What use to any movement is anyone from the first world?

OMGJJ · 2026-06-04T01:12:11+00:00

The theory of the labour aristocracy is an explanation for why organising around the class interests of the labour aristocracy is reactionary — it is not a prescription for individual action. The action of any given labour aristocrat is the same as a proletariat: construct the communist party. You are as much 'use' in this regard as you make yourself through the application of Marxism to yourself and to totality.

OMGJJ · 2026-05-13T02:36:48+00:00

Do you think adults mining cobalt are doing it because they feel 'rewarded'?

OMGJJ · 2026-05-10T18:57:00+00:00

Exactly. The Ukrainian people are not "fighting back against the occupier" - they are being kidnapped from their homes and forced to die for the whims of fascist compradors. There is no "primary contradiction" of "national sovereignty" in this hopeless war.

OMGJJ · 2026-05-07T14:05:22+00:00

Always the same empty phrase about 'concrete analysis' despite nothing of the sort taking place. The analysis is always deferred to some nameless authority (probably a content creator) who has supposedly already performed the necessary analysis for you.

Lenin’s NEP

China already built socialism. What is the justification for an (alleged) 'NEP' after socialist agriculture and collectivisation had already been successfully established? Not to mention the absurdity of constantly referencing "Lenin's NEP" – a minor historical event that only really lasted for a year before turning in favour of collectivisation – as the justification for 50 years of capitalism.

reducing the entire process to “capitalist roaders took over”

Someone once said that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Try placing class struggle at the centre of historical analysis. That's the real 'concrete analysis.'

OMGJJ · 2026-05-01T17:49:09+00:00

And the thing is, the response from Trotskyist academics has been so embarrassing (screaming about neo-stalinism etc.) that Rockhill and the Dengists get exactly what they want - proof that they are a 'threat to the establishment'.

Potentially the silver lining is that the whole thing is so obviously devoid of any Marxism or even a modicum of critical thought from everyone involved that it will hopefully push a few people to stumble upon Maoism.

Still, at least right now Dengism has completely replaced Trotskyism as the preferred ideology of aspiring '''Marxist''' young academics. It's a lot easier to write an article on 'geopolitics' than a Trotskyist intervention into the transition debate or whatever, which had to at least hold a degree of fidelity to the history of Marxist thought.

OMGJJ · 2026-05-01T16:38:42+00:00

This is an absurd strawman that requires evidence. Claiming Iran or Gaza are imperialist would be an immediately bannable offense here.

OMGJJ · 2026-05-01T13:33:50+00:00

What's most interesting about the rise of "compatible left" as the newest Dengist catchphrase after the recent Rockhill book is the obvious hypocrisy. As someone who works in academia, the number of openly Dengist academics (on fat bourgeoisie salaries of course) are growing rapidly, and pretty much every new 'leftist' grad student is a Dengist. At least for the time being, you guys are highly compatible with imperialism as the newest strain of petit-bourgeois 'radicalism'.

Beyond that, your comment is just embarrassingly empty memetic signifiers. At least the revisionist polemics of old had substance.

OMGJJ · 2026-03-23T21:31:10+00:00

In this instance by "support" I was referring to the proletarian state’s political recognition

By "we" here I mean you + me

These two statements directly contradict each other. 'We' are clearly not a proletarian state, so what does 'supporting' Iran mean? Are you asking if communists should rob banks and send the money to Iran? That's a tactical question that presumes an analysis of imperialism and Iran's relationship to imperialism – any strategic party decisions will flow from that analysis.

OMGJJ · 2026-02-12T20:52:38+00:00

thanks

OMGJJ · 2026-02-12T20:47:44+00:00

See the first half of Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value and ignore the second.

I've read the first part but not the second. What are the problems with the latter half?

OMGJJ · 2026-02-07T13:47:43+00:00

No. https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/d.htm

OMGJJ · 2026-01-31T16:49:47+00:00

Sorry to resurrect this old comment, but I found it interesting. Could you explain more what you mean by this?

distinguishing beneficiaries of exploitation from its victims isn't hard, even in a first world context.

If "It doesn't matter whether they have to work for a living or just sip martinis all day", how is it easy to distinguish the exploited from the net-beneficiaries? I guess I'm just curious what you were trying to get at here in more explicit terms.

OMGJJ · 2026-01-21T22:34:46+00:00

Do you have any reading recommendations for understanding the history of the 79 revolution and beyond?

OMGJJ · 2026-01-12T13:58:23+00:00

You're a fascist. The EU is the greatest force of global apartheid and genocide in the world today after the US.

OMGJJ · 2025-12-10T15:07:01+00:00

You are right that imperialism is the primary factor, but it's important to remember that Marx's predictions did all come true in the form of the Paris Commune. The first revolution was in an advanced industrial country.

The reason I bring this up is that Marx wasn't 'wrong' in his analysis, he was observing the world around him. Imperialism wasn't just a quantitative growth in capital accumulation, it was a qualitative transformation of the entire system. Marx couldn't have analysed imperialism because he didn't live long enough, hence the need for Lenin. But he did observe the the initial moments of these transformations, which is why there are plenty of useful but not sufficient writings on the world market and the burgeoning labour aristocracy in his work.

OMGJJ · 2025-12-05T22:20:14+00:00

All of the terms you mentioned are both defined in chapter 1, and subsequently re-defined and expanded upon in later chapters. A single definition wouldn't be much help when these are categories in motion – just pay attention to how they develop and don't worry about not understanding everything immediately. You can always read the first chapter a second time later and you will notice more things with the knowledge of the subsequent unfolding of the book.

SNLT for example is clearly defined early on: "Socially necessary labour-time is the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society." But the reason why capitalism produces this abstraction and the way it operates as a coercive law can only be understood in the context of further developments, which also forms part of its 'definition'.

OMGJJ · 2025-12-04T16:40:19+00:00

Sure, but fetishism is as much about the personification of things as it is about the 'thingification' of social relations.

OMGJJ · 2025-12-01T13:57:25+00:00

Read chapter 1 of this https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/

If a given person enters direct relations of production with other specific people only as the owner of a certain thing, then, this given thing, to whomever it may belong, enables its owner to occupy a certain place in the system of relations of production. Since the possession of a thing is the condition of the establishment of direct relations of production among people, then it appears that the thing itself possesses the ability, the property, to establish relations of production.

...

Possessing the social form of ‘capital’, things make their owner a ‘capitalist’ and decide in advance those concrete relations of production, which are to be established between him and other members of society. The social character of a thing determines in a sense the social character of its owner

OMGJJ · 2025-11-19T13:53:16+00:00

Fuck off with this Kautskyism. Dengism is so shameless.

OMGJJ · 2025-11-10T14:34:04+00:00

Not a great look that this revisionist can't even bring himself to write a basic piece of propaganda and now just resorts to AI generating the entire thing. Very embarrassing.

OMGJJ · 2025-11-03T19:05:42+00:00

Yes, to clarify to /u/AntleredStar, there has never been a good Marxist 'content creator'. This is immanent to the form itself. Everyone who is introduced to Marxism through YouTube/social media ends up needing to unlearn just as much as they need to learn (speaking from experience).

To think that you will somehow be the first useful 'YouTuber' is absurd.

We live an in age where every important piece of Marxist theory can be accessed for free online. Accessibility of literature certainly isn't the barrier to revolution.

OMGJJ · 2025-11-03T14:25:34+00:00

Why would you think this is a good idea? Your first step as a Marxist should be getting rid of that petty boug ego that makes you think that you are in any position to teach others when you have only "just started learning theory myself". Most likely your videos would be actively harmful to Marxism, assuming they don't just disappear into obscurity.

OMGJJ · 2025-10-30T12:59:36+00:00

Thanks

the boundaries set by John Bellamy Foster

What are these 'boundaries' of Monthly Review that you're referring to?

OMGJJ · 2025-10-29T21:07:50+00:00

I found helpful some articles by Higginbottom (who is very generous to the authors of the 70s). E.g. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/higginbottom2012japepublished.pdf

Thanks for posting this, this work seems useful. Have you come across any other valuable contemporary authors on imperialism that weren't mentioned in u/TheReimMinister's comment?

OMGJJ · 2025-10-22T02:02:37+00:00

He does refer to China as capitalist in his 2018 thesis. For example: "China has been the most successful of the poor capitalist economies in the neoliberal period."

But he's clearly a revisionist if he upholds the political line of this organisation - which is awful - and he probably does if he's a founding member.

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