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Koba of the Lakes ☭ 🏭 🌽 Profile picture
Koba of the Lakes ☭ 🏭 🌽
@RedPrecariat
Marxism-Willichism. Regime mouthpiece. Ohio Apologist. ☭☰ Fellow Traveler. Backup: @RedLacustrian
6 subscribers
Jun 14 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Symbolism 🧵:
I understand why the consensus "Heads of Communism" ends with Mao, but ending it there feels incomplete. Five is an ugly and undialectical number.

Either remove Stalin and Mao to make it three heads (which I hate) or add Deng to make it six heads (what I prefer). Image Five is an undialectical number because the Hegelian dialectic has a triune structure (sublated unity of opposites, three in one).

Limiting the Heads to Marx/Engels/Lenin makes sense because Lenin "sublated" the revolutionary science of Marx/Engels into a revolutionary state.
May 20 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
If you want a concrete understanding of the dialectic between "War of Position" and "War of Maneuver," you should study Ukraine's 2023 Offensive and the Russian defense.

The first map depicts the Ukrainian plan, and the second shows their actual gains (blue stripes, not arrows). Image
Image Don't ignore the granular details in favor of the big picture; that will only keep you trapped in the realm of abstraction.

Study the *particular* positions and maneuvers held and taken by each side during their summer struggle on the Pontic Steppe.
Feb 25 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD:
Russia's leverage in negotiations comes from the assertion that they're ready to abandon talks and switch from positional war to maneuver war at any time.

The RU MOD posting this video is part of the public jockeying process.

The question is if it's a bluff or not. Russia has the manpower/material reserves to conduct a Dnieper crossing and reopen the Kherson front, while Ukraine lacks enough of those things to do anything more than a fighting retreat.

Even with that objective (im)balance of forces, this would be a costly operation.
Feb 22 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD
I want two basic things in politics as a communist:

• Proletarian power/influence.

• To discredit/destroy anything that obstructs proletarian power/influence.

Besides the repressive state, there is no greater obstacle to the first point than Institutional Leftism. Image Institutional Leftism permeates the US Empire's ideological state apparatus.

It's the ideology of aspirants/members of the urban PMC. Both organic student movements and manufactured color revolutions globally are driven by this broad tendency.

(Read the alt text on the pics) The Color Revolution playbook: 1) Combine an aimlessly angry crowd of institutional leftists with an organized, violent vanguard of imperial agents to overthrow a recalcitrant government. 2) Install a puppet government with a facade of democracy covering a fascistic deep state. 3) Use that new puppet state as cannon fodder against the enemies of the Atlanticist Cartel.
Populist slogans without disciplined DemCent always lead to the Democratic Party.
That complexity was not just chaos, it was also the process of cooptation and recuperation by bourgeois imperial institutions.
The Center for Social Development is funded by the Ford Foundation and the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, among MANY others. https://csd.wustl.edu/partners/funding-partners-2/
Jan 26 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD:
The current geopolitical landscape is usually compared to some part(s) of the 19th/20th centuries, but I think the best historical analogy to our current circumstances is actually found in the 16th/17th centuries in Europe—from Martin Luther to the Peace of Westphalia. The Protestant Reformation At the time, Europe was dominated by the hegemonic Catholic Church, and that hegemony was enforced by the Habsburg Empire.

For 100+ years, this Papal-Habsburg hegemony was embroiled in conflict with disparate forces that were unified only by their counter-hegemonic partisanship. De facto holdings of Emperor Charles V Habsburg, also the de jure Holy Roman (German) Emperor.
Dec 9, 2024 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
What people colloquially refer to as the "American Empire" is, in reality, the Atlanticist *Cartel* — a syndicate of imperialist mafias unified under the leadership of the Wall Street-City of London axis. It is a product of the "Second Thirty Years War" (1914-1945). The cartel form represents the dialectical sublation/transcendence of the inter-imperial struggle that Lenin had analyzed. The national forms of the constituent mafias are an echo of the Cartel's historical basis, the period of intense rivalry between global European empires.
May 2, 2024 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
🧵On the topic of the US-Israel relationship, it's not a question of "who controls who," it's a feedback loop that developed from the petrodollar and Suez Canal.

The world imperial system consists of a network of capital flows between metropoles that all lead back to the US. https://appliednetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1007/s41109-020-00304-z The most important metropole nodes in this network correspond with the locations of the Federal Reserve Banks, specifically NYC, DC, and San Francisco.

The US exports USD from these nodes and imports commodities and labor from the rest of the world. That is the American Empire. Image
Mar 25, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
🧵
A lot of people on here contradictorily have extremely high expectations for the UN while viewing it with complete contempt.

I won't scold a Palestinian for cynicism but Westerners should adjust their expectations and understand why countries around the world value it. At its core, the UN is a standardized forum for diplomacy. It's not a law enforcement agency at the top of some international hierarchy, it's designed to be a connective tissue between states in what is otherwise an anarchic international system.
britannica.com/topic/anarchy
Jan 8, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
🧵We really shouldn't be surprised that anti-communism took root in Iran when Soviet policy towards it was essentially a continuation of Tsarist policy.

The Anglo-Soviet invasion in 1941 was just another round of the long-running "Great Game" in the eyes of Iranians.

Russian territorial expansion in the Caucasus and spheres of influence.
Anglo-Soviet occupation zone during WW2. We've all heard about the 1953 coup, but how many of you have heard of the 1946 Iran Crisis, when the USSR set up satellite states in the territory it occupied after the 1941 invasion? That wasn't the first time Iran's territorial integrity was threatened by Russians. Image
Oct 12, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
🧵
I see a lot of socialists pointing out that Israel "created" Hamas. While there is truth to that, it's reductionist and counterproductive to bring up in most cases when discussing this conflict with people.

The rise of religious nationalism within the Palestinian... ...movement was driven by two key and connected events:

1) Gorbachev coming to power.
2) The Oslo Accords.

As we all know, the USSR had been the patron of many liberation movements around the world, including the leftist-secular PLO. When Gorbachev came to power, that changed.
Dec 20, 2022 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
In the same vein as my thread on Yemen and its strategic importance, I'll be giving another geography lesson by partially answering this question, "Why is Russia so big?"

Perceptive types will see that this map hints at one of the main reasons, which I'll explain below. The history of Russia is defined by two problems, the lack of naturally defined borders and warm water ports with free access to ocean commerce.

Dark green on this map represents the borders of the Russian Tsardom at its establishment in 1547 under Ivan Grozny.
Dec 17, 2022 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
Thread🧵

I never fully understood President Xi's quote about "historical nihilism" and the USSR, but that's starting to change as a result of the war in Ukraine and the stuff I talked about in the thread below.

Historical nihilism is the unprincipled rejection of history. Historical nihilism first took hold of the CPSU with De-Stalinization.

Before I get to my main points, I want to say that De-Stalinization was a well-meaning policy in the broadest sense and I don't hate Khruschev like some others. The problem was that it went WAY too far.
Dec 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1) I saw an interview with some Russian soldiers in which they were asked what they call the AFU troops. The interviewer expected something like "Ukrops" or "Banderites." Do you know what the actual answer was?

"We call them Germans" 2) I didn't save the interview unfortunately, I'll try to find it again, but it got me thinking about a lot of things. My immediate thought was that we here in the West can't really comprehend the DEEP cultural influences and scars of the Great Patriotic War in Russia.
Dec 14, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
It's been a while since I put on my armchair general hat and I wanted to make some crude maps, so I'm going to share what I think are the potential locations and goals for Russia's presumed winter offensives in this short thread.

Check the alt text for the legend.
🧵 First, Kharkov.

Russian attacks are currently concentrated toward Lyman. I believe the goal of an offensive here would be to create a cauldron for the AFU, with their back against the Oskil River. If Russia takes a conservative approach, it will move towards... Red Line - Current Front Re...
Oct 27, 2022 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
🧵
There are three ideological pillars that form the basis of American imperial hegemony:

1) Manifest Destiny
2) The Monroe Doctrine
3) Heartland Theory

These pillars define the geopolitical strategy of the US Empire and its globalized capitalism. The first two developed within the US.

Manifest Destiny is the justification for westward expansion and US dominion over North America. The Monroe Doctrine is the US claim to dominion over the Western hemisphere, in opposition to old world claims in the Americas.
Oct 25, 2022 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
🧵
An important distinction for communists to make is the one between the "political mainstream" and what I'll call the "political underground".

The biggest advantage bourgeois democracy has in suppressing revolutionary sentiment is that it has a broad but shallow mainstream. Generally speaking, this mainstream is controlled with a fairly light touch, mostly using the powers of agenda (e.g. "choose the blue or red team"), ideology, and paradigm (more on this later) to guide politics.

In contrast, states like Tsarist Russia...
Oct 20, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
1) Everyone should read this speech by Georgi Dimitrov (GenSec of the Comintern) if you want to better understand CPUSA's approach to organizing in a bourgeois democracy: The party program is based on the United Front strategy developed by the Comintern.
marxists.org/reference/arch… 2) The section "Attitude Towards Bourgeois Democracy" is most relevant to the current "discourse".

It's incorrect (to put it lightly) to describe our position as "vote blue no matter who". Our overall goal is to build a broad coalition centered on the working class.
Oct 20, 2022 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
🧵
What would it take for a revolution to occur in the US?

This is of course the golden question we as communists must eventually answer, and I'm not equipped to fully give one (especially on Twitter) but I'm gonna share some thoughts on how we might answer it in a short thread. First, we must ask "what are the current conditions in the US?"

The answer is obvious to any and all communists: The US is in a pre-revolutionary stage, and it has been since its rise to global hegemony after the Great Depression and WW2. Imperial prosperity has kept it there.
Oct 20, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
🧵
I love all the grandiose posturing that pops up whenever CPUSA tweets something about elections that may or may not be poorly worded.

Principled/informed criticism is fine and the party certainly has problems, but those problems are reflective of the broader American left. 2) The most fundamental problem is our impotence as a broad political movement. We're either stuck in the mud of tailism to varying degrees (intentionally or not) or we're isolated weirdos stuck in dogmatic internet bubbles. Creating a broad working class movement...
Oct 19, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1) With Saudi Arabia now defying the US, I see a lot of people saying that a regime change op is inevitable. The US might try, but I doubt it.

The thing with Saudi Arabia is that underneath the incredibly brutal regime is a very fragile society. It's primary oil-producing... 2)...region is full of heavily repressed Shia Muslims, any political instability is liable to cause a civil war that would have a severe impact on oil production. The US doesn't really need Saudi oil directly, but it does need it on the global market to maintain stability.
Oct 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1) There's an interesting contrast between Russia's tactical/operational struggles in Ukraine and its excellent strategic vision. Driving a wedge between the West and the Arab gulf monarchies is a strategic masterstroke largely driven by Russian diplomatic maneuvering. 2) That's not to say the war is a disaster, but there are real problems that need to be and are being fixed, though arguably slowly.

China is the engine of the new international system, but Russia is acting as the connecting thread between the rising poles of this new system.