ProbablyKaffe

ProbablyKaffe , 9 days ago

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/d2435fb6-ed9f-4d5b-a3d3-9af67a2d14e6.png

"One lesson from Texas history is that repression was so severe because resistance was so daunting-a lesson to keep in mind as this century unfolds"

ProbablyKaffe , 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago)

No it's not. Wages in the Imperialist countries are buffed by super-exploitation of the global South.

The amount of resources Americans use means that they are condensing into a "middle class" above the 3rd world nations workers and below the Imperial Bourgeoisie.

Spending most if not all of your paycheck does not mean you aren't "middle class" (petty bourg or labor aristocrat). You were never meant to be able to accumulate wealth, the bourgs want you to consume it and for them to get it in their balance sheets at the end of the day because you bought goods and services from their property. If you are accumulating significant wealth that can't be wiped out due to crises (ex: getting very ill, medical costs), you are certainly not exploited. If you are consuming more labor than you put out, but break even on paper, you're still not exploited (Imperialist wages).

This is why Economism (and accompanying social democracy) is dead end politics that is incapable of handling national contradictions that Imperialism feeds on.

As well, the top 80% of income brackets have been getting increased wealth and income, since the end of WW2.

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/6211c202-d440-4a12-aaae-ad3ffb53fbcd.jpeg

ProbablyKaffe , 1 month ago

The only segment of the US working class that is difficult to describe as a labor aristocracy (in NAFTA states) is being shredded to pieces.

This segment of the working class should be the focus of organization in the core. The rest should only be organized secondarily, as their interests align with Imperialism too much.

ProbablyKaffe , 1 month ago

tragic

ProbablyKaffe , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

And this ain’t the first time, Roderick’s a bit terminally online, arguing against other based progressive like JT (Second Thought) and Michael Hudson…

Why shouldn't he? Hudson's following reproduces Industrial Capitalist apologia in the same way that fed Social Chauvinism in Europe prior to WW1 (and during the height of Imperialism's African carve). I can see the consequences of Hudson in the patsoc space. Second Thought's video on MMT was uncritical and like Hudson reproduces petty booj cope about "the economy" and reform.

Hudson and ST are Marxist educators, they should be criticized so that their performance at that role can improve. If we are giving these people a living as revolutionary educators, shouldn't they be held to the highest standards?

The western left has a deep cultural lack of seriousness (I wonder why that is?). Memes and jokes are fine but bigotry and anti-intellectualism shouldn't be passed off as jokes to avoid criticism.

ProbablyKaffe , 2 months ago

It was about ST's MMT video, it was deserved.

ProbablyKaffe , 7 months ago

ahh the Biden policy lmao

ProbablyKaffe , 11 months ago

Libertarian backers have immense wealth from both the fracking boom and silicon valley. The difference between neolib and libertarian is basically non-existent. The Libertarian anti-war stance is opportunism, and their criticism is just that their PMCs should be hired for more imperialist ventures.

Middle income Americans trend reactionary on political-economy because the bourgeois narratives work for them and their livelihood is secure, and the state does often end up helping them out.

America is an exceptionally bourgeois country, especially considering the colonial question. The proletariat is outnumbered and we really need to stop trying to pander to the settler petit bourgeoisie, they already have state power.

ProbablyKaffe , 11 months ago

Yeah but their freedom slogan isn't anything unique, it's the core of Liberalism. The freedom slogan works for radlibs because like Libertarians they most likely lived a middle income life, which in America is very wealthy in global standards, and they only think about the state in terms of limiting their Liberty to get what they want, or not doing enough to protect their ability to get what they want.

Their overwhelming interests (needs rather than wants) are being served by the bourgeois settler state, in the same way as the ML AES's proletariat's interests are served by the vanguard and DotP.

I think the anti-establishment politics don't really exist outside of the worker's movement to take power. All bourgeois ideology is establishment.

ProbablyKaffe , 11 months ago

Indenture contracts most often guaranteed the servant land upon finishing their obligations. It was an upwardly mobile system that allowed settlers to enter debt for entrance into the colonial planter class. Indenture was basically dead for over 50 years by the time black sharecroppers became the dominant form of agricultural worker for black people.

Indentured servants were still part of the colonizer class, and were obligated to defend the colonies in militias alongside their masters. Indenture fell out of fashion after a series of servant revolts through which the servants won significant rights in the colonies. These revolts increased the planter class' reliance on African slaves. By the time of the Revolution indenture was basically irrelevant.

Decolonial Marxism is perfectly compatible with MLism, in fact it is a reorientation of MLism, into the perspective of the colonized. Colonization is the subjugation of one nation by another. It is the purpose of Marxists in the colonizer nation to practice defeatism in solidarity with their nation's colonized peoples. The Marxists of the colonized nations need to defeat the chains of Imperialism by fighting against their colonizers.

America being a settler state, a state by and for settlers where settlers exercise political supremacy (as seen in the Navajo water case just ruled by the SC), lives alongside its primary colonial subjects, the extant indigenous nations (most are still around) and the black nation. The secondary subjects being the migrant workers from colonized nations around the world (predominantly Latinos and Asians).

The Settlers as a nation are a colonizer class above the indigenous and black people. The contradiction between settlers of the bourgeoisie and property-less is secondary to the nation-state's looting of indigenous land and super-exploiting black workers. The Pick-Sloan dams are a prime example of the white laborers working on genocidal projects that benefited white people overall. The condemnation of black and asian neighborhoods made way for downtown highways for white beneficiaries of the GI bill.

America has massive weaknesses in the production of Imperialism, namely in the necessity of the US to continue colonization of indigenous territory to maintain dollar imperialism. The DAPL and KXL protests blocked and delayed massive oil projects that the US and Canada need to control the price of oil. Biden has signed off on massive drilling projects in Alaska on indigenous land where the residents don't have running water or electricity. This project is to replace the reliance on Saudi Arabia in maintaining a low price of oil. In response to unfavorable global conditions, the settler states dip into their own resources to replenish their empire. I think MLs in America should focus on attacking the US in its arteries, the production chain of imperialism. The dismantling of White Supremacy means removing White rule over the vast territories of North America and depriving the settlers of a state for themselves. The Dictatorship of the Colonized Nations is the necessary form of state that will replace the US, Canada, and Mexico.

ProbablyKaffe , 11 months ago

It's a retronym, Marxist theorists in this space never unified the theories and applications of ML utilized by Fanon, Rodney, Lushaba, Wynter, etc., under a specific title. However, the revolutions in Cuba, Vietnam, and China have been Decolonial in nature and should be studied in the way they took special attention to the society of the colonized masses when constructing Socialism that would go on to challenge and defeat Colonial rule.

The basis is the refusal to start history at the time of colonization, or from the reference point of the colonizers. The context of the settler states needs to start before the settlers arrived, how they arrived and came to dominate, and understand the protracted resistance against the settlers. When understanding the structure of a particular colonization, which is really how national resources are processed and consumed, we can see the relationship between the colonizer class and the colonized.

When I say Decolonization is a reorientation of ML I mean that ML was developed to explain the need for the proletariats of Imperial nations to understand the development of Imperialism in relation to class struggle. The American MLs know they need revolutionary defeatism but they do not understand what they need to defeat and where. The struggle for gender is one of deconstructing Colonialism, the struggle for race is one of deconstructing Colonialism, the struggle for the environment is one of deconstructing Colonialism. The struggle for class is one of deconstructing Colonialism. Decolonial Marxism is Scientific Socialism that builds a society that supplants the Colonial order.

ProbablyKaffe , 11 months ago

Colonizer refers to anyone involved in the entire process of expropriation of the resources of another nation, this is a national distinction, not a racial one. Colonized, or indigenous in the settler form, refers to those who's national property in land, resources, and labor is expropriated by a colonizing nation. The American nation owns, is hegemonic over, or exercises sovereignty over, the lands of Turtle Island. The nations that rely on those resources are being pushed off of them while the resources are expropriated for the entire Settler economy, the "free gifts of nature". So colonizer vs colonized or settler vs indigenous relates to the definite relations between national (social) groups. Colonizers have exploitative positions in consumption of expropriated resources from the colonized groups in land and labor. As in when you have super exploited national groups within a country, it means that the colonial proletariat is exchanging less labor for the same returns in the distribution of resources in the economy. The state, superstructure turned back into material, allocates expropriated resources/property/consumption for members of the colonial nation, as if it were a bourgeoisie as a whole. So why isn't the class differences within the colonial nation the primary contradiction (or the primary class contradiction, i.e. peasant vs prole) in a settler society? Because even if the settler proletariat defeated the settler bourgeoisie, it would still maintain national differences in the means of production and ownership of yet to be utilized resources. The settlers would have to voluntarily give up their position of expropriation over the other nations, that would have to be maintained by the decolonial state apparatus, the end of American supremacy.

Do the classes interpermeate or are they distinct?

Yes, distinct in the way of definite social relations to production, but like the bottom of the bougies and the top of the labor, the consumption by individuals varies beyond national bounds depending on the relationship to property within each nation. Colonialism once it has subjugated competing nations converts the structure of those nations into a model that provides the most expropriated resources with the least effort, in the case of the US the Americans can either totally expropriate territory from the indigenous, taking from bougie and prole alike, or in a neo-Colonial form where the indigenous bourgeoisie allows super exploitation of their proletariat and resources by a higher power in exchange for a share of the proceeds and reinforced rule by the colonizers. This form remains dominant as indigenous territory is used for meat, lumber, oil, and mineral production (especially Uranium), while indigenous workers rarely get those jobs from the American bourgeoisie as it is reserved for the American workers. Essentially any resources claimed by the colonial bourgeoisie are also claimed by colonial proletariat, this is the fuel of reactionary nationalism within the colonial nations.

ProbablyKaffe , 1 year ago

Ahh yes we are Liberals for not wanting to work with white supremacists and homophobes.

Nobody has yet to explain how we can oppose Imperialism through peaceful protests.

Rainer spends 50% of his time tailing "paycheck to paycheck" petty bougies and the other 50% making adventure time fanfiction.