To understand tortured news language today, like goofily not mentioning "Israel" in articles, notice how people relate to history.

Back in the day people knew "The Holodomor" was a Nazi joke. But NYT, etc. were carefully ambiguous. Decades later, all that ambiguity pays off. Of course, things look unstable and all that "future-proofing" may never pay off.

But just try to imagine a particular world a hundred years from now, where Zionists continue to rewrite history: "Oh yeah? If it happened that way you say, why did no NYT article mention it?"

401ks make workers into capitalists.

Pensions had them fighting politically for terms.

401ks meekly align their interests with those of markets.

By the end of most affluent careers, "workers" will "vote" against wage raises and safety regulations to protect their "nest egg."

https://twitter.com/__papa_/status/1764680242533138442

It's not like pensions were amazing, mind you. They're a concession, not worker control.

But people with fat 401ks who cry "Who could callously invest in horrible companies like Exxon and Facebook and Lockheed-Martin!?" amuse.

*You* do!

Restricted funds are a fig leaf.

Every once in a while I dive into Rosa Luxemburg's archive to try to find something of hers to put upon RS and I always conclude the same thing:

- She's really genuinely likable
- She's dangerously misguided

She's got a trippy yet familiar combination of charisma and wrongness. Take her commentary on the Plekhanov-Lenin split.

She's attacking Plekhanov to defend Lenin, but she comes off as naive: she underplays what Plekhanov detects in Lenin, while *also* underplaying the correctness of Lenin's insights on "spontaneity."

A CPUSAer replied to my WITBD note.

MLK Jr., for all his virtues, was an avowed religious idealist whose political career was majorly buoyed by an officially uncredited and politically under-theorized "good cop" dynamic with Malcolm X and the Soviet Union as "bad cops."

https://twitter.com/afromaterialism/status/1757881953859129577

To put this in ML terms, for CPUSA to imply MLK Jr. has important "innovations" over Lenin in terms of peace and faith in America is like telling Germans to read SDs.

You could instead read Black Panthers like Huey and Fred and Assata, but they don't make CPUSA look very good.

New @RedSailsOrg!

In 1921 Lenin said "you cannot hope to become a real, intelligent Communist without making a study of all of Plekhanov's philosophical writings, because nothing better has been written on Marxism anywhere in the world."

Let's try one!
redsails.org/the-meaning-of… @RedSailsOrg 'We can foretell that although there will be a revival of interest in Hegel among the educated classes … bourgeois scientists will undertake a feverish "critical revision" … many doctors' diplomas will be obtained fighting the late professor's "extremes" and "arbitrary logic."'

I think for Losurdo the Soviets failed philosophically insofar as they turned theory into practice but failed to then turn practice into theory.

Applies both to Lenin's NEP and to Stalin's repulsion of Nazi invasion through "siege socialism."

Overused "special circumstances." The problem is not that what was done was done—indeed, those were good real solutions to hard real problems.

The problem is how it dovetails with the habit favoured by liberals of drawing a loop around an action and declaring "that doesn't reflect on who I really am."

Commodity fetishism is one of the most important concepts advanced by Marx and Marxists ***NEED*** to understand that Marx used the term "fetish" to argue "commodities behave like little gods in how they seem to command men" (1) and not "consumerism is immoral and vulgar" (2, 3).

The term commodity fetishism objectively should make you think of some manager saying (and even genuinely believing):

"I'm sorry I have to fire you, but the market told us it doesn't need more guitar tuners."

Not feel guilt for:

"Gosh, those new shoes coming out look sick."

Americans keep blaming their lack of revolutionariness on their moral character, their culture, etc. etc.

I'm a harsh critic of Americans but I find this wrongheaded.

The real reason is this: the 20th percentile poorest American is 80th worldwide.

America is a *slaver nation*. (source: )

The point of understanding this isn't

1. nothing can be done
2. everything is hopeless
3. only poor people can revolt

etc.

It's simply to grasp that it's difficult *because* people have toys and resources, and not because of any other reason.thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/the…

Nietzsche and Nietzschean motifs are very overrepresented in Western media because the "art" layer of wealthy societies, violently purged of communists in "red scares", for decades since became a parking lot for the non-career-oriented children ("failsons") of rich people.

Nietzsche's main concern was *art*.

He was very adamant that it was impossible to create true, authentic, sublime, world-historic art—the Greek and Roman stuff that Westerners call "immortal"—if "otium"—a life of aristocratic leisure—was in short supply.

Domenico Losurdo, 2013:

"Marx and Engels were perfectly well aware that reason and the light of reason can be employed to justify domination. However, this can be highlighted and refuted only through a new, more cogent and compelling recourse to reason and the light of reason." "Those (one thinks particularly of Michel Foucault) who have discovered a more radical critique of domination in Nietzsche than Marx (who they charge with stopping half-way to genuflect to reason and science), argue in mistaken and misleading fashion."

I keep coming back to the idea that the counter-propaganda scene today is a modern version of the philosophy scene that Marx and Engels break down in "The German Ideology."

Both German "Young Hegelians" and Anglo "Assangists" assert we live in a world of "manufactured opinions." In both cases the problem isn't that glaring contradictions and falsehoods are sharply identified in the hegemonic narrative—that's good.

The problem is that such opinions are seen more as the product of mass hypnosis than as the ideological reflection of our material reality.

Losurdo's Hegel book is so interesting.

Turns out Parenti's take on Julius Caesar isn't so rare. Hegel had a similar one! (Popular King vs. Baron Aristocracy.)

Also, when Hegel (and Marx) use the term "Despotism" (e.g. "Oriental Despotism"), it's not used as liberals use it. It's funny that it took me so long to get around to a full read of this one because it seemed like it would be abstract and not so relevant to modern problems.

As with his book on Nietzsche, studying "abstract" things ends up being very practical.

Americans love to yell "Oppose Book Worship!" as if they were overflowing with Mandarins and Young Hegelians, as if hordes of eunuchs were drowning out all practical activity with loud debates.

In reality there's rampant illiteracy, and intellectual pride is *inexistent.* The Movement seems to generally treats intellectuals along the lines of the movie portrayal of the "Jock/Nerd" relationship: the intellectual as a pathetic self-effacing creature that ought to deliver homework on time, then flatter the Real Revolutionary before scampering.

Here's a perfect example of how "discourse" works in North America.

Attacking what I *actually* said is too difficult. How can an American get around it? No problem, just make up an easier opponent and claim victory over it:

"He’s defending theory with no practice."

https://twitter.com/tvnkth/status/1629784778613325825

The problem is not that disagreements exist, but that this society is devoid of the social tools to even *begin* working on overcoming a disagreement.

Rampant illiteracy rules the day, and *communication* is off the table.

And this isn't a new problem.
marxists.org/archive/marx/w…

The communities who go around trying to "doxx" me are varied.

First it was Hongkies, then it was PatSocs, then Ukranadians, now theater-kid "ML"s.

It comes with the territory, but I think it exposes how all these cliques are finally glued together by bullying. It's not a big deal, if it was secret information I'd actually hide it.

But I hope it makes it clear what these people are really like.

It's why these "radical" "organizer" communities turn on each other like vultures over petty stuff like breakups. They're children.

The problem isn't "social media" but rather that poor literacy leads many people to become hostile against *language itself*.

Those who struggle to represent their feelings in words get angry and suspicious when they see someone using unfamiliar words and styles.

César Vallejo: This is what leads even avowed "Marxists" to basically completely disregard everything Marx wrote, reducing his theory to quirky aphorisms and super basic pre-Marxist anger at capitalists and social benevolence, and bragging so like:

When I started writing about politics I felt like a Johnny-come-lately because I hadn't done much "activism" before.

I came around to being very okay with this.

I think the conceptual monopoly that theater-kid stunts have over what people think of as politics leads nowhere. "Radical Politics" was presented as a kind of cultural scene involving megaphones, marching, crying, edgy art, flags, etc.

I liked math and stern writing, and these were seen as basically anathema to the dominant artsy ethos.

It took me a long time to discover my own roots.

MMT & Me. 1) Yes they are.

2) The MMT understanding of money (and obsession with "fiat", excessive focus on finance and rents, not enough on wage-labour relationships, etc.) is inferior to and watered down from Marx's:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RPrecarian/status/1624124154508083205

This is the fate that awaits every "ally" of the U.S. empire.

It's annoying to hear so many doomers who think the U.S. is invincible and that everything they do is a 4D-chess maneuver.

Having a basic Plan B ("if destroying Russia doesn't work, destroy Europe") isn't "genius." Rich people have options.

If something doesn't go their way (e.g., buying a rare vase at an auction), they can usually take another second option (buying a fancy less expensive one) and spin it as frugality or wisdom.

They don't leave empty-handed.

This is what America does.

When you find something that you like—say, a good essay, or a movie—do you look up the source to try to find more of what you liked?

Do you go through the discography of an artist whose song you enjoyed to try to find more songs like it? I sometimes worry that the way I experience consumer society in general and the internet in particular—no ads of any kind, no mailing lists, etc.—is a little *too* different from what is "normal."

With few exceptions, I go out and seek items, and rarely get items "pushed" on me.

The big question remains "Socialism or Barbarism?"

Is North America able to shed its liberal façade of plurality and still preserve its capitalist basis?

I don't think it can.

I think, as liberalism falls apart, socialism has much more of a fighting chance than doomers claim. This has nothing to do with a rosy notion of "better angels" among Americans or Canadians. Down with all their symbols and myths.

I just think, contra incessant anti-mass propaganda, that they aren't stupid.

And socialism is a much better project than anything else on offer.