Bonus points for implying Parenti is one too.
Another one:
Summarises it better than I could. I used to watch him, along with other content creators, but it’s been a while so don’t remember exact examples. The above hits the nail on the head when it comes to the overarching issue.
The fact Hakim promotes Parenti, if I remember correctly, is one sign of his liberalism. The fact he runs a sub like r/TheDeprogram which is one in a long line of western petit bourgeois leftist meme subs (succeeding MoreTankieChapo and GenZedong) and the fact many of his podcast’s followers there are Dengists is another sign of his liberalism.
The fact he has a (fairly successful) YouTube channel where he makes relatively short, relatively shallow, “snappy” videos, as well as a podcast, is a clear sign of the petit bourgeois nature of the commodity production (“content creation”) he’s engaged in. And I think the fact he has a fairly successful Patreon from which he funds his own survival + the continuation of his petit bourgeois commodity production pretty much by definition makes him a fairly successful petit bourgeois. And the fact it is his political propaganda which directly affords him this class status is problematic to say the least.
E: Please keep in mind that me as well as many others are deriving this stuff from personal as well as collectively experiences and observations. I’m not just randomly thinking oh he’s petit bourgeois so fuck him. I personally spent years consuming leftist content on YouTube and the like and did not learn shit about the philosophy and theory of Marxism or the history of communism. I had a very superficial understanding of things despite spending years watching this stuff and it showed when I started engaging with the sub we’re on right now since people here actually have a more in depth understanding of Marxism. I’ve basically had to start over which is what I’m doing now, I’ve tried to put away all I think I know and started studying Marxist texts, starting from the basics, a few months ago. This is my own personal experience but if you talk to other people here you’ll find it’s not unique at all. Leftist content is legitimately not a good way to learn Marxism, at best if it somehow manages to be devoid of liberalism it’s just an entertaining thing to do in your free time, but even then there’s so little leftist content that is actually revolutionary, exactly for the reasons I described above, that leftist content creators work within the framework and by the rules of petit bourgeois production in the industry of content creation. They are by default driven to produce content that will appeal to western petit bourgeoisie and labor aristocrats since those are the people who consume things like YouTube and podcasts the most. If your concern is to just consume leftist whatever then okay, keep watching it. But if you want to become a Marxist and an actual communist, i.e. the vanguard of the global proletariat, you’ll have to do better than that.
reduced access to treats = life is harder
“consuming content” … libs just can’t get over that hump of “im a good little consumer”
BTW, that totally equal redistribution of wealth wouldn’t benefit workers in the imperial core only holds true for a small number of countries (Canada and the Nordic countries being the main example). In places like the US, the UK or Germany, wealth distribution within the country is so unequal that many, many people would profit signicificantly from an equal global distribution of wealth - not as much as somebody in the Global South, but it would still easily mean a doubling or more of the average Amerikan’s income.
Also important to point out that communism doesn’t just mean redistribution of wealth, it means taking political power. If the redistribution of wealth happens to harm some workers, a dictatorship of the proletariat is more fit to aid them and relieve those new contradictions as opposed to a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which would only elevate wealth disparity to profit off of need.
Hi, Canadian here. Equal redistribution of wealth would greatly benefit the vast majority of people here too. Workers are getting fucking crushed here. Our ‘free healthcare’ we used to pride ourselves so much on is falling apart. Infrastructure is crumbling. The average worker here’s life is getting worse and worse. The only people it wouldn’t immediately materially benefit is a small number of tech fuckers (like me). And tbh that’s only from a certain perspective. If we got thing’s like Cuba’s medical system reforms out of a revolution here, it would even benefit the techno-labor-aristocracy.
Thinking that petit bourgeoisie is bad by default is a big problem on the left
Yeah, it’s an unpopular opinion, but my default opinion about small business owners is “okay” compared to large chains and corporations where it’s “damn, the owners deserve to get shot.” There’s more nuance to it
I personally disagree with this, obviously the scale of the harm they create is way higher for large corporations, but small business tyrants are some of the most cartoonishly evil people. Even more so for ‘mom and pop’ landlords, I’ve had way better experiences renting from a corp than when I’ve had an actual landlord
This is still just liberal moralizing, the thread (and this site in general) is full of it.
Marxist class analysis isn’t about good or bad, it’s about material interests and revolutionary potential.
Check out Mao’s analysis of the classes in China
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_1.htm
