🚩Yesterday, thousands took to the streets against fascism and state authoritarianism in Euskal Herria.

Strong communist organisation alone stands to face the oligarchy’s authoritarian offensive.

Let us press forward towards this end.

https://x.com/GKSozialista/status/2018044124130107606

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10480943

Michael John Parenti (born 30 September 1933 - 24 January 2026 in Manhattan, New York City) was a political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who wrote on scholarly and popular subjects. He taught at US and international universities and was a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences.

Parenti's writings covered a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life.

Here is a list of books written by Professor Parenti,

• The Anti-Communist Impulse (1969)
• Trends and Tragedies in American Foreign Policy (1971)
• Democracy for the Few (1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2011)
• Ethnic and Political Attitudes: A Depth Study of Italian Americans (1975)
• Power and the Powerless (1978)
• Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (1986, 1993)
• The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race (1989)
• Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (1992)
• Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (1994)
• Against Empire (1995)
• Dirty Truths (1996)
• Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
• America Besieged (1998)
• History as Mystery (1999)
• To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia (2001)
• The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond (2002)
• The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)
• Superpatriotism (2004)
• The Culture Struggle (2006)
• Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (2007)
• God and His Demons (2010)
• The Face of Imperialism (2011)
• Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life (2013)
• Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies (2015)

Video recordings,

• 1986: Monopoly Culture and Academic Freedom at the University of Vermont, 9 April 1986
• 1986: US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR at the University of Colorado Boulder, 15 April 1986
• 1986: [Michael Parenti at Loyola University](https://youtu.be/VKg1Jj3AjfM] at Loyola University New Orleans, 23 April 1986
• 1986: Anti-Sovietism in the Media at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 20 November 1986
• 1987: The Political Uses of Religion in Denver, Colorado, 18 April 1987
• 1988: Superpatriotism and the Importance of Being Number One in Boulder, Colorado, 1 August 1988
• 1989: The Sword and the Dollar in Thunder Bay, Ontario, 27 October 1989
• 1990: Human Nature and Politics in Los Angeles, California, May 1990
• 1991: Corporatism and the U.S. Political Scene, 1991
• 1993: Conspiracy and State Power at the University of Vermont, 21 April 1993
• 1993: Inventing Reality, 17 October 1993
• 1997: The Hidden Ideology of the News Media at the University of Vermont, Burlington, 9 April 1997
• 1999: The U.S. Empire and the War against Yugoslavia at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, Berkeley, 1999
• 1999: Berkeley Mother's Day for Peace 1999 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park, Berkeley, 9 May 1999
• 1999: The U.S. War on Yugoslavia in Seattle, Washington, 16 May 1999
• 2002: The Corporate War Against Democracy at Portland State University, 14 September 2002
• 2002: Terrorism, Globalism, and Conspiracyat St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church, Vancouver, 9 October 2002
• 2003: The Assassination of Julius Caesar in Venice, Colorado, 29 June 2003
• 2004: Creating a Sustainable Economy at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, California, 24 June 2004
• 2005: Michael Parenti on Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 23 May 2005
• 2005: Iraq and the Future of US Foreign Policy at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, 18 April 2005
• 2005: The Darker Myths of Empire: Heart of Darkness Series at the College of DuPage, 16 November 2005
• 2007: Lies, Wars, & Empire at Binghamton University, 9 October 2007
• 2010: Deep Ideology: How Reactionary Agendas Shape Political Awareness at the University Inn & Conference Center, Santa Cruz, 14–16 May 2010
• 2011: The Face of Imperialism and The 99% Solution at the University of Guelph, 2 November 2011
• 2012: Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth at the La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley, 6 January 2012
• 2013: Michael Parenti on the Threat of US Imperialism in Vancouver, British Columbia, November 2013
• 2015: Capitalism vs. Reality'' in Springfield, Illinois, 6 October 2015

with AI it's now

first as satire, then as tragedy

original:

https://x.com/shitpost_2049/status/2013967460467159279

Growing up poor and working class you are inevitably exposed to violence regularly.

This can be public school bullying, abuse & neglect at home by parents, violent crime like street gangs, police brutality, and so on.

Much of this violence comes from the same few sources: people who've been isolated and exploited, unable to provide for themselves or others, feeling inadequate and depressed. Deprived of a life worth living in addition to the time and energy to enjoy life they turn to drugs/alcohol as escapism, take their frustrations out on others, and in general develop anti-social tendencies as they lack the social network needed to provide for them and the capitalist state provides no aid.

When you're surrounded by violence you yourself have to embrace it as a matter of survival. I've been both the victim of violence and the perpetrator of it; the bully and the bullied; the one who started fights and the one who ended them. I didn't have a choice in the matter as that choice was already made for me. When violence was done to me I was forced to respond with violence for no one else seemed willing or able to stop it. Parents, teachers, employers, law enforcement, etc.

I tried, once, to follow the rules and not fight back just as the bourgeois mouthpieces always tell me to. I relied on the existing authorities to resolve the conflict. They completely failed. I was assaulted at my workplace (multiple times in one day) by a co-worker for no apparent reason (maybe because I was small and thus an easy target or maybe he was just bored, I don't really care regardless) and my employers did nothing. He would go on to harass me for several months and despite multiple complaints the issue was treated as a "teamwork issue" where the entire team was apparently at fault for being unable to "work together". For management the issue wasn't one employee harassing another but a whole group that just couldn't work together. For once I took the pacifist route and it completely failed me; I did as I was told and as I was expected to do and nothing happened. The system in place was disinterested in my plight and, in effect, told me to just "get over it". No one around me stood up to speak in my defense; everyone treating it like it was just an issue of two people unable to get along and not a co-worker being bullied by another.

I can't afford non-violence. If I fight back I might get fired, my ass kicked, maybe even arrested but if I don't I'll have to stomach further abuse that could eventually lead to my death. I can't rely on apathetic authorities. I can't rely on apathetic bystanders. I think about all the instances where I didn't fight back and wish I had. I think about those few times where I was victimizing someone else and they didn't fight back and I wish they had. People need to be able and willing to stand up for themselves.

But the bourgeoisie don't want us to. When we're facing violence we're supposed to walk away, grab an authority figure, and let them "fix" the issue. We become dependent on authorities; nice and docile. This works to the benefit of the ruling class when those same authorities are used to suppress dissent; be it in the workplace or in public. They tell us "violence is wrong" so that we allow the baton to come down on our skulls. That is to be expected though, right? Obviously they don't want us fighting back against their oppression. But there's more to it: some of them actually, unironically believe that all violence everywhere is actually wrong out of moral principle.

Because of course they can say this with a straight face: they have walls and cameras to keep out burglars, security guards to protect them from assassination, lawyers to take their abusers to court, et al. They can afford to be non-violent. They have the means to cut themselves off from the parts of society inflicting violence against them. They never have to worry about things like drive-by shootings, muggings, etc. They can switch schools if they're being bullied, cut toxic people out of their lives, uproot their entire life and start over elsewhere. They have the privilege to avoid violence if they don't want to face it - the kind of privilege proles like me will never have. Even the authorities who do nothing for those of us at the bottom are more useful and compliant to those coming from wealth and status; more helpful and cooperative.

And always these privileged types have the same privileged opinions: increased gun control, talk to an adult if you're being bullied, call the cops if you're being threatened, vote for different leaders if you want political change, etc. Even self-defense - usually the one act of violence that is universally deemed acceptable even by many self-proclaimed "pacifists" - sometimes isn't acceptable to them. I can only imagine what kind of life can lead someone to develop these kinds of views and attitudes toward violence because they're not my lived experience. It's a common trope in media that people exposed to extreme violence end up swearing off violence as they grow disgusted by it. I hate this trope not only because it's often used as preachy way of saying "violence is wrong" but also because the people most opposed to violence are often those who've never experienced it first hand. They never had to actually defend themselves before in order to safeguard their own life and well-being so of course they can say it's never okay. Maybe they did face violence but the same authorities that neglect the violence proles face actually a gave a shit this time because the victim was someone of wealth and status.

(To be clear: this isn't to say people with PTSD from violence don't ever swear-off violence; those people absolutely do exist and it's perfectly understandable as to why. They're just not the norm and are usually people who experienced war or genocide, the two most extreme forms of violence there is.)

I can't be a pacifist. I tried and that didn't help me at all. If anything not fighting back just made things worse. I don't have the privilege that allows me to evade the violent reality of my violent surroundings and especially not the inherent violence necessary for the class struggle. The capitalist society is one built on violence at its core; the violence of the state against the workers to keep us down and also the violence between workers to keep us divided. The poverty we exist in serves not only as a consequence of our exploitation but also as a trap to keep us hostile & aggressive, further justifying state violence.

Only those who live outside the reality of the proletarian experience can really truly live as pacifists; selling their violence to others and cutting themselves off from it entirely. Their pacifism is born out of privilege.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/41698116

https://x.com/ladyizdihar/status/2011207694129201594

Credit: https://youtube.com/post/UgkxH5MfKu0iw011O64mQEl8xTfVdgH8afdc

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/41622463

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19017

By Nikos Mottas

The widespread claim that recent imperialist bluntness, epitomized by the Trump doctrine, has “destroyed international law” rests on a false premise: that such a law ever existed as a binding, neutral framework above imperialism.

From a Marxist-Leninist standpoint, this belief is not an error of detail but a fundamental ideological illusion. Imperialism has never been restrained by international law. On the contrary, what is called “international law” has always been a secondary product of imperialist relations, tolerated only insofar as it served monopoly interests and discarded whenever it ceased to do so.

The present moment, marked by open treaty violations, contempt for institutions, and unapologetic coercion, does not signal a descent into barbarism. It signals the collapse of the ideological form through which barbarism was previously administered.

Any serious discussion must begin with the Marxist theory of law itself. Lenin, following Marx and Engels, rejected the liberal notion of law as a neutral arbiter. In The State and Revolution, he dismantles this illusion at its root:

“The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.”

And further:

“The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it creates ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collision between the classes.”

Law, therefore, is not a universal moral code. It is a political instrument, inseparable from state power and class domination. What law does domestically for the bourgeois state, so-called international law does globally for imperialist powers: it legalizes domination, stabilizes exploitation, and disguises coercion as order.

There is no supranational authority standing above classes and states. There is only the world system of capitalism, and at its highest stage, imperialism.

Lenin’s masterpiece Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism provides the decisive theoretical framework. Imperialism, he explains, is not merely aggressive foreign policy but a structural phase of capitalism defined by monopolies, export of capital, and the division of the world among great powers.

Within this system, treaties and legal frameworks cannot be stable or binding. As Lenin demonstrated, agreements between imperialist powers are nothing more than temporary truces between wars.

And even more decisively he writes:

“Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations.”

This passage alone renders the concept of a permanent, rules-based international legal order under imperialism theoretically impossible. If agreements are merely truces, then law is merely a momentary crystallization of force.

International law does not restrain imperialism; it registers its temporary balance.

The historical record fully confirms Lenin’s analysis. Imperialism has never hesitated to annihilate its own legal frameworks when they conflicted with strategic or economic interests. World War I destroyed every existing treaty system in the struggle for colonial redistribution. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterated entire cities without any legal or moral justification. The Vietnam War involved systematic violations of humanitarian law on a massive scale. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was conducted without UN authorization. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 proceeded despite the absence of any legal mandate. The destruction of Libya in 2011 transformed a limited resolution into regime change and permanent chaos. Sanctions regimes in the 21st century institutionalize collective punishment of civilian populations in direct contradiction to proclaimed legal norms.

These are not exceptions. They are the normal functioning of imperialism.

For long periods, imperialism preferred to rule behind legal and humanitarian rhetoric. Institutions, courts, and treaties were useful tools for managing rivalries, disciplining weaker states, and integrating reformist forces into imperialist governance. Law functioned as ideological cement, not as restraint.

As Stalin emphasized, “the equality of nations under capitalism is a deceptive phrase”, since alongside formal equality there exists “actual inequality in economic and political development, inequality in strength”, an inequality that “determines everything.”

This is not cynicism. It is materialism.

What distinguishes recent imperialist conduct is not its content but its form. As contradictions sharpened — economic stagnation, intensified inter-imperialist competition, internal social polarization — the ideological value of legal language declined. Open coercion replaced ritualized justification.

Lenin warned against mistaking changes of form for changes of essence. In Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, he stressed that communists must judge governments not by their words or declarations, but by their deeds

Judged by deeds, imperialism today behaves exactly as it always has. What has changed is merely the degree of ideological camouflage.

This analysis must not removed into moral denunciation of one state or leader. Imperialism is not a national pathology; it is a global system. Multilateralism does not abolish imperialist domination — it coordinates it.

Lenin made this point unequivocally:

“The bourgeoisie of all countries is united against the proletariat, but this does not eliminate the struggle among the bourgeoisie of different countries for domination and for markets.”

Whether domination is exercised unilaterally or multilaterally is irrelevant to the oppressed. The substance remains exploitation, coercion, and subordination.

International law functions most efficiently against those without power. Liberation movements are criminalized. Independent economic policies are punished. Whole populations are sanctioned. Law becomes a weapon wielded selectively, binding the weak and dissolving before the strong.

This is not a betrayal of international law. It is its real content under imperialism.

Marxism-Leninism does not advocate a return to “respect for international law.” That demand presupposes that imperialism can be regulated ethically. Lenin rejected this outright. In Socialism and War, he stated unambiguously:

“So long as capitalism exists, wars are inevitable. Wars are a necessary and inevitable result of capitalism.”

Where war is inevitable, law cannot rule. The task of communists, therefore, is not to repair imperialist legality but to abolish the material conditions that render legality impossible: monopoly ownership, capitalist exploitation, and imperialist competition.

The exposure of imperialism’s naked face is not a loss for humanity. It is a gain in clarity. The collapse of legal illusions forces a confrontation with reality.

There is no international law under imperialism. In reality, there is only force, temporarily codified, and power, briefly legalized.

Only the overthrow of imperialism itself can make genuine equality between peoples possible. Until then, “international law” will remain what it has always been: the handwriting of the powerful — erased the moment it ceases to serve them.

* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.

From In Defense of Communism via This RSS Feed.

To see the struggle for socialism as a long process of global transformation since the mid-nineteenth century is also somehow comforting on a psychological level for an old man. The struggle and suffering of millions of communists and socialists over the past two hundred years have not been in vain, but are contributions to this long process of creating a better world. To be part of this process—a tiny cog in the machinery of transformation—and to give it a little push in the right direction seems to be “the meaning of life.” This meaning is not founded in some religion or a belief in an afterlife, but in historical materialism and the purpose of life before death: to hand over a world that is more equal and in balance with nature to future generations.

The problem for the next generation, however, is that we are running out of time. Our task—as the subjective force of change—is to work toward a transformation of the system into a more democratic and equal world order, one in balance with nature, within the next several decades.

• The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism by Torkil Lauesen

evangelical christianism is a psyop because the CIA was noticing that catholic church was defending some changes (with theology of liberation and stuff)

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/LOC-HAK-2-1-34-0.pdf

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve10/d13

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/41471906

Right now, people keep asking, "Why don't Americans go on strike?" And even more Americans keep giving common excuses:

Fear. Fear of losing housing, healthcare, a job. Fear of losing the little stability they think that they still have. But the question that no one is asking is: "who taught us that not acting was safe?"

While fear isn't irrational, it is political. Under capitalism, survival is individualized. Housing is private. Healthcare is tied to employment. Food and safety are commodified, so risk feels personal instead of collective.

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

When people are forced to survive alone, they begin to think alone. Which is absolutely not human nature, but rather a system producing obedience.

This is why some of the most defeatist arguments come from people who still think they have something to lose.

Lenin identified this contradiction: He wrote that layers of relative comfort inside capitalism often produce hesitation rather than resistance. Because the insecurity is masked. This is a hostage psychology.

This is also something that Marxists call silent compulsion or mute compulsion. Workers not held in place primarily by force but by contradictions that punish resistance automatically.

When you lose your job, your healthcare, your housing, the system disciplines you without needing soldiers on the street. And this is exactly what makes people say "this will never work" before it even begins.

But history contradicts defeatism. This is where this sort of American amnesia becomes dangerous. Let's talk about Seattle, the city that I live in.

You may notice this poster behind me at times, commemorating the Seattle general strike in 1919, the very first general strike in the United States, where over 60,000 workers shut down the entire city.

Transportation and businesses stopped, workers organized food distribution and essential services. There were no modern labor protections, no unemployment insurance, and a real threat of military intervention.

They knew this and they did it anyways. And the only reason it ended was because leadership lacked consensus on how far to escalate it when the National Guard was sent in.

In retrospect, Anna Louise Strong said this (please pay attention, we must learn from this!):

"As soon as one of these workers was put on a responsible committee, he also wished to stop "before there was riot and blood".

The general strike put into our hands the organized life of the city - all except the guns.

We could last only until they started shooting; we were one gigantic bluff."

The workers had the power, but many were not yet prepared to use it fully.

We learn from this. We do better next time.

We also ignore that strikes built modern America. Almost every protection working people still have in the United States exists because workers did strike. These gains were not gifts from the states, but concessions extracted under threat. Our threat.

And then globally, workers have not just improved conditions, but reshaped entire governments. All organized responses to unbearable conditions.

And across that history, workers have mobilized under conditions worse than those we face now. No protections, no guarantees, constant open violence. They weren't striking because it was safe to do so, because there was a backup plan, something to fall on.

They struck because doing nothing already killed them. It got them where they are.

We can't let fear have the authority. Are we going to let them get that far? That's what we're doing by sitting back and saying "Uh, we could never do it. It'll never happen. I might lose my job."

You'll lose your job when they kill you anyways!

What we're living with today is alienation, loss of third spaces, collapse of unions, erasure of that working class history, and an ideology that tells us survival is personal responsibility.

Antonio Gramsci gave us the clearest framework for this moment:

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

Revolutionary optimism is not pretending that things are easy. It's recognizing that keeping what little crumbs we have under these conditions guarantees our loss.

We are already losing what we're afraid to lose.

And right now, I'm speaking mostly to the privileged who are only just now fearing realizing they could lose something. Many before you didn't have anything to begin with.

So, are we going to lose the crumbs we have quietly? Or together, with intention, with memory of the past, with solidarity with one another?

We need to transform our conditions and become something greater. We deserve better. Don't give up. Don't give in to nihilism and defeat.

His website: https://www.howardwaitzkin.org/

Him on the AES podcast: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/8d546709-2b54-498a-a29d-a0bde330a940/AES_Episode_001.mp3?dest-id=3462398

John Bellamy Foster opens Breaking the Bonds of Fate with a refusal that is at once philosophical and political: the refusal to accept that human history, human suffering, or human defeat are governed by immutable laws. The phrase that gives the book its title—“breaking the bonds of fate”—is not rhetorical flourish. It names an ancient and ongoing ideological battle, one in which ruling classes repeatedly dress their power in the costume of necessity, while materialists insist that what is presented as destiny is in fact the product of historically specific social relations. Foster’s wager is simple and dangerous: that Marxism, properly understood, belongs to a much older insurgent lineage that has always fought against fatalism, fear, and the naturalization of domination.

Just wanted to vent about this topic for a bit, because this is something that annoys me to no end. You see so many people complain nowadays about how China "stole" something from the West, whether that's technology or just some idea for a product.

So many times this is just racism, but yes, there are times when Chinese manufacturers were very likely inspired by a Western design. So what? Let's even assume that they added nothing of their own to it and just took the idea as-is (which is not usually the case; as we have seen by now, imitation is only the first step; eventually China learns and starts to innovate and even advance ahead of the West).

Even in those extreme cases, either the original product was not made anywhere near as cheaply, or as efficiently, or maybe even mass produced at all. Let's say someone showcases online some artisanal design of something cool they made, but never tried or intended to mass produce, and some manufacturer (doesn't even have to be in China, can even be in a Western country) decides to take that design and mass produce it and sell it, did they really do something wrong?

Did they "steal" anything? As in physically take something away from the original creator that they now no longer possess? No. On the contrary, they worked out how to actually produce that design in a way that is commercially viable, and provided the world with a product that people would not have had if this manufacturer had not taken up that idea and actually made it a mass produced reality.

So where is the "crime"? What would have happened if the first hominid who discovered how to make fire told all the other hominids: "Hey, you're not allowed to make fires, this was my idea and if you use it for your own benefit, it's stealing!". How about the first inventor of the wheel? "No, no one else can make wheels, else you're stealing my design! Even if i decide not to make any more of them than this one prototype."

Why do so many people nowadays accept this argument, when all throughout human history this sort of behavior would have gotten you laughed out of the village? Humanity progresses by sharing knowledge, by imitating and copying other people's ideas. And if someone can implement your own idea better than you yourself can, why shouldn't they?

This isn't theft. "Intellectual property" is the real theft: theft from humanity. Holding back progress because you could have made money off of it first, or even just because your ego demands recognition, is that justified? Is that something that we as a society should accept?

This criticism of course extends even more so to the level of corporations which go absolutely crazy with hoarding patents and copyrights, often to things which they didn't even create but just "bought the rights" to (a crazy, absurd concept btw...i mean even if you believe the originator of an idea should have a special right, how can anyone believe that this right is something that can be bought and sold!?), even long past the point when they themselves are no longer using these IPs to make money. I call this is a crime against humanity.

Also, so-called "piracy" of digital media has nothing to do with actual piracy, which is actually physically taking something by force from someone else. You don't take anything from anyone when you copy a sequence of ones and zeros. The original sequence is still there, you didn't delete it, you just duplicated it.

One of the biggest psyops ever pulled on us as a society is convincing us that making copies of existing digital media is somehow equivalent to "theft".

This excellent video on dialectical materialism got me thinking more about the pedagogy of practicing and learning it: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10142756

Which is a fancy way of saying, I thought, "What if school-like exercises for practicing the components of it to grapple with comprehension and retention of it?" After all, quantitative engagement with its component parts could lead to qualitative change in understanding. :)

In Mao's essay On Contradiction, he gives examples of opposing forces such as:

In mechanics: action and reaction. In physics: positive and negative electricity. In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms. In social science: the class struggle. In war, offence and defence, advance and retreat, victory and defeat are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a war, pushes its development forward and solves its problems.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The idea is to expand on that with what you can think of.

What I wrote down so far:

hot and cold; growth and decay; strength and weakness; noisy and quiet; action and rest; theory and practice; imagination and sensation; wet and dry; beginning and end; the forest and the trees (e.g. big picture and the details, collective and individual); spiritual and secular; venerated and vulgarized.

So now I put it to you: What are some more examples of this?

Bonus question: What's an example of something that can occur when opposing forces collide?

P.S. Feel free to correct with a why, if you believe something shared is not an example of opposing forces. Just remember to think of it as for teaching and learning.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

Full pamphlet (Marxists.org): https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/index.htm

What would our world look like without borders? A video on the history, politics, and human impact of global border regimes. How we manufacture “illegality,” why borders create inequality, what an abolitionist future could mean for all of us. Borders reinforce capitalism, racial hierarchy, and imperial power structures, and we think that a world with free movement is not only possible, but necessary.

A long-ish video but very thought provoking. Worth listening to if you have some time to spare.

"The savage in man is never quite eradicated." - Henry David Thoreau

This is the primary fear that lurks in the mind of the colonizer, whose identity is constructed on a polarizing narrative of a world divided up into civil and savage, with themself on one side and the barbaric savage on the other.

It grips the west to this day, in communion not only with the more general Christian makeup as outlined in Jones Manoel's excellent essay (https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/), but also more particularly in the characteristics of Catholicism and its symbolic vacillation between sin and confession, rooted in the irreversible mark of original sin.

Briefly (and roughly, I am not a Catholic scholar), for those less familiar with Catholic doctrine, the general idea is we are all born with "original sin" due to the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and baptism bypasses this in a way that allows us to be able to enter heaven. There are degrees of badness of sin, like venial and mortal sin. Venial sin is a minor offense. Mortal is more serious and requires more conscious intent. However, if you are truly sorry, you can confess and be forgiven for basically anything, insofar as the possibility of getting into heaven is concerned. You might have to do some penance in purgatory, but otherwise, you can get there.

The specifics of exact Catholic teaching are less important here than how the more generalized concepts of it get used in western colonial and imperial society.

Going back to original sin, colonialist history acts as a stand-in for it in the liberal mindset. Similar to how Catholicism does not seek to reconcile with its god over the behavior of ancestors once and for all, instead taking on a kind of perpetual responsibility for original sin by contact, liberalism does not seek to do reparations for colonialism, return power to the colonized, or otherwise undo the horrors its ancestors have inflicted. Instead, the focus is on confession.

But this would not be complete without taking into account the side of the conservative also, in particular in the dichotomous scheme of the US. The conservative acts the part of the sinner. The liberal the part of the one confessing to the priest. The conservative always has a justification, no matter how crass or crude they have to be, and they are often found among the most openly violent warhawks. The liberal, though their policy so often is similar to that of the conservative, does not tend to act the same. The liberal is sorrowful, mournful, and when necessary, ready to confess.

"Civil" and "savage", ideas which normally exist in contradiction and in fearfulness of corruption from the light, synthesize with confession to create redemption, the cleansing of sin, even if temporary. Like a real Catholic confessional, which might give you some Hail Mary prayers to say but does not delve into the details of your life and ask material changes of you, this confessional purification process is ideal because it demands no change of behavior. The colonizer continues on and its past crimes are washed away in the confessional.

To avoid responsibility, the confession is done by intermediaries; people who may have had proximity to the "sin", but who are not the most directly responsible for it. And so you get bizarre contradictions like when Joe Biden apologized to the indigenous of Turtle Island for past systemic boarding school abuses of indigenous children, even as his administration was funding a genocide elsewhere.

You can find examples of this inclination in media and even in mundane real life contexts. For example, the infamous character Darth Vader in Star Wars, whose crimes are prolific and horrifying, but who is redeemed when he chooses to save his son and turn against his cartoonishly evil leader. Luke (his son's) belief in the possibility and importance of his redemption reflects and validates this Catholic mindset that no matter how great the sin, it is still possible to make it to heaven. Never mind that Luke nearly martyrs himself pointlessly in order to accomplish this. Surely it is the redemption of "evil" that is of paramount importance, not the liberation of the masses! (So the colonizer's mindset implies and why wouldn't it, when it is of such great importance to the colonizer to wash away their sins rather than give up an ounce of ground they have stolen through war and slaughter.) Or in the more mundane context, almost amusingly so, when a person on the internet might start a comment with an insult and then end it with "have a nice day." As if they have washed away the "impure" intent they started out with by ending it on a more polite note.

For the colonizer's image of self-civility to hold, they have to justify it somehow. They can't justify it through how they behave when they exercise power because the majority of that is genocidal. So they turn to the process of purification, cleansing, and forgiveness. This reflects rather well the phenomenon of liberals who are "against every war but the current one." The current one is still in the grip of the conservative side's wave of overt war mongering. It is only after it is concluded, when the liberals are cleaning up and confessing, that the greater public is allowed to feel bad about it; and at that point, it is somewhat necessary that they do, in order to go through the aforementioned synthesis to create redemption.

What this redemption brings about is nothing substantive in material reality. It's an abstract notion of redemption, centering around metaphysical notions of darkness and light, corruption and valor, and the overcoming of temptation. Were the colonizer judged in its totality, it would be considered a great abuser of the confessional, one who is never actually sorry in the right places and who does the same thing again anyway. But totality is brushed away in favor of whatever is the current, both in the meaning of current events and the wave-like current of inertia.

"What cannot be properly justified right now can be forgiven later" might be a fitting adage for how this colonial and imperial structure operates.

The "savage" conservatives relentlessly pursue power and domination, and the "civil" liberals shy away from power and fear its "corrupting" influence. Through this, they can act in tandem, whether literally as one party handing over power to another, or more figuratively in media representation and language, sinning their way across the world and then moseying their way down to the closest confessional to wash it away.

"It doesn't matter what or who you are, it matters how you play."

This is a quote, likely doing some paraphrasing, from a movie about Jackie Robinson. I had not set out to watch the movie, but saw bits of it in passing from someone else watching it and my brain went spinning off on analysis of it.

I could take it as just a feel good story, a man who faces prejudice and discrimination and overcomes. But that quote lodged into my brain, along with other bits on the screen. I don't know exactly how the story went in real life, but this isn't about that exact story anyway.

It's about the broader methodology at work here and the way in which capital uses reform efforts to its advantage and then largely defangs them.

The quote exemplifies the practice well, if we do a little bit of reading between the lines: "It doesn't matter what or who you are if you can make more profit for us."

The choice of language and focus implies not an intention toward the abolishment of systemically racist practices, but the allowing of exceptions on a case by case basis, based on "merit" (which in the capitalist case, is defined as "you contribute to growing our money/power base").

This kind of idea, that you can transcend the box marginalization has put you in by helping the capitalist out, got stretched to its limits with figures like OJ Simpson and Bill Cosby. Star performers, make lots of money for the capitalist with a healthy cut for themselves, and also deal in some of the worst accusations that can be levied at a person. I am being vague because I see no gain in this context going into it in detail and being potentially triggering or needlessly graphic, and the details of it aren't that important to the point anyway. The point is incidents like these put to test the idea of, "It doesn't matter what or who you are, it matters how you play."

The capitalist method of getting lucrative people past racist gatekeepers while keeping systemic racism intact hit some limits. A method which normally works well alongside liberal mentalities about "be who you are, no matter who that is."

But it's easily observable that being "who you are" can range from being an inconvenience to others to being an actual terror. Capital and liberalism in their marriage of bullshit have no answer for this. They're not interested in policing society, but rather interested in profiting from it.

In order for this method of "reform" to function while leaving the rest of the system intact, the notion is not "you are valuable and deserve basic needs met no matter who you are," it's "you are valuable if you notably help the capitalist." This leaves most marginalized people remaining in a position of less than. As compared to a socialist project where things like racism can actually be tackled head on because the meaning of valuation of a person gets changed fundamentally when the project is based around meeting the needs of the people, no matter who they are, and because actually listening to the people means reform efforts can gain a foothold in governmental structures, not just in corporate slogans.

Another example of this kind of thing, we can see happening with sexism too. Among the most marginalized women are those in prostitution. Capital's answer is not to liberate them from coercion and from any economic incentive to turn to it for survival, but to push for formalizing it into another market; a market where prostitutes can have slightly better conditions than they would otherwise have, but capitalists also get a cut and the system is not fundamentally changed.

I don't feel like this is a "complete" take on the topic, but I wanted to get it out while it is on my mind.

I'm sure there are other examples in practice of the difference between real reform and profiting off of exceptions to the rule that don't fundamentally challenge racism/sexism/etc. Let me know what you know.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39843704