Panopticon posted:

yeah sure the magical negroes in the third world will bestow their authentic knowledge of leftism on the labour aristocrats

is it "magical negroes" to say that objectively the black panthers were more ideologically advanced than the trotskite professors and organizations that spent all day reading marxist literature? is it fetishism to say the FLN was more revolutionary than the french communist party despite not even considering itself marxist? is it ridiculous to say a peasant in India who can't read has more understanding of revolutionary practice than a white dude in Amerikkka who posts on the internet all day? like I said, objective reality upsets a lot of people who think of themselves as able to transcend economic reality.

babyhueypnewton posted:

getfiscal posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

people think they can think their way out of materialism because being a communist in the west means thinking you're smarter than everybody else and way cooler. so people accept third worldism and agree that objectively they are labor aristocracy but are like "I'm not like that!" and "how come the organizations I join are all shit and the 1st world left is shit?" because the answer means they aren't a special snowflake.

leftist infighting exists because the 1st world left is objectively bourgeois, actual leftist "infighting" in proletarian movements like Shining path vs. the MRTA; CPI(Maoist) vs. CPI (Marxist); PSUV vs. the dissident ultra-left (Red Flag Party; Movement for Socialism); etc are resolved through practice (and revolutionary violence) and not petty squabbles in newspapers.

I know I'm a labor aristocrat, I hope all of you know it too.

this just reads like macho aggression to me. as in, "real politics" is only violence, it only happens among the very poor in other countries, etc. it's also a bad argument but i don't really care anymore.

political power comes from the barrel of a gun. that our politics are not at that point is only a sign of their impotence. that you think this is "macho" is pure bourgeois propaganda which has attempted to make guns into the liberal guilt of having a small penis, when in fact it is the AK-47 which liberated humanity from imperialism and communist guerrillas around the world (most of whom are women) use to freeing themselves from patriarchy and super-exploitation daily.

unless by macho you mean phallic power in a Lacanian sense, in which case I agree that all power takes a phallic form under late capitalism.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars?page=full#how is this whole internet feminism thing is anything other than middle school girl drama is beyond me. the point isn't to smash capitalist patriarchy, it's about individuals seeking popularity and validation.

I'm pretty secure in my whitemalehood if this is where we're at lol

here's that same person gettin' down with Gates Foundation mass sterilization programs http://www.newsweek.com/melinda-gates-new-crusade-investing-billions-womens-health-64965

babyhueypnewton posted:

people think they can think their way out of materialism because being a communist in the west means thinking you're smarter than everybody else and way cooler

idk those people i guess. sounds like a bad scene huey, sever

Lessons posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

getfiscal posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

people think they can think their way out of materialism because being a communist in the west means thinking you're smarter than everybody else and way cooler. so people accept third worldism and agree that objectively they are labor aristocracy but are like "I'm not like that!" and "how come the organizations I join are all shit and the 1st world left is shit?" because the answer means they aren't a special snowflake.

leftist infighting exists because the 1st world left is objectively bourgeois, actual leftist "infighting" in proletarian movements like Shining path vs. the MRTA; CPI(Maoist) vs. CPI (Marxist); PSUV vs. the dissident ultra-left (Red Flag Party; Movement for Socialism); etc are resolved through practice (and revolutionary violence) and not petty squabbles in newspapers.

I know I'm a labor aristocrat, I hope all of you know it too.

this just reads like macho aggression to me. as in, "real politics" is only violence, it only happens among the very poor in other countries, etc. it's also a bad argument but i don't really care anymore.

political power comes from the barrel of a gun. that our politics are not at that point is only a sign of their impotence. that you think this is "macho" is pure bourgeois propaganda which has attempted to make guns into the liberal guilt of having a small penis, when in fact it is the AK-47 which liberated humanity from imperialism and communist guerrillas around the world (most of whom are women) use to freeing themselves from patriarchy and super-exploitation daily.

unless by macho you mean phallic power in a Lacanian sense, in which case I agree that all power takes a phallic form under late capitalism.

i never saw that episode of frasier

getfiscal posted:

one thing i like about laclau and mouffe is that their understanding of political subjectivity is such that radical changes are possible within the self-understanding of a group. i think that sort of thing is essential to radical politics or else you're always going to be pitching your message to where people are at rather than where they could be.

like for example, in canada women were considered a very conservative force in politics during suffrage debates. when women got the vote it was explicitly to allow the wives of soldiers to support the government. women looked to their fathers and husbands to see who they should support. and women did tend to vote relatively more right-wing than the general public for decades. one thing the emergence of a feminist movement did, in conjunction with changes in work and life, is first made the subordination of women evident and then changed its character into oppression. even on the left this was a radical process, because left groups tended to be highly hierarchical and patriarchical. but it did have a significant effect such that women shifted to being more left-wing on average then the general male population.

this seems obvious in retrospect but it is not at all, that's exactly how radical politics works, it changes the terms of the debate by linking subordination with oppression and promising a socialist alternative. i don't think it's easy or straightforward, it takes millions of narrative interventions for this self-understanding to evolve, and it ties to material conditions such as the capacity to organize and such, but i think the lessons hold true more than most practitioners of identity politics realize because they apply to people who are currently articulated as part of the apparatus of oppression.

for example, during the bolshevik revolution one of the major sources of strength for the bolsheviks were the defecting soldiers. soldiers participated in the soviets in large numbers. the russian army had been one of the most reactionary forces in the whole country and partially its self-understanding was fractured and reshaped such that soldiers could break away from the army and join the revolution, ultimately winning the civil war. i think that's important: the blacker the reaction gets, the more likely there are internal contradictions which can be radically exploited for revolution.

a lot of left politics tends to focus on recuperation of sections of the population by the right-wing, as if it's an unrelenting process of embourgeoisment, but those same people could radically flip given the right conditions and organizing. there's a basic logic to the fact that americans with houses won't fight for africans in slums, but radical politics is not some either-or total war. i don't see the point of identity politics as being one of articulating a majority with what we've got, but rather articulating a majority based on the best possible subjectivities of each dimension of oppression. i think if you don't get that then you start treating a lot of people with contempt just because they aren't where you are yet.

take me now you beast

shriekingviolet posted:

take me now you beast

*hyperventilates trying to remember things from grade school health class

c_man posted:

yeah but thats also where matthew yglesias posts soooooooo...?

that's slate.

Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt In New York, 1870

After studying the Irish question for many years I have come to the conclusion that the decisive blow against the English ruling classes (and it will be decisive for the workers’ movement all over the world) cannot be delivered in England but only in Ireland.

On January 1, 1870, the General Council issued a confidential circulare drawn up by me in French (for only the French journals, not the German ones produce important repercussions in England) on the relation of the Irish national struggle to the emancipation of the working class, and therefore on the attitude which the International Association should take towards the Irish question.

I shall give you here only quite briefly the salient points.

Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself.

If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English.

As for the English bourgeoisie, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in clearing the estates of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account.

But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.

And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.

But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.

England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.

...You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear.

Next time a few remarks dealing particularly with the position of the English workers.

Greetings and fraternity!

Karl Marx