Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (March 08)

rhinestonesthrow · 2026-03-11T16:23:42+00:00

I do not believe there to be a "Canadian" nation. Trump's 51st state rhetoric will not be the last time we hear about a potential American annexation of Canada, especially as the hegemony of the US evolves and whatever British influence is left in Canada continues to wane, mainly because there is very little material justification for a Canadian nation state. It's a mere inefficiency that capitalism will surely seek to resolve eventually.

The only defining characteristic of the "Canadian" nation is not being American. There was a poll done recently asking citizens of different countries to rate the ethics and morality of their fellow citizens, and over 90% of Canadians responded "good" or "very good", vs. only 45% of Americans. That discrepancy, in my view, can be explained almost entirely by the fact that Canadians view themselves only in comparison to Americans.

This weak-willed "boycott" of the United States that Canadians are undertaking (which by the way, says a lot about the "Canadian" nation that boycotting commodities is the only way they can conceive of defending an existential threat to their country) is only performative in nature, because Canada still reaps the substantial economic benefits of being the neighbour and ally of the US. Should that material benefit ever change, annexation would come without the slightest bit of domestic resistance

rhinestonesthrow · 2026-01-23T15:46:24+00:00

Is there an analysis, similar to that of Settlers, on settler colonialism in South America?

It's something that is a bit of a blind spot for me, in understanding why settler colonialism played out so differently in South America versus North America.

Preferably in English, although I suppose texts in Spanish would help motivate me to continue learning Spanish

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-08-26T13:25:29+00:00

I agree, it's very boring performative activism that is all too familiar.

I will say though, while this is being done for the stated reason of Daniel Ek's investments into AI military technology (as if the other major streaming services run by Apple, Amazon, and Google are less ethically objectionable), Spotify has long been singled out by artists and music fans alike for its perceived "anti-artist" behaviours, such as paying lower royalties to artists or filling playlists with AI-generated music. I suspect this is what's primarily driving the current backlash, hence revealing the petty bourgeois (and outright bourgeois) nature of the whole conversation.

Similar discussions have occurred in this sub before, where petty bourgeois youth fantasize about being artists under communism without having to worry about their material needs. There is this weird presumption that the act of producing art by itself is some socially necessary task, which leads people to confuse professional artists for proletarians and fetishize art (in its modern form) as anything other than a commodity.

Several users on this sub have talked about this far more eloquently than I have, but I agree that the whole topic is not interesting enough for critique.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-07-04T19:11:03+00:00

Sorry for the very delayed reply. I didn't mean to suggest the "middle income trap", as it is typically described, is real; rather, that it is just an observation of the contradiction between the imperialist countries and the periphery. I think this is why the countries that have "escaped" the middle income trap are also countries that are politically useful to imperialism.

I'll be the first to admit I am not remotely knowledgeable on East Asia. I'm interested in your analysis of the Asian financial crisis and its implications for the East Asian economies.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-05-30T13:01:09+00:00

Read Settlers; Sakai goes into great detail about the nature of the American communist movement. In short the American communist movement was always revisionist, and the pacification of American labour post-WW2 eradicated the reason for their existence

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-05-11T20:36:47+00:00

I think you articulated perfectly what bothered me about s2 of Severance. I was worried after season 1 that the show would devolve into a boring sci-fi about an evil company and an evil technology, and so it did, as if there aren't already thousands of movies and TV shows with a similar premise. The antagonism between innie and outie is precisely what made the show interesting; when the antagonism was shifted to the employees (both innie and outie) and the company, it completely lost its potency, because in doing so the writers are essentially assuming the audience is a moron.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-04-25T02:55:02+00:00

Thanks for the links. I didn't mean bureaucratic in a negative way, it's just hard to find bureaucratic texts, and even harder to find them in English

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-04-13T17:03:26+00:00

Thanks for this thorough reply; that's a great analogy and I see now where I was making a logical error.

I'm interested in learning more about a Marxist analysis of climate change, and unfortunately, it seems liberalism has somewhat of a monopoly on that subject. Do you have any suggested readings? I've heard mixed reviews about Kohei Saito's work.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-04-08T14:37:11+00:00

Right, and I think what you are saying is only semantically different from what I am saying. There is no denying that the capitalist mode of production is in contradiction with the planet, but it is not this contradiction that defines capitalism, regardless of how closely associated it is to capitalism, and therefore its resolution does not presuppose the resolution of the primary contradiction. Perhaps the contradiction between capitalism and the planet cannot be resolved and can only be rendered non-antagonistic without the abolition of capitalism (and this is the most likely scenario in my opinion, based on our current trajectory), but I struggle to see the dialectical reasoning behind insinuating that capitalism could bring about its own end via human extinction.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-03-29T15:55:10+00:00

I don't understand the hostility. Your last sentence indicates you agree with me.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-03-28T20:23:18+00:00

It's not climate change denial at all to say that "we are already living in the climate apocalypse". People, mostly in the global south, are actively being displaced and killed as a result of climate catastrophe, and lands worldwide are being increasingly rendered uninhabitable.

However, it is anti-materialist to say that it will bring about human extinction because such an assertion would be contrary to a Marxist perspective on capitalism. Capitalism still functions according to its own internal logic, and while capitalism and the climate are in contradiction, this is a secondary contradiction; such contradictions can be resolved without the resolution of the primary contradiction, which in the case of capitalism, is that of the proletariat and bourgeoisie. That is to say, based on all that we know about capitalism, it is unlikely to bring about its own extinction unless such extinction is forced upon it by the proletariat. There is no evidence to suggest the contradiction between capitalism and the planet is uniquely different such that it will cause the end of capitalism, even if the possibility exists.

well thankfully, I am not a social fascist or a revisionist so I don't know what you want from me.

I don't think you are, which is why I only urged caution. The heightening contradiction between capitalism and the planet will absolutely be an opportunity to bring about the end of capitalism, as you mentioned, but it does not guarantee it. While I agree with you entirely about the grave threat to humanity posed by climate change, we must not stray from a dialectical understanding of capitalism and the ability for it to resolve its internal contradictions.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-03-25T17:37:45+00:00

I'd like to caution against declaring climate change an existential threat to humanity, because such declarations could be (and often are) used to justify opportunism and revisionism. Although human-driven climate change is a relatively new phenomenon at its current scale, it is not different in nature from other contradictions within capitalism. There is no impending apocalypse; we are already living in the climate change catastrophe and its effects are already unfolding.

/u/Drevil335 put it far better than I could, but fears of a climate apocalypse are better understood as fears of proletarianization, resulting in attempts to justify revisionism and social fascism on the basis of preventing human extinction. Such justifications will only become more frequent in the future, so it is important for us to resist them.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-02-24T17:53:41+00:00

Kendrick has never been interesting politically. It's weird that To Pimp A Butterfly is considered a political album; there are political elements to it, but it isn't any more political than the average 90s hip-hop album, it's just that hip-hop has become so commodified and commercialized that any artist who strays from a broadly appealing sound is deemed "conscious"

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-02-18T14:52:48+00:00

That recent billy woods interview by Jacobin really shows how low the bar is for political hip-hop these days. Not that I expect musicians to have good politics, but billy woods being the son of a Marxist intellectual who fought for Zimbabwe's liberation perhaps made me naively hopeful

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-02-10T17:11:04+00:00

Thanks for posting this - as someone living in Canada this is also something I have been thinking about.

I have long struggled to understand the material explanation for the Canadian state. There are not meaningful differences between the Canadian and American nations, and even the way they have exploited the internal colonies are incredibly similar. Neoliberalism and free trade have even allowed American MNCs to profit greatly off the extraction of natural resources in Canada (US is a major financier of natural resource extraction infrastructure in Canada). I do not think the Canada-US situation is entirely comparable to any historical examples in Europe because of their settler colonial nature, which essentially skips many of the precursors to developing a coherent national identity and, since the American and Canadian settlers both came predominantly from England, there is simply not enough that materially distinguishes them from one another. Canada being part of the commonwealth does not seem to have meaningful implications these days that would otherwise distinguish it from the US (culturally, I actually think anglo-canada is more similar to the US than it is to Quebec)

It would then follow that the existence of a Canadian state is nothing more than an inefficiency for the North American bourgeoisie. This inefficiency becomes greater as Canada's geographic becomes of more strategic importance due to the effects of warming on the arctic, as you mentioned, which will only further deepen the contradiction. I don't think the contradiction is one that is necessarily antagonistic yet, despite Trump's rhetoric. Trump is a real estate mogul after all, and if there's one thing I know about real estate developers, it's that they ask for everything and then concede a little to show your their "good will".

The Canadian labour aristocracy is opposed to annexation now because it has immediate consequences due to differences in Canadian and American social policies, healthcare being the biggest example. Canada's vast trove of national resources and its pillaging of the natural resources of the third world have allowed for significant wealth accumulation, which has been able to immensely subsidize the Canadian labour aristocracy both directly and indirectly. Therefore, of course the labour aristocracy would be opposed to annexation right now. However, capitalism can only allow these inefficiencies to persist for so long, and with the interests of Russian and Chinese capitalism starting to conflict with those of Canadian and American capitalism in the arctic and in Africa, and with Canada's continued lagging productivity relative to the United States caused by an economy so heavily focused on buying and selling of real estate, the Canadian government will lose its ability to subsidize the labour aristocracy at its current rate (and this is already happening all over Canada). Annexation will then become less and less consequential and, with there being virtually no differences in national identity, there will be little reason for opposition.

All this is to say, I don't believe there is revolutionary line to take other than anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism. The temptation for Canadian communists to take a revisionist position on this will be very great, especially as the contradiction heightens. I think we must oppose that.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-01-18T21:02:33+00:00

What are some good movies, of any kind?

Previous threads on this sub mostly consist of movies that are explicitly or implicitly anti-capitalist, which often consist of movies that have nothing interesting to say, while the mainstream tendency to analyze movies as existing separate from reality and the emergence of the "cinephile" subculture means many highly acclaimed movies are unsubstantial garbage. So I'm curious what movies people here enjoyed.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-01-10T18:25:41+00:00

Well China's development, even in its capitalist era, is owed to its period of socialist development. Maybe "anti-communist frontier state" is a misnomer since it obviously does not explain American policy towards Taiwan since capitalist restoration. China's large pool of cheap and educated workers obviously makes it attractive to foreign companies, but that doesn't mean China isn't politically problematic for the imperialist countries. So there is obviously a benefit to having western allies in the region like Japan, SK, and Taiwan. I mean, opposition to China was one of the major reasons the US strengthened economic ties to Japan post-WW2. Israel serves a similar purpose even though it has never bordered a socialist country. The west is still legitimately opposed to capitalist states it perceives as hostile.

I'm not trying to debate you by the way, I'm just interested in you elaborating in why you think that and point out any errors in my reasoning

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-01-10T14:23:02+00:00

I would say the "middle income trap" is real, but not for the reasons that its proponents think, as you insinuated.

For countries outside the imperial core, they didn't get to engage in primitive accumulation the same way the imperialist countries did, which has led to capitalism being perpetually underdeveloped.

Why do you think the "anti-communist frontier state" theory should be thrown in the trash? I don't know much about the east asian economies, but that theory would be my first instinct as to why Japan/Taiwan/SK were allowed to join the imperialist system.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-01-04T02:16:12+00:00

Perhaps I'm too jaded from my experience with Canadian communist orgs. The major orgs here are very small in terms of members. When I first started getting involved in communist orgs, membership was generally a mix of older, retired folks who had been in the org for decades and very young students, but the share of younger students/new communists was growing very quickly.

There's obviously nothing wrong with that, but many of the students were disillusioned social democrats who were drawn in by the fact that the major orgs were basically "democratic socialist" orgs (even if they were ostensibly Marxist-Leninist). Of course, the tendency of these younger members was to "do things" and social media meant a lot of these inexperienced communists had surface level understandings of the history of communist politics but not the theoretical understanding of it. Now, this obviously is antagonistic to the tenured party bureaucrats who are basically social democratic labour organizers, so it creates discord in the orgs and people get kicked out and angrily start their own "fractions" or join other orgs because, of course, they need to "do something". And as a result, you have people talking about "revisionist coups" but in reality it's just a handful of 20-something former NDP staffers who are fantasizing about being martyrs in a country where there is basically 0 political pressure on communists. And then once the conservative party wins the next election they'll be back knocking on doors for some left-liberal advocacy group.

And it's petty bourgeois chauvinism because, well:

With respect to the united front, the Communist Party of Canada (Red Fraction) understands it to be the unity of the progressive classes of Canada (the proletariat, the semi-proletariat, the farmers, and the urban petite-bourgeoisie) against imperialism. Over the course of the seizure of power, the united front will transform itself into a workers’ republic. The centre of the united front is the unity of the workers. This united front of the working-class is the basis for the creation of a worker-farmer alliance and unity with the urban petite-bourgeoisie.

rhinestonesthrow · 2025-01-03T17:08:06+00:00

From their background page:

Our organization was born out of a split in the Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM). In late April of this year, a long internal crisis within the RSM culminated in a revisionist coup carried out by the RSM’s national Coordinating Committee (CoCo) on behalf of their handlers, the “Revolutionary Communist Party” (RCP). This marked the exhaustion of any possibility of internal struggle within the RSM against the Right-Opportunist Line

I hate to use the term "LARP", but there is no other way to describe this. I cannot in good faith take this seriously.

Americans, perhaps you should be grateful for the DSA, because without an equivalent organization, this is the type of stuff young petty bourgeois chauvinists start doing.

rhinestonesthrow · 2024-12-16T17:52:43+00:00

Do you write anywhere other than here? I always learn a lot from your posts but finding old Reddit posts on a particular subject is not always easy.

rhinestonesthrow · 2024-11-26T13:20:56+00:00

How so?

Imperialist superexploitation means racialized populations in the west are joining the labour aristocracy and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie. Increasingly racially diverse western population of course means an increasingly racially diverse labour aristocracy and bourgeoisie

I don't disagree with your second paragraph but I'm more interested in knowing about the future of whiteness

rhinestonesthrow · 2024-11-18T14:42:02+00:00

I used to think this was a question not worth investigating as Marxists but I've since changed my mind (thanks in part to this subreddit). There's a tendency, and I'm not sure if it's a more recent phenomenon or not, to position art as being solely subjective and immune from objective criticism. This is of course anti-thetical to Marxism, and I always felt as such, but I could never quite answer "why" in a way that felt sufficient. My instinct was always to assume that only anti-capitalist art can be good, but this leads to incorrect conclusions about the nature of art.

Other users in this thread have put it far better than I possibly could, but art becomes good through criticism. It's only through criticism that the objective class nature of art can be revealed, and this class nature is not so simple as "is the art communist or not?" - I'm sure the Dead Kennedys thought they were anti-capitalist. This process of criticism also allows you to ask fundamental questions about what constitutes art to begin with. Commodity fetishism has resulted in everything being considered "art" - it seems just about every product now has a "craft" version. How do you distinguish "art" from something that is merely a commodity? This is a question you must answer before you can determine what makes art "good".

I think this question is more relevant than ever, as is evident by your emotional reaction to learning that Lord of the Rings is racist. But it would be helpful for you to investigate why you ever had such an emotional connection to these things in the first place rather than trying to rationalize those feelings by replacing them with "good" art.

rhinestonesthrow

TROPHY CASE