#marxism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #marxism, aggregated by home.social.
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Om två timmar startar A marxist defense of utopian thought i Stockholm!
#CMS #TransformEurope #Samtal #HBTQ #Marxism
https://www.gnistor.se/event/2026-09-05-a-marxist-defense-of-utopian-thought/ -
"The relationship between capital and labor in the ‘core’ countries is stabilized by the imperial arrangement."
by Bikrum Gill: https://progressive.international/blueprint/523d7734-45b9-4c63-9423-a86e68458cea-gill-internationalism-and-national-liberation/en/
#internationalism #marxism #genocide #USWars #imperialism #capitalism
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https://www.europesays.com/people/215012/ Elon Musk is right: Hitler was a socialist #AdolfHitler #Communism #DemocraticSocialism #ElonMusk #fascism #KarlMarx #Marxism #Musk #Nazis #socialism
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Trois phases d’un libéralisme injustifiable : du keynésianisme à l’illibéralisme
Comment le keynésianisme, le néolibéralisme, le néo-managérialisme et l’illibéralisme peuvent être interprétés comme trois phases successives d’un libéralisme de moins en moins défendable. De la gouvernance technocratique à l’autoritarisme ouvert, les masques tombent. #Marxism #CriticalTheory #PoliticalEconomy #Neoliberalism #Illiberalism #Capitalism #PoliticalPhilosophy Une lecture…
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every time I read something citing Franco "Bifo" Berardi, I mistake him for Jello Biafra and I can't get this association out of my head
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"Two marxists on the same screen," Varoufakis remarks with a smile.
America is quietly losing the world – Yanis Varoufakis & Richard D. Wolff | The #Econoclasts"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFQ9aHZpCAg
#capitalism #marxism #varoufakis #richardwolff -
Is Islam Compatible with Western Civilisation?
When someone declares that Islam is "incompatible with Western civilisation," why is the West automatically treated as the moral standard? Before you judge whether Islam fits your "Western" world, you must first prove that your world is morally defensible.https://wrzky.com/is-islam-compatible-with-western-civilisation/
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https://cpmk.org/87-recent-news/444-the-vanguard-is-not-a-matter-of-opinion
Banger of a read from Kenya.
>Communists should indeed reject sectarianism.
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>Sectarianism isolates revolutionaries from the masses.
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>It substitutes slogans for investigation.
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>It mistakes organisational isolation for ideological purity.
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>But there exists another danger.
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>Liquidationism.
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>Liquidationism dissolves the communist party into the general Left.
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>It blurs ideological distinctions.
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>It dismisses organisational discipline.
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>It celebrates diversity while abandoning revolutionary coherence.
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>If sectarianism builds walls where bridges are necessary, liquidationism removes the foundations upon which the bridge itself must stand.
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>Marxism Leninism rejects both.---Booker Ngesa Omole
#politics
#kenya
#socialism
#communism
#marxism
#MarxismLeninism
#leninism
#vanguardism
#sectarianism
#liquidationism
#BookerNgesaOmole
#BookerOmole
#capitalism
#neocolonialism
#neoimperialism
#colonialism
#imperialism
#theory
#practice
#praxis
#HistoricalMaterialism
#DialecticalMaterialism -
The Radical Buddhist Project is a dual-purpose scholarly resource: a comprehensive text archive and a contextual encyclopedia. It is dedicated to recovering, preserving, and analyzing the historical intersections of Buddhist doctrine with left-wing political philosophies, such as socialism and anarchism, and Buddhist involvement in anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and radical social justice movements
#buddhism #buddhist #marxism #socialism #anarchism #engagedbuddhism
https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Main_Page -
ladyizdihar
Marx, women, historical materialism, and the danger of reading historical texts in isolation.
Thoughts?
#history #education #marx #marxism #HistoricalMaterialism
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbRx1IMBkxY -
If Acts Happened Today, Would We Call It Communism?
For many, "communism" has become less a political philosophy and more a conversation stopper. But is every effort to use our shared resources to care for the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable really communism? This article examines the difference between political labels and biblical principles, comparing the teachings of the early Church with today's political rhetoric. -
In a deeply personal piece, Nathaniel Dickson reflects on the interconnected violence of borders and antitrans bigotry.
https://spectrejournal.com/notes-on-trans-migration/
#marxism #communism #socialism #capitalism #trans #lgbt #lgbtq #news #borders #bigotry #pride #spectre
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In a deeply personal piece, Nathaniel Dickson reflects on the interconnected violence of borders and antitrans bigotry.
https://spectrejournal.com/notes-on-trans-migration/
#marxism #communism #socialism #capitalism #trans #lgbt #lgbtq #news #borders #bigotry #pride #spectre
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In a deeply personal piece, Nathaniel Dickson reflects on the interconnected violence of borders and antitrans bigotry.
https://spectrejournal.com/notes-on-trans-migration/
#marxism #communism #socialism #capitalism #trans #lgbt #lgbtq #news #borders #bigotry #pride #spectre
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In a deeply personal piece, Nathaniel Dickson reflects on the interconnected violence of borders and antitrans bigotry.
https://spectrejournal.com/notes-on-trans-migration/
#marxism #communism #socialism #capitalism #trans #lgbt #lgbtq #news #borders #bigotry #pride #spectre
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In a deeply personal piece, Nathaniel Dickson reflects on the interconnected violence of borders and antitrans bigotry.
https://spectrejournal.com/notes-on-trans-migration/
#marxism #communism #socialism #capitalism #trans #lgbt #lgbtq #news #borders #bigotry #pride #spectre
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It really annoys me when Marxists just can't give any credit to Anarchists. I was listening to FREE today, which I really enjoy, but the conversation really bothered me because they were talking about anarchist ideas (no patriarchy, non-heirarchical, Bookchin!) and yet they didn't mention anarchism or even hint at it. Instead Clara just mentions Marx.
#anarchism #marxism #freefreeforum #bookchin #indigenous #leftunity #claramattei #robertomendoza
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'Lewis takes up a debate with several Black feminists who have, at various times, questioned the idea of family abolition, whose central argument has been that, very often, Black families have been sites of resistance against racism. Similarly, we could point to many experiences of class struggle in which sectors of working families have played a key role against the attacks of capital: supporting strikes, establishing relations of solidarity between factories and neighborhoods, staging rent strikes, maintaining soup kitchens, creating movements in defense of public services, and many other forms of resistance. The tradition of “women’s commissions” in strikes, for example, has allowed the working class to articulate fighting forces far beyond the workplace.
'To this criticism Lewis responds that, even so, we should not cease working for the abolition of the family, since we would not need its “protective shield” if we managed to build a society without racism. The argument contains a grain of truth, but it stops halfway. It fails to contemplate the role that the family relations within sectors of the working class and oppressed can play in moments of heightened class struggle. On another level, it doesn’t account for the fact that capitalism, while it needs such a “social cell” for its own reproduction, constantly undermines working families’ very conditions of existence. Marx and Engels remarked on this in the mid-19th century, pointing to the length of the working day, the lack of decent housing, and the general precariousness of working class life.'
Josefina L. Martínez : https://www.leftvoice.org/love-and-care-beyond-capitalism/
#property #gender #subordination #dependence #family #debates #debate #abolition #antiCapitalism #Fourier #Lewis #sociology #anthropology #communities #feminism #feminisms #chores #care #queer #rainbowMafia #historyOfIdeas #Marxism #relationships #abolitionism #culturalism #radicalFeminism #materialism #classes #revolution #domesticWork #classStruggle #careWork #historyOfFeminism
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"Stop patronising hijabi Muslim women by telling them to consider how other Muslim women may find hijab oppressive, as if we have not already done so.
We know how religion is weaponised in places where Muslims are the majority. We also know how your governments weaponise anti-Muslim rhetoric globally, and we understand where Islam stands in the global order.
Who are you trying to fool here?
Treating Muslim subjects as if we are insulated from that order and reminding us that “contradictions exist” is a projection of the privilege enjoyed by those who benefit from that system."
https://wrzky.com/orientalism-and-the-denial-of-muslim-political-agency/
#hijab #orientalism #muslim #liberalism #press #islamophobia #edwardsaid #activism #authoritarianism #marxism #liberalfeminism #Islam #Iran #afghanistan #indonesia #palestine
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Morning Star publishes defence of Your Party by Claudia Webb.
From YP Code of Conduct. Weekly Worker.
“Your Party receives very little support, with” less than 1% of the vote.” Voting Intentions.
The Morning Star, independent of the Communist Party of Britain and owned by the co-op, publishes this:
“Your Party: what kind of socialist party does the British working class actually need in 2026?” Claudia Webb.
“The Your Party CEC’s position is notably generous in tone and correct in substance. It is explicit that this is not a condemnation of other socialist parties.
It is explicit that it is an invitation — to individual members to join, to whole organisations to merge into Your Party. It acknowledges the vital campaigning work of socialist organisations across the left.
It draws a line not around ideology but around a specific organisational practice: the holding of binding membership obligations to an external national political party simultaneously with membership of Your Party.”
“The reasoning is democratic, not ideological: “Transparent, democratic decision-making is only possible when every member is able to trust that whatever differences of opinion arise, all members put Your Party’s interests first.”
This is not a demand for political homogeneity. Your Party is explicitly pluralist. Members may hold, advocate and organise around an unlimited range of political positions within the party.
The only requirement is that their democratic participation in this party is genuinely their own — not determined, even partially, by an external accountability structure.”
The socialist organisations outside Your Party continue to do important work. Many of them are already working in practical alliance with Your Party on the May elections. The CEC explicitly welcomes that ongoing collaboration and welcomes any organisation willing to merge into Your Party and bring its experience, its networks, and its commitment into this shared democratic project.
The membership eligibility decision is not a closing door. It is an opening one — opening onto a politics of genuine mass democracy, genuine class power and a party that the working class can trust, because it truly belongs to them.
Claudia Webbe was the member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019 –2024). YOh de
Oh dear….
#Communism #History #Marxism #news #politics #YourParty -
🚨𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝗘𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀 ($𝟲𝟮𝟱 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹)🚨
Hi, I’m disabled and in need of ongoing support. I didn’t meet March’s goal, so that gap is now carrying into April.
I had to prioritise meds last month and couldn’t pay utilities, so I need an additional $250 to stabilise this month.
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• Groceries: ~$250
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That’s $𝟯𝟳𝟱/month just to cover the bare minimum.$100/month is currently pledged across platforms, still building toward stability.
If you can help:
• Monthly support (preferred): scan QR
• One-off support package: scan QR (pic 2)
• One-off support through Ko-fi:
https://ko-fi.com/wrzky/goalThis work sustains a global mutual-aid network and keeps me connected to comrades organising across borders.
https://wrzky.com/legacyWhether it’s a one-off tip or a monthly pledge, your support helps keep this work going.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @mutualaid @edendestroyer
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@actuallyadhd#MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #DisabilityCrowdFund #disabilitymutualaid #MutualAidBoost #MAboost #mutualaidsaveslives #press #ShowUpForWishes #antifa #actuallyautistic #neurodivergence #HelpFolksLive2026 #anarchism #activism #internationalism #groceries #medicalassistance #advocacy #marxism #communalism #MonthlySupport #ongoingsupport
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The Myth of Marxism
& the grand delusion of "socialistic" labels
Ever noticed how every serious conversation about economic systems eventually crashes into the same wall? Someone utters the word socialism — and half the room hears “Soviet gulags” while the other half sees sunshine and lollipops.
This is not an anomaly. It is the predictable result of using words that function as tribal signals rather than analytical categories — terms so overloaded with ideology, history, and propaganda that they can no longer carry the weight of real argument (assuming they ever did).
The words causing the most damage are, as always, socialism, communism, and Marxism — not because they describe dangerous things, but because they never described anything with precision to begin with.
Yet, they are routinely treated as if they name concrete social and economic systems — institutional blueprints that are comparable to market-based economies, which actually do have identifiable mechanics: private property, price signals, competitive exchange, profit-seeking firms, and monetary accounting that coordinates production and distribution.
But the fact is: these terms were never institutional blueprints. They emerged as philosophical critiques of the existing order, as historical theories, as aspirational visions. They specified what was wrong far, far more clearly than they specified what should replace it.
And treating them as system designs equivalent to any functioning economic model is like treating a prosecutor’s indictment as an architectural plan for a new courthouse. The two things are not the same kind of object.
No, Marx Did Not Write an Operating Manual
The assumption behind most political debate is that Marxist texts contain a detailed design for a “socialist” society. That assumption collapses into oblivion on contact with the actual literature.
Marx spent the overwhelming majority of his intellectual energy analyzing capitalism — how surplus value is extracted, how class relations form, how markets expand, how crises emerge from systemic contradictions. Das Kapital, all three volumes of it, is fundamentally a forensic examination of capitalism’s mechanics. Volume I alone runs to nearly 900 pages of dense analysis of the commodity form, the working day, and the accumulation of capital. What it does not contain is a chapter on how to run a railway network, set agricultural output targets, or adjudicate between competing industrial priorities.
https://peterjoseph.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-marxism?open=false
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"What is the relationship of science and technology to human history, and how have Marxists conceptualized this problematic within historical materialism? The work of Boris Hessen represents one of the most sophisticated attempts to apply a materialist analysis to the history of science—specifically, how the economic needs of early capitalism influenced what we now think of as modern science and the Scientific Revolution. In this blog, I explore how Hessen pursues his analysis in his seminal essay “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia” (henceforth referred to as “Newton’s Roots”).
While Hessen did not develop the first Marxist analysis of science, Hessen’s approach was one of the first truly systematic attempts. Moreover, his work helps us see past the often oversimplified division between “Western Marxism” and Soviet thought, revealing a productive tension in international Marxism through attempts to apply historical materialism in understanding science, technology, and nature under capitalist society.
In the same vein, Henryk Grossman makes the connection between science and capitalist society explicit in his work with the Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung, or IfS)—several of Grossmann’s articles were published in the IfS’s journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (ZfS). Grossmann was in fact one of the first defenders of Hessen’s work against critics such as George. N. Clark, Richard S. Westfall, etc. as these critics fundamentally misunderstood Hessen’s theses, and, by extension, Grossmann’s own formulation of the relation between science and capitalist society. While both reached similar conclusions independently, and Grossmann’s work is introduced at points, I focus on Hessen’s formulation here."
https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/blog/2025/RootsandBranches_Hessen/
#Marxism #Science #Newton #HistoricalMaterialism #STS #Capitalism -
"I have always thought that such a fertile working hypothesis as historical materialism in no way required as a basis the absurdity of metaphysical materialism."
#Sartre #JeanPaulSartre #Existentialism #Phenomenology #Marxism #HistoricalMaterialism #Philosophy
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Thomas Sankara is really a fascinating figure
https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1423321/thomas-sankara-is-really-a-fascinating-figure
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Che Guevara on what it takes for a revolution
Che argues that all faith in the bourgeois systems must be shattered and shaken to the core for any chance at revolution to occur
#socialism #communism #che #guevara #cheguevara #cuba #argentina #marxism
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Great piece on what it means to be a communist on a personal level and how a communist party should support its candidates as they prove themselves for full membership and beyond 👇
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5mWQY9PI94
#hoxha #albania #marxism #socialism #communism #communistparty #marxismleninism #pla
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"In line with its ‘timeful’ approach, the book starts working towards its end once we arrive at financialization in the form to which we are accustomed. By this point, Bicocca is almost completely stripped of its old working-class identity. Though the authors do not write in a melodramatic tone here, it’s sad to see that, after a century of struggle, the area is now known as a ‘no-man’s-land’. It was not always planned like this; in the 1980s, Pirelli’s plan was to turn Bicocca into a leading centre of high-tech industrial development named ‘Technocity’. But already by the 1990s, company management realized that basing the neighbourhood’s development entirely on real-estate speculation was much more profitable. In stark contrast, then, with the supposedly ‘dynamic’ financial markets determining the rhythm of its development, Bicocca is now best described by the authors as ‘decaffeinated urbanity’.
In that sense, Class Meets Land reminds more of the financial markets it takes issue with than of present-day Bicocca: it’s a fast-paced book, in the best sense of the word, and nowhere do the authors trip into excessive theoretical reflection. Yet, its biggest strength lies in Kaika and Ruggiero’s methodological insistence: the struggle between class and capital is never lost sight of, and each historical event is neatly related to what preceded and followed it. As such, they make a convincing case for approaching financialization in its specific historical context and from the perspective of local class struggles."
#Italy #Milan #Operaismo #Manufacturing #Financialization #History #Marxism #ClassWarfare #Bicocca
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"All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers" | Mao Zedong Talks with Anna Louise Strong (1946)
#socialism #communism #marxism #socialist #communist #marxist #china #maoism #maoist #interview #ww2 #wwii #imperialism #ussr #sovietunion #japan #korea
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“A perverse bourgeois calculus of prosperity and suffering had prevailed. The rationalization of life had made it cheap and easily disposed of. To the #surrealists, this culture sought not to inspire but to sort and arrange the human condition into a gray, predictable pattern.” #Surrealism #Marxism #Socialism #History #Histodon #AgainstTheCurrent https://againstthecurrent.org/atc233/beyond-reality-on-a-century-of-surrealism/
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Hurra, gedruckt isses: Walter Rodneys »Dekolonialer Marxismus. Schriften aus der panafrikanischen Revolution«. Jetzt letzte Kontrolle der Abfolge, dann wird die Auflage gebunden! Die Druckerei hinkt mit der Produktion etwas nach, daher Anfang November da. Freut euch, wird gut 💎
#walterrodney #decolonial #marx #karlmarx #marxismus #antikolonial #blackpower #blackhistory #race #class #panafricanism #dekolonialisierung #marxism
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Having a long discussion with one of the more reasonable MLs from #hexbear, and it's downright fascinating https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/29900244/14179136
I'm really pushing them to argue the "left unity" which they claim exists in hexbear between anarchists and MLs and the best they can come up with is that hexbear anarchists accept "Actually Existing Socialism" as a fact (which is just...wut?!) and that they all hang out in the same place doing their own leftist things.
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Do Communists Vote in Capitalist Elections?
#news #politics #political #election #elections #uselections #election2024 #democrat #republican #libertarian #green #psl #socialism #socialist #communism #communist #marxism #marxist #marxismleninism #marxistleninist #unitedstates #timwalz #trump #harris #kopmala #kamalaharris #donaldtrump #joebiden #biden #timwalz #walz #leftcoalition #leftcongress #labor #laborunion #government #war #gaza #freegaza #palestine #freepalestine #elonmusk #jillstein #claudiadelacruz #VoteSocialist2024 #karinagarcia #claudiaandkarina
https://medium.com/@socialismforall/do-communists-vote-in-capitalist-elections-56dceab92a36
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"On Why I'm Leaving the Party" [CPUSA] (2024) by Khadija. #MarxistLeninist #Audiobook + Discussion of USA #Socialist & #Communist Parties, Anti-Revisionism
#marxism #marxist #communism #marxismleninism #socialism #cpusa #khadija #revisionism #antirevisionism
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For years on this channel, we've been talking about the need for the US left to detach from the Democratic Party and for the existing, mostly quite small left parties to join together in a #LeftCoalition or #LeftCongress to intensify the class struggle and increase workers' economic and political power. This week in France, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) or New Popular Front, which has done just that, took the lead in the national elections and, together with the "center" ("moderate" right) forces behind Macron, pushed the extreme-right Marine Le Pen and her fascist National Rally party into third place at a time when they had been expected to win control of the government.
The NFP includes parties from the center-left to the far-left such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed (La France Insoumise or LFI), Mitterand's and Hollande's Socialist Party (PS), the French Green Party (LE-EELV), and the French Communist Party (PCF), among others. While all of these deserve significant criticism and most likely will not be able to guide the French masses out of capitalism in their present form, they are far preferable in the short term to Macron's neoliberal austerity ghouls or the flat-out neo-Nazis of the National Rally. The French masses now must take every opportunity to strengthen the fight for better conditions, increased class consciousness, and an independent, internationalist, revolutionary party of the proletariat as they struggle to build a movement capable of ending capitalism in France.
From the NFP's website:
"You asked us; we did it: the new Popular Front was born to govern and change everything.
"We have united, beyond political parties, around a program of rupture, solid, coherent and fair, quantified by economists and experts:
"1) To defend purchasing power and wages;
"2) For public services everywhere, from overseas to the countryside via working-class neighborhoods;
"3) For all women who demand equality and an end to violence;
"4) To defend the climate and living things;
"5) For all those who experience racism, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia;
"6) To defend the Republic against the far right.
"We are the camp of social, ecological, popular victories and peace. Progress and bright tomorrows. Our history is great. We must now write the future of our country."
source: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240707-france-s-leftist-new-popular-front-wins-a-shock-victory-%E2%80%93-but-now-the-hard-part-begins
source: https://www.nouveaufrontpopulaire.fr/#news #politics #france #nfp #newpopularfront #socialism #communism #socialist #communist #marxism #marxist #revolution2030 #rev2030 #s4a #socialismforall #marxismleninism #election #elections #frenchelections #frenchelection #macron #tatertube
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Incontro con Lenin — Il valore della merce “forza-lavoro”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=iVyzb8cU1vs&si=GF5fuv3czHxrJkWq
#economics #economia #teoriamarxista #MarxistTheory #marxismo #marxism
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In finance, an inverted yield curve is when interest rates on short-term debt instruments rise above the interest rates of longer-term debt instruments of similar creditworthiness. In other words, this is an unusual situation in which, all else being equal, shorter-term investments return more money than longer-term investments.
Historically, inverted yield curves on US treasuries have been reliable indicators of impending recessions or economic downturns, and more prolonged inversions generally correlate with more severe crashes, as this video by the Game of Trades investment channel demonstrates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELF_EivMCMI
(The last 30 seconds of this video are just ads for the channel's trading advice services.)
Our current situation in 2024 is that the yield curve has been inverted for 540 days, which is comparable to the durations of the inversions preceding the 1974 crash and the 2008 global financial meltdown (low 500s each) and second only to the 1929 market crash that kicked off the Great Depression (700).
The stock market is currently still going up, but keep in mind that the stock market went up for a long time after the 2008-era inversion as well: a record 657 days. If the market were to keep rallying for that length of time today, then the crash would begin this August.
2008 showed us that the average person will be angry and more ready to question capitalism itself when events like this happen. As Marxists, we must prepare to do widespread agitation, education, and organizing in its wake, spreading real knowledge about how to understand, resist, and fight back against capital.
#yieldcurve #ustreasury #federalreserve #invertedyieldcurve #recession #crash #financialcrash #financialmarket #economy #economics #news #politics #gfc #globalfinancialcrisis #2008 #greatdepression #depression #yieldinversion #capitalism #socialism #communism #socialist #communist #marxism #marxist #revolution #rev2030 #revolution2030 #tatertube #s4a #socialismforall
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On Democratic Socialism & Capitalist Elections | "The Tragic Events in Chile" (1973) by Enver Hoxha
#socialism #socialist #democraticsocialism #dsa #chile #allende #hoxha #albania #antirevisionism #marxism #marxist #communism #communist #antiimperialism
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The Modern Revisionists on the Way to Degenerating Into Social-Democrats and to Fusing with Social-Democracy (1964) by Enver Hoxha. Marxist/Communist Audiobook + Discussion.
#socialism #socialist #s4a #marxism #communism #ussr #khruschev #hoxha #albania #france #politics
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https://archive.org/details/mwakenya
Mwakenya: The Unfinished Revolution. Selected Documents of the Mwakenya - December Twelve Movement (1974-2002) by Maina wa Kĩnyattĩ
Topics
#Kenya, #Kenyanpolitics, #politicsofKenya, #Kenyanpoliticalhistory, #Kenyanleftism, #Kenyanleft, #socialism, #neocolonialism, #WorkersPartyofKenya, #DecemberTwelveMovement, #marxism, #marxismleninism, #Mwakenya, #antiimperialism, #marxisminAfrica, #marxisminKenya, #revolutionarypolitics, #Africanpolitics, #20thcenturypolitics, #europeanimperialism, #britishimperialism, #usimperialism, #anticapitalism, #MwakenyaMovement, #MuunganowaWazalendowaKenya, #UnionofPatrioticKenyans, #politicaleconomy"This volume represents the development of the WPK/DTM-Mwakenya’s anti-imperialist line in Kenya from1974 to 2002. The Mwakenya Movement (Muungano wa Wazalendo wa Kenya/ Union of Patriotic Kenyans) was an underground socialist movement in Kenya in the 1980s formed to fight for multi-party democracy.
Independence means self-determination and self-government. An independent nation is one with the autonomy to make decisions, which will advance the welfare of its people. It is a nation that controls its own resources, and has the political and economic scope to utilise these resources, human and natural, free of foreign interference.
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Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Josef Stalin is not a very exciting read, as he is quite repetitive to ensure points are clearly made. However, it has helped me understand these concepts MUCH better than I had previously, so I must say that it accomplishes its goal well. It's an important read for leftists so that we may better understand the world and how to change it more clearly!
#booktoot #Stalin #DialecticalMaterialism #HistoricalMaterialism #Marxism #Socialism #Communism
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CW: Defining ideology // The ideological construction of technology
Thinking about technology and ideology.
I honestly think that an alarming number of authors that are frequented in 'marxists' circles, such as Zizek, maintain a misleading conception about what "ideology" is, probably as a heirloom from freudianism and psychoanalysis. Their definition of ideology is much like "a way of thinking", or "a prescription over our forms of desire". And, indeed, ideology is a moulding force over our volition and idiosyncrasy, but it's much more subtle that a "mind-control-like thing". Ideology is the way in which the world is presented to us.
You are not "indoctrinated into an ideology", and, being fair, there is no such a thing as a single coherent ideology. Instead, you are presented "ideological representations" of reality in the form of reified social relations. The commodity is an ideological object that we introduce in our daily lives. Gender is an ideological object securing the social reproduction of labour forces, capital and authority. The point is: social relations, power, modes of production... are all interwoven when it comes to our verily cognitive recognition of the world. We learn as long as we live, we live in the social world, the social world is mediated by ideological objects; therefore, we learn how to interpret the world through ideological representations. Also our conceptions about what "nature" and "objectivity" is are formulated upon an ideological basis.
Now let's transfer this thought to the interpretation of the modes of production under capitalism.
When studying the rise of capitalism, we often read that this new mode of production won over the Ancien Régime because of its "superior productivity" and "eficiency". This isn't accurate. "Eficiency" is a highly ideological category to evaluate a mode of production. Eficient for whom? Even "productivity" is not as objective as it may seem. Reading André Gorz, I found that, at the begining, there was not such as thing like a "higher production" of the manufacture over traditional craftmanship. What was really determinant for the success of manufactures was that the concentration of the work force allowed for a higher level of control and, therefore, higher levels of exploitation. That is to say, the history of manufacture and the factory is a history of the evolution of control over the worker. The higher "eficiency" of capitalism was the eficiency to maximize capital accumulation.
Since then, our technological innovation in the terrain of production has been developed under the conditions of capitalist exploitation. The higher levels of production are not a sign of the superior capacity of capitalism to generate new products and higher numbers of commodities; on the contrary, it is a sign of how capitalism colonized human creativity and innovation and forced us to imagine new technologies of production that need human submission to function. As Marx analyzed in his "Capital", the worker who loses knowledge over the production process is alienated and, instead of being a living user of its means of production, becomes themself into a dead compound of a great machine. The scientific knowledge of the process of production turns itself against the worker and serves as tool for the despotic authority of the capital.
We often think about technology and science as "neutral" and inoffensive by themselves, but this is an ideological representation. Yes, indeed, "technology" and "science" as abstract identities, understood the former as the ideation of tools and processes, and the former as the achievement of "true knowledge" of the world, are not a "capitalist" thing my themselves. BUT technology and science do not exist in a social vacuum, in reality they get realized under the social relations of capitalism and mediated by ideological forms and objects, thus, the products of "technological and scientific innovation" conform themselves to ideological forms, specially when it comes to their implementation to the production process.
Calm down, this post is not a "technology bad, return to monke" thing, all the contrary. What I want to express is that the valorative categories that we use in order to appraise the mode of production are moulded by capitalist representations of reality and, more important, that technological innovation under capitalism obeys to such a representation of reality. Capitalism "productive superiority" is a myth if we understand "productivity" as a measure for the fulfillment of our necessities. The only productive superiority of capitalism stands when it comes to the production of "commodities" as a social relation, which are an ideological representation of the economic production and is founded over the possibility of a market economy.
That's why an "intermediate state capitalism economy before the achievement of communism" like the one defended by many marxists is impossible, as they defend this intermediate stage as a method to the "development of the means of production". Such a development of the means of production would be an illusion, as the means or production that you will be developing would be the capitalist ones: the ones that maximize the reproduction of capital and capital accumulation. You would be appraising "eficiency" and "productivity" with the same measures as the capitalist, insofar as you conceive technology and technological innovation as a neutral thing.
The truth is that, under the conditions of an emancipated society, with an economy of free communities following their self-fulfillment, technology and the means of production would evolve following very different criteria. A specific technology that is "efficient" under certain material conditions may not be efficient when it is transferred to a different social context. The tecnology that is "efficient" under capitalism won't be efficient in communism.
I consider this as an argument against stage/transition authoritarian communism. We should strive for the anarchist prefiguration, here and now, of the society that we want to live in in the future. Only by following this project can we discover which technologies will be functional to our autonomy and our relation to the world.
#Ideology #Technology #Productivity #Communism #Efficiency #Productivism #Scarcity #Post-Scarcity #Anarchism #Alienation #Prefiguration #Marxism #Reification #State #AntiState #AntiStatism
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