Yeah it also comes up during election cycles in the US. If you say you don't want to vote Democrat, you might hear someone say that you shouldn't focus on purity and vote pragmatically(TM).
Of course they are either unable to understand that there are different politcal aims at play, or they are trying to extort you.
When the "Republican friend" tries to suggest a moderate or alternative dem for "pragmatic purposes" it's often taken in bad faith. RFK Jr is a decent example of this today, a lot of Dems hate him because he sucks and is an obvious grifter. But if a communist or some other 'lefty' doesn't want to vote for Democrats, they are selling everyone out to Trump because of a dangerous lack of pragmatism.
The main problem that I see is that a lot of people on the left are rejecting effective methods for building a movement that have been proven in the past as being authoritarian.
Occupy Wall Street comes to mind. It's like a natural demobilizing ideaolgy that grows in reaction to neoliberalism. People get focused on grassroots and bottom up approaches, which makes sense and is necessary. But then they get taken over by astroturfing because their leadership is basically unofficial and nothing more than a friend group that got their first. I'm looking at you David Graeber (RIP). And now the whole "99% vs 1%" rhetoric is all but entirely used by the right wing.
I think proletarian ethics is emergent from a combination of class interests and from revolutionary practice. OP can certainly disapprove, and even be repulsed by the actions of their family and their political interests can certainly be the foundations of this. Sure having petty bourgeoisie or wealthy parents doesn't mean much in terms of being communist, and there is no need for OP to get lost in identity crisis over that but that doesn't mean the situation can't be degrees of troubling. If our family is contributing to the problems of the masses, then the last thing we should be doing is justifying it, or sterilizing it by needlessly making it all entirely about macro processes. I don't see why family gets a special pass on these matters either.
Landlords may be determined by capitalist relations but the reality this produces is not merely academic and it is far from harmless. It is not amoral, it is directly antagonistic to a proletarian normativity. We can explain the act of stabbing someone to death in terms of the physiology of the killer, or the sociology, to better understand, but at the end of the day someone was killed.
I want to be clear that centering morality has major pitfalls, especially in our settler and/or bourgeoisie outrage cultures and the utility civil religion provides for bourgeoisie politics. Good and evil are usually liberal trademarks and so I do agree that this should not be our primary thought and oftentimes we should resist moralizing things until we have the means to do so properly. But I doubt denying it entirely will hold up forever, and it's removal can't be used to cover up crimes against working and subsisting people or to ease our minds illegitimately.
All in all this case is small time and OP probably has nothing to worry about other than contextualizing themselves within dynamic class structures. They are not alone in having pety bourgeoisie characteristics and not in bad company either.
I don't understand how you can talk about race without talking about class. The claim that the left only cares about racism is explicitly racist and class reductionist. The NYT has got nothing to do with it. If these political spectrum discourses have any meaning or substance at all, the NYT is clearly right wing.
Eventually it worked
I play the shit out of this game but don't really want to make a other lemmy account...
Edit: never mind I figured it out
A lot of people play it ironically. It's certainly not explicitly pro soviet. But it is fun.
The only place for a mercenary is prison. We are now learning why this is the case.
I did not read the article but BlackRock only owns significant shares of most corps. They don't own everything but they do get a massive say in the corporate world and have led the way in promoting stakeholder capitalism, geenwashing, etc.
Part of the consciousness around BlackRock is that they control the world and it is used to promote conspiracy theories full of half truths. Certain factions weaponize this to manipulate finance. Several state treasuries, for example, have divested from BlackRock to force finance to treat fossil fuels better and to challenge Fink's vision with something more asthetically fascist, and more explicitly in favor of US nationalism and imperialism (especially in regards to oil investment which is reliant on stable, high oil prices to maintain US energy dominance, with more investment and support, exxon could have basically bought euro energy out). So it is not so simple that they control everything.
The truth is Fink and BlackRock are more like the traffic cops of the global economy or the glue that holds finance together as it is. Very powerful and influencial. Fink has less money than Musk but is arguably more influencial. But they are more like a major part of capitalisms infrastructure than they are its rulers, if that makes sense. Nobody likes having the whistle blown on you, being told to halt or that you won't get investment you need. No one likes being told your business is untenable because of climate change. Imo this is more why Fink/BlackRock take heat than anything else, far more than concern over power that is more visible.
Fink is, for better or worse, a "true believer" imo, a white savior that keeps the death cult going despite taking heat from many factions. He is basically trying to bring about a communist utopia through finance capitalism lol, or so he tries to portray himself. He really thinks finance will solve all social problems through good corporate governance and so on.
He also has been instrumental in assisting the US government in managing financial disasters, so he is as much of an insider as it gets. There probably is collusion, corruption, and backroom deals, but the fixation on that kind of thing turns it all into a spectecle and turning it into a spectecle makes manipulating the infrastructure easier if you ask me.
I also see BlackRock as a kind of symbol of American/metropolitan core complicity. Everyone that is using their services to ensure their retirement and grow their wealth is complicit in BlackRock's imperial structure and gives some fuel to every social problem it causes.
The occupation of Palestine is a problem on many levels. I'm not sure China has the ability to address all of them. My guess is they think if they can at least bring about an end to the violence that Southwest Asia will be better off and will steadily gravitate away from the west.
Im not sure it can work without addressing the nature of the occupation, which would potentially be an existential threat to all of the explicit settler colonial states, and even some post colonial states. Not to mention the political and military ties that make it such a dangerous issue.
It's a can of worms that China likley feels compelled to address, but is not prepared for the consequences of letting all the worms loose. With new developments in the global human system we may see these things become either easier or harder to address. Let's hope it gets easier. I know critics of the occupation seem more numerous than a decade ago so maybe that is a good sign. Hopefully when change does come, it is change for the better. I doubt a two state solution, or peace talks, will do any good by themselves but the fact that a leading nation wants to address the issue is certainly a better direction.
When I was young I had an opportunity to (in summary) go to DC and learn from Pentagon officials. They talked about their involvement in Hollywood and even mentioned movies they withdrew their support from (I remember Jarhead was on thr list, so if you want to see a war movie the Pentagon hates, Jarhead makes the cut).
Like you, I also assume it doesn't stop with this. But they have to give an illusion that granddad DoD is just saluting that ole flag with the zeal and sincerity of a patriot, and not curating war culture or valorizing paternalism and sacrifice for imperial gains.
What the hell is a beehaw anyway? Sounds like a shitty corporate name for an app nobody needs.
Welcome. Glad to see things sort themselves out.
I feel like reddit moved in next door.
Go back to reddit
Oof...
I gotta say I'm glad this community exists and people can be critical of these takes because my day to day life is absolutely saturated with this kind of stuff.
At first I thought it was cool but now its clear lemmy will just be turned into reddit.
I only care about lemmygrad.ml which as far as I know is where the comrades are. Yall are great. I came here to spew word vomit in consentrated bursts to get 3 up votes at a time. I am blissfully ignorant of technology issues or whatever the hell people are on about with reddit nowadays. I would like to avoid the normcore libs and porn distributors that are flooding the site. I use reddit for cyber bullying those types but here is like a sort of home base.
How do I keep these worlds from colliding?
The problem was that people were taking the variation that was not specifically for humans.
Not sure how any of this written diarrhea helps frame Zelensky any better.
There have been many debates and discussions on this and in this case searching 'Russia' and reading through those discussions may help. Though do not read this as discouragement from asking questions. It is, understandably, a hot topic worthy of elaboration and there are plenty of people here that will be interested in answering.
Here is my take:
Russia as a nation has a class character that is more easily compared to that of developing countries than that of a core country.
The BRICS countries, especially recently, have gained steam due to the reelection of Lula in Brazil. But also because the war, and subsequent sanctions, many countries are compelled to build an alternative to the global finacial order, aka white supremacist or "western" imperialism, giving the BRICS more vigor and more direction. Russia's role in this project is crucial. Russia may be viewed as the aggressor if you begin the story 1.5-2 years ago and ignore Donbas, but if you go back further it is not difficult to make the case this conflict began in 2014 during the coup.
The war is obviously disturbing, a major threat to global stability. It has been incredibly violent and destructive in many different ways. The war increases risk of nuclear attack, creates the surge of weapons into the region which is ending up with reactionaries committing atrocities in the Donbas region, to organized criminals and even to places much further away. Sanctions and other factors surrounding the war have caused rising energy prices and increased inflation that has hurt many countries in the global south. This is affecting people subsisting on the countryside already suffering from drought and people toiling in the metro. There is too much pressure on the masses. The war must end.
The problem is that Russia is not the only party involved and NATO will need to make concrete efforts to prove they will be able to build peace as much as Russia and Ukraine. Unfortunately, that has not played out and remains unlikely. So here we are.
I would like to add that the word "support" is commonly used in this discussion but it is not an especially useful word and by my observation is a huge source of confusion to the critics of my position and to our communities position. I do not send money to Russia. I do not send weapons or material aid. I am not a Russian citizen and thus have not voted for Putin and do not serve in the military or government. Nor have I contributed to government policy, war policy, or on the ground support as an independent contractor. Nor do I "root" for Russia as if it is a sports team or a dance contestant. Frankly, I don't feel obligated to do so either. I have my own problems to attend to.
However, what I am in favor of is the greater project that Russia is part of which is creating a needed alternative for much of the world. I think the global masses will benifit from this process of history but will suffer if it is stopped. The threat of the this development to the imperial core is the primary reason Russia is demonized for its invasion. If they were concerned about the humanitarian crisis they would act differently and pull their weight in ending it, but they hardly even admit their role.
I was a captive audience to someone talking about how some countries only had access to China's vaccine. They said the vaccine was terrible and people took it and still got COVID.
But like.... I took American vaccines and still got COVID...
...and over a million people in the US died of COVID, some of whom where vaccinated with US subsidized, corporate vaccines.
It was brought up because others were talking about global inequality during the pandemic. So having to take the subpar sinovac was apparently all part of global inequalities.
I hate talking about COVID and I feel like it's so distracting and people try to make everything about COVID because it's so easy to do. Maybe that is just a hot take but this argument that sinovac sucks because people still contracted COVID is at best a really lazy way to try to say US vaccines are better.
Also the same person implied masking prevents people from contracting the virus... instead of preventing you from spreading it to others like was repeated ad nasium by medical representatives for 2 years straight.
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is the ultimate real-time soviet-themed city builder tycoon game. Construct your own republic and transform a poor country into a rich industrial superpower!
Probably one of the most complex builder games out there
The output of grades that have traditionally made up the Brent benchmark has fallen over time, and the inclusion of WTI Midland crude to the benchmark will change the oil market forever
![The Brent Oil Benchmark Is About To Change Forever | OilPrice.com](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/1cd061c1-c0da-4ee7-9fa6-f97663a81436.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Basically US oil and gas is becoming more associated with Europe
The nationalisation of Exxon Mobil’s assets in Chad comes after the oil giants divested from them in December 2022.
![Chad says it has nationalised all assets owned by Exxon Mobil](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/70a92bc0-7bcf-4ce9-bc77-b3755fdca1b4.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
ExxonMobil is holding discussions with the Colombian government to potentially recover some of its investments in projects as Colombia prepares to ban fracking in the coming months
![Exxon Looks To Recoup Investment As Colombia Prepares To Ban Fracking | OilPrice.com](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/gA72njpcGC.jpg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Sorry Exxon!
Over the last several years I have, in song with others, pushed for priorities to be directed toward a “socialism with American characteristics.” The discourse that the quest has generated has often been a disaster. The obvious worst of this being the “patsoc” thinking that has thankfully quieted for the most part. In order to better advance this cause of creating a revolutionary theory, and to combat my personal angst which arises in the face of Maoists trying to force me to read about the Philippines instead of something that could be even more relevant for North America, I believe it would be generative to show an example of how Marxist theory has been used by Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard.
Not entirely unlike how Mao and the communists of China facilitated a “sinophication” of Marxism, some scholars and activists are arguably indigenizing Marxism, or making it “transformed in conversation with critical thought and practices of Indigenous peoples” to make it compatible for North American realities (p. 9).
In his book, Red Skin, White Masks, Coulthard explores the subjectivity that is enforced on Indigenous people by colonialism and the complications that arise. Coulthard may not be an explicit Marxist, he probably does not go around claiming to be ML, his aim is more to mold Marxism into a weapon for Indigenous people and not the other way around. Personally, I find this to be a worthy cause that more should be aware of.
I can’t do justice to a full summary at this time, but to partially summarize the book I will focus primarily on the context shift toward colonialism that Coulthard uses alongside his views on primitive accumulation. Most of this will be from just the introduction. I’ve chosen this because I believe this text provides a bridge between Indigenous thinkers and Marxist thinkers and can be a kind of gateway for a complex topic. Hopefully, this can expose comrades here to Indigenous thinking that can help us understand what is to be done.
Subheading: Into the Weeds
This context shift is a move toward a context of colonial instead of just capital relations by way of primitive accumulation. He defines colonialism as structured dispossession and utilizes chapters 26-32 of Capital vol I to stand on this.
He writes (p.7): In Capital these formative acts of violent dispossession set the stage for the emergence of capitalist accumulation and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production by tearing Indigenous societies, peasants and other small-scale, self-sufficient agricultural producers from the source of their livelihood—the land.
Many are already familiar with Primitive Accumulation, but I will attempt to flesh it out regardless. Primitive accumulation often seen as a temporary state of brutality were it forcefully opens up “what were once collectively held territories and resources to privatization” which inevitably leads to proletarianization. It is this violent transformation of non-capitalist relations into capitalist, market relations that constitutes primitive accumulation. Before continuing on to how Coulthard would like to recontextualize primitive accumulation he briefly touches on the fact that Indigenous thinking and Marxist thinking are oftentimes at odds. Part of his goal is to rescue both Indigenous people from the oftentimes racist, chauvinist, reactionary attitudes that Marxists often deploy and rescue Marxism from a “premature rejection” by Indigenous thinkers (p. 8). By doing so (he holds that feminist, queer, anarchist, and post-colonial thinking will be helpful) he believes more light can be shed on colonial domination and resistance.
Transforming Primitive Accumulation
In order to transform Marx’s primitive accumulation, he addresses three problematic features, and several important insights about these features. Some of these criticisms you may already be familiar with.
The first feature is “Marx’s rigidly temporal framing of the phenomenon” (p9). The idea here is that PA (primitive accumulation) is confined to a specific phase in time. For example, in England PA has passed and completed but in the colonies PA is present. Along with many other Marxian thinkers (like Harvey et al), a persistent role of PA is what we should see, and certainly with neoliberal hegemony. “[U]nconcealed, violent dispossession continues to play in the reproduction of colonial and capitalist social relations in both the domestic and global contexts” (p9).
The second feature is normative developmentalism. This is basically what was especially present in early Marx, a modernist view of history. This leads some of Marx’s work to portray PA as a historical inevitability that is apart of a historical metanarrative. Coulthard seeks to rescue Marx from this fallacy by shifting emphasis from capital relations to colonial relations.
Marx sees PA as a process of dispossession that leads to proletarianization. His concern was with understanding capital as a social relation dependent on the separation of workers from the means of production. Thus Marx was not nearly as preoccupied with dispossession as he was with arriving at proletarianization as a focus (p11).
He writes (p11): By repositioning the colonial frame as our overarching lens of analysis it becomes far more difficult to justify in antiquated developmental terms (from either the right or left) the assimilation of non-capitalist, non-Western, Indigenous modes of life based on the racist assumption that this assimilation will somehow magically redeem itself by bringing the fruits of capitalist modernity into the supposedly ‘backward’ world of the colonized.
This is something late Marx was more comfortable with. However, his point is well taken. I personally have seen “patsocs” of the last few years attempt to say what happened to Indigenous people was merely them being added to the work force. Proletarianization, but ignoring the colonial relations in order to assert this was a natural and inevitable event, even a desirable one. Also, I find that within the academy, Marx is often taught as a snapshot of his early self, so this criticism is good for those who have been confined to early Marx (Tangentially I think the academy misrepresents Marx’s totality regularly so its good to have criticisms that are not based in liberal chauvinisms.) It is evident that “egalitarian” voices will use modernist fallacies to reproduce dispossession. For example, advocates who seek a return of the commons fail to understand that there are no “commons” in Canada or the US. There is only the land of the First Peoples.
He writes (pg12) By ignoring or downplaying the injustice of colonial dispossession, critical theory and left political strategy not only risks becoming complicit in the very structures and processes of domination that it out to oppose, but it also risks overlooking what could probe to be invaluable glimpses into the ethical practices and preconditions required for the construction of a more just and sustainable world order.
Further insight into this critique regards the role of Indigenous labor. As industrial capitalism matured in North America, Indigenous labor was rendered increasingly (though not entirely) superfluous. This helps us furthure understand why the context of colonial relations and the emphasis on dispossession can illuminate more than the normative developmentalist views that prioritize proletarianization can.
Forgive my metaphor, but in many ways the civilization policies that were levied against Indigenous peoples were the John the Baptist that preceded the Christ of industrialism. This is seen in how slavery was spread through Henry Knox's civilization policy, something I'd be happy to post about separately another time. As Canada’s commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote in 1890, “The work of sub-dividing reserves has begun in earnest. The policy of destroying the tribal or communist system is assailed in every possible way and every effort has been made to implant a spirit of individual responsibility instead.”
(Note the red scare language. This is something that is present throughout the history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism.)
However, you could point to proletarianization as a distraction, usually it is said dispossession was meant to facilitate proletarianization, but for Indigenous people dispossession was meant to acquire land and resources for capital. Dispossession is the “dominant background structure” and “continues to inform the dominant modes of Indigenous resistance (p13).”
He writes further: (p13) The theory and practice of Indigenous anticolonialism, including Indigenous anticapitalism, is best understood as a struggle primarily inspired by and oriented around the question of land—a struggle not only for land in the material sense, but also deeply informed by what the land as a system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondomination and nonexploitative terms—and less around our emergent status as ‘rightless proletarians.”
Grounded normativity cannot be stressed enough as a key for understanding pan-Indigenous philosophies and how they can interact with Marxism. For Indigenous philosophers, ethics cannot be simply separated from cosmology, or from anything, certainly not from land. The universe itself has a moral character that is revealed by co-relationality. I would recommend works by Vine Deloria Jr and Richard Atleo to have a better feel for how this works although Coulthard himself gives good insights himself later in the book.
For now, grounded normativity can by defined as “the modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time” (p13). I will focus on this more in later posts if I can.
Another insight into normative developmentalism that is briefly mentioned, is that it doesn’t always see the land itself as exploitable, people are. There is a tendency to deploy poor understandings of the environment and a presumption that Marxism is designed to ignore ecocriticism. I did not go into detail about grounded normativity, but we can already see that if we see Land as a system of relations then this anti-environmental tendency is problematic for Indigenous thinking in unique ways even when it is routinely levied by ecological thinkers.
A final insight into normative developmentalism is economic reductionism. I’ll let quotes take this one as other authors tackle this regularly and I’d rather his voice shine for this article.
He writes: (pg 14-15) …the colonial relation should not be understood as a primary locus or base from which these other forms of oppression flow, but rather as the inherited background field within which market, racist, patriarchal, and state relations converge to facilitate a certain power effect—in our case, the reproduction of hierarchical social relations that facilitate the dispossession of our lands and self-determining capacities. Like capital, colonialism, as a structure of domination predicated on dispossession, is not ‘a thing,’ but rather the sum effect of the diversity of inter locking oppressive social relations that constitute it.” Basically, shifting toward colonial relations doesn’t “displace” class struggle, but “situates these questions more firmly alongside and in relation to the other sites and relations of power that inform our settler-colonial present.”
OK so now on to the 3rd and final problematic feature. Which is more of a question on governmentality. This one is interesting because I think his peers have pushed against this. Basically, he believes that because the liberal Canadian state is developing less overtly brutal methods of subjugation it differs from the explicit and incredible violence that Marx asserts goes hand in hand with primitive accumulation—as Marx says, “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, in blood and dirt.”
He asks readers: (p15) What are we to make of contexts where state violence no longer constitutes the regulative norm governing the process of colonial dispossession, as appears to be the case in ostensibly tolerant, multinational, liberal settler polities such as Canada? Stated in Marx’s own terms, if neither ‘blood and fire’ nor the ‘silent compulsion’ of capitalist economics can adequately account for the reproduction of colonial hierarchies in liberal democratic contexts, what can?
I take this as more of a question of understanding what the state is up to than a statement that violence has lost its place in primitive accumulation. Much of the book is about "recognition" and how relying on state recognition is bunk, so in that light, it makes sense to me to ask these questions in hopes of understanding the role that pursuing state recognition plays in primitive accumulation. But clearly violence is still the status quo for Indigenous people, thus I find this to be his weakest but most intriguing point.
Conclusion
So, I have laid out Coulthard’s initial points on primitive accumulation. In the future I hope to make a post on more parts of this book, and maybe others as well. I especially intend to flesh out grounded normativity and recognition, which the book is mostly about in the first place as I think these can be helpful concepts for comrades.
![the background blur](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/f267ff62-fd6b-48f4-bf7a-37745cb79b7d.jpeg?thumbnail=256&format=webp)
![](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/f267ff62-fd6b-48f4-bf7a-37745cb79b7d.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
Furthermore we are seeing major euro chemical corps taking preservation measures that may be a signal for a death spiral for the competitiveness of European capital. We also see leaders like Macron pissed that the US is in such a good spot relatively speaking. All of this is only getting harder to watch. The US truly is cannabalizing the west.
So it seems to me that across many spaces there is a tendency to water down queer and gender issues into the cynical commercialism that finance capitalists have pushed for. Among communists I see this with what people in Donbas have said, what a person from the DPRK has said to a Chinese interviewer, and it is also found in the west. Also in sections of the Indigenous community oftentimes elders will claim that (ironically) white people made up Two-Spirit people, all despite evidence to the contrary.
We also see characters like Putin rallying around this idea that the west is obsessed with "gender freedoms" despite the very obvious coordinated crackdowns against these supposed "freedoms" in the west.
When I hear people make these claims I am baffled because I am certain that colonialism has damaged and (attempted to) erase Indigenous gender expressions around the world. To say that queer issues can be boiled down to liberalism is clearly false and likley has its root in colonialism. Yet communists and other forces that are otherwise opposed to the financial imperialist system are not unified on this issue.
It does seem clear that the west tries to weaponize human rights to justify war and to justify investments. It also demonizes and makes sure to show when its enemies show these sentiments. But this reactionary strain of communism has failed to explain how the bourgeoisie apparently invented trans people without simply criticising their least favorite liberal feminist or gender theorist (perhaps Judith Butler). But gender is dynamic and if it has been molded by capital in this way then it should be demonstrable beyond criticisms of a single theorist or a single field.
I myself am absolutely no expert on gender or queer theory. Im straight and grew up in a reactionary home. Im hoping people here can give insight on how to address these issues that exist among communists. I think we can tallow the west to use human rights to further colonize the world and gender issues accross the world probably manifest differently and that should be understood and respectes. Simultaneously, we cant allow this erroneous view that the western bourgeoisie is not only the protector of gender rights, but its progenitor.
Anyways, I am hoping for some discussion on this.
![CountryBreakfast](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/749c66ef-39e8-45ba-b483-2a3f8b18704c.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=64)
Anti-colonial Marxism is as good as a country breakfast.