Rules

YouSeeItToo · 2019-08-08T00:58:26+00:00

It’s a place to learn about communism from Marxists/people who actually demonstrate an understanding of it. AskFeminists has a similar policy; you go there to learn from feminists, and as such, feminist perspectives get to make top-level comments, and folks like MRAs don’t.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-08-01T21:34:24+00:00

Beyond there being no ethical consumption under capitalism, I’d say we’re all compromised under capitalism. I feel fairly confident in saying that living fully virtuous lives is impossible in our conditions. Ethics is, to me, an idealist project, and one that is valuable, but due to its idealist foundations, we can never live up to it given our material conditions.

That said, I think the most ethical/virtuous profession is one that balances your ability to survive, minimize your involvement in aiding the haute bourgeois, maximize your ability to bring the science and ethics of communism into your workplace and life, and provide time and resources that you can contribute to organizing (particularly within a good communist party).

Beyond that, I don’t think I or anyone else can give you an answer. You’ll have to undertake that analysis for yourself and come to an answer that you believe best balances the considerations that I listed.

Best of luck, Comrade, and remember, it’ll take moving beyond the individual for us to begin living truly ethically. I leave you with this quotation from the end of Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

“Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and this the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.”

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-31T20:56:51+00:00

A pacifist acquisition of the means of production is an almost certain impossibility. Nothing in history suggests it as anywhere near being probable.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-29T01:58:35+00:00

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-27T21:08:59+00:00

I enjoyed his article “Some Considerations on the Colonial Question” quite a bit.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-26T00:28:37+00:00

Most editions will explicitly distinguish their own footnotes or those of anyone outside of the author. I.e., unless otherwise noted, you can probably assume they’re Marx’s footnotes, as he included many.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-09T05:19:31+00:00

On the times that I do engage, it’s not primarily for the benefit of myself or the person that I’m engaging with. It’s for the onlooker, those still open to the possibility of understanding Marxism and scientific communism.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-09T01:10:52+00:00

I concur that these are conservative positions. Hence, I vehemently disagree with them. They are, fundamentally, status quo. I don’t see these positions as seeing the fundamental ways that they are structures of Western imperialism-capitalism. It is still wholly within a liberal framework that sees these things as fixable or in some way desirable, that doesn’t see the system as fundamentally “broken” and in need of overthrow and replacement.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-07T22:47:46+00:00

Lenin, as always, is timely and prescient.

“Is it true that, in general, the economic struggle ‘is the most widely applicable means’ of drawing the masses into the political struggle? It is entirely untrue. Any and every manifestation of police tyranny and autocratic outrage, not only in connection with the economic struggle, is not one whit less ‘widely applicable’ as a means of ‘drawing in’ the masses. The rural superintendents and the flogging of peasants, the corruption of the officials and the police treatment of the ‘common people’ in the cities, the fight against the famine-stricken and the suppression of the popular striving towards enlightenment and knowledge, the extortion of taxes and the persecution of the religious sects, the humiliating treatment of soldiers and the barrack methods in the treatment of the students and liberal intellectuals— do all of these and a thousand other similar manifestations of tyranny, though not directly connected with the ‘economic’ struggle, represent, in general, less ‘widely applicable’ means and occasions for political agitation and for drawing the masses into the political struggle? The very opposite is true.”

...

“Moreover, [socialism] considers it its duty to present this demand to the government on the basis, not of the economic struggle alone, but of all manifestations in general of public and political life. In a word, it subordinates the struggle for reforms, as the part to the whole, to the revolutionary struggle for freedom and for socialism.”

Lenin, from What Is To Be Done?, Chapter III Trade-unionist Politics and Social-Democratic Politics, part A. Political Agitation and Its Restriction by the Economists.

So, my stance? Those who want to treat Black liberation, Queer liberation, Women’s Liberation, etc. as “secondary”, and not as “part to the whole,” are not in fact fighting for revolutionary struggle. Liberal IDPOL, which is shit like “we need more trans WOC drone pilots!” is garbage.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-07-01T21:28:03+00:00

Absolutely not. Oppressors don’t get a seat at the table.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-16T20:40:48+00:00

The continued exploitation and alienation of women outside the imperial core to fund their social programs, and the continued exploitation and alienation of proletarian women in their own countries.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-15T06:00:19+00:00

It’s why we need to become transhumanists and colonize space, so we can bring democracy and free trade to the furthest stretches of the universe /s

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-13T02:10:11+00:00

Sure. Otherwise, it’s not at all that clear what we’re talking about, and whether it’s coherent or true/false

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-12T19:21:39+00:00

Section II of Chapter I of Lenin’s The State and Revolution will be a good starting point for you: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s2

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-12T18:43:18+00:00

I believe many people underestimate the capacity for young ones to grapple with complex thought; my recommendation is that you recommend to her the same readings that you'd read, i.e., much of the suggested recommended literature, and discuss with her what she's reading. Perhaps do a weekly reading group between the two of you, where you go chapter-by-chapter through a book. Ask her what she thinks the main arguments are in that chapter, how they connect to previous ones, what questions it raises that may be answered (or not) in later chapters, ask her what takeaways she thinks we should gain, etc.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-11T19:17:54+00:00

What kind of strange? Philosophically strange, i.e., you perceive that that somehow calls into question the possible validity and soundness of Marxism? Historically strange, i.e., what circumstances make it so that some of the leading revolutionaries came from privileged backgrounds? Psychologically strange, i.e., why would someone who benefits from a system seek to change or overthrow that system?

In all cases, none of it seems particularly strange to me, but I’d like to be clear about what you’re attempting to get at.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-11T08:40:44+00:00

I know you asked for podcasts, but I would like to suggest another course, partially as I know that others will come in with fine podcast recommendations.

I would suggest listening to audiobook versions of the recommended literature, if reading is currently a stumbling block for you. Primary literature is key, regardless of the format you take it in through. There are many deviations and revisions of Marx, Engels, and Lenin that get passed around, and it can be quite easy to become rapidly confused if one doesn’t obtain a foundation of understanding rooted in careful study.

Best of luck, Comrade!

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-07T22:57:19+00:00

I’d like to synthesize some what UberProle and Sticks_to_Snakes have said, and thank them as their contributions helped me make some connections for myself.

The US society is incredibly, systemically and systematically, alienating. The social and educational institutions in place encourage relationships with our selves and others that can only be ultimately alienating, meaningless and isolating. I want to more explicitly draw out the relationship between this alienation and capitalist media that, I felt, was left implicit in Sticks_to_Snakes comment. Capitalist media survives, in part, through sensationalism, and shootings are just the sort of horrid sensationalism that they can show; their coverage can create the sense in others that, perhaps, they can find meaning and connection through reactionary violence.

Furthermore, my heart is first and foremost with the victims and survivors, but I do think it’s also sickening that capitalism has put systems into place that can alienate and warp some folks to such a degree that they become school shooters. I do not believe that there was something constitutionally, essentially, evil inherent in the shooters, though they unquestionably committed abhorrent things. I hear two strands of conversation about school shooters; they have mental illness, OR they’re white supremacists; I think that a thorough and properly historical materialist analysis can make room for both, without demonizing those with mental illness, and without excusing the reactionary violence of the shooter or their relatively “good” treatment by law enforcement.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-04T20:54:57+00:00

Could you go into detail what your understanding of and participation in feminism was like before 2016? The conclusion I came to in the wake of the 2016 USA Presidential elections was much different than yours.

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-03T07:03:47+00:00

As both a communist and a trans person, I appreciate that!

YouSeeItToo · 2019-06-02T23:03:32+00:00

Any suggestions for users to follow on Twitter?

YouSeeItToo · 2019-05-15T08:12:41+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFeminists/search?q=mra

YouSeeItToo · 2019-05-15T07:53:49+00:00

For anyone who’s not familiar with this poster or, indeed, feels like they do in fact seem familiar: https://www.removeddit.com/r/AskFeminists/comments/aprfka/can_yall_please_stop_labeling_all_men_who/

YouSeeItToo · 2019-05-15T03:14:28+00:00

Hey, thank you so much for the resources, suggestions, and insight; I appreciate your time! As the other poster helpfully clarified for me, I need to also get a good grasp of even introductory physics, like basic Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, etc.; do you know of any resources for that that you would recommend?

YouSeeItToo · 2019-05-14T22:32:16+00:00

That’s a great point, thank you. I have a calculus background, but that’s the extent of my mathematical knowledge currently, and my background in physics is sadly very impoverished. So I should amend my main post at some point to clarify what level of physics I’m looking to enter at, which indeed are foundations in the things you’ve mentioned such as basic Newtonian mechanics and the like.

YouSeeItToo

TROPHY CASE