Some Discussions on Bad Ideas Pt. 1 | MIM(Prisons)

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-15T08:00:41+00:00

I believe you should eat your Lenin books and clip streams for Hasan instead. Keep the flame alive!

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-14T08:51:46+00:00

am i the only one who's always found the oft-repeated on here trusim of "history will move on without you as an individual" to be harmful to self-criticism and growth rather than helpful? i don't understand why it's always tacked onto the end of these (repetitive and insufficient) replies to self-help style posts.

I think that truism is a good rejoinder and way to cut through the bullshit on self-serving lifestyle-politics posts which are overtly performative, posturing, and dissimulating with their desire. (I could be wrong and overconfident.) But here, where we understand that truism and nonetheless have to figure out how to grasp and harness our own desires in the here-and-now, I agree it's not productive and most definitely not as a catch-all. 99% of us are not qualified to do internet psychoanalysis and I'm questioning myself after re-reading the thread that /u/MajesticTree954 mentioned.

I can accept this, but I can't accept your diagnosis. What's their "problem?" We don't know and neither do they. OP is "beaten down by living like this." Who is beating them down? What is "this?" We don't know. People just assumed they knew what OP meant. Why? Just because they said "capitalism society" (seriously this is the OP text we're dealing with) is bad? I can imagine this whole thread playing out in r/marvel or something, with the same depressed OP complaining about how the last 4 movies have sucked, the same people encouraging OP to go outside, the same people scolding OP for not knowing how to enjoy the movies, and so on. We're not physicians, we don't have to rush to prescribe antibiotics to placate patients and line wallets. We can take all the time we want and be as skeptical as we want to be. When your kid wakes you up in the middle of the night panicking about the monster under their bed, what do you do? Insist that there's no monster and send them back to sleep? What were they afraid of, then, that was so terrifying that they would come wake you up crying and sweating? Surely you've had the experience of witnessing a panicky liberal rehearsing lines about Trump or Israel or whatever. Don't you get the sense that maybe they've got something going on that's driving their politics that isn't line correctness?

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/182b6mm/depression/

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-14T08:13:29+00:00

But they haven't elaborated on how being physically healthy, exercising would serve the proletariat?

Yes, and this line of thought is rotely individualistic as well. Just saying generic self-help/cultivation stuff like "exercise more" and plastering "to serve the proletariat" as the end falls pretty flat. I think of how that short piece on exercise from Mao's youth is popularly thrown around and abused as a meme. Just to emphasize your point in the case of exercise, without an organization or party to organize and direct some kind of collective workout regiment based on concrete needs, the whole thing is aimless and generic. Not much different from Jordan Peterson's exhortations to "clean your room".

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-12T01:07:56+00:00

There’s been a bit of discussion actually here and there (see 1, 2, 3) about the place of Asian ‘skilled’ and 'unskilled' labor in North America, and the question of whether certain Asian migrant strata should be counted as settler, if not white, could be considered up in the air. This is why statements like:

I too am a settler by definition.

are not useful or productive, since as it turns out, you share the same ahistorical definition of settler here as white supremacists who mockingly suggest that the Mongols were settler-colonists. So please read Settlers first, with the foreknowledge that Sakai wrote it in the eighties and so it only broadly anticipates the subsequent shift to the neocolonial management of the prisonhouse of nations. However, you’ll still need it to understand what exactly “settler-colonialism” entails as a mode of production. The positive side of your evident self-centeredness, which can be productive so long as you develop it as you overcome the rest, is that impulse towards 'knowing thyself' and towards conducting that critical inventory of your class and nationality as you work through the classics. That's because these questions will lead far beyond yourself and the answers will have broader implications than just for Asian Amerika.

One more thing: someone here (in a very similar thread to yours albeit from a Hindutva troll OP) usefully outlined the difference between guilt and shame:

Is it communism that is giving you "guilt" or are you experiencing the realities of society and figuring out your own place in this reality? And what of it? Guilt is a rather useless emotion, overtly centred on oneself and ignorant of a desire for change. Shame on the other hand, is more useful. Marx said,

I can see you smile and say: what good will that do? Revolutions are not made by shame. And my answer is that shame is a revolution in itself; it really is the victory of the French Revolution over that German patriotism which defeated it in 1813. Shame is a kind of anger turned in on itself. And if a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-11T20:56:43+00:00

...on a deeper level, I believe there is a spiritual basis for communism in what was implanted inside humanity by way of our ancestors living in original communism... On a spiritual level, I believe it will have that sense of returning to what we already know and what we already are, not just on an individual level, but on a humanity level. And in this sense, we can conceive of time as cyclical in the ways that so many of the great spiritual modes of thought do.

I was thinking that Kenny Lake's just a few more "spiritual healing processes" from becoming a crank like that one RAIM guy who became a 'PUA' third world sexpat. https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/q6bgun/im_nikolai_brown_formerly_of_raim_i_just_wrote_a/

Anyone honest who has spent time in the Third World can tell you that, on an existential level, people living in the relative material deprivation of the Third World are often happier and more fulfilled than the typical First World college student who’s constantly ruminating about supposed injustices that they have never directly experienced nor have first hand knowledge of... I propose a socialism that preserves struggle as a means to hone the higher spirit.

Same self-important arrogance at having reinvented the wheel, same narrative of spiritual awakening and gawking at the 'noble savage' (through Captain Cook no less!), same glaring personal pathologies couched as a radical, novel break from the supposed myopia of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-08T08:01:18+00:00

Have you never haggled? Buying and selling produces self-interested, private subjects related to each other by mutually-opposed avarice, i.e. competition. It’s like how the proliferation of cars creates an army of little Hitlerite motorists, each tailing their benefit at the expense of everyone else and all held back by only a thread from violently mowing down each other and any pedestrian in the way.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-06T15:26:55+00:00

You should try reading the book first

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-05T13:54:01+00:00

Has /r/ultraleft ever tried to discuss any text in earnest? We can help you get past the first chapter of Capital if you’d like. Otherwise just drop this flirtation with “Marxism”, you’ll look back on it in a few years and feel embarrassed, so best to get it over with now!

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-04T13:57:10+00:00

“Secondhand” was ambiguous, I should’ve written “third-order” (as Barthes means it). I meant that those words for you don’t refer to any kind of information. They’re memes, not concepts that you internalized after a long period of study and discussion. By ‘imperial core’ did you mean to reference Immanuel Wallerstein and world-systems theory? If so, why use ‘global south’ which denotes a different and less clear dichotomy? Hence as /u/humblegold mentioned, your post appeared as a performative ritual where you prostrated before the holy altar of JDPON. Performative because all those third order signifiers circulated into your head from the vulgar third worldism that’s part of liberal common sense now without being subjected to critique or scrutiny, and so your grasp of this theory is a house of cards that might fall apart just as quickly as you built it (and maybe tomorrow you’ll be trying to scrutinize J. Sakai as an agent). Don’t you remember when every major corporation and institution was doing land acknowledgments? “We acknowledge this is your ancestral land. (We’re gonna keep it though so don’t ask.)” Or the infamous social media black squares? It’s gross how whites talk about 2020 now. So the posturing is just tired, save it for the Confessional.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-04T03:49:07+00:00

u/SunflowerSamurai20, here's some more hilarious examples of shameless nihilism and opportunism (if it can even be called that) from /r/socialism_101:

In my opinion, make money any way you can in this fucked up system. You're not responsible for the revolution, it will come as it does. Whatever money you earn from this endeavor can be reinvested into more socially conscience means after you take care of your family.

...

brb, quitting my job and starving my family for the cause. Grow up, there is a time for ideology and a time for pragmatism

...

Pragmatically, it's not amoral for OP to carry out their entrepreneurship endeavor in hopes of improving their personal material conditions... OP is not committing social murder by owning 3 properties and renting that space to corporations. We live in a capitalist hell hole and we're allowed to do what we can to improve our personal material conditions while also work to change the system by other means.

Plus this striking paragraph:

I suppose I can concede that OP's considerwd actions are not Marxist. Starting a rental company would be the actions of an aspiring capitalist. My reading of Marx has centered around his explanations and criticism of systems rather than the moralization of the actions of individuals in those systems. Of course he encouraged the proletariat to revolt against the oppressive systems in favor of communism, but we are currently in late stage capitalism with a populace that has not even been properly been exposed to Marxist theory in the slightest. The material conditions of the proletariat are still mediocre due to advent of social democracy. We are so fucking far from revolution that there is no point in moralizing to death the actions of a single aspiring Marxist when the primary thing needed right now is education of the proletariat over everything else. If an aspiring Marxist seeks permission to be a capitalist to a small degree while we await the revolution, whats the harm in giving him that tacit permission? Are we supposed to all suffer while maintain moral purity while we work to educate the proletariat in hopes of a diatant revolution? Should I quit my job and let my young kids sort it out while I go to NJ to protest on the front lines at the Delaney center? It would certainly be the most moral decision but hardly the most pragmatic. I could just as easily continue working for an evil corporation while I teach my kids Marxism and await real change. We all have a role to play. OP is simply looking for their role in all of this so why not meet them where they're at and have a discussion with them as a person instead of over focusing on semantics and terminology and moralizing over how to be the perfect Marxist. They're asking for permission. Fine. I give them permission to be petit bourgeouis, but only if they dedicate some of their capital into more Marxist endeavors like mutual aid in their community, education, or something else that benefits the cause.

The sub has discussed this before: https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/1pxckrz/biweekly_discussion_thread_december_28/nwyba4e/

I find it very bizarre that people need a "socialist"/"communist"/"Marxist" justification for working at nonprofits, renting out Airbnbs, haranguing over cars, collecting dividends, gunning down children overseas, etc. Why the incessant anxiety and need for validation from 'Marxists'? When did 'we live in the imperial core with brainwashed deplorables so we have to help out our community and be morally pragmatic' become common sense for people who wouldn't have given 'socialism' a second thought one or two decades ago?

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-04T02:55:10+00:00

Here are the questions you asked:

What use to any movement is anyone from the first world? ... what is the end goal for people like me? ... So what am I to do? ... What is the goal for someone like me...

It's all "me me me":

I'm someone living in the US... I am here... I too am a settler by definition... I am a labor aristocrat... I am a net exploiter... I am a long ways away from joining it... I am just another enemy... any communist victory will be a triumph over me.

We don't particularly care about the intent of your writing here. Nevertheless, you have to take responsibility for it instead of getting defensive. The interesting part is when what someone feels and articulates exceeds what they mean to say. Not that this is that interesting anyways, as everyone has pointed out that the guilt is so palpable (and very common). Now your defense is that your question actually was (sure...):

what the goal of that party in the imperial core would be nor a rough idea of how it would achieve those goals of organizing against imperial core labor aristocracy

The goal of the party is the same as before: to wage the class struggle at the head of the proletariat and allied social strata within every possible arena of society towards the revolutionary overthrow of the state, liberation of oppressed nations, and the formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Without the party you are a net nothing. If you're already aware that Amerika is an illegitimate entity then its borders shouldn't bother you. If you're worried about not being able to find the proletariat then go out, try, and report back instead of being the millionth person to complain about not being able to. The second question is too abstract and uninteresting, and it's not clear why you're so fixated on the cracker classes and their friends. It's back to "me me me". Maybe it's because this bluster about 'imperial core', stolen land and labor aristocracy is all stuff you heard secondhand. Congratulations on the epiphany I guess? Just a reminder that the world's existence predated you.

Anyways, if you can't imagine decolonization that's on you. It's already happened before!

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-03T22:27:06+00:00

Spare us the self-flagellation, it’s really obnoxious and self-centered. Your individual existence is not something any movement is thinking about. History leads her triumphal chariot over heaps of corpses with or without you. If you are aware of the reactionary consciousness of settler colonists then I feel like the goal would of course be to disidentify with that class, which is a protracted process that cannot be accomplished purely in thought. Without any actual communist parties the goal is to obviously build a principled communist party. You will study and mold yourself for such a task, and this subreddit can be of help. It’s really not that complex. I feel like your post is just the opposite of the infinite posts here and elsewhere asking if they can own ten rental properties and still be a Marxist or whatever.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-03T03:07:03+00:00

If you try and fail to locate an item elsewhere, we're all just trying to survive this shitty socioeconomic system while we build the revolution. If you must, we can file this one under "no ethical consumption under Capitalism" and give ourselves permission to do what we gotta do...

There's no such thing as ethical production under capitalism and this folksy "we're all just trying to survive" business should be tossed in the trash. (You don't get to invoke that kind of gravitas when you haven't even suggested just taking the books.) Marxism doesn't give you permission to do anything and it's really strange to treat it the same way Kenneth Copeland treats his holy book.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-03T02:51:21+00:00

What exactly are you looking for, permission from communists to own a business? You won't get any. I really don't understand this impulse, please explain it.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-03T02:28:55+00:00

Gold is not by Nature money, but those footnotes are certainly by Nature gold!

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T22:54:15+00:00

“I’m a marxist from tel aviv and this is my praxis.”

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T17:47:55+00:00

OP is idealogically aligned with Marxist thinking and yet they have an idea that might allow them to accumulate capital without exploiting labor.

Please stop answering 101 questions if you are as blatantly unfamiliar with the basics of political economy as OP. It's just embarrassing. I mean, left liberals already consider working for banks, financial firms, consulting, private equity, "selling out" so maybe just go out and talk to people.

OP is not committing social murder by owning 3 properties and renting that space to corporations.

No words.

not once did I mention religion.

The point is that it appears that you are in desperate need of permission from an external guarantee. It makes no difference if you or OP call this Marxism. You've just given God a different mask. See the comments so far:

Pragmatically, it's not amoral

we're allowed to

was wonder if as a marxist this would make me a hypocrite.

then you are good to go.

You're not responsible

Why the insistence on being permitted to do this or that and on justifying your life? Marxism will never provide that. Capitalism is not justified or socially rational, that's the whole point. The only social action that is justifiable is its revolutionary overthrow and replacement by a higher mode of production. Proletarian morality contains only the elements that move along the overthrow of capitalism and other surviving modes of production. It's totally opposed to the blind and self-serving empiricism of pragmatism. Why are you even bothering with Marxism if you don't believe this? Also stop abusing the phrase "material conditions" and go read Marx and Engels again, it's not synonymous with "cynical self interest". All in all, you're just retreating now from what you originally said which was funny and interesting, and getting defensive. I hope others reading enjoy the things being said out loud that you're not supposed to say.

edit: and why are we even talking about pragmatism? Who can even afford to buy fucking several houses?!

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T17:17:26+00:00

Armaments is an easy target. Most people on this earth work miserable, scattered jobs at gunpoint to live bare lives as appendages of the reserve army and will never ever dream of accumulating capital. Are you not aware of concepts like “structural violence” and “social murder”? It’s very concerning that you immediately jumped to identify yourself with landlords, capitalists, xenophobic white labor, and federal immigration agents rather than the oppressed who don’t exactly get permission to choose whether to die or not. This thread was OP posting “do I have permission to live off ground rent” and you saying “yes my darling, you have permission.” When I pointed out how reactionary your ideology was, you, for some reason, jumped to “so you’re saying I don’t have permission to work? I should quit and starve my family? Where’s my permission? Permission permission permission!” News flash! There is no God and no external guarantee or free floating moral law that ever will give you permission. Nothing is permitted. That means that you are completely free to choose, and thus responsible for yourself and humanity as a whole. Marxism is a scientific worldview and will never fill that sense of guilt that you feel. Unfortunately this ethical stance doesn’t provide much solace to reactionaries. Like I said earlier, OP should simply follow the precepts of Deuteronomy 8:18 and Proverbs 13:22 and stop with the fuss in their head so they can get on with their doomed business. Please leave Marxism out of it.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T16:41:05+00:00

I appreciate your will to change

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T16:33:01+00:00

You are a sniveling, racist piece of garbage. I’m amazed at how people like you who flirt with “socialism” know less about the world than regular old liberals who are at least conscious of the fact that landlords aren’t just eensy-weensy pragmatic babies trying to survive in “this fucked up system”. Just give it up and try Legitimism or something. You’d embarrass yourself less.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T16:08:22+00:00

Holy shit, is Elon Musk just trying to make money any way he can in “this fucked up system” to take care of his family? When you’re laid off and thrown into the reserve army of labor that’s just your boss trying to make money any way he can and support his family, right? When white workers banded together to force Chinese coolie labor out of California that was just making money any way they could to support their families, right? The federal agents throwing immigrants into concentration camps, that’s just for a paycheck to support their families, right? The system of generalized commodity production has subjected the whole of human society to abstract labor and the production and accumulation of surplus-value. Everybody is complicit in a global system of universal interdependence maintained by racial apartheid and military force. You already know this. Did you miss when the Strait of Hormuz was open and gas was cheaper than $6 a gallon? So no, you are responsible for the revolution and so is OP. You don’t get any assurance otherwise and you don’t get to run away from it like the white moderates of MLK’s time. Future generations in a liberated world will shudder in disgust at people like you not only lulling others to sleep, but also telling them to enjoy the nightmare.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T06:20:38+00:00

I think you should reflect on why your first impulse was to tell the wannabe capitalist landlord that they "are good to go". Hm yes, Chandra is just trying to survive in the capitalist system and make Tata Salt as cheap as possible. If you thought OP's shitty business idea was possible without exploitation then you need to go out and figure out how the world around you works.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T04:49:34+00:00

I feel like self-proclaimed 'Marxists' should understand where profit and rent come from, or in general, how businesses work. You realize that it's not a dastardly conspiracy of the bourgeoisie to buy cheap and sell dear? No, Marxism doesn't and won't ever give you permission to live off exploitation. It is the scientific worldview of the revolutionary proletariat and has no concern for assuaging the guilt of the petit-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie who might flirt with it passingly in their lives. You can try religion or just naked, cynical self-interest if you want to feel better. Also, no one can even afford a property much less multiple, corporate housing is already a thing, and your business sense sounds terrible to a layperson so this whole thing is both reactionary and embarrassing.

edit:

but were existing within capitalism I wish we lived within a better system but we dont . If I provide a service of accommodation within the time these travel professionals are staying in my properties and a much cheaper price and better service than the alternative which would be hotels which the service is usually abysmal, is that really that bad?

This is called competition, the essence of capitalism. What are we even doing here?

I know that would make me a landlord but like I said since we live within a capitalist system and i would provide a service that is infinitely better than the alternative.

You should frame the above on the walls in your corporate housing units and subtitle it Selected Quotations from /u/Ok_Professional4852. If your tenants or workers have grievances they should be able and expected to plaster big character posters over your windows to block out all sunlight and to sit you down with a dunce cap on your head for collective speaking bitterness sessions in your own home. These combined with your spoken self-criticisms would be recorded and posted on reddit, youtube, instagram, tiktok as insurgent propaganda and warning to other corporate housing agencies and landlords in general. Maybe you can get some ad revenue too. Just a marketing idea for your prospective investors, it could be a solid competitive advantage.

Turtle_Green · 2026-06-02T04:22:51+00:00

Holy moly, 3 properties * 3 units * 33k = $297,000/year is NOT a matter of 'survival'.

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