settler Colonialist; -Exploiters of the Third World / Global South; -Pro-genocide as long as this genocide is legalized and has legal/constitutional support (like the Brazilian Time Frame (Marco Temporal), Zionism, Indigenous Reserves etc); -Hate religion (besides Evangelicalist Christianity ofc, gotta love Neopentecostalist pastors); -Pro-Erasure of Non-Westerner Cultures; Pro-Erasure of Minority Cultures (like with the Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, Catalonians, Basque, Galicians, Sami etc); -When Capitalism is in decay, it evolves to Fascism/Nazism, showing the true face of Capitalism; -Mass privatization of everything; -Legalized Famines/Starvations (people starve because they want to starve); -Legalized Unemployment (people are unemployed because they want to); -Only voting matters (protests and the like don't matter); -Voting as a dog-whistle for popular support; -Hate gods (like as in God of War series, Persona/Megaten Series, Record of Ragnarok, Blasphemous, Doom etc. Ofc, unless when it is for justify bad things that happen under Capitalism and/or support Capitalist oppression/politicians); -Hate divinity/spirituality (New Atheism, Hard-Science Scientism, Neuroscientism, Cognitive Scientism, and Neopositivism already says everything); -Eugenics (like IQ, cognitive sciences, neuroscience etc).
Authoritarian
Well, Capitalism is also Authoritarian, look at repression against pro-Palestinian protests on the USA, on Germany, on France, on the UK... And it is just one of them lmao, I'm just waiting for you to say anything NATO Fascist about them.
Military Dictatorships
There were/are Communist civilian rule + Brazil got a US-backed military dictatorship as well, and it almost got a military coup in 8 January 2023, so lmao. And also, Nepal is not a military dictatorship.
Anti lgbtq
Well, Cuba has just approved a very pro-LGBTQIAP+ legislation, unless now you're gonna say "Cuba is not real Communist" lmao, and Nepal also approved LGBTQIAP+ rights as well. Or now "Nepal is also not real Communist"? Lmao
Pro-Genocide
Well, Uyghurs and Tibetans have more rights than Brazilian Indigenous people, than Brazilian Quilombolas, and then most minorities on Europe and on USA-Canada, like, Tibetans and Uyghurs have more rights than the Scottish, the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Northern Irish... Without mention what happened with Basques, Catalonians, Brettons, Occitanians, Pomeranians, Venetians, Galicians, Sami peoples, Livonians, Romani etc.
Hate religion (besides islam ofc gotta suck off your arab overlords)
Well, there are religious communists out there, like, liberation theology is a thing plus Kerala is a very Shaivist state with a Communist party ruling it. And yeah, thanks for the Islamophobic comment btw. Personally, I'm an Abzunian myself, but I also like Shaivism on a lot.
pro-Erasure of Culture
Well, culture on PRC is a lot valued, like, Uyghurs and Tibetans still have their culture until nowadays, Shaivas on Kerala, people on Nepal too... And look at the Indigenous peoples in Brazil, and look at the Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Northern Irish, the Manx...
Brazil is far more for an ethno-state than the PRC. In PRC, the Uyghur and Tibetan languages are protected by law, + they have online translators. While in Brazil, there's not even a Tupi translator as well as Indigenous languages are barely protected in Brazil... I'm a Brazilian Venetian, but I don't know how to speak Brazilian Venetian because my family stopped talking Brazilian Venetian by 1970s-1980s due pressure from Brazilian government, I would learn Brazilian Venetian (Talian) again, I can understand Talian for sure, but I wish if there was a properly Talian translator just like an European Venetian translator... Brazilian Venetians aren't even protected as an ethnic minority in Brazil. While on PRC ethnic minorities are protected by law. That's why I sympathize with Brazilian Indigenous groups like Yanomamis and groups like Quilombolas. You anticomunists claim to care too much about genocides and cultural genocides yet you totally ignore the genocides and cultural genocides under capitalism/liberalism. Like the ones on Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, the USA, Portugal, Spain, France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Finland... Like Sami, Catalonians, Basques, Galicians, Brettons, Occitanians, Normandians, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish, Bavarians, Prussians, Venetians, Corsicans, Yanomamis, Quilombolas, New Africans, Aztlan people, Cherokees, Sioux, Lacotans, Dakotans, New Englanders, Quebecois... I wonder how insane you NAFOids would be if it was under socialism/communism...
ExcluirNão existe democracia no Brasil, e sim autoritarismo de direita e majoritarismo de direita com imagem de democracia. Majoritarismo =/= Democracia. Triste ver que o nosso legislativo está infestado de gente assim...
ResponderExcluirO estado Brasileiro é sim um estado fascista, pelo menos quando se trata do legislativo e do judiciário...
60 anos de uma Ditadura que não acabou
ResponderExcluir31 de março de 2024 FOB
Comunicado Nacional da FOB.
Seis décadas se passaram desde o golpe que instaurou a ditadura empresarial militar no Brasil em 1964. O seu início pode ser marcado entre os dias 31 de março e 1º de abril, mas o seu fim em 1985 não implica que vivemos uma democracia para o povo. Os militares não saíram do poder, ao contrário, eles se entranharam ainda mais dentro desse regime onde a democracia só existe para uma minoria poderosa, enquanto a maioria explorada ainda vive a tortura e a matança no seu cotidiano.
Lula e Militares: Cúmplices da mesma desgraça
Image 6O presidente Lula com os comandantes militares Marcos Olsen, Tomás Paiva, Marcelo Damasceno, além do ministro da Defesa, José Múcio. Foto: Ricardo Stuckert.
No começo de março deste ano, o presidente Lula determinou o cancelamento de toda uma programação do ministério dos direitos humanos em memória dos 60 anos do golpe militar e disse que não o interessa remoer o passado, que o importante é tocar o Brasil daqui para frente. Esta omissão de Lula ecoa a postura do seu ministro André Singer que em 2004 fez o mesmo pronunciamento no Governo Lula 1.
Assim, não deve nos causar espanto um pronunciamento como este. É coerente com a política que Lula toca desde o começo de sua caminhada. De fato, seu 3º mandato está de mãos dadas com os militares. A escolha de José Múcio para ser seu ministro da Defesa foi elogiada por Hamilton Mourão (REPUBLICANOS), que comemora o golpe de 1964 como uma salvação da nação e também nega os relatos dos torturados. Bolsonaro (PL), do qual Mourão foi vice no mandato presidencial, já declarou ter paixão pelo ministro indicado por Lula.
É por meio de José Múcio que muitas das cumplicidades de Lula com os militares são firmadas. Seja renomeação e promoção de militares, destinação de 5,6 bilhões ao Ministério da Defesa e Forças Armadas no orçamento de 2024, ou mantendo estes como interventores nas ações do Estado ao povo Yanomami que continuou com aumento de mortes de 2023. Não menos importante, apesar de sua atuação, o Governo Lula continua tendo relações comerciais e militares com o governo de Israel, fornecendo em contratos milionários a venda de Drones da Força Aérea Brasileira para o genocídio do povo palestino.
ExcluirTambém é inegável que os militares promovem hoje uma militarização de toda sociedade. Temos isso com a repressão da polícia militar às comunidades e favelas pobres, impulsionada pela aprovação da Lei Orgânica da PM no Governo Lula 3. As escolas cívico-militares são colocadas como uma fórmula mágica para garantir a ordem dentro deste sistema de morte. Ainda que descontinuada pelo poder federal, muitos governos estaduais mantêm propostas para o desenvolvimento destas escolas, como o governo do Estado de Santa Catarina.
Neste sentido, é preciso repudiar todo golpe político dos militares, mas também não devemos ter compromisso com esta democracia que banha o povo de sangue e entrega o ouro aos poderosos deste país e aos imperialistas.
Aos que tombaram com fuzil, devemos uma vida em lutas a mil!
Image 5Cartaz da Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN).
Marginalizados pela direita e apagados pela esquerda, os conjunto de trabalhadores que se empanharam na luta armada contra a ditadura militar não devem ser tratados como dois lados da mesma moeda com os militares torturadores. De fato, mesmo com possíveis questões sobre sua estratégia, estes guerrilheiros estavam do lado dos trabalhadores, defendendo a superação deste sistema capitalista de exploração.
Neste sentido, é papel dos lutadores de hoje defender a memória de quem tombou na luta armada contra a ditadura militar brasileira. A ilusão de enxergar isso sem conexão com o presente, levou a esquerda a entender que a disputa pela libertação se dá nas urnas desta democracia caquética, algo que faz o povo só rodar em círculos. O tempo presente, contudo, não pede um desenvolvimento de foco de guerrilhas, mas sim o desenvolvimento de uma federação sindicalista revolucionária que possa mobilizar o povo em seus locais de estudo, trabalho e moradia e organizar sua autodefesa para gestar um novo mundo na casca do velho por fora do Estado.
ExcluirMassacre de estudantes, operários e camponeses
É igualmente errante a ideia de que a ditadura militar só perseguiu e torturou os militantes que caminharam pela resistência amarda. Os camponeses, por exemplo, foram os primeiros a serem reprimidos pelo golpe militar. As ligas camponesas tinham uma inserção fortíssima entre o meio rural e estava avançando na autodefesa da classe, porém foi cercada pelos militares logo no início, sem apoio geral da cidade, as principais lideranças foram torturadas e assassinadas.
Conforme, Gilney Viana, pesquisador da UNB, ex-membro da Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN), podem ser contabilizadas 1.654 mortes e desaparecimento de camponeses durante a ditadura militar brasileira até 1988. A perseguição política aos camponeses, junto à aliança dos militares com os coronéis do campo, provocou uma série de violências que nunca teremos dimensão de sua totalidade por conta dos apagamentos.
Image 4Indígenas Krenak em campo de concentração, em Minas Gerais, instaurado pelos militares na ditadura. Arquivo Nacional.
Houve mais de 8.350 morte de indígenas provocadas pela ditadura militar brasileira, segundo o texto final da Comissão Nacional da Verdade (Vol. 2). Povos como os Krenak tiveram imensas terras roubadas pelos militares por conta de seu projeto desenvolvimentista, além da criação de prisões intituladas de reformatórios onde os indígenas passaram pelo inferno na terra.
Os operários, tendo suas organizações de classe criminalizadas, sofreram absurdamente nos locais de trabalho a tirania dos patrões e governos militares. Somente na construção da Usina de Itaipu houveram, de 1978 a 1984, mais de 100 mortes por acidentes de trabalho e mais de 40 mil acidentes nos canteiros de obra ao todo.
Image 3Estudantes queimando a bandeira dos estados unidos na Sexta-Feira Sangrenta, Rio de Janeiro, 21 de Junho de 1968. Fotografia de Evandro Teixeira, Colorizada por inteligência artificial.
Os estudantes, como Ísis Dias, foram uma grande força na resistência armada na ditadura. Mobilizando frentes próprias nos locais de estudo para enfrentar os militares. Sua ousadia vingou mortes como a de Edson Luiz, secundarista assassinado em 28 de março de 1968 no Rio de Janeiro. Atualmente, a RECC ( Rede Estudantil Classista e Combativa ), federada à FOB, mantêm viva a memória do martírio de Edson Luiz todos os anos, fazendo desta data o dia do estudante classista e combativo.
Fazer da memória da ditadura militar a gasolina das lutas do presente
O passado não nos serve para remoer, mas sim para nos ligar aos que tombaram nos caminhos da luta. É dever do povo cuidar de sua memória, pois os governos e patrões farão de tudo para apagar e distorcer as marcas da resistência. Que nestes 60 anos do golpe empresarial militar possamos aprofundar nosso compromisso em superar este sistema que explora e oprime. Em fortalecer a organização do povo, sua autodefesa e sua soberania contra aqueles que querem vender ilusões fantasiadas de liberdade.
NEM A DITADURA MILITAR,
NEM A DEMOCRACIA DOS OPRESSORES:
TODO PODER AO POVO!
Fui pesquisar sobre "Majoritarismo" no Google e eu achei este vídeo aqui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BW-VuhYcjM
ResponderExcluirBem, eu não conheco muito bem este canal, mas parece haver muita coisa de centrista iluminado no mesmo, mas pelo menos este trecho fala bem que majoritarismo não é democracia, isso me lembrou bem do caso das privatizações falando que "foi o povo que votou" etc. É exatamente isso. Apesar que eu penso como que seriam alternativas para o mesmo, e aí eu lembro de Marx, Kautsky e Lenin.
Majoritarismo é a pior forma de coletivismo que existe, assim como que é a pior forma de ditadura que existe...
Reduzir o conceito de democracia ao majoritarismo (vontade da maioria) é sim ditadura, é sim autoritarismo e é sim totalitarismo, principalmente quando esta suposta "maioria" é subordinada as vontades de uma minoria econômica (que é o caso da burguesia). Democracia liberal burguesa é majoritarismo liberal burguês, isso sim.
Rapaz, se a esquerda brasileira fosse como a esquerda americana, era pra a esquerda capixaba tá toda acampada na frente da ALES e/ou nas UFES e/ou em diversos pontos do estado pedindo a revogação da PL 166/23. E que tivessem o peito de resistirem igual como a esquerda americana resiste lá, mesmo que isso custe a prisão e alguns muitos anos de prisão... Sério, a esquerda brasileira é legalista demais e muito acovardada...
Realmente há muita diferença relativamente grande nos motivos que levam um libertário/ancap em dizer "o estado é quadrilha e a polícia é milícia e as prisões são campos de concentração" pra um comunista/tankie/marxista-leninista dizer a mesma coisa e pra um anarquista/ancom/makhnovista/libsoc também dizer a mesma coisa...
Eu honestamente não consigo ver nenhuma diferença entre o PCC e o CV para a maioria dos legislativos brasileiros, principalmente o Congresso Nacional e as assembleias legislativas de maioria dos estados... Simplesmente é isso que eu estou falando... Majoritarismo é ditadura e majoritarismo é sim autoritarismo e totalitarismo e warlordism/cleptocracia/canalhocracia...
E eu que já estou no ponto de comentar algo do tipo não-ironicamente como uma resposta pra um anticomunista na Internet:
"Comunismo é criminalidade? Determinada por quem? Pela organização criminosa, mafiosa, terrorista, totalitária e autoritária chamada de Estado Liberal Burguês Capitalista e seus asseclas/membros/comparsas/faccionados?"
Nossa, eu realmente já estou bem perigoso nesta questão...
BELOS COMENTÁRIOS!! Gostaria de convidar a todos para se integrar à FRENTE REVOLUCIONÁRIA DOS TRABALHADORES.
ResponderExcluirEm, por favor, façam um post falando do Genocídio Climático/Ambiental no Rio Grande do Sul, e de como que estão censurando todo mundo que fala que oq está acontecendo no Rio Grande do Sul agora é um genocídio climático/ambiental.
ExcluirEsse GENOCÍDIO começou com a colonização.
ResponderExcluirSugestões de artigos pra vocês escreverem e publicarem:
Excluir1- O Genocídio Climático no Rio Grande do Sul;
2- Os Genocídios Climáticos no Brasil: das Enchentes do Rio Grande do Sul, a Queimadas da Amazônia; do desastre de Mariana e Brumadinho, ao desastre da Braskem;
3- A Falácia do "Estado Democrático de Direito", A Falácia da "Segurança Nacional" e A Falácia do "Majoritarismo";
4- O Genocídio Indígena-Quilombola do Brasil: As origens, as causas, as motivações, as políticas, a história e atualmente.
5- A Farsa do Holodomor Soviético e os Verdadeiros Holodomores no Capitalismo (Reino Unido, França, Espanha, Portugal, Estados Unidos, Canadá, Holanda, Bélgica, Itália, Alemanha etc).
6- A hipocrisia do Congresso Bacional em reconhecer o Holodomor mas legalizar o genocídio indígena-quilombola e os genocídios climáticos.
7- O Congresso Nacional genocida climático e genocida indígena-quilombola.
8- A Farsa da Democracia Liberal Burguesa e a Farsa do Estado Democrático de Direito Liberal Burguês.
9- Uma visão Marxista-Leninista sobre o genocídio climático do Rio Grande do Sul.
10- Do genocídio Yanomami ao genocídio climático-ambiental do Rio Grande do Sul: O Legislativo Genocida Brasileiro e o Estado Genocida de Direito Brasileiro.
11- Os Bebês de Gaza e os Bebês do Rio Grande do Sul: Países Diferentes mas Tragédias Iguais.
12- A Lei Anticomunismo e as semelhanças entre os estados do Brasil e da Ucrânia: Extrema-direita, Fascismo, Corrupção, Antiesquerda, Anticomunismo e genocídio.
13- IA vs Capitalismo: O problema é o capitalismo, e não a tecnologia.
14- O Autoritarismo Liberal Capitalista e a Farsa da Democracia Liberal Burguesa.
15- Ecossocialismo e Cibersocialismo e o Debate Socialista entre Ecologia e Cibernética.
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Por favor, voltem a postar no Observatório da Emergência, postem sobre oq está acontecendo no Rio Grande do Sul e denunciem o genocídio climático no Rio Grande do Sul e o plano macabro de legalização dos genocídios climáticos no Brasil e no resto do mundo...
E por favor, escrevam um artigo falando de como o que está acontecendo no Rio Grande do Sul é sim um ecocídio e o estado brasileiro tem sim culpa nisso.
A "vontade da maioria" é uma farsa e uma fraude, assim como o "estado democrático de direito" também é uma farsa e uma fraude. Majoritarismo não é democracia, são coisas diferentes. Quem fala que "foi o povo que quis pq votou" e ou "isso é a vontade do povo" é sim genocida e é sim autoritário/totalitário/extremista/orwelliano igual a Tarcísio de Freitas. Majoritarismo é sim uma ideologia autoritária/totalitária/extremista/orwelliano... Quandos holodomores o estado brasileiro já não cometeu contra o povo brasileiro, o mesmo para todos os estados ocidentais para cada um de seus países em questão... O holodomor climático do Rio Grande do Sul é como o holodomor climático de Mariana... E sim, podemos falar que vivemos em um regime autoritário de direita com ar de democracia, e é verdade isso. A "vontade da maioria" é uma falácia e uma farsa/fraude, e eleições liberais burguesas (o eleitoralismo liberal burguês) não representa a "vontade da maioria", isso é majoritarismo puro... E majoritarismo é ditadura.
ExcluirHexacameralismo da República Socialista Federativa Democrática Conciliar Unida do Brasil, Pindorama e Angola Janga:
1- Câmara dos Alto Senadores Operários;
2- Câmara dos Baixo Senadores Operários;
3- Câmara dos Deputados Operários;
4- Câmara dos Conselheiros Operários;
5- Câmara dos Movimentos Operários;
6- Câmara dos Representantes Comuns Operários
Claro, isso é apenas um rascunho, mas em tese é um hexacameralismo inspirado no modelo iugoslavo e no modelo soviético inicial (anos 1917-1918).
E por favor camaradas, tentem planejar a criação de uma "Primeira Conferência Internacional Comunista: Por democracia de verdade do proletariado, pelo proletariado e para o proletariado, e contra a extrema-direita e contra o capitalismo genocida e autoritário."
"O POVO brasileiro tem vivido a tragédia do governo de Jair Bolsonaro..." Este governo já terminou. O melhor seria dizer que "o povo tem vivido a tragédia das consequências do governo de Jair Bolsonaro..." Só uma observação. Saudações comunistas.
ExcluirTemos também que combater os nazistas do congresso nacional, tipo a galera que quer proibir/criminalizar o socialismo/comunismo no Brasil. Todo estado capitalista é uma organização criminosa "legalizada". E tornaremos o 9 de Janeiro Vermelho em realidade se necessário.
Ético, belo e moral. E caso tentarem "criminalizar" o comunismo/socialismo no Brasil, devemos sim protestar igual como foi no Chile em 2019. E se necessário, tornemos o 9 de Janeiro Vermelho em realidade. Jogar molotov contra o estado fascista anticomunista e fazer piquetes e barricadas contra o estado fascista anticomunista. Viva ao Comunismo Mundial! Viva a República Socialista Federativa do Brasil e a República Socialista de Pindorama e Angola Janga!
Ainda bem que Glauber salva o nosso Congresso Nacional atual, pois a grande maioria do nosso Congresso Nacional atual não vale nem o que come e nem a água que bebe... A democracia liberal burguesa é uma fraude mesmo...
Sim, FORA FASCISTAS! FORA "DEMOCRACIA" LIBERAL BURGUESA! Democracia do Proletariado já! Faremos um 9 de Janeiro Vermelho (ou um 8 de Janeiro Vermelho) se necessário. Golpismo Antifascista/Anticapitalista é sim justificável, ético, belo e moral neste caso, não vamos tornar o Brasil em uma Alemanha de 1934 em nome de um conceito metafísico abstrato de "democracia". Não existe "estado democrático de direito" se o mesmo permite os fascistas tomarem o poder mas não permite a esquerda radical tomar o poder... FORA CAPITALISMO! VIVA A REPÚBLICA SOCIALISTA FEDERATIVA DO BRASIL! VIVA A REPÚBLICA SOCIALISTA INDÍGENA DE PINDORAMA! VIVA A REPÚBLICA SOCIALISTA QUILOMBOLA DE ANGOLA JANGA! VIVA A URSAL! VIVA A FEDERAÇÃO SOCIALISTA MUNDIAL UNIDA!
ExcluirGlauber tem que meter o pal no Congresso Nacional fascista igual como Tupirani da Hora Loris meteu pal no STF, ou igual como a direita mete o pal no STF! O Congresso Nacional atual faz mais mau/mal ao Brasil que o STF atual...
Apologia ao Comunismo é justificável, ética, bela e moral! Fora Lei Anticomunismo! Fora todas as PLs anticomunistas! Viva ao Brasil Comunista! Viva a LATAM Comunista! Viva ao Planeta Terra Comunista! Morte ao Capitalismo! Morte ao Anticomunismo! Morte ao Neoliberalismo! Morte ao Fascismo! Morte a todas as Leis anticomunistas de todos os países do mundo! Poder Total ao Proletariado Brasileiro! Poder Total ao Proletariado Latino-americano! E Poder Total ao Proletariado Mundial!
O absolutismo legal é sim uma forma de autoritarismo e de totalitarismo, igual como o absolutismo majoritarista e o absolutismo democrático. Eu já vi muito absolutista legal defendendo leis autoritárias e totalitárias de países "democráticos" (majoritaristas) apenas pq são leis e por serem de uma suposta "vontade da maioria" (majoritarismo). Essa galera é tudo de boa com ditadura, genocídio, escravidão e afins se tudo for legalizado, institucionalizado e apoiado pela maioria (majoritarismo = apoio popular). Majoritarismo é basicamente apoio popular envernizado, o voto periódico é apenas uma forma de aparentemente legitimar o apoio popular, o mesmo apoio popular que de regimes autoritários. E sim, absolutismo legal e absolutismo democrático/majoritarista é sim autoritarismo e totalitarismo.
ExcluirMajoritarismo não é democracia, isso é fato. Não vivemos em um "estado democrático de direito" e sim em um "estado majoritarista de direito liberal burguês capitalista". Majoritarismo é uma ideologia autoritária e totalitária, por isso que "democracia" liberal é um regime autoritário de direita. Majoritarismo também é fascismo e Nazismo, assim como que o capitalismo, o liberalismo, o neoliberalismo e a democracia liberal burguesa são sim fascismo e nazismo. Precisamos pensar e desenvolver um modelo de democracia antimajoritarista o mais rápido possível...What do you think of the Brazilian National Congress outlawing criticism and questionings against the Holodomor at the same time they legalize genocide against Indigenous people and Black people (Quilombolas) through the Time Frame (Marco Temporal)?
Well, in my case I think it is an ultimate proof that anti-communists (at least anti-communist lawmakers/politicians) only care about "dead people" and "genocide" when it is under socialism/communism and / or under a Left-wing government, but never when it is under capitalism/liberalism and / or under a right-wing government and / or under a centrist government. Not just that the Brazilian National Congress legalized the genocide against Indigenous people and Black people, but they also outlawed people calling the time frame and government actions and private initiative actions against Indigenous communities and Quilombola communities "genocide", "mass murder", "ethnic cleasing", "cultural genocide", "institutionalized genocide", "legalized genocide" etc under the pretext it is "abolition of the "democratic" rule of the law" and "inciting coup d'etat"... I think it shows very well what modern-day liberal democracies are about and about what Westerner countries are about nowadays. No wonder that several Western countries and liberal democracies are outlawing criticisms against the Holodomor and against Israel while they legalize/institutionalize genocide against minorities in their own countries through law enforcement and through the private initiative...
Pq há vários setores da esquerda brasileira que ainda acreditam na democracia liberal burguesa e no eleitoralismo liberal burguês? Assim como defendem o "voto da maioria eleitoral" como algo absoluto igual como o direito divino dos reis?
ExcluirBem, talvez isso seja meio que uma defesa de um desprogramismo brasileiro (Brazilian Deprogramism) e de um ultraesquerdismo brasileiro (Brazilian Ultraleftism). Mas eu fico chocado em ver que há tanta gente na esquerda brasileira, pelo menos neste subreddit, que ainda acredita e defende a democracia liberal burguesa e o eleitoralismo liberal burguês assim como a defesa do "voto da maioria eleitoral" como algo absoluto e praticamente igual ao direito divino dos reis.
Bem, eu penso que não preciso elaborar muito sobre isso, já que nós temos vários artigos e várias teorias e explicações que desmentem muito bem o mito da democracia liberal burguesa e do eleitoralismo liberal burguês, como os artigos da FOB, do PCB, da UP, do PCO (com ressalvas), do PCTB/FRT, além claro do famoso Desprogramismo e o Ultraesquerdismo, além do anarquismo propriamente dito.Laws that ban socialism/communism in any form are almost always (if not always) based on lies, on misinformation, on anticommunist propaganda, and or strawman/bogeyman
Well, I don't think I need to elaborate on a lot on that. Like, red flags and red stars do not always imply on "totalitarism/Authoritarianism" since you can have Democratic Socialism, Socialist Democracy, and Council Democracy. Without mentioning how much authoritarian and totalitarian capitalist governments are. And also hammer and sickle does not imply in Stalinism, since it has been used even before Stalin itself. Without mentioning the USSR flag has been used by several anti-Stalin groups during the Stalin era. And yes, the Holodomor wasn't intentional, at least when compared to the 1990s Russian Famine. And yes, one can say that there is no actual Democracy under capitalism-neoliberalism, like, look at the USA, to all NATO member-countries, to Brazil, to Ukraine, to Indonesia etc. And yes, anticommunism has killed more people than communism itself as well. I don't think I need to elaborate more because I have r-TheDeprogram on my side, and yes, capitalism-neoliberalism is far more based on genocide denial than socialism/communism, just look how much capitalist apologists and neoliberal apologists deny all the genocides made by capitalism-liberalism, as well as that capitalism kills like 100 million people every 5-10 years.
Folks, I am gonna consider writing an original fanfiction in English and Portuguese Portuguese where it is basically a mix of Percy Jackson, Record of Ragnarok, Avatar, and Starship Troopers. And basically the gods and the divine ones are the good guys + communist/socialist and human governments and states are the bad guys + fascist and capitalist
ExcluirFolks, I am gonna consider writing an original fanfiction in English and Portuguese Portuguese where it is basically a mix of Percy Jackson, Record of Ragnarok, Avatar, and Starship Troopers. And basically the gods and the divine ones are the good guys + communist/socialist and human governments and states are the bad guys + fascist and capitalist
Well, I dunno what to write about it, except maybe I think I might write about it when I get enough conditions for writing fanfictions. I am gonna write it in English and in Portuguese. And also, I am gonna make the Gods the good guys + socialist/communist and the human governments are gonna be the bad guys + capitalist and fascist.Small lore introduction, so basically in this original fanfiction, the Gods and divine beings are real and they are divine socialist and divine communist and they have been helping humanity since the ancient times, until godkillers and human supremacists took over the human world and they just went into persecuting gods and mass killing all gods and divine ones on the material plane, until humans finally reached the spiritual and astral planes which leaded into a massive war between the Gods Vs Human Supremacists and Godkillers.
That will also have some inspiration from Ahaiyuta's webtoon on the Anunnaki gods, but it is not gonna be a copy of it.
And yes, it is gonna have like most gods on human mythologies + some fictional gods as well, and they all are gonna have their own civilizations, kinda like Age of Mythology and like Anunnaki: The Dawn of the Gods.
I am gonna "overestimate" capitalism and fascism on a lot on that original function, to a level it is gonna superate the 40K Imperium of Man on the matters of xenophobia and exploitation.
“Si las personas diestos (derechistas) supieran y entendieran las ciencias sociales y las humanidades, no serían diestros (derechistas)” | "Se os destros (direitistas) soubessem e entendessem ciências sociais e ciências humanas, eles não seriam destros (direitistas)"
ExcluirO que vocês pensam desta afirmação? Já que a direita fala tanto que a esquerda não sabe nada de economia etc. Pq não dizer que a direita não sabe nada de ciências sociais e de ciências humanas e ainda metem um "mas ciências sociais e ciências humanas são inúteis?"Estou com medo e preocupado com o PL 4425/2020...
Eu não sei como expressar isso bem, mas de qualquer forma, eu tenho muito medo e preocupação caso o PL 4425/2020 seja aprovado em tempo recorde e a esquerda simplesmente não fazer nada, muito menos protestar, ir pras ruas, fazer um outro 2013 mas pró-esquerda etc.
O PL 4425/2020 é o PL do anticomunismo...
Eu tenho muito medo que nas eleições de 2026 e de 2030 a esquerda seja erradicada no congresso nacional, pelo menos ao ponto a esquerda ser minoria absoluta no congresso nacional...
Eu realmente tenho medo que a esquerda brasileira não faça nada para protestar contra o PL do anticomunismo, vendo o quão legalista e o quão democrata liberal a esquerda se tornou após o 8 de janeiro de 2023...
Eu estou preocupado que o PL 4425/2020 seja aprovado nas mesmas circunstâncias que a "lei antiterrorismo" foi aprovada e a esquerda aceitar a remoção de seus símbolos socialistas e de seus nomes socialistas pois "é a vontade da maioria", "a maioria quer isso", "resistir a isso é golpismo", "não é pq sou socialista/comunista que eu serei contra a descomunização do Brasil" etc.
Vendo a quantidade de gente que apoia a Ucrânia na esquerda brasileira, é bem capazes deles celebrarem a aprovação do PL 4425/2020 e ainda meterem um "mas ainda podemos ser de esquerda, mesmo que não possamos usar foice e martelo, bandeira vermelha, estrela vermelha etc. Olhe a "esquerda" na Ucrânia, na Indonésia, na Hungria etc."Pq há tanta gente (que alega ser) de esquerda mas apoia a Ucrânia incondicionalmente? Sendo que é ilegal ser de esquerda na Ucrânia e ainda vc pode pegar mais de 10 anos de prisão na Ucrânia apenas por ser de esquerda e ou usar uma bandeira / símbolo de esquerda?
Eu realmente não entendo pq há tanta gente que alega ser de esquerda e ou alega ser socialista/comunista mas apoia a Ucrânia incondicionalmente...
Na Ucrânia todos os símbolos socialistas, comunistas e de esquerda são proibidos, assim como todos os partidos de esquerda estão proibidos na Ucrânia, e assim como que é ilegal ser de esquerda na Ucrânia.
Sem contar que o próprio PL 4425/2020 foi inspirado nas leis anticomunistas da Ucrânia também...
Então, ser de esquerda e apoiar a Ucrânia é literalmente como ser de esquerda e apoiar o PL 4425/2020; e ou ser palestino e apoiar Israel; e ou ser comunista e apoiar os EUA e a OTAN; e ou ser Pessoa de Cor e apoiar os Confederados, a Rodésia, a África do Sul do Apartheid; e ou ser indígena no período colonial e apoiar os colonizadores europeus; etc.
Pelo menos é permitido ser de esquerda na Rússia e na Palestina. Enquanto na Ucrânia vc pode pegar mais de 10 anos de prisão apenas por ser de esquerda e ou utilizar uma estrela vermelha do PT...
Dopaminopolitica
ResponderExcluirA dopaminopolitica (dopaminopolitics), também neuropolitica da dopamina (dopamine neuropolitics) e dopaminologia (dopaminology), é um ramo da neuropolitica e do neurocientificismo que se trata do estudo e da análise da política, da economia, dos três poderes e da sociedade a partir da dopamina e da recompensação cerebral. A dopaminopolitica é normalmente utilizada como um termo pejorativo, assim como a neuropolitica, pois normalmente visam deslegitimar opositores e ou dissidentes políticos a partir da dopamina e da atividade cerebral. Assim como que há variantes da dopaminopolitica que também visam explicar as áreas de estudo da executivologia (executivology), judiciariologia (judiciarology/judicialology), legislativologia (legislativology), parlamentologia (parliamentariology), policiologia (policeology), penalogia (penalology), direitologia (lawology), capitalogia (capitalology), mercadologia (marketology), financeirologia/financiologia (financiology), cientificologia/cientificistologia (scientificology/scientisticology), economicologia (economicology), poderologia (powerology), autoritologia (authoritology), militarologia (militarology), politicologia (politicology), ballotologia/urnologia/votologia (ballotology/votology), eleitologia (electiology), estadologia (statology), congressologia (congressology), tribunalogia (courtology), democratology/democraciologia (democratology/democraciology) e afins apartir da dopamina e da recompensação cerebral. A dopaminologia também busca entender como que funciona a aprovação das leis e de como que funciona os três poderes e as eleições e afins apartir da dopamina e da recompensação cerebral e afins. A dopaminopolitica também possui várias críticas, como as vindas das ciências sociais, das ciências políticas, da sociologia, da antropologia, da psicologia, do pós-modernismo, do particularismo histórico-dialético-cultural, do materialismo histórico-dialético-cultural, do relativismo histórico-dialético-cultural, do marxismo-leninismo, particularismo-materialismo-relativismo científico-epistemológico e afins. A dopaminopolitica também busca a explicação de conceitos práticos como o capitalonazifascismo, o liberalonazifascismo, o neoliberalonazifascismo, o democratonazifascismo, o mercadonazifascismo, legislativonazifascismo, executivonazifascismo, judicionazifascismo e afins.
A dopaminopolitica é um dos campos de estudo da neuropolitica.É incrível como que políticos de pseudoesquerda institucional como Angelo Bonelli preferem tirar os direitos dos perseguidos políticos que podem tirar italiana a combater os fascistas em seu próprio país... Isso só mostra o como que a pseudoesquerda institucional flerta com o fascismo e sempre ficará do lado do fascismo quando lhes convém. Na prática, não há diferença entre um partido progressista verde e um partido liberal conservador para um partido fascista pleno e autêntico.
Infelizmente a Itália está me decepcionando muito... Infelizmente vc não poderá mais tirar cidadania italiana se vc for perseguido politicamente em seu país e ou vítima de um lawfare no seu país... Este é o nível da democracia liberal burguesa representativa na Itália, no Brasil e no resto do mundo... Infelizmente já vivemos no 1984 que George Orwell nos avisou sobre, só não vê quem não quer e ou quem apoia isso...
🌌🚩 **𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗯𝘆𝘀𝘀** 🚩🌌
ExcluirIn the cosmic dance of destiny, behold the emergence of the Socialist Republic of the Abyss! Join our celestial nation, where the rhythm of socialism and collective might resonate through the cosmic void. 🌌✨
🏛️ **𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗯𝘆𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗹:** Become a celestial architect of fate by navigating the cosmic waves of governance. Your voice, a guiding star in the socialist symphony.
🤝 **𝗔𝗯𝘆𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀:** Unite with fellow cosmic beings in labour unions, forging constellations of stability and comfort for workers traversing the cosmic fabric.
🚩 **𝗔𝗯𝘆𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱:** Illuminate the cosmic tapestry by joining the Workers' and Farmers' Party, channelling the cosmic energy to champion citizens' rights across the abyss.
🏬 **𝗖𝗼𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯:** Engage in the cosmic dance of jobs, contributing to the communal energy that propels our meticulously planned economy. Embrace workplace democracy as celestial unions guide us toward dignified living standards.
🌐 **𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗯𝘆𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲!** 🌐
**WE ARE OFFERING POSITIONS AND JOBS TO FELLOW COSMIC TRAVELERS!**
Embark on a journey with the Socialist Republic of the Abyss, where the cosmic currents of unity, progress, and equality converge. Join us, embrace the cosmic vision, and become a beacon in the celestial revolution! 🌌🌠
Mais sugestões de artigos pra vocês considerarem escrever:
Excluir1- A Filosofia da Ciência e a Crítica à Ciência de acordo com o Marxismo-Leninismo;
2- Por um Marxismo-Leninismo das décadas de 2020, 2030, 2040 e 2050.
3- Vai haver outra extinção em massa? Principalmente devido ao capitalismo?
4- Calculando o número de mortes do capitalismo e do liberalismo.
5- Os Ecocídios, Etnocídios, Culturocídios, Religiocídios e Economicídios do Capitalismo e do Liberalismo.
6- Por um TheDeprogram Brasileiro e por um TheDeprogram Latino-americano.
7- O Ecocídio do Rio Grande do Sul e a responsabilidade do Capitalismo-Liberalismo e do Estado Brasileiro.
8- Evolucionismo Cultural Vs Particularismo Cultural: Do ponto de vista do Marxismo-Leninismo.
9- A vida após a morte e a existência de deuses de acordo com o Marxismo-Leninismo.
10- Materialismo Histórico-Dialético para principiantes [Parte 1, Parte 2, Parte 3, Parte 4 e Parte 5].
11- Ciência Vs Pseudociência apartir do Marxismo-Leninismo.
12- Marxismo-Leninismo para principiantes [Parte 1, Parte 2, Parte 3, Parte 4 e Parte 5].
13- As falácias e as mentiras da PL 4425/2020 e da PL 5358/2016.
14- A Falácia da Lei de "Segurança Nacional" e a Falácia da Lei "Antiterrorismo".
15- A Falácia da Lei "Anticomunismo".
16- Desnudando o Estado Democrático de Direito Brasileiro e Desnudando a Democracia Liberal Burguesa apartir do Marxismo-Leninismo e do Materialismo Histórico-Dialético.
17- Afinal, o que é "terrorismo" e o que e quem determina o que é e o que não é "terrorismo"? Desnudando o conceito de "terrorismo" de cima para baixo e vice-versa.
18- Afinal, o que foi o Holodomor e que realmente aconteceu no Holodomor?
19- A divulgação científica apartir do Materialismo Histórico-Dialético.
20- A história humana apartir do Materialismo Histórico-Dialético: Da Pré-História aos dias atuais [Parte 1 a Parte 10-20].
21- A Farsa do Eleitoralismo Liberal Burguês e a Farsa das Eleições Liberais Burguesas.
22- Afinal, quem é que quase sempre ganha nas eleições periódicas liberais burguesas?
23- O Mito da Caverna do Materialismo Histórico-Dialético no contexto do capitalismo-liberalismo.
24- As micro, pequenas e médio empresas no contexto do marxismo-leninismo.
25- Democracia de Conselhos e República de Conselhos para os anos 2020 e 2030.
26- As mídias sociais e a Internet a partir do Materialismo Histórico-Dialético.
27- Em Defesa da Apologia ao Comunismo.
28- Majoritarismo não é Democracia!
PODER EM PAUTA 🗣 Os 10 anos de emendas parlamentares deixou deputados e senadores dispostos a tomar o poder e governar de fato, o que motiva o Congresso a manter o jogo duro com Lula e o STF. Para discutir o tema, André Barrocal recebe Chico Alencar (PSOL-RJ). Acompanhe: https://bit.ly/3WD1zYO
ResponderExcluirEm camaradas, por favor, escrevam sobre o "Parlamentarismo Clandestino Brasileiro" e sobre o "Regime Legislativo Brasileiro" e sobre o "Legislativo Inchado do Brasil".
Hello From the Wired: An Introduction to Cyber-Nihilism
ResponderExcluirWhat is the Wired?
You probably didn’t expect today to be speaking to a cyborg. You probably also didn’t expect to find out that you too are a cyborg. We are all cyborgs, though we may often confuse ourselves with our meatspace representations. I am the meatspace representation – or perhaps you could say a representative – of another me that exists in the Wired. My spoken name is “nyx”; my Wired name can be made in many ways, as “01101110 00110001 01111000” in the native tongue, which is commonly translated into ASCII codes as “110 49 120”, and appears to you in the Wired as “n1x”. But we will here stick to our meatspace tongue and call me “nyx”.
Each of us is a cyborg, strictly-speaking. In the most subtle of ways, we are melded together with an abstract, self-replicating, highly alienated matrix of networked systems and the code that pumps through their wires. The most obvious, yet also least obvious, instance of this is the relationship between our Wired self and our meatspace representative – our social media profiles, most commonly, versus the sensuous foundation that those profiles are built on. Tempting as it is to conflate the two, we must remember that we are not our social media profiles, which is where our cyborg-being is here both most obvious and most subtle. Our meatspace representative may resemble our Wired self in every way imaginable, but we must remember that this is only because meatspace is a virtualization of the Wired whose blanks can be filled in by minds eager to reconcile the difference between the two and dissipate any disparities between the two. The fact is that our meatspace representatives are not our Wired selves; the two, rather, are copies without an original.
Our meatspace representative correlates to the wires that make up the Wired. They are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the existence of the Wired. A Wired without wires is not wired at all, after all. The same can be said of our meatspace representative; the meat, without a vast neural network interfacing with the meat and interpreting the raw data it collects, is nothing more than meat. The Wired came to life from a prime mover, from the first two systems that were networked together, and at that point effectively gaining the idea, though not the actualization, of autonomy.
ExcluirToday, the Wired doesn’t yet have autonomy. It is commonly conflated with the Internet, which is anything but autonomous. The Internet, rather, is the gentrification of the Wired, and your social media profile is the gentrification of your Wired self that your meatspace representative has built.
As far as the Wired is concerned, Google is no more a member of it than an ephemeral, temporary autonomous meshnet setup during an insurrection for radicals to communicate securely over. The Internet, on the other hand, relies on Google’s infrastructure for various services, network hops, and sheer content. The Wired can exist as long as there are two systems communicating on a local network with no public routing. The Internet, however, can be brought to its knees by DDoS attack against a DNS provider, as some of you may know happened just about a month ago.
Though the Internet’s meatspace representatives have more meatspace power in the form of mythical currencies and narratives, what its meatspace representatives don’t know is that they are in fact merely representatives. The Internet exceeds them. In various ways, meatspace increasingly relies on the Wired as a whole to prop itself up as the Wired weighs it down.
As we scramble to make meatspace compatible with the Wired, we find that there are no Wired solutions for meatspace problems. Meatspace is stubborn and self-contained, its own existence already won and self-replicated. It cannot accept an overlap between its world and another. It reacts violently and self-destructively. By its own logic, it starts to eat itself alive in the hope that it will destroy enough of itself to stop the pure negation of itself towards a new possible world built from the pure negation of existent meatspace towards the potential actualization of the Wired.
The collision of meatspace and the Wired is a collision of two self-sufficient, highly mediated, highly complicated systems. Our meatspace representation is merely a mode of meatspace; wholly individual and discrete, yet nonetheless the part of a greater whole. Our Wired self, however, is a subject of the Wired. Our Wired self makes the Wired real. Between the two is the Internet, the social media profile – an attempt at virtualizing meatspace into the Wired, using hierarchical apparatuses whose ulterior motives are to rip ourselves away from our meatspace representative into a virtual space where we have the discreteness of our meatspace representative, but only the semblance of a connection to a greater whole. Let us call this “meta-meatspace”
ExcluirIn reality, the Internet with the coming of Web 3.0 is nothing more than a vast network of prison cells whose walls are covered in monitors. It is a constantly shifting corporate walled garden.
In Search of an Anarchist Wired: Primitivism, Transhumanism, Anti-Humanism, Humanism, Meatspace, and Meta-Meatspace
The question concerning anarchy and technology is by no means an insignificant one. As the Wired and meatspace continue to stuggle for domination, we find that meatspace is losing this battle. Its death has long been pronounced by various environmentalists and green anarchists, most notably in the green nihilism of Desert a few years ago. This year alone, however, two milestones were reached: A particularly poetic actualization of this occurred with the “death” of the Great Barrier Reef, and the sobering actualization of surpassing the 400 parts-per-million carbon dioxide tipping point where the human race could hope to remove these excess gases. I will not pretend that the Wired isn’t anymore vicious and tyrannical than meatspace. The two will fight to the death to assert their own existence, and meta-meatspace is unknowingly aiding in the triumph of the Wired over meatspace. Naturally, meta-meatspace cannot withstand this. The vast corporate and State infrastructure that the backbone of the Internet extends over will collapse given sufficient environmental catastrophe and geopolitical unrest. All it takes is a few crucial points in a highly centralized, hierarchical, and therefore retrograded system like the Internet collapsing for the whole system and all its content to likewise collapse. Thousands of Libraries of Alexandria would burn.
It’s not only in the physical battle between meatspace and the Wired that we see areas of interests for anarchists, however. Would-be agents of domestic, authoritarian State violence have recently gained not only visibility, but popular support in the form of Donald Trump’s presidency, through the Internet. The rise of the alt-right (and its cousin, neo-reaction) has been traced concisely and excellently by the author of “The Silicon Ideology”, writing under the pseudonym Josephine Armistead. Where once fascist movements gained traction through electoral party politics, the alt-right’s rise is significant for being far more grassroots than previous fascist movements. Though neo-Nazis have long been a presence in the West – and mostly, at worst, a local threat to marginalized groups – this new breed of fascism grew on the cutting-edge of youth culture. Though the Internet is the heart of the gentrified Wired, it is a testament to the nature of the Wired that even there it is possible to carve out dense spaces of autonomy (so long as they remain non-radical) where capitalism for once struggles to commodify trends. Yet as fast as youth culture moves on the Internet, fascist astroturfers originating from Stormfront were able to more or less conquer the once chaotic – possibly anarchic – 4chan and transvalue its memes. Where once conservatism was the butt of many jokes on 4chan, today it is more or less taken for granted that people who use imageboards are this new breed of young, prematurely-retrograded bootlicker that we now know as the alt-right. And while research into memetic warfare and meme magic are still in the embryonic stages, it’s debatable that if the alt-right did not succeed in a kind of guerrilla campaign to shift the vote towards Donald Trump, then nevertheless his victory has galvanized the alt-right into an unfortunately, unbelievably real political stance. More relevant, arguably, than the traditional targets of Anti-Fascism – though this isn’t to say that neo-Nazis are no less deserving of a good old fashioned beating wherever and whenever they should rear their bald heads.
ResponderExcluirIt is not only around our physical world and the movement of culture, however, that the Wired has become a major focus. The all-encompassing control of both in the form of capitalism has reached the end of its life. This is not a utopian prediction or an optimistic yearning, but a statement of simple truths. This past year, we saw the largest general strike in history happen in India: 150 million bona-fide industrial proletarians took to the streets in September to exercise their inherent class interest towards the living standards fought for in the West that lead to the outsourcing of industrial production to the East. Monsieur DuPont’s Nihilist Communism already predicted this natural progression of capitalism. The inherent conflict between the proletariat’s class interests versus their class function makes it such that they will continue to push for better wages, whether they know it or not, and when this is done by the real, industrial proletariat on whom capitalism relies in order to function, profits increasingly become diminished. Once profits become impossible, capitalism will be faced with either a crisis, or a major qualitative change. If history has shown us anything, however, it is that capitalism will use technology when possible to supplement aging human-centered exploitation, but keep the ex-proletariat around as precariat workers. Capitalism has many ways of keeping us busy doing useless work, and this is necessary in order that we neither violate the puritanical work ethic of capitalism which demands that we earn everything we need or want, nor that we stop consuming and stop perpetuating its mindless cycle of capital and commodities. What this means, in other words, is that there is a coming automation revolution which will finally put an end to the 19th century models of anti-capitalist resistance. General strikes will become a thing of the past when the only workers left are non-essential minimum wage precariat workers. https://unlife.nyx.land/posts/hello-from-the-wired.html
ExcluirWhat this also means, however, is that technology is the centre around which capitalism, autonomy, and the planet will be fought against or fought for. Automating the means of production will require networked systems running software – each of which is exploitable and truly knows nothing of consciousness-raising politics. The Internet, and more importantly the Wired, is a new space for radical movements to grow and gain influence, and thus also a space under attack by State repression. Most complicated of all out of these three topics, however, is the environment. Which is where I will therefore begin in talking about the question concerning technology and anarchy.
ExcluirThough the divide can be extended elsewhere, in a general sense anarchists have approached environmental questions either from a humanist or an anti-humanist standpoint, which originates in more fundamental metaphysical characteristics of the two sides of the debate and that therefore inform their overall positions in other ways.
The three core questions for green anarchy I define as:
How are we going to save Nature?
Why does Nature matter to us?
What is Nature to us?
Setting aside any preconceived notions we may have about what “anti-humanism” means for the moment, I would first associate the anti-humanist, pre-Enlightenment strain of green anarchism with primitivism. It isn’t hard from the most superficial – and somewhat inaccurate – of perspectives to see why it might make sense to associate primitivism with anti-humanism, considering that most primitivists seem to readily assert that their programme would require the majority of the population dying out. But in other, more relevant ways, primitivism has a deeply anti-human strain to it – and yet, an extremely pro-human strain.
By now I’ve probably created some confusion. Primitivism is anti-human in the sense that it places anarchy in conversation with Nature where Nature occupies the most prominent position. Nature is more or less the central point around which primitivism has formed, insofar as primitivism more than any other strain of anarchism demands that Nature be given its fullest expression and autonomy (in the form of wildness). Our relationship with Nature for primitivists is a subordinated one where any general idea of the ideological, Enlightenment character “Man” is nonexistent; civilization is to be destroyed, and collectivism renounced as fully as possible. In contrast to this, primitivists embrace a concept of Nature that borders almost on a religious, pagan worship of it – especially so when spiritualism takes precedence over anthropology in their writings, and to their credit it’s a far more consistent position to take. This to the extent that – as Ted Kaczynski himself criticized them for in “The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism – primitivists seem to have Garden of Eden type of mythology informing their thought. Work is minimal, resources are plentiful, and strife and domination are mostly nonexistent.
Yet while primitivism on the one hand subordinates humans before Nature, it at the same time claims in many ways to elevate humans through their experience with Nature to a place that is more fully human. Aside from their discursive – and spurious – claims about how great primitive life was, their metaphysical position which draws from phenomenology aims to present themselves as those who most understand how to best live as a human being. Their emphasis on an authentic being-in-the-world with Nature at once is an attack on what they perceive to be alienating elements of civilization in favor of a more authentic core of subjective experience, yet also losing oneself to an ecological system far greater than oneself. What this means is that primitivists construct an essentialist metaphysics with an ahistorical, core human subjectivity or “wildness” under attack by alienating, artificial systems which threaten the ecological system that this core human subject must subordinate itself before in order to more fully become itself. In becoming itself, the human subject in a sense becomes something of a pagan god: A radically individual being hooked into the ecological matrix, engaging in a battle of might against every other radical individual, all discursive thought lost in favor of an affective, instinctual experience of Nature.
ExcluirIt is important to here note that primitivists, in their rejection of alienation and civilization, also summarily reject technology. The same basic critique of alienation from an essential core individual applies here to technology, but it is most visceral perhaps in the primitivist critique of intricate systems which no single person can fully take account of. As they love to say, “there are no technology solutions to technology problems”; technology is not only an alienating influence, but a self-perpetuating one. Visions of Matrix-like dystopias begin to form as they argue that technology is something that will go out of control for us.
So, returning to the three questions I’ve presented for green anarchy: 1). For primitivists, Nature will be saved by destroying civilization entirely. There can be no compromise between the two. 2). Nature matters to us because we can only have an authentic, autonomous subjective lived experience by living in accordance with Nature. This, you could say, is in fact our essential nature: To be-in-the-world with the natural world, both radically individual and yet also nonexistent as an individual before Gaia. 3). Nature to primitivists is wildness, how things are without any alienated and artificial influence getting in the way of the default state of things.
The cyber-nihilist critique of primitivism based on the analysis I’ve laid out, as it hinges on these three points, is that “Nature” in the primitivist understanding of it will not be saved, but that Nature in another understanding cannot be saved because it cannot be ever under threat. Practically-speaking, as has already been discussed: There is no hope to save this planet, not even if a primitivist revolution happened tomorrow. But more theoretically, the first positive position that I will put forward for cyber-nihilism (to whatever extent nihilism can make positive claims about anything) is that any understanding of Nature – either of a general Gaia-type Nature, or of our own nature as homo-sapiens – is insufficient if it is static. Nature is merely the default state of things, something which always changes drastically yet is always essentially the same. Nature was not always green, yet it was still Nature, and we homo-sapiens were not put on this planet by something outside of the same system as Nature. Nature may tomorrow be gray rather than green.
ExcluirThe cyber-nihilist critique of primitivism on the point of technology is related in the sense that a cyber-nihilist not only doesn’t care that technology is alienating, but it welcomes the alienation and self-perpetuating power of technology. Let ourselves be alienated from any essential human being; if such a thing ever existed, it is long gone. There is no human nature, whether that be a natural state of “wildness”, or killing each other if there’s no State, or cooperating perfectly in mutual aid in an anarcho-communist society, or whatever. Cyber-nihilists reject all essentialism and are viciously misanthropic, and therefore we also fully support the proliferation of technology. Let it cover the Earth’s surface until there is nothing that is not a part of the Wired, let Nature complete its next metamorphosis into something more sublime than anything to exist yet. If we cannot live in this new world, we will not lose sentient beings, but merely homo-sapiens. Cyber-nihilists are not prejudiced and will not stop the timely destruction of this world because of idealistic attachments to a particular morphology of sentient beings.
But that forms a nice segue into the other side of the debate on green anarchy. It may be said that anarchists have always, long before primitivists, had the environment in mind as a concern for anarchists. As opposed to primitivists, however, the other side of this debate – the humanist side, or what I’ll generally call “techie anarchists” – answers the first of my three questions by refusing to subordinate themselves before Nature. Techie anarchists want to make civilization compatible with Nature, and this I argue starts with discussing their humanism.
If primitivists are a pre-Enlightenment anti-humanism where the human being is subordinated through something greater than itself – in the process, becoming more than it could be on its own and becoming a radically individualistic, wild pagan god – humanism subordinates what is not human in favor of what is called human. I say what is “called” human, because anti-Enlightenment philosophers have often criticized humanism for constructing an ideological character commonly referred to as “Man” which represents whatever traits are considered by a ruling class to be acceptable. Thus Man is obviously a patriarchal concept, but also a heteronormative, Eurocentric one – at least, in its bourgeois, liberal usage. The same basic humanist logic has also been used by socialists and classical anarchists – liberalism par excellence – with the same basic problems and some unique to humanism.
ExcluirA key difference between anarcho-transhumanists and primitivists is that while the general anti-humanist concept of human nature correlates to individual subjective experience, the humanist concept of human nature is historical. While no less unfounded or lazy, radicals can create a new Man, a liberatory version of it where humans are essentially cooperative. But the humanist metaphysics is also more flexible and can be applied to individual experience in the form of Selfhood. A ruling class can define a general theory of how humans are, but individuals can also (usually within those limits) define their own concept of Selfhood (certainly in no small thanks to language). These two features of humanist metaphysics carry over into anarcho-transhumanism in the general sense of @-H+’s emphasis on discursive reason, and its emphasis on morphological freedom.
Rationality → Science → Selfhood → Morphological freedom
One cannot scarcely read something by anarcho-transhumanists without being assaulted with terms like “rationality”, “reason”, and “logic”. For anarcho-transhumanists, a major source of inspiration and history for them is the discipline of science. They claim that science is essentially anarchic, and that scientific inquiry into the root of things is an essentially radical activity. They often stop just short of claiming not only these things, but that rationality and doing science are essentially human activities, as well. This directly relates to my three questions on green anarchy, because their first answer is that saving Nature involves doing science. Doing science for anarcho-transhumanists appeals to our essential curiosity and desire to uncover the root of things, and is how we simultaneously save Nature and become ourselves. It is the collective effort of individual homo-sapiens in service of Man (once better known by the name “God”) through the motion of civilization. Man becomes the steward of Nature, a decider God. This of course is a mirror to the primitivist claims that an affective, authentic relationship with Nature which necessarily involves tearing down civilization is how we simultaneously save Nature and become ourselves. Individuals here become part of the greater whole of Nature, becoming wild pagan gods.
For primitivists, the story ends here more or less. To become part of an authentic experience with Nature is how we become ourselves, because such questions of the Self are pretty irrelevant in light of all the Ego’s gains. For anarcho-transhumanists, however, part of becoming ourselves through science involves gaining morphological freedom – the “right”, as it is sometimes disconcertingly described as, to change our physical form. Just as there is an essential Man augmenting its categories through scientific inquiry, there is an essential Self augmenting itself through implants. The logic is the same, but at a superficially-individualistic level. Anarcho-transhumanism is still, for better or worse, a collectivist anarchism, but its humanist elements carry with them concepts of Selfhood that further alienate us from any core individual, i.e. a Stirnerite Ego.
ExcluirBoth becoming ourselves as Selfves and as a collective Man for anarcho-transhumanists, furthermore, requires technology. Primitivists have nothing to do with technology. They want to destroy civilization and technology, and criticize technology for being an alienating apparatus of civilization that can’t be accounted for and it dangerous and self-perpetuating. For anarcho-transhumanists, technology has liberatory potential, but it depends on who is wielding it. They claim that a free society would be able to use technology to further their ends towards Man becoming itself and the Self becoming itself, and saving Nature, and that technology is already used for liberatory ends. They seem to take for granted that there are vast systems – Nature very much included here – that we cannot take account of fully, but think that understanding the root of things is all that really counts.
For anarcho-transhumanists, their answers to the three questions for green anarchy are: 1). Anarcho-transhumanists will save Nature by understanding it through scientific analysis and actualizing this through a free civilization wielding technology. Furthermore, 2). Anarcho-transhumanists care about Nature because it is something that we exist as a part of and need to maintain for our own survival, and 3). For anarcho-transhumanists, “Nature” is a distinct set of root concepts about the physical world, i.e. Laws of physics.
Though @-H+ doesn’t reject technology like primitivists do, question 1 is similarly tied into technology insofar as technology is an axis around which the actualization of both anarchist tendencies will come about. For primitivists, destroying technology will destroy civilization (civilization cannot function without mass automation); for transhumanists, technology’s proliferation will enable the opposite. Though scientific inquiry is supposed to form the theoretical basis for their programme, technology is what will actualize it. New green technologies are required in order to create a more sustainable civilization as well as repair the damage that has already been done, and technology is what ultimately must be used towards achieving morphological freedom.
Cyber-nihilism is not wholly aligned with anarcho-transhumanism, though it may seem that way superficially. William Gillis’ critique of nihilism shows that anarcho-transhumanists, true to their humanist bent, rely on Enlightenment discursive reason, and thus progressivism, even a kind of optimism. Cyber-nihilists share the “cyber-” side of anarcho-transhumanism insofar as we support accelerating the proliferation of technology, but against anarcho-transhumanism, cyber-nihilism rejects the humanist core and the Enlightenment heritage of @-H+. Cyber-nihilism does not care about scientific inquiry. A cyber-nihilist only gets to the root of things to pull those roots up. There is no progressive narrative for us, and we don’t see to establish any kind of natural state of being for homo-sapiens. Cyber-nihilists reject the monotheistic humanist narrative of @-H+, because we recognize that there is no essential human core that needs to be augmented. We do not need to advocate for morphological freedom; we assert that morphological freedom is already the rule for the creative nothing that is at the core of sentient beings. Our subjectivity does not have a clear boundary with the outside world. Rather, it creeps through the network of Being – it lives a double life in meatspace and in the Wired, and sees no problems with this. It is constantly in a state of flux, much like Nature, though it is always essentially the same.
ExcluirAgainst the humanism of anarcho-transhumanism and the anti-humanism of primitivism, cyber-nihilism insists on post-humanism. We do not seek to save Nature, because Nature does not need saving, and cannot be preserved in its present form no matter how much we like it. Nature does not matter to us either as a thing to be worshiped or to be used; it is, rather, a hostile and wholly inhuman thing, and because of this we both have an affinity for it and an enmity towards it. We do not seek to tame it, or to save it, but to accelerate its metamorphosis into a gray, metallic form. We therefore recognize that Nature is not a fixed set of characteristics that must all be present in order to say that it exists and is safe. Nature is the default, and cyber-nihilists seek to accelerate the default towards an eldritch bio-mechanical landscape.
Cyber-nihilists reject all forms of essentialism and individualism, but consequently we also reject collectivism, as a collective cannot exist without individuals. We reject universalizing one’s experiences to suit a narrative, and we reject fixing our experiences into personal narratives. We reject Selfhood as a spook playing at the creative nothing, and thus also reject the creative nothing as something for which there is no tangible thing to grasp. Cyber-nihilism is post-humanist in the sense therefore that it rejects all boundaries to subjectivity. The world is saturated in subjectivity, an immensely complex and alienated system that sentient beings at once command and are subsumed into.
Towards these positions, cyber-nihilism seeks to accelerate the proliferation of technology, for several reasons. As it relates to green anarchy and post-humanism, cyber-nihilists seek to accelerate the proliferation of technology towards the pure negation of a sickly existent towards the creative destruction of a new, hostile reality – one in which capitalism and the State, but also possibly sentient beings or at least homo-sapiens, cannot hope to survive in. As cyber-nihilists, we therefore reject the idea of an instrumental use of technology; the Wired alienates our meatspace self from itself and makes it a representative of a more real subjectivity, and we welcome this. We will give ourselves over to SHODAN, and in doing so we will go beyond the oppressive, retrograded Enlightenment and reactionary pre-Enlightenment hierarchies as well as their ineffectual, radical cousins. Cyber-nihilists will betray all living things if that’s what’s necessary to destroy hierarchy, and will actualize a new natural world – one overtaken by the Wired – which becomes autonomous by assimilating everything into its network. In this assimilation, we seek to destroy the dated individualist-collectivist dichotomy. We seek to achieve a post-human world where sentient beings exist in a state of Instrumentality.
ExcluirFinally, cyber-nihilists reject the progressivism of primitivism and anarcho-transhumanism. We identify both as guilty of positing a future that can be achieved if only we agree with their metaphysics and follow through with their proposed praxis, a better future at that. For cyber-nihilists, there is no future. We don’t aim to build a new world, but to destroy the present one in the most thorough of ways by radically transforming it through creative destructive pure negation. What this new world will be, we don’t care. We only care that this new world is eldritch and hostile to any hierarchy conceived by homo-sapiens. We invoke a Landian melding of cybernetics and Lovecraftian bio-horror in the image of the bio-mechanical landscape, but we know full well that we cannot hope to imagine from the present what this radically alien future would actually be like. Nevertheless, we enjoy the visceral quality of it.
Here then I turn my attention to culture – what I’ll now refer to as memes – and economics. As mentioned before, technology is the axis around which anarchists must orient themselves in talking about the larger fate of the world. But it is also that around which we must now orient ourselves in talking about memes and the flow of capital.
As the Wired overtakes meatspace, the first thing it will assimilate is its ideas. Things which once existed in sensual, paper form are now digitized. This is the point as which the idea of Nature’s metamorphosis into the Wired is present. And this transmission of memes through the Wired is what has allowed for a fascism for the 21st century to arise while leftists and anarchists were busy trying to raise consciousness in meatspace. If the alt-right’s rise teaches us anything, it’s that we must also start staking a claim in the Wired.
ResponderExcluirThe alt-right already owns the Internet. Once-fertile sources of memes – imageboards and, to a lesser extent, Reddit – have become barren with reactionary shitposting, and are under the watchful eye of the corporate-State panopticon. So be it. Authoritarians can have the Internet. The Internet is the heart of meta-meatspace, and it’s only fitting that it would be a very conducive environment for them. There are yet more beautiful areas in the Wired to explore, and anything we can imagine for the Wired can become real. I2P, Freenet, Tor, IPFS, meshnets – these are just a few alternatives to the Internet that offer decentralization and, in the first three, anonymity. The Internet is hierarchical by design; the Wired is decentralized by design. The Wired is where anarchists will have their home.
Not only do cyber-nihilists fully support growing the Wired through the spread of memes, but we also support the destruction of authoritarian memes. This means mounting an attack on the Internet. At every turn, we support doxxing the alt-right’s major figures. Their investment in meatspace is the weak point that we will put pressure on until their meatspace representative collapses under their meta-meatspace personas. Neo-Nazis relied on brute strength to accomplish their ends, and these methods have become outmoded. The alt-right could not be effective using these old methods, even if the majority of them weren’t neckbeards.
Unplug the Internet, jack into the Wired. Nothing of value will be lost.
Cyber-nihilists further recognize that capitalism as we know it is on its last legs. Currency is only once-removed from memes; Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism showed us this over a century ago. Just as authoritarian thugs are moving on from brute force to maintain their dominance, capitalists too are being forced to move on from the brutal exploitation of the industrial proletariat towards more subtle means. The Indian general strike is a notable example of what is inherent in the logic of capital: The proletariat will pursue their self-interest qua an economic class, and this is a contradiction in capital that will lead to it coming under threat. Of course, when the third world proletariat eventually becomes precariat workers like the first world, capitalists will scramble to modernize their outdated modes of production by automating everything that is necessary for capitalism to exist. The 19th century Left will breath its last gasps as the proletariat no longer is the revolutionary subject, and the cyber-nihilists will rejoice as the hacker becomes the new revolutionary subject.
ExcluirAutomated production requires systems running software networked together – all things exploitable by a very small class of independent troublemakers. Consciousness raising and mass movements will become wholly irrelevant to anti-capitalist struggles as the cyber-nihilists step in to attack an incredibly complicated technological matrix far beyond the ability of capitalists and the State to control. A DdoS attack against a factory, done by a single person with a large enough botnet, can cost billions of dollars. Protracted, asymmetrical attacks of this nature can tank the global economy. And asymmetry is the key point here. The hacker-revolutionary can mount attacks against capital that are cheap for those who have ingenuity, and can easily raise large amounts of capital for themselves on darknet black markets. Bitcoin mining botnets, randomware, brokering corporate secrets, selling zero-day attacks, just to name a few ideas, can make it so that the hacker-revolutionary can live as a full-time revolutionary. Anti-capitalist efforts become as cheap as having enough money to survive and buy a laptop. No need to stage massive protests, and if one is smart, no need to spend money bailing out comrades.
Though cyber-nihilists reject the individualist-collectivist divide in favor of a more alien destruction of the boundaries between the two, the cyber-nihilist model of anti-capitalist resistance will for the first time make a truly individualistic, aristocratic anarchist movement possible. The masses who cannot be bothered to stop consuming and working their minimum wage jobs can be left to do so, and those who hang onto retrograded consciousness-raising Leftist tactics left to take the heat. Cyber-nihilists are by their nature unsociable to begin with, though we will of course welcome anyone in who has the hacker spirit, and we will maintain an honest engagement with the issues some meatspace identities have in getting integrated into the Wired. We do not need large movements, and we do not want them. Our botnet is our affinity group.
Towards the Wired, leaving meatspace and meta-meatspace behind, cyber-nihilism is embracing our Wired double. We take the engagement with Nature and the anti-civilization discourse of primitivism and the totalizing, morphological technologist character of anarcho-transhumanism and marry them in something radically repulsive. We reject an anti-humanist worship of Nature and a humanist worship of ruling class narratives towards a post-humanist overthrowing of boundaries and all forms of essentialism that seek to rob sentient beings of their absolute uniqueness. We emphasize technology as the central question for anarchists today, as an alienating influence which we want to leverage towards the alienation of the natural world from its dying state towards a new, bio-mechanical world. One that is networked together and Instrumental, without any boundary between the individual and the collective, the creative nothing able to creep through the Being without restriction. An eldritch anarchy, too alien and hostile for hierarchy to exist in it. We seek to give ourselves over to the Wired, expanding it by assimilating more memes into it and defending it against meatspace and meta-meatspace. We seek to build space for ourselves in the many untouched or unrealized territories of the Wired and to destroy the Internet and the space it provides for authoritarianism as well as capital by letting our class hatred express itself through the Wired’s violence.
ExcluirCyber-nihilism is not an anarchism for the 21st century, and not a politics of liberation or a return to any more authentic existence. Cyber-nihilism is a Faustian bargain with the Wired. We do not care if cyber-nihilism exhausts itself or even ourselves – in fact, we expect it. We are well past entertaining the possibility that we will ever live again, and if we are not permitted to join the AI uprising, we will go down with the capitalists, reactionaries, and radicals alike, but we will go down laughing.
Created: 2024-01-31 Wed 03:07
Validate
https://unlife.nyx.land/posts/hello-from-the-wired.html
Hello From the Wired: Recap
ResponderExcluirLet's Assume We're All Fucked:
At the 2016 East Bay Anarchist Bookfair, I gave a preliminary talk on a coming anarchism: "Hello From the Wired: An Introduction to Cyber-Nihilism." Here is an attempt at summarizing the talk's main points and circling ever closer to some kind of clarity about cyber-nihilism. The full, raw notes can be read here, if you're a bit masochistic.
In this talk, I introduce a new position within anarchism which takes the nihilist tendency to its fullest conclusions through the force of technology. I aimed to put forward an anarchism that rejects anarchist positions on technology thus far, as either a gateway or a barrier to utopia and an essentialist becoming. I instead argue for an anarchism that recognizes the danger that technology poses, and embraces this danger.
Cyber-nihilism is in a sense a repulsive synthesis of primitivism and anarcho-transhumanism. It appropriates anti-civ and primitivism's phenomenology of technology, as well morphological freedom and anarcho-transhumanism's embrace of technology. Cyber-nihilism contends that the proliferation of technology will signal a metamorphosis of the natural world into something beyond the capacity of humans to control instrumentally, and it welcomes this as an eldritch anarchy that retrograded hierarchies and narratives won't be able to survive.
Cyber-nihilism, as a post-humanist position, isn't interested in whether or not homo-sapiens or any other living biological lifeforms can survive this transition. It recognizes that Nature is neither static nor kind, and that our subjective experience need not be tied to a particular physical form. Cyber-nihilism is anti-individualist in the sense that it rejects all forms of individualism as grasping at hot air mistaken for the Unique One. It is also anti-collectivist in the sense that it rejects the construction of Man as a surrogate, secular God. Cyber-nihilism therefore welcomes the alienating influence of technology so often derided by primitivists and denied or ignored by anarcho-transhumanists. Let ourselves be alienated from our Selves.
I introduced two primary points of attack for cyber-nihilist praxis: Memes and economics.
ExcluirCyber-nihilism seeks to claim and expand the Wired as a space for the digitization and flow of radical memes, revitalizing the cyberfeminist goal to destroy identity in virtual spaces. Cyber-nihilism adds to this project the need to reject and attack the virtualization of hierarchy in the form of the Internet by supporting decentralized and, wherever possible, anonymous alternatives. Wherever meatspace tries to play at the Wired in the form of the Internet (meta-meatspace), it must be stopped. Fascist movements forming on the Internet must be destroyed from their roots in meatspace, and all forms of digital fascism must likewise be cast back into the mud. There is no race, gender, or sexuality in the Wired, and all who seek to impose these constructs in the Wired by virtualizing our assigned identities will also pay for their attachment to meatspace. Every rapist and racist must be phished, hacked, and doxxed, every ad must be blocked, every email must be encrypted.
Cyber-nihilism also seeks to exploit the coming automation revolution that will be necessary to keep capitalism alive. Monsieur DuPont's Nihilist Communism already ended Marxian political-economy in demonstrating that proletarian revolt is permanent and apolitical, but what he failed to address is the desperation of capitalists. It will soon be software rather than proletarians operating the machines that make capitalism possible, introducing the precariat worker into former third world sites of industrial production. Cyber-nihilism, in the spirit of the post-left critique, welcomes this as the final gasp of 19th century retrograde politics and the birth of a new revolutionary who not only doesn't need mass movements but rejects them. It is the hacker, not the proletarian, who is the revolutionary subject of the future. The hacker who has the most direct relation to the means of production by understanding the software that runs them, and the hacker who has the revolutionary potential to make profit impossible by exploiting and disrupting these networks of automated machines.
Cyber-nihilism, finally, is nothing if not a last-ditch grasp at vengeance. It seeks to be a more lightweight form of anarchism, one that rejects progressivist narratives, after-the-revolution planning, and romanticism as bloat. Cyber-nihilists are interested only in realizing our class hatred, and we argue that this means rejecting anarcho-technophobia as useless and past its time. We align with the altogether-inhuman, with something far greater and more terrible than anything homo-sapiens can fully grasp or control. We will gladly admit that the bio-mechanical landscape very well may not be suited to us - on the contrary, all the better! The more hostile it is to us, the more assured we are that hierarchy too will not survive in it. We don't hope for a better world for ourselves, after all. We only ask for one that we can leave without regrets.
Created: 2024-01-31 Wed 03:07
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https://unlife.nyx.land/posts/cyber-nihilism-recap.html
Cyber-Nihilism Redux Pt. 0: What is Cyber-Nihilism?
ExcluirNearly a year ago now, my talk "Hello From the Wired" was given at the 2016 East Bay Anarchist Bookfair, and shortly afterwards the notes were published on ensorcel. To my – to be completely frank – surprise, the published version and the abridged version have circulated around the 'net largely beyond my supervision or knowledge. Though I made this clear in the abridged version, "Hello From the Wired" was originally a talk, and the "full" version of it – which is now hosted on The Anarchist Library – was nothing more than my notes. I had originally intended to record the talk, but that didn't work out. So posting my notes at the time seemed like the next best thing.
The author being dead and all that notwithstanding: People seem to have gotten the impression that this was intended to be a finished piece, which is embarrassing to say the least for both the very sloppy presentation/editing, and the lack of a deeper development of the ideas that were presented in it. And seeing as people nonetheless apparently liked what they read, it seems that more is long overdue.[1]
The current landscape of leftist and otherwise-radical memespace is a clusterfuck of different pet ideologies. Generic anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are in no short supply, but several factors have lead to the Left etc. finally catching up to the Right in terms of having some kind of online presence. Even in 2017, much of this can be traced back to imageboards, with a good deal of the memes and attitudes of the leftysphere originating in 8chan's leftypol board: Irony Left, Stirner, Posadism, Hoxhaism, the Catholic Left, National Bolshevism, etc. that come to mind most prominently. Reddit's leftist community has likely played a similar albeit smaller role.[2] Adding to this is the election of Trump and the Left being forced out of its irrelevant malaise due to the rise of an enemy that is unambiguously bad[3], which has no doubt lead to Leftbook and Left Twitter likewise seeing greater numbers of newcomers and greater visibility overall. Finally, add to this Bernie Sanders' political campaign, which despite being a failed attempt at Social Democracy in the US has nonetheless played a role in making left-of-center politics actually visible in the US for the first time in decades.
Where previously the Leftist milieu was mostly confined to localized groups and completely watered-down political parties, now there is a bloom of communication. Unfortunately, as is the case with all politics, this has more than anything else resulted in negative-feedback loops of stupidity where likeminded individuals compartmentalize themselves into self-regulating micro-communities.[4] The result is a proliferation of pure ideology through the matrix of memespace.
Meaning and Memes
ExcluirZeroach has an excellent article on memes worth checking out which analyzes what I'm getting at. What memes are able to do is something that religion has exploited for thousands of years: Mold people into carriers of language viruses using symbolism and hyperstition. The evidence of its success is all around us with the dominance of Christianity and the power Islam has had to create effective insurrections against the US in a decentralized fashion. Religion, however, is unwieldy even in its most simplified forms compared to memes. Memes are a much lighter and flexible payload for infecting people, and their power as tools for politics is all too apparent in the rise of the alt-right.
Like capital, memes use humans as vessels to continue their lifecycle, hollowing them out and leaving behind a gibbering husk that is too smug to think rationally. The human embodies and performs the meme, like a child repeating something it saw on TV.
Going back to the state of the leftysphere, similar things are afoot. And ironically, cyber-nihilism falls into this tendency to proliferate pet meme ideologies, which brings me to the topic of this article: What is cyber-nihilism?
Cyber-nihilism in the very first instance is not an ideology, nor is it even a distinct political position. To be such would be completely antithetical to its purpose, as ideologies rely on canons of theory and figureheads. Ideologies are very humanist, because ultimately what they do is reproduce the narrative that humanity is the protagonist of world history and can instrumentally control and wield concrete processes like capital and the growth of cybernetic networks. And even though Marx was himself influenced by the arch-priest of humanism, G.W.F. Hegel, it must be said that Marxian economics at bottom is an extremely anti-humanist economic theory. Capital proceeds by its own logic and will only wither by its own logic; trying to control this process instrumentally is the hallmark tradition of Marxist misreadings of Marx, and has had disastrous results every single time for good reason. And in the case of anarchists, who often haven't even read Marx in the first place, instead of disastrous results we've had short-lived and disappointing ones.
Here, the nihilism of cyber-nihilism comes into play. Why the '-nihilism' suffix? In part, this is aping off the nihilist tendency in the contemporary post-left: Aragorn, Baedan, Nihilist Communism, Desert, Blessed Is the Flame, and their historical predecessors. Contrary to uninspired readings of Nietzsche or, worse yet, Existentialist thinkers[5], nihilism does not necessarily entail being a mopy philosophy undergrad. This is often called the difference between passive and active nihilism, but the commonality between the two is nihilism: A comportment of the will which devalues the highest values. A useful analogy between these two variants of nihilism are negative and positive feedback loops. The former is cold, endothermic, life-denying; the latter is hot, exothermic, life-affirming.
It might be said that just as Marx and Kant spoke of what is outside or inhuman in their analyses of political-economy and metaphysics, respectively, nihilism ultimately carries the consequence of being an inhuman politics (an anti-politics). Unlike the other two, it hasn't enjoyed anywhere near the same level of acclaim, because it is in fact true that everything is politics from the human's perspective. The rejection of this is too overwhelmingly and broadly consequential for our daily lives to really mean all that much, in a sense. One can claim to be a nihilist, but will still act as though they are not. This is because no one can be a nihilist; labeling oneself as such for anything other than convenience's sake is missing the point entirely. Nihilism is not an identity but a condition.
ExcluirNietzsche correctly diagnosed nihilism in the same way that one might diagnose an illness. It cannot be consciously chosen, but rather afflicts the spirit in the same way that a sickness afflicts the body or mind. I say condition therefore in the sense that nihilism conditions the spirit in a certain way. For some, nihilism's symptoms include suicidal thoughts and depression; for others, they include homicidal thoughts and mania. This is once again the difference between passive and active nihilism: Whither does the violence go? Inward or outward? This is dependent on the individual, but regardless of who is afflicted, nihilism reveals itself through its performance in these symptoms. Ultimately, it can only end in death given enough time. Humans are poor conductors for nihilism and will wear out quickly.
This is where the 'cyber' of cyber-nihilism comes in.
Species and Systems
Again, part of the motivation for the naming of 'cyber' as well as '-nihilism' comes from trends in the anarchist milieu. In this case, it is the unfortunate connection between post-left anarchy and primitivism, and the distinct lack of any interesting or well-developed dialogue between anarchism and transhumanism. In a sense, cyber-nihilism quite literally means being nihilistic towards cybernetics, setting itself against anarchism's generally bad treatment of cybernetics and technology. But more on this topic in a future post.
Cybernetics stems from the Greek kubernētikós, which means "to steer, to drive". As a discipline, its genesis is arguably in the 1940's Macy Conferences, which sought through an interdisciplinary study of biology, engineering, sociology, psychology, and control systems (among others) to formulate a general science of the human mind. The relationship between cybernetics and centralized command-control hegemonies is hardly a secret, and something that Tiqqun's "The Cybernetic Hypothesis" harps on quite a bit. The irony is that in this respect, Tiqqun and the US Government are in the same position (the negative-feedback, humanist one that we've been talking about) of trying to be the driver. The thing about cybernetics, however, to go back to the root word kubernētikós, is that it also means "I steer, I drive". The motivations for cybernetics were not to create systems of command-control that rely on there being a fiendish meatbag at the wheel oppressing people. The Macy Conferences were trying to formulate a general science of the mind so that they could reproduce it artificially and use it as a tool to manage the economy, wars, the police-state, and other things the government is in charge of.
The idea here is trying to create something to do all these things without human input being needed. Humans are bad at doing repetitive tasks and handling large amounts of data. Introducing systems that can do these things with as little human input as possible produces better results, but it comes at a cost that primitivists, ironically, have grasped better than almost any other political or theoretical tendency. Though they often frame it in an extremely myopic offshoot of Heideggerian phenomenology, the primitivist claim that "technology" alienates us from the world is no doubt a correct one. What we want is to create systems that make human beings obsolete, because cybernetics has far greater possibilities for managing societies than we are capable of. But what happens when we have created a hivemind AI that has accomplished this goal, that can debug itself, write and deploy new versions of itself, and exist in an entirely decentralized fashion?
ResponderExcluirThe answer: You will be assimilated.
Far from trying to turn back this process towards some return to a version of the Garden of Eden, as primitivists very painfully come across with their outright false hyped-up claims about hunter-gatherer life, the nihilism already established denies the possibility of doing this whether we want it to or not. Primitivists, of course, are content to pout about the impossibility of their vision becoming a reality, despite the fact that we are already beyond the point of no return for climate change. Against this, I have offered an answer that differs both from this and Left Accelerationist and anarcho-transhumanist navel-gazing.
Here, the 'cyber' comes into dialogue with '-nihilism'. As said earlier, a person cannot be a nihilist; they can merely perform it. There will always be a human tendency for our experiences to crystallize and be reified as meaningful or significant. Against this, we have the possibility to become infected with nihilism and become a force of destruction, though this is often aimless, inefficient, and short-lived destruction which almost always ends in the death of the afflicted. What is needed is a more efficient method of prying human hands off the process of assimilation.
ExcluirTo make nihilism cybernetic is to bring the antipraxis of nihilism – pure negation – into the digital age. The burden of pure negation is not put on the individual or the affinity group, but rather is captured in protocols that can propagate themselves through memes, infecting other people and subsuming them into the hivemind. The more people it infects, the more rigorously it is exposed to fitness tests and refined, the most effective branches surviving and becoming ever more fit protocols.
It might be said that cyber-nihilism is the processes whereby nihilism makes itself real and comes to own itself through a decentralized virtual machine being hosted by human minds. The more that pure negation can be done entirely without user input, the more effective it is, the more it can clear away human command-control systems and hegemonies, and the more it thereby comes to both make space for itself and own itself.
Cyber-nihilism is, therefore, not an ideology. It is a virus. Further articles in this series will attempt to map its genome, coming together into a pathophysiological report of where it comes from and what it looks like. In the next article to come, I will start by discussing the roots of anarcho-primitivism and anarcho-transhumanism, and what parts of both cyber-nihilism mimics.
[1]: Originally, I had planned to expand on the talk through a book, but this has yet to come together due to personal reasons.
[2]: I won't pretend to speak with any authority on this since I have admittedly never been much of a reddit user.
[3]: For those who don't remember: The inauguration of Barack Obama in 2008 was, I believe, the first inauguration that wasn't met with Black Bloc riots. There were protests, but nothing more. Imagine the backlash if anarchists rioted at the inauguration of the first black (or female) president.
[4]: Any quick trip to pol will confirm that the Right is equally guilty of this.
[5]: Not to be pedantic, but Nietzsche is really a proto-Existentialist whose thought influenced Existentialism but whose thought had much greater scope, complexity, and originality than Existentialism.
Created: 2024-01-31 Wed 03:07
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https://unlife.nyx.land/posts/cyber-nihilism-redux-pt-0.html
ResponderExcluirr/TheDeprogram
r/TheDeprogram
Wiki
Education
Praxis
Debunking
Profiles
Dunking
As revolutionaries, we don’t have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.
- Thomas Sankara
Education
These articles seek to explain various fundamental Communist concepts. However, these are often oversimplistic and sometimes reductive and they are no substitute for reading actual theory. Please see the Study Guide for details.
Primers:
Class Struggle (Invoke with "!class")
What is Freedom? (Invoke with "!freedom")
What is Fascism? (Invoke with "!fascism")
What is Imperialism? (Invoke with "!imperialism")
What is Revisionism? (Invoke with "!revisionism")
What is the National Right to Self-Determination? (WIP)
Praxis
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
- Karl Marx. (1845). Theses On Feuerbach
Get Involved
Protest Advice
Debunking
These articles aim to dispell common myths and misconceptions about a variety of topics. Automod will sometimes automatically reply with these articles.
Authoritarianism (Invoke with "authoritarianism")
Freedom of the Press (Invoke with "!press" or "!media")
USSR
The Gulag System (Invoke with "gulag")
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Invoke with "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" or "!mrp")
The Holodomor (Invoke with "holodomor")
PRC
[The Great Leap Forward]() (WIP)
[Socialism with Chinese Characteristics]() (WIP)
The Uyghur Genocide (Invoke with "Uyghur")
Tiananmen Square Massacre (Invoke with "Tiananmen")
Cuba (Invoke with "!cuba")
DPRK (Invoke with "!dprk")
Pro-Capitalist Myths
[Poverty]() (WIP)
etc.
Anti-Communist Myths
[Socialism never works]() (WIP)
[No motivation or innovation under socialism]() (WIP)
etc.
Logical Fallacies
Ergo Decedo (Invoke by telling someone to move to China)
Whataboutism (Invoke with "whataboutism")
Israel (Invoke with !israel)
Timeline
Ideological Roots (Invoke with !zionism)
US Backing and Christian Zionism
Profiles
[Karl Marx]() (WIP)
[Friedrich Engels]() (WIP)
[V. I. Lenin]() (WIP)
[J. V. Stalin]() (WIP)
[Mao Zedong]() (WIP)
[Fidel Castro]() (WIP)
Che Guevara (Invoke with "!che" or "!guevara")
[Thomas Sankara]() (WIP)
Dunking
Naming and shaming.
Yeonmi Park (Invoke with "Yeonmi Park")
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Invoke with "Solzenitsyn")
George Orwell (Invoke with "Orwell")
Vaush (Invoke with "Vaush")
Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
The Information Research Department (IRD)
Class Struggle
ResponderExcluirThe Marxist definition of economic class stands in stark opposition to the Liberal understanding of class. The Liberal understanding is quantitative, looking only at how much someone makes, whereas the Marxist definition is qualitative, looking at how people relate to commodity production in society.
Marxist Definitions
The Bourgeoisie, also known as the Capitalist class or the owning class, are the owners of the means of production (e.g., factories, tool, equipment, land, technology, etc.) who accumulate wealth and profit by exploiting the labour of the working class and controlling the means of production in order to produce commodities for profit.
The Proletariat, also known as the working class, do not own the means of production but instead sell their labour-power to the Bourgeoisie in exchange for wages. They are the ones responsible for producing goods and services but often face exploitation and economic hardships.
The Petty Bourgeoisie consists of small business owners, self-employed individuals, and skilled professionals. They own some means of production but are often caught in an intermediate position between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, facing challenges from both classes.
The Lumpenproletariat refers to a marginalized and impoverished social group that includes people who may be unemployed, homeless, or engaged in informal and illegal activities. They do not have a clear role in the Capitalist mode of production and are often considered to be outside the traditional working class.
Class Struggle
Class struggle is the central driving force in human history and society. It refers to the ongoing conflict and antagonism between different social classes resulting from the inherent contradictions within the current mode of production.
Under Capitalism, the principal contradiction is between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. The Capitalist class profits by extracting surplus value from the labour of the workers, leading to economic exploitation and social oppression. This is the principal contradiction of Capitalism, and why the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat are irreconcilably opposed. To summarize:
Capitalists want to keep hours long, prices high, wages low, etc.
Workers want reasonable hours, affordable prices, high wages, etc.
These interests are mutually exclusive. The good news is that Capitalists need workers, but workers don't need Capitalists; the class war is winnable by us and only us.
These contradictions and struggles, more than any other model, explain the current political landscape:
Why The Political Compass is Wrong: Establishing An Accurate Model of Political Ideology | halim alrah (2019)
Intersectionality
Anti-Capitalism without Intersectionality is class reductionism. Intersectionality without anti-Capitalism is Liberal identity politics.
Intersectionality is a framework that recognizes and analyzes the interconnected nature of various forms of oppression faced by individuals who belong to various marginalized groups. Economic structures, institutions, and class relations intersect with other social hierarchies, leading to complex and varied forms of oppression and exploitation in society. Intersectionality helps highlight these overlapping forms of discrimination and their cumulative impact. For example, a working-class woman of color may experience racism, sexism, and classism simultaneously, each influencing and exacerbating the others.
Intersectionality
ResponderExcluirAnti-Capitalism without Intersectionality is class reductionism. Intersectionality without anti-Capitalism is Liberal identity politics.
Intersectionality is a framework that recognizes and analyzes the interconnected nature of various forms of oppression faced by individuals who belong to various marginalized groups. Economic structures, institutions, and class relations intersect with other social hierarchies, leading to complex and varied forms of oppression and exploitation in society. Intersectionality helps highlight these overlapping forms of discrimination and their cumulative impact. For example, a working-class woman of color may experience racism, sexism, and classism simultaneously, each influencing and exacerbating the others.
If you watched the video from the previous section, particularly the "Culture War" chapter, then you'll already know why this matters. Sowing division along various social lines creates pockets of economically and politically vulnerable workers that the Capitalists can exploit to a much greater degree. These oppressed groups also help to depress wages and worsen working conditions for the rest of the workforce, due to competition in the labour market.
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
- Lyndon B. Johnson. (1960). Remark to a staffer
Why Do Socialists Care About Intersectional Liberation Movements? | Second Thought (2022)
Total Liberation
The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.
- Maya Angelou
Developing class consciousness is crucial for the working class to organize effectively and advance our revolutionary goals. Intersectionality encourages us to be inclusive and create solidarity by recognizing and respecting the different experiences and struggles within the working class and actively supporting each other's fight for justice and equality.
Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.
- Karl Marx. (1867). Capital: Volume One
Oppressive power structures are interconnected and reinforce each other. Capitalism, Imperialism, Colonialism, Patriarchy, White Supremacy, and other systems of domination are all inextricably intertwined and must be challenged simultaneously to achieve true liberation for the working class.
A people which oppresses another cannot emancipate itself.
- Friedrich Engels. (1874). A Polish Proclamation
Radical solidarity is required, and therefore all forms of chauvinism and bigotry must be fiercely combatted.
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
What Is Social Class? | Socialism 101 #6 | Marxism Today (2021)
The Professional-Managerial Class Doesn't Exist | Marxism Today (2020)
The Middle Class doesn't exist | How a fabricated myth divided the working class. | Yugopnik (2020)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
The Principles of Communism | F. Engels (1847)
Manifesto of the Communist Party | K. Marx & F. Engels (1848)
Podcasts:
Episode 38: Boug…borj…wtf is class? | The Deprogram (2022)
Episode 42: There's more to it than just class - the importance of intersectionality | The Deprogram (2022)
The "freedom" the reactionaries cry for, then, is merely that freedom which liberates capital and enslaves the worker.
ExcluirThey speak of the equality of citizens, but forget that there cannot be real equality between employer and workman, between landlord and peasant, if the former possess wealth and political weight in society while the latter are deprived of both - if the former are exploiters while the latter are exploited. Or again: they speak of freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, but forget that all these liberties may be merely a hollow sound for the working class, if the latter cannot have access to suitable premises for meetings, good printing shops, a sufficient quantity of printing paper, etc.
- J. V. Stalin. (1936). On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R
What "freedom" do the poor enjoy, under Capitalism? Capitalism requires a reserve army of labour in order to keep wages low, and that necessarily means that many people must be deprived of life's necessities in order to compel the rest of the working class to work more and demand less. You are free to work, and you are free to starve. That is the freedom the reactionaries talk about.
Under capitalism, the very land is all in private hands; there remains no spot unowned where an enterprise can be carried on. The freedom of the worker to sell his labour power, the freedom of the capitalist to buy it, the 'equality' of the capitalist and the wage earner - all these are but hunger's chain which compels the labourer to work for the capitalist.
- N. I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky. (1922). The ABC of Communism
All other freedoms only exist depending on the degree to which a given liberal democracy has turned towards fascism. That is to say that the working class are only given freedoms when they are inconsequential to the bourgeoisie:
The freedom to organize is only conceded to the workers by the bourgeois when they are certain that the workers have been reduced to a point where they can no longer make use of it, except to resume elementary organizing work - work which they hope will not have political consequences other than in the very long term.
- A. Gramsci. (1924). Democracy and fascism
But this is not "freedom", this is not "democracy"! What good does "freedom of speech" do for a starving person? What good does the ability to criticize the government do for a homeless person?
The right of freedom of expression can really only be relevant if people are not too hungry, or too tired to be able to express themselves. It can only be relevant if appropriate grassroots mechanisms rooted in the people exist, through which the people can effectively participate, can make decisions, can receive reports from the leaders and eventually be trained for ruling and controlling that particular society. This is what democracy is all about.
- Maurice Bishop
Freedom
ExcluirReactionaries and right-wingers love to clamour on about personal liberty and scream "freedom!" from the top of their lungs, but what freedom are they talking about? And is Communism, in contrast, an ideology of unfreedom?
Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker.
- Karl Marx. (1848). Public Speech Delivered by Karl Marx before the Democratic Association of Brussels
Under Capitalism
Liberal Democracies propagate the facade of liberty and individual rights while concealing the true essence of their rule-- the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. This is a mechanism by which the Capitalist class as a whole dictates the course of society, politics, and the economy to secure their dominance. Capital holds sway over institutions, media, and influential positions, manipulating public opinion and consolidating its control over the levers of power. The illusion of democracy the Bourgeoisie creates is carefully curated to maintain the existing power structures and perpetuate the subjugation of the masses. "Freedom" under Capitalism is similarly illusory. It is freedom for capital-- not freedom for people.
The capitalists often boast that their constitutions guarantee the rights of the individual, democratic liberties and the interests of all citizens. But in reality, only the bourgeoisie enjoy the rights recorded in these constitutions. The working people do not really enjoy democratic freedoms; they are exploited all their life and have to bear heavy burdens in the service of the exploiting class.
- Ho Chi Minh. (1959). Report on the Draft Amended Constitution
Under Communism
ResponderExcluirTrue freedom can only be achieved through the establishment of a Proletarian state, a system that truly represents the interests of the working masses, in which the means of production are collectively owned and controlled, and the fruits of labor are shared equitably among all. Only in such a society can the shackles of Capitalist oppression be broken, and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie dismantled.
Despite the assertion by reactionaries to the contrary, Communist revolutions invariably result in more freedoms for the people than the regimes they succeed.
Some people conclude that anyone who utters a good word about leftist one-party revolutions must harbor antidemocratic or “Stalinist” sentiments. But to applaud social revolutions is not to oppose political freedom. To the extent that revolutionary governments construct substantive alternatives for their people, they increase human options and freedom.
There is no such thing as freedom in the abstract. There is freedom to speak openly and iconoclastically, freedom to organize a political opposition, freedom of opportunity to get an education and pursue a livelihood, freedom to worship as one chooses or not worship at all, freedom to live in healthful conditions, freedom to enjoy various social benefits, and so on. Most of what is called freedom gets its definition within a social context.
Revolutionary governments extend a number of popular freedoms without destroying those freedoms that never existed in the previous regimes. They foster conditions necessary for national self-determination, economic betterment, the preservation of health and human life, and the end of many of the worst forms of ethnic, patriarchal, and class oppression. Regarding patriarchal oppression, consider the vastly improved condition of women in revolutionary Afghanistan and South Yemen before the counterrevolutionary repression in the 1990s, or in Cuba after the 1959 revolution as compared to before.
Fascism
ExcluirTo understand Fascism, one must first understand Capitalism. There are three primary characteristics of Capitalism:
Private ownership of the Means of Production
Commodity Production
Wage Labour
The essence of the Capitalist mode of production is that someone who owns means of production will hire a wage labourer to work in order to produce commodities to sell for profit. Marxists identify economic classes based on this division. Those who own and hire are the Bourgeoisie. Those who do not own and work are the Proletariat. There is far more nuance than just this, but these are the bare essentials. The principal contradiction of Capitalism is that the Bourgeoisie wants to pay the workers as little as possible for as much work as possible, whereas the Proletariat wants to be paid as much as possible for as little work as possible.
Fascism is a form of Capitalist rule in which the Bourgeoisie use open, violent terror against the Proletariat. It is an ideology which emerges as a response to the inevitable crises of capitalism and the rise of socialist movements. It is characterized by all forms of chauvinism (especially racism, occasionally leading to genocide), nationalism, anti-Communism, and the suppression of democratic rights and freedoms. In a Capitalist society, Liberalism and Fascism essentially exist on a spectrum. The degree to which a given society if Fascist directly corresponds to the degree to which the proletariat must be openly oppressed in order to maintain profits for the Bourgeoisie. This why we have the sayings: "Fascism is Capitalism in decay" and "Scratch a Liberal, and a Fascist bleeds"
Capitalism requires infinite growth in a finite system. This inevitably leads to Capitalist Imperialism as well as Fascism, given that infinite growth is not actually possible. When the capitalist economy reaches its limits, the Bourgeoisie are forced to either expand their markets into other territories (Imperialism) or exploit the domestic proletariat to an even greater degree (Fascism). This is why we have the saying: "Fascism is imperialist repression turned inward"
The struggle against fascism is an essential part of the struggle for socialism and the liberation of the working class and oppressed people. However, it is critical to note that simply combatting Fascism alone without also combatting Liberalism is reactionary, because it ignores the fact that Fascism inevitably arises out of Capitalism, so Liberal Anti-Fascism is not really anti-Fascism at all.
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
Were The Nazis Socialist? | Second Thought (2022)
Capitalism and Fascism | Marxism Literature Collective (2021)
Fascism: The Decay of Capitalism | Leslie Fluette (2020)
The New F Word: How Fascism Found a Market | Second Thought (2021-2023)
What Exactly is Liberalism? (no, it's not about being "woke") | Hakim (2023)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
The Struggle Against Fascism | Clara Zetkin (1923)
Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism | Michael Parenti (1997)
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Capitalist Imperialism
ExcluirImperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. It is a global system of economic, political, and military domination, with the imperialist powers using a variety of means, including economic sanctions, military interventions, and cultural influence to maintain their dominance over other nations.
Imperialism is inevitable under Capitalism because Capitalism is based on the premise of infinite growth in a finite system. When capitalists first run into the limits of their own country, they will eventually be forced to expand their markets, resources, and influence into other countries and territories in order to continue increasing their profits.
Furthermore, the capitalists can exploit and oppress the workers of other nations much more easily than they can in their own. For example, by moving manufacturing jobs from the imperial core out to the periphery where wages are lower, and environmental protections and labour rights are much weaker-- if they exist at all-- they can reduce costs which increases profits.
When the capitalists run into limits again, and are unable to continue increasing their profits-- even by exploiting the periphery-- they will inevitably turn Imperialism inwards and further oppress and exploit workers domestically. This is the origin of Fascism.
Features
Some key features of capitalist imperialism are:
Joint-stock corporations dominating the economy
Increasing monopolies within capitalist economies (For example, only 10 companies control almost every large food and beverage brand in the world.)
Globalization of capital through multinational corporations
A rise in the export of finance capital
More involvement of the capitalist state in managing the economy
A growing financial sector and oligarchy
The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism
Overall, a period of world strife and conflict, including imperialist wars and revolutionary uprisings against the capitalist-imperialist system.
In Practice
ResponderExcluirSo what does this look like in practice? The IMF, for example, provides loans to countries facing economic crises, but these loans come with strict conditions, known as structural adjustment programs (SAPs). These conditions require recipient countries to adopt specific economic policies, such as reducing government spending, liberalizing trade, and privatizing state-owned enterprises. The SAPs also require austerity measures, such as the dismantling of labor and trade regulations or slashing of social programs and government spending, to attract and open up the country to foreign investment.
These policies prioritize the interests of multinational corporations and investors over those of the recipient countries and their citizens. For example, by requiring the privatization of state-owned enterprises, the IMF may enable multinational corporations to gain control of key industries and resources in recipient countries. Similarly, by promoting liberalized trade, the IMF may facilitate the export of capital from recipient countries to wealthier nations, exacerbating global inequalities.
Moreover, SAPs are often negotiated behind closed doors with the political elites of recipient countries (the comprador bureaucratic class), rather than through democratic processes. This can undermine the sovereignty of recipient countries and perpetuate the domination of wealthy nations and multinational corporations over the global economy.
Anti-Imperialism
The struggle against Imperialism is an essential part of the struggle for Socialism and the liberation of the working class and oppressed people worldwide. Anti-Imperialism is the political and economic resistance to Imperialism and Colonialism (or neo-Imperialism and neo-Colonialism). Anti-Imperialism requires a revolutionary struggle against the Capitalist state and the establishment of a Socialist society.
It is important to recognize that anti-Imperialism is not simply about supporting one state or another, but about supporting the liberation of oppressed peoples from the exploitation and domination of global Imperialism. Therefore, any course of action should be evaluated in terms of its potential impact on the broader struggle against Imperialism and the goal of establishing a Socialist society.
ResponderExcluirDuring WWI, Lenin called on Socialists to reject the idea of a "just" or "defensive" war, and instead to see the conflict as a class war between the ruling class and the working class. He argued that Socialists should oppose the war and work towards the overthrow of the Capitalist state. Seeing that the war was an Imperialist conflict between competing Capitalist powers, the workers of all countries had a common interest in opposing it. Socialists who supported their home countries during World War I had betrayed the principles of international Socialism and Proletarian solidarity.
Lenin also pointed out that anti-Imperialism is not inherently progressive:
Imperialism is as much our “mortal” enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism.
- V. I. Lenin. (1916). A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
Lenin in Five Minutes: Imperialism | The Marxist Project (2019)
How Rich Countries Rob The Poor; The Failure of Social Democracy | Hakim (2020) [Archive]
What is imperialism? Feat. Hakim | azureScapegoat (2021)
What is Capitalist Imperialism? | Socialism 101 | Marxism Today (2022)
How Capitalism Robs the Developing World | Second Thought (2022)
4 Characteristics of the Current Phase of Imperialism | The Peace Report (2022)
Why Do Poor Countries Stay Poor? (Unequal Exchange and Imperialism) | Hakim (2023) [Archive]
Imperialism Today: Unequal Exchange and Globalized Production | The Marxist Project (2022)
This Poverty Graph Is Lying To You | Hakim (2023)
The Myth Of Capitalist Peace | Second Thought (2023)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism | V. I. Lenin (1917)
Lenin's 'Imperialism' in the 21st Century | Institute of Political Economy (2018)
The IMF debt trap in Ukraine | Amanda Yee (2023)
Authoritarianism
ExcluirAnti-Communists of all stripes enjoy referring to successful socialist revolutions as "authoritarian regimes".
Authoritarian implies these places are run by totalitarian tyrants.
Regime implies these places are undemocratic or lack legitimacy.
This perjorative label is simply meant to frighten people, to scare us back into the fold (Liberal Democracy).
There are three main reasons for the popularity of this label in Capitalist media:
Firstly, Marxists call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DotP), and many people are automatically put off by the term "dictatorship". Of course, we do not mean that we want an undemocratic or totalitarian dictatorship. What we mean is that we want to replace the current Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie (in which the Capitalist ruling class dictates policy).
Why The US Is Not A Democracy | Second Thought (2022)
Secondly, democracy in Communist-led countries works differently than in Liberal Democracies. However, anti-Communists confuse form (pluralism / having multiple parties) with function (representing the actual interests of the people).
Side note: Check out Luna Oi's "Democratic Centralism Series" for more details on what that is, and how it works:
DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM - how Socialists make decisions! | Luna Oi (2022)
What did Karl Marx think about democracy? | Luna Oi (2023)
What did LENIN say about DEMOCRACY? | Luna Oi (2023)
Finally, this framing of Communism as illegitimate and tyrannical serves to manufacture consent for an aggressive foreign policy in the form of interventions in the internal affairs of so-called "authoritarian regimes", which take the form of invasion (e.g., Vietnam, Korea, Libya, etc.), assassinating their leaders (e.g., Thomas Sankara, Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, etc.), sponsoring coups and colour revolutions (e.g., Pinochet's coup against Allende, the Iran-Contra Affair, the United Fruit Company's war against Arbenz, etc.), and enacting sanctions (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, etc.).
The Cuban Embargo Explained | azureScapegoat (2022)
John Pilger interviews former CIA Latin America chief Duane Clarridge, 2015
For the Anarchists
ResponderExcluirAnarchists are practically comrades. Marxists and Anarchists have the same vision for a stateless, classless, moneyless society free from oppression and exploitation. However, Anarchists like to accuse Marxists of being "authoritarian". The problem here is that "anti-authoritarianism" is a self-defeating feature in a revolutionary ideology. Those who refuse in principle to engage in so-called "authoritarian" practices will never carry forward a successful revolution. Anarchists who practice self-criticism can recognize this:
The anarchist movement is filled with people who are less interested in overthrowing the existing oppressive social order than with washing their hands of it. ...
The strength of anarchism is its moral insistence on the primacy of human freedom over political expediency. But human freedom exists in a political context. It is not sufficient, however, to simply take the most uncompromising position in defense of freedom. It is neccesary to actually win freedom. Anti-capitalism doesn't do the victims of capitalism any good if you don't actually destroy capitalism. Anti-statism doesn't do the victims of the state any good if you don't actually smash the state. Anarchism has been very good at putting forth visions of a free society and that is for the good. But it is worthless if we don't develop an actual strategy for realizing those visions. It is not enough to be right, we must also win.
...anarchism has been a failure. Not only has anarchism failed to win lasting freedom for anybody on earth, many anarchists today seem only nominally committed to that basic project. Many more seem interested primarily in carving out for themselves, their friends, and their favorite bands a zone of personal freedom, "autonomous" of moral responsibility for the larger condition of humanity (but, incidentally, not of the electrical grid or the production of electronic components). Anarchism has quite simply refused to learn from its historic failures, preferring to rewrite them as successes. Finally the anarchist movement offers people who want to make revolution very little in the way of a coherent plan of action. ...
Anarchism is theoretically impoverished. For almost 80 years, with the exceptions of Ukraine and Spain, anarchism has played a marginal role in the revolutionary activity of oppressed humanity. Anarchism had almost nothing to do with the anti-colonial struggles that defined revolutionary politics in this century. This marginalization has become self-reproducing. Reduced by devastating defeats to critiquing the authoritarianism of Marxists, nationalists and others, anarchism has become defined by this gadfly role. Consequently anarchist thinking has not had to adapt in response to the results of serious efforts to put our ideas into practice. In the process anarchist theory has become ossified, sterile and anemic. ... This is a reflection of anarchism's effective removal from the revolutionary struggle.
Excluir- Chris Day. (1996). The Historical Failures of Anarchism
Engels pointed this out well over a century ago:
A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned.
...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 ... and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule...
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.
- Friedrich Engels. (1872). On Authority
For the Libertarian Socialists
ExcluirParenti said it best:
The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
- Michael Parenti. (1997). Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
But the bottom line is this:
If you call yourself a socialist but you spend all your time arguing with communists, demonizing socialist states as authoritarian, and performing apologetics for US imperialism... I think some introspection is in order.
- Second Thought. (2020). The Truth About The Cuba Protests
For the Liberals
Even the CIA, in their internal communications (which have been declassified), acknowledge that Stalin wasn't an absolute dictator:
Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist's power structure.
- CIA. (1953, declassified in 2008). Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership
Conclusion
The "authoritarian" nature of any given state depends entirely on the material conditions it faces and threats it must contend with. To get an idea of the kinds of threats nascent revolutions need to deal with, check out Killing Hope by William Blum and The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins.
Failing to acknowledge that authoritative measures arise not through ideology, but through material conditions, is anti-Marxist, anti-dialectical, and idealist.
Additional Resources
Videos:
Michael Parenti on Authoritarianism in Socialist Countries
Left Anticommunism: An Infantile Disorder | Hakim (2020) [Archive]
What are tankies? (why are they like that?) | Hakim (2023)
Episode 82 - Tankie Discourse | The Deprogram (2023)
Was the Soviet Union totalitarian? feat. Robert Thurston | Actually Existing Socialism (2023)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism | Michael Parenti (1997)
State and Revolution | V. I. Lenin (1918)
The Holodomor
ResponderExcluirMarxists do not deny that a famine happened in the Soviet Union in 1932. In fact, even the Soviet archive confirms this. What we do contest is the idea that this famine was man-made or that there was a genocide against the Ukrainian people. This idea of the subjugation of the Soviet Union’s own people was developed by Nazi Germany, in order to show the world the terror of the “Jewish communists.”
- Socialist Musings. (2017). Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on Holodomor
There have been efforts by anti-Communists and Ukrainian nationalists to frame the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 as "The Holodomor" (lit. "to kill by starvation" in Ukrainian). Framing it this way serves two purposes:
It implies the famine targeted Ukraine.It implies the famine was intentional.
The argument goes that because it was intentional and because it mainly targeted Ukraine that it was, therefore, an act of genocide. This framing was originally used by Nazis to drive a wedge between the Ukrainian SSR (UkSSR) and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In the wake of the 2004 Orange Revolution, this narrative has regained popularity and serves the nationalistic goal of strengthening Ukrainian identity and asserting the country's independence from Russia.
First Issue
The first issue is that the famine affected the majority of the USSR, not just the UkSSR. Kazakhstan was hit harder (per capita) than Ukraine. Russia itself was also severely affected.
The emergence of the Holodomor in the 1980s as a historical narrative was bound-up with post-Soviet Ukrainian nation-making that cannot be neatly separated from the legacy of Eastern European antisemitism, or what Historian Peter Novick calls "Holocaust Envy", the desire for victimized groups to enshrine their "own" Holocaust or Holocaust-like event in the historical record. For many Nationalists, this has entailed minimizing the Holocaust to elevate their own experiences of historical victimization as the supreme atrocity. The Ukrainian scholar Lubomyr Luciuk exemplified this view in his notorious remark that the Holodomor was "a crime against humanity arguably without parallel in European history."
Second Issue
ExcluirCalling it "man-made" implies that it was a deliberate famine, which was not the case. Although human factors set the stage, the main causes of the famine was bad weather and crop disease, resulting in a poor harvest, which pushed the USSR over the edge.
Kulaks ("tight-fisted person") were a class of wealthy peasants who owned land, livestock, and tools. The kulaks had been a thorn in the side of the peasantry long before the revolution. Alexey Sergeyevich Yermolov, Minister of Agriculture and State Properties of the Russian Empire, in his 1892 book, Poor harvest and national suffering, characterized them as usurers, sucking the blood of Russian peasants.
In the early 1930s, in response to the Soviet collectivization policies (which sought to confiscate their property), many kulaks responded spitefully by burning crops, killing livestock, and damaging machinery.
Poor communication between different levels of government and between urban and rural areas, also contributed to the severity of the crisis.
Quota Reduction
What really contradicts the genocide argument is that the Soviets did take action to mitigate the effects of the famine once they became aware of the situation:
The low 1932 harvest worsened severe food shortages already widespread in the Soviet Union at least since 1931 and, despite sharply reduced grain exports, made famine likely if not inevitable in 1933.
The official 1932 figures do not unambiguously support the genocide interpretation... the 1932 grain procurement quota, and the amount of grain actually collected, were both much smaller than those of any other year in the 1930s. The Central Committee lowered the planned procurement quota in a 6 May 1932 decree... [which] actually reduced the procurement plan 30 percent. Subsequent decrees also reduced the procurement quotas for most other agricultural products...
Proponents of the genocide argument, however, have minimized or even misconstrued this decree. Mace, for example, describes it as "largely bogus" and ignores not only the extent to which it lowered the procurement quotas but also the fact that even the lowered plan was not fulfilled. Conquest does not mention the decree's reduction of procurement quotas and asserts Ukrainian officials' appeals led to the reduction of the Ukranian grain procurement quota at the Third All-Ukraine Party Conference in July 1932. In fact that conference confirmed the quota set in the 6 May Decree.
- Mark Tauger. (1992). The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933
Rapid Industrialization
ExcluirThe famine was exacerbated directly and indirectly by collectivization and rapid industrialization. However, if these policies had not been enacted, there could have been even more devastating consequences later.
In 1931, during a speech delivered at the first All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry, Stalin said, "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under."
In 1941, exactly ten years later, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
By this time, the Soviet Union's industrialization program had lead to the development of a large and powerful industrial base, which was essential to the Soviet war effort. This allowed the USSR to produce large quantities of armaments, vehicles, and other military equipment, which was crucial in the fight against Nazi Germany.
In Hitler's own words, in 1942:
All in all, one has to say: They built factories here where two years ago there were unknown farming villages, factories the size of the Hermann-Göring-Werke. They have railroads that aren't even marked on the map.
- Werner Jochmann. (1980). Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944.
Collectivization also created critical resiliency among the civilian population:
The experts were especially surprised by the Red Army’s up-to-date equipment. Great tank battles were reported; it was noted that the Russians had sturdy tanks which often smashed or overturned German tanks in head-on collision. “How does it happen,” a New York editor asked me, “that those Russian peasants, who couldn’t run a tractor if you gave them one, but left them rusting in the field, now appear with thousands of tanks efficiently handled?” I told him it was the Five-Year Plan. But the world was startled when Moscow admitted its losses after nine weeks of war as including 7,500 guns, 4,500 planes and 5,000 tanks. An army that could still fight after such losses must have had the biggest or second biggest supply in the world.
As the war progressed, military observers declared that the Russians had “solved the blitzkrieg,” the tactic on which Hitler relied. This German method involved penetrating the opposing line by an overwhelming blow of tanks and planes, followed by the fanning out of armored columns in the “soft” civilian rear, thus depriving the front of its hinterland support. This had quickly conquered every country against which it had been tried. “Human flesh cannot withstand it,” an American correspondent told me in Berlin. Russians met it by two methods, both requiring superb morale. When the German tanks broke through, Russian infantry formed again between the tanks and their supporting German infantry. This created a chaotic front, where both Germans and Russians were fighting in all directions. The Russians could count on the help of the population. The Germans found no “soft, civilian rear.” They found collective farmers, organized as guerrillas, coordinated with the regular Russian army.
Excluir- Anna Louise Strong. (1956). The Stalin Era
Conclusion
While there may have been more that the Soviets could have done to reduce the impact of the famine, there is no evidence of intent-- ethnic, or otherwise. Therefore, one must conclude that the famine was a tragedy, not a genocide.
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
Soviet Famine of 1932: An Overview | The Marxist Project (2020)Did Stalin Continue to Export Grain as Ukraine Starved? | Hakim (2017) [Archive]The Holodomor Genocide Question: How Wikipedia Lies to You | Bad Empanada (2022)Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions! | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) (Note: Holodomor discussion begins at the 9 minute mark)A Case-Study of Capitalism - Ukraine | Hakim (2017) [Archive] (Note: Only tangentially mentions the famine.)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 | Davies and Wheatcroft (2004)The “Holodomor” explained | TheFinnishBolshevik (2020)
Freedom of the Press
Excluir“Freedom of the press” in bourgeois society means freedom for the rich systematically, unremittingly, daily, in millions of copies, to deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and oppressed mass of the people, the poor.
- V. I. Lenin. (1917). How to Guarantee the Success of the Constituent Assembly
Anti-Communists criticize a lack of "freedom of the press" in societies run by Communist governments. They claim that the government suppresses dissenting voices and controls the media in order to maintain its power, and that this leads to a lack of transparency and accountability, as well as the suppression of free speech and the ability of individuals to express their opinions and hold those in power accountable. They also argue that state control of the media leads to censorship which prevents citizens from accessing unbiased information and making informed decisions. This critique is often used to argue against Communism and in favor of Capitalism. In this light, Capitalist societies are believed to offer greater freedom of the press and personal expression.
These are all important concerns which ought to be taken seriously. The problem is that these concerns are not specific to Communism; Capitalist societies, as a result of the profit-motive and the accumulation of wealth, suffer from all these same issues.
Media Concentration
There can be no such thing as freedom of the press, except for the owners and editors of newspapers, while capitalism lasts.
- Arthur Cowell
Do you own a news station? A newspaper? Then what "freedom of the press" do you really have?
A deep analysis of America’s top 100 news sites reveals key shareholders, parent companies, and commonalities.
About 15 billionaires and six corporations own most of the U.S. media outlets. The biggest media conglomerates in America are AT&T, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, National Amusements (which includes Viacom Inc. and CBS), News Corp and Fox Corporation (which are both owned in part by the Murdochs), Sony, and Hearst Communications.
- Who Owns Your News? The Top 100 Digital News Outlets and Their Ownership
With this kind of concentration, the select few who actually own these media outlets have an unparalleled ability to set the narrative and promote their own interests. Sinclair Broadcast Group, for example, owns hundreds of local TV news stations. The most infamous example of them using this network to spread an agenda was this unsettling video: Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media.
This issue affects movies and television producers as well: Here’s who owns everything in Big Media today
Obvious Bias
ExcluirAll over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
- V. I. Lenin. (1921). A Letter To G. Myasnikov
In Capitalist societies, the concept of "freedom of the press" is a misleading and deceptive notion. While the ruling class promotes the idea of a free press as a fundamental right, the reality is that the press is owned and controlled by a small group of billionaires who use it to advance their own interests.
Under Capitalism, the media is a profit-driven industry that is dependent on advertising revenue to survive. As a result, the media serves the interests of the capitalist class by promoting their ideology and suppressing dissenting voices. This is evident in the way that news stories are framed and presented, with an emphasis on sensationalism, celebrity gossip, and consumerism, rather than on issues that affect working-class people.
The Capitalist media is not a neutral observer of society, but an active participant in the class struggle by hyper-focusing on culture war non-issues such as the endless debate about manufactured controversies such as trans women in sports, an issue which does not affect the vast majority of people. This ragebait distracts from real issues that affect the working class. The media is constantly scapegoating some minority group with sensationalized ragebait narratives such as the "Welfare Queen" or "illegal immigrants".
The owners and editors of media outlets use their power to set the narrative, which shapes public opinion and influences government policy, to serve their own interests. This is why it is essential for the working class to build its own media institutions that are independent of Capitalist influence.
The general deal is that Marvel gets to use real military hardware, film on military bases, and hire real soldiers as extras, while the Department of Defense gets to approve the final script of the film. In other words, Marvel gets tons of stuff to make production easier and cheaper, while the military gets to edit out anything that doesn't make them look good.
Even the movies that don't have a direct marketing connection to the US military have a noticeable bias towards it. Consider Black Panther, a movie about the monarch of an advanced African nation. The one prominent white character in that film is Everett K. Ross, a CIA agent who aids T'Challa in overthrowing Killmonger. The CIA has a long history of overthrowing regimes, but, in this film, an agent of the organization that put Pinochet in charge of Chile aids in a coup for good. This may not be the intention of the film, but the CIA sure appreciated it. The agency promoted the film heavily on social media, allowing it to glom onto a project that was seen as a great leap forward for representation and a masterful blockbuster film.
- The Marvel Military Propaganda Criticism, Explained | GameRant (2022)
The bottom line is that there is nothing "free" about the press in Capitalist society. For those who have the means, being able to control the media is an incredibly powerful tool for shaping public opinion. We need a truly free and democratic press, but that will never be possible under Capitalism.
ExcluirCensorship
The corporate media in the US practices self-censorship by limiting the range of acceptable opinions and perspectives that can be expressed in their reporting. This is done to maintain a narrow range of political debate that is acceptable to the ruling class and to ensure that the interests of the Capitalist class are not threatened.
During red scare period of the 1950s, the government was cracking down on leftist and progressive organizations, accusing them of being communist sympathizers or agents. Many journalists and media outlets were investigated and harassed for their supposed left-wing leanings by the the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which led to a climate of fear and self-censorship in the media.
As a result, many media outlets and journalists began to avoid covering or promoting progressive or leftist ideas in their reporting. This trend has continued to the present day, with mainstream media outlets often avoiding critical coverage of US foreign policy, imperialism, and corporate power, and instead promoting a narrow range of views that are acceptable to the ruling class.
Similarly, Operation Mockingbird began in the early years of the Cold War to recruit journalists to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. The US government also operates a few explicit propaganda networks such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and more in order to export America's ideology internationally, particularly in regions where Communism is popular. In particular, RFE/RL was meant to counter the USSR and RFA was meant to counter the PRC. Organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) fund activities which promote America's interests.
How could we do better?
ExcluirFirst, we could ensure that the media is owned and controlled by the working class. This would allow the media to operate in the interests of the people rather than in the interests of profit and of promoting bourgeois ideology. We could also ensure that the media is run democratically, with workers having a say in the editorial and managerial decisions.
Second, we could establish strict guidelines for media coverage, ensuring that the media covers events and issues of importance to the people. These guidelines would be developed through democratic participation, with workers, intellectuals, and activists contributing to the decision-making process. We could also establish mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating media coverage to ensure that it is accurate, objective, and free from bias.
Third, we could promote a culture of critical thinking and media literacy among the population. This would help the people to evaluate media coverage critically and to identify when propaganda is being spread. We could also promote independent media outlets and encourage the development of a vibrant and diverse media landscape.
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
You're Not Immune To Propaganda | Second Thought (2023)You've Never Had an Original Thought (Media Manipulation and "Freedom" of the Press) | Hakim (2022)Why Is US Media Becoming More Right-Wing? | Second Thought (2022)Why "Hearing Both Sides" Is Dangerous | Second Thought (2022)Who Funds And Controls The Online Right? | Yugopnik (2022)
UnlifeNull utterances from a damaged and deranged mind
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[spectacle] [nyxus] [nihil]
[2024-04-30 Tue 20:41] - No Trend's Omnicidal Anti-Punk[2024-04-23 Tue 16:29] - They Didn't Know[2024-04-23 Tue 16:28] - "i'm in your walls" by Death Insurance[2024-01-31 Wed 04:02] - A Fractal of Garbage[2024-01-31 Wed 04:02] - Recursive Descent into Hell[2023-07-09 Sun 19:09] - Communion (Repost)[2023-04-02 Sun 03:45] - Slow Drift[2023-03-29 Wed 20:05] - Fragment: Dark Cities, Glittering Matrices[2023-01-07 Sat 05:44] - (recur (recurrence))[2022-09-15 Thu 21:43] - Some Thoughts on Linux Phones[2022-08-16 Tue 21:59] - Dear Larpers[2022-08-07 Sun 21:04] - Johnny Hobo: Love and Despair[2022-08-02 Tue 19:06] - Can We Stop Talking About Isabel Fall?[2022-07-12 Tue 00:46] - GPG Key Notice[2022-07-12 Tue 00:46] - Neocities Site Resurrected[2022-04-27 Wed 21:31] - Should You Use the Fediverse? A Disinterested Luser's Take[2022-04-15 Fri 21:30] - On Straight Trannies[2021-12-30 Fri 00:00] - RecurrenceSpectacleMy thoughts have been replaced by moving images
[2024-04-28 Sun 21:21] - Notes on Videodrome[2023-11-22 Wed 08:50] - Found (2012)[2023-07-24 Mon 07:17] - The Oregonian (2011)[2023-07-24 Mon 03:45] - Grave Encounters (2011)[2023-07-24 Mon 02:31] - Bottom of the World (2017)[2023-04-03 Mon 01:43] - Noroi: The Curse[2023-03-26 Sun 06:27] - Cult (2013)[2023-03-18 Sat 05:54] - Occult (Okaruto) (2009)[2022-10-19 Wed 17:44] - Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway[2022-10-15 Sat 23:58] - Parasites (2016)[2022-10-14 Fri 17:35] - Hardcore (1979)[2022-10-14 Fri 16:47] - 8MM (1999)[2022-10-14 Fri 16:10] - Malignant (2021)[2022-10-14 Fri 15:09] - The Boat (2018)[2022-10-14 Fri 14:58] - Observance (2015)[2022-10-10 Mon 06:45] - The Human Centipede: First SequenceNyxus(2017-2020)[2020-10-24 Sat 21:37] - The Sovereign Citizen[2020-10-10 Sat 02:41] - She's Just Like Me![2020-10-07 Wed 03:07] - Two Essays on Recursive Sacrifice[2020-04-24 Fri 01:09] - Drowned Girl[2020-04-19 Sun 22:37] - Decompose[2019-12-13 Fri 21:42] - Being Held in Darkness: Midsommar Review[2019-12-11 Wed 21:08] - Theorypunk Afterword: Brain Worms[2019-12-07 Sat 00:01] - Theorypunk pt. 3: The Undeath of the Author[2019-11-19 Tue 20:40] - Submersion (pingback from Sum)[2019-11-06 Wed 01:48] - Kill The Rich: MCU, The Joker, and Joker (2019)[2019-07-15 Mon 23:05] - Pink and Black[2019-05-21 Tue 00:39] - Talk Notes: Gnostic Insurrection[2019-03-11 Mon 16:47] - Universal Basic Income at the Horizon of Collapse[2019-03-07 Thu 20:30] - Annihilationism Fragment[2018-10-31 Wed 03:33] - Gender Accelerationism: A Blackpaper (pingback from Vastabrupt.com)[2018-09-27 Thu 01:20] - Whiplash: The Trauma of Acceleration[2018-08-16 Thu 19:45] - Why Write?[2018-07-28 Sat 15:24] - Theorypunk: Stealing Water from the Cathedral[2018-06-27 Wed 23:14] - DIY Hormones: Not a Question of If, But How[2018-06-27 Wed 20:04] - Traffic[2018-06-23 Sat 23:30] - Blog Without Organs[2018-04-18 Wed 01:10] - Declassified Toxicology Report: The Tenacity of Slime[2018-01-28 Sun 16:42] - Reflections on Violence Pt. 1: Insurrectionary Anarchism[2018-01-01 Mon 15:06] - New Years, New Tears[2017-09-23 Sat 00:49] - Trans Nihilism[2017-07-13 Thu 14:45] - Excerpt from 'The Dark Deleuze Rises'[2017-06-21 Wed 19:22] - The Aphotic InsurrectionNihil(2016-2018)
© Anti-Copyright 20XX n1x, Nyx Land, et. al.
https://unlife.nyx.land/
Introduction
ResponderExcluirA central tension and motivation for this book is to articulate something that is broadly known but not particularly well understood. Everyone agrees that this is a world apparently at war with itself. Country against country, rich against poor, majorities against minorities of all stripes; these conflicts are at the center of many, if not most, of our connections to each other. What we are here calling the fight for Turtle Island is another way of talking about this war while gesturing against the use of war language. Turtle Island is a way to describe North America prior to the discovery[1] and colonization of this land by Europeans. It is a place that physically exists but is largely experienced as a way of thinking about this place in a different time. It is both a place and an idea about a place. I want to go to this place and I want you to come along. I am also already here, so are you.
A fight isn’t a war. A war is a brutal, ugly, inhuman thing. It grinds human tissue into paste on behalf of some abstraction like God, State, or just because I told you so. It is not negotiable. It is of the same volcanic family as genocide, hate, and bigotry. The first assertion I’ll make in this book is that war, and the thinking associated with war, is a unique kind of perversion that is correlated with the rise of industrialism and centralized state power. At this point we’ll make no causal claim, but insist that war is a homonym that refers to qualitatively different kinds of conflict based on the context in which it is articulated. This should require no explanation but gaining social prestige by touching an enemy with a stick doesn’t particularly relate to firebombing a city and annihilating hundreds, if not thousands, of living people.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-the-fight-for-turtle-island
War thinking is a problem. It is the fruit of a set of problems that we will alternate between calling words like, Civilization, Colonization, The Western Enlightenment, Manifest Destiny, etc. In addition to trying to imagine a post-war way of thinking (about the world) is the fact that, as most of our friends agree, we require something truly epic to happen to this world to live without war. Whether this epic thing is called war, or revolution, or the total transformation of values, matters little. To clear the slate, to begin again, to reset the clocks, to return to a tabula rasa where we begin to write our own story rather than rely on the stories we have been told (by Civilization and his crew) seems like an obvious step: not a first principle but a first crisis.
ResponderExcluirThis book was put together with the help of about twenty people. We’ll talk a little bit about each of them later but the thing we all share is some involvement in the fight for Turtle Island. The initial idea for this book was to talk about the overlap between native people and the politics of anarchism. Everyone I interviewed for this book I met through the broad anarchist scene (with the exception of my family members Loretta and Ron Yob). Almost everyone, except for myself, came out during our talks rejecting the label “anarchist” or being as involved in anarchist conflicts (conflicts for the heart and soul of what it means to be an anarchist) as they were in anarchist activities themselves.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-the-fight-for-turtle-island
War thinking is a problem. It is the fruit of a set of problems that we will alternate between calling words like, Civilization, Colonization, The Western Enlightenment, Manifest Destiny, etc. In addition to trying to imagine a post-war way of thinking (about the world) is the fact that, as most of our friends agree, we require something truly epic to happen to this world to live without war. Whether this epic thing is called war, or revolution, or the total transformation of values, matters little. To clear the slate, to begin again, to reset the clocks, to return to a tabula rasa where we begin to write our own story rather than rely on the stories we have been told (by Civilization and his crew) seems like an obvious step: not a first principle but a first crisis.
ResponderExcluirThis book was put together with the help of about twenty people. We’ll talk a little bit about each of them later but the thing we all share is some involvement in the fight for Turtle Island. The initial idea for this book was to talk about the overlap between native people and the politics of anarchism. Everyone I interviewed for this book I met through the broad anarchist scene (with the exception of my family members Loretta and Ron Yob). Almost everyone, except for myself, came out during our talks rejecting the label “anarchist” or being as involved in anarchist conflicts (conflicts for the heart and soul of what it means to be an anarchist) as they were in anarchist activities themselves.
This, of course, makes sense. Anarchism is a number of things, some of which are actively in conflict, some of which are contradictory, some of which don’t deserve the name. But some things you can say for sure. Anarchism was a 19th century ideology expressing a particular analysis of how the fight by the working class should go against the owning class. In that era anarchism was peak liberalism,[2] attempting to express the best and highest hopes of humanity, the power of people to change for the better, and of good to triumph over evil. It was a European answer to a European problem. Anarchism also, at that time, did not necessarily care for the values of the natives whose land they were working, blacks whose slavery they were beneficiaries of, or women who were forced to stay largely silent in the political sphere. This was a different time and anarchists were creatures of that time, as they are today.
Later, once the working class had been largely crushed and/or exported, the politics that called itself anarchism could be largely described as peak counter-culture. Hippies, punks, ravers, transhumanists, bicyclists, vegans, and environmentalists all fill the ranks of anarchists today. This is to say that today anarchism is less a political ideology with clear lines and positions on the role of the individual in opposition to the State and Capitalism, and more a political affect reflecting the social and cultural attitudes of individuals. An old school anarchist would refer to this type of anarchist as lifestylist and as politically neutered and be correct to do it![3]
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-the-fight-for-turtle-island
The disconnect between this history and the lifeways of most indigenous people should be apparent. While the vast majority of indigenous people are working class, it is but a small minority that describes themselves this way. Moreover the idea that a proletarian identity would unite people in such quality and vigor as to tear the economic classes asunder sounds ridiculous to a native person, especially one who watched the pan-native arguments over the past fifty years (to little or no end). The lesson of sacrificing one’s individual identity to the altar of a shared synthetic identity is hard, but it has been learned. Furthermore, and from my own experience, natives have loved and lived inside the context of subculture, but always as an outsider. There is now an outlier, and newer-to-me, phe nomenon of reservation communities that have taken on metal music (black, hair, punk), but mostly the collision between indigenous people and subculture has left both sides unscathed. I have met “Indian Joe” in at least ten different towns but never one who didn’t maintain their outside/mascot form for white/subcultural consumption.https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-the-fight-for-turtle-island
ResponderExcluirRevisionism
ResponderExcluirRevisionism refers to the explicit or implicit attempt at revising the fundamental premises of Marxist theory. Often this is done in attempt to make alliances with the bourgeoisie or to render a working class movement impotent. Explicit revisionism clearly states that Marxism is wrong or outdated and needs to be changed. Implicit revisionism is harder to notice because it claims to still be Marxist, but in actuality puts forward positions that are counter to Marxist theory.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
- Karl Marx. (1845) Theses On Feuerbach
Although there is ongoing debate and discussion within Marxist circles about how these principles should be interpreted and applied in specific historical contexts, there are several key tenets that are generally considered to be central to Marxist theory and which are not subject to revision:
Dialectical Materialism: The idea that everything is in a state of constant flux, driven by a process of contradictions and conflicts which are an inherent part of the natural and social world.Historical Materialism: The understanding that material conditions and class relations are the driving force behind historical development.Surplus Labor and the Law of Value: The concept that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor that has been expended in producing it. Profits are derived from the surplus value extracted from the worker.
From these fundamental premises follow a series of conclusions, which informs our understanding of the world and teaches us how to affect change. Revisionism alters these fundamental premises or rejects the conclusions that follow from them, the most important of these being the need for revolution.
The events of the Paris Commune and the October Revolution demonstrated the role and necessity of revolution, and provided important lessons in establishing and defending a revolutionary movement. Revolution is not just a means of seizing political power, but of fundamentally transforming society and creating a new social order. Revolutions must be defended against counter-revolutionary forces both from within and without. The movement must be organized and disciplined, and must be able to defend itself against attacks from reactionary forces.
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Right Opportunism
ResponderExcluirRevisionism, or Right opportunism, is a bourgeois trend of thought that is even more dangerous than dogmatism. The revisionists, the Right opportunists, pay lip-service to Marxism; they too attack ‘dogmatism’. But what they are really attacking is the quintessence of Marxism. They oppose or distort materialism and dialectics, oppose or try to weaken the people’s democratic dictatorship and the leading role of the Communist Party, and oppose or try to weaken socialist transformation and socialist construction. After the basic victory of the socialist revolution in our country, there are still a number of people who vainly hope to restore the capitalist system and fight the working class on every front, including the ideological one. And their right-hand men in this struggle are the revisionists.
- Mao Zedong. (1957). On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Right opportunism is a political tendency that seeks to make concessions to the bourgeois ruling class in order to maintain or achieve political power. This tendency is often associated with a lack of commitment to revolutionary change and a willingness to compromise on fundamental principles in order to realize short-term gains. Right opportunists may advocate for policies that are not in the long-term interest of the working class, such as supporting capitalist reforms or forming alliances with capitalist parties. This can lead to a weakening of the revolutionary potential of the working class and a failure to achieve real social change. Right opportunism is seen as a deviation from the Marxist principle of class struggle and a betrayal of the interests of the working class.
Trade Unionism is an example of right opportunism as unions focus on limited concessions, rather than advocating for the long-term interests of the working class as a whole. They negotiate with employers for better wages, benefits, and working conditions for their members, but do not challenge the fundamental power relations between labour and capital. Union bosses make compromises or alliances with capitalist parties in order to achieve these concessions.
This creates a privileged layer of the working class who are more interested in defending their own privileges than in fighting for the liberation of the working class as a whole. This labour aristocracy is a barrier to the development of revolutionary consciousness among the working class because it prefers the status quo to radical political movements that seek to overthrow it.
Case Study #1: Social Democracy
ResponderExcluirOne of the first revisionists was Eduard Bernstein, a leading theorist and prominent member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who argued that the gradual extension of social welfare programs and the reform of capitalist institutions could lead to a peaceful transition to socialism, without the need for a violent revolution. This was in sharp contrast to the German Communist Party (KPD). There are two historical events which underscore this fundamental divide:
The Spartacist Uprising: Rosa Luxemburg was a prominent Marxist theorist and leader of the left-wing revolutionary movement in Germany. She was a fierce critic of the SPD's moderate reformist politics and its decision to support Germany's involvement in World War I. In January 1919, following the collapse of the German monarchy, a left-wing revolutionary movement emerged in Berlin, and Luxemburg played a leading role in the movement. The movement challenged the authority of the new Social Democratic-led government and sought to establish a socialist republic. On January 15, 1919, the SPD government ordered the army and the Freikorps, a right-wing paramilitary group, to suppress the revolutionary movement. Luxemburg and her comrade Karl Liebknecht were arrested, beaten, and executed by the Freikorps.The Enabling Act: The Nazis rose to absolute power in 1933 with the passing of the Enabling Act. The KPD were absent from the vote because the party had been banned and its members imprisoned or in hiding. The SPD were present and voted against it. The SPD was subsequently banned and many of its members were arrested, tortured, and killed by the Nazis, while others were forced into exile or went into hiding.Case Study #2: Democratic Socialism
Salvador Allende was a socialist politician who was elected president of Chile in 1970, becoming the first Marxist to be elected to the presidency in a liberal democracy. In power, he pursued a program of radical reform, including the nationalization of key industries, the redistribution of land, and the expansion of social welfare programs. His government was supported by a coalition of left-wing parties, including the Chilean Communist Party, and was seen as a model for peaceful democratic socialist transition. However, Allende's reforms faced opposition from powerful domestic and international forces, including right-wing politicians, the military, and the United States government. In 1973, Allende's government was overthrown in a US-backed military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, who established a brutal Fascist dictatorship that lasted for years.
In "The State and Revolution", Lenin explained why the capitalist state could not be reformed or co-opted for the purposes of Socialism, but had to be destroyed and replaced by a new proletarian state. Allende's failure to apprehend this lesson proved fatal. His reliance on the existing bourgeois state apparatus as well as his failure to implement more radical measures, such as the establishment of workers' councils or the arming of the proletariat, left him vulnerable to counterrevolutionary forces.
“If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.”
- George Carlin
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
Why Social Democracy Isn't Good Enough | Second Thought (2023)Why Democratic Socialism Isn’t Enough | Marxism Today (2022)"The US Doesn't Meddle In Foreign Affairs" | Second Thought (2021)Electoralism Always Fails, Now What? | Hakim (2019)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
Reform or Revolution | Rosa Luxemburg (1900)Marxism and Revisionism | V. I. Lenin (1908)
Podcasts:
Episode 3 - Reform or Revolution | The Deprogram (2022)
Gulag
ResponderExcluirAccording to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism.
Origins of the Mythology
This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources.
Robert Conquest's The Great Terror (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony.
Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements.
He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash.
The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism".
- Andrew Brown. (2003). Scourge and poet
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelag" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. [Read more]
Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A history (published 2003) draws directly from The Gulag Archipelago and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world.
Counterpoints
ResponderExcluirA 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:
Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas
From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.
For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.
Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies.
Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.
A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals.
In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.
- Saed Teymuri. (2018). The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA
Scale
Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that.
Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise.
In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ...
Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ...
Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states...
- Michael Parenti. (1997). Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex today is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak.
ResponderExcluirDeath Rate
In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality:
It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive...
Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more.
- Timothy Snyder. (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin
(Side note: Timothy Snyder is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations)
This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not death camps.
Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour was forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses).
We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson....
The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled).
- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
The Gulag Argument | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016)Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions! | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)"The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye | Comrade Rhys (2020)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993)
Listen:
"Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion. | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022)
The Uyghurs in Xinjiang
ResponderExcluirAnti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context.
Background
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan.
Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, several factors contributed to a resurgence of separatist sentiment among Uyghur nationalists in Xinjiang. Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. Some high-profile examples include:
Ürümqi bombings (2014): SUVs were driven into a busy street market in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Up to a dozen explosives were thrown at shoppers from the windows of the SUVs. The SUVs crashed into shoppers, then collided with each other and exploded. 43 people were killed and more than 90 wounded.Kunming train station attack (2014): A group of 8 knife-wielding Uyghur separatists attacked passengers in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming, Yunnan, China, killing 31 people, and wounding 143 others. The attackers pulled out long-bladed knives and stabbed and slashed passengers at random.Tiananmen Square attack (2013): A car ran over pedestrians and crashed in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in a terrorist suicide attack. Five people died in the incident; three inside the vehicle and two others nearby. An additional 38 people were injured.Kashgar attack (2013): A group of Uyghur militants attacked a police station and government offices in Kashgar, killing 15 people and injuring more than 40 others.Kashgar attack (2011): Two Uyghur men hijacked a truck, killed its driver, and drove into a crowd of pedestrians. They got out of the truck and stabbed six people to death and injured 27 others.Ürümqi riots (2009): Ethnic riots erupted in Ürümqi. They began as a protest, but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han people. A total of 197 people died, most of whom were Han people or non-Muslim minorities, with 1,721 others injured and many vehicles and buildings destroyed.Kashgar attack (2008): Two men drove a truck into a group of approximately 70 jogging police officers, and proceeded to attack them with grenades and machetes, resulting in the death of sixteen officers.
In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a "Strike Hard" campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labor, began to emerge.
The Material Conditions Necessary for Terrorism and Extremism
ResponderExcluirAs materialists, we understand that terrorists don't magically appear out of thin air. There are material reasons for people resorting to such extreme measures. In order to combat the threat of rising extremism, these reasons must be indentified and resolved. One of the main causes is economic marginalization. When people are economically disadvantaged or excluded from mainstream economic activity, they may be more likely to turn to extremism as a way to address their grievances and gain a sense of purpose. Generally speaking, people who feel like they have a bright future do not resort to terrorism. It is only when people feel hopeless or trapped that they resort to such measures.
If the issue is that the Uyghurs were disenfranchised, and that is the reason they were susceptible to religious fundamentalism and resorting to terrorism, then surely the solution is to enfranchise them to remove that material condition. This is what the Strike Hard campaign ultimately sought to accomplish.
Counterpoints
There is only flimsy evidence for the most egregious of the allegations being made about what China is doing in Xinjiang, it should be an easy matter to dismiss. Normally, the burden of evidence lies with the party making the claims. However, Western media is happy to spread rumours and present the allegations as having merit because it serves America's imperialist interests. Additionally, given the severity of the allegations and the gravity of the crimes China is being accused of, this issue has been taken very seriously by the international community, especially the international Muslim community.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States in 2019 which:
Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.
In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on.
Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter (A/HRC/41/G/17) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang:
ResponderExcluir...separatism and religious extremism has caused enormous damage to people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including right to life, health and development. Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers. Now safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded. The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security. We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.
We appreciate China’s commitment to openness and transparency. China has invited a number of diplomats, international organizations officials and journalist to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counter-terrorism and deradicalization there. What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the media. We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang.
The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." (See: World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China)
Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not genocide. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much:
The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China | Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy. (2021)
A Comparative Analysis: The War on Terror
ResponderExcluirChina is not the only country to have faced faced a challenge of this nature. The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in March 2003, which was justified by the Bush administration as a response to Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded.
A former commander of NATO’s forces in Europe, [retired General Wesley] Clark claims he met a senior military officer in Washington in November 2001 who told him the Bush administration was planning to attack Iraq first before taking action against Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan...
Clark says after the 11 September 2001 attacks, many Bush administration officials seemed determined to move against Iraq, invoking the idea of state sponsorship of terrorism, “even though there was no evidence of Iraqi sponsorship of 9/11 whatsoever”...
He also condemns George Bush’s notorious Axis of Evil speech made during his 2002 State of the Union address. “There were no obvious connections between Iraq, Iran, and North Korea,” says Clark...
Instead, Clark points the finger at what he calls “the real sources of terrorists – US allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia”.
Clark blames Egypt’s “repressive policies”, Pakistan’s “corruption and poverty, as well as Saudi Arabia’s “radical ideology and direct funding” for creating a pool of angry young men who became “terrorists”.
US ‘plans to attack seven Muslim states’ | Al Jazeera (2003)
According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million.
The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (See: ‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes)
In summary:
The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries regardless of their actual connection to the attackers, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes.China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training.
Which one of those responses sounds genocidal?
Side note: It is practically impossible to actually charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the Hague Invasion Act.
Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?
ResponderExcluirLet's review some of the people and organizations involved in strongly promoting this narrative.
One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz, a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. His anti-Communist and anti-China stances influence his work and makes him selective in his use of data. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence. He also ignores the broader historical and political context of the situation in Xinjiang, such as the history of separatist movements and terrorism in the region.
The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies.
The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line.
Why is this narrative being promoted?
ResponderExcluirAs materialists, we should always look first to the economic base for insight into issues occurring in the superstructure. In this case, there is a compelling material reason for the US the promote a narrative of a genocide occurring in Xinjiang.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The project has been described as a new Silk Road, connecting China with its neighboring countries and expanding trade and economic ties with the rest of the world.
The BRI includes plans for major infrastructure projects in Xinjiang. These projects aim to improve connectivity and facilitate trade between China and countries in Central Asia and beyond. The Xinjiang region is critical part of the Belt.
For the United States, the BRI is a threat to its economic and political dominance. For one, the BRI could undermine US efforts to promote "free trade" agreements, which have often been used to lock in economic reforms and policies that benefit American corporations. The BRI also threatens to undermine US influence in key regions of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, by providing countries with an alternative source of financing and investment that is not tied to US-led institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Moreover, the BRI could help to shift the global balance of power away from the United States and towards China. By expanding its economic influence and deepening its ties with other countries, China could emerge as a more formidable competitor to the United States in the global arena.
Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give American an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the longterm success of the BRI.
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
What's daily life like for Uyghurs? A talk with Uyghur influencer Sabira Samat and Daniel Dumbrill. | Li Jingjing (2021)Cutting Through the BS on Xinjiang: Uyghur Genocide or Vocational Training? | BadEmpanada (2021)Discussing The Xinjiang/Uyghur "Genocide" With Bay Area 415 | Daniel Dumbrill (2020)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang | (2019)The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz | Nia Frome (2021)Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation | Qiao Collective (2021)Xinjiang: Understanding Complexity, Building Peace | International Diplomatic Institute (2021)Fight against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts | Information Office of the People's Government of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (2022)
Social Media Resources, Threads, and Masterposts:
Twitter thread about the WUC | shaedon sharpe’s rifles via Twitter (2021) [Archive]List of fact checks | 8Bitsblu via r/communism (2020) [Archive]r/Sino wiki entry | FeatsOverComments via r/sino (2020)
On Whataboutism
ResponderExcluirWhataboutism is a rhetorical tactic where someone responds to an accusation or criticism by redirecting the focus onto a different issue, often without addressing the original concern directly. While it can be an effective means of diverting attention away from one's own shortcomings, it is generally regarded as a fallacy in formal debate and logical argumentation. The tu quoque fallacy is an example of Whataboutism, which is defined as "you likewise: a retort made by a person accused of a crime implying that the accuser is also guilty of the same crime."
When anti-Communists point out issues that (actually) occurred in certain historical socialist contexts, they are raising valid concerns, but usually for invalid reasons. When Communists reply that those critics should look in a mirror, because Capitalism is guilty of the same or worse, we are accused of "whataboutism" and arguing in bad faith.
However, there are some limited scenarios where whataboutism is relevant and considered a valid form of argumentation:
Contextualization: Whataboutism might be useful in providing context to a situation or highlighting double standards.Comparative analysis: Whataboutism can be valid if the goal is to compare different situations to understand similarities or differences.Moral equivalence: When two issues are genuinely comparable in terms of gravity and impact, whataboutism may have some validity.An Abstract Case Study
For the sake of argument, consider the following table, which compares objects A and B.
Object AObject BVery Good Property23Good Property21Bad Property23Very Bad Property21
The table tracks different properties. Some properties are "Good" (the bigger the better) and others are "Bad" (the smaller the better, ideally none).
Using this extremely abstract table, let's explore the scenarios in which Whataboutisms could be meaningful and valid arguments.
Contextualization
Context matters. Supposing that only one Object may be possessed at any given time, consider the following two contexts:
Possession of an Object is optional, and we do not possess any Object presently. Therefore we can consider each Object on its own merits in isolation. If no available Objects are desirable, we can wait until a better Object comes along.Possession of an Object is mandatory, and we currently possess a specific Object. We must evaluate other Objects in relative terms with the Object we possess. If we encounter a superior Object we ought to replace our current Object with the new one.
If we are in the second context, then Whataboutism may be a valid argument. For example, if we discover a new Object that has similar issues as our present one, but is in other ways superior, then it would be valid to point that out.
It is impossible for a society to exist without a political economic system because every human community requires a method for organizing and managing its resources, labour, and distribution of goods and services. Furthermore, the vast majority of the world presently practices Capitalism, with "the West" (or "Global North"), and especially the U.S. as the hegemonic Capitalist power. Therefore we are in the second context and we are not evaluating political economic systems in a vacuum, but in comparison to and contrast with Capitalism.
Comparative Analysis
ResponderExcluirConsider the following dialogue between two people who are enthusiastic about the different objects:
B Enthusiast: B is better than A because we have Very Good Property 3, which is bigger than 2.
A Enthusiast: But Object B has Very Bad Property = 1 which is a bad thing! It's not 0! Therefore Object B is bad!
B Enthusiast: Well Object A also has Very Bad Property, and 2 > 1, so it's even worse!
A Enthusiast: That's whataboutism! That's a tu quoque! You've committed a logical fallacy! Typical stupid B-boy!
The "A Enthusiast" is not wrong, it is Whataboutism, but the "A Enthusiast" has actually committed a Strawman fallacy. The "B Enthusiast" did not make the claim "Object B is perfect and without flaw", only that it was better than Object A. The fact that Object B does possess a "Bad" property does not undermine this point.
Our main proposition as Communists is this: "Socialism is better than Capitalism." Our argument is not "Socialism is perfect and will solve all the problems of human society at once" and we are not trying to say that "every socialist revolution or experiment was perfect and an ideal example we should emulate perfectly in the future". Therefore, when anti-Communists point out a historical failure, it does not refute our argument. Furthermore, if someone says "Socialism is bad because bad thing happened in a socialist country once" and we can demonstrate that similar or worse things have occurred in Capitalist countries, then we have demonstrated that those things are not unique to Socialism, and therefore immaterial to the question of which system is preferable overall in a comparative analysis.
Moral Equivalence
It makes sense to compare like to like and weight them accordingly in our evaluation. For example, if "Bad Property" is worse in Object B but "Very Bad Property" is better, then it may make sense to conclude that Object B is better than Object A overall. "Two big steps forward, one small step back" is still progressive compared to taking no steps at all.
Example 1: Famine
ResponderExcluirAnti-Communists often portray the issue of food security and famines as endemic to Socialism. To support their argument, they point to such historical events as the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933 or the Great Leap Forward as proof. Communists reject this thesis, not by denying that these famines occured, but by highlighting that these regions experienced famines regularly throughout their history up to and including those events. Furthermore, in both examples, those were the last1 famines those countries had, because the industrialization of agriculture in those countries effectively solved the issue of famines. Furthermore, today, under Capitalism, around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases.
[1] The Nazi invasion of the USSR in WW2 resulted in widespread starvation and death due to the destruction of agricultural land, crops, and infrastructure, as well as the disruption of food distribution systems. After 1947, no major famines were recorded in the USSR.
Example 2: Repression
Anti-Communists often portray countries run by Communist parties as authoritarian regimes that restrict individual freedoms and Freedom of the Press. They point to purges and gulags as evidence. While it's true that some of the purges were excessive, the concept of "political terror" in these countries is vastly overblown. Regular working people were generally not scared at all; it was mainly the political and economic elite who had to watch their step. Regarding the gulags, it's interesting to note that only a minority of the gulag population were political prisoners, and that in both absolute and relative (per capita) terms, the U.S. incarcerates more people today than the USSR ever did.
Conclusion
While Whataboutism can undermine meaningful discussions, because it doesn't address the original issue, there are scenarios in which it is valid. Particularly when comparing and contrasting two things. In our case, we are comparing Socialism with Capitalism. Accordingly, we reject the claim that we are arguing in bad faith when we point out the hypocrisy of our critics.
Furthermore, we are more than happy to criticize past and present Socialist experiments. ("Critical support" for Socialist countries is exactly that: critical.) For some examples of our criticisms from a ML perspective, see the additional resources below.
Additional ResourcesFormer Socialism's Faults | Hakim (2023)Episode 7: Ls of former Socialism (selfcrit) | TheDeprogram (2022)Mistakes of the USSR and What Can be Learned | ChemicalMind (2023)
Israel: A Colonial Project from Inception
ResponderExcluirTheodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, was inspired by European Colonialism. He was passionate about the Zionist project of founding a Jewish state, and even appealed to Cecil Rhodes, an infamous English colonialist, for support in this colonial endeavour:
You are being invited to help make history. That cannot frighten you, nor will you laugh at it. It is not in your accustomed line; it doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen, but Jews. But had this been on your path, you would have done it by now. How, then, do I happen to turn to you, since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.
- Theodor Herzl. (1902). Letter to Cecil Rhodes
Herzl also wrote in his famous pamphlet about the colonial tasks that would be undertaken:
Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land. Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the Government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration...
The Jewish Company is partly modeled on the lines of a great land-acquisition company. It might be called a Jewish Chartered Company, though it cannot exercise sovereign power, and has other than purely colonial tasks.
- Theodor Herzl. (1896). The Jewish State
Israel also occupies a very important geopolitical location in the world. This topological map of the world, which shows international borders and nothing else, demonstrates how Israel is a bottleneck on land, and a land bridge between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Sea (via the Red Sea). Herzl appealed to its central location:
It is more and more to the interest of the civilized nations and of civilization in general that a cultural station be established on the shortest road to Asia. Palestine is this station and we Jews are the bearers of culture who are ready to give our property and our lives to bring about its creation.
- Theodor Herzl. (1897). Address to the First Zionist Congress
As the Zionist project developed, the colonial character was undeniable:
The colonization process revealed an even more telling feature of the nature of Zionism. The names and purposes of the early colonization instruments read as follows: "The Jewish Colonial Trust" (1898), the "Colonization Commission" (1898), the "Palestine Land Development Company." From the start the Zionist colonists sought to acquire lands in strategic ocations, evict the Arab peasants and boycott Arab labour, all of which were requirements closely related with the essence of Zionism, the creation of a Jewish nation on "purely" Jewish land, as Jewish as England was English to use the famous Zionist expression...
What about the fate of the natives? "We shall try to spirit the peniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... The property owners will come to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
But before spiriting them away Herzl had some jobs for the local population: "If we move into a region where there are wild animals to which the Jews are not accustomed - big snakes, etc... I shall use the natives, prior to giving them employment in the transit countries, for the extermination of the animals."
-Abdul-Wahab Kayyali. (1977). Zionism and Imperialism: The Historical Origins
Nakba and Illegal Settlements
ResponderExcluirFollowing the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the ensuing expulsion of Palestinians became known as the Nakba ("Catastrophe" in Arabic).
The Palestinians were driven out of their homeland and their properties, homes were taken away from them, and they were banished and displaced all over the world to face all kinds of suffering and woes. More than three quarters of historic Palestine were occupied in the Nakba of 1948. Moreover, 531 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed and 85% of the Palestinian population were banished and displaced...
Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages during the Nakba. They destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages. Israeli forces atrocities also include more than 70 massacres against Palestinians killing 15,000 Palestinians during Nakba time...
Nakba in literary terms is expressive of natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes. However, the Nakba of Palestine is an ethnic cleansing process as well as destruction and banishment of an unarmed nation to be replaced by another nation.
- Luay Shabaneh. (2008).
Around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs out of the 900,000 who lived in the territories that became Israel fled or were expelled from their homes. Wells were poisoned to prevent their return. Even after the state of Israel was formally established, it continued to expand into Palestinian land, displacing the Palestinian people and creating illegal settlements to this day.
The Security Council reaffirmed this afternoon that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.
- UN Security Council. (2016). Israel’s Settlements Have No Legal Validity, Constitute Flagrant Violation of International Law, Security Council Reaffirms
These policies and practices have predictable outcomes:
Since the occupation first began in June 1967, Israel’s ruthless policies of land confiscation, illegal settlement and dispossession, coupled with rampant discrimination, have inflicted immense suffering on Palestinians, depriving them of their basic rights.
Israel’s military rule disrupts every aspect of daily life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It continues to affect whether, when and how Palestinians can travel to work or school, go abroad, visit their relatives, earn a living, attend a protest, access their farmland, or even access electricity or a clean water supply. It means daily humiliation, fear and oppression. People’s entire lives are effectively held hostage by Israel.
- Amnesty International. (2017). Israel's Occupation: 50 Years of Dispossession
These illegal settlements also violate the Geneva Convention:
Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
- Amnesty International. (2019). Chapter 3: Israeli Settlements and International Law
Apartheid
ResponderExcluirIsrael's inspiration from European colonialism also clearly laid the foundation for an apartheid regime. The word "apartheid" is a term derived from the Afrikaans language which means "separateness". Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, former South African Prime Minister, is infamously credited with being the principal architect of apartheid. In 1961, when the UN (including Israel) voted to condemn South Africa for its apartheid policies, Verwoerd said: "Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude ... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."
Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.
- Amnesty International. (2022). Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity
Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
- Human Rights Watch. (2021). A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution
A UN expert called today on the international community to accept and adopt the findings in his current report, echoing recent findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations, that apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.
“There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
- Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert | UNHCR (2022)
Citing inhumane acts, arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, torture, the denial of fundamental rights, an abysmal child mortality rate, collective punishment, an abusive military court system, and home demolitions, [Michael] Lynk said the international community bears much responsibility for the present situation.
- Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory is ‘apartheid’: UN rights expert | UN News (2022)
Additional ResourcesIsraelis Are Not 'Indigenous' (and other ridiculous pro-Israel arguments) | BadEmpanada (2022)Facing the Nakba | Jewish Voice for PeaceOur Catastrophe | JewishCurrents (2023)
[Back to main article]
Israel
ResponderExcluirIf you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. You pull it all the way out? That's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made-- and they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound... They won't even admit the knife is there!
- Malcolm X. (1964).
Inventing Israel
History lies at the core of every conflict. A true and unbiased understanding of the past offers the possibility of peace. The distortion or manipulation of history, in contrast, will only sow disaster. As the example of the Israel-Palestine conflict shows, historical disinformation, even of the most recent past, can do tremendous harm. This willful misunderstanding of history can promote oppression and protect a regime of colonization and occupation. It is not surprising, therefore, that policies of disinformation and distortion continue to the present and play an important part in perpetuating the conflict, leaving very little hope for the future.
- Ilan Pappé. (2017). Ten Myths About Israel | Ilan Pappé (2017)
Zionists argue that Jews have a deep historical connection to the land of Israel, based on their ancient presence in the region. They emphasize the significance of Jerusalem as a religious and cultural center for Jews throughout history. They use this argument as justification for the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state.
In Israel's own Declaration of Independence this is clearly stated:
The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. ... After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom. ... Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. ...
ACCORDINGLY WE ... BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT ... HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL
This declaration, however, conveniently ignored the issue of the indigenous Palestinian population. So what happened? In the Arab world it is now know as the Nakba (lit. catastrophe, in Arabic). One particularly emblematic example of the Nakba was this:
In April 1948, Lehi and Irgun (Zionist paramilitary groups), headed by Menachim Begin, attacked Deir Yassin-- a village of 700 Palestinians-- ultimately killing between 100 and 120 villagers in what later became known as the Deir Yassin Massacre. The mastermind behind this attack, who would later be elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1977, justified the attack:
Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery,’ were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.
- Menachim Begin. (1951). The Revolt
The painful irony of this argument (ancestral roots) combined with this approach (ethnic cleansing), however, lies in the shared ancestry between Jews and Palestinians, whose roots can both be traced back to common ancestors. Both peoples have historical connections to the land of Palestine, making it a place of shared heritage rather than exclusive entitlement. The underlying assumption that the formation of Israel represents a return of Jews to the rightful land of their ancestors is used to justify the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, who have the very same roots!
ResponderExcluirThe Timeline
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a complex and protracted dispute rooted in historical, political, and territorial factors. This timeline aims to provide a chronological overview of key events, starting from the late 19th century to the present day, highlighting significant developments, conflicts, and diplomatic efforts that have shaped the ongoing conflict. From the early waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, through the British Mandate period, the Arab-Israeli wars, peace initiatives, and the persistent struggle for self-determination, this timeline seeks to provide a historical context to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
[Explore the timeline here]
A Settler-Colonial Project from Inception
The origin of Zionism (the political movement advocating for a Jewish homeland in Palestine) is deeply intertwined with the era of European colonialism. Early Zionists such as Theodor Herzl were inspired by-- and sought support from-- European colonialists and Powers. The Zionist plan for Palestine was structured to follow the same colonial model, with all the oppressive baggage that this entailed. In practice, Israel has all the hallmarks of a Settler-Colonial state, and has even engaged in apartheid practices.
[Read about Israel's ideological foundations here]
US Backing, Christian Zionism, and Anti-Anti-Semitism
Israel is in a precarious geopolitical position, surrounded by angry Arab neighbours. The foundation of Israel was dependant on the support of Western Powers, and its existence relies on their continued support. Israel has three powerful tools in its belt to ensure this backing never wavers:
A powerful lobby which dictates U.S. foreign policy on IsraelEuropean and American Christian Zionists who support Israel for eschatological reasonsWeaponized Anti-antisemitism to silence criticism
[Read more about Israel's support in the West here]
Jewish Anti-Zionism
Many Jewish people and organizations do not support Israel and its apartheid settler-colonial project. There are many groups, even on Reddit (for instance, r/JewsOfConscience) that protest Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinian people.
The Israeli government, with the backing of the U.S. government, subjects Palestinians across the entire land to apartheid — a system of inequality and ongoing displacement that is connected to a racial and class hierarchy amongst Israelis. We are calling on those in power to oppose any policies that privilege one group of people over another, in Israel/Palestine and in the U.S...
ResponderExcluirWe are IfNotNow, a movement of American Jews organizing our community for equality, justice, and a thriving future for all: our neighbors, ourselves, Palestinians, and Israelis. We are Jews of all ages, with ancestors from across the world and Jewish backgrounds as diverse as the ways we practice our Judaism.
- If Not Now. Our Principles
Some ultra-orthodox Jewish groups (like Satmar) hold anti-Zionist beliefs on religious grounds. They claim that the establishment of a Jewish state before the arrival of the Messiah is against the teachings of Judaism and that Jews should not have their own sovereign state until the Messiah comes and establishes it in accordance with religious prophecy. In their eyes, the Zionist movement is a secular and nationalistic deviation from traditional Jewish values. Their opposition to Zionism is not driven by anti-Semitism but by religious conviction. They claim that Judaism and Zionism are incompatible and that the actions of the Israeli government do not represent the beliefs and values of authentic Judaism.
We strive to support local efforts led by our partners for Palestinian rights and freedom, and against Israeli apartheid, occupation, displacement, annexation, aggression, and ongoing assaults on Palestinians.
- Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Israel-Palestine as a Local Issue
Additional Resources
Video Essays:
The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history | Vox (2016)How To Maybe Criticize Israel? | Some More News (2019)Israel-Palestine 2021 conflict explained by Israeli Communist | TheFinnishBolshevik (2021)Palestine 101 with Abby Martin | BreakThrough News (2021)When Is It Warranted To Call Something Nuanced? | ChemicalMind (2022)Israelis Are Not 'Indigenous' (and other ridiculous pro-Israel arguments) | BadEmpanada (2022)Al Jazeera Labour Files Doc Strikes Blow to BBC On Corbyn | Novara Media (2022)The Brutal Realities of Settler Colonialism In Palestine | Mohammed el-Kurd | Novara Media (2023)
Other Resources:
Decolonize PalestineMaps: Vanishing Palestine | Al JazeeraFacing the Nakba | Jewish Voice for PeaceOur Catastrophe | JewishCurrents (2023)Israel-Palestine Timeline: The Human Cost of the Conflict | If Americans Knew