When bourgeois revolutions happened and replaced feudalism, in many countries republics also replaced monarchies. But in some places like the UK there are still monarchies in place, even though economically these places are most certainly capitalist and not feudalist. I have a few questions regarding monarchies today: How does the royalty function within capitalism, while taking class into account? Previously the bourgeoisie seemed to be at irreconcilable odds with the nobility, while today it doesn't seem to be the case. Is the royalty even still considered to be a different class? Or are they just bourgeoisie with more bells and whistles? What role do monarchies still play in politics today? Also how does royalty in different countries differ in their role? Does the royal family in Saudi Arabia play a more significant role than the monarchy in Britain, for example? Thank you very much for your answers, you are all very helpful!

Sup comrades, Looking to do a deep dive into current price hikes and inflation with some comrades and looking for resources to explain, critique and solve the problem form a marxist perspective. The term inflation famously doesn't really come up explicitly in Marx, only "money devaluation" afaik, but still if you got relevant material/articles/books/whatever on the topic, I'd love to go through them Cheers

I'm a fan of history and looking about getting into theese topics, what documentaries can u comrades suggest?

What would you criticize about this article, if anything? It is too conspiratorially inclined or is it mostly correct? I have always been somewhat skeptical of the "heartland" theory, and i am wary when it comes to analyses by non-Marxists, especially when the focus is on individuals and shadowy groups rather than systems. Something here bothers me... but i can't quite put my finger on it.

I am aware that a few years before the invasion, Iraq started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars, and I understand that the preservation of the petrodollar was a reason for the destruction of Libya. Also, there must have been a reason to go to war with Iraq the first time in 1990 and to then wage economic warfare against Iraq. I've heard some stuff about the war being really against Iran, but that doesn't really make much sense because Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a counterweight against Iran in the region (and in fact the imperialists sponsored an Iraqi invasion of Iran during the 1980s). Of course, the WMD lie and attempts to link the Iraqi government of the time to al-Qaeda (which seems to just be an imperialist asset anyway) and 9/11 was just a way to find an excuse for the invasion. The weapons manufacturers, private military corporations, and many other corporations profited greatly from the war, but there must have been a reason that Iraq specifically was targeted.

This really good (but not explicitly Marxist) environmental org I follow posts about it a lot, sympathizing anti-government protesters and saying the government is really bad. But when I try to research it, mainstream media seems to have really liberal talking points supporting sanctions and regime change, etc. Can anyone help me understand the situation over there from a Marxist point of view? I really like the org in question, but because they don't follow an explicitly Marxist framework they do occasionally fall into liberal mindsets sometimes. But I also know that situations like this can be very complicated and its not as simple as "one side = good, other side = bad"

What do you think of this essay? For me personally on the one hand i can see it contains a lot of idealism and is not exactly written from a Marxist materialist perspective, but on the other hand i think there is a lot there that westerners, especially liberals and ultra-leftists, would do well to start thinking about more.

I don't mind the occassional memes dunking on Al-Ukraina and the Imperialist West and the occassional snippets calling out western hypocrisy and showing the barbarianism Ukrainian Civilians are facing from their own military forces; but I'm not interested in hearing about your *oh-so-hot-takes* on LGBT issues and using it as a way to flex your "morality" to the world. I'm sick of it already.

Countries like Ukraine and Poland banned Communist parties and Communist symbols, while Russia didn't. Ukraine demolished statues of Lenin, while Russia still keeps him preserved at his mausoleum. Is there a reason why anti-communist sentiment is (or at least seems to be) much stronger in other former socialist countries compared to Russia? Did Russian Communists manage to still remain powerful enough to force concessions?

So I heard about this institute in a YouTube video where it was brought up to contextualize violence in Latin America. How many dictators and cartel members graduated from the school. I’m wondering if anyone here knows more about countries that were directly affected by the School of the Americas, I’m thinking about using one of those countries in my research paper about “failed states” but I’m having trouble picking which one. I’ve chosen Libya as one state to write about but I just need one more.

While reading [Gabriel Rockhill's exposé on Slavoj Zizek](https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/) what stood out to me a lot was the brief mention of postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida being involved in "anti-communist political activism against the government in Czechoslovakia". While I've always known that Postmodernism is an enemy of Marxism, this makes it sound like postmodern philosophers are also feds. The source Rockhill cites for Derrida's anti-communist praxis is the 1999 book *The Velvet Philosophers* by Barbara Day. Has anyone read this book? What specifically is said about the topic in it?

When talking about, for example, the USSR, people seem to put some of the blame for their demise on the likes of Khruschev and Gorbachev. It seems like a major component of the downfall of the Soviet Union is the infiltration of the Communist Party by opportunists paving the way to a bourgeois counter-revolution. My question is: can Communists do the same in order to help bring about a socialist revolution? Can principled Communists join, for example, the American Democrat or Republican parties and somehow weaken the state from within, until it can be smashed by a revolution? If not, then why? And in the case that it's not possible, then why is it possible the other way around?

The [Simple Sabotage Field Manual](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual) was a document created by the United States, for advice on how to sabotage (primarily) socialist nations, much of which is still relevant today. Even if you can't, or don't want to read the whole thing I'd advice you at least read the section titled "[General Interference with Organizations and Production](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual#(11)_General_Interference_with_Organizations_and_Production)" for examples of how a saboteur may attempt to infiltrate and disrupt an organizational or productive group.

We all know that anti-communism is at the core of fascism. This short thread proposes an interesting corrolary: much of the anti-Soviet attitude found in formerly socialist Eastern European countries, and ultimately perhaps even the motivation of the significant section of the population that did not stand to gain materially yet still supported the restoration of capitalism and the fracturing of the USSR is resentment at having been excluded from the West's white supremacist global hegemony. This infatuation with the supposed "superiority" of the West, the internalized inferiority complex and desire to be included among the "white" Europeans as opposer to the "inferior, barbaric asiatics" is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of especially countries like Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics, but also Romania and much of the Balkans. The author of the thread cites Georgia as an example with which they are personally familiar, and i can only confirm that i have experienced the same attitudes and self-hatred among Romanians. Would others who have experience with the cultural attitudes of these countries agree with this thesis?

The west, the global north, developed countries, the imperial core. I understand and am aware of some of the etymological differences between these words, but what is their difference in practical terms? It seems that from a Marxist perspective these are one and the same, all designate the same grouping. I hear the west the most often in Lemmygrad, but which term is the most precise, or which might be the best to use? I'd like to hear your perspectives and analysis.

The Hypocratic oath states that doctors should treat everyone, regardless of race, religion, sexuality, financial status, personal history, etc. First of all, Western countries already don't do that. They discriminate by race, religion and sexuality (Catholic hospitals), and *especially* financial status. So not doing this is already standard practice. But I personally think a case can be made the communist doctors shouldn't treat everyone either. If a Nazi comes in, no, he can go fuck himself and no doctor should be treating him. Or in a triage situation, the proletariat should absolutely get priority over the bourgeoisie. That's just my hot take and admittedly I do not really know the theory behind this stuff, and I definitely want to learn, hence this post. What do you think? Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

I've been on a chemistry kick lately from watching NileRed and NurdRage (both of which make amazing chemistry videos btw), and something they talk about a lot is how hard it is for an independent chemist not working for a lab, company, or university, to buy chemicals suitable for experiments (i.e. pure enough and in large enough amounts). Not only that, often buying seemingly innocuous chemicals can get you put on a drug making or terrorism watchlist. It can be a real pain to buy high grades of even extremely common industrial chemicals, most infamously it seems are the mineral acids: Hydrochloric acid, Sulfuric acid, and Nitric acid. These are used in an enormous amount of useful reactions like making plastics, fertilizers, dyes, medicine, and electronic components. But unfortunately, some of those reactions are also associated with making drugs, explosives, and chemical weapons, so it can be very hard to buy pure forms of these acids, and hobbyist chemists literally distill them out of things like drain cleaner or make it themselves from more readily available chemicals. Moreover, most chemical supply companies will only sell to universities and companies. So even if a chemical had zero restrictions, hell something like really really pure sodium chloride, you still might not have a good enough source for running experiments. It's also interesting that most other STEM professions don't have such strong restrictions for hobbyists. For example, some parts of the electronics hobby can be very dangerous and kill you instantly if you don't know what you're doing. But, any bored kid can take apart a microwave they find by the side of the road and extract some extremely dangerous high voltage electronics and a very powerful RF generator that can literally cook flesh. But, on the flip side, you literally *can* create drugs, explosives, and worst case scenario chemical weapons using industrial or lab chemicals, especially if anyone could order whatever organic compound they wanted, they could order the most similar mass produced one and potentially be only a simple reaction away from something illegal (NileRed managed to turn a common additive in latex gloves into, no joke, grape flavour, and the chemical that make peppers spicy. That's obviously legal, but imagine if someone wanted to make meth and had the entire industrially relevant chemical catalogue at his fingertips). Also, chemistry is pretty dangerous and amateur chemists get injured or killed every year, and that's *with* these restrictions in place. Finally, not everyone is responsible about how they handle chemical waste, and depending on what reactions they did if they pour it down the drain or throw it in the trash it can fuck up the environment or damage the sewage processing infrastructure. Imagine if some teenager decided to make a bunch of freon because he was rebellious at the ozone layer. What do you think? Should people not formally working for a lab or university have the ability to run chemical experiments at home? To what extent do you think we should be restricting the sale of lab chemicals to people? (Full disclosure I've never tried running chemical reactions by myself and frankly I don't see myself ever doing that. But, I do consume media from people, albeit often *actual* chemists just not working in a formal lab, who do it at home.)

Over the last several years I have, in song with others, pushed for priorities to be directed toward a “socialism with American characteristics.” The discourse that the quest has generated has often been a disaster. The obvious worst of this being the “patsoc” thinking that has thankfully quieted for the most part. In order to better advance this cause of creating a revolutionary theory, and to combat my personal angst which arises in the face of Maoists trying to force me to read about the Philippines instead of something that could be even more relevant for North America, I believe it would be generative to show an example of how Marxist theory has been used by Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard. Not entirely unlike how Mao and the communists of China facilitated a “sinophication” of Marxism, some scholars and activists are arguably indigenizing Marxism, or making it “transformed in conversation with critical thought and practices of Indigenous peoples” to make it compatible for North American realities (p. 9). In his book, Red Skin, White Masks, Coulthard explores the subjectivity that is enforced on Indigenous people by colonialism and the complications that arise. Coulthard may not be an explicit Marxist, he probably does not go around claiming to be ML, his aim is more to mold Marxism into a weapon for Indigenous people and not the other way around. Personally, I find this to be a worthy cause that more should be aware of. I can’t do justice to a full summary at this time, but to partially summarize the book I will focus primarily on the context shift toward colonialism that Coulthard uses alongside his views on primitive accumulation. Most of this will be from just the introduction. I’ve chosen this because I believe this text provides a bridge between Indigenous thinkers and Marxist thinkers and can be a kind of gateway for a complex topic. Hopefully, this can expose comrades here to Indigenous thinking that can help us understand what is to be done. Subheading: Into the Weeds This context shift is a move toward a context of colonial instead of just capital relations by way of primitive accumulation. He defines colonialism as structured dispossession and utilizes chapters 26-32 of Capital vol I to stand on this. He writes (p.7): In Capital these formative acts of violent dispossession set the stage for the emergence of capitalist accumulation and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production by tearing Indigenous societies, peasants and other small-scale, self-sufficient agricultural producers from the source of their livelihood—the land. Many are already familiar with Primitive Accumulation, but I will attempt to flesh it out regardless. Primitive accumulation often seen as a temporary state of brutality were it forcefully opens up “what were once collectively held territories and resources to privatization” which inevitably leads to proletarianization. It is this violent transformation of non-capitalist relations into capitalist, market relations that constitutes primitive accumulation. Before continuing on to how Coulthard would like to recontextualize primitive accumulation he briefly touches on the fact that Indigenous thinking and Marxist thinking are oftentimes at odds. Part of his goal is to rescue both Indigenous people from the oftentimes racist, chauvinist, reactionary attitudes that Marxists often deploy and rescue Marxism from a “premature rejection” by Indigenous thinkers (p. 8). By doing so (he holds that feminist, queer, anarchist, and post-colonial thinking will be helpful) he believes more light can be shed on colonial domination and resistance. Transforming Primitive Accumulation In order to transform Marx’s primitive accumulation, he addresses three problematic features, and several important insights about these features. Some of these criticisms you may already be familiar with. 1) The first feature is “Marx’s rigidly temporal framing of the phenomenon” (p9). The idea here is that PA (primitive accumulation) is confined to a specific phase in time. For example, in England PA has passed and completed but in the colonies PA is present. Along with many other Marxian thinkers (like Harvey et al), a persistent role of PA is what we should see, and certainly with neoliberal hegemony. “[U]nconcealed, violent dispossession continues to play in the reproduction of colonial and capitalist social relations in both the domestic and global contexts” (p9). 2) The second feature is normative developmentalism. This is basically what was especially present in early Marx, a modernist view of history. This leads some of Marx’s work to portray PA as a historical inevitability that is apart of a historical metanarrative. Coulthard seeks to rescue Marx from this fallacy by shifting emphasis from capital relations to colonial relations. Marx sees PA as a process of dispossession that leads to proletarianization. His concern was with understanding capital as a social relation dependent on the separation of workers from the means of production. Thus Marx was not nearly as preoccupied with dispossession as he was with arriving at proletarianization as a focus (p11). He writes (p11): By repositioning the colonial frame as our overarching lens of analysis it becomes far more difficult to justify in antiquated developmental terms (from either the right or left) the assimilation of non-capitalist, non-Western, Indigenous modes of life based on the racist assumption that this assimilation will somehow magically redeem itself by bringing the fruits of capitalist modernity into the supposedly ‘backward’ world of the colonized. This is something late Marx was more comfortable with. However, his point is well taken. I personally have seen “patsocs” of the last few years attempt to say what happened to Indigenous people was merely them being added to the work force. Proletarianization, but ignoring the colonial relations in order to assert this was a natural and inevitable event, even a desirable one. Also, I find that within the academy, Marx is often taught as a snapshot of his early self, so this criticism is good for those who have been confined to early Marx (Tangentially I think the academy misrepresents Marx’s totality regularly so its good to have criticisms that are not based in liberal chauvinisms.) It is evident that “egalitarian” voices will use modernist fallacies to reproduce dispossession. For example, advocates who seek a return of the commons fail to understand that there are no “commons” in Canada or the US. There is only the land of the First Peoples. He writes (pg12) By ignoring or downplaying the injustice of colonial dispossession, critical theory and left political strategy not only risks becoming complicit in the very structures and processes of domination that it out to oppose, but it also risks overlooking what could probe to be invaluable glimpses into the ethical practices and preconditions required for the construction of a more just and sustainable world order. Further insight into this critique regards the role of Indigenous labor. As industrial capitalism matured in North America, Indigenous labor was rendered increasingly (though not entirely) superfluous. This helps us furthure understand why the context of colonial relations and the emphasis on dispossession can illuminate more than the normative developmentalist views that prioritize proletarianization can. Forgive my metaphor, but in many ways the civilization policies that were levied against Indigenous peoples were the John the Baptist that preceded the Christ of industrialism. This is seen in how slavery was spread through Henry Knox's civilization policy, something I'd be happy to post about separately another time. As Canada’s commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote in 1890, “The work of sub-dividing reserves has begun in earnest. The policy of destroying the tribal or communist system is assailed in every possible way and every effort has been made to implant a spirit of individual responsibility instead.” (Note the red scare language. This is something that is present throughout the history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism.) However, you could point to proletarianization as a distraction, usually it is said dispossession was meant to facilitate proletarianization, but for Indigenous people dispossession was meant to acquire land and resources for capital. Dispossession is the “dominant background structure” and “continues to inform the dominant modes of Indigenous resistance (p13).” He writes further: (p13) The theory and practice of Indigenous anticolonialism, including Indigenous anticapitalism, is best understood as a struggle primarily inspired by and oriented around the question of land—a struggle not only for land in the material sense, but also deeply informed by what the land as a system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondomination and nonexploitative terms—and less around our emergent status as ‘rightless proletarians.” Grounded normativity cannot be stressed enough as a key for understanding pan-Indigenous philosophies and how they can interact with Marxism. For Indigenous philosophers, ethics cannot be simply separated from cosmology, or from anything, certainly not from land. The universe itself has a moral character that is revealed by co-relationality. I would recommend works by Vine Deloria Jr and Richard Atleo to have a better feel for how this works although Coulthard himself gives good insights himself later in the book. For now, grounded normativity can by defined as “the modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time” (p13). I will focus on this more in later posts if I can. Another insight into normative developmentalism that is briefly mentioned, is that it doesn’t always see the land itself as exploitable, people are. There is a tendency to deploy poor understandings of the environment and a presumption that Marxism is designed to ignore ecocriticism. I did not go into detail about grounded normativity, but we can already see that if we see Land as a system of relations then this anti-environmental tendency is problematic for Indigenous thinking in unique ways even when it is routinely levied by ecological thinkers. A final insight into normative developmentalism is economic reductionism. I’ll let quotes take this one as other authors tackle this regularly and I’d rather his voice shine for this article. He writes: (pg 14-15) …the colonial relation should not be understood as a primary locus or base from which these other forms of oppression flow, but rather as the inherited background field within which market, racist, patriarchal, and state relations converge to facilitate a certain power effect—in our case, the reproduction of hierarchical social relations that facilitate the dispossession of our lands and self-determining capacities. Like capital, colonialism, as a structure of domination predicated on dispossession, is not ‘a thing,’ but rather the sum effect of the diversity of inter locking oppressive social relations that constitute it.” Basically, shifting toward colonial relations doesn’t “displace” class struggle, but “situates these questions more firmly alongside and in relation to the other sites and relations of power that inform our settler-colonial present.” 3) OK so now on to the 3rd and final problematic feature. Which is more of a question on governmentality. This one is interesting because I think his peers have pushed against this. Basically, he believes that because the liberal Canadian state is developing less overtly brutal methods of subjugation it differs from the explicit and incredible violence that Marx asserts goes hand in hand with primitive accumulation—as Marx says, “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, in blood and dirt.” He asks readers: (p15) What are we to make of contexts where state violence no longer constitutes the regulative norm governing the process of colonial dispossession, as appears to be the case in ostensibly tolerant, multinational, liberal settler polities such as Canada? Stated in Marx’s own terms, if neither ‘blood and fire’ nor the ‘silent compulsion’ of capitalist economics can adequately account for the reproduction of colonial hierarchies in liberal democratic contexts, what can? I take this as more of a question of understanding what the state is up to than a statement that violence has lost its place in primitive accumulation. Much of the book is about "recognition" and how relying on state recognition is bunk, so in that light, it makes sense to me to ask these questions in hopes of understanding the role that pursuing state recognition plays in primitive accumulation. But clearly violence is still the status quo for Indigenous people, thus I find this to be his weakest but most intriguing point. Conclusion So, I have laid out Coulthard’s initial points on primitive accumulation. In the future I hope to make a post on more parts of this book, and maybe others as well. I especially intend to flesh out grounded normativity and recognition, which the book is mostly about in the first place as I think these can be helpful concepts for comrades.

Every time someone brings up any sort of even half utopian vision (read: a world where people aren't actively trying to kill each other), communism for example, people are sure to bring up "but how will technological/societal/human progress be driven without conflict? Wouldn't humanity stagnate like the fatasses aboard the space ship in WALL-E?" I've never agreed with this, and though I'm obviously not a sociopolitical theorist, I have some vague justifications of my stance: First of all, human curiosity and desire to create are intrinsic to our species and does not require conflict. There are enough makers slapping together half baked DIY projects in their garage that do a whole lot of nothing aside from being fun to prove that, with many enjoying the process of making the thing more than the thing itself, but sometimes those pet projects do turn into real products that solve real problems. As are the scientists that research the weirdest things just for the hell of it, and surprise surprise decades later it turns out to actually be useful. Astronomers studying exoplanets and cosmic gas clouds are another example, they're never going to visit those things, certainly won't be colonizing them anytime in their or our lifetime, and it's not like there's an obvious path from that to any sort of weapon. Are they doing it specifically because there might be a war soon? When Galileo fought tooth and nail for his heliocentric theory, he never expected it to physically affect existence on Earth, nor could he have conceived any way of using said theory in battle, but he still advocated it simply because he believed it was the truth about the nature of our universe. Also, things like radar, nuclear fission, or any of the things commonly associated with war were not initially discovered because of war. The mechanisms of action were discovered by physicists probing and trying to understand the universe, simple as that. The Chinese developed the first forms of gunpowder, and they used it for fireworks at first, guns came much later with the European colonization of East Asia. Also also, in times of peace, art flourishes. Any period known as the golden age of a given culture or society are almost always in times of relative peace. Can't do much art if you're being raided from the neighbouring empire can you? Another thing, just because there are no longer external geopolitical conflict doesn't mean there are no conflicts period. Illness, mortality, minor inconvenience, hell even being bored are all conflicts that people have worked very hard to defeat. And there are sci-fi sounding things that can be explored even after all of that is solved. Transhumanism, transphysics, mind uploading, telepathy, faster than light travel, time travel, seeing into or visiting other universes or higher dimensions, do other universes or higher dimensions even exist? We genuinely do not know if these things are possible or what they can do for us, so do they not warrant exploration? Or, instead of exploring outer space, how about exploring inner space? The nature of life and consciousness, emotion, love, and attachment, higher and higher orders of mathematics and logic, do living things truly have spirits or life force within or are we just complicated, mostly self contained chemical reactions? Plenty to chew on in a post conflict world, no? Finally, one must consider, is no change or advancement really stagnation? Why do we *need* infinite advancement? Why can't we just focus on being human, living, and enjoying what we have now? This reminds me of the excuses European colonists made for the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples, that, "well they aren't actively trying to build empires or advance themselves, we're doing them a favour by bring them our way of life because they were never going to achieve anything their way" meanwhile many Indigenous people believed that simply living life has intrinsic value, that being human and enjoying all the things that come with that is enough. IDK, what do you think of all this?

I don't know how to explain it, but since I've been studying Dialectical Materialism (and mindfulness too, but may not be as related), I've had this intense feeling/emotion/thought pattern that's been emerging that I've had a tough time putting words to. I've done lots of research into the idea and talked to a lot of people, and I think it's a fuzzy sense of interconnectedness that's being given to me by this radical shift in cognition that I've had over these past couple years. Just really noticing and feeling the complex interconnection between everything in the world, and the patterns that make up the world, and how everything in the world is interdependent on everything else in the world and trying to observe that structure of the world we live in. I feel like i've never had this kind of nuance in my thinking before, and I like it, despite the occasional bouts of anxiety it causes. The closest fields of study that I've found, besides marxism/dialectical materialism of course, has been Systems Theory. In my research, some computing/math topics like recursion and fractals have also appeared, but I've yet to figure out their relevance, besides just being types of patterns. A couple of neuroscience topics cropped up as well, but, again, not sure the relevance, so I want to start with looking at the crossover in theory between Marxism-Leninism and Systems Theory. I'm decently familiar with ML, just been reading through the recommendations on the ML Reading Hub site, but I have literally zero experience with Systems Theory, however, I would love to learn, if you have any recommendations. Or if you think I sound like I'm losing my mind, that's also valid lol, I sort of feel that way while typing this out and just being like "it's all connected man!!!". Thanks for any responses, regardless lol.

Hello Comrades, I hope you are doing well today. I would like to ask what is the relation between entrepreneurship and innovation in the economy, and in terms of what a company itself may develop—from a Marxist perspective. Also, what influences the leaders of companies to make decisions related to or bolstering innovation? This is related to coursework in a Chinese university, so the more detailed the better!

I heard he had some good works before he went reactionary, especially his works on marxist philosophy was good. Anyone have some recommendations?

Anyone can elaborate what it was about? Seems like part of the khrushchevite purge attempts, but i'm not sure.

It isn't exactly a pro-soviet source, but it contains a decent wealth of information that isn't readily available in mainstream works.

So I have been out of work for several years due to being a single parent with no childcare. Now that my daughter is in kindergarten, I have gotten a regular job as a dishwasher at a non-chain restaurant. The 2 owners are also chefs and they work literally right beside me. But there are 27 other employees who are not owners and thus are being exploited. Everyone's general mindset there is benefitting the company as much as possible. They associate success of the business with the potential for pay raises, promotions, etc. My mindset is a communist worker working directly alongside the people exploiting everyone else's labor. It's important to note the owners in this establishment don't do nothing at all, they are the head chefs and do a lot of work every day, but I can't ignore the fact that they tale home the majority of the profits while everyone else is beholden to a standard hourly wage ($12/hr) My problem is I am very unfamiliar with the restaurant industry and its relation to labor organizing. Are unions a thing in restaurants? Is it more risky to approach labor organizing when the owner is part of that labor? Am I looking at this from an entirely wrong angle? I'm just not sure what steps, if any, I should consider here. I spend all day listening to Marxist theory through headphones while washing dishes, but I can't figure out how to approach this situation. Please give me some starting points if you can. It's also probably relevant to note that I work in a state with Right To Work and At Will Employment laws

Police and prisons are institutions of state power and thus must be kept in the transition towards communism. However, once communism is achieved, do you think police and prisons could go away? If so, what would replace them, if any.

I'm considering selling pc parts to make a living though I am a bit concerned about one thing: CPU My concern is the bottlenecking of the GPU (especially given I'll get a 2060)

This might seem like an odd question but I'm totally serious. I'm tired of having to sift through capitalist propaganda whenever I want to ask a question like "how does China's government structure work" and seeing like 20 results about how Xi Jinping personally controls the mind of every Chinese citizen. On the other hand I don't want to bother everyone here with trivial questions every day. Does anyone have pro-socialist alternatives to Google? If not, where should be the first place I go to for information from a socialist perspective?

Hello everyone. I am interested in learning about the death penalty specifically from a socialist perspective, as well as why do socialist countries currently implement it. China is notable for being based as hell and executing corrupt capitalists. But, my question is, why is execution necessary or preferable to, say, life imprisonment? The biggest argument I can think of against the death penalty is simply that nobody and no government is perfect, and it's entirely possible that somewhere along the line, an innocent person will get executed and be exonerated only after the fact. If someone gets life in prison and it later turns out they are not guilty, they could be released and recompensated. The death penalty however, is not reversible. So this raises a few questions for me: 1. What are your opinions on the death penalty (both in principle and in practice)? 2. What are the reasons current and former socialist countries practice it? I should also mention I am primarily thinking of countries in a stable, peaceful state, as opposed to during a war/civil war. Thanks!

This serves as a great introduction to Marxist Feminism.

I'm wanting to get into some "graduate-level" works on Marxist-Feminism. So far I've read Federici, Lerner, and Vogel, which have been wonderful. What do yall suggest I read?

Do you think the UN is a useful organization? It seems to me like it vilifies US enemies and does almost nothing when it comes to anything else. https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-is This is on their humans rights page and the only country mentioned here aside from the usual list is Israel and a few others. If I were to read some of the stuff written here about a country like DPRK how likely is it to be true? What do communists think of the UN? The creation of the UN was supported by the USSR so there must have been something beneficial to it? or did the old UN disappear alongside the USSR? It would be very nice to get your opinions on this, thank you.