vacuouslyfalse

[vacuouslyfalse]

I think referring to feasibility problems as "concern trolling" is a good demonstration of what the core of my issues with the revolutionary left are

I think I am going to have to keep making this post forever. If you think it is easier to take over the government from the left with violence than it is with voting in the US of A, you have completely lost the plot

Like... remember the big military? Most funded one in the world? Keeps doing imperialism everywhere, noticeably right wing in affiliation, no one on the left even pretends to try to infiltrate it or propagandize its members? That military? What do you think it's going to do in the case of a left wing revolution in the US? Politely roll over once you take over DC??? Start accepting marching orders from the people who keep calling them the running dogs of capital????

[vacuouslyfalse]

Chile in 1973 has the same political landscape as the US in 2024, this is a comparison that makes a lot of sense. No notes

I think I am going to have to keep making this post forever. If you think it is easier to take over the government from the left with violence than it is with voting in the US of A, you have completely lost the plot

Like... remember the big military? Most funded one in the world? Keeps doing imperialism everywhere, noticeably right wing in affiliation, no one on the left even pretends to try to infiltrate it or propagandize its members? That military? What do you think it's going to do in the case of a left wing revolution in the US? Politely roll over once you take over DC??? Start accepting marching orders from the people who keep calling them the running dogs of capital????

[vacuouslyfalse]

I do not find that very plausible

I think I am going to have to keep making this post forever. If you think it is easier to take over the government from the left with violence than it is with voting in the US of A, you have completely lost the plot

Like... remember the big military? Most funded one in the world? Keeps doing imperialism everywhere, noticeably right wing in affiliation, no one on the left even pretends to try to infiltrate it or propagandize its members? That military? What do you think it's going to do in the case of a left wing revolution in the US? Politely roll over once you take over DC??? Start accepting marching orders from the people who keep calling them the running dogs of capital????

[vacuouslyfalse]

Give us your analysis on something. Anything.

the americans pretend the cold war was bipolar; a contest of two meaningful equals, since it makes them look better. in reality, it was a war of the filthy rich against the dirt-poor, at a time when wealth wins wars, as it has since the 1500s. broadly speaking, in 1945, there were six industrial megacomplexes in the entire world - my term for a large region containing what at the time were the foundational industries of economic development, namely blast furnaces for manufacturing large quantities of high quality-steel. these megacomplexes were a geoeconomic phenomenon that doesn't really exist any more, partially thanks to how much cheaper it is to ship things these days and how many different industries we have going into all the things we make. in the days before the rise of the computer and plastics industries, steel was the foundation of economic growth and production, and everything that mattered was downstream of steel. picture a scene in band of brothers and ask yourself - how much of what they're carrying is made of steel? steel helmets, steel gun-barrels, steel tank armour, etc. nowadays the helmets are kevlar and the tank armour is partially rubber, but at least the gun barrel is still steel. thanks to the tyranny of transport costs (no shipping container revolution), other vital heavy industries like machinery and weapons want to be as close as possible, so industries tend to agglomerate into these megacomplexes. one of these megacomplexes lay in the northeastern united states on the detroit-pennsylvania axis, one in central russia with twin centres of donbas and the urals, one based in the ruhr valley of western germany, one in the central and northern united kingdom, one in belgium and northern france, and one split between manchuria and southern japan. not a coincidence that all of these are built on large coal deposits. their fates were varied, of course; the ruhr and the bit of the last the japanese inherited became the cores of a very different kind of industrial megaregion, while the french-belgian industrial region and part of the america none managed to gracefully age into finance/services/tech. the manchurian half of the east asian megacomplex, along with the british and most of the american and soviet ones, became rustbelts.

back to 1945 - the belgian complex had been thoroughly looted by the nazis, and in any case was never what it was after its first destruction and looting in the first world war. of course, much of the russian complex was uprooted or destroyed, and the german complex bombed (but not nearly as much as it might have been as noted by multiple historians, although various other reasons are ascribed), and much of the japanese complex firebombed or looted. if you draw the lines of the cold war, you notice two things - firstly, that the free world has a 3:1 margin, ignoring damage. they also get the only undamaged complexes in the uk and us. the one-and-a-half complexes the communists end up with are also the youngest; japanese modernization started in the 1870s and the russian industrial complex only began to take shape in the 1880s; the (horrifically brutal) japanese development of manchuria didn't start until 1931.

think about what this means for the balance of power. the industries of 1945 were not those relevant in 1985, but they did confer wealth in 1945, and wealth allows for investment. the cold war was, in large part, an economic war, and the american economy was always far stronger than the soviet and chinese economies. we can look at stalin's reluctance to export the revolution in the 1950s or the willingess to embrace detente by both the soviets and chinese in the 1970s or even dengist retrenchment as betrayals of the revolution, or we can look at them as realistic acknowledgements of just how heavily the odds were stacked against them.

[vacuouslyfalse]

Finally, when the weather turned favorable, he [Julius Caesar] ordered the infantry and cavalry to board the ships [for an invasion of Britain]. But while everyone's attention was occupied by this, Dumnorix [an anti-Roman Gallic leader being kept as a hostage] took some Aeduan horsemen and, without Caesar's knowledge, left the camp for home. As soon as Caesar heard of this, he stopped the departure of the ships, put off everything, and sent a large part of the cavalry after Dumnorix with orders to bring him back. He gave the command to kill Dumnorix if he did not obey and resisted violently, being convinced that this man would not behave rationally when left on his own, since he had flouted Caesar's orders in his actual presence. In fact, when he was ordered back, Dumnorix began to resist and defend himself violently, calling on his followers to do their duty to protect him and shouting again and again that he was a free man and belonged to a free nation. His pursuers, as they had been ordered, surrounded the man and killed him, upon which all the Aeduan horsemen returned to Caesar

Fascinating how willing Julius Caesar (the author here) is to depict the Gauls as fighting for their freedom against Roman "slavery" - a word he uses often enough. He does a lot to massage the narrative to make himself look better, including tweaking his portrayal of the Gauls as needed, but he can't be bothered to hide what the Gauls are fighting for. What it reminds me of is the noble savage attitude towards Native Americans, as a proud people who are nevertheless doomed to be supplanted by a superior race. It's the sort of respect you grant to a victim who was never a real threat to you, because if you build them up into a worthy opponent it makes you seem less cowardly and cruel. But you also can't build them up too much, they still have to be barbarous in the end.

[vacuouslyfalse]

The worker must one day capture political power in order to found the new organisation of labour. He must reverse the old policy, which the old institutions maintain, if he will not, like the Christians of old who despised and neglected such things, renounce the things of this world.

But we do not assert that the way to reach this goal is the same everywhere.

We know that the institutions, the manners and the customs of the various countries must be considered, and we do not deny that there are countries like England and America, and, if I understood your arrangements better, I might even add Holland, where the worker may attain his object by peaceful means. But not in all countries is this the case.

Karl marx said imperialist england and usamerikkka specifically can just do reformism with no need for revolution. Revisionists cope and seethe

[vacuouslyfalse]

my recollection from my college class on the USSR in WWII:

Stalin was warned about Barbarossa several times before it actually happened with incorrect info, which made him take subsequent stuff less seriously

It seemed like a stupid time to invade (and it was)

Stalin was very invested in keeping the peace as long as humanly possible and was concerned overreacting to a potential threat would trigger an invasion earlier than if he didn't react

Every time I'm reminded of how many different people tried to warn Stalin about Barbarossa and got ignored I wonder how the fuck this guy managed to wrap the entire CPSU around his finger.

[vacuouslyfalse]

#What do you think youre going to find in the biography of literally any emperor ever of any empire

y'know that's fair

Alas, poor Hadrian. One of the most competent emperors, forever known only for his love of walls and twinks

[vacuouslyfalse]

Listening to Adam Tooze's podcast episode on this he seemed borderline livid, very annoyed with economists effectively throwing their weight to the far right to stop the left

the old adage that the centrists are more worried about socialists than the fascist far right is playing itself out in france

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JK Rowling endorsing the Communist Party bc they are sufficiently transphobic but Labour isn't is... well, it's something.

[vacuouslyfalse]

1917 Germany was literally right there. Lenin looking over his shoulder longingly at German industrialization....

starting to feel like marxism, a political theory based on workers and their relationship to the capitalist system, is probably best applied when peasants aren't the majority population

[vacuouslyfalse]

I've undoubtedly made this post before but I think if you were trying to create a massive saw trap for marxist revolutionaries, giving them 1917 Russia as the place to try to build communism would be a pretty good torture method

starting to feel like marxism, a political theory based on workers and their relationship to the capitalist system, is probably best applied when peasants aren't the majority population

[vacuouslyfalse]

The trouble is that I think Marx is actually a rather subtle and interesting thinker who articulates some actually rather formidible critiques. But many of the people I see drawn to Marxism are just such utterly ridiculous personalities. And the sobriety differential here can be a bit disorienting.

[vacuouslyfalse]

When Khrushchev once pleaded that he had a kidney ailment and should be exempt from drinking, Beria spoke up and said that he too had a kidney ailment, but that he drank nonetheless and it did him no harm. This of course left Khrushchev without an excuse.

wow they did not like each other did they

[vacuouslyfalse]

How do you communicate with pro-China MLs? It feels like they exist in a different universe, fascists are easier to engage with than they are. How do you look at contemporary China and not see class collaborationism, revisionism, etc

i mean usually i don't, for precisely the reasons you outline. if i'm publically arguing with one my goal isn't to convince them; it's to convince the onlookers who are on the fence. you have to accept that you will never be able to convince a true believer, especially one who makes their beliefs a source of emotional comfort, by arguing with them directly. all you'll do is get them to double down, for the same reason people in a psychological state of denial cling to their beliefs all the harder when they're challenged.

given that, arguing at the level of broad concepts like "socialism" and "revisionism" and "class collaborationism" is futile, since they can just define those words to mean whatever they want, in such a way that xi always ends up looking like the next mao. what you need to do is engage at the level of hard facts. use statistics. cite articles, ideally ones produced from the chinese state apparatus itself. focus on specific details, and let others draw the broad conclusions from those details. of course, xi could start up a program to turn migrant workers into fish food, and these people would still call him a socialist; the point is to create a contrast between their bloviating and your empiricism that onlookers will take notice of.

that's just my approach, however. the important thing is that you have to give up any hope of changing their minds. sometimes, they can change their own minds, but that's not something a stranger on the internet can help them with.

[vacuouslyfalse]

I don't know if "but this is already long" is intended as for your benefit or for followers, but if you were wanting to say more on your revolution thoughts I would be fascinated to see them. No pressure though, obviously!

I think I was getting to the point where I was going to start rambling or repeating myself so I wanted to leave things as they were

I think the revolution criticisms are a subset of a more general criticism I have about where you choose to cut off your analysis - a lot of the most incisive critics of the US, liberalism, etc will say many true things in a row and then end with a sort of batshit idealism that is completely untethered from reality, and it gets on my nerves

I pick on the communists because I think they're the smartest/most interesting of the far leftists (sorry anarchists) but it's a pretty universal problem. Hell, even fascists can do it sometimes (see all those moments where Tucker Carlson got good press on here for saying true things about US capitalism).

So I guess I want people to pay attention to when the switch between "criticism of problems" and "proposed solution" happens, and watch the materialism seep away and the ideology take over

[vacuouslyfalse]

@siliquasquama I'm still a bit torn on how seriously we should take January 6th as an attempt to seize power, given how clumsy and doomed to fail it looks in retrospect, but I think the crucial distinction is that it wasn't an attempted revolution, it was an attempted coup.

Specifically, there was no large effort to overturn the existing order - it was an attempt to preserve the existing order against the natural progression of liberal democracy (ie, the transfer of power). It was done with the expectation of assistance from a faction of the existing government (ie, Trump, Pence, and other pro-Trump allies) and when that assistance didn't come, it became a farce.

If things had gotten farther along - Pence moves to overturn the results, Trump allies across the country start trying to prevent the transfer of power, etc - I think it's much more likely we would've seen some real violence.

As it is, though, I'm not sure I would call the response of the last few years "coddling" - the government response seems reasonably thorough to me.