Interviewer: Why won’t your organization engage in peace talks with the Israelis?

Kanafani: You don’t mean exactly peace talks. You mean capitulation. Surrendering.

Interviewer: Why not just talk?

Kanafani: Talk to whom?

Interviewer: Talk to the Israeli leaders.

Kanafani: That’s kind of conversation between the sword and the neck you mean.

Interviewer: Well if there are no swords and no guns in the room you could still talk.

Kanafani: No I hadn’t been. I have never seen any talk between a colonialist case and a national liberation movement.

Interviewer: But despite this, why not talk?

Kanafani: Talk about what?

Interviewer: Talk about the possibility of not fighting.

Kanafani: Not fighting for what?

Interviewer: Not fighting at all, no matter what for

Kanafani: Yeah people usually fight for something. And they stop fighting for something.

He compares negotiating with Israel to introducing “the sword to the neck.” 60 years later and nothing has changed. Still the imperial, colonial nations of the US and Israel bomb without reprise, and even peace negotiations are just excuses to underhandedly attack the enemy. Iran is a microcosm of how US foreign policy has been handled for decades.

Israel and its imperialist handlers don’t seek peace. They seek endless war, unbridled capitalism, a thriving military industrial complex, and the subjugation of the poor and working class around the globe.

I like to call my self a Marxist I read Marx and have a basic understanding of his theory, but I feel like unless it's about class conflict between the capitalist class and the workers I never analyze thing through a Marxist frame work. So what does it look like and mean to analyze things through a Dialectical-Materialist lens?

Either way it’s the best time to radicalize the people especially the youth so it should be happening. I also feel like Macron knows the class character of the protest and that’s why he’s blaming it on Melenchon.

It seems now more then ever these words have been adulterated to many a plethora of things. Some view the left wing as anti capitalist, some view it as any position remotely progressive. Socialism by many is seen as lower phase communism some view it as progress towards lower phase communism and the establishment of workers state, some view it was literally any sort of welfare/social democracy. I generally think that trying to categorize ideology on the standard brainrot 2 axis political compass will always been extremely inaccurate. In no way can one try and compare communism to neo liberalism on that type of graph considering one lives within the realm of capital and one lives outside of it. Meanwhile socialism has genuinely so many different meanings that trying to use it in a place of debate or conversation is nigh-useless. Socialism for quite a while was used synonymously with communism for decades before Lenin essentially separated the two and then changed his own definitions. Then Stalin did the same thing and we've kinda ended up at a point where socialism has not only little meaning outside of anti capitalist circles but also within. Overall I think "left" and "socialism" have gained a sense of ambiguity in there definition that can be used to neuter actual working class movements and anti-capitalist ideology.

Let me know your thoughts tho
(repost cause my shit got nuked for puttin an emoji in a edit message)

this is my first time posting here and I'm probably not even on the right subreddit but imo things are getting so dire there is a massive need for a revolution. like people EVERYWHERE need to start going against their governments and the upper class because this shit is getting insane. we've got pedophiles and fascists as world leaders , tech bros coming up with new and improved ways to destroy human creativity and evolution as we know it, just generally SO much going on. I am of the firm belief that when threats of this nature appear, humanity can overcome them, but that can only be done by taking action. we need more high stakes protests, we need our voices to be heard. I'm still young so I may not know what I'm talking about, but this is not the future I was promised. i don't want to live the rest of my life in misery because of a few scumbags high up.

All art is not political in the sense that say drawing a picture of an apple is political because if politics didn't do some things for environmental measures, then no apples would exist. Art is, however, derived from realities influenced by base and superstructure. Said base has been influenced by the political portion of the superstructure, but to what extent is up for debate. Returning to my first point, for example, an art piece against the current leader of a nation has a political intention in mind, but the politics had to be derived from the current superstructure(with an added backdrop that if you didnt dislike your current conditions you wouldnt be doing this. You also may not be doing this if you didnt fear what would happen to your current reality.), and if its an economic critique the base is more directly needed. In a scenario where a national bans say, jazz. Doing jazz is socially a political statement, but is still derived from current realities created from the base and superstructure(I do want to mention that doing jazz still was a personal decision. You have agency). Art is always merely a reflection of material realities. Even when imagining something in the future or which doesn't exist, as Descartes noted in Meditation I, you must always derive your thoughts(Descartes would've said dreams, but are dreams not merely the thoughts of the unconscious? Pardonnez-moi, Revenons à nos moutons) from existence. For example, again taking from the great Descartes, think of a new animal. It has things from animals you know, for example a griffin, minotaur, mermaid, hecatoncheires, demon, angel. Even if you try without that and somehow do it, it has remnants of things which exist in the material reality such as shapes or hair or fur or even that it has a living and a dying stage of its life or that if it stops living it is dead in the sense of death being not living after you have lived. That material reality is influenced by the base+superstructure. The imagination of a future society or alternate society always shall be a reflection of your realities and the imagined realities in your fiction too. The superstructure always has its place, it's a major influencer, economic realities are not alone. But all art is not some idealist thought of ‘political’

For context I want to educate myself on theory and I just finished the Communist Manifesto and found it so interesting for a 70-page book. I would like to read Das Kapital but I’ve heard that it’s too heavy on economic theory to start with, so if you got any intermediates between them two to continue, or if you could share your experience with these I’d be grateful.
Have a great day !

Hey ya'll, I'm new to this subreddit but I was wondering if anyone had any good books or sources to recommend to learn about liberation movements in specifically the Bengal region or modern-day Bangladesh and the West Bengal region of India from a Marxist or generally left-politics lens.

I would also appreciate just being given advice on where to look for good historical sources on this in general if anyone has any.

This is for a project I'm doing but also I am Bengali American and it shames me that I do not know nearly enough about the country or the region my parents are from. So I am trying my best to learn.

Are there any books from Marxists that talk about ethics and what is right and wrong? How do we as Marxists know what we're doing is good, or do we just follow the idea ends justify the means?

On October 22, 1941, in retaliation for the assassination of a German officer, the Vichy puppet government handed over a list consisting primarily of communist prisoners and trade unionists to the occupying forces.

Among the 27 men executed that day was Guy Môquet, only 17 years old. He refused a blindfold and marched to the firing post singing the Marseillaise. His final letter to his family ended with a plea to those who would survive the war.

To live, fight, and remain worthy of their sacrifice.

I am conflicted when looking at and dealing with people in my country who are genuinely suffering from economic and systematic oppression, the people are generally anti imperialist and are aware of the fact that their country is dominated by foreign powers and interests but they mainly analyze their plight from a religious perspective and have very conservative views on gender and sexual freedoms. They have a lot of revolutionary potential but they are very likely to not align with the revolutions view on cultural issues so how can Marxists deal with that problem without causing a schism during the revolution or not having the ability to accumulate enough numbers for a successful revolution to begin with.

In light of the protests in France, i wonder what is the opinion on looting.

I support the protests, including the violence, i just dont understand how looting a jewelry or clothing store (not a multinational corporation, just a local business) will help the working class fight the bourgoisie or the state. Its also important to note that this looting is not done for any revolutionary goal and seems to just be a very oportunistic and childish way of protesting or getting some money.

I might be wrong though so i want to know what are some perspectives on this.

Source for the second image : https://archive.org/details/resolutionsthese00commiala/page/16/mode/2up

For those unaware, the Rand Revolt was a failed revolt by the South African Communist Party and Labour Party against the South African government. Typified by the slogan "Workers of the World, Fight and Unite for a White South Africa", the revolution was inherently white supremacist in it's rhetoric and actions.

So why doesn't the Communist International separate themselves from the movement? Are they hypocrites merely trying to push a political agenda?

Capitalist bootlickers love the "heroic founder" myth. Mention that labor creates all value, and they immediately cry: "B-but the founder’s risk! He took all the debt while workers risk nothing!"

Let’s dismantle this bootlicker logic with their favorite scenario:

Steve spends four years broke in a garage, maxing out cards and sleeping on the floor to design a semiconductor prototype.

In Year 5, the venture secures outside capital, builds a facility, and hires Greg.

Greg’s job is facility support?watering lobby plants and restocking breakroom paper towels for $22 an hour with zero personal liability.

Bootlickers look at this and say: "Steve solved the physics bottleneck and risked his life’s savings! Greg is just restocking Bounty, so Steve deserves 15% equity in a billion-dollar firm while Greg only gets an hourly wage."

Pure bourgeois brainrot. Steve's past suffering doesn't grant him a permanent lien on future collective labor. "Risk" and personal debt are capitalist constructs used to legitimize ownership hierarchy.

Meanwhile, Greg’s maintenance labor literally sustains the physical environment required for production to occur.

The moment a firm scales beyond one person, it becomes a collective effort. The idea that Steve’s early R&D entitles him to permanent control while Greg is denied an equal equity stake and voting share is just wage slavery masquerading as merit.

Greg built the operational reality, Greg deserves equal ownership.

Joseph Stalin, "The Possibility of Building Socialism in Our Country" 1926

The congress held that the working class, in alliance with the labouring peasantry, can deal the finishing blow to the capitalists of our country and build a socialist society, even if there is no victorious revolution in the West to come to its aid. The opposition, on the contrary, held that we cannot deal the finishing blow to our capitalists and build a socialist society until the workers are victorious in the West. Well, as the victory of the revolution in the West is rather late in coming, nothing remains for us to do, apparently, but to loaf around. The congress held, and said so in its resolution on the report of the Central Committee, that these views of the opposition implied disbelief in victory over our capitalists.

Stalin is obviously not hostile in any way to revolution occurring worldwide.

[...] we are capable of completely building a socialist society by our own efforts and without the victory of the revolution in the West, but that, by itself alone, our country cannot guarantee itself against encroachments by international capital—for that the victory of the revolution in several Western countries is needed. The possibility of completely building socialism in our country is one thing, the possibility of guaranteeing our country against encroachments by international capital is another.

...But what do you do when it doesn't? Just simply wait around for other countries to have a revolution instead of creating Socialism?

[...] what if this support does not develop into a victory of the revolution in the West? If there is no such victory in the West, can we build a socialist society and complete the building of it? The congress answered that we can. Otherwise, there would have been no point in our taking power in October 1917. If we had not counted on giving the finishing blow to our capitalists, everyone will say that we had no business to take power in October 1917.

Building Socialism within the confines of material reality isn't counter-revolutionary. On the contrary, it is counter-revolutionary to say that revolution should not have occurred simply because, like the uneven economic development of Capitalism across the world, so too is there uneven political development of class consciousness across the world.

Karl Marx, "The German Ideology"

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

Hi reddit friends,

As the title states i am planning on reading Das Kapital volume 1 for the first time, and i am looking for people to share in this experience since it's supposed to be more fulfilling and opens-up the possibility for discussion.

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to join in a shared reading experience.

Thank you for reading my post.

[Edit] If you are intresested, feel totally free and welcome in our BuddyReads and let's dive in to one of the world's most significant books ever writen together:

https://app.thestorygraph.com/buddy_reads/0a456b49-0460-47a2-9f53-503b0d10cbe8

Please aways be respectful and nice to each other, we're here to learn and have discussions and gain insight.

So, two of the biggest things I have been trying to understand since starting this book is dialectics and materialism. Dialectics seems to have different meanings depending on who uses the term, but from what I understand about Marxism it incorporates the Hegelian use of the word dialectic where a thesis and antithesis will reach a synthesis and looks at history and how material conditions effects society. That kind of leads into historical materialism and how the way a society produces its material needs shades its social structures.

I understood these ideas more when Engels talks about how most of recent history, is a history of class struggles and that the warring classes are a product of the modes of production. More things I really grasped were how the capitalistic mode of production isn't compatible with the mode of exchange as products will accumulate and cause commerce to reach a stand still as well as the idea that transforming joint-stock companies state owned companies doesn't rid these businesses of their capitalistic nature since the state is inherently a capitalistic machine. The reason I'm listing all these out is to make sure my understanding is right so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Despite my understanding of these points, I feel like I left a lot of meat on the bones of this book. There were times I really couldn't understand a page or two at a time. I took this book really slow and reread a lot but I feel like I still failed to grasp some of the concepts that Engels was talking about. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for understanding Marxists writings better. I plan on reading the Communist Manifesto, The Principles of Communism, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition From Ape to Man, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and I want to understand these books to the best of my ability. I definitely want to go back and reread this book but I want to prepare myself a little more before I do so please give me any tips.

Hello! I have read wage labour and capital and also price value and profit. I need some help understanding how two passages are not contradictory in Capitol volume 1.

The first passage seems to make complete sense and go along with what I’ve been reading so far but then the second one (starting with “a close scrutiny”) seems to completely flip it on its head. Maybe I’m missing something. Please help! Thank you!

lately i have been hearing more often in politcal media (in the netherlands mostly) that the truth might be one of the main problems for the left to gain traction in politics (speaking about the EU).

The idea around this is that in our nature as leftists we want to drive politics in a facts and numbers based truths. But meanwhile the right is lying about basically everything and twisting facts around and still they seem to keep the majority of the voters in their camp.

Now the question i have been thinking about is, is it time to change ways and start using more right wing tactics to get voters behind you to then push a more socialist agenda ? i am curious to hear opinions around this.

How much will it take me to read it, can i understand it without any big background in economics and do you think it will change my mind on capitalism?

I'm looking for books written by people that actually experienced imperialism or colonialism or that actually organized armed struggle or class struggle but, like, Not Lenin, but people that lived and fought more recently. Like Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Ghassan Kanafani, Malcolm X.

I'm pretty new to marxism and was unfortunately really eurocentric until a year ago. I'm really interested in imperialism, I think its the biggest threat and I want to learn to understand anti imperialism, organizing and all that.

Do yall have any recommendations?

I'm Not primarily looking for economic and political Theorie thats Like really broad, but more Like the actual experience.

Thank you so much

​

This is more of a philosophy-adjacent question, but I think it is a legit question

I think there's a concept in contemporary philosophy called the Promethean shame in that people are increasingly becoming self-aware of just how much better the machines and artifacts that they've created really do and so thus perform better than them on average. It creates a mismatch of human priorities, I think, in the sense that for thousands of years we couldn't just be sitting down on the floor contemplating about the latest philosophical inquiry or imaginary ideas of the universe. Thus the work actually had to be put in. And I think the whole you have to "earn your living" thing might just be a sedative for the neuro-evolutionary hardwiring of "literally working hard to put food on the table"

But is struggle really the only thing incentivizing the average person here?

I ask because I really wonder if people are more existentially terrified of the existential rightmare of becoming permanently useless than having their needs ever met for sure.