redux

je ne suis pas marxiste

[edwad]

Join commie theory stuff etc • Community on Tumblr

idk man i just wanna banter about stuff. just don't be a dork

anyway join my virtual clubhouse. we're starting a cult

[edwad]

war eagle!

fuck you

[edwad]

What are the best books on ‘feudalism’ in your opinion? That is, books about the ‘feudal’ system itself assuming such a thing has a coherent definition or books on the intellectual history of the concept

the only thing i know how to do is gesture vaguely at susan reynolds and direct you to @notallmensheviks for any further questions

[edwad]

if anyone was wondering, saito's new "guide" to capital is incredibly lackluster and also is not a guide to capital lol

[edwad]

this would otherwise be a pretty uninteresting summary of newish approaches to marx over the last couple decades (there are better and more concise versions of this though lol) except that he also insists on squeezing out various takes such as:

1. marx was an anarchist communist after the paris commune (maximilien rubel redux)

2. marx's inability to theoretically resolve the urban-rural divide is why he never finished capital

3. "under capitalism, we are all part of the proletariat"

[edwad]

if anyone was wondering, saito's new "guide" to capital is incredibly lackluster and also is not a guide to capital lol

[edwad]

Reminding you we got phonebanking for Evan on Mondays and turnout calls to members on Tuesdays

i can't believe i'm being organized in my dms

[edwad]

just knocked 100 doors for evan. this person can stop sending me hatemail now

[edwad]

went to the bookstore today

[edwad]

Where do you stand on the issue of 1m1v?

opposed in general

[edwad]

Is the hamilton musical good?

i have never seen it but i am not optimistic

[edwad]

Do you still believe capital represents a unified concept? If so is it still a thing you oppose and seek to overcome? If not what motivates you to socialist activism and what do you believe opposes your efforts? If I gave you 20 bucks would you read Kant?

1. good question, i guess i carry a notion around in my head with me but not sure how well it holds up

2. yes still oppose it and don't think lack of steady concepts means my politics necessarily has to turn away from anti-capitalism. if it were just a matter of chasing concepts, i don't think liberalism necessarily has a better case per se. but i'd like to make the theoretical argument about that instead of flailing

3. i would probably read kant for $20

[edwad]

What do you think of ‘labor aristocracy’ theories in general and what do you think of the idea that nobody in the us (and the ‘imperial core’ in general) has an incentive to tear down capitalism because they all benefit from its exploitation of those in the global south?

i think it's undeniable that there is a risk for a bureaucratic layer to develop within unions and working class formations generally. i also think that countries like the united states are able to prop up terms of international trade which benefit them, and that there is a real history of capital exports in the interests of trying to capture an extra profit from unequal exchanges with relatively underdeveloped economies. i don't think the relationship between these elements finds its best explanation in a theory of the labor aristocracy.

if anything, i think it's pretty ironic that this sorta thing gets paraded as a radical marxist theory when generally the point is that revolutionary subjectivity is reducible to levels of income, independent of class and somehow immediately perceptible -- as if workers can feel when they're paid a single penny more or less than the value of their labor-power (exploitation here being converted into a kind of injustice) and make political decisions based on that. this definitely isn't the case in marx's analysis, so it can't simply be tacked on and treated as a mere extension of the classical analysis.

and to the extent that it attempts to explain why anti-capitalist sentiment among the working classes of the powerful counties declined in the 20th century (as if that had one primary economic cause), i'm not sure how an advocate of such a theory would be able to account for the re-emergence of a socialist movement in these countries (or even their continued existence, in whatever weakened form). i think history and subjectivity are a bit more complicated than that.

[robertreich]

Big Money is the root of our political dysfunction.

[edwad]

Big Money

[edwad]

i got my old twitter account back by complaining about woke dei activists silencing me

[edwad]

My prediction for the new stage of marxist discourse is that marx actually didnt care about labour or value at all but rather he had a "Theory Theory of Theory" theory where he was actually theorirising the theories behind the theorirising of theory

literally so true besty

[edwad]

Ik "dialectics is when two things" is a meme but I fail to see how that's not just how it's been used throughout the history of marxism lol

well the meme certainly comes from somewhere!

[edwad]

🤨

[edwad]

i guess i have to clarify that my point is that it's bad that poor people are often systematically left out of the political process. this isn't to say that they are incapable of being political. that is in fact what i am suggesting we ought to work on, so pointing to instances where poor people have done political work is sorta beside the point

[edwad]

i'll also say, as far as politics as usual goes, when people are conducting polls and trying to collect data for campaign purposes, they're often targeting triple prime voters which are generally older and middle class. these are people who have the free time, money, and energy to commit to politics of some sort. sure, they might be the kind who write pathetic letters to their representatives and nothing more, but these are the people who are sought out for political mobilization because they are the most outwardly mobilized, whether we like what they're doing or not.

one of the things which was actually surprising about zohran is that he engaged new yorkers outside of the usual political process and built up/transformed the electorate rather than merely convincing existing voters. this made national headlines because it was a deviation from what politics usually looks like in the united states. this was surprising because, practically, it has not made any political sense to strategically orient toward people who didn't vote, who weren't of a certain age, etc. so when i'm saying these kinds of things, i'm saying it with a very real history and practice in mind which we, as communists, should be trying to change