#communism (theory and philosophy)

[andreadworkinq]

“Sex-negative” is the current secular reductio-ad-absurdum used to dismiss or discredit ideas, particularly political critiques, that might lead to detumescence [aroused dick deflation]. Critiques of rape, pornography, and prostitution are “sex-negative” without qualification or examination, perhaps because so many men use these ignoble routes of access and domination to get laid, and without them the number of fucks would so significantly decrease that men might nearly be chaste.

Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin

[queercodedangel]

Squidward understands that language is political and that we therefore need to break away from the status quo in the way we speak when we aim to resist the status quo

[grandpasessions]

Materialist dialectics assumes, without particular joy, that, till now, no political subject was able to arrive at the eternity of the truth it was deploying without moments of terror. For, as Saint-Just asked: "What do those who want neither Virtue nor Terror want?" His answer is well known: they want corruption —another name for the subject's defeat.

Or, as Saint-Just put it succinctly elsewhere: "That which produces the general good is always terrible." These words should not be interpreted as a warning against the temptation to violently impose the general good on a society, but, on the contrary, as a bitter truth to be fully endorsed.

The further crucial point to bear in mind is that, for Robespierre, revolutionary terror is the very opposite of war: Robespierre was a pacifist, not out of hypocrisy or humanitarian sensitivity, but because he was well aware that war between nations as a rule serves as the means to obfuscate revolutionary struggle within each nation.

Robespierre's speech "On War" is of special importance today: it shows him as a true peace lover who ruthlessly denounces the patriotic call to war, even if the war is formulated as the defense of the revolution, for it is the attempt of those who want "revolution without revolution" to divert the radicalization of the revolutionary process. His stance is thus the exact opposite of those who need war to militarize social life and take dictatorial control over it.

In Defense of Lost Causes S. Zizek

[alpaca-clouds]

The Anarchist History of Homo Sapiens

I already spoke about my favorite book that I read last year: David Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything". A book that very much goes into the topic mentioned above: Human history under the perspective of anarchism.

Now, quite a lot of people will know the theory by Rousseau: Humans lived their wonderful free life, then we discovered agriculture, and then some people decided all the stuff was theirs, and then we ended up in the modern misery. This theory tends to get quoted again and again by scholars, with just one small problem: it was technically just a scenario Rousseau dreamed up. There is no actual evidence for this - which does not mean it is wrong. Just that it is a story not based in research.

And because of this Graeber, who is an anthropologist, decided to look further into this together with a colleague. And what they came up with is quite interesting.

Because here is the thing: the way we learn about early human history in school - not that it is a whole lot - is wrong once more. And technically it does not even need research for this.

Humans have been around for about 200 000 years, which in terms of earth history is not a whole lot. Still, out of this time, humans have only really done agriculture for about 7000 years - or at least this is how the story goes. This was after all, when the first big civilizations showed up on the scene. However, you will notice something: Do you actually think that humans before that did not understand agriculture?

While human brains might have shifted a little bit during this time, in general human intelligence did not change a whole lot. So obviously some humans would have realized that if you put seeds into the ground, you can make plants grow there. And given that some animals were domesticated before that 7000 years, we also definitely knew how to domesticate animals. So, why did we - the species homo sapiens - not do that?

For this Graeber and his colleague go to the one source we have, given that we do not have written sources from pre-history (as the word pre-history implies): indigenous folks who did still rely on hunting and gathering, when a more modern civilization made contact with them. And they actually had a wonderful answer to this: they would not use agriculture, because it was not worth the hassle.

There is theory, that will get discussed to bits: the more civilization developed, the more work did humans have to do. Hunters and gatherers often only "worked" for about 20 hours a week. Early people doing agriculture would do about 30 hours. And today... Well, you and I both know how much people work today.

And a lot of people push back on this, saying it is simply not comparable, given that people back in the day did not really have a concept for "work" and as such work and leisure was not even fully differentiated.

But this does not chance, that we do work a whole lot more these days, than other humans before us had.

And the reason for this is simple: We work, so that the owning class can get richer. We do not just do the work that would be needed to sustain ourselves, but the world that will grow businesses. We work so that "line goes up".

Hunter-Gatherer-Cultures did not do such a thing. While they might at times take a bit more and prepare food so that it could last them the winter, they did not hoard that food just to have it. And while peasants during agriculture societies would have to work more, given they produced the stuff for their kings to hoard, this was still not the kind of overproduction we are bringing in today.

And then there was the other thing. The main reason why people for most of human history actually had one big thing we are lacking today: freedom.

Basically, if you did not get along with the folks in your family or tribe in a hunter-gatherer-soceity, you could simply leave. This was even true in mainly agricultural societies. You did not like the king? Well, if push came to shove, it was fairly easy to leave. Sure, you would have to give up on what you had, but it was usually not that much. Nobody really could stop you, because in the end, there was no way to track you.

If you wanted to just move into another country, you could do that.

And also... For the longest time in human history, whatever rulers or leaders humans had were quite aware that they only could rule as long as the people permitted it. If you did not treat your people well, the people usually had more than enough ability to just throw you out or outright kill you.

So even those hierarchies that existed were fairly shallow.

But we lost all those freedoms over the last few centuries. Especially now, that everything is digitalized and you basically will have a hard time moving across the world without being noticed. Getting in and out of a country? Ha, good luck with that.

And that... Well, that is an issue, isn't it?

Because given that the one thing is what came out of our evolution, and the other thing was brought onto us by a few people... It is easy to say, that this way to live is against our nature.

In our society, we just do not have a lot of freedom. Graeber called this out in several of his books. If you brought an ancient Greek man into our modern world, he would assume everyone here is a slave. Because most people who are not part of the super rich do not really have freedoms. Sure, there is some freedoms that exist in theory, but in praxis? We have freedom of movement... but only as long as we remain in certain countries. We have freedom of choosing our work, but if we do not work, we will simply starve. A lot of countries also did not give people the freedom to roam. And any form of foraging is outlawed in a lot of places or highly regulated. So most freedoms we have are just freedoms in theory - and even those theoretical freedoms can easily be taken from us, as the Trump regime is showing us right now.

Humans are meant to be free. As such, it is no big surprise we are all in all rather unhappy with how we are living, isn't it?

[dn-838]

If America was becoming Fascist, you wouldn’t be seeing so many Socdems and Neoliberals calling it out as “Fascism” or opposing Trump. Fascism was a very specific ideology that formed mostly as an extreme way of opposing the growing fear of the Soviets and to counter the risk of any kind of Socialist uprising in the countries it was applied to. Progressives, Conservatives, Socdems, even some Demsocs, were all heavily in support of it as a tool to counter Communism, and it usually took over through heavy support from Establishment Liberal Democracy and Social Democratic entities.

Trump has a lot of Fascists in his supporter base yes, Trump has Fascist-esque policies and is an authoritarian reactionary, Trump would be in full support of Fascism if the conditions were reached for it, and Musk did that pose very intentionally, however he is NOT making America a Fascist state in the present. There’s no USSR to oppose or big uprising in America to counter, if there was, both parties would have supported a politician or party promising Fascist countermeasures, as would the European countries who have only reacted to Trumps victory with fear.

Trumps ideas are horrifying and oppressive, he is a Reactionary leader regressing on a lot of Social issues, yes you should continue to keep your mouth shut if you know an immigrant or LGBT+ person, however this is NOT Fascism, this is NOT comparable to the rise of the Nazis, and claiming it is gives too much credit to those “progressive” groups who oppose this but would willingly throw all their ethics under the bus in the case of actual Fascism (if they oppose Communism and are the sort of people who insist that voting for what they themself consider a Genocidal regime was “necessary” to avoid the “worse Fascists”, then they’d absolutely throw the marginalised under the bus to support genuine Fascism) and just gives more fuel to the Imperialist machine using these deluded political narratives and revisionist history that could end up helping actual Fascism in the future.

[thejokerismybf]

[canisvesperus]

From the 2020 folder— ironically the same year in which I ended up hyperfixating on cooking.

[alchemisoul]

"People in the 90s, and people still today to some degree, although, in the 90s, it was more obvious were like, oh, we're building the World Soul as we all get network together. We'll see that we're all one and we'll have no choice, but to overcome our enmity and sort of become a global, a planetary civilization, which was a big Motif in New Age thinking - this sort of planetary Consciousness.

Um, and cool, groovy, you know. Like, "Uh, you know, we're all one", right? But, actually, The Global Village is a paranoid place. That was the thing that Marshall McCluhan talked about in the 60s. He said, yeah, we're moving towards a global village and people tended to think he meant sort of, you know, like in a kind of a Walt Disney way like, oh, it's a little village, and we're all happy and together.

No, no, that's not what he meant at all. He meant it was going to be a place where everyone was aware of everybody else's business. There's a lot of backbiting, envy, social tension. You know, so it's a mix - it's a deeply mixed bag.

And I was able to articulate in a way both the Utopian and, if you will, the Demonic side of this kind of global technology. But a more, I think a better figure rather than thinking of the sort of angel-demon tension is, the thing about technology, in particular, if it has a mythological identity - it's the trickster and the tricksters bring gifts. And they bring pranks.

They can be devilish, they can be celebratory and erotic. They can open the gates to the other dimensions, and they can fool you. So all of those kind of qualities from a mythological level, I think that's at play inside our technology and that this just hasn't changed since, you know, 25 years ago when I was writing Techgnosis - it manifests in different ways. There are different. balances."

- Erik Davis in an Interview on New Thinking Allowed with Jeffery Mishlove

[verloonati]

this is like. Not a huge problem as it is more an ongoing frustration, but it's always really funny to see all kind of online liberals perceiving themselves as "radical", whatever that may mean use the word terf as a shorthand for transphobe (leading to the delicious misuse of the word directed at trans women sometime) regardless of said transphobe's other positions and beliefs, as a way to distance 'radical feminism' from the rest of feminism (and calling it "not real feminism") as if the feminist movement hadn't been, from its foundation, and repetitedly through its currents a platform for eugenicists, race scientists and homophobes, more focused on promoting girlbosses than class consiouscness, and yes, a movement in which transphobes have been proeminent.

This not only leads to a lack of engaging with either the actual terves and their inner polemics, disaagrements and currents (and in recent years there have been a lot in these spheres as the anti-trans sentiment has been a bigger and bigger rallying point of reactionaries) that translates to a lack of understanding of what we're actually facing in those cases, but it also leads to a lack of engaging in good faith and understanding of what feminism is as a movement and how varied, contradictory, adversorial and sometimes reactionary it can be.

It also leads to calling Donald Trump or Kier Starmer or Viktor Orban radical feminists. Which like.

[clwhowrites]

The Fatal Flaw in Economic Theories, Part 2 - Socialism

Just to show I will not be picking on American capitalism (as it will be the main topic after this), I’ll start with socialism. This scene wasn’t just a joke. First, lets define terms, because most in the US don’t even know what socialism is. Socialism is an umbrella term for multiple economic philosophies and theories largely based on classless systems with worker or collective ownership of…

[2econd2ight2aver]

Was William from Moriarty the Patriot socialist?

During the manga and the anime he very clearly believed that the class system is a curse upon the British empire, that change must happen and that it is extremely unfair for the 2%, the upper classes, the Bourgeois be spending all their life in luxury whole the lower class, the Proletariat work all day to feed their families.

Although it is true that that way of thinking can be found in socialism, there are some things that he seems to disagree with in that ideology. In the Jack the Ripper arc, William finds out that there is no Jack the Ripper, an organization is making a villain to try and stir up a revolution between the Proletariat and the Bourgeois.

That, coincidently is the whole idea of Socialism, Communism and Marxism, a Proletariat revolution. He is against that. If he wanted a Proletariat revolution, he would just let that happen, but he didn't.

He tried to stop that from happening. William doesn't completely agree with Socialism because Socialism, Communism, Marxism ect is really violent. Innocent lives will be lost. But wouldn't that backfire with his final plan? He started killing people and setting fires to become a common enemy.

There is a big difference between the revolution and what he did. His plan, was making him a common enemy, just like Maximilien Robespierre, so that the two classes could put aside those differences. While a revolution wants one class against eachother, he wanted all of the people together.

That I believe is the biggest difference. He doesn't want to eat the rich like socialist want, he doesn't believe if someone is rich he is inherently evil. After all, people are born into wealth, just like people are born into homelessness.

So in conclusion, no. He isn't a socialist or communist. He believes in some ideas of Socialism but he despises the violence of the revolution socialism wants. The red in his eyes isn't for the Soviet Flag (fortunately since that would be time inaccurate)

But that's just a theory,

An anime theory

Thanks for reading.

It feels so good to rant about communism in anime.

[queercodedangel]

Squidward understands that language is political and that we therefore need to break away from the status quo in the way we speak when we aim to resist the status quo

[cufufle]

Finished the communist manifesto after a few months, I’ve officially decided that communism is in fact a good idea. you got me Marx, now I’m a transformer with pronouns AND a communist

[prolekult]

We are already in a new climate. Capitalism has failed.

[dn-838]

No matter your view on any other Socialist and Revolutionary figures throughout history, I hope we can all still agree that Pol Pot was a fucking monster

[m---a---x]

Inspired by all the newly created communities i have also created one about the topic closest to my heart: Foundational Mathematics

It is inteded for all types of posts about and from people of all kinds of backgrounds interested in the topic.

Please share with anyone you think might be interested. If you want to be added comment on this post, so I can add you.