jack

joined 4 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] jack@hexbear.net 5 points 4 hours ago

For PSL, we usually read Basic Principles of Party Organization during recruitment. Highly recommend it.

A more recent piece from the CPI(M) in 2010 is good for discussing the criticisms of democratic centralism and the reason why it's still the best method: https://cpim.org/wp-content/uploads/old/marxist/201001-Democratic-Centralism-Prakash.pdf

[–] jack@hexbear.net 54 points 11 hours ago

only I am allowed to throw my diarrhea at you - if you throw your diarrhea at me, you are being ridiculous

[–] jack@hexbear.net 23 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Actually regarding that, this is good news!

[–] jack@hexbear.net 24 points 12 hours ago

you have defied the will of the market sutherland-point

[–] jack@hexbear.net 18 points 12 hours ago
[–] jack@hexbear.net 15 points 12 hours ago

What I was trying to explain was that "Trump is a moron who can't manage the empire" is not a sufficient explanation of these events. That is liberal great man theory and as Marxists we must look to materialist explanations.

No, it isn't. It would be liberal great man theory if I said Trump rose through great force of will to wrest control of the yoke of history and then fucked it all up when he got there. Great man theory is not the odea that the decisions of political leaders matter, but that they are the basis from which history flows. Trump os exactly the opposite of that. Fascism (or fascism-like) self-destructive policies are the inevitable result of the material forces that drive capitalism, and Trump simply imparts a particular flavor to an imperial collapse that began long before he entered the scene and which will have an impact far beyond the role of his specific choices in accelerating it. If Kamala had won, she'd only stave this off for a few years - the US was already on the decline as the hegemon, it was already second fiddle to China, and BRICS was already laying the groundwork for a new world order. No president could have been elected under these conditions that could shift things by more than a few degrees. We just happened to get the stupidest, most brutish option.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 14 points 12 hours ago

Frankly not relevant here. What OP is looking for is a secret explanation of capitalist brilliance that makes the obvious, open capitalist stupidity an actually brilliant plan. That's not how it works. OP's assertion, at least for the premise of this thread, is that Trump's obviously destructive actions are actually the result of behind the scenes manipulation whose scope and scheme we cannot possibly ascertain beyond conspiratorial speculation. What we're actually witnessing is capitalist self-consumption.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 13 points 12 hours ago

They do it open too

Yeah that's my point. You see what they do and why because they tell you.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 86 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (7 children)

Of course, but the real oligarchs who back their regime aren't real morons.

lenin-sure

These are the people who thought they would defeat China by investing in it - or worse, their children. The Dulles brothers are long gone.

The financial class that really runs this country hasn't stopped his trade wars, hasn't stopped his dismantling of soft power like USAID, hasn't disciplined him with a capital strike/flight. This means to me, they are willing to go in on the strategy.

What mechanism would they use to stop him if they wanted to? Where does their cabal meet and who takes their secret orders?

We need to get away from this idealist conspiratorial thinking. The capitalist class is fractious and divided, and the power of the capitalist state, including its elected officials, is very real. It's shocking to see a bunch of Marxists all talking to each other about the secret hidden forces pulling the strings from the shadows in order to justify doomerism. How many times in history have we seen myopic, inbred, hubristic ruling classes bring about the destruction of their own power? I'll answer: every single time an empire fell.

Exactly as any Marxist-Leninist could tell you, divisions in ruling classes are inevitable as personal ambition and ideology begin to fester in calcified strictures. The further temporally removed from the foundations of those structures, the less the ruling class understands how they truly operate without some internal correction mechanism (like a Marxist party). The short-term self interest that is the engine of capitalist development and innovation abhors nurturing and developing systems like that.

I mean, just apply your mode of thinking to the billion other ways capitalism consumes itself and it become clear there's no one directing the ship besides the idiot who seized the wheel in the last election. Why hasn't the financial capitalist class withdrawn from China, even though investment there has been building its own destroyer? Why haven't they addressed climate change, which will obliterate the material basis of the economic system and crumble their power structures? Why don't they build cheap, efficient livable cities instead of costly, crumbling car-dependent suburbs? Over and over, the capitalist class consistently turns away from the obviously correct long term decision for their own survival and profits because some dipshit from Texas can make a quick buck. We have seen them destroy their own support systems, put in place by their predecessors, because they were too ignorant to understand they actually depend on those things.

Capitalism is defined by the internal contradictions it is unable to resolve. It's not capable, as a system, of solving the problems it creates. It can only find a new way to profit off of them, and it's always less profit for a shorter time. Always! That is why the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is Marx's most important contribution.

What capitalism produces above all else are its own gravediggers. We have known this would happen for two hundred years. It has happened before and it will happen again.

it-is-happening-again

[–] jack@hexbear.net 14 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

imagine how utterly inscrutable this comment is to everyone in your life who doesn't post on hexbear

 
 

Spoilers abound!

I'm really loving the Absolute stuff so far, and of what I've read, Superman is the best. Kal-El gets a whole childhood with his working class family on Krypton, and the depiction of environmental devastation is very tightly wound with the explicit class politics of the series.

Absolute comics start from the basic premise of heroes reimagined without class advantages, and they take dramatic swings with the characters that have been paying off consistently.

Looking forward to reading Flash and Martian Manhunter next.

 

gulag for tech

 

help me out, where does political power grow from?

 

I've been enjoying Half-Earth Socialism and Terra Nil quite a lot. I'm looking for more games about restoring the environment and/or building socialism. Preferably, but not necessarily, something lightweight. PC or PS5.

 

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4423465

Another banger from a comrade of mine. Our Akron unit has been doing aggressive works on multiple fronts in the city. Excerpts below, but there's much more in the article.

Akron’s mayor Shammas Malik often says, “Safety is the number one priority for our administration.” He said this as recently as Oct. 17, 2024, while announcing a decline in violent crime rates while standing alongside police chief Brian Harding. This was just a month after a chemical plant hidden in the middle of a residential neighborhood caught fire, forcing residents to evacuate. One month later, the Akron Police Department chased down high school freshman Jazmir Tucker and killed him with three shots to the back. The mayor has also offered no resistance to the venture capital takeover of the city’s non-profit health care system.

Police Violence:

Malik’s first city budget, passed in 2024, provided a massive funding increase to the APD. The new police budget totaled $92 million, up from the $78 million it was allocated in 2023. Police funding was increased under the rationale that “safety is [Akron’s] number one priority.” However, according to the APD’s own statistics, use-of-force incidents have increased by 38%. Between January and October 2023, 195 use-of-force incidents were reported, going up to 269 use-of-force incidents between January and October 2024.

For-profit acquisition of Summa Health:

Working-class Black residents will also be disproportionally affected by the acquisition of the non-profit Summa Health. Historically, Summa Health has accepted anyone regardless of whether or not they could afford treatment, making it vital for people who are impoverished and unable to pay for expensive medical care. In January 2024, it was announced that the venture capital firm General Catalyst would be acquiring Summa Health and privatizing it, transforming it into a for-profit corporation.

The chemical fire on Rosemary Blvd:

On Sept. 5, 2024, a chemical plant on Rosemary Blvd. in East Akron owned by SMB Products caught fire, creating a huge smoke plume visible for miles. An evacuation zone with a radius of 0.5 miles around the site of the incident was declared, encompassing multiple working-class neighborhoods. Stored on site were hazardous chemicals including methanol, xylene and propane, the latter giving cause for concern of explosion to firefighters on the scene.

Connecting the dots: a war on Black Akronites:

One thread unites all three of these stories from 2024: the victims left in their wake were and are primarily Black. Jazmir Tucker was a Black teenager. The purchase of Summa Health will disproportionately hurt Black Akronites, who are systematically and disproportionately impoverished due to centuries of racist policy. The neighborhoods surrounding the SMB Products chemical plant are majority Black.

 

Another banger from a comrade of mine. Our Akron unit has been doing aggressive works on multiple fronts in the city. Excerpts below, but there's much more in the article.

Akron’s mayor Shammas Malik often says, “Safety is the number one priority for our administration.” He said this as recently as Oct. 17, 2024, while announcing a decline in violent crime rates while standing alongside police chief Brian Harding. This was just a month after a chemical plant hidden in the middle of a residential neighborhood caught fire, forcing residents to evacuate. One month later, the Akron Police Department chased down high school freshman Jazmir Tucker and killed him with three shots to the back. The mayor has also offered no resistance to the venture capital takeover of the city’s non-profit health care system.

Police Violence:

Malik’s first city budget, passed in 2024, provided a massive funding increase to the APD. The new police budget totaled $92 million, up from the $78 million it was allocated in 2023. Police funding was increased under the rationale that “safety is [Akron’s] number one priority.” However, according to the APD’s own statistics, use-of-force incidents have increased by 38%. Between January and October 2023, 195 use-of-force incidents were reported, going up to 269 use-of-force incidents between January and October 2024.

For-profit acquisition of Summa Health:

Working-class Black residents will also be disproportionally affected by the acquisition of the non-profit Summa Health. Historically, Summa Health has accepted anyone regardless of whether or not they could afford treatment, making it vital for people who are impoverished and unable to pay for expensive medical care. In January 2024, it was announced that the venture capital firm General Catalyst would be acquiring Summa Health and privatizing it, transforming it into a for-profit corporation.

The chemical fire on Rosemary Blvd:

On Sept. 5, 2024, a chemical plant on Rosemary Blvd. in East Akron owned by SMB Products caught fire, creating a huge smoke plume visible for miles. An evacuation zone with a radius of 0.5 miles around the site of the incident was declared, encompassing multiple working-class neighborhoods. Stored on site were hazardous chemicals including methanol, xylene and propane, the latter giving cause for concern of explosion to firefighters on the scene.

Connecting the dots: a war on Black Akronites:

One thread unites all three of these stories from 2024: the victims left in their wake were and are primarily Black. Jazmir Tucker was a Black teenager. The purchase of Summa Health will disproportionately hurt Black Akronites, who are systematically and disproportionately impoverished due to centuries of racist policy. The neighborhoods surrounding the SMB Products chemical plant are majority Black.

view more: next ›