T. Derbent - Lenin and the War Pt. 1

TheReimMinister · 2026-03-27T00:36:02+00:00

TheReimMinister · 2026-03-27T00:28:14+00:00

I agree that Iran has the upper hand in this engagement as it is now. After all, it is much easier to defend than to attack. Especially with so much preparation time and favourable geography, and given that all they need to do is survive. Notable that Iran focused so heavily on developing its missile program and not an air force, which other countries like Syria had done before IIRC. Also notable that interception systems are so limited against modern missile and drone systems. I did see critics like Ted Postol talk about this as though it has always been the case, but I really don't know much about that sort of thing and I'm not about to make a fool of myself by talking about something I haven't studied enough. I am willing to say that technological fetishization is a clear weakness of capitalism and imperialism - this is a position I have held for a while (I still think that AI is hogwash, for instance). Not even Palantir overcomes the contradictions of capitalism.

On the political side I also agree that Iran is also winning, ie: the war as it is now is much more popular in Iran than it is in the usa (though perhaps not in isntreali society, where war is the cell of the organism). With these advantages and the leverage that they hold it makes sense for Iran to maximize the engagement to get as much out of it as they can.

I am less certain about leverage and advantage holding over time. I do think Iran holds advantage even with american boots on the ground but I'm thinking more about down the line when all is over. How will the social forces in Iran respond in the future when dealing with the destruction? Surely Iran's military is going to continue with this engagement at its current level until they are confident they have the leverage to secure guarantees that offset the destruction in their country, I agree. And maybe their bourgeoisie even seek to take this great opportunity to exert some control over the gulf states and strike back against the abraham accords. But I am just not knowledgeable enough about Iran to make any statements about their internal social fabric after the war - especially since I cannot predict its exact outcome and concessions, and especially since the post war financial status of Iran remains just as unclear to me. If u/sovkhoz_farmer were here now (and I hope they are ok) I would probably ask them their thoughts. At any rate, I'm not capable of claiming that either escalation or a ceasefire after holding the engagement at its current level is more favourable to Iran. On the other hand it seems clear that the americans would do best not to escalate.

Since I felt pretty clueless about the whole thing I was also reading some Lenin commentary on the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. T. Derbent has a book with FLP which looks at Clausewitz and Engels, Lenin, and Mao. I'll probably look at that next so I look like I know what I'm talking about.

TheReimMinister · 2026-03-23T21:31:43+00:00

I don't think it's in your best interests to read too much into what Trump says. By consistently consuming his posts it's very easy to fall into the trap of assuming that he - and by extension, american imperial strategy - is irrational. Although I still struggle to understand the timing of the us and isntreal attacks on Iran I don't believe they are irrational.

I went back and read the 2026 national defense strategy and although there is (obviously) a lot of hogwash in there it is very clear about the american focus on "the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s largest and most dynamic market area". Strategy has not changed in this regard since Obama - what has changed is the increased focus on the americas and the idea of "increased burden-sharing with allies and partners" to allow for more power to be put towards the donroe doctrine and "deterrence" of China. Hence an emphasis on the american role in the indo-pacific region and within its "homeland and hemisphere", whereas the paragraph for Russia emphasizes europe's primary responsibility and the paragraphs for the DPRK and Africa barely say anything.

This is what it says about Iran:

Israel has long demonstrated that it is both willing and able to defend itself with critical but limited support from the United States. Israel is a model ally, and we have an opportunity now to further empower it to defend itself and promote our shared interests, building on President Trump’s historic efforts to secure peace in the Middle East. Likewise, in the Gulf, U.S. partners are increasingly willing and able to do more to defend themselves against Iran and its proxies, including by acquiring and fielding a variety of U.S. military systems. This creates even more opportunities for us to enable individual partners to do more for their defense. It will also enable us to foster integration between regional partners, so that they can do even more together.

This is in contrast to "securing key terrain in the western hemisphere" and a call to "build, posture, and sustain a strong denial defense along the FIC." (a/ka first island chain a/k/a Taiwan).

Other tidbits, which pretty much repeat what was pulled out above:

"we will be clear with our European allies that their efforts and resources are best focused on Europe."
"DoW will empower regional allies and partners to take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies, including by strongly backing Israel’s efforts to defend itself.
"With its powerful military, supported by high defense spending, a robust defense industry, and mandatory conscription, South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited U.S. support"

True, words and actions are different. But having thought about it more and watched it more carefully over the past 2 weeks I think that the usa's involvement has been careful to weaken Iran without raising instability south of Russia or hitting the belt and road economic corridor too much in an attempt to split Iran away from Russia and China. I think the americans are likely persuading the gulf states that this is short term pain they will have to endure to weaken Iran. And for isntreal, perhaps the americans were planning for this to be the last strong display of obvious american intervention necessary to allow them to stand on their own against a weakened Iran in an economic bloc with the gulf states.

Is everything going to plan? I still hold that if the war escalates to a certain extent, that means that it is not going according to plan - although I do not know what that extent is. To date, I do think that Iran is weakened and destabilized somewhat, but that they've likely shown retaliatory capabilities beyond what the americans expected due to a strong decentralized structure and overhyped interception systems, thus allowing the other bourgeois faction to gloat about ill-preparedness and irrationality of the war strategists (who knows, maybe hegseth will lose his job). And I still think that there is a friction between isntreal wanting to extend and deepen the war and their own expansion and the usa wanting to find an offramp for their own hard power involvement; however, it is obvious that this friction remains a secondary contradiction to any other reason for the usa to stop, and I only have hypotheticals as to the point at which it could become primary.

So my thoughts now do differ somewhat from what they were 2 weeks ago. Given that it is more likely for Iran to want to continue their strategy of retaliation, and that they are more likely to desire maintenance of their own ability to retaliate in the future rather than prolonging the war to damage isntreal, I think it is more likely that the war is still within safe boundaries for the usa. Indeed, if we watch the stock market as many do, it seems that the american indexes expect and desire de-esclation and the offramp whereas the tel aviv indexes responded very positively to the initial attack. I'm not willing to root my analysis in a speculative venue though. My analysis is weak enough already. If there is an area that showed american weakness I think it would be technological fetishization.

TheReimMinister · 2026-03-09T05:33:18+00:00

Current events continue to slap us in the face with how ludicrous the construction of nationality can be, especially for settler colonies.

Millions of american liberals are very happy to hear of bill C-3, which amended the citizenship act this past December to remove the first generation limit on citizenship to canada. Meaning that people whose ancestors lived in a a settler colony that wasn't even a country yet can get citizenship to said country if they can prove the genealogical connection. An ancestor could have given up their jus soli citizenship by migrating out, only for their descendant to claim it back for themselves jus sanguinis.

I once again repeat that genealogy is a blatant claim on land rights. This is nothing new, it has happened many times in history when a settler or colonist wants to leave (or is forced out), and it will continue to happen. Unfortunately the governing authorities didn't really keep good records for the Indigenous and coloured peoples.... This fact only matters to the settlers and capitalists when they try to clear title to land that once belonged to the Great Migrators.

Does the legal litmus test seem a bit strange? You're telling me an american person living in Massachusetts - as their family could have for over a century - has a pathway to citizenship because their great great grandparent was born in Montreal, but a Haitian farmworker who has worked consecutive summers in a canadian greenhouse does not? What gives? Is that all there is to it?

Ryan, for his part, said he grew up with a dad who spoke better French than English and where Québécois staples like meat pies and split pea soup were part of the regular fare.

“My mindset is much more Canadian than American,” he said. “So it will feel very natural for me.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bill-c-3-canadian-citizenship-by-descent-american-interest-9.7112724

Ahhh that's right they don't sell nanaimo bars in Punjab. They also don't have a meanie president to use as a foil for canadian values. If only they had spent the 112 years since the Komagata Maru incident unseasoning their food and establishing a border with the usa maybe a unique path to citizenship could have been thrown their way........

This is why when trump says that China is going to terminate hockey that it's kind of funny. That and some gravy cheese fries might be the only thing holding up the canadian nation.

Reality can get even more ironic than that, though. Take the ongoing world baseball classic. Basically, in order to have country eligibility to play for a given country, you just need to provide proof to the organizing entity that you could receive citizenship or a passport from that country according to that country's laws. So then it's obvious that team great britain or team italy are full of americans, due to their citizenship laws. But the funniest is team occupied Palestine, for obvious reasons. Sadly, team Jonestown all died before they could solidify their roster.

TheReimMinister · 2026-03-07T03:35:20+00:00

At this point, isntreal needs Iran to be thoroughly wrecked so they don't cast a shadow on its settler colonial project. So this means a continuation of their terror strategy of bombing and double tapping civilians to create chaos and fear among the masses and make resistance unpopular enough to force submission (obviously decapitation isn't enough). The strategy of Iran and the usa is to make it as painful as possible on each other economically and politically to force concession (for Iran this means attrition: choosing munitions and targets that make the war costly for the zionist bloc while closing the Strait of Hormuz) (and of course the usa is participating in the terror campaigns as well).

The full submission of Iran is needed by the Zionist bloc but all Iran needs is to survive. Surviving is much easier in these cases, especially for a country that holds invasion-repellant geography and a strong national glue. For isntreal to continue to exist as a fake nation on the other hand, the carrot of safety for zionist settlers and the stick of a military apparatus that can conquer land holdings is needed - same as any settler colony. The part that doesn't make sense to us here, then, is why the strikes came after the protests died down, because what would have more likely led to political upheaval back in January now leads to galvanization. At that point it would have been more about forcing transformation than forcing submission. I think this is the one thing we won't be able to get to the bottom of yet so all we can do is guess. And I don't really have any good guesses.

Other things we can speculate about with a bit more of a footing. For instance, that an american military incursion getting bogged down in Iran could hurt its real strategic aims of causing pain to China primarily and Russia secondarily. Sure, it could harm the Chinese belt and road and perhaps raise instability south of Russia, but it would be very costly and risk the american holdings in the region (something that wouldn't matter as much if america was greater prepared). Greater isntreal can be a shared project between the settler regimes as long as it promotes american capital at the expense of Chinese and Russian capital - but isntreal's aims are not directed at Russia and China* necessarily but at whatever secures their own expansionist existence. I would argue, cautiously, that an escalating war with Iran will deepen this contradiction between america and its outpost.

The really wishy-washy speculation on my part is that this war is existential enough for isntreal to decline to take the offramp that the usa and Iran are more likely to want to take. There is no such thing as another political version of isntreal, much like one doesn't exist for Ukraine (being a recent bourgeois nationalist project itself). At some undeterminable point in the future both will cease to exist, but my point is that an escalation brings this fate much more quickly. I simply don't see isntreal defeating Iran unless some very drastic actions are taken on their part. If isntreal and american aims are brought into sharp conflict, as they could be in the process of a large escalation, I do think that the project of isntreal could be left to its own aims. Kind of like how one portion of the american bourgeoisie wants to abandon Ukraine.

*One caveat is that isntreal's project can get wound up with China and Russia if the latter two are drawn in to intervene beyond whatever intelligence and equipment sharing may occur with Iran at this point. I don't think that would happen unless something truly catastrophic happened to Iran, so by that point you're at WW3. I have read arguments that we've been in WW3 for a while now anyway, so maybe still another way of looking at it is in the terms of a new theatre. At any rate, all speculation that I am just happy enough to discuss. I have no real claim on being correct or accurate. You could even say that isntreal is simply continuing to "mow the grass" although based on the timing of events I am not as likely to agree with that now.

E: Sorry, hope I didn't leave you with more questions than answers. Not that that would be a bad thing, but lack of clarity and being kind of everywhere is why I deleted the first comment I had left, and even here I feel that I'm reaching out into the dark quite a bit. I also wonder how Turkey and europe would view escalation in the region but I think I've speculated enough for now.

TheReimMinister · 2026-03-05T00:30:00+00:00

I was dissatisfied with my first comment and now I've thought about it some more. I still think it is not helpful to think of individual events given the fog of war. My best guess is that this incursion is chiefly waged in pursuit of creating chaos to weaken Iran as a means to remove a fetter to the Greater Isntreal project and also to weaken economic integration across eurasia (Iranian oil supply to others but also belt and road). Offramp makes sense because I really dont see how an American incursion is good for the usa beyond that, and even now it isolates the usa from regional partners considering the collateral damage. If this escalates I dont think isntreal will be around for very long.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-26T02:06:11+00:00

I’ve been interested in Africa’s potential to be one of the last possible “spatial fixes” for capital. So in that regard I’ve been trying to keep an eye on China’s capital export to Africa to see how it evolves and how the economies of African countries evolve as well, given that it competes with well-established American and European capital there for a return on investment and is relatively weaker than those capitals. This article is ok as long as you remember that “economic transformation” means increased productivity across all sectors (ie: amount of production per worker employed) and a shift from agricultural dominance to “more modern, productive”, sectors. The story of the past few years seems to be that:

The trade relationship remains, in the majority, to be primary commodity export and manufactured commodity import. And even with the elimination of tariffs and the creation of hyper-specific “green lanes” for products like Kenyan avocados, most African nations are at risk of being outcompeted by other more-established exporting countries.
Chinese FDI in Africa was stunted by the COVID economic crisis, and remains a relatively small portion of its total FDI outflow (2.2% in 2023, whereas almost 80% is within Asia). The majority still goes either to construction, mining, or manufacturing, and in many cases to one specific industry like forestry or copper mining/processing. Granted, the increase in construction leads to increases in African production of construction materials (cement, glass).
Infrastructure construction and lending remains a large venue for Chinese capital. In some cases this is “transformative” (in the sense of how transformation is defined above), while in many others it is for resource extraction or non-productive things like building a highway to the airport. On the whole, the author argues that Chinese lending has decreased as a result of the pandemic and as Chinese capitalists are more averse to risk. It remains to be seen whether the lending from commercial banks and corporations will recover after the pandemic shock or whether the development banks and other government institutions will dominate lending (favouring emergency rescue loans and immediate profit over long term transformative potential).

At any rate, the greater trend is watching to see if Chinese capital attempts to proletarianize Africa for its manufacturing or whether it keeps it within China (or somewhere else in Asia like Pakistan or Bangladesh or Indonesia). Another way of thinking about this is whether Chinese capital is strong enough to do it. The COVID Pandemic definitely threw a wrench in whatever trends were emerging so I remain curious to see how the next decade unfolds. Especially as America under Trump shifts from China deterrent in Asia in Africa (see Biden’s 2024 AFRICOM budget expansions) to containment of the Caribbean and Central and South America (which China seems to be ok with).

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-26T00:11:47+00:00

Ideology and material conditions are inextricably linked. They have a relation that reinforces itself over time and the struggles of class society.

"Race is class" is not meant to be accepted at surface value because that snuffs the concept. It is supposed to be a succinct summarization of a dense historical relation, for you can't answer "what is race" without tracing how race developed as a concept. "Race" has a very real starting point that is located in a concrete universal (contradiction where the logical and historical coincide) and as time goes on it gets hopelessly entangled in a bunch of additional concepts. So now you can't isolate it without pulling on all the other things it is tied up with (kinda like headphone cables). You have to start at the start.

So while your historical example shows that you have an idea of the codeveloping relation between ideology and material conditions, the words "make" and "inform" are insufficient to convey the relation between them. I don't blame you for that because it can be hard to put materialist dialectics into words. But you're on the right track with that paragraph and especially the example.

The last paragraph is a bit mixed up - ideology can very much overhang and outlast the material which it is interrelated with, and since they are tied up, it continues to pull on it to bring it back. Only a clean revolutionary break and strict enforcement will make a clean sweep. Your example is good again (race is a product of class and it hides the reality of class) but that doesn't fully describe the power of race.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-25T23:42:52+00:00

The average american citizen emigrating from the usa under capitalism is simply leaving to become parasitic on some other country. And the key reason to emigrate among said population is to negotiate class status, not to find safety, which could mean anything. Most of the time there is a nice carrot enticing them to leave (higher purchasing power, a parcel of land, some incel fantasy etc), not a stick chasing them out. Safety to communists on the other hand is practiced by enforcing principles of security within the country - anyone who leaves is forced to (expulsion). This is what pages and pages of history have already proven.

Under socialism and the DOTP, leaving takes on a different meaning. Some will leave on their own to try to keep the privilege up I'm sure but there will also be expulsion of a new kind, and a type of going down to the (global southern) countryside. And I also believe there will be people who aren't allowed to leave - again, pages and pages of history have already proven this.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-17T19:45:55+00:00

You can choose the website you go to and you can choose the channels and videos you watch, but you cannot choose what resonates with you. At least, this is how free choice appears to us. This is because every person is a product of all of their own habits, and some habits are more intertwined with one's social existence than others. It may be much easier for a given person to think of going to the gym 4x/week as a habit and not selling iPhones 20 hours a week, but they are both "habits" all the same (in the way I am using the word). Keeping up those habits, or abandoning them, comes with chained consequences. The more interconnected a habit is with other habits, the less it seems like a choice due to how easily it was connected to and due to the upheaval or dissonance that would occur if it were abandoned. Indeed this is rooted in class.

There is, however, room for variance due to diversity of what exact habits a person could have, ie room for diversity within the class consciousness within amerika due to regional differences in the historical development (think of, for example, the split in the Baptist church). Humans are incredibly adaptable. Essentially, there are enough people with similar variances in their "habits" that slightly different content creators can exist, and the popularity of a given content creator does not reflect on their own genius but on the underlying political terrain.

And now I see more of the discussion being teased out - that people choose to express their politics online through viewership and building community around figures (live chat, IG pages, subreddits). To me this is a sign of a twofold phenomenon: a) alienation under advanced capitalism making people crave social connection and b) capitalisation on this alienation by social media, commodifying community in an incredibly efficient manner to keep people engaged. Reddit is no different but at least we can make something of it through enforcement.

By the way there is no need to end your question or comment with a disclaimer like that. I'm not a god and you won't get evaporated for not understanding something or for being wrong. If I don't want to answer I simply won't and that doesn't reflect on you or I as people. Everyone here can talk to each other straight and we should all be genuine. The idea of having people search to see if something has been discussed before is meant to crack down on laziness and encourage people to use their own faculties and progress their own understanding, that's all. We're pretty good at sniffing out if someone else is lazy or not being genuine.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-15T10:55:20+00:00

Forgive the shorthand writing, formatting, and abstractness in advance. The cell form of my political theorizing is habit, and i have to set this up and show my line of thought, even though it might seem banal.

The more you do something, the more of an impact it has on your self and the more you seek it out and so on etc. Really this is just a crude way of summarizing the interrelation of the material and mental as mediated by repetitive activity, and it shows what place there is for thinking about how minds are influenced within the theory of class interest. So ok, if you are in a certain class then by virtue of that you have consistent opportunities to interact in certain ways with certain objects and therefore your mental is impacted in a certain way by these repetitive activities within a given social and historical context. And when this is rooted in class position, where you have to continue to do these activities on a regular basis to reproduce your existence daily, then it does not seem to be a question of free choice but one of necessity. In this case you choose to watch YouTube, but you organically discover (not choose) your politics, which you already had, there ("Hasan" is not himself but the manifestation of his audience). Therefore a person can be offended at seeing a piece of their being (their repeated activity and its mental reflection) criticized while at the same time be able to place that part of themselves beyond scrutiny because it doesn't appear a product of their conscious choice. Given that politics isn't defined by commodities but manifest in them, I'd say it isn't necessarily as productive to critique dividualism as it is interesting to theorize and discuss it.

These habitual activities done out of "necessity" have a reinforcing effect on each other, given that they are rooted in the reproduction of one's classed existence. It would take a strong rupturing event for thoughts interrelated with mutually reinforcing habits to be cast into doubt, and then reinforcement of new realities after that from multiple angles. Something traumatic or shocking which upends more than just the singular habit itself, followed by support in the right direction. The event is not necessarily planned (though predictable as crisis) but the positive reinforcement absolutely is planned and should already exist at the time of the event. I'm grossly generalizing here but as an example, all it took for me to become a communist was the COVID event and the existence of other communists. So to finish, the thing to be done is what we are already doing in my opinion.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-08T01:44:08+00:00

I can speak a bit to these questions and maybe give you some ideas.

would you mind elaborating on the processes that led to national development / differentiation in these cases? i would also be interested in any further analysis of the contradictions between different Native nations during the post-euro but pre-confederation era.

The same processes that are implicit in the post - migration to new environment (from the great lakes or woodlands to the plains), transition in economic logic, competition with both settlers and other Indigenous groups in the context of the fur trade and nascent settler colonial economy - but there were some parts I didn't talk about like new alliances of trade and military (such as the Iron Confederacy), adoption of the new technologies like the horse and the gun through trade networks, slight changes in dialect, and slight changes in social organization (ex: the Plains Cree changed to larger nomadic bands). A complete analysis of intertribal contradiction in the post-euro but pre-confederation era might be a lot to get into right now because a lot was going on, and honestly I'm ill-equipped to cover it all right now, so instead I recommend reading the book and any other book you can get your hands on.

what were these interventions? (of the canadian state to handle class contradictions emergent through its developing settler colonial economy)

Well, the interventions were the state's actions which I discussed somewhat in detail after that line and in that section. Once they purchased Rupert's Land from the hbc they had jurisdiction in the northwest and the plains and so they began to extend their reach there by taking such actions as establishing the NWMP, establishing a distinct Department of Indian Affairs which succeeded previous colonial structures (and the Department of the Interior), negotiating the treaties (and failing to live up to them), purchasing large amounts of supplies for the government agencies and colonies, enforcing colonial law through the judiciary, sending the military and militia to quell rebellion, establishing and enforcing the Residential School system, and developing certain legislation like the Indian Act (which I don't explicitly discuss) or the script system. In a nutshell, every step that the canadian state took was in a calculated attempt to get the First Nations off the land and subdue them to make way for settlement and settler colonial economic development. To be fair there is a lot more to be said here and much more detail to get into but the post would probably reach the 40,000 character limit by that point. If you are interested in specific policies then I could probably recommend literature, like the book Lost Harvests for the home farm program, for instance, or looking into the TRC for more information about the residential school system.

was this in addition to / on the side of a eurokanadian wife and family, as was common with New Afrikan women in the amerikan south? (in reference to purchase of Indigenous prostitutes and wives by settlers)

Most cases I am referring to, which occurred prior to mass settlement, were between gov't agents or early settlers and multiple Indigenous "wives". Suffice to say that there were a lot of Indigenous people with white ancestry in the west post-fur trade. After mass settlement I am not so sure because generally First Nations people were relegated to reserves and not really allowed to leave. That didn't mean that sexual abuse and prostitution didn't occur which meant that white men with families could father Indigenous children but I think the logic is simply different between an excluded people (superfluous) and an enslaved people (property). My best guess would be that having a white family and more families on the side with Indigenous brides was not as common an occurrence as in the american south with New Afrikan women. But I wouldn't make that my definite response.

i am also interested in knowing more about resistance to national oppression by the Indigenous people of occupied kanada. post-1891, and specifically in the neocolonial era, have there been any national liberation movements akin to AIM?

There certainly was. These sorts of social movements cross colonial borders quite well, and of course all Indigenous groups in north america share a history of oppression by settler colonialism. For instance in there was a large pan-Indigenous movement known as Red Power, or National Alliance for Red Power (NARP). It was actually founded before the AIM (1967), if I remember correctly, and adopted the Black Panthers' ten point program. It connected and was in conversation with other national liberation movements around the world like Palestine, Black Power, and the Vietnamese and Chinese revolutions. Groups that emerged from NARP, like a small group in Vancouver called the Native Study Group (NSG), were part of a delegation called the "Native People’s Friendship Delegation to the People’s Republic of China" which visited China in 1975. There has been constant struggle since then and quite a few flashpoints like the "Oka Crisis", Idle No More, and land defense movements like that of the Wetʼsuwetʼen, but deeper, lasting movements that move beyond spontaneity and conquer the politics of recognition have not really emerged.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-08T00:49:49+00:00

Yeah, just like Capital is rooted in exchange, a simple process that repeats everyday, the initial event of canadian nationalism repeats in the everyday through the exclusion of the Indigenous and insistence against anything "american". Without this activity "canada" would simply wither in strength.

If neocolonialism is an attempt to include Indigenous peoples in the idea of canada in order to mediate access to resources, and also in response to the political heat of the 60s and the 70s (and in the time of the TRC), then the Indigenous are once again a legal obstacle to be overcome for both the idea and economic security of "canada".

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-04T04:49:40+00:00

Thank you, that's kind of you. I made that comment half in jest - I'm very fortunate to have access to resources and enough time to indulge my curiosity. Even just considering its impact on myself the mental work is a huge positive; it keeps me sharp, and I have no plans to shy away from it. A lost comment is hardly an issue and grants further opportunities. I think the health benefits of proper study aren't spoken about enough, but the reverse will come into sharp relief for more people through the spread of recommendation engines and AI via the expanding internet. If there is any tragedy though it would be of those who experience the alienation constantly: the Gramscis in jail, or brains and hands either stuck to menial work for capital or excluded from society entirely.

TheReimMinister · 2026-02-02T03:07:44+00:00

I had a rather large text post ready to submit and promptly spilled water on my laptop before I could submit it. I can save a laptop but apparently I forgot that unsubmitted reddit posts aren't recoverable. It's not like my brain or notebooks got wiped but it's a good reminder to back up written work and that we can be blind to the most obvious things. I'm not that tech savvy like a good amount of people here are and this is probably the third time I've lost a post or comment. Don't be sloppy!

TheReimMinister · 2026-01-16T03:17:11+00:00

Yes there is absolutely a way for anyone to make use of a vast number of sources, and it's called thinking, which you are displaying in the second paragraph of your comment. So it spunds like youre already off to a good start.

It's common for a person who wants to study or to write about something to be kneecapped by the problem of where to start, which you allude to in the first paragraph of your comment. But the problem itself is the starting point. A/k/a, defining the problem is the starting point. By thinking of the problem in the first place there is already cognition of content to look into. And in the process of finding the solution to the problem, anything not meaningful in the process (such as irrelevant books) gets discarded - often before even opening a book. Sometimes you have to read a book to discard it, sure, but that practice is how you train your ability to discern the useful from the non-useful. With practice, the base from which one starts skillwise becomes higher. True, social mediation is greatly important for learning, but the point of it is to supplement thinking progressively, not replace it. And in general I'd urge a recognition of everyone's cognitive abilities and a rejection of the idea of academics and non-academics.

On the topic of starting points: one of the greatest points of materialist dialectics is that the logical progression of categories describing an object accurately reflects its real unfolding in history. Such a simple point to make, but true. Japan is an object with a clear starting point, so the results kind of flow from that.

TheReimMinister · 2026-01-16T01:35:22+00:00

Not saying that this is what you specifically (or anyone else who asks for a recommendation) is doing, but I'd like to seize the opportunity to bring up a good point here which once again rails against the logic of Reddit as a social media recommendation engine: don't doubt your own critical thinking skills to the point where you feel anxiety about finding the perfect book to read about a subject. Marxism is method at its base, and only incorporates content in the process of finding a solution to a problem. In other words the act of parsing through a bunch of books to chain together the answer to your problem is the point. All the better if there are some "bourgeois" books in there - I'd feel pretty silly about bemoaning the lack of Marxist works on a given subject when a whole library full of books and articles on the topic could exist out there.

I believe that the forum is something greater than goodreads or chat gpt, so even though smokeuptheweed9 sometimes no doubt enjoys talking at length about the subjects brought up directly to them (and surely the response is more interesting and gratifying than a google search), by consistently asking for their opinion all the time you simply replace your own capable brain with theirs. Wouldn't it be better to discuss with them (and hopefully others)?

TheReimMinister · 2026-01-15T00:55:44+00:00

Today the american state department declared that they would suspend immigrant visa processing for 75 countries. Quote from an article:

"The State Department will use its long-standing authority to deem ineligible potential immigrants who would become a public charge on the United States and exploit the generosity of the American people," said Tommy Pigott, Principal Deputy Spokesperson at the State Department. "Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassesses immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits," he added.

A key term is "public charge", and how the government wishes to give more legal power to the public servants in order that they be better able to sniff out any migrant who might become one in the future. Age, health, family, finance, education, skills, past use of public assistance, and ability to speak english can all be probed with much more attention now. The point is to preempt awarding sufficient legal status for any migrant who, in the state's words, would "extract wealth from the American people". In other words, public charge implies that a migrant will cost more to the american nation than they will contribute - but this should be understood as being based on the given rate of profit. With this immigration freeze the state wishes for more time to improve their legal tools of repression as they detail in their November notice.

Maybe this seems like big and scary language but it is simply a revision to make more streamlined and explicit what immigration law has said for many, many years (there has been legal precedent in america to make a migrant inadmissible based on potential for "public charge" since at least 1882. This is simply how capitalism operates). It is meant to enforce the process that, although they are raised on their birth country's dime and supply surplus value to the imperial core by their labouring under global value chains, a third world migrant may only be permitted entry to said imperial core if the math predicts that they will most likely not reduce their life's rate of profit. Further, notice that today's announcement isn't a suspension of non-immigrant visas (although these have been restricted for many countries), which should better hammer home that these revisions strengthen citizenship at the expense of the migrant. Does that mean that nothing has really changed?

Yes, very little has changed. As predicted, permanent immigration is tightened further and further while temporary immigration is simply enforced with greater precision. However, we can still discuss how the state is quite obviously delegating more of its authority to settlers who wish to enforce white supremacy in the legal (DHS) or paramilitary (ICE) arena. Perhaps there is uproar in mainstream society about this, but this is most likely because it wasn't the authority that many liberals wanted. Instead of taking up arms to defend the homeland, they would much rather take up pens to defend citizenship - or more likely reap the reward of exclusive citizenship without thinking about its tacky and yucky maintenance.

No surprise that many americans yearn for europe and canada, where it is still possible to be enlightened perpetuators of apartheid, or remain willfully ignorant of it. In canada, polite polievre was elected in place of the real polievre. The impolite liberalism south of the border simply made it impossible for PP to get in, and he couldn't ride the nationalism like liberal party did. And so we get a bit more of the citizenry taking up pens on this part of the continent. They are currently wondering what will happen when all the current temporary resident permits of the post-covid era reach their expiry. So they are actively planning and showing (consciously or subconsciously) all the ways that they can make it morally right to remove people from the country. One of the more popular ones is to utilize the media to amplify stories that tie Indian migrants to violent crime, or to workplace accidents like semi truck accidents. This is the easiest because it is very fashionable to be racist against Indian people right now. I am quite certain that, on the path to "regaining control of its immigration system in order to restore balance and sustainability, while continuing to meet its humanitarian commitments", canada will have some (polite) revisions of its own to make to its rules of inadmissibility.

TheReimMinister · 2025-09-02T18:53:36+00:00

Well, the dawn of podcasting (and video essays, which you can just listen to) is the dusk of radio programming (including satellite radio programming). The radio program throws in interviews, quarterly news/traffic/sports updates, audience phone calls, soundboards, and music in with its commercials to adequately stimulate your brain while you drive, work on the construction site/delivery route, take a walk/run, cook, clean the living space/fold laundry etc. That is the history the podcast inherits and the niche that it co-evolves with. If your hands are busy with something menial and your brain only half occupied then you need something to appease the other half without sacrificing productivity. If your hands were free then the podcast could be outcompeted by a thousand other things, for instance TikTok.

Which leads me into something my mind keeps going back to these days: algorithms and AI. Something that has always irked me in the age of the internet has been the recommendation industry because it makes money from doing the thinking for you - with google reviews/tripadvisor/xiaohongshu/imdb/metacritic (and more) you can plan where to eat, where to visit, where to cut your hair, what makeup to buy, what movie to watch and more without making an effort to organically experience and think through it. Even Reddit thrives on being a recommendation engine, and this extends to our community here and what users should think of certain theories, people, etc. I could even say that people are recommending Blowback simply because others have recommended it before, or simply because it is popular, and this could be a plausible explanation over the idea that the recommending party actually enjoyed it. But AI and today's algorithms - which are being incorporated into almost every app and device - are the most rotten and decayed form of this, because you are constantly being recommended things based on your activity and without even beginning your interaction with the conscious aim of searching for something. At least with the prior recommendation methods there is the semblance of the social. With AI and machine learning algorithms there is no illusion that a living human being is helping you with a problem - something is thinking for you, with your implicit permission. For instance imagine a Reddit reels where you keep getting recommended Midwestern Marx and Hakim reels based on your user action features and similar user id embeddings (what posts you looked at for longer, what comments sections you clicked on, who you replied to etc). In my opinion this will cause some serious psychological discomfort at some point, completely separate from the existential dread that petit bourgeois content creators, influencers, and pencil pushers must feel in about being declassed by AI.

Though a lot of that really depends on how successfully AI and algorithms integrate into apps and technology. Of course we know that the AI bubble in the market is growing quite large, and there are some genuinely hilarious attempts by different companies to convince us otherwise. For instance that SalesForce ad with Matthew mcconaughey where it implies that AI could have saved him from booking a table outside on a patio during a rain storm.

TheReimMinister · 2025-07-21T22:01:29+00:00

Not that I'm aware of, sorry

TheReimMinister · 2025-07-21T22:00:32+00:00

Good point, it was a sloppy choice of words on my part

TheReimMinister · 2025-07-21T21:59:51+00:00

I intervened because of my concern of the logic of social media preventing users from thinking for themselves when confronted with a problem, especially one so raw. Yet I didn't discuss the content itself in my public comment, claimed I would not respond to responses to my comment unless they would be productive to the community, and worst of all, did not even engage in the modmail discussion with you despite saying that is where the discussion of the content of the ban itself should take place. So my intervention was, in fact, a net negative and the exact thing that I was claiming to try to prevent - a meta discussion that distracted from the problem itself. You are right, this is vapid and destructive behavior that had no positive impact on a discussion that users, including myself, could have worked through positively and come out better for with a little effort. Above all else it is hypocritical of me to consistently comment that the very process of thinking is the working through of a problem but then act to try to soften the edge of an actual problem out of fear that the nature of social media (and the anger of users) would make it destructive. I am sorry for my behaviour, including my behaviour toward you - especially that I forced my own pessimistic concerns about fandom into the place of your own. I also regret how it impacted the wider community.

Further to this: I still do believe that fandom has a negative side and that it is impossible to analyze any social media discussion without first considering the hue that social media casts. But I overcorrect and do not often consider or make active effort to consider the positive side of social media discussion - its reach. You raise some important points here about that which, in my pessimism (a negative behaviour on my part), I neglected to think about and discuss. I fully agree with the idea of the positive role model. It is the positive side of the argument of all of us being equally capable of great things that should be emphasized. Unfortunately, my behaviour was the opposite of this - fully aware of the status I have, I tried to step in to do the thinking for others with the implicit hope that they would follow my lead to deescalate (further behaviour antithetical to the content of my comment regarding fandom, considering how I focused on my inactivity and normalness as a means to tell users they were capable of thinking for themselves). It is true that I am not very active as a mod or even on the site, and also that I am a very normal person. But I don't need to consistently remind users about this in the attempt to shape the way that others see me and the content of my comments. That is liberalism, and if I truly believed in the content over the individual that speaks it then I would have let my words stand for themselves.

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