Substack wouldn’t let me post a reply unless I created a profile....I’ve talked at length with [a comrade] about the 2020 endorsement and have listened to and I believe understand what BA had to say.
I was responding — getting defensive? — to what I thought was a dismissal of Hamas. It’s not that I’m all in on anything they are doing or have done, but I’m not able to condemn Hamas. My reasoning is not original.
You’ve probably heard Finkelstein and others refuse to condemn Hamas then explain what happened during the Return March, or talking about Nat Turner & John Brown; or Finkelstein saying that he might have done the same had he been through what the Palestinians in Hamas have been through.
I’ve heard others — Rania Khalek among them — refuse to condemn Hamas by asking, “What do you expect when you hold a music festival outside a concentration camp on stolen land?”
I don’t have a lot of confidence in the validity of that position, but I’ve taken it.
Know that I support you and the Revcoms, and also know that much more is needed than my contributions and efforts.
Response: I believe strongly in the right of physical resistance to Israel's judeo-fascist apartheid and occupation state, of course. I'm an atheist and a revolutionary communist in basic hard thought-out orientation so of course I am not going to spare an Islamo-fundamentalist group (long sponsored by Netanyahu BTW) with profoundly reactionary ideas on numerous matters (gender relations for starters) and a terror operation from criticism just because Hamas resists a horrific racist state that is a tool of the sick US Empire. We must not confuse revenge with revolutionary politics and we must always be careful of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking. I am not going to hold back on criticizing the capitalist-imperialist and fascism-spreading Putin regime simply because it is an opponent/official enemy of US led imperialism in Eastern Europe. Same on the horrific state-capitalist regime in post-Mao counterrevolutionary China. The people of the Middle East need socialist liberation/revolution and none of the leading antagonists in the current conflagration represent a force for that, obviously. Western/US imperialism and Islamo-fundamentalism (what Avakian calls the "two outmodeds") are bound up with each other in mutually reinforcing ways. That the resistance has fallen to forces like Hamas is a tragedy. That Islamo-fundamentalism rather than communism (or at least secular leftish nationalism) led the Iranian Revolution was a tragic and fateful turn. Many of the activists I spoke with in Union Park made a very misleading analogy between Hamas and the Vietnamese resistance of the 1960s and 1970s. It was quite appropriate for US leftists to unambiguously say "Victory to the National Liberation Front" (even if the NLF was infected by a heavy dose of nationalism instead of proletarian internationalism) in that time. It's something else altogether to say "Victory to Hamas" and Hezbollah and the women-crushing/-killing theocratic regime in Teheran. Chicago's "Marxist" (old time CPUSA turned Freedom Road, ugh) leader Frank Chapman told a group last spring that the Palestinians are "winning" a great "revolution" under Hamas since October 7. That is sheer madness. Ask ordinary Gazans, 90 percent of whom have been displaced, if they share that sentiment as they see their families buried in rubble and coping with disease and famine. There's a huge lack of objective, scientific, evidence based thinking on the "left" that showed up in Chicago. Very good on moral opposition to genocide, of course, but that seems a pretty low bar, no? Also, when you get serious about it historically, Finkelstein's analogy gets fairly weak imho. I get the parallels but they seem overwhelmed by the differences.
I would think that China would need and desire a strong military faced with likely possibility of war with the most so called lethal killing machine of the USA. The problem of Capitalism yes but I understand it's both state and private there. Anyway I'm not wise about trading and capitalism facts but at least the Chinese aren't making war all over the globe and calling it bringing democracy. Especially as America is prodding and poking them to bring about a war. And doing the same thing in Russia. Which of the three countries do you think is the absolute worst criminal enterprise in the world? How am I getting this wrong?
Yes, of course the US Empire is the biggest most lethal killer on Earth. That's why I wrote my brilliant and heralded essay "The World Will Nor Mourn the Decline of US Hegemony" along with my many other stunning critiques of US imperialism :) What in my opinion you may be getting wrong is perhaps falling somewhat into "the enemy is my enemy is my friend" thinking. To ask "which of the three countries so you think is the absolute worst criminal enterprise" is to me a statement of Lesser Evilism. I don't think we should fall for Lesser Evil-ism with regard to capitalist-imperialist exploitation and oppression states/superpowers (or sub-superpowers [Russia...China is becoming a full blown superpower) anymore than we should with our domestic politics. And then there is just a question of objective truth, scientific fact. Calling contemporary virulently post-Mao China "socialist" is just factually absurd. In any event, revolutionary communists want people's socialist revolutions in the US, in China, in Russia, in Europe, in Africa and want you to know that a more multi-polar world capitalist system is no solution to humanity's dire situation under the rule of capital and imperialists. I'll add that when a state goes capitalist it goes imperialist...capitalism requires expansion.
I don’t disagree with you in principle but don’t you think that the world would be far more dangerous if there was no opposition to America’s ruthless plunder? I have no doubt that the other two countries are just as bad, but I don’t see where they’re doing as much damage as “we” are.
China is already viciously imperialistic, exploiting other countries, especially in Africa, with their incredible mineral wealth. The question of which country is more aggressive militarily, I think, has less to do with their nature, in a static sense, than with their position in the global competition at a particular time. The US has had decades more time to become entrenched in many regions, and thus has committed far more crimes and oppressed, exploited, and murdered literally hundreds of millions if not billions of people.
China, after 1949 was engaged in building socialism and even aiding revolutions in other countries. Now a capitalist economic powerhouse, They are expanding economically and the US is reacting desperately with both economic and military threats.
How can you complain about China! As if the USA hasn’t tried for more than a few decades to rob and rule that great country. Thank G-d for China and Russia opposing the most infamous and truly dangerous country in the world! furthermore as Smedley Butler said;”War Is A Racket”!
Thanks, I have started to develop a little sub-hobby of trying to differentiate the different self-proclaimed Marxist groups in terms of line and history and genealogy. That is very useful.
I think two out dated ideologies written by YT men in the 1800’s is not the answer.
Something has to change but the answer is not capitalism or communism.
We need a resource based economy that takes into account what resources each region of world has and how we can live harmoniously within that ecosystem.
What "two ideologies written by YT men in the 1800s"? What is a "YT man"? You think Marxist historical materialism is an "ideology"? If so, wrong: it's a scientific paradigm for understanding history and guiding revolutionary action. This is very much worth a read: Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx
Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883 On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.
Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts (1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.
Reading this has caused me to regret not having studied Marx's ideas when I was younger. I'm trying to catch up and share your appreciation for his great achievements.
Both systems seem to be working great so far, just look at the state of world.
All this dogmatic belief in some dead YT man’s words written over 100 years ago is not gonna do shit! Shift the paradigm friend, there has to be something better.
A pod cast about Marx’s, Lenny or Mao, won’t change anything and you know that. You derailing the people on the streets over an argument about “theory” is counter revolutionary.
Both parties in the United States are criminal enterprises, we all know that. We all know this is not 1968 just like we all know it’s the 1800’s and your god Marx’s is dead.
Again you have reading to do. You need to dig into Avakian. He's no slouch. Has big/major critiques of Lenin, Mao and even Marx. Oh wait, the YT thing. LOL. Sorry, wrong pigment and chromosomes! My bad! You of course have no idea what I'm talking about and I'd put money on it that you never will because your identitarian world view cancels in advance the notion of consulting serious intellectual work by YTs... you know old and/or dead YTs like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Chomsky, Avakian (hey come on, Mao was Chinese). YTs don't ya know!!. Cancel their lectures now --- it's YT Speak! In all seriousness you are revealing a disastrous and destructive (I might even say despicable) epistemology (what in postmodern academia is moronically heralded as "standpoint epistemology") . The thought process you are revealing here is poisoned by what the Recvoms rightly call Woke Lunacy. It's just the other side of the coin of the white nationalist neofascism -- the same violent anti-scientific BS in some key ways. "Both systems seems seem to be working great" is of course absurd since revolutionary socialism is not a system in place to any seriously significant degree anywhere in the world system - this has been the case since 1976. The snark about "your god Marx" is despicable. I have no "god," merely a great respect for science harnessed to the cause of human emancipation from all oppression. Historical materialism is a still valid and relevant paradigm to say the least; having never really dug into it, you don't know why that's the case. Watch this and look honestly for yourself is what is being properly criticized here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxmPCiy90z4
1. Oh, I see YT is slang for white. So your mind is mired in the noxious and destructive, sleepy-woke swamp of identitarian Cancel Culture, which channels and advances a deeply authoritarian and in fact violence-promoting epistemology. Shameful! . 2. You call a scientific paradigm and revolutionary analysis an "ideology" (projection?). Absurd. 3. Your reference to the 1800s shows that you know nothing about subsequent developments in communist/Marxist thought and writing including both the old communism and the new communism forged by Avakian. Ignorant! (Yes, I see your eyes rolling....ten to one they';ll never roll on to the actual texts you'd need to spend time with to correct this.) 4. The harmony between humanity and ecology you rightly seek will of course never happen under capitalism --- that is a basic fact at the intersection of natural and social science. You may well know that. The problem here is that you cannot comprehend a revolutionary socialist state that prioritizes livable ecology. I can. Go to pp. 21-22 of Avakian's Draft Constitution for a Socialist Republic of North America: https://revcom.us/sites/default/files/socialistconstitution/SocialistConstitution-en.pdf
The protests were united on at least one critical point and, as you observed, maybe both united and separated on several other not so relevant or useful points. But the important point of unity: arms embargo — stop sending bombs and cash to Israel; stop funding genocide.
I didn’t see anyone from the SEP. I’ve read that they’re organizing rank and file committees in work places misrepresented by the UAW. They’re attempting much more. They have presented credible legal challenges to the most recent election of Shawn Fein. As you mentioned, their wsws.org site is an excellent news source. They repeat the working class line often, but I won’t make that a point of contention any more than I’d make Avakian saying, “It’s a scientific fact we don’t have to live this way” over and over again when it is a fact that we HAVE been living this way and the past can’t be changed.
I don’t know wtf I would have done if I was born into Palestine, but Hamas is fighting the decades long apartheid and ethnic cleansing that Zionists have always wanted. I can’t imagine living in it.
Revcoms can justify voting Biden in 2020, but can’t bring themselves to offer some greater understanding to fighters of apartheid and genocide in Gaza?
You mentioned chants you didn’t like. One I like, though I didn’t hear it Monday: Yemen, Yemen make us proud. Turn another ship around.
Yes, excellent observations on the police control of the marches and separation at the DNC and contrasting to 1968.
Bob, you can't comment here anymore? Not sure why if that's the case...I have done some comradely struggling with you here but consider you a friend and ally and would never block you.! Maybe some weird function in Substack kicked in...it's a mystery to me.
Have you read the Avakian dispatches on the unique circumstances behind the distinctly secondary 2020 voting advice on stopping a second Trump administration after folks failed to remove the fascist POTUS the right way (through mass action) -- a position that involved zero stand down from revolutionary action? And the dispatches on how and why voting Dem is not recommended this time? It's all on Substack for free in Bob Avakian Official. He goes in great detail into the specificity of 2020 and what's quite different in 2024-25. Did you want a second Trump term with full consolidation of fascism and us now looking at a third Trump term, very possibly without even the fig leaf of an election? Seriously? :) As for your "greater understanding of fighters of apartheid and genocide in Gaza" line, I have no idea what that is about. There's zero lack of understanding in that regard among Revcoms. What's not understood?! Of course the Revcoms are steadfast in their opposition to US imperialism and the US-Israel genocide in Gaza and back popular and mass resistance to apartheid and genocide. So basically you are telling the Revcoms to STFU when it comes to Islamo-fundamentalism. Have you read Avakian and the Revcoms on "the two outmodeds" that are bound up with each other - US imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism? Have you followed Alan Goodman's writing on Gaza, Israel, the US Empire and Hamas? Are you aware of Bibi's sponsorship of Hamas? Have you researched Hamas's world view? How do you evaluate the religious theocracy atop Iran? Do you think Hamas is a force for human emancipation? Do you think having any public criticism of Hamas means aligning with US imperialism and its pit bull Israel? (it doesn't) Have you read Avakian's critique of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking? I talked at length to an SEP guy. Nice guy. I get good stuff from the WSWS sometimes. How on Earth do you think the fact we have been living under capitalism-imperialism in the past and present invalidates the observation that we don't have to live under capitalism-imperialism in the future?! WTF. It's a basic scientific fact that we could rise up and radically replace capitalism with socialism and it's an even more scientific fact that we are fucked if we don't. And if we are going to get serious about revolution, we need you and others to dig seriously into Avakian's rich critique of the ridiculous and bizarre reification of "the" rich nation working class/proletariat and labor movement and of the constant incantations of class struggle spoken and written as if that's all the revolutionary Marxist paradigm is about. I'll go find the relevant dispatches on 2020 and 2024 and put them below.
Have you any word on what looks like Counterpunch was hacked again? Looks like the Idf has a posse, just considering the timing coinciding with Chicago. If sociopathy is spreading, we once a weekly can tentatively mark its appearance, harder when you paint a mansion, but soon I will be free to restart believing the bastards when they say 'buying a new car!'.
I hope not. There a lot of subscribers who may be in contact with other dissenters in this terrible lost and dangerous world of today who’s was undermined primarily by the USA f
False alarm. But per the comments, Armand seems unaware of the farming successes in Cuba and the current state of medicine there. A people who stand to break even versus our realistic enemies stress, reactivity, and you name it: envy the constant humming fuel for envy, if not for U.S diplomacy.
Really communism is an end goal of revolutionary socialism. It is simply an era without the exploitation of one part of humanity by another part of humanity. Under communism there is no need for a coercive state. It's the opposite of "totalitarian." The opposite. "Primitive communism" certainly exceeded 100-200 people in many bases if I remember my anthropology classes (LOL). Revolutionary socialism is of course hardly the end of class or of state power/coercion but it transforms and moves humanity past the literally (as well as figuratively) cancerous capitalist mode of production and brings a measure of popular sovereignty and general decency that leaves bourgeois democracy/capitalist class dictatorship in the dust. It is routinely called "dystopian," "authoritarian," and "totalitarian" by petit-bourgeois scribblers and scaredy cats (LOL) and reactionaries but if you want to see real dystopia and authoritarianism and Hell on Earth just look at the capitalism-imperialism is cooking up for humanity and other living things!!!
Astute points, esp.:
- how neo-liberalism dominates both parties, even though one is now full-fascist.
- the 2024 DNC was NOT the same as 1968
- the people united CAN be defeated
This from Robert Kolkebeck:
Substack wouldn’t let me post a reply unless I created a profile....I’ve talked at length with [a comrade] about the 2020 endorsement and have listened to and I believe understand what BA had to say.
I was responding — getting defensive? — to what I thought was a dismissal of Hamas. It’s not that I’m all in on anything they are doing or have done, but I’m not able to condemn Hamas. My reasoning is not original.
You’ve probably heard Finkelstein and others refuse to condemn Hamas then explain what happened during the Return March, or talking about Nat Turner & John Brown; or Finkelstein saying that he might have done the same had he been through what the Palestinians in Hamas have been through.
I’ve heard others — Rania Khalek among them — refuse to condemn Hamas by asking, “What do you expect when you hold a music festival outside a concentration camp on stolen land?”
I don’t have a lot of confidence in the validity of that position, but I’ve taken it.
Know that I support you and the Revcoms, and also know that much more is needed than my contributions and efforts.
Response: I believe strongly in the right of physical resistance to Israel's judeo-fascist apartheid and occupation state, of course. I'm an atheist and a revolutionary communist in basic hard thought-out orientation so of course I am not going to spare an Islamo-fundamentalist group (long sponsored by Netanyahu BTW) with profoundly reactionary ideas on numerous matters (gender relations for starters) and a terror operation from criticism just because Hamas resists a horrific racist state that is a tool of the sick US Empire. We must not confuse revenge with revolutionary politics and we must always be careful of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking. I am not going to hold back on criticizing the capitalist-imperialist and fascism-spreading Putin regime simply because it is an opponent/official enemy of US led imperialism in Eastern Europe. Same on the horrific state-capitalist regime in post-Mao counterrevolutionary China. The people of the Middle East need socialist liberation/revolution and none of the leading antagonists in the current conflagration represent a force for that, obviously. Western/US imperialism and Islamo-fundamentalism (what Avakian calls the "two outmodeds") are bound up with each other in mutually reinforcing ways. That the resistance has fallen to forces like Hamas is a tragedy. That Islamo-fundamentalism rather than communism (or at least secular leftish nationalism) led the Iranian Revolution was a tragic and fateful turn. Many of the activists I spoke with in Union Park made a very misleading analogy between Hamas and the Vietnamese resistance of the 1960s and 1970s. It was quite appropriate for US leftists to unambiguously say "Victory to the National Liberation Front" (even if the NLF was infected by a heavy dose of nationalism instead of proletarian internationalism) in that time. It's something else altogether to say "Victory to Hamas" and Hezbollah and the women-crushing/-killing theocratic regime in Teheran. Chicago's "Marxist" (old time CPUSA turned Freedom Road, ugh) leader Frank Chapman told a group last spring that the Palestinians are "winning" a great "revolution" under Hamas since October 7. That is sheer madness. Ask ordinary Gazans, 90 percent of whom have been displaced, if they share that sentiment as they see their families buried in rubble and coping with disease and famine. There's a huge lack of objective, scientific, evidence based thinking on the "left" that showed up in Chicago. Very good on moral opposition to genocide, of course, but that seems a pretty low bar, no? Also, when you get serious about it historically, Finkelstein's analogy gets fairly weak imho. I get the parallels but they seem overwhelmed by the differences.
Bob I have NOT blocked you and never would!
If you are having issues commenting on my Substack page let’s try to fix it. I have no idea what might have happened.
I would think that China would need and desire a strong military faced with likely possibility of war with the most so called lethal killing machine of the USA. The problem of Capitalism yes but I understand it's both state and private there. Anyway I'm not wise about trading and capitalism facts but at least the Chinese aren't making war all over the globe and calling it bringing democracy. Especially as America is prodding and poking them to bring about a war. And doing the same thing in Russia. Which of the three countries do you think is the absolute worst criminal enterprise in the world? How am I getting this wrong?
Yes, of course the US Empire is the biggest most lethal killer on Earth. That's why I wrote my brilliant and heralded essay "The World Will Nor Mourn the Decline of US Hegemony" along with my many other stunning critiques of US imperialism :) What in my opinion you may be getting wrong is perhaps falling somewhat into "the enemy is my enemy is my friend" thinking. To ask "which of the three countries so you think is the absolute worst criminal enterprise" is to me a statement of Lesser Evilism. I don't think we should fall for Lesser Evil-ism with regard to capitalist-imperialist exploitation and oppression states/superpowers (or sub-superpowers [Russia...China is becoming a full blown superpower) anymore than we should with our domestic politics. And then there is just a question of objective truth, scientific fact. Calling contemporary virulently post-Mao China "socialist" is just factually absurd. In any event, revolutionary communists want people's socialist revolutions in the US, in China, in Russia, in Europe, in Africa and want you to know that a more multi-polar world capitalist system is no solution to humanity's dire situation under the rule of capital and imperialists. I'll add that when a state goes capitalist it goes imperialist...capitalism requires expansion.
I don’t disagree with you in principle but don’t you think that the world would be far more dangerous if there was no opposition to America’s ruthless plunder? I have no doubt that the other two countries are just as bad, but I don’t see where they’re doing as much damage as “we” are.
China is already viciously imperialistic, exploiting other countries, especially in Africa, with their incredible mineral wealth. The question of which country is more aggressive militarily, I think, has less to do with their nature, in a static sense, than with their position in the global competition at a particular time. The US has had decades more time to become entrenched in many regions, and thus has committed far more crimes and oppressed, exploited, and murdered literally hundreds of millions if not billions of people.
China, after 1949 was engaged in building socialism and even aiding revolutions in other countries. Now a capitalist economic powerhouse, They are expanding economically and the US is reacting desperately with both economic and military threats.
How can you complain about China! As if the USA hasn’t tried for more than a few decades to rob and rule that great country. Thank G-d for China and Russia opposing the most infamous and truly dangerous country in the world! furthermore as Smedley Butler said;”War Is A Racket”!
Thank you Paul. I needed your restating that/this truth.
The Freedom Road line on China: https://frso.org/main-documents/looking-back-at-tiananmen-square-the-defeat-of-counter-revolution-in-china/
Note a couple paragraphs into the intro they do the class truth thing. In the main piece they flat out denounce the cultural revolution...
Thanks, I have started to develop a little sub-hobby of trying to differentiate the different self-proclaimed Marxist groups in terms of line and history and genealogy. That is very useful.
There's also Liberation Road, formerly FRSO Left Re Foundation: https://roadtoliberation.org/about-us/faqs-frso/
They're into intersectional identity politics basically.
I think two out dated ideologies written by YT men in the 1800’s is not the answer.
Something has to change but the answer is not capitalism or communism.
We need a resource based economy that takes into account what resources each region of world has and how we can live harmoniously within that ecosystem.
What "two ideologies written by YT men in the 1800s"? What is a "YT man"? You think Marxist historical materialism is an "ideology"? If so, wrong: it's a scientific paradigm for understanding history and guiding revolutionary action. This is very much worth a read: Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx
Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883 On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.
Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts (1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.
Reading this has caused me to regret not having studied Marx's ideas when I was younger. I'm trying to catch up and share your appreciation for his great achievements.
This book was a big deal to me when I was first getting introduced to Marxism: https://www.amazon.com/Age-Revolution-1789-1848-Eric-Hobsbawm/dp/0679772537
Also Arnold Kettle's beautiful analyses of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Dickens' Oliver Twist in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-English-Novel-Vols-Routledge/dp/1138954314
Both systems seem to be working great so far, just look at the state of world.
All this dogmatic belief in some dead YT man’s words written over 100 years ago is not gonna do shit! Shift the paradigm friend, there has to be something better.
A pod cast about Marx’s, Lenny or Mao, won’t change anything and you know that. You derailing the people on the streets over an argument about “theory” is counter revolutionary.
Both parties in the United States are criminal enterprises, we all know that. We all know this is not 1968 just like we all know it’s the 1800’s and your god Marx’s is dead.
The Venus Project!
Again you have reading to do. You need to dig into Avakian. He's no slouch. Has big/major critiques of Lenin, Mao and even Marx. Oh wait, the YT thing. LOL. Sorry, wrong pigment and chromosomes! My bad! You of course have no idea what I'm talking about and I'd put money on it that you never will because your identitarian world view cancels in advance the notion of consulting serious intellectual work by YTs... you know old and/or dead YTs like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Chomsky, Avakian (hey come on, Mao was Chinese). YTs don't ya know!!. Cancel their lectures now --- it's YT Speak! In all seriousness you are revealing a disastrous and destructive (I might even say despicable) epistemology (what in postmodern academia is moronically heralded as "standpoint epistemology") . The thought process you are revealing here is poisoned by what the Recvoms rightly call Woke Lunacy. It's just the other side of the coin of the white nationalist neofascism -- the same violent anti-scientific BS in some key ways. "Both systems seems seem to be working great" is of course absurd since revolutionary socialism is not a system in place to any seriously significant degree anywhere in the world system - this has been the case since 1976. The snark about "your god Marx" is despicable. I have no "god," merely a great respect for science harnessed to the cause of human emancipation from all oppression. Historical materialism is a still valid and relevant paradigm to say the least; having never really dug into it, you don't know why that's the case. Watch this and look honestly for yourself is what is being properly criticized here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxmPCiy90z4
1. Oh, I see YT is slang for white. So your mind is mired in the noxious and destructive, sleepy-woke swamp of identitarian Cancel Culture, which channels and advances a deeply authoritarian and in fact violence-promoting epistemology. Shameful! . 2. You call a scientific paradigm and revolutionary analysis an "ideology" (projection?). Absurd. 3. Your reference to the 1800s shows that you know nothing about subsequent developments in communist/Marxist thought and writing including both the old communism and the new communism forged by Avakian. Ignorant! (Yes, I see your eyes rolling....ten to one they';ll never roll on to the actual texts you'd need to spend time with to correct this.) 4. The harmony between humanity and ecology you rightly seek will of course never happen under capitalism --- that is a basic fact at the intersection of natural and social science. You may well know that. The problem here is that you cannot comprehend a revolutionary socialist state that prioritizes livable ecology. I can. Go to pp. 21-22 of Avakian's Draft Constitution for a Socialist Republic of North America: https://revcom.us/sites/default/files/socialistconstitution/SocialistConstitution-en.pdf
The protests were united on at least one critical point and, as you observed, maybe both united and separated on several other not so relevant or useful points. But the important point of unity: arms embargo — stop sending bombs and cash to Israel; stop funding genocide.
I didn’t see anyone from the SEP. I’ve read that they’re organizing rank and file committees in work places misrepresented by the UAW. They’re attempting much more. They have presented credible legal challenges to the most recent election of Shawn Fein. As you mentioned, their wsws.org site is an excellent news source. They repeat the working class line often, but I won’t make that a point of contention any more than I’d make Avakian saying, “It’s a scientific fact we don’t have to live this way” over and over again when it is a fact that we HAVE been living this way and the past can’t be changed.
I don’t know wtf I would have done if I was born into Palestine, but Hamas is fighting the decades long apartheid and ethnic cleansing that Zionists have always wanted. I can’t imagine living in it.
Revcoms can justify voting Biden in 2020, but can’t bring themselves to offer some greater understanding to fighters of apartheid and genocide in Gaza?
You mentioned chants you didn’t like. One I like, though I didn’t hear it Monday: Yemen, Yemen make us proud. Turn another ship around.
Yes, excellent observations on the police control of the marches and separation at the DNC and contrasting to 1968.
Bob, you can't comment here anymore? Not sure why if that's the case...I have done some comradely struggling with you here but consider you a friend and ally and would never block you.! Maybe some weird function in Substack kicked in...it's a mystery to me.
Have you read the Avakian dispatches on the unique circumstances behind the distinctly secondary 2020 voting advice on stopping a second Trump administration after folks failed to remove the fascist POTUS the right way (through mass action) -- a position that involved zero stand down from revolutionary action? And the dispatches on how and why voting Dem is not recommended this time? It's all on Substack for free in Bob Avakian Official. He goes in great detail into the specificity of 2020 and what's quite different in 2024-25. Did you want a second Trump term with full consolidation of fascism and us now looking at a third Trump term, very possibly without even the fig leaf of an election? Seriously? :) As for your "greater understanding of fighters of apartheid and genocide in Gaza" line, I have no idea what that is about. There's zero lack of understanding in that regard among Revcoms. What's not understood?! Of course the Revcoms are steadfast in their opposition to US imperialism and the US-Israel genocide in Gaza and back popular and mass resistance to apartheid and genocide. So basically you are telling the Revcoms to STFU when it comes to Islamo-fundamentalism. Have you read Avakian and the Revcoms on "the two outmodeds" that are bound up with each other - US imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism? Have you followed Alan Goodman's writing on Gaza, Israel, the US Empire and Hamas? Are you aware of Bibi's sponsorship of Hamas? Have you researched Hamas's world view? How do you evaluate the religious theocracy atop Iran? Do you think Hamas is a force for human emancipation? Do you think having any public criticism of Hamas means aligning with US imperialism and its pit bull Israel? (it doesn't) Have you read Avakian's critique of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking? I talked at length to an SEP guy. Nice guy. I get good stuff from the WSWS sometimes. How on Earth do you think the fact we have been living under capitalism-imperialism in the past and present invalidates the observation that we don't have to live under capitalism-imperialism in the future?! WTF. It's a basic scientific fact that we could rise up and radically replace capitalism with socialism and it's an even more scientific fact that we are fucked if we don't. And if we are going to get serious about revolution, we need you and others to dig seriously into Avakian's rich critique of the ridiculous and bizarre reification of "the" rich nation working class/proletariat and labor movement and of the constant incantations of class struggle spoken and written as if that's all the revolutionary Marxist paradigm is about. I'll go find the relevant dispatches on 2020 and 2024 and put them below.
https://bobavakianofficial.substack.com/p/revolution-53
https://bobavakianofficial.substack.com/p/revolution-54
https://bobavakianofficial.substack.com/p/why-it-was-necessary-to-vote-for
https://bobavakianofficial.substack.com/p/revolution-63
https://bobavakianofficial.substack.com/p/revolution-64
Perception is reality. As we can see, the tragically dumb may be a little off.
Have you any word on what looks like Counterpunch was hacked again? Looks like the Idf has a posse, just considering the timing coinciding with Chicago. If sociopathy is spreading, we once a weekly can tentatively mark its appearance, harder when you paint a mansion, but soon I will be free to restart believing the bastards when they say 'buying a new car!'.
CPunch was hacked? I'll have to check that out :)
I hope not. There a lot of subscribers who may be in contact with other dissenters in this terrible lost and dangerous world of today who’s was undermined primarily by the USA f
False alarm. But per the comments, Armand seems unaware of the farming successes in Cuba and the current state of medicine there. A people who stand to break even versus our realistic enemies stress, reactivity, and you name it: envy the constant humming fuel for envy, if not for U.S diplomacy.
How do you know this?
Although there are self-proclaimed communist governments there are presently no communist countries ie. classless and/or private property-less
Really communism is an end goal of revolutionary socialism. It is simply an era without the exploitation of one part of humanity by another part of humanity. Under communism there is no need for a coercive state. It's the opposite of "totalitarian." The opposite. "Primitive communism" certainly exceeded 100-200 people in many bases if I remember my anthropology classes (LOL). Revolutionary socialism is of course hardly the end of class or of state power/coercion but it transforms and moves humanity past the literally (as well as figuratively) cancerous capitalist mode of production and brings a measure of popular sovereignty and general decency that leaves bourgeois democracy/capitalist class dictatorship in the dust. It is routinely called "dystopian," "authoritarian," and "totalitarian" by petit-bourgeois scribblers and scaredy cats (LOL) and reactionaries but if you want to see real dystopia and authoritarianism and Hell on Earth just look at the capitalism-imperialism is cooking up for humanity and other living things!!!