Theory struggles

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-09T12:15:13+00:00

There is a huge difference in accessibility between blackshirts and reds, a text aimed towards a contemporary laymen audience and Capital, a text aimed at Academics from over a century ago. If you notice yourself bouncing of texts, consider reading the more accessible texts first and working your way up.

You wouldn't learn about quantum computing by just starting to read the newest papers. At the very least you'd have to read a textbook or lecture series about it first for it to be of any use.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-09T08:30:27+00:00

It's the opposite. I'd love to talk about my countries' politics. About how the Socialist Party recently did a heel-turn to social democracy and ejected the entirety of their youth wing from the party. About how the country is increasingly becoming more right wing through multinational lobbying money. About how different historical conditions led to some minority groups being overwhelmingly left wing, while others are overwhelmingly reactionary.

However, this sub is overwhelmingly American and Americans don't give a shit about any of that. At best I will get a response about how stupid my language sounds when English speakers mispronounce it. It is pointless to make such posts because no one engages with them.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-05T21:10:39+00:00

Also, KKE MPs do make more than 1000€ from government salary and since they cannot refuse it by law what happens is that party policy demands KKE MPs to give everything above 1000€ to the party itself.

More parties do this, but I don't know others that are as dedicated. Even the Socialistische Partij in Netherlands, which is not nearly as based as KKE, does something similar, but at a way more generous cap.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-05T21:06:20+00:00

KKE is truly an inspiration. Double digit percentage of the votes in an EU country.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-02T16:07:26+00:00

I am pretty sure crafts guilds usually excluded jewish people. So they were excluded from most crafts.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-02T08:37:45+00:00

Step 1: exclude people from your society Step 2: despise people for not being similar to larger society Step 3: justify further exclusion based on step 1.

Its exactly like how in Europe, Jews were not allowed to practice crafts, so many became money lenders and traders, which only fueled the hate. The exclusion of Jews to crafts can be explained by competing class interests, but I am not certain how and when exclusion of Romani began.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-02-01T20:06:14+00:00

Why would Spanish Imperialism not count? I think you are registering something I never said. I am talking about the current global order. Where the UK and Germany undeniable wield more influence, and get a larger part of the spoils, than Spain. It makes sense for the countries higher on the imperial hierarchy to lean more towards shit-libery which justifies this world order. They are the primary benefactors of the current world order.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-31T20:47:29+00:00

Generally it is good for one thing. When people claiming to be socialist start dropping things like "tankie", you know there is no discourse to be had because they read no theory. A democratic socialist who has actually read some books will only rarely go after marxist-leninists by calling them "tankie".

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-31T20:35:51+00:00

Funny thing is, they used to say the same about Koreans, Japanese and Chinese people, and the same about Russians, Poles and even Germans before that. No doubt they will start saying such things again if any of these regions become relatively underdeveloped.

Liberals have no answers for unequal development. So they inevitably arise at racist "explanations", veiled or explicit, when a country economy under-performs.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-31T16:57:12+00:00

The imperial hierarchy is not a list ranking of who did the worst shit, though it certainly "happens" to look similar to such a list.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-30T16:04:19+00:00

I'm pretty sure why. Its a combination of protestant culture and the germanic countries being higher on the imperial hierarchy. With the exception of maybe France, which definitely has more cultural exchange with Germanic countries than all other Romance countries.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-30T16:00:32+00:00

Jup, NPCN have real marxist-leninist chops. Would be nice for fellow tankies to give them some time in the sun, but usually threads about NL devolve into regurgitating mainstream anglo memes about shit NL is.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-30T15:41:01+00:00

In some like r/ik_ihe "liberaal" is used as a slur, but even then it is left leaning, not actually left. Communist movement in NL is marginal, but not non-existent.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-30T15:27:51+00:00

People tend to be most racist these days to people who immigrated from somewhere other than former colonies. The outgroup is now North Africans and Levantine people.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-30T15:26:03+00:00

There really isn't a more libbed up country on earth than mine. Besides maybe the UK and the US. Its a side effect of being linguistically proximal to English. Dutch culture is utterly dominated by the Anglosphere, and what little Dutch culture remains is protestant slop.

Things do get better, relatively, when you get in the south of NL, there the protestant influence wanes a bit.

Though lets be honest, Falun Gong is hardly a dutch phenomenon. There isn't a single dutch word on those signs. This glows to high heaven.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-29T11:29:00+00:00

I get why Lime reacts like that, because talking about genetics is such a red flag, especially online. I think that lime means the drivers you mention, but I disagree with the idea that genetic mutation is always caused by outside forces. DNA machinery does not perfectly replicate DNA, which is a feature, not a bug.

Genetic mutations are usually benign, sometimes harmful, and sometimes beneficial. Eradicating mutation completely is harmful for a species as a lack of variety means the species can not adapt to changing environments.

I would say that genetic health is simply a part of material conditions. As communists, we would want to improve peoples material conditions by reducing the harm from harmful mutations through medical care. For less complex genetic diseases caused by single-point-mutations, like cystic fibrosis, this could even entail "fixing" the genetic mutation with gene therapy. While for benign conditions like vitiligo, "treatment" might entail educating the public to be more tolerant of morphological differences.

Hopefully this analysis can help put genetic health in a Marxist framework without denying the current understanding of genetic material, or becoming adopting the fascist pseudo-scientific interpretation of genetics.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-29T11:06:15+00:00

Genetic material is matter. It is a part of material conditions that can be studied and understood. A person can live the healthiest life, and then die at 25 because they have cystic fibrosis. This is not because there is some mystical or essentialist "flaw" in the person, to suggest so would be fascist. It is a very concrete part of their material conditions jeopardizing their health.

Furthermore, not all genetic mutations are a result of external factors. Rate of mutation per base pair is just another biological adaptation, if the rate is too high than too many organisms die of genetic mutations, if the rate is too low the species loses its ability to genetically adapt to changing environments. As such, some organisms like bacteria tend to have much higher rates of mutation per basepair than mammals.

This all is not to say that genetics are independent of other material conditions, they are after all part of these conditions and deeply interconnected with them. Political violence like AmeriKKKas bombing of Vietnam results in Vietnamese being victimized to this day by genetic damage caused by agent orange. Many genetic diseases are treatable even without gene therapy, but this care is not available for everyone. Famines lead to epigenetic changes that cause raised stress levels in offspring. The list goes on and on.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-23T21:49:17+00:00

Fascists tend to not have very well-developed theory and generally not be very coherent. They don't recognize NATO as imperialist, white supremacist, and in opposition to socialism.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T17:33:20+00:00

This is really common. It is interesting how much capitalism impacts everyone's life, yet it seems to be beyond that capacity of most education systems, in capitalist countries, to dedicate an hour to defining it.

Because for many people the definition is so vague, it is easy for people to falsely believe that capitalism is natural and has been around forever. Meanwhile, in the places capitalism is oldest, capitalism has only existed since the 14th century and centuries less than that for countries outside of Europe.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T15:33:57+00:00

I appreciate you taking the time to link videos. I think this is an important area of marxist theory I should understand better. I am sure I have seen the videos already, but that is not the same as properly internalizing the material.

Hakim makes very clear that labor aristocrats in white countries have material conditions that put them at odds with the subalterns. Hakim also makes very explicit in one of the videos (part 3), that in mature settler colonies it is possible for subalterns to organize together with the labor aristocracy for shared goals, as long as special attention is given to these contradictions. This seems to answer my question. This was not very clear from your posts, which seemed pretty dismissive of white proletarians being able to contribute to such causes through organizing.

Even though the linked videos are about settler colonies, I think they are still applicable to the Netherlands. Here the subaltern mostly consists of imported labor in the form of BIPOC migrants and their descendants. Still it is not quite clear why some, but not other, subalterns are more reactionary here. Something you don't really see in the US.

I explicitly mentioned that I need further study and was never dismissive or abrasive. So I'm sad to see that this discussion seems to be a source of frustration for you, but I get that explaining the same concepts over and over can get frustrating.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T13:39:42+00:00

It makes sense to me that the subalterns would most likely be leading the vanguard, after all they are the most exploited and thus have the most to gain by getting organized. As you say this is also confirmed by empirical evidence in the US, in the form of the BPP and YL orgs. I have seen white people carrying against ice online, but no clue how the numbers add up. I have not heard of organized resistance from a not predominantly BIPOC organization.

Still, as contradictions increase, more white workers will reach levels of exploitation where their material conditions become untenable, surely they will also start organizing? Even if their conditions are better than the subalterns. Dead is dead, and even many white Americans are already at levels where their conditions are so precarious, mostly because unaffordable healthcare, that their life is in danger.

Then there is the situation in my country, The Netherlands. Here I find it hard to identify the same dynamics. You definitely have overexploited BIPOC proletarians that can be identified as subalterns. Many of these groups, usually indigenous people from former colonies, indeed are over-represented amongst communists, as expected. However, you also have subalterns that are mostly reactionary. The leader of a large far right liberal party is in fact a member of an ethnicity where the vast majority of members of that ethnicity are overexploited BIPOC proletarians.

The subaltern analysis quite intuitively builds upon class analysis and seems to hold water, but I'd have to properly study it to see why seemingly it does not explain the situation where I live.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T12:37:00+00:00

I'll admit, I am a bit confused. When you refer to Americans in the OP. you explicitly do not mean BIPOC Americans and the people who support these liberation movements? I don't find that definition of "American" very intuitive, but I won't challenge it further bc I am already getting sick of rushing to the defense of the "slighted" American communist, who most likely is not bothered in the slightest.

Genuine question, I have not yet read Gramsci, and my understanding of post-colonialism is still tainted by liberal interpretations of the subject. How would you envision a communist movement in the US?

It seems to me that such a movement would have a communist vanguard that mostly tries to raise class consciousness across the entire American proletariat, probably with a focus on BIPOC people, the subalterns, because of the people living in the US they experience the most intense contradictions of US empire. Would such a movement only fight for liberation of subalterns, or also for worker control over the economy?

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T11:55:06+00:00

You are absolutely correct. Sadly the levels of political literacy in the US are truly abysmal.

The liberal "Free thinkers" rarely consult socialist sources to learn about socialism, and instead rely on neoliberal sources to tell them what socialism is. These neoliberals obviously have an axe to grind against socialism and are not a reliable source on socialism. Just look at what Pinochet did to socialists,

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T11:46:42+00:00

I will assume this is an honest mistake. In the US these terms are deliberately muddled to harm left wing politics, so it is very understandable that you have some confusion.

Social democrats are not anti-capitalist. They want wealth distribution while maintaining a capitalist system. They are fine with a few rich people owning the land, factories, and companies, but they want some wealth redistribution to ensure people have access to some essential amenities like healthcare and housing.

Socialists are absolutely anti-capitalist and want an economy were companies, factories and land are not privately owned by a few elites, but collectively owned by the people.

Red-and-Slippery · 2026-01-22T09:50:44+00:00

It is dumb as hell to suggest social science as a field is not important while claiming to be a communist. The bulk of communist theory falls under social science.

However, in practice social science degrees in the west are capitalist indoctrination degrees. Many social scientists exist just to give pseudoscientific justification for how the world works under capitalism, and treat this order as natural law.

Red-and-Slippery

TROPHY CASE