Party leadership has formed a paternalistic relationship to new rank-and-file members that they're unable to change or develop positively, leading to a macabre parody of Marxist politics in action.

The men abusing women have names and badge numbers

AMERIKKKA STAYS SAME OVERNIGHT

Clown Fucka Boyz : Applications are now closed for the season.

Stop hiding behind really good and excellent music threads and Some badas but sarcastic flamewars

Marxism is centered on the idea that classes can be abolished through the liberation of the proletariat.

Freedom means all different things to different people. One mans freedom is another mans oppresser. Every one wants to have freedom but our economy does not work without planning. It turns unequal. Here are three resaons that people can be free and have plans!

I like Mad Men for personal reasons. Sure, they have good writers and an attractive cast, but I really feel like integral parts of my upbringing are reflected in the story lines. There’s something so familiar about the touches of despair hinted at by the characters. At the end of the day you’re staying up late and putting in your heart and soul for laxatives or car models. It’s worth noting how much of the first world’s best creative talent is funneled into the business. Ralph Waldo Emmersons and Picassos are regularly consumed by the long hours, ridiculous expense accounts, and substance abuse.

while following this book, or the conversation so far, a question may be beginning to appear in your darling heads - "well, blinkandwheeze, this is all very well and good. but how, if at all, does this pertain to the immortal science and shining path of marxism-leninism-mao tse tung thought?"

So the question is, where does the United States go from here? The transnational capital class (TCC) has not just taken flight, it has turned the American population into a festering sore it can suck on whenever it needs to. OWS was great, but unfocused. It turned cannons on the TCC, rightfully so in some cases, but gave the government a pass. Many who were involved or supported it will no doubt vote for Obama again in the coming election. The major problem I can see is that the citizenry believes that the government is still accountable to the people, that it remains an impartial mediator between capital and labor.

the truth of all the degenerate failed modern ideologies are to be found in islam. dumpster diving: sunnah?

Many first world communist parties have attached themselves to the "1% vs 99%" analysis of capitalist society. However, they have done so uncritically. A 99% v 1% analysis is fundamentally too vague to be useful as an analytical tool when looking at how policy is formulated and carried out in any political system. This is reflected by occupy's focus on campaign financing and relatively inconsequential legal fictions like corporate personhood.

Notions of broad American populism are popular on the white “left”, but nearly all the gains from broad American populism go to a privileged strata of white people. When radicals divorce the 99% rhetoric from the history of American populism, they are ignoring how that broad rhetoric has been used to exclude the needs of the disenfranchised. Without a POC-centered strategy, nothing is stopping the ruling class from using the same tools to reduce class tensions.

For advocates of social justice the problem of postmodernity is generally seen in terms of political impotence, specifically a subjective, individual impotence. The conditions of postmodernity are allegedly such that the pre-emptive co-option of social action into the reproduction of capital is assured. Capital, despite creating first and foremost its own gravediggers, has somehow 1. achieved hegemonic dominance, 2. circumvented the creation of alternative productive modes, and 3. completely subjugated the site of resistance, the working class, into its reproductive program.

In "Is The Red Flag Flying" (1979), Al Szymanski examined empirical research on the Soviet Union and came to the conclusion that the USSR was socialist, but that technical and professional intelligentsia (those "who develop and disseminate knowledge and skills and who provide professional services") had disproportionate influence over policy. However, "the managerial stratum appears to be significantly closer to the manual working class than is the scientific-technical intelligentsia". "Socialism Betrayed" by Keeran and Kennan noticed that this intelligentsia was dominated by right-opportunists who wanted to introduce capitalist "reforms".

For the most part, the directors (“interventors”) of the new state industries were competent, however, some were not, and it was difficult to determine the difference with the few existing channels of communication between industry and state. In August of that month, Fernando Flores, the young intellectual who had been named General Manager of the CORFO, the state institution that regulated the recently nationalized factories, flew to England to meet with a very peculiar man. Bearded and eccentric, lacking any formal degree in cybernetics or computer sciences, Stafford Beer was a visionary in the mold of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, with one key difference – he was a socialist, even a techno-communist. He spoke no Spanish. However, he communicated to Flores – in broken Latin – that he very much desired to offer his expertise to the Chilean project.

the working class is under attack worldwide and will not gather around one flag because the one flag concept is what is attacking them. leftist protesters in the united states have the wherewithal to wave flags. they don't mind. they understand the forces at work against them are flagless, and we count on footage of pigs trampling the flag while they beat your ass to stir that kernal of patriotism still embedded deep in every american thanks to years of pledging the damn thing in grade school. it's a smart move and very practical at this juncture. globalization depends on a fake front of dissolution of nation states to get by.

A strong point made by Peter Hallward is simply that "waiting" has never made a revolution happen. If you consider capitalism a transformation of slavery, and existing capitalist society to be unjust, then it doesn't matter if the legal paperwork has been done. John Brown didn't leaflet for abolitionism, he tried to arm the people and destroy the institution he despised. "Waiting" for a parliamentary majority, or a well established consensus around some economic alternative, seems like it concedes all the ground to the opposition.

This has been brought up before and undoubtedly a lot of you are familiar with the now infamous Wikipedia article about the Cultural Revolution that delves into a hilariously sickening level of anti-communist blood libel. However, what I find deeply interesting are the sources quoted in the article and academic articles written that treat such absolutely ludicrous accusations as fact without batting an eye.

I've basically been working through some books on poststructuralist marxism and friends. Mostly stuff about Laclau and Mouffe, but some stuff about Zizek as well. Mostly I've been thinking about the three-part set "liberalism -Chantal Mouffe-, marxism -Slavoj Zizek- and anarchism -Richard Day-", and trade-offs that each one makes. So basically a convergence between Lacanian psychoanalysis (which all three lean on to different degrees) and certain situated traditions within (pots)modern society.

If history is the alchemy of theory, then communists turned gold into lead in Palestine. When I first arrived in 2009, I was one of those hand-wringing well-meaning comrades who shed tears over the absence of a progressive political left in Palestine. No doubt, there exists in Palestine some of the strongest and bravest leftists in the region, but their work is for naught and their books (printed with French, German, and Canadian money) get used to warm hovels in Askar refugee camp.