#communist louis

[pathetic-dreamy]

Zayn: Say something rebellious.

Louis: Uhh okay, I think the working class should uprise against the rich people.

Zayn: I said rebellious, not revolutionary.

[mo98h]

Crammed together like heaps of flesh in tents that feel like scorching ovens, our days have regressed to a more degraded version of those of the earliest humans. From morning till night, we search for the same things Abel and Cain sought to survive: water, food, and fire. We endure long hours in queues to get a meager amount of water, and the food consists of old, low-quality canned goods. We sleep and wake to the sounds of savage airplanes, unsure of where they will strike next or who among us will be turned into scattered remains. Here in Gaza, we are living the worst existence humanity has known since its very beginning, You are our only hope for escaping Gaza and its oppression. Please help my siblings and me find a safe place to live💔🇵🇸

This tent is now sheltering us in difficult conditions after the bombing and burning of the house

This is our daily lives and sufferings in the simplest things;

We will be forever grateful for any kind of support.

Please donate if you can and reblog as much as you can 🙏

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[little-candy-store-of-horrors]

Hetalia Sticker sheets for a con/artist alley this weekend! Can you spot all the historical references?

[00h5]

[apotrelavrius]

looking for some hot structuralist deleuzian althuserrian marxists communists socialists leninists rn.can't do this anymore.marxists hmu

[releaseholiday]

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[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Doubts If Nation Needs Prodding Of Communists," Winnipeg Tribune. October 15, 1942. Page 3. ---- [By The Canadian Press] TORONTO, Oct. 15 - Drummond Wren, chairman of a public meeting here Tuesday, which approved lifting of the legal ban on the Communist Party of Canada, today made public a letter he had received from Justice Minister Louis St. Laurent in reply to a telegram from Wren asking that the ban be lifted. In the reply, Mr. St. Laurent. quoted from another letter he had written, he said, in answer to a similar request: "I am sorry if large numbers in Ontario are feeling indignant because the recommendations of the parliamentary committee considering the Defense of Canada Regulations have not been implemented. "Personally I have not favored their implementation, and the information I have received was to the effect that a majority of the people, even in Ontario, still felt that there would be danger in giving any encouragement to the Communist Party. "We are very much impressed by the magnificent resistance of the Russian people, but I for one am inclined to attribute that to their vigorous Russian nationalism rather than to any virtue of international Communism. I am not at all convinced that we require the prodding of Communism. in our constitutional setup."

[twelvedaysinaugust]

i actually think Louis could lean more left than Harry. I don’t know why I think that, maybe that he agreed the other day about strikes/unions? maybe because louis’ public image comes across to me as more intentionally grounded than Harry’s? (I think they’re both pretty grounded for multi millionaire musicians but just that Louis’ image comes across more so that way). i can see Louis advocating for liberal causes for the U.S. or U.K. And I can’t see Harry doing that as much except for gay rights stuff or vague stuff about abortion bc of the way he has been marketed and how aloof and vague his public image is. but it’s interesting because Louis has never been vocal about lgbt rights (we know why obviously) or abortion to my knowledge but I still think he leans more left than Harry. maybe it’s his more working class image, which is funny to me considering how rich he is

Yeah, I think about this a lot and I think you could be right.

[headspace-hotel]

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia, except for Chinese people...who were only excluded because they were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

[pathetic-dreamy]

Liam: And have you learnt anything this Christmas, Tommo?

Louis: …Not really.

Liam: Nothing?

Louis: Tell you one thing I have learnt—Christmas; ultimately, commercial holiday. Who's the real winner at Christmas? Amazon. They have drones now! Tiny little dystopian slaves delivering iPads and headphones. I ordered a toaster; it was on the doorstep five hours later! Do we need that? It was 4.99! For a toaster! I mean, someone's being exploited there.

[world-v-you-blog]

The Uses of History, 8 – From France, 1812 to Russia, 1917, 5 - 1848

The Uses of History, 8 – From France, 1812 to Russia, 1917, 5 – 1848

Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, 1754. An epic heroism has shone forth in the personal struggles of Socrates, of Paul and Augustine, of Luther and Galileo, and in that larger cultural struggle, borne by these and by many less visible protagonists, which has moved the West on its extraordinary course. There is high…

[queen-mabs-revenge]

White Man

Sure, I know you! You’re a White Man. I’m a Negro. You take all the best jobs And leave us the garbage cans to empty and The halls to clean. You have a good time in a big house at Palm Beach And rent us the back alleys And the dirty slums. You enjoy Rome— And take Ethiopia. White Man! White Man! Let Louis Armstrong play it— And you copyright it And make the money. You're the smart guy, White Man! You got everything! But now, I hear your name ain't really White Man. I hear it’s something Marx wrote down — Fifty years ago— That rich people don’t like to read. Is that true, White Man? Is your name in a book Called The Communist Manifesto? Is your name spelled C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-T? Are you always a White Man? Huh?

— Langston Hughes, New Masses, 15 Dec 1936

[pattern-recognition]

Good starting points for socialist reading? Detailed medium form summaries? Skeptic debate between various forms, and between other theoretical systems? Please do recommend

For introductory texts, start with the basics. That means starting with the foundation laid out by Marx and Engels themselves, not some abridged text or modern compilation that seeks to re-explain scientific socialism out of a lack of agency for the modern reader (though some of these type are good, but I digress.)

For this i’d recommend:

- Marx, Engels. The Communist Manifesto (obviously)

- Engels. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

- Marx, Engels. Wage-Labour and Capital/Value, Price, and Profit

The above three are very short, succinct, and informative. The latter two are woefully unrecognized as ideal texts for introductory socialism, and they were written for that explicit purpose.

After that, move on to more wholistic works that flesh out and elaborate upon the historical, material, circumstances that gave rise to the capitalist epoch and how and why they furnish the future conditions for a socialist system.

- Engels. Origin of the Family, State, and Private Property (Whatever copy you’ll procure will probably include his complimentary essay, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, which isn’t hugely beneficial for most discursive purposes but interesting, nonetheless.)

- Lenin. The State and Revolution

- Bukharin. Historical Materialism - A System of Sociology

All of Engels’ work, from his introductions to Marx’s texts, his input on the former, and his original treatises, are a wealth of information.

After the structure of dialectical materialism and the capitalist system are understood, I’d recommend works on how the former can/should be implemented and the latter’s historical reign of misery, as well as works addressing the pressing contradiction of imperialism and core-periphery subjugation. (You won’t find vocabulary like core/periphery/semi periphery in texts like this though, that wouldn’t come about until Immanuel Wallerstein outlined the World Systems Theory in his eponymous book. It’s not strictly a historical materialist work, and made by a bourgeois academic (who was the sociology professor of my sociology professor, which is fun I suppose) but is formative for much of contemporary sociological discourse).

- Lenin. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

- Lenin. What is to Be Done?

- Galeano. Open Viens of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

- Said. Orientalism

Along the way, I strongly suggest you actually read Marx’s Capital in full, at least the first volume. It’s not as monolithic and inaccessible as some would lead you to believe, quite the opposite, and cannot be understated in its utility and insight.

- Marx. Capital: A Critique of the Political Economy, Volume I

Other recommendations:

- Marx. Critique of the Gotha Programme

- Marx. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

- Bevins. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

- Bevins. If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

- Lenin. Critical Remarks on the National Question (1913) (Also, can be found in the recent compilation of Lenin’s work on the subject called Imperialism and the National Question)

- Debord. The Society if the Spectacle

- Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

- Mishra. From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia

Truth be told, I’m a grievously under-read marxist, and there are others on this site who could provide a more comprehensive syllabus. To half-assedly make up for it, here are some books i’ve been meaning to read/finish but haven’t gotten to it yet:

- Adorno, Horkheimer. Dialect of Enlightenment

- Marx. Capital, Volumes 2 and 3

- Strong. The Soviets Expected It

- Adorno, Bernstein. The Culture Industry

- Adorno. Minima Moralia

- Mao. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

- Mao. On Protracted War

All of the aforementioned reading can be found online, for free and readily accessible, on places like Marxists.org, or as downloads from places like Libgen. If you want to read on your phone, download the file as an epub and use your device’s proprietary Books app or similar. If you want to read on a PC, I’d recommend a PDF for easiest navigation. If you want to pursue the latter but can only procure the former, you can use a epub reading program like SumatraPDF. If you’re a person who values a physical copy highly enough to warrant a purchase, I’d recommend ThriftBooks, though do be attentive to buying the most suitable copy of whatever material. Also, I’d be happy to send my copies to you or anyone else, via a google drive or telegram, if you feel like coming off anon.

As for “skeptic debate between various forms, and between various systems,” I can’t think of a standalone work with the principle task of dissecting and contrasting various stripes of marxism, but you’ll find as such permeating throughout almost all of these texts. The thing is, the fundamental material conditions haven’t shifted substantially since these were written, wether it be in Marx’s 19th century, Lenin’s 20th, or Bevins’ 21st. The old enemies remain enemies, the old arguments remain true. Dialectical materialism, scientific socialism, is a malleable system. It is a scientific method by which one can analyze the world, understand it with rational clarity, and come to conclusions on how to react to it and make predictions as to how things may unfold. This is the task assigned to any student of marxism. It is not dogma or a ecclesiastical canon, it is a tool.

After you’ve garnered your bachelor’s degree in scientific socialism you can move on to the postgraduate courses, such as chainsmoking cigarettes, caffeine and amphetamine addiction, alcoholism, and playing Disco Elysium.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The source for this figure of 100 million people killed under communist regimes is Le Livre noir du communisme (1997), published in English as The Black Book of Communism (1999). In the introduction, the editor, Stéphane Courtois, used a ‘rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates’ to come up with a figure that approached 100 million, a number far greater than the 25 million victims he attributes to Nazism (which does not, conveniently, include those killed as a result of the Second World War). Courtois equated communism with Nazism, and argued that the ‘single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide’ had impeded the accounting of communist crimes.

The Black Book stoked controversy from its first publication in France. As soon as it hit the shelves, two of the prominent historians contributing to the volume, Jean-Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth, attacked Courtois in the pages of Le Monde. Margolin and Werth distanced themselves from the volume, believing that Courtois’s obsession with reaching the number of 100 million led to careless scholarship.

Kristen R Ghodsee and Scott Sehon, The merits of taking an anti-anti-communism stance

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 2 February 1932, it was reported that a mob of 1,000 residents in the Bronx, New York City fought police and bailiffs who were trying to evict three families during the great depression. The New York Times reported that violence broke out when police attempted the evictions "in the Communist neighborhood of the Bronx, where many of the residents [were] striking for a 15% reduction in their rents". The paper also reported that "women scream[ed] defiance" as mounted police, officers on foot, and 50 detectives supported city marshals in evicting families from their homes. Then: "While the furniture was being carried to the sidewalk the women in the windows urged the movers, 'as fellow workers'to quit their jobs, and implored the crowds to fight." The tenants being evicted were the families of Louis Perlstein, Goldie Calmus, and Jenny Newmark. Their landlord claimed the tenants "were agitators, he did not want in his building under any conditions". Over the course of the battle, police arrested nine people, including five women, eight of whom were later jailed for periods of around two days. While it seems in this case the landlord was successful in evicting the families, elsewhere in the city physical resistance to evictions are estimated to have restored around 77,000 evicted families to their homes in that time. Sources, map and more info on our web app: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9179/bronx-residents-fight-evictions https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2200835346768270/?type=3

[theworldsownoptimist]

I found it interesting that Morgan's two guesses about Louis' past are a military defector or a communist sympathiser. I'm no expert, but from what I understand, it makes sense for him to make those specific assumptions based on the historical context. The story Louis gives is flimsy and he wouldn't assume a black man was a waylaid journalist like himself, so of course he looks for an alternative explanation.

The idea that he might be an American soldier is self-explanatory: there were roughly 120,000 Black American soldiers serving overseas during WW2 and plenty of reasons to go AWOL. As an aside, the story Louis gives about looking for his fictional wife isn't totally implausible. A small number of African American women (less than 1000 I think?) served in the American Nurse Corps after they were allowed to enlist in 1941. Whether any went missing in Romania is a different matter.

As for being "a red", over the course of the previous decade a number of African Americans immigrated to or visited the Soviet Union, drawn by the opportunity to escape racial segregation or find work. Among them were well known figures like Langston Hughes (visited in 1932) and Paul Robeson (visited in 1934), people who Morgan would likely be aware of. Whilst there were also white American immigrants to the USSR and communist sympathies were by no means limited to Black Americans, I do think race plays a role in leading him to that conclusion.

This is a bit of a reach, but I see some broader significance in the two scenarios he lays out. His advice to Louis is to go back to the army if he went AWOL and to avail himself of any illusions he has about the Soviet Union. Essentially, he should admit to his betrayal and give up on the dream of a better life elsewhere. Both reinforce the sentiment expressed by Daciana and Louis himself i.e give up and go home, there's nothing out here worth searching for.

The comment Morgane makes about returning being "a paradise compared to Uncle Joseph's utopia" feels especially relevant given Louis' characterisation of Claudia's quest as a search for God. This author notes that African American writers arriving in the Soviet Union often framed it as a quasi religious experience.

Louis is turned in a marriage ceremony that's also part baptism, which promises an escape from the rigid racial hierarchies of his homeland. After decades of disillusionment, Morgan's advice nicely reflects his state of mind. There is no paradise left to strive for so why bother looking?

source of the extract: African Diaspora 1 (2008) 53-85, Journeys of Hope: African Diaspora and the Soviet Society by Maxim Matusevich