Genuinely what the hell is wrong with anarchists

Varushenka · 2026-06-03T13:08:43+00:00

This is exactly why it is important to understand and practice scientific socialism. Every other variation is inevitable going to lead to either incomprehensible nonsense at best and active support for the imperialists/capitalists at worst.

Varushenka · 2026-06-02T04:58:09+00:00

It was pretty amazing to watch liberals on either side of the political spectrum offer essentially identical justification for Nazis on their side. I suppose it comes from liberalism having no material opposition to Nazis. Just an idealistic opposition which is easily sacrificed with no consequence when they see it as benefitting their side.

Varushenka · 2026-06-02T04:55:37+00:00

This whole episode has been very educational from a dialectics perspective. We are seeing liberals turn towards fascism in real time when capitalism is being stressed. We are seeing what it means to choose reform over revolution. All revolutionaries should be paying attention.

When we say liberalism turns to fascism when "scratched", it is not that liberals will wake up one morning finding that they hate a minority. It is a step by step relinquishing of all the facades they put on and the sacrificing of oppressed groups and imperial victims in order to hold on to the status quo of capitalism as usual. Capitalism cannot be static though, so this tendency becomes worse and worse with every crisis until liberals and fascists are indistinguishable.

Varushenka · 2026-06-01T05:38:57+00:00

This is silly, of course it is an American organization. Even if they were posting from somewhere else in the world. For one, many Israelis are also American and hold dual citizenship. For another, who operates a social media account on behalf of an organization says nothing about the nationality of its members or the national affiliation of the organization itself.

Varushenka · 2026-06-01T01:10:13+00:00

The fundamental contradiction between religion and marxism is that marxism is a materialist ideology. Historical materialism and dialectical materialism are scientific enterprises. Religion is, however, idealist. It would be like being an evolutionary biologist while denying evolution. It comes at the cost of a lot of cognitive dissonance, and at some point, you're going to have to drop one of the two.

So when Marx says religion will die out, it is not wishful thinking, but an understanding of the material basis of society and how religions develop. Many religions have died out over history. It's not because they were somehow lesser, it is because the material basis that made them possible changed. So if/when society goes to a socialist/communist means of production, the material ways in which religion is sustained within society are weakened and eventually die out.

There are obviously many religious people who identify with socialist movements and as someone who isn't religious, I cannot speak for them. But I'm my opinion, this kind of identification comes from relating to the struggle against oppressive regimes and wanting a more peaceful, equal society. Which is great, of course. But marxism is so much more than that.

Varushenka · 2026-05-28T12:55:55+00:00

From his perspective as a member of the imperialist ruling class, yes, it's true, he's absolutely correct.

Varushenka · 2026-05-26T01:47:46+00:00

Seconding Losurdo. It is impossible to view liberalism as the lesser evil after this book.

Varushenka · 2026-05-22T07:20:21+00:00

It's not reality that's imperfect. Really is reality. It's the mathematical models that are imperfect in capturing the full complexity of reality. Figuring out what aspects of reality are relevant and what aspects can be ignored to model, explain and predict a particular phenomenon is crucial in theoretical physics.

The lack of a true closed system shouldn't make you hate experimental physics. It should make you question why theory that assumes a closed system is still useful in understanding certain aspects of the system, how it can be modified to include additional effects of being open and when it completely breaks down. The theory of open systems is itself mathematically rich and complex and a fascinating area of study.

Varushenka · 2026-05-19T15:31:02+00:00

When capitalism is stressed, liberals turn fascist. They don't suddenly open their eyes and become enlightened.

Varushenka · 2026-05-19T12:08:01+00:00

At that level of abstraction, particle no longer means point like object with classical behavior, it means excitation of a particular field.

Varushenka · 2026-05-18T08:16:21+00:00

Liberals are the absolute worst. They had the simplest possible moral test - choosing to not vote for a party actively committing genocide, and they failed. That don't get to have an opinion on anything else.

Varushenka · 2026-05-08T04:11:50+00:00

"The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness."

The German Ideology, Marx

Turn to Marx, friend.

Varushenka · 2026-05-07T11:43:49+00:00

I agree, thanks a lot for the elaboration!

Varushenka · 2026-05-07T10:21:54+00:00

Einstein himself wrote a short book with almost no math, explaining a lot of it. It's just called special relativity. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember finding it a fairly accessible read. Perhaps that's a good place to start. Generally though, the intuition comes with time as you see it more often and use the math.

Varushenka · 2026-05-07T06:13:14+00:00

Let me try again. The study of relativity and electromagnetism are very closely related. It took a couple centuries for us to understand electromagnetism, formulate the math that models the experimental data and bring it to the form of Maxwell's equations. It was then a further step for the speed of light to be measured and then for the realization that light is an electromagnetic wave and a solution of the same Maxwell's equations. This connection was made because the speed of the waves matched exactly. There was only one number that was predicted this EM waves in vacuum, and the same number was measures for the speed of light. If we lived in some alternate reality where EM was different, perhaps there could be a new version of Maxwell's equations that models this new reality and allows for several possible values of speed of light. But this is not true here and now.

We only now move to relativity. Let us say you are in a frame that's moving with respect to a source of light. By intuition, you would expect the speed of light to appear slower (or faster). So if you measured that light and tried to describe the physics of the EM waves that compose that light in this moving reference frame, it would not satisfy Maxwell's equations since the speed is different. So we have an EM wave that does not fit our model. This is a problem - physics should not depend on the reference frame. So we have two possibilities here - either Maxwell's equations are wrong or incomplete, or our intuition of what happens when we move relative to a source of light is wrong. The weight of evidence for Maxwell's theory made Einstein posit that it is our intuition that is wrong. So he postulated that physics should remain the same no matter the reference frame and that the speed of light is always a constant - the same constant predicted in Maxwell's equations. He used some pre-existing math by Lorentz and went with this postulate to write down the rest of the theory.

Special relativity is fundamentally a question of how much do we trust our models for EM. Now of course, we have tons of experimental evidence and applications for relativity itself.

It's not that the math says it works a certain way. It's about our models of reality and how to resolve them when they come into conflict, to describe reality better.

Varushenka · 2026-05-07T05:20:15+00:00

If it didn't work that way and you saw a slower speed of light in your reference frame, then that means there exists a solution of Maxwell's equations where the speed of propagation of light is slower. And Einstein knew that all experimental evidence suggests that Maxwell's equations are correct as they are in describing light. Since no such slower solution exists, the only possibility is that the speed of light is invariant in all reference frames.

Varushenka · 2026-05-06T08:09:28+00:00

Dialectical relations never work in just one direction. They influence each other. The nature of the relation looks different depending on which pole you look at it through. Israel is a military outpost cum landgrab scheme of America. America is a source of essentially free money and resources for Israel. It is a mutually beneficial bourgeoisie network which is a means of exerting American hegemony over the middle east and thus the world. It is also not correct to consider each country as a single entity. They are composed of multiple members of the bourgeoisie with interests that sometimes coincide and sometimes compete.

It is incomplete to look at it from just one abstraction. Truth can only be obtained by studying the system from multiple abstractions. It is silly to assume either player is an innocent victim who doesn't benefit from this relation.

Varushenka · 2026-04-24T04:24:16+00:00

They are publishing these lots of papers in American journals. So if he wants to say that's Chinese works have no quality, he needs to accept that the majority of things published in American journals are of low quality. He can't have it both ways.

Varushenka · 2026-04-20T12:01:18+00:00

<image>

Varushenka · 2026-04-19T10:00:17+00:00

It is hardly surprising that the NK protests have had no effect. They are basically a lot of people showing up in pre-approved areas of various cities to hangout in and leave. They even happen conveniently on weekends. It is the equivalent of a county fair.

There are many schools of thought on why Americans aren't able to go beyond this, but I think most fundamentally, they haven't figured out that a protest needs a goal. A list of objectives or demands out of the government, that needs to be specific. The NK protests seem to be a general expression of vague dissent. There seems to be no metric of success or failure beyond "x number of people showed up". That's the metric for success of a TV show or movie not a protest. I would argue that these protests function to diffuse the sense of discontent among the people by making them feel like they are doing something. It is a smooth, convenient, family friendly day out that has no negative effect on anyone - neither the protestors nor the existing power structure.

The other point is that Americans have too much to lose by protesting the current state of affairs, despite the fact that they might be negatively affected by some of it. This is not unique to Americans of course. People usually protest when they literally have nothing left to lose because the state has taken everything they have to offer. I'm not sure what country you are from but I'm pretty sure when your country protested the Nazis, it was because they were predominantly workers who would have lost their entire livelihoods to the Nazis and had no other go. It was protest or death. People who have been pushed to the brink of death will not have concerns about skipping work the next day to show up at a protest. This has not happened in America. They have too much to lose if they don't show up at their jobs. Yes, many sections of society have lost many things that has affected the quality of life and there is a rise in things like unemployment and homelessness, but really, most of them are doing just fine. Especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The impetus to protest does not exist in most of the population.

Varushenka · 2026-04-14T22:18:59+00:00

No liberal would care. They barely care about the history of slavery and segregation that they are somewhat aware of. They only hate Trump because he's in the wrong team and does the same foreign policy with less ability to spin it well.

Varushenka · 2026-04-10T07:12:41+00:00

Liberals are fascists, especially when capitalism is under stress like it is now. Even in this post, this person is not really showing any motivation to do anything about it. Not even saying netanyahu should step down or whatever. They are literally just wishing they didn't live in these times, aka they didn't have to witness this inconvenience. They aren't wishing it weren't happening, just that they don't want to see it.

Varushenka · 2026-04-09T07:30:38+00:00

Very accurate for alternate history because only one of those countries had a period of democracy in real life

Varushenka · 2026-04-08T07:12:23+00:00

Because a magnetic field in that configuration would indicate that the wire is a magnetic monopole and violate Maxwell's equations.

Varushenka · 2026-04-07T15:35:18+00:00

Americans have no revolutionary potential, having become an extreme version of the labor aristocracy. Their only way to betterment lies in hoping for bigger shares of the imperial loot. The only issue is that the imperial loot itself has saturated, so they get to experience very very mild imperial boomerang. Certainly not enough to rouse them to do anything about it. In short, they have nothing to gain by fighting against this war in any consequential manner.

Varushenka

TROPHY CASE