quarrk [he/him]

Same cognitive dissonance that prevents libs from understanding why communists either supported or were a part of every progressive movement of the last 150 years. It’s not an accident that communists were a century ahead of the left-liberals on race, gender, religion, antisemitism, and imperialism, in addition to their bread-and-butter of labor movements.

The Soviets in particular advanced the rights of women both in ideals (see the USSR constitution) and in practice (women in STEM increased significantly). The empowerment of women in the Soviet Union was so self evident that it spawned the movie trope of the headstrong, independent Russian woman who can’t be wooed by James Bond or some other “gentleman”.

It was the Bolsheviks who saw the reactionary character of antisemitism, which during the Russian Empire was especially horrible.

”It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there among the Russians and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital.” — V. I. Lenin

The communists historically have been a driving force for positive social progress. Liberals co-opt these gains as products of their own enlightenment, either consciously to deny the communists a win, or unconsciously because they don’t have a theoretical basis for understanding historical development.

I used to help with the 101 commie subreddits until one of the powermods banned me from all of them (yes one user was a mod of several subs).

I never posted anything particularly sectarian because I honestly didn’t have the energy to go beyond questions with unambiguous answers.

I’m pretty sure the thing I got banned for was saying that I don’t care if we call it socialism or communism; that both terms are quite old, so they can technically have definitions inconsistent with Marxism.

Anyway it was at that point I think I really gave up on reddit as a whole because I had no other purpose to be there.

Biden wants to destroy Russia before going to war with China

Trump only wants to improve relations with Russia in order to go to war with China now

Both seem to be interested in going to war with Iran in the next 5 years.

Deleting my reddit account has been great for my mental health

I realize it wasn’t the main point of the post, so without getting too debatey I will clarify a little more before I leave it.

The idea of “an economy” as an external object attached to a society is peculiar to capitalism, for the fact of commodity fetishism, in which relations of production dominate over capitalist society as an external force. Only under these conditions does it make sense to treat an economy as a model that appears dispensable or interchangeable (but is not actually so).

Although societies have started out with consciously defined rules — and by rules I mean property relations — the aim of these rules has nothing to do with creating a stable society. The purpose of the rules is to define who retains privilege, who is oppressor and who is oppressed. Only after the rules are set does the task begin to make these rules practicable. This logical sequence is glossed over when talking of societies’ economic relations as external objects called economies.

An economy is a model for allocating labour and resources in a way that meets the needs of the people in the country.

Economies are no more “models for allocating labour and resources” than Darwinian evolution maximizes the happiness of all species. All past societies have existed on the simple condition that they were compatible with their material bases. They are not necessarily perfect or optimized for productivity, happiness, justice, etc.

You probably didn’t mean it this way, but an economy is not necessarily a consciously applied, a priori model. Most societies have not had planned economies, let alone for any purpose like meeting the needs of the population.

Of course there must be some way that societies reproduce themselves. It is typically brutal as a ruling class exploits another class, the most obvious example being the various societies based on types of slave labor.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” — The history of society has been the history of economies for the benefit of a single class, or in legal terms, the history of exclusive property rights held by privileged classes.

Okay? “Videos” in general, not this particular one in every aspect…

It’s not how I would have scripted the video, but until/unless I make my own content, I’m not going to bash him too hard. Still consider him a great contributor. I’ll leave it at that — thanks for the discussion

I agree that the theory should adapt. Just not in that way. Political climate and popular opinion, in a word ideology, are distinct from material conditions and relations of production.

The historical changes that require updating theory are things like Western financial imperialism that works concurrently to de-industrialize the West while increasing exploitation in the Global South; what Andy Higginbottom calls “super-exploitation”. Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai have also discussed this in detail.

It has always been difficult and unpopular to advocate revolution, even in Marx’s time. It is not uniquely difficult today even with the Red Scare. There was a time in the early 20th century that there was some modicum of support for revolution in some countries, but in every example it still required a bitter civil war.

There are plenty of Marxists on YouTube who do not concede revolution. Maybe some are too small to grab attention, but there are larger channels like Geopolitical Economy Report who routinely talk about current events from a Marxist perspective, and occasionally talk theory, without such compromise.

The need for revolution is more or less standard Marxism, so it feels backward that I should be explaining that perspective — why do you think we must educate from a social-democratic perspective? Blaming the Red Scare seems like an excuse to me. If someone clicks a video about socialism, they’re either open to learning, or they’re not. At that crucial point you have to be convincing, not wheel out the usual arguments about fairness that every single Westerner has heard for decades.

Propaganda is no excuse to concede the essential Marxist tenets.

For one thing, 100 years is not a long time.

Secondly, without proving why a theory is now practically obsolete, appealing to the age of theory is a lazy dismissal. For example, many people’s knee-jerk reaction to Marx is that he’s irrelevant because he lived gasp 150 years ago. So much has changed! Before they had mean wage labor, and now we have nice wage labor!

Reformism was an issue throughout the 20th century. Both PRC and USSR took active measures to prevent reformists from undermining their respective parties. In Finland, the social democrats allied with the bourgeoisie to win the civil war (1918) and then allied with the Nazis to genocide Leningrad during the Continuation War.

The proletariat as a class is materially unchanged, for the most part, since the time of that party. The particular political situation does not change the basic theory and the necessity for revolution over reform.

I commend the attempt but the content is not above criticism.

The audience of the Gotha Program was essentially the same as JT’s audience, and Marx found it important to produce a polemical critique against reformist tendencies.

We don’t necessarily want support from social democratic groups who have demonstrated fickleness in historical periods like the 1918 German revolution.

We shouldn’t water down the essential tenets of revolutionary theory when appealing to the proletarian masses. We shouldn’t focus so much on distribution, on vague “equality”, or on bourgeois electoral democracy.

These gateway videos should be honest and focus more on the necessity of a total revolution in production, the necessity of a change in our way of life, not merely reform in existing political institutions.

Choice excerpts from the Gotha critique:

Maybe I’m just a cranky Marxist — JT’s videos are great as a gateway to socialism for the most propagandized Westerners. But does anyone else pick up on an apparent socdem tendency in the explanations provided in videos like this one?

His argument for socialism boils down to moralistic criticism of unequal distribution, and pointing to socialism as a society in which all people receive a guaranteed minimum income, in other words, a more egalitarian society in terms of value received.

Is this not almost identical to the utopian arguments of the Lassalleans whom Marx criticized in his Critique of the Gotha Program?

deleted by creator

The earth is healing

Lots of western historians study history extensively and still don’t escape the ideology of their class. Even a well-meaning Marxist is prone to have bad takes on history depending on who they read because, let’s face it, not everyone has the time or the will to read and vet primary historical sources.

The essential thing is not necessarily to be a History Knower but to recognize that every social relation is historically contingent. That includes wage labor, the state, race relations, religion, etc. If it is social then it typically has a material basis which can change over time. Because they usually lack this perspective, non-Marxists are more inclined to have reactionary takes on both current and historical events, regardless of how much history they know.

One excellent book I’m trying to finish is Michael Parenti’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar. Just one example of how historians have distorted the past due to their class lens.

This is the other side of the iron curtain my friend

I think Pepe would agree with you. There is no single cause or reason, it is just one of many, in the broader geopolitical picture he paints in the video.

The eye is an external part of the brain. If they managed to restore vision, I think that would have a profound impact on our ability to repair brain injury overall.

I wonder if he will need to take rejection meds like recipients of other organs do.