star_wraith [he/him]
Me when I’m talking about Stalin on hexbear: “Stalin did a lot of good but I really think it’s important to balance that against the cadres like Bukharin who were unjustly killed in the purges or how industrialization could have been achieved in less brutal ways. And don’t get me started on how some of the economic decision making under Stalin lead to a lot of problems with economic planning later on down the line!”
Me when literally anyone else tries to shit on Stalin:
Edit: in that thread I noticed how those libs just use “Stalin” and “USSR” interchangeably. The propaganda works so damn well. The US was able to convince people that the extraordinary circumstances the USSR faced under Stalin and during and immediately after WW2 (when conditions in the gulags were admittedly horrific but so were the conditions for most Soviet citizens during the war, especially for the 20-25% of the population that lost their lives thanks to the fucking Nazis) was the norm from 1917 to 1991. Even the most ardently anti-Stalinist bourgeois historian would acknowledge Corn Man ended the gulag system and for decades the prison system was basically fine and certainly better than what we have in the US today. But most libs think the worst aspects of Stalinism remained all the way through Gorby, because they have brains as smooth as silk and no lib actually bothers to study history.
I think the Supreme Court is gonna come down on the side of not letting states determine who gets put on the ballot. It’s way too destabilizing (in a “bad for capital” kind of way) because once you open that door every state with a trifecta in state govt is gonna remove the opposing presidential candidate, guaranteed. Well, the GOP will at least.
I frequently make the mistake of using way too many words to make a point. It takes real skill to be able to make a point impactful and succinct. That’s why I really like Black Red Guard’s (BlackRedGuard1) current pinned tweet:
decolonization comes with horrific violence. don’t like it, don’t colonize
It really is that simple.
I’m reading Torkil Lauesen’s The Principal Contradiction. It’s an excellent book and I’ll write up a review at some point, definitely recommend it. But in it, while Lauesen acknowledges that general contradictions like “workers v. capitalists” and “private profit v. socialized production” are always important, it is the contradiction between imperial core and periphery that is the principal contradiction right now. That’s to say, it is the contradiction that is most critical at this moment to the further development of capitalism.
I think he is correct. And if that’s the principal contradiction, then to me where you stand on core versus periphery is the most important stand for any leftist to take. That separates the wheat and the chaff. And there are few places in the world (with the exception maybe of eastern Ukraine) where core and periphery are in greater physical conflict than in Palestine.
So fuck Bernie, fuck AOC, fuck Cornel West, and fuck any other “leftist” (including in this thread) who expresses anything other than uncritical support for Palestine in this moment.
200 year old tropes so ancient they were debunked by Marx himself
In the very first lecture of my Macro 101 course in undergrad, my libertarian econ professor talked about how if the LTV was correct then an inedible mud pie would have as much value as a real pie. I was delighted when I first read Capital and I saw that Marx debunked this very myth like on page 4. Marx is great at anticipating objections and then thoroughly responding, it’s just the libs don’t bother to read him.
rate of inflation
Weasel question. If the inflation rate was 15% last year and then “only” 13%, then technically the rate of inflation has gone down up obviously you still have the issue of higher prices than last year.
Good article. It’s not the main point but I liked this section:
The lie that Obama is Muslim was always code for “He’s Black.” But in 2008 liberals couldn’t say that they wouldn’t vote for someone who is Black. Post-racial anti-Blackness had to be more subtle. After seven years of the War on Terror, it was widely accepted that Muslims are subhuman and our lives disposable. So it was easy for people to simply say that they wouldn’t vote for someone who is Muslim.
It never occurred to me - though it’s obvious to me now - that all the accusations of Obama being a Muslim were really just the way white folks were able to launder their unwillingness to accept a black man as president. That’s why they doggedly held on to that belief despite how it was so obviously not true.
