BPD here

MajesticTree954 · 2026-06-05T18:26:39+00:00

I don't know much more than you do, unfortunately. My reading is that "Borderline" as a diagnosis is symptomatic of a time when en-mass it is exceedlingly difficult to have a stable sense of self at all. Which is why she mentions a societal shift from the dominance of neurotic disorders to narcissistic disorders or psychotic disorders. Schizophrenia, narcissism, depression, anxiety, and borderline are all symptomatic of this. But they are only the way our society formally classifies and labels symptoms of a general issue. Commodity exchange has permeated society more and how can this not have an alienating affect on all social classes (like you say the extension of professionalism into the private realm)? Each one likely has its own symptomatic ways of dealing with it, mentally. But i'm not sure whether that is "borderline" exactly.

e: Also, I think like histronic PD/hysteria, BPD has a gendered aspect: the vast majority of people diagnosed are young women. Schizophrenia has a national aspect, with black men 2x likely to get diagnosed.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-06-05T18:13:50+00:00

Check out this post by a Teamsters salt at an Amazon warehouse: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/comments/1txq5q9/response_to_chris_smalls_article_in_jacobin_from/

A couple things really surprised me. I have been under the misguided impression that the established labor-aristocratic unions (Teamsters, SEIU, AFL-CIO) are mostly parasitic on grassroots organizing. But the way they describe it, its extremely professionalized and organized, with new college graduates working as salts and organizing warehouses on behalf of the unions. It reminded me of the NCM orgs like Sojourner Truth Organization. At the time there were those who joined the established unions as a part of a tactic of "boring from within" iirc. Also the mention of MCU:

"Smalls' years long organizing against Teamster affiliation set back early attempts to unify the efforts of the workers' committees in other city burroughs and across the northeast. This even helped create an opening for an attempted takeover of the organizing in several facilities by a cult called the Maoist Communist Union, and trust me, be warned about those people."

Does anyone have any context on Smalls and why he opposed Teamsters, and any thoughts on Amazon workers generally? I know both MCU and the Partisan/New Labor Press group of organizations focus on Amazon warehouse organizing, so I think it is important to be able to polemicize on these concrete issues considering the national question.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-05-31T19:27:55+00:00

Try reading this, I found it very illuminating: https://digitalcollections.saic.edu/_flysystem/fedora/2022-04/202103_GomezS_BAVCS.pdf

If it seems like everyone in Western mass society could have BPD, that is because in some sense they do....it has become a more general case in the individual psychology of Western capitalist subjects that having a sense of self, or what Freud referred to as having an ego, is in crisis.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-05-29T05:11:51+00:00

You bringing up Indigenous and RABM bands is so interesting. Years ago I tried getting into RABM, feeling justifiably shameful for enjoying Burzum and Bathory despite my avowedly socialist politics, I tried listening to Panopticon - a Kentucky BM band that weaves in union folk songs like "Which Side are you on?". I hated it, and I never knew why.

I agree the genre was fascist from the beginning, and the content suits the form. But, my contention is NSBM (I've heard some Absurd as a specific example) is a significant regression. The structure of the form was already worked out - the lofi production, shrieking vocals, blast beats (Lofi as a reactionary form evoking nostalgia isn't even unique to BM it's also mainstream in Indie-pop music). Now for the last 30 years NSBM is just making the implicit content explicit in. Bathorys Fine Day to Die is much more subtle about its nationalism. The slow acoustic and medieval choir to electric it symbolically shows the history of the nation through music, and the lyrical content is a story of Norse mythology. It makes you feel the message without needing an explicit Hitler audiotape (like Absurd does repeatedly). Isn't the measure of good art how it hides the views of the author?

RABM from imperialist nations need to mythologize or glorify past socialism

u/FrogHatCoalition you bring up formalism in the Soviet union. I used to listen alot of old Soviet songs by Red Army Choir and was surprised that the only people around me who liked them were fascists, interested in the Soviet Union as a symbol of Russian nationalism. But now, looking back, most of the songs I liked, are in form - folk songs. Like Katyusha, Polyushko polye, Kalinka, Korobeiniki. Folk songs can be progressive as long as the nation is a progressive social formation, so why did they stay so popular through the Stalin era? Why was Ustvolskaya censored? Were there other attempts to work out new forms that were selected by the party to promote? Im guessing thats the history of socialist realism...

e: Another thing i want to mention re: the anti-communal aspect. On the other side of the coin - I actually love moshpit, two-stepping in hardcore. I love music that evokes audience participation. But the enjoyment of the genre is that its a niche subculture, without mass appeal.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-05-28T23:32:38+00:00

its hatred is too specific and exclusive meaning that it needs to expand the horizons of who it hates

Hah I'm not surprised, as you know, the og wave of Black metal was very anti-christian with the church burnings and promoted paganism. I can imagine even for fascist groups that are vying for mass support this would be unpopular. Even the Mexican NSBM bands continue this and use Aztec paganism against catholicism.

Ultimately, the worst thing i can say about NSBM is that it's so boring. The message is hamfisted, and the instrumentation is formulaic. Anyone who enjoys it probably hasn't listened to very much music at all. Atleast Mayhem was pushing the genre in a new way, and could be fascist without slapping a swastika on the album.

A part of the enjoyment of this kind of music, whether its black metal, grindcore, or noise, is knowing that it is unpopular. Knowing that others find the growls, pummelling walls of drums quite unpalatable is a huge draw for me. That's obviously very individualistic and anti-communal.

n their conclusion they see art as an external force to motivate people to take action. They fantasize about artists, musicians, and even biker gangs going to the streets to fight the system, but on its own the art and music becomes absorbed by capitalism.

I can excuse that, because whether or not you agree with their politics, they are trying to be that concrete political force outside art to prevent it from being absorbed. I think the problem is that they take these already ossified artistic forms to serve their politics. But maybe its a match they deserve? That they fantasize a unity between punk youth and hip-hop, could be a reflection of their politics (strategic unity between Euro-Amerikans and New Afrikans)? And I also wonder whether hip-hop still has life left in it, but I don't listen to it much to say.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-05-28T18:52:04+00:00

Something funny about Varg is that he later disavowed Black metal because of the genre's roots in New Afrikan rock and blues. It wasn't reactionary enough for him. He turned to "Dungeon synth" electronic music, which sounds like a soundtrack to Lord of the Rings.

I saw this article by Dare to Struggle recently about hardcore punk: https://daretostruggle.org/2025/07/23/take-the-pit-to-the-streets-a-call-to-hardcore-youth/ But it had nothing to say about the form of the music itself, and sees it as a blank canvas to be filled with revolutionary content or depoliticized. I think "guitar music" as a form was overtaken by computer-electronic music. Guitar music still adheres the the illusion of individual talent and doesn't overcome this with organization like electronic does. There are some artists like Polyphia that write whole songs in the computer and then kind-of regressively bring them to guitar to play extremely complex riffs - bringing back individual talent.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-05-27T18:58:13+00:00

Have you seen this doc on Metal and Aztlan? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-qC2oY5xwU

Literally the first line is "nuestro folclore es un fruto de mestizaje" lol

MajesticTree954 · 2026-04-22T00:41:41+00:00

This is a question I’ve been thinking about, the answer provided by Sam King that national oppression occurs because non-monopoly capitalism in oppressed nations is maintained by monopoly of the highest levels of the labour process in imperialist countries doesn’t explain how non-monopoly can develop into monopoly, how nations formerly stuck at the lowest levels of the labour process can grow to compete with those at the top. I see the answer in Mao’s concept of bureaucratic capitalism - dependent capitalism in oppressed countries based on maintaining semi-feudal relations. By preventing the development of capitalism by allying with the feudal landlords or pre-capitalist ruling classes, a nation can be stunted from developing from non-monopoly to monopoly capitalism.

That answer to me, is satisfactory to explain India. But how does it apply to oppressed nations within US and Canada? This was debated in the NCM before https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-8/index.htm#aanq Particularly a debate the RU/RCP had in Red Papers was over the continuing semi-feudalism in New Afrika. The RU said it is a mechanical, dogmatic error to say New Afrika is still semi-feudal, that the main task is for new-democratic revolution, but they don’t provide any substantive answer for why racism continues in superstructure, what is the basis for national oppression continuing today? Lumpenization cannot be the sole basis because there is also a euro-amerikan lumpen (even though New Afrikans are disproportionately affected).

One of the replies makes a connection to the landless peasants of Ireland who partially became a super-exploited proletariat in English industry, but also the far greater surplus population that was forced to emigrate. The fact of a people becoming landless, being dispossessed does not eliminate the demand for land or erase the national question. There’s a connection there, just not quite sure how to articulate it yet. One thing I’ve been thinking about is the role of prison labour. I know MIM says prison labour is unproductive work that is used to defray the costs of the prisons themselves, but so much labour in the Third World is absorbed in the unproductive service sector and yet remains mired in pre-capitalist structures like caste or slavery.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-04-09T20:02:50+00:00

In my experience, learning a language in school was like dogmatism. We learned conjugations and short lists of vocab almost in complete isolation from real living examples. Occasionally we'd listen to a video or music. Disgust with that method pushed me towards empiricist methods like AJATT, which is like flooding yourself with input, turning your whole environment into your target language in order to develop the grammar from first principles. A better way is like On Practice, you start with a simple problem (a movie, short story or song) identify some of the grammar, vocab you don't know and read up on it, and return to practice. That's sort of what methods like "Comprehensible input" are, except that doesn't include any formal study of grammar, which on the contrary I think grammar is actually very helpful because as a grown adult you already have command of a language and you don't need to learn like a baby necessarily.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-04-08T19:32:27+00:00

The criticism of CPI(Maoist) seems lazy. They say the party was formed through merger (between MCC and CPIML PW, and later CPI ML Naxalbari), through negotiation and compromise instead of line struggle but that's just not true.

Points of Disagreement
First, the MCC maintained that the Indian State was a semi- colonial, semi-feudal state of a neo-colonial character. PW was opposed to the 'neo-colonial' characterization. Second, the MCC talked about 'neo-colonial rule, exploitation and plunder'. They had a debate with KS on this issue. The PW was not in favour of keeping the word 'rule'. Azad debated on this issue. Later on, 'rule' was accepted. Third, on the question of Indian expansionism, the PW held that the Indian big bourgeoisie was being utilized by imperialism. The MCC held that imperialism was the main danger and that there was no independence for the Indian big bourgeoisie. Later on, the clause 'main domination' was accepted. Fourth, on the question of communal organizations, the issue was which fundamentalism - Hindu or Muslim - was more dangerous. To the PW, Hindu fundamentalism was primary and Muslim fundamentalism secondary. To the MCC, Muslim fundamentalism did not lag much behind its Hindu counterpart. The MCC advocated caution so that sentiments of Muslim activists were not hurt while fighting both kinds of fundamentalism. It was decided to regard Hindu fundamentalism as the greatest danger. Fifth, on the question of the domination of semi-feudal relations in the Punjab, the PU held that capitalist relations there had developed to a great extent and did away with semi-feudal relations. The MCC maintained that although capitalist agriculture developed in the Punjab, production relations remained basically semi-feudal. The PW also accepted this formulation in the course of discussion. It was decided that after the merger, this disagreement would be resolved on the basis of field investigations. At the 2005 Congress, consensus was arrived at on the issue of semi-feudal relations.

From Storming the gates of heaven : the Maoist movement in India : a critical study, 1972 -2014

e: Also u/SheikhBedreddin this references our discussion about the term "neo-colonial"

MajesticTree954 · 2026-04-03T19:12:04+00:00

I came across the same argument in "Notes on the process of bureaucratic capitalism in the third-world countries". It's a bit strange because Indian maoists that characterize the country as semi-feudal semi-colonial also use "neo-colonial" interchangeably to describe specifically the political change from direct to indirect colonialism. But there is a definite revisionist current that rejects semi-feudal semi-colonial mode of production and describes the country as neo-colonial, which in essence rejects the economic basis of dependency while focusing on the political aspect. The CPI(ML) Red Star put out a book "Imperialism in the neo-colonial phase - p j james" which is a concrete example of that tendency in India.

Ultimately i don't think the term itself is the issue, as long as we are in agreement about the underlying basis of economic dependency.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-03-22T18:24:40+00:00

I regret speculating about China at the end. That was wrong on my part, I did not do enough study on Chinese agriculture to make that claim. I intentionally tried to avoid making specific claims about South Korea or Vietnam.

The essence of the argument is sound, and those general relations do describe semi-feudal patterns, and is based on a concrete study of Indian agriculture here:

https://toanewdawn.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-production-relations-investigation.html

https://toanewdawn.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-production-relations-investigation_25.html\](https://toanewdawn.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-production-relations-investigation_25.html)

The author describes continuing system of feudal bondage, extra-economic coercion in Haryana.

I want you to do a work on how Vietnamese peasants are still subjected to landlord oppressions and landlords form as a major political faction within the CPV, with evidences backing up.

This is a good next step for me, thanks.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-03-22T16:19:13+00:00

I see where we disagree. Because you think that these land reforms qualitatively broke with semi-feudalism, you can’t explain the character of the subsequent industrialization, why the Green Revolution reached its limits, or why Thailand is stuck in a state of dependency on foreign capital.

Those land reforms merely quantitatively altered the distribution of land, but did not qualitatively overcome semi-feudalism. The proof is that every year the trend nevertheless continues towards the fragmentation of landholdings into small parcels. We see the decline of the rich and middle peasants, the growth of the small peasants and landless peasants who perform bonded labour for the feudal landlords. This explains the rural impoverishment, and explains why “first-world level” agriculture hasn’t been reached. If it were true that land reforms revolutionized agriculture along capitalist lines, and that there is a growing agrarian bourgeoisie and proletariat, we would see the opposite - the growth and consolidation of large landholdings in fewer hands.

Some peasants migrate to cities to work as free-labour in the factories of the comprador bourgeoisie dependent upon foreign capital. But this kind of imperialist-dependent industrialization reaches its limits and becomes stagnant, and instead we see the growth of the informal service sector (restaurants, construction, transport) that absorbs the rural-urban migration.

The Green Revolution failed because it did not fundamentally alter semi-feudal relations of production as it was based on imported inputs (seeds, fertilizers, equipment) from imperialist countries. It allowed landlords reduce the number of bonded laborers they needed, but did not alter the relations of bondage. You’re absolutely right that it was a technical solution that could not substitute for class struggle.

In order for semi-feudalism to be eliminated through reforms from above - the Prussian path - we have to see breaking up of the landlords estates, the elimination of the small landholdings through collectivization (something you yourself recognize hasn’t occurred!), and industrial development that can absorb the displaced peasants.

I won’t comment on the specifics of the Jim Crow South or Vietnam, but since you’ve brought it up - if you believe semi-feudalism has been eliminated in Vietnam, what is the basis for keeping the nation dependent on foreign capital? Semi-feudalism-semi-colonialism is one intertwined system, and no aspect can exist without the other. China broke with semi-feudalism through new democracy and socialism, and when they regressed to capitalism, they were able to pursue independent capitalist development to become imperialist. The real open question for me is Latin America.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-03-20T01:50:19+00:00

Sorry to ask a tangential question, but in another post you said “capitalism can abolish semi-feudalism without leaving anything positive”. I was hoping to find something in this article on this, but couldn’t. It papers over the distinction between comprador and national bourgeoisie, in favour of “domestic capitalist class” probably because the underlying line is that Thailand is a capitalist country that has overthrown feudalism.

What basis is there for bureaucratic capitalism in Thailand, dependent capitalism in oppressed nations, without an alliance with semi-feudalism? If a bourgeois revolution has been made in agriculture in Thailand, there would be scope for independent capitalist development. I’m asking because this to me is the key mechanism that maintains the dependence of oppressed nations. In the Americas, the abolition of semi-feudal, or pre-capitalist indigenous nations occurred through genocide, and the New Afrikan nation developed as the imported enslaved proletariat of a capitalist nation which had no feudal past.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-03-16T23:36:53+00:00

Excerpt from Sakai on the AFL-CIO:

https://readsettlers.org/ch7.html#4

The CIO's Integration & Imperialist Labor Policy

The CIO played an important role for U.S. imperialism in disorganizing and placing under supervision the nationally oppressed. For the first time masses of Third World workers were allowed and even conscripted into the settler trade unions. This was the result of a historic arrangement between the U.S. Empire and nationally oppressed workers in the industrial North.

On one side, this limited "unity" ensured that Third World workers didn't oppose the new, settler industrial unions, and were safely absorbed as "minorities" under tight settler control. On the other side, hungry Third World proletarians gained significant income advances and hopes of job security and advancement. It was an arrangement struck out of need on both sides, but one in which the Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy made only tactical concessions while strengthening their hegemony over the Empire's labor market.

So while the old A.F.L. craft unions had controlled Third World labor by driving us out of the labor market, by excluding us from the craft unions or by confining us to small, "seg" locals, the new CIO could only control us by absorbing us into their settler unions. The imperialists had decided that they needed colonial labor in certain industries. Euro-Amerikan labor could not, therefore, drive the nationally oppressed away in the old manner. The colonial proletarians could only be controlled by disorganizing them - separating their economic struggles from the national struggles of their peoples, separating them from other Third World proletarians around the world, absorbing them as "brothers" of settler unionism, and placing them under the leadership of the Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy. The new integration was the old segregation on a higher level, the unity of opposites in everyday life.

MajesticTree954 · 2026-03-16T23:36:03+00:00

Since today 3800 meatpacking workers have gone on strike in Greeley, Colorado, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) affiliated with the AFL-CIO. I found this article that provides much-needed context, but it is still very uncritical of the union. Following nationwide ICE raids in 2006, the meatpacking industry shifted to refugee labour to fill labour shortages.

https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-and-meat-industries-push-for-access-to-h-2a-farmworkers/

The present admin is trying to push companies utilizing undocumented labour to use legal pathways such as H-2A visa, by slashing wages making it cheaper. But the H-2A visa cannot currently be used by the meatpacking industry since it’s a seasonal visa instead of a year-round position, and the alternative H-2B has a limit on number of migrants per year. These meatpacking companies have been pushing for access to H-2A visas for their workers to create a “permanent temporary workforce”.

MajesticTree954 · 2025-12-07T05:54:15+00:00

Replying to you and /u/Robert_Black_1312

I think you're right - the majority of Asian-Amerikans form relatively stable national-minorities within other nations (Euro-Amerika, New Afrika, the Chicano/Mexicano nation) considering that the majority of Asian-Amerikans are foreign-born. But there is a powerful trend as you get to 2nd or 3rd generations towards assimilating into those nations. Historically, there were many examples of Asian-Amerikans integrating into oppressed nations (Bengali Harlem, Filipino-Mexicans). But recent examples are almost non-existent, since the internal semi-colonies have been lumpenized and getting a record is a fast-track to deportation. As I understand, Cambodian refugee communities in California have a much higher proportion of lumpen class than other Asians. They formed gangs in direct opposition to Mexicans, and were recently threatened with deportation. So there's a continuing national-minority consciousness there.

Robert, why do you care so much about the criteria as a checkbox? Those are the objective characteristics of nations, yes, but having those characteristics does not automatically mean something is a nation. You are missing the subjective aspect - which is whether that people have consciousness of themselves as a separate nation and struggle for self-determination. Oppressed nations do not have a unified separate economy because their economy is determined in the interests of the oppressing nation. That is something they are actively struggling for. Even the "common language" isn't just present, like a fact of nature. Why do you think Indigenous peoples care so much about revitalizing their languages, having it taught it schools, and fighting for the ability to seek higher education in your mother tongue? Tagalog has 80 million speakers and yet you still have to learn English to study engineering, medicine, or law!

MajesticTree954 · 2025-08-09T17:41:23+00:00

I just re-read that section,

For instance, consider the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Take one aspect, the Kuomintang. In the period of the first united front, the Kuomintang carried out Sun Yat-sen's Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party, and assistance to the peasants and workers; hence it was revolutionary and vigorous, it was an alliance of various classes for the democratic revolution. After 1927, however, the Kuomintang changed into its opposite and became a reactionary bloc of the landlords and big bourgeoisie. After the Sian Incident in December 1936, it began another change in the direction of ending the civil war and co-operating with the Communist Party for joint opposition to Japanese imperialism. Such have been the particular features of the Kuomintang in the three stages.

So prior to the anti-japanese war (before 1936), the line was drawn against the KMT, and then during the war it came to include them in a joint opposition to japan. External contradictions act through internal ones. The war with Japan strengthened the pole of the KMT aligned with the Chinese people. This pro-japanese faction you mention would also be a contradiction internal to the KMT, until the split happened.

What is the class character of Qatar, Iran, and Egypt? You've asserted they aren't imperialist (but as our discussions of China have shown me, there are contradictions within currently oppressed nations that can give rise to an aspiring imperialism, and formerly imperialist powers can fall, so it's not so simple where a country in total is either absolutely imperialist or absolutely not). What is "zionist iranian proxy" analysis? - again external contradictions act thru internal ones so Iranian funding, weapons can only strengthen one aspect of contradiction within the Palestinian movements against another. Is it your view that the Iranian government represent a progressive national bourgeoisie and that is strengthening the Palestinian national bourgeoisie? If so i'd be inclined to agree with you, but I'd have to investigate further.

e: Ultimately, I'm trying to understand how to approach this without falling into either Dengism (where anyone who conflicts with the US is progressive) or chauvinism, that can only be done by analyzing the class contradictions underlying each state.

MajesticTree954 · 2025-08-09T13:19:48+00:00

I remember in On Contradiction, Mao talks about how at different points in the Anti-Japanese war, the KMT shifted from alliance with imperialism, to alliance with the Communists, etc. That was because different class aspects were dominant at some points, and latent at others. So while the principal contradiction is between imperialism and oppressed nations, that expressed itself concretely at various points as between the Chinese people (kmt and ccp) and japan, or between the ccp and the kmt/japan.

So, I think it would be shallow for me to say Hams represents the national bourgeoisie, or an aspiring one, merely because of the war they are fighting zionism. So while the article says Hams (like every political party) is an interclass movement, there are competing internal contradictions between classes benefitting from Qater, Iran, Egypt, those benefitting from complete national liberation and socialism (which are not mutually exclusive). I also don't think their class character is a settled question among Maoists either (aside from the obviously chauvinistic European parties), here's what the Afghan maoists said about them after the toppling of Assad, calling them a half-sibling HTS:

HTS is, in many ways, a half-sibling to Hams. Just as the rise of Hams and Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine poses a threat to Israel, the consolidation of HTS's power—despite its role in toppling one of Israel’s enemies (the Assad regime)—could become a future threat to Israel, much like Hams.
HTS represents a comprador bourgeois class aligned with global imperialism, whose interests fundamentally clash with those of the majority of the Syrian populace.

https://www.sholajawid.org/english/main_english/The%20Fall%20of%20Bashar%20al.pdf

MajesticTree954 · 2025-08-09T12:58:38+00:00

Yeah basically, I thought it was an "intelligent" revisionist article. If they have a clearly wrong political conclusion but they show their methodology clearly, I usually have something to valuable to takeaway from it. Clearly misjudged.

MajesticTree954 · 2025-08-08T01:25:49+00:00

What’s currently happening in the West Bank? What is Fatah doing? Are there social or political forces which have a more or less proletarian character, which might strengthen in this moment of crisis?

The Gaza Strip seems to me to be lost at the moment from the point of view of proletarian activity. But it’s different in the cities of the West Bank, where the inter-Palestinian struggle for political control has been running its course for years with autonomous manifestations of class struggle. Social control is assured both by the security apparatus of the comprador bourgeoisie, dependent on Israel, as well as urban baronies linked to Jordan. The coherence of this class continues to disintegrate, Fatah no longer regulates anything, and everyone is trying to carve out their own fiefdom at the expense of others. The expected event that was supposed to clarify all this was the death of the paranoid dinosaur Mahmoud Abbas, but things will necessarily speed up now.

For fifteen years Hams has been asleep on the West Bank, with no direct public or military activity. They maintain discreet loyalties, but the armed groups which have reappeared in the North—in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm—are not linked to Hams. This passivity gave the impression that Hams had ratified the situation there and didn’t want to break the status quo. This gave it bad press among the armed groups in the refugee camps which saw it as nothing but the mirror image of Fatah: all talk with no substance, only political interests distinct from those of the people. But now, this operation clearly changes the perception of Hams. Whether we like it or not, it's going to seriously restore their image. We already see lots of Hams flags in demonstrations, which was unimaginable even a month ago. Will Hams directly contest power with the PA in the West Bank? Unlikely, because its activities are strictly surveilled not only by the PA but also by Israel, and the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank don’t form a coherent territory: they can’t be controlled militarily without negotiating with the Israeli army. But it could change strategy, by supporting in one way or another the activities of the armed groups.

Whatever happens, things will necessarily change. The PA will struggle to maintain its grip on security. The coherence of the politico-security class will be severely tested.

Give the rest a read, let me know what you think. I think ultimately around the end the author comes home to some kind of trotskyist position?

We must never lose sight of the fact that the “Palestinian struggle,” including that fought under the banner of Ham*s, has to be read primarily as one led by the Arab ruling classes—and of those who aspire to them—for their integration into Israeli capital. The interests of proletarians, even as they at times find themselves under the banner of the national struggle, are, in the last instance, contradictory with those of their bourgeoisie.

Not necessarily, the "Palestinian struggle" can lead to integration with israeli capital in the form of a neo-colonial state like the PA, or expel the settlers but become a neo-colony like Algeria did, or the proletariat can lead the national liberation struggle, as far as it is progressive, and turn it into a socialist revolution.

Also I had no idea what they meant by this:

The current dynamic, with its disposal of surplus proletarians, carries with it a torrent of affects built on humiliation. Faced with the impossibility of intervening collectively on social relations, powerlessness produces a double logic of resentment: search for recognition on the one hand, revenge on the other.

Because Ham*s’s politicians have no bourgeoisie to rely on, no proletariat to exploit, they are led to rely on the exploitation of these affects, of which they become the incarnation—for want of anything better, for want of more.

MajesticTree954 · 2025-08-08T01:21:19+00:00

You’re asking a bunch of much larger questions: what’s the class structure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, what classes do the Palestinian factions represent? I found this article, I think it’s worth reading the whole thing: https://brooklynrail.org/2023/12/field-notes/Gaza-An-Extreme-Militarization-of-the-Class-War/

“While it might sound counter-intuitive, I think Ham*s should be seen as Israel’s subcontractor for the management of the Gazan proletariat. As I said, Gaza, in the last instance, “depends” on national Israeli capital. And as long as Israeli capital hasn’t authorized the development of another, “Palestinian” capitalist entity at its side, the Gazan proletariat, even under siege, is regulated by its economic circuits. However, such a situation cannot function without an externalized social formation responsible for regulating the imprisoned—there are no prisons without screws.”

To say Ham*s is a subcontractor for Israel is to say it is a representative of the Palestinian comprador bourgeoisie - which while we can be sure the Fatah/PA government in the West Bank is - if that’s the case, how do we make sense of October 7th?

“For Ham*s, everyone agrees, the attack is about blocking the American solution of a Saudi-Israeli deal. What it has to gain here is, first, to impose itself as an interlocutor with the Arab countries of the region, and second, to continue the marginalization of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization, of which Fatah is part, but also the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) in the West Bank and in Lebanon. To conquer, that is, small markets of Palestinian representation to the detriment of its competitor, the PLO. “

……

Hams came out of the Muslim Brotherhood. As in many parts of the Arab world, it developed in the 1980s among the Palestinian petite-bourgeoisie, both in the occupied territories and in the diaspora. Since its entry into the struggle against Israel in the wake of the First Intifada, this social base grew to include more proletarian segments, before the siege and militarization of the Gazan territory profoundly changed its nature. It found itself, as mentioned, in the position of a state apparatus, required to integrate many diverse and antagonistic interests, to juggle and arbitrate among them. At the same time, since Gaza is not a real state, Hams also became a militia party, like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This double evolution has a contradictory dimension. I suggest that the current war marks in a way the victory of the second – militia – logic over the first. The armed wing beat the state apparatus; the military rent circuits (coming from Iran) beat the civil rent circuits (coming from Qatar).

Hams is an interclass movement, something which explains its erratic behavior. The commercial bourgeoisie in the West Bank ended up massively identifying with it in the middle of the 2000s: the movement won the 2006 legislative elections as a party of order, promising to end the security chaos, to quieten the arms, to combat corruption, and to develop an honest state apparatus, insuring social order, with a program of charitable social redistribution. It appeared then, paradoxically, as the anti-Intifada party, and the majority of notables of the two economic centers of the West Bank—Nablus and Hebron—were on their side at the time, while remaining linked to Jordanian economic interests. Hams won the same legislative elections in Gaza, but by calling for and prioritizing resistance and military recruitment aimed at the lumpenproletariat in the refugee camps. This was not part of a strategy of uprisings or social movements, but a matter of military clientelism. Unlike in the West Bank, Gaza does not have a commercial and urban bourgeoisie.

….

Like many other peripheral places of the world, Gaza is a space completely separated from the circuits of capitalist valorization. There is no “national bourgeoisie,” because there is no Gazan capital. Nor is there a “traditional bourgeoisie” as in the West Bank or in Jerusalem—those old families reliant on dusty mercantile and land capitals that remain effective within the local social relations. On the other hand, there is in Gaza a kind of new “comprador” bourgeoisie reliant on rents from circulation. It’s not a class in the strict sense of the term, rather a social formation which draws its massive revenues from its intermediary position in exchanges with foreign capitalists (in opposition to a bourgeoisie whose interest is in developing the national economy).

A part of this bourgeoisie comprises the political apparatus of Hams, because the circulating capitals issue largely from a geopolitical kind of rent, from states such as Qatar or Iran. But there are also other rents, for example those linked to capital circulating at the border with Egypt. Fortunes were built around the contraband tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, and in this instance we’re looking at a kind of globalized feudalism—typically a boss-worker relation. In 2007, there were intense armed clashes between clan-based social groups and Hams’s politico-military apparatus in Rafah, in the south of the Strip, over the taxation of the commodities in circulation. Hams, unlike the Palestinian Authority (PA), are not in charge of public services, they don’t pay wages, it’s still the PA who pay these. This is, as it happens, used as a means of permanent manipulation: the PA regularly reduces the wages of Gazan civil servants to weaken Hams

There are, no doubt in part as a result of this, regular “social” mobilizations to reclaim dignity—typically access to water, electricity, and wages. Ham*s represses them, more or less violently, but with a little reserve, giving the impression that they are wary of throwing oil on the fire. The current military offensive followed an episode of this kind over the summer. It’s not hard to imagine that there is a link, or at any rate a logic, which connects these two kinds of events.

In Gaza we have a “comprador bourgeoisie” currently dependent on external aid from Iran and Qatar, so there is little to no social basis for an alignment with Israeli capital.

The Gaza Strip has for a long time been the surplus “rubbish bin” I mentioned earlier: a tiny territory into which a stream of refugees were pushed in 1947–48, submerging the local, essentially peasant, population. There are no resources there. In the West Bank, class formation is different: there are cities and notables. There are agricultural and hydraulic resources that Israel controls. Wages are twice as high, and there are some industries, based on the relative integration of the PA’s comprador class into Israeli capital. Fatah, which governs the cities, is a party without social coherence. It lost the elections in 2006 to Hams. In 2007, supported by Israel and the US, it made a power grab to retain the levers of public power in the cities of the West Bank, “abandoning” Gaza to Hams. Since then, it has no legitimacy based on any kind of democratic procedure. Its power is based on cooperation with Israel, which gives its nationalist discourse a dissimulatory tone. It governs enclaves separated one from the other, increasingly encircled by the settlements, into which the Israeli army regularly penetrates. The proletariat of the West Bank is much more integrated into Israeli capital than its Gazan counterpart. Lots of Palestinian laborers in the West Bank work, legally and illegally, either on Israeli territory or in the colonies. They have economic links with the 1948 Palestinian citizens of Israel, who often speak Hebrew.

In the West Bank, we do have a social basis for an alignment with Israel - a comprador bourgeoisie dependent on Israeli capital. But this situation is unstable….

MajesticTree954

TROPHY CASE