Wanted to take a second to make some positive cases for why we believe in Scientific Socialism/Anarchism. We spend a lot of time belittling historically illiterate smug lords (which is awesome) but I think it’s important to take a second to appreciate why these ideas resonate with us so much and why we find these ideas so important that they are worth fighting for online and IRL. I’ll go first;
Demystification: that’s a big thing for me. The imperial core is a place that is full of institutions that, can technically be understood, and yet do not make a whole lot of sense in their function. Health insurance companies are a great example of this. The entire process of acquiring and using insurance in the U.S. is a Kafka-esque beauracratic nightmare. And at every step there are individuals who are happy to help you understand the process, and yet even once you gain the understanding they impart, it all still feels wildly inefficient and punitive. Even to a very young person, it doesn’t make sense. It is Only beneficial In comparison to the monstrous social violence of medically induced poverty. Meaning it only makes sense when you accept that violence as a necessary societal inevitably.
So growing up in the U.S. you are faced all the time with complex and baroque financial institutions and practices that society insists you understand even if doubt persists that what you are understanding doesn’t really make sense. Ultimately when this practice confers practical economic benefit the cognitive dissonance is assuaged and is even completely resolved in some individuals. Credit cards and credit scores are another great example of this.
Understanding Mystification as a Marxist term finally gave me the vocabulary to understand this phenomenon and hence be less bothered by trying to make sense of things that I understand and yet don’t make any sense.
Another big thing: The labor theory of value; perhaps my understanding is too cursory but when I tried reading Capital this part really stuck with me because it is profound even though it seemed rather obvious to me from my lived experience.
Without trying to get out of my depth In philosophical jargon, my understanding of the LTV is that the value of currency is derived from the surplus value generated by the application of labor to raw materials. I know the states ability to enforce the transaction is also key. I welcome any clarification/insight on LTV.
The point I’m trying to make about LTV and why I find it profound and worth Blooming about is that it means that as workers we generate the force that actually changes the world. That force is labor. It’s not money, It’s not Gold, it’s not big ideas from big job titles. It is the people who turn the earth, teach the young, or just sell their labor hours doing any number of things.
It’s easy to be pessimistic in the face of the incredible accumulated political power the west still holds. Yet we should have hope, because the power that money has is only ever borrowed from labor. Under that framework it becomes a struggle to organize enough unalienated labor hours to put towards building something better.
Our labor hours are the most important building block we have towards revolution. That is the real “capital” that reshapes the world. The struggle is to take as many back from your boss as you can, and if you can, invest those hours into something bigger than yourself.
That’s what gets me blooming. Constructive feedback always welcome (would love more insight on LTV)
What makes you feel hopeful about communism/anarchism?
I honestly feel like my fall into the alt-right pipeline was a necessary wake-up call. I grew up in a borderline cult and managed to deprogram myself from it when I was 13-17, when I started to see the conflict between the teachings of loving everyone equally and the attitudes towards women and sexual minorities. After that I basically coasted for a few years identifying as “progressive” or “left-leaning” because I disagreed with the most blatant discrimination without doing any self-reflection on any of the more internalized bigotries I harbored at that point.
The rabbit hole obviously started with the youtube atheist sceptics a few years before the anti-sjw brainworms first really manifested, at that point I was just looking for validation for breaking away from the religion I grew up with. It ended up with watching way too many “owning feminists” compilations and I started being pedantic about which waves of feminism I support.
At some point I realized I was in the middle of even more sexist and homophobic people than I thought I left behind in my enlightenment as a teen, and that brought along pretty uncomfortable questions.
A big part of that realization was all the more leftist friends and family, I’m forever thankful that they kept me out of the bubble enough that I realized where I was heading.
I started to look more critically on what my actual values and feelings were compared to what I wanted to project to the world, and that combined with looking for more information directly from the marginalized groups instead of the easily consumed and regurgitated liberal talking points my radicalization snowballed.
One of the funnier parts of my radicalization was my relationship with edgy humour and how it helped me to actually read theory. I didn’t really want to give up shocking and annoying people, because it can objectively be funny. Then I realized, that edgy humour from leftist perspective shocks and annoys the right-wing edgelords and the floodgates opened. I started with the obvious ones like Mussolini doing yoga, but I needed better material so I started memorizing funny quotes and studying history for bits and ended up reading theory.
So why am I leftist? Because of the people around me. They taught me empathy, patience and love, they showed me that even an asshole who belittles you is worth at least an attempt to change their mind.
And because nothing is funnier than a crypto fascist trying to hide his genuine anger and offense with a pitiful laugh at my joke about murdering nazis because the room is full of liberals that cannot be allowed to see their power level, but we both know that the other one knows.