Hi all! Just joined from a friend recommending this on another website. I’ve written several essays on J. Posadas and decided to post them here. I take Posadas somewhat seriously, as I feel the ‘memey’ take on him is somewhat unfair and doesn’t really take all factors into account. Enjoy!

In Defense of Posadas:

J, or sometimes Juan, Posadas was a pseudonym for Homero Rómulo Cristalli Frasnelli, an Argentine trade union leader, and Trotskyite Marxist. “In 1947, he organized the Grupo IV Internacional (GCI) and created Voz Proletaria, an Argentine paper focused on the Peronist process in the early days of nationalism. Following this, he developed Trotskyist sections in several Latin American countries and created the BLA – the Latin American Bureau of the Fourth International.” At some point during Posadas’ life, he was tortured by Argentinian authorities for his beliefs, and many believe this is one of the reasons he developed the stranger and more ‘out there’ (quite literally, eh?) ideas that he did.

Posadas did not limit himself to simply applying the Marxist analysis to the political situations of the time. He also wrote about technology, humanity’s possible future in space, harmony with nature’s animals, and what I can only describe as the prospect of cybernetic implants. So, when the Fourth International Posadist website lists the various fields that Posadas contributed to, they’re not just glorifying him.

Now that you know about Posadas the man, move on to Posadism the idea. Many claim that Posadism shows a want for atomic war and contact with aliens. However, I believe this to be false. There is only one text I found in my research on Posadas indicating he believed in Aliens and this is the best passage where he lays it out:

“Beings that may have left their homes one million years ago might be coming to study the Earth, to see how life on Earth is like. It is possible. We say ‘one million years’, but for those beings, this may be a number without importance, a normal measure. They couldn’t have the same notion of time as we do. For us, time has been, and remains, a notion that we have learnt from a society divided into classes. It was to exploit nature that our society needed to measure time. This gave rise to a division of time that has no reason to exist.”

However, Posadas only says that the existence of other life forms in possible, and that, if they were more advanced than our society to achieve space travel, he goes on to say that they must have developed a form of socialism or an advanced society to get there. Posadas wrote, or said, a lot more on the subject of atomic war, however, I do not believe he ‘advocated’ for it as some would have us believe.

“In human relations, it is necessary to reason and persuade. Reasoning and persuasion do not exclude the use of force. We propose the preventative war, atomic even, against imperialism. But we do not advocate it with the mind of the assailant. It is the same as when some rock obstructs the way. What is the good begging it: ‘Rock, move and let me through’? The rock must be cast aside. What we advocate about the war, we do it in the same spirit, with no sentiment of violence or of arrogance. We pose it with the sentiment of doing something necessary in history: and not for the sake of one group or the other, but for humanity’s.” - J. Posadas, The World Revolutionary Process and the Course of the Partial Regeneration in the Worker’s States

While some may interpret this as advocating for atomic war, I disagree. One must first look at the political situation of the time to truly understand what Posadas meant. This speech was given on July 20th, 1975. Politicians like Ronald Reagan were advocating for tougher action against the Soviet Union, the outcome of which would only be war in Posadas’ mind, and that war would have been an atomic one. I do not believe Posadas advocated for nuclear war or annihilation more than you or I do. Instead, I believe that Posadas and the Posadists saw it as inevitable at the time and believed that it would happen no matter what. If one examines history, you will find they were almost right more than a couple times.

But if what is thought as the two main tenets of Posadism has just been defeated, what really is Posadism and what did Posadas want?

If one examines Posadas’ writings closer, you will find they were much more than just some space aliens and atomic war. Instead, you’ll find some Trotskyite ideas, along with other unique ideas from Posadas. Posadas rejected the idea of the USSR as a degenerated workers’ state and the later Trotskyite idea of bureaucratic collectivism. Instead, he referred the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, North Korea, and the rest as simply “worker’s states” and other states in a period of political upheaval that could very well have ended up as socialist as “revolutionary states”.

Posadas believed that in “worker’s states”, trade unions should be given control over production and distribution so the worker’s states could avoid the corrupt bureaucracy that Trotskyites were known to heavily criticize. Posadas also wrote about cybernetic implants, as I demonstrated in my last article. In short, Posadas wrote about trade unions, teaching, Palestine, the EEC and later the European Parliament, Labour and the abolition of the British monarchy, and just about any political topic that could have been prominent at the time, the guy was everywhere.

His views on the European Parliament are something I think most leftists should adopt, regardless of whether or not you like Posadas. He believed it to be a capitalist institution set up to oppose the Warsaw Pact (which it was) and that leftist would be unable to gain any substantial change through it (which, unless there’s something I don’t know of, they have not). Instead, leftists who were elected to the EU Parliament should instead use it as a forum to promote their own ideas and support local change and self-determination.

In short, I think Posadas is unjustly ridiculed and made fun of throughout the leftist community undeservedly. He contributed heavily to the idea of space socialism and transhumanism, which I believe is a very interesting and ignored topic that should be further discussed by today’s leftist circles.

A Socialist Future In Space and Beyond:

I have been dabbling in the works of J. Posadas, a Trotskyite theorist known mostly for his views on Ufology and atomic war. However, when one looks past these beliefs, one finds that Posadas was probably more interested in space and technology. He wrote the essay “On the Socialist Future of Humanity”, in which he theorizes about what I can only describe as cybernetic implants that will allow the human voice to be “mightier than the mightiest thunderclap,” and that “the day will come when the human voice will have fulfilled a role comparable to that of Karl Marx.”

When I first read these words, I at first could not look past his outrageous theories about socialist space aliens and atomic war, but when one ignores such theories, you come to find in Posadas a hope for humanity’s future and a certain kind of “Socialist Transhumanism”. Posadas suggests that, at some point in our technological socialist future, the human life span could be near eternal. And, should technology keep progressing at the rate it is today and we are able to throw off the shackles of capitalism, I believe it’s entirely possible (probably not in my or your lifespan, or even our great-grandchildren’s).

Posadas, in the very same essay, also speaks of a superior system to Marxism, socialism, and communism. The seventh stage of historical development, I believe it would be called in Marxist theory. According to Posadas, “The main drive of private property is to limit the scope, the development and the dynamic of intelligence. The interest of private property causes it to counteract and cripple anything that develops ideas.” However, under a socialist system or the future system, Posadas says will take its place, where property is in held in common, humanity would be free of the profit and money influence into technological and everyone would benefit.

So, despite all of his flaws, Posadas makes a clear and reasonable argument for a technological and possibly transhumanist socialist future. I do not think the question is whether or not this vision will come true, but when. Technology is still progressing further than before under capitalism, even today. Think of the technology we could invent and utilize under a socialist vision.

“Socialism is all to the reverse. The elementary condition of socialism is to make every scrap of objective knowledge serve the common good, the good of humanity. Socialism does not serve the socialists and the communists, it serves humanity.” - J. Posadas

(continued)

  • @stickypepsiOP
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    5 years ago

    (continued)

    Human Intelligence, Science, and Socialism

    A note: Unfortunately many of Posadas’ works on Art and music are either lost or remain untranslated (the IV International (Posadist) does not make clear either on case for his works that are linked but cannot be viewed), thus I am sure I cannot utilize his work to its full extent.

    Sapience is what sets humanity above the animals of the Earth. We have the ability to reason, judge, and formulate our intelligence into viable solutions or new ideas. There is no limit to how much human intelligence or scientific capacity can develop, but at the same time, there is.

    Our current system of social organization, Capitalism, organizes what is important and what is good through the use of the profit motive. It is through this motive that capitalists argue capitalism causes innovations and new ideas, through people wishing to gain money through their creation. This is undoubtedly a falsehood. Those without the economic means to do so cannot put their ideas out there, to test them in the profit motive (even those many of those ideas would not have a profitable outcome, and would likely be tossed away or extraordinarily expensive under capitalism).

    Science is restricted by capitalism in this way. If even a percentage, nay a percentage of a percentage, of the world’s scientific resources were put to curing afflictions like cerebral palsy, I’ve no doubt it could be cured within a decade or shorter time. But why is it not done this way?

    Only 17 million people worldwide have cerebral palsy. That seems like an extraordinarily large number, though even fraction probably has GMFCS Level V like a friend of mine. It is estimated that most who are afflicted as seriously as my acquaintance will die around 38 years of living. This is nothing short of a crime.

    “The squandering of life that goes on at the present moment is quite staggering. The way to put an end to this terrible waste is to put our social house [system] in order.” - J. Posadas, On the Socialist Future of Humanity

    Why will capitalism do nothing to stop this? Because 17 million people are nothing to the capitalist machine. The world population clock estimates there are 7.58 billion worldwide at the time of this writing. What is something as minor as 17 million going to do for capitalism? Nothing. It is not profitable to save the lives of those 17 million because of the minor impact they will have on the capitalist machine.

    “These people see science as a means of producing cheaper and nothing more.” - J. Posadas, War, Peace, and the Function of the Socialist Countries

    But not only are lives lost because we refuse to escape this terrible system of profit over lives. In Chile, through 1971-73, a system known as Project Cybersyn was planned to be implemented. This system would’ve allowed for the economic needs and wants of all Chilean citizens to be input into a database, where resources would’ve then been given to projects and foods and factories and the like to fulfill these needs. Interestingly, this solution could solve the economic calculation problem posed by Mises and later Hayek.

    However, I wish to focus on a different aspect of the Project. At the time, the project was revolutionary in its suggestions and could be implemented even better in the 21st century. Instead of having it run by slow humans, CyberSyn could be run by computers with much more efficiency. And, instead of human labour producing everything, we now have the technology to automate most, if not all, labour currently done by humans. This would leave us with a much higher scientific capacity than under capitalism because thinkers formerly restricted by their job and life would now be able to contribute to scientific discussion. Science will no longer be a profitable institution from which society is restricted: it will become a social institution in which society is most heavily involved.

    With the elimination of capitalism and the complete implementation of socialism and automation, science will be freed from the profit motive, and the people can and will be freed from what diseases and afflictions we will find cures for.

    “The social condition for human existence is progress. Progress will immediately give to human audacity and capacity an expansion a million times greater than in the system of private property. These qualities will no longer be hindered or determined by the interests of the individual. The whole of society will be engaged, giving confidence and reassurance. When social thought is entirely held in common, it will change the modes of living.” - J. Posadas, Flying Saucers, the Process of Matter and Energy, Science and Socialism

  • Muad'DibberA
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    5 years ago

    Thx for posting these, and /u/joeufo1 for making this, posadas is interesting as fuck.

    Joe also you can do images in markdown like : ![](my_image_url)

    • @stickypepsiOP
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      35 years ago

      I agree. It is quite disappointing to me that he’s discredited as some “out there” guy (which is somewhat fair; it is believed he was tortured by the Argentinian government and had bad trauma from that which may account for his more eccentric views) when honestly I think he was just an idealist thinking about the future and what it might hold.

      • @joeufo1M
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        35 years ago

        He was essentially the Gene Roddenberry of Trotskyism!

        • Muad'DibberA
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          35 years ago

          Hehe, I think I remember reading that Roddenberry was influenced by posadas!