Alastair

He/Him literature, art, political theory, history South African, Marxist ☭

[caspien-see]

Hello! I’m Alastair

I’m a 20yo South African, and a transgender man (he/him). I am currently studying politics, history and law. I am a Marxist-Leninist, but not rigidly so, as I read widely. I am very partial to third-worldism, but am not yet too familiar with the theory.

My favourite political theory authors are Fanon, Lenin, Gramsci, Luxembourg, Mbembe, Parenti, and Losurdo. If anyone would like recommendations, I am happy to provide. If anyone would like to send me recommendations, please do. I have a long reading list, but always want to add to it.

I do have interests beyond politics. I draw and paint, specifically academic, baroque and neoclassical. I write and do calligraphy. I also can cook fairly well and read fiction when I can find time outside of my degree. I don’t tend to post about personal matters, but if I do so, it will be tagged accordingly.

I will engage in conversation, so please feel free to ask. I will do so in good faith and would like you to do the same.

[caspien-see]

Sometimes I want to tear my hair out in political science.

What do you mean you genuinely believe there is any separation of powers??

I promise you that the judiciary, executive, and legislature will never be separate because they share the same economic base and serve the same interests.

They are all just arms of the same body.

[purpleorganeater]

marxist communist transgender that gives big pharma thousands of dollars per year for their cosmetic surgeries

[caspien-see]

Guys would I be a bad communist if I paid a pharmacy for my HRT and my surgeon for my top-surgery?

We live in a society…

[caspien-see]

Sometimes I forget that many people just don’t care about politics.

Here I am talking about people who have time, access, funds, and ability. Like my mother - who cares about feminism and the environment at a superficial level but will never expand that concern to broader topics.

The amount of conversations I have had with educated, well-off people about how ‘no, using metal straws is not going to stop climate change, personal responsibility is not our solution here’ or other topics is truly astonishing.

Granted, I know what it is like to be a lukewarm liberal - I was a lukewarm liberal until around 17. However, at least I had the initiative to treat politics as something serious, something worth my time to learn about because it impacts not only me, but the people around me.

There are two cases:

Disadvantaged proletariats of the core and periphery: Some people don’t see that they are materially disadvantaged because of an economic system that works very hard to persuade them otherwise.

Petty bourgeois and labour aristocracy: Others aren’t materially disadvantaged - they just do not care about those who are. Perhaps they even recognise that the disadvantages of others means they get to be propped up.

The first group are those I have sympathy for, the second, almost none. Both need to come to care through class consciousness.

[caspien-see]

Inventing the narrative of Israeli innocence

Established western media organisations like the Times, the BBC, and the Washington Post are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.

This is by no means a new point to make, especially to leftists who have been long aware of media bias and spin. This is seen in positive reporting of Ukraine, almost no reporting of Sudan or the Congo, and actively hostile reporting of Palestinian resistance.

What I want to do is point out rhetorical tools to look out for.

Last year, my final history dissertation was to compare two articles about the history of Israel - one by the BBC and the other by Al Jazeera with the aid of other academic sources.

Rhetorical tools to look out for

Diction

Example 1: The BBC refers to historic Palestinian resistance as Arab-Jewish violence.

First, this means that the existence of Palestinians is entirely nullified, viewing them as ‘Arabs’ from surrounding countries. This is an explicitly Israeli state talking point. When Palestinians are not seen as a distinct group of people, it is justified to displace or them to bordering nations or kill them entirely.

Second, it characterises the historic resistance as faith-based, rather than resistance to setter colonialism. It can be framed in terms of anti-semitism this way.

Thirdly, simply calling the resistance violence is the classic ‘terrorist vs freedom fighter’ framing. Violence does not connote a rightful cause, but mindless barbarity towards the Jewish settlers and British colonial rule.

Passive and active voice

Example: The BBC infer the borders that surround the Gaza Strip as something that magically appeared - ‘the border around the Gaza Strip has grown into a semi-permanent structure…’

Who built those borders? The article essentially shows an open air prison, but makes no comment on who built the walls.

Later, they ensure to include the violence committed by Hamas on October 7th and previous efforts to justify why there are fences, concrete barriers and observation towers looking into Gaza.

Tone

Example: the BBC are quoted ‘Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem - claiming the whole city’.

The tone is congratulatory. Here, Israel is an efficient, James Bond-esque military, ‘effectively’ claiming the city that was designated as Palestinian territory by the UN partition plan.

This is a common trope in reporting about the Israeli military, viewing them as one of the most highly trained and technologically advanced forces in the world. It is common to see them portrayed this way in American action films.

Selection of information

Example: BBC makes no mention of the existence of Zionism before WW2 and the holocaust and its role in the creation of Israel.

Zionism as an ideology existed prior to the Holocaust and Nazism. If this is not mentioned, the BBC can frame Jewish settlement as a result of the atrocities they faced in WW2.

This rhetorical tool creates a justification for Israel’s very existence (even if it is a poor one). To be against Israel is to be against the safety of a group that just underwent a genocide.

__________________________________________

Essentially, this article was a history of Israel that perpetuates their current genocide. The BBC’s apologia sickens me. However, this is a wider, systemic pattern in news coverage. We will not see an end to this manner of reporting until news is separated from bourgeois interests.

We will not see that separation until our present economic model is fundamentally changed.

Sources

BBC “Israel’s Borders Explained in Maps.” BBC News, October 11, 2023, sec. Middle East. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54116567.

Haddad, Mohammad, and Alia Chughtai. “Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Brief History in Maps and Charts.” Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, November 27, 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/27/palestine-and-israel-brief-history-maps-and-charts.

Recommended reading

Michael Parenti - Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media

Laleh Khalili - Sinews of Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula

Fredrik Meiton - Electrical Palestine: Capital and Technology from Empire to Nation

[lesbianfidelcastro]

"De-Stalinisation" and the complete denunciation of Stalin under Khrushchev was genuinely such a stupid move. Like even putting aside your personal feelings about the matter or whether the crimes of Stalin's era can really be attributed to him or not, it was a massive political mistake

At the time of Stalin's death, yes there were many who hated him or had trauma associated with his leadership, but he was also widely understood as a national hero throughout the Soviet Union. That's why there were mass protests against de-Stalinisation, such as in Georgia where the protests caused massive unrest and anti-Soviet sentiment

In attributing all crimes to Stalin as an individual, in denouncing Stalin in his entirety, Khrushchev and his government were essentially forcing the Soviet people to abandon pride in all that they had achieved throughout Stalin's leadership. Writings about the experiences of the Soviet people in the 20s and 30s, with the exception of the Great Purge years, have demonstrated such an astronomical degree of hope and passion for socialist development

They defeated the Nazis under Stalin's leadership. They modernised their country, turning it from a feudal empire to a world superpower with powerful industry and welfare services hitherto inconceivable

To then suddenly denounce that entire period of leadership is to destabilise the people's connection to those achievements and create widespread disillusionment in communism. It's also just reductive, feeding great man theory which is anti-Marxist anyway

Soviet leadership should have done what China did, and assessed Stalin's leadership more fairly. They should have admitted to the mistakes and abuses of power yes, but not abandon Stalin's legacy completely, and they should have analysed it within context in order to understand how better to improve

You can make people aware of his mistakes without destroying their faith in communism and the achievements they made

[caspien-see]

Losurdo’s book Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend does a very good job at this. It demonstrates that much of our critiques of Stalin come from the Secret Speech which was mostly half truths and lies. However, Losurdo is also critical of Stalin - he doesn’t do blanket apologia.

Further, the work is critical of attributing these critiques to Stalin alone. That is Great Man theory, not materialism.

Anyways, great post, just wanted to give a book recommendation :)

[appalachianfox]

Leftists, in America at least, have a problem with being non-violent. Capitalism & fascism are different sides of the same coin. The average American is not a "capitalist," because they own no capital. Any self prescribed capitalist is simply defending a system that brought them privilege.

It is a pastime to compare poor countries to America, to say "Hey, America has given me all this opportunity. It's not the best, but we've done pretty good." Yet Americans never understand why 3rd world countries are so impoverished, & why America has so much wealth. These two things are for the same reason. Unequal exchange.

Capitalism in America relies on the import & export to other countries. 3rd world countries are built on exporting everything to make money instead of building real infrastructure for their people. The hard, cheap, & dangerous slave labor America relies on is exported to foreign countries. This is why America is so wealthy, because they rely on oppression.

[nerudan]

happy birthday frantz fanon i love you alot

[caspien-see]

One of my favourite political theorists. He was vector for understanding post-colonial class structure, racism, and xenophobia. For that, I am incredibly grateful.

[caspien-see]

My own fault, but I should have realised Frantz Fanon and fanon (fan-canon) would be mixed up on the fanwork website lol

Everyone should go read fan-canon, especially those of the imperial core. That is absolutely the party line of this commie blog.

[caspien-see]

My legal education has been a very liberal one, but at the very end of the semester, we touched on the concept of private property and whether it should be so highly regarded.

Preliminary note: In the Marxist sense, private and personal property are different things.

Private property refers to something you own that produces capital - factories, tracts of land, etc.

Personal property refers to things you simply own - your house (if you’re lucky), your notebook etc.

To begin, the liberal conception of ownership of private property is that it is something exercised without state interference - a guarantee of personal liberty. It is exercised in the free market and is closely tied with the emergence of capitalism.

Essentially, ownership cannot be interfered with (most of the time), the owner can retrieve their private property at all times, and it is abstract (stable, timeless, unaffected by circumstance - once you have the title deed, it is yours).

What should be questioned, however, is if these things are unquestionable truths. Liberalism often places its legitimacy in Rome, drawing much of its law from the period. However, Roman concepts of ownership are vastly different to today’s. Restriction on property was very natural - not outlandish or extreme as it is viewed now.

The humanist tradition of the 16th century saw this rigidity start to emerge. Roman-Dutch lawyer/theorist Grotius helped create the idea of ownership as the highest form of property right to protect individual freedoms.

This was strengthened by the 19th Century German Pandectists. They formulated a systematic, doctrinal method that was a supposedly scientific approach to law. They then placed their reasoning in supposed historic Roman law.

So what I mean to convey is that modern ownership of private property under capitalism is historically constructed, not universal and timeless, and can thus be changed.

To link this back to Marxism, private property is not natural or inevitable. There is no legal precedent before capitalism for its unwavering existence.

Marxists do not want to take away your notebook, your phone, your jewellery, or your house (personal property). Marxists want to do away with ‘immutable’ private property, as owning things that produce capital automatically creates the distinction between classes.

References for this post

Andre van der Walt - Property in the Margins

Andre van der Walt - The South African Law of Ownership

Karl Marx - Das Kapital

Friedrich Engels - The Principles of Communism

[caspien-see]

Guys my literal country is reblogging me what do I do 😰 /j

[aes-cheerleader]

Taking the bus to Pyongyang

Comrade Kim Goes Flying (2012)

[caspien-see]

Ah Guardian, how I hate you

[caspien-see]

I wanted to piggyback on @dushanbabe’s post regarding the the comprador bourgeoisie and its collaboration with the imperial core.

I recently posted about Fanon’s critique of the National Bourgeoisie - the bourgeois that allied with the colonial power, or gained their status once the colonial power receded. This works hand in hand with the core-periphery model popularised by Wallerstein and Dependency theory that came out of Latin America.

The core-periphery model operates like this:

The core refers to the imperial core - Western Europe and the US. The periphery refers to the rest of the world - the imperialised, colonised, or underdeveloped. This is Latin America, Africa, Asia, and arguably Eastern Europe.

The core and periphery interact through extraction, as capitalism requires constant expansion. The periphery is underdeveloped (or over exploited, as said by Parenti) through their economies never evolving past limited export of raw materials. The core thus gains its wealth through having access to these cheap raw materials, labour, and a monopoly on finished goods.

There are countries that lie somewhere in between these two - Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Spain, South Africa etc. They act as buffer zones. They are examples to point to and say ‘ look! It is possible for the periphery to become the core, for their economies to develop beyond neocolonial extraction.’

This is not the case. These buffer zones exist at the goodwill of the imperial core.

A nuance to have with this, however, is that the Core has a core and a periphery, and the Periphery has a core and a periphery.

The core of the Core is the bourgeois. They are the state, the business owners, and the titans of industry. Some would say that labour aristocracy falls into this too. The Core also has a periphery - historically marginalised groups like African Americans in the US, the Romani people in Europe, or any other group that has their access systemically limited. This is your proletariat. These are the people that must ally themselves with the Periphery.

The Periphery also has a core. They are the comprador bourgeois, the members of state, the nouveau-riche. They too are bourgeois, but they are subordinate to their Imperial core peers (see my previous post about Fanon and the national bourgeois). The Periphery then has a wider periphery - the hyper-exploited proletariat, or even peasant population. Independence from colonisation did not free them from exploitation, and this is why you see militant Marxists emerge from the periphery. They do the labour that allows the core to have gentle capitalism in the form of social democracy.

Where I disagree with the model below is that there is a harmony of interests between the two peripheries. Both must unite to form a global, working class movement. There is no sympathy for the capitalists of the periphery.

My apologies for the long post, but I think that this provides a more nuanced understanding of class. The bourgeois-proletariat model is global, but their natures differ slightly.

[caspien-see]

I think that all people should read Frantz Fanon, but I especially implore those of the imperial core to do so. You will not have an understanding of how class is structured without it.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon is scathing in his criticisms of the national bourgeois. They are capitalists that form part of the usually previously colonised population. They serve as intermediaries/subsidiaries to the imperial core.

For example, the global owner of McDonald’s is Richard Kempczinski (USA), but the previous franchise operator of all South African locations was our current president, Cyril Ramaphosa. He resigned as owner before his stint as president, but this illustrates that the national bourgeois and national government overlap.

Fanon describes this national bourgeoisie as a class uninterested in the development of their own country, instead placing their securities in western markets and spending their weekends in luxurious European capitals.

For Fanon, the national bourgeois are a greedy caste, get-rich-quick, content to accept dividends from the old colonial power, and incapable of inventiveness. They are 'not even the replica of Europe, but its caricature', and they conceal their mediocrity with cars and holidays on the Riviera.

The bourgeois across the world shares interests, but those of the imperial core are slightly different to those of the periphery. For a wholistic understanding of imperialism and neocolonialism, you must understand the relationship between capitalists of the first and third world.

(Edit: since this post garnered so much attention, I wanted to link my subsequent post regarding the core-periphery model. Neither are exhaustive, but this Fanon post does not fully explain the concept I wanted to convey)

Post by @caspien-see · 1 image

💬 0  🔁 9  ❤️ 21 · The core-periphery model operates like this: · I wanted to piggyback on @dushanbabe’s post regarding the the comprador bo

[songs-of-the-east]

Historical Solidarity between Socialist countries like Yugoslavia and Poland with decolonizing countries in Africa

In the early weeks of 1961, news broke that sent a jolt through much of the decolonizing world: Patrice Lumumba, the Republic of the Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister, had been executed. Lumumba had become a powerful symbol of African independence after he led Congo to liberation from Belgian colonial rule in June 1960. But his time in office was short lived. Just months into independence, he was deposed in a coup backed by internal rivals and western powers. Captured and handed over to secessionist forces in Katanga with the complicity of Belgian authorities, Lumumba was killed on January 17, 1961.

His death was met with outrage in Socialist nations. In Yugoslavia, anger exploded into the streets. In Belgrade, a crowd estimated at 150,000 gathered to condemn what they saw as a brutal act of neo-colonial interference. Chanting slogans and carrying placards that read “Glory to Lumumba; Death to Colonialism,” the protestors marched with growing intensity. Clashes with police erupted, culminating in the storming and looting of the Belgian embassy. The protests were not isolated to the capital, they spread to other cities as well, with Congolese students studying in Yugoslavia joining in. That same year, Belgrade’s new student dormitory was named in Lumumba’s honor.

Other Socialists countries experienced similar reactions. In Poland on February 14th, 1961, the Belgian embassy was met with riots, when around a thousand students (mostly from the Warsaw Polytechnic Institute), gathered outside and chanted slogans, denouncing Belgium as responsible for Lumumba’s death. Polish authorities, far from suppressing the unrest, appeared to welcome the public outrage. Government officials issued statements condemning Belgium, and state-run newspapers published fierce denunciations of “imperialists” and “colonial murderers.” While Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz even sent an official telegram of condolence to Congolese rebel leader Antoine Gizenga, recognizing him as the legitimate vice premier of the Congo. The night after that protestors stormed the embassy destroying it and covering Belgian officials with crimson paint.

Across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Lumumba’s assassination was not just seen as the silencing of a leader, but was also interpreted as an attack on the very idea of self-determination. His legacy ignited mass mobilizations, symbolic acts of remembrance, and a wave of anti-colonial solidarity.

[caspien-see]

I am echoing a similar post in saying this, but companies are responsible for a large part of colonisation. They acted on behalf of the crown, even if they were legally subordinate.

The following is a legal case that demonstrates this relationship, as well as the concepts of Terra nullius and Rex nullius being weaponised to expropriate land.

In re Southern Rhodesia 1919 AC11

The issue was regarding ownership of ‘unalienated land’ in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) after territory was conquered by the British South African Company. The territory was ruled by King Lobengula, infringed upon by the Company in 1890. Three years later, conflict broke out between the two groups.

When the matter was brought to court, the existing ownership of the land was seen to be ‘tribal’/‘communal’. The court believed that some tribes do not have concepts of right and duties, or other legal ideas of civilised society. According to them, the gulf between ‘civilised’ Europe and the ‘backwards’ tribes was too large to bridge. For this reason, the indigenous tribes were seen as incapable of owning land - not like the civilised, liberal men of Europe.

With this matter resolved, the court had to decide who owned the land: company, or crown. The case ruled in favour of the crown, but stated that chartered companies may conquer and administer the land on their behalf. Indigenous land systems received no legal protections.

The chartered company believed that they owned the land they took. However, they only possessed it as a subordinate entity to the British Crown. Indigenous rights, ownership, and even existence and full humans were barely considered in this case.

This case is indicative of many attitudes of the time, but there are a few I wish to highlight:

1. The hypocrisy of liberalism: ownership and even general human rights do not extend to those who are not deemed civilised, or even human. Because of this, the land is deemed empty.

2. The entitlement of colonial Europe: because land is ‘empty’, whoever encounters it first (company or crown) is able to incorporate it into their empire.

3. The use of legality to justify colonialism: liberalism will resort to overt violence if needed, but prefers to clean its hands and justify its actions with legality. The prestige of court proceedings create an air of legitimacy.

4. Eurocentrism: belief in European civilisation as opposed to African barbarity. Any system of governance except a European model of liberal democracy is illegitimate.

5. The collaboration of corporation and monarchy: colonisation is an extension of capitalism in its constant drive to acquire more resources and thus profit. Historic colonialism was a collaboration between the old aristocracy and the new bourgeois.

[tamamita]

[caspien-see]

‘Are there civil liberties for the fascists?’