• 0 Posts
  • 27 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: March 23rd, 2022
  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.mltoCommunism@lemmygrad.ml•How can i help?
    10·
    2 years ago

    +1 to joining a youth organization. That’s the single best thing you can do. As individuals we’re weak, ineffectual and alone. Only by joining the collective bodies of the organized working class can we really aid the cause and develop as communist personalities.

    Depending on where you live you can also try organizing your school if you’re still going. I have plenty of young comrades that joined by people organizing their schools and student bodies.

  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.mltoCommunism@lemmygrad.ml•A comment on the Russia/NATO warEnglish
    21·
    2 years ago

    I’m not gonna make the point that it is inter-imperialistic, but imo while what you’re saying about the history of the conflict is correct, it only proves aggression and imperialistic drive by NATO, it doesn’t prove or disprove the “Russia is imperialist” side of the argument. NATO being the primary aggressor and being imperialist itself doesn’t mean Russia can’t also be imperialist, at least not if we talk about imperialism in a Marxist sense. Because in that sense imperialism isn’t when aggression or expansion, it is a stage of development and the way countries at the stage of monopoly capitalism relate to other countries. It’s fundamentally about surplus value extraction. Again, here I’m not making the argument that Russia is, I just don’t think you really made the argument why it isn’t.

    I also don’t think categorizing the conflict as inter-imperialist would make a ‘both-sides equal’ argument, because, again, imperialism in the Marxist sense isn’t really a normative term and not derogatory, but a technical descriptor.

    It also wouldn’t negate the possibly positive ramifications of this war. Those things can coexist.

    I ultimately don’t think it really matters all that much either to communists outside of Ukraine and Russia. Communists in the US, Germany or wherever have to fight their domestic class antagonist. Liebknecht’s parole is applicable as ever - Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land! The main enemy is at home!

    If this debate at all distracts us from fighting that main enemy, it has fulfilled its purpose. Whether or not Russia is at the stage of development we call imperialism is immaterial to our day to day praxis in our communities.

  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.mltoCommunism@lemmygrad.ml•Discussion Thread: What are all you reading in terms of fiction AND non-fiction? (NOW for BOTH fictional and non-fiction works) - #18
    2·
    2 years ago

    Fiction: GRRM Dunk & Egg series

    Non-Fiction: The Assassination of Fred Hampton

    Gotta say I expected something different from this. More of a biography a la Malcolm X. Still interesting and just insane to what degree all levers of power worked to kill this 21 year old local leader. The whole state apparatus of the global hegemon was used to execute this young Chicago dude who barely got started with his work. And then you still have idiots 50 years later, whining about muh US democracy.

    But the writing itself kinda irks me. It’s just so painfully…American. The author seems to have done some very good work in his life for the cause, but he talks and writes just like any other self-gratifying Yank high-achiever. It’s all about the self, how hard you work, how tough you are, but in such a self-important way. Dunno, really not my cup of tea at all. It’s a quick read though, so not too bad.

  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.mltoCommunism@lemmygrad.ml•Discussion Thread: What are all you reading in terms of fiction AND non-fiction? (NOW for BOTH fictional and non-fiction works) - #15
    1·
    3 years ago

    Parenti’s Assassination of Julius Caesar.

    Have been relistening Mike Duncan’s History of Rome a while ago and while it’s an excellent story he’s telling, it’s a bit strange how he sticks to the story told by ancient story tellers. Of great men driving history by their ambition, quest for honor, etc, etc. Just kept asking myself “what was the actual driving force here? What were the class antagonisms? Man I wish someone wrote a materialist history of this”.

    Turns out the goat himself did. So refreshing to read history analyzed like this, critiquing the childish, idealist, individualist version we’re constantly told by mainstream historians and school books.

    Also felt good to get some validation for the instinctual dislike I always had for the likes of Cicero, Cato, etc and the interest I had for the Gracci, Caesar and many of the famous tribunes.

  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.mltoCommunism@lemmygrad.ml•Discussion Thread: What are all you reading in terms of fiction AND non-fiction? (NOW for BOTH fictional and non-fiction works) - #14
    5·
    3 years ago

    Still on the Shock Doctrine audiobook I posted about some time ago. Gotta say it gets better after the initial wave of anti-communism in the first chapters. It’s generally a fairly good book and covers a lot of ground. It’s just - and I can’t say it any other way - Naomi Klein is a dumbass. I’m sorry, but how the hell can you write a book like that and still not only refuse to draw the proper conclusions, but spout the same anti-communist nonsense as the people the book is criticizing?

    She’s correctly identifiying the conditions under which the liberal ‘welfare states’/Keynesianism she keeps harping on about (‘threat’ of the USSR/socialist movements), she’s also correctly identifiying the effect the fall of the USSR had on those welfare states - their ongoing dismantling. Lady, these two things are connected, it isn’t some fucking coincidence social democracies fall into neoliberal hell every god damn time, as this book aptly points out, so how the fuck do you still ramble on and on about muh Keynes. It doesn’t work.

    My god, it’s just infuriating how close and yet how far she is from getting it. Like Chomsky really, just even worse.

    Edit: I also can’t get over her equating Deng and the Dengist reforms with Yeltsin and constantly portraying the Tiananmen protests as result of ‘corporatist’ shock therapy by the CPC. Yeltsin caused 70mio Russians to fall below the poverty line, Deng’s reforms lifted almost a billion Chinese out of poverty. How the fuck are these in any way comparable?

  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.mltoLate Stage Capitalism@lemmygrad.ml•*Permanently Deleted*
    31·
    3 years ago

    From Wikipedia’s article on his book Dark Alliance

    James Adams, Washington correspondent for the Sunday Times, wrote a largely negative review for The New York Times. Adams was critical of Webb’s “failure” to contact the CIA to “cross-check sources and allegations,” and concluded that “For investigative reporters determined to uncover the truth, procedures like these are unacceptable. Neither the editors of the San Jose Mercury News nor the publishers of these books should have allowed their writers to take such relaxed approaches to a serious subject.”

    Is this dude seriously saying someone reporting on the CIA’s drug trafficking to fund death squads in Nicaragua should check sources and allegations with…the CIA?