So, for weeks Rocko has been going on a crusade in defense of "genAI" against those upset that Disney gets to rip off IP who also elsewhere mourn the ruling against Internet Archive and free access.

I'm with Rocko. That criticism is sentimental in a bougie way!

https://twitter.com/Rocko64_/status/1831694357105086707

I think genAI is subpar technology that won't deliver on its hype (redsails.org/dialectics-and…), but I think all this flowery talk about "small humble artists representing humanity against evil soulless machines" is downright tawdry.
x.com/Rocko64_/statu…

New @RedSailsOrg!

Many institutions peddle confusion about the contradictions of democratic centralism.

Sharp divisive self-criticism is called for. At the same time, unity is necessary. How can these coexist?

Lenin reconciles them in *definite action*.
redsails.org/freedom-to-cri… @RedSailsOrg h/t @SpreadWhiz and @m1vql1hdwt for the great find, from a while back.

The tell-tale of lumbering, useless, repressive "communist" institutions is that they repress any kind of discussion while accomplishing nothing specific to speak about whatsoever.

https://x.com/RodericDay/status/1825170257096397165

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You've maybe read Marx's famous line about "ruthless criticism of all that exists." Have you read the 1843 letter it's from, though?

I found existing translations read a bit tricky, so I attempted a new one, to bring its ideas out more.
redsails.org/an-ruge/ @RedSailsOrg 25-year-old Marx, having just earned his doctorate in philosophy two years earlier (1841), is hyping up his friend Ruge towards their new joint venture, a journal.

Marx believes that the only outcome of serious high-soaring philosophy in their day can be… political activity!

The reason I don't have trouble believing Xi is a Marxist is because I don't think Marxism is about being a "good person."

It's about being a smart person, particularly a smart person who is unimpressed by capitalist boasts. And he clearly is that. Many people frame it like "Do you *really* think Xi cares about poor families when he pushes development?"

Firstly, yes; I do think he cares. But that's besides the point. Many who "care" loudly accomplish nothing with all their caring.

Marxism is about getting it done.

This is a problem that Losurdo writes about often, adapting Hegel. "Legality" matters.

But Westerner radicals are very given to brag that legality is the enemy of all good intentions, and that illegalism is basically inherently virtuous, and don't see the point of such pursuits.

https://twitter.com/Ziyad_F_I/status/1796116598870143012

Engels summarized it very succinctly, in a way that simply could not more elegantly expose how scientific socialism is opposed to anarchism:

"Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity."

It's depressing that so many people out there think saying nonsense of this sort is the absolute apex of "deep" thought.

Fascism and the destruction of reason go so hand in hand.

https://twitter.com/aufgehenderRest/status/1786944607055475197

"Distrust logic and communication.

Accept that experiences make groups fundamentally unable to understand each other.

Revert back to natural instincts and traditions.

Be skeptical of rootless, faithless individuals.

Don't think.

Just Do It."

The case for socialized ownership is simple.

Many people want to be compensated "fairly" for their work. But the problem is that they work in complex systems, so there's no objective "fair."

Who "made" a videogame? Coders? Artists? Writers? Maintainers? They made it together! *If* workers truly understood this, they would band together, and begin planning how to distribute the collective booty democratically.

In *absence* of this consciousness, work gets organized by capitalists, who minimize the compensation of all workers and hoover up the rest.

New @RedSailsOrg!

Brandon Hogan writes about what Fanon found useful in Hegel: a theory of why "top-down" liberation, which disallows slaves from "gain[ing] a sense of self" apart from "the values of the colonizer," fails to fulfill "mutual recognition."
redsails.org/fanon-and-hege… @RedSailsOrg I also added a very short part of Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks":

"Man's behavior is not only reactional. To induce man to be *actional*, that is the task of utmost urgency for he who, after careful reflection, prepares to act."
redsails.org/the-black-man-…

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"Free and independent" American unions have historically played a sinister role in capitalism's worldwide war against Communism.

In 2004, lifelong American unionist Harry Kelber summarized many works on this subject into one short read.
redsails.org/aflcios-dark-p… This is a bitter subject for many "lefty unity" types, but misunderstanding the relationship between Communism, Trade Unions, and capitalists; then complaining about a lack of "free and independent" (read: America-loyal) unions, is too common a talking point to leave unaddressed.

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?"

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The question of religion continues to confuse, presenting as a *false* choice, between rudely antagonizing religion and flattering it as harmless.

Marx thought otherwise: "The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism."
redsails.org/the-attitude-o… @RedSailsOrg It's in no way wise to point fingers at some loud annoying atheist, to then declare that all religions are perfectly valid and that there is no tension with Marxism.

In fact, put Marxism aside: not even the religions themselves encourage such bland pluralism between each other.

New @RedSailsOrg!

A project I've temporarily put on hold is criticizing the way M. Hudson's fans muddle Marxism.

However, I keep collecting pertinent resources, such as this Michael Roberts essay summarizing the stark difference between Marx and Keynes!
redsails.org/marx-and-keyne… @RedSailsOrg My notes at the moment just exist scattered on Twitter, but Roberts gets at the heart of the bizarre narrative whereby good productive "honest" capitalists should lead to the disappearance of "rentiers," but somehow they proliferate and ruin everything!

https://x.com/RodericDay/status/1754182436483662046

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Domenico Losurdo is well known to be sharply critical of Hannah Arendt and her account of "totalitarianism."

However, in this 2001 piece he joins forces with her, as he recovers many scathing pre-Cold War anti-Zionist Jewish writings.
redsails.org/il-sionismo-e-… @RedSailsOrg "To take refuge in 'complexity' in order to evade the intellectual and moral obligation to pass judgment on Zionism is to adopt an attitude similar to that of historical revisionism, which does not tire of emphasizing 'complexity' either, in their case about fascism."

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."

New @RedSailsOrg!

Was Lenin a belligerent sectarian, or a consensus-builder?

Using the religious metaphor of ecumenism, Roland Boer explains: "He was always keen to have these struggles out in the open […] for only then would strong agreements emerge."
redsails.org/sectarianism-v… @RedSailsOrg This is the first time I've prepared a text for RS where the foonotes required more formatting work and ended up being longer in aggregate than the actual text!

They're fun footnotes, though.

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.

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Early Mao works like 'Report on Hunan' or 'Rural Surveys' are so often full of brave enthusiasm!

"Now you want to have your rent reduced. Let me ask, how will you go about it? Will you believe in the gods or in the Peasant Association?"
redsails.org/the-overthrow-… @RedSailsOrg "A man in China is usually subjected to the domination of three systems of authority: political, clan, and religious. As for women, in addition to being dominated by these three systems of authority, they are also dominated by the men."

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."'

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Many authors, such as Freiberg, have examined how various key tenets of dialectics had extant, non-Hegelian roots in China. How did this manifest, though?

This very short parable, which I revisit in tough times, illustrates a bit of it.
redsails.org/the-lost-horse/ An error must be avoided here, though.

Discussing philosophy, Lenin points out that dialectics contains relativism within it, but cannot be *reduced* to relativism.

Similarly, dialectics contains, or traces over, some Daoist wisdom, but it cannot be *reduced* to that.

New @RedSailsOrg!

Despising Anthony Bourdain is not "a high standard."

"In his coverage of Washington's targets Bourdain was unlike any other celebrity chef or travel show host and more like a Henry Kissinger for people who drink craft beer."
redsails.org/on-anthony-bou… @RedSailsOrg "Like many mainstream writers, Bourdain highlights Orwell's as a personal hero, […] the inspiration for Kitchen Confidential. […]

Against all odds, the son of a music industry executive and a NYT editor managed to get his foot in the door of the media world."