#201
Post rating: +
somebody get the nanny a rhizzone account:

https://twitter.com/frandrescher/status/709928715975667712
https://twitter.com/frandrescher/status/709931881970569216
#202
Post rating: +++++
tfw fran drescher has a more marxist political perspective than some rhizzone posters
#203
Post rating: ~
Notwithstanding his support for foreign wars, which is deplorable and yet probably a prerequisite for a serious contender for the American presidency, I did find this this.
"The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution."
As well as this
"In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin."
Which kind of was what I was trying to say.
#204
Post rating: ~

At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have “developed” into an exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving effect to the omnipotence of wealth in democratic republics of all descriptions. Since, for instance, in the very first months of the Russian democratic republic, one might say during the honeymoon of the “socialist” S.R.s and Mensheviks joined in wedlock to the bourgeoisie, in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky obstructed every measure intended for curbing the capitalists and their marauding practices, their plundering of the state by means of war contracts; and since later on Mr. Palchinsky, upon resigning from the Cabinet (and being, of course, replaced by another quite similar Palchinsky), was “rewarded” by the capitalists with a lucrative job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per annum — what would you call that? Direct or indirect bribery? An alliance of the government and the syndicates, or “merely” friendly relations? What role do the Chernovs, Tseretelis, Avksentyevs and Skobelevs play? Are they the “direct” or only the indirect allies of the millionaire treasury-looters?



stop talking about voting in the capitalist shitshow like it matters or some crap, who even cares, we all know it just legitimises imperialist capitalist scum and itll be 4 more years of exploitation of the proletariat and destruction of the third world.

#205
UNUSUALY COOL
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red Canadian it's time for you to lurk for a while and read some Lenin.
#206
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so you're saying that in the past some communists have allied with bourgeoisie, that doesn't really make your case
#207
UNUSUALY COOL
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I'm probably going to gas this thread for sucking, but the OP remains cool
#208
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cars posted:

red Canadian it's time for you to lurk for a while and read some Lenin.


read the programme of the sixth congress of the comintern, too

#209
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read all the words then u can git gud at marxism
#210
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I dunno, I guess I thought quotes from the communist manifesto would carry more weight amongst Marxists.
#211
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Guys, can't you see this is the problem that communism has developed writ large? I'm completely willin to learn and read more, but you guys are just dismissing me wholesale. I will read the programme of the sixth congress, do you have specific works of Lenin I should focus on?
Saying that unless you read every single work in the history of Marxism, you shouldn't post here is kind of ridiculous. I'm working towards that goal, but you'll never get a ton of converts by being so dismissive, and by shutting down all discussion by people that aren't as enlightened as you.
Or would you prefer being a tiny insular community that has no effect on the world at large?
#212
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

Red_Canadian posted:

Or would you prefer being a tiny insular community that has no effect on the world at large?

Yes.

#213
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

Red_Canadian posted:

Saying that unless you read every single work in the history of Marxism, you shouldn't post here is kind of ridiculous.

You should just ignore the flame wars. Nobody really expects that (except the elite posters). You posted a quote that says of Communists "they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way," for you, is supporting Sanders the "revolutionary" action of some segment of the bourgeoisie?

#214
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

orchestra_hit posted:

cars posted:

red Canadian it's time for you to lurk for a while and read some Lenin.

read the programme of the sixth congress of the comintern, too

Its here fyi http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/6th-congress/index.htm

#215
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Thank you swamp man, I was just reading that link already. No, I merely included that quote because it goes even further than the first, which is the more directly relevant one. I should have included the footnote,
"(1) The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. "
But I will continue my reading before posting more in this thread.
#216
Post rating: +
RedCanadian here is good, short piece by Lenin that opposes the idea of constantly bandwagoning on every left liberal political platform. Its appropriately titled Where To Begin

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/may/04.htm
#217
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~
And fuck the moderation, I hope the moderators swallow kebab skewers all and fucking die, they can twist in hell for their blatant favorism.
#218
Post rating: ~
Thanks walkinginonit, I've just read that. Aside from advocating the creation of an all Russian newspaper, and creating a more stable body of the revolution, which I have not disagreed with in any way, it also says,

the immediate task of our Party is not to summon all available forces for the attack right now, but to call for the formation of a revolutionary organisation capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice and not in name alone, that is, an organisation ready at any time to support every protest and every outbreak and use it to build up and consolidate the fighting forces suitable for the decisive struggle


Never have I once advocated a complete alliance with the bernie movement, merely that we support it while maintaining the importance of an eventual seizure of capital and it's administration by the workers. That piece also talks about the material conditions, supporting a students movement that's goals started as academic and then developed revolutionary conditions. What's more, the conditions he mentioned in Russian, namely a significant portion of the workers developing a revolutionary air, is certainly not present in the American working class, but may be on the way of developing one, through piece-meal struggle. I mean, isn't him saying this

Today we are faced with the relatively easy task of supporting student demonstrations in the streets of big cities; tomorrow we may, perhaps, have the more difficult task of supporting, for example, the unemployed movement in some particular area, and the day after to be at our posts in order to play a revolutionary part in a peasant uprising.


Backing up what I'm saying? It's not about only supporting those movements which have perfectly thought out revolutionary socialist demands, but any movement in which a large mass of the people are involved against the powerful.

#219
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Sorry Red if i soundded desmissive, just joking aboit!

In ref to that 2nd quote do u not think think that is far more applicable to say supporting strikers, protestors and rioters etc which arnt marxist but are still good, rather than voting for bernie?
#220
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Haha no tears I know your post was made in jest. I don't think it's a question of supporting one over another, since Lenin mentions supporting a students movement, which is pretty applicable to Sanders support from the youth.
I certainly understand the trouble with supporting something that could siphon off anger in non-productive ways, but I believe that's makes our role as communists as even more important, namely to push the movement even further left, to prevent the safety valve effect.
History tells us most revolutionary developments come after the ruling class makes a concession, however small, to the demands of the oppressed. By securing that concession, the oppressed are more aware of their power.
#221
[account deactivated]
#222
Post rating: ~

tpaine posted:

2000: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2001: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2002: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2003: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2004: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2005: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2006: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2007: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2008: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2009: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2010: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2011: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2012: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2014: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2015: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?
2016: should we maintain our principles and agitate for a communist revolution or lend our support to a more viable yet unsatisfactory leftist candidate?



Yes

#223
Online
Post rating: +
#224
http://bit.ly/1Jzhh7M
Post rating: +

ilmdge posted:



#225
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
i read a thing that criticizing hillary for having an unfaithful husband is unfair because it's beyond her control. i was confused so i looked outside and checked. nope, not yemen, still america, where divorce is 100% legal
#226
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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i get that him cheating wasnt her fault but how she handled it, staying with a man who publicly got caught shooting his cum on a fat girl because a divorce would be suboptimal for her career, is actually material to the kind of person she is
#227
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
yeah i know that my husband has been getting blown by every waffle waitress south of the mason-dixon line since the bicentennial, but i really really want to be president
#228
Online
Post rating: ~
Why am I not surprised that Goatstein, a known bigot, never considered that maybe Bill and Hillary are polyamorous?
#229
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
hillary and bill are too sane + successful to be polyamorous
#230
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
in poly news did you see that elizier yudkowsky, the fatlord brony dropout behind the Rationalist movement, married his longtime slave, Brienne? tru love can blossom even on the battlefield of AI research
#231
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
#232
hi
Post rating: ~
what
#233
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +++++
if you look at the US system of government and say "i want to run that system", and you've progressed far enough along in your career that it has become credible that you might do that, questions of character are sort of out the window. politicians are like every aspect of the little lord middle manager given the veneer of civic duty, just like cops and soldiers. some of them promise to be nicer to you by renegotiating the terms of the bargain, and those people tend to be somewhat more forgiving the more distant they are from real power.

also i mean, sanders' economic plan is entirely dependent on a certain strain of hyperactive postkeynesianism being correct. he wants to sharply reduce the rate of profit while increasing aggregate demand through new debt and he wants to dramatically expand the already enormous levels of new money being printed. and he wants to limit the possibilities of fictitious capital so that the money is redirected into the real economy, primarily infrastructure and manufacturing. note that if he is serious about his finance plans that he is evaporating the profits of most banks and hedge funds deliberately. but investment decisions would still be set by private investors, so why would they put their money into american investments. that's why no major left party in europe says "let's make smaller banks", they say we need to democratize finance. nationalization isn't even enough in itself, too, lots of european countries have strong public ownership in financial institutions and such, if they are targeting profits in a systematic way instead of social aims then there isn't a profound difference.
#234
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
one thing about reformism is that much of the debate around lenin and such wasn't about stated aims. the people they were focused on often said oh yeah bernstein is dumb, we're real socialists, we want a revolution to destroy capitalism. and when they made "democratic" demands, they didn't mean tiny piecemeal things, they meant things like radical land reform or nationalizations, pushing capitalism to its absolute limits. the argument was more that their style of work had made accommodation necessary and capitulation inevitable. because if you say you'll work within parliament to make socialist reforms then you freeze into a position of legality which inevitably means you have to pose as a better manager of capitalism than the others. once you've done that, your style of work will make you appeal to reforms that are sensible within the existing context instead of transforming the context, and you depend on coalition building around existing interests instead of smashing the established interests.

none of sanders policies are out of step with the major liberal tendency within the democratic party, virtually all contested primaries have had people promising universal health care. the only exception is his finance plan, which seems like the least likely of his policies to be fully enacted in a successful way. the question isn't whether sanders is the lesser evil, i think that's true. it's whether a party which has a style of work that isn't willing to confront police, prisons, the army and bourgeois politicians in a direct and possibly dangerous way is going to be able to lead a socialist revolution. i think it's cynical to deny that this possibility exists such that one has to give up on it as an organizing principle. there are lots of people who oppose sanders for cynical reasons, but i think it's disingenuous to support at an organizational level a party that isn't committed to socialism.
#235
Online
Post rating: +

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

in poly news did you see that elizier yudkowsky, the fatlord brony dropout behind the Rationalist movement, married his longtime slave, Brienne? tru love can blossom even on the battlefield of AI research

haha why do you know who any of these what any of this whatever

#236
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
a thing to add to all that though is that marxism isn't primarily a theory of how to convince liberals to agree with you. a lot of the strategy i've seen around sanders has a 'freak the squares' mentality to it, like saying people should go to democratic party meetings and make communist demands. but the main thing isn't like... spending my time arguing with people who say a good idea is to 'occupy the democrats', or just complaining about other groups, it's to find ways of contributing to more relevant work. a smart guy who posts here made the point the other day that most of the people he works with on stuff like migrant justice can't vote anyway. like if a quarter of adult black males in florida can't even vote, there are probably better uses for your money at a local level than sending it to sanders. i don't mean chipping in or whatever, if you send a $50 donation to sanders it's more symbolic than anything in a campaign where he's raised like $100 million. i don't think it's a categorical thing, there are smart people working for him, the point is to do what you can within your own context.
#237
Post rating: ~
Red canadian doesnt need lenin he needs george jackson
#238
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Or a stint in a reeducation camp
#239
Post rating: +
We all do. It doesn't hurt to practice the fundamentals.
#240
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~

ilmdge posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

in poly news did you see that elizier yudkowsky, the fatlord brony dropout behind the Rationalist movement, married his longtime slave, Brienne? tru love can blossom even on the battlefield of AI research

haha why do you know who any of these what any of this whatever



I read slate star codex pretty regularly to go "hmm thats an interesting thing about the psychiatric field" 90% of the time and "lol that someone over 12 years old could have this opinion" 10% of the time