Tired Marxist writer. I make films and stuff through @ProlekultFilms (https://t.co/gC3Leklz3z). #SocialismorExtinction
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May 22 • 28 tweets • 8 min read
The Walney report lumps left-wing, anarchist and single-issue "threats" together. Might seem small, but it allows the report to put anti-abortion activism, anti-vax activism and the incel movement in the same bracket as Marxists, anarchists and eco-protests.
Main take-aways from the eco section: (a) That stuff which hasn't happened might happen because of the way the climate crisis is discussed; (b) that members of the public might beat up eaco-activists.
In other words, the report is straining to find ways to criminalise very hard.
Dec 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Even if we accept this as an accurate statement of the Marxist method (which, like, no), the primary “binary” for Marx would be the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. The goal of Marxism is to abolish class stratification: that is, we want to overthrow that “binary”.
None of this actually has very much to do with gender at all, but to take this at its own word, class can either be an intrinsic property of nature (oh hi there vulgar bourgeois polecon), or non-binary people can *be* the revolution. Their framework, their choice.
Nov 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Musk's Twitter layoffs are bad in two senses: (a) they're an arbitrary way of broadly dismissing workers, and will definitely be used to more deeply cultivate a certain type of working environment; (b) this is an industry tendency, gaining in pace, that isn't talked about much
I do not pretend to know if this is the truth or not, nor is what I have to say dependent on either interpretation. There are clear competitive motivations behind Russia's statement here. news.sky.com/story/ukraine-…
Firstly, this does make sense as an accusation. In 2013, British companies secured a 50 year exclusive deal on gas reserves in the Donbass. The British are, by far, the most invested nation in the territories Russia has annexed.
The first high-quality guano reserve opened to capitalist exploitation was depleted in 1870, three years after Marx wrote that every progress made by capitalism in increasing the fertility of the soil is “a progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility”
The guano fertiliser industry only started in 1924, with the shipment of two casks to the US. It ballooned rapidly - half a million tons shipped to England and the US combined by 1850.
Anti-war and anti-imperialist movements are distinct, but the former is a pre-condition of the latter having the political space to form. If you don't directly contest the leadership of the former, and engage with the movement wholly, the latter will simply not form.
Remember this before you get too into denouncing things as liberal or inadequate from a distance. As I've said: a lot of you need to be far more patient.
Feb 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So many fucking patsys on here jesus
It's not a "two things are bad" moment. It's not a "victory to Russia" moment. It's not a "NATO must sanction them" moment.
It's a "we demand communism and an end to the economic basis of war" moment.
Feb 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The speed at which Russia's military operations are progressing is honestly jaw-dropping. Modern high-intensity warfare is unlike any this planet has seen before.
If world war does break out then the world will be consumed by it in days. The planet cannot survive that.
Socialism or extinction really are the options.
Feb 22, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Comrades, what we need to do is explain *why* this is happening to working class and oppressed people. We do not need to stomp around in an imagined moral Cold War with the press and each other about what banner our continued impotence ought to carry.
So much talk on here assumes we’re thrashing out the positions of a movement, rather than attempting to prepare the pre-requisites for one to exist.
We have built more than the cynics in our midst think, but not into a real material force by any metric.
Feb 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The sanctions on Russia from the EU and the US look more significant than usual, particularly the elements targeted at state debt and securities, but are really quite a step down from cutting Russia off SWIFT. The US has lost this round, and I think they know it.
The real losers in the imperialist competition are, of course, the EU - particularly Germany. The expansion they initially wanted isn’t gonna happen and they stand before the distinct possibility that they may have to shoulder the cost of US gas.
Oct 26, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The censorship of Novara by a capitalist monopoly is not a victory for anyone. If the process of digital information control extends to even right social democrats (who platform eugenicists nonetheless), its acceptance allows an expansion to all left media.
I despise Novara, but we do not cheer the growing assertiveness of reactionary monopolies.
Oct 25, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Bourgeois ideological infrastructure and its dynamic of "report -> news cycle" is honestly stupid as fuck. This is so fucking obvious it's unfathomable.
Why aren't they doing it? Nature does not produce surplus value. That's it. #SocialismorExtinctiontheguardian.com/environment/20…
Love to see another UN Climate Conference conclude we should re-invent trees, keep drinking the earth's blood like frat boys at a kegger, and swan off to achieve nothing until the next one repeats. Rinse repeat ad nauseam in an ever mounting wreath of flames.
Oct 25, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Marxists told you long before Jack Dorsey, remember. businessinsider.com/twitter-ceo-ja…
Where Jack is wrong is that Bitcoin won't save capitalism or, by extension, him.
Sep 30, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Brexit isn't original sin. HGV drivers are definitely one reason why shortages are hitting Britain hard, but gas prices across *all of Europe* have risen 500% this year. The crisis is made more acute by Britain's parasitism, and that, in turn, has been given a catalyst by Brexit.
It's pure liberal nonsense that the economy was a-okay, just fine, then Brexit happened.
Sep 29, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
the soft/soc dem/Labour watcher left rn and probably forever
I don't how people can possibly be obsessed with this still. They don't care about elections, they don't care about the conditions of anyone other than themselves and they don't want any of you in their party. You all know this, yet you remain hitched to obsolescence.
Sep 29, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am all for logging off but the "get some air" or "touch grass" memes will never not simply be hysterical to me because they don't account for the fact that we can be online outside anywhere and have been able to do that for over a decade.
You all sound like jaded parents who just want the kids to go out so they can have sex circa 2002
Sep 28, 2021 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
I’ve been doing a lot of reading around fascism and modes of production in decay for this year’s @ProlekultFilms and I’m increasingly unconvinced that the term fascism has any use when considered as an abstract force.
The dominant modern reading of the 1930s communist analysis of fascism is really illustrative in this way. Rajani Palme Dutt puts forward the clearest articulation in his wonderful book “Fascism and Social Revolution“.
Sep 28, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
An organisational realisation of capitalism's tendency toward total monopoly. The choice is between a bourgeois state propping up capital accumulation until it defaults and falls into terminal decline, or a proletarian state, with mass democracy over a fully nationalised economy.
There is no option other than central planning and increasing reliance on the state for capitalism. Capital is already subsidised via direct payment, contract, and tax cuts to such an extent that masses of the economy would collapse without these allowances.
Apr 3, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Corbyn and all your faves remained members of the Labour Party through this, and still remain members now, as Labour acquiesces to open capitalist dictatorship. Fuck em.
He’ll asphyxiate this just as he asphyxiated the anti-austerity movement, just as he chose co-operation with the bourgeois state over the proletarian movement at every serious test of his integrity. Letting these people lead, again, points to defeat, again.
Main take-aways from the eco section: (a) That stuff which hasn't happened might happen because of the way the climate crisis is discussed; (b) that members of the public might beat up eaco-activists.
