Bündis Sahra Wagenknecht

Wait a minute, she just named a whole ass political party after herself? Like Bernie Sanders creating a “The Bernie Sanders Party” political party? Is this like a normal thing for Germans?

I was raised in (and was devout about until age 27 or so) white evangelical Christianity in the US. From that, I struggled to view “religion” in a broad sense other than through that lens. I held on to a lot of anger and in some ways was an edgy internet atheist. Marxism helped me understand base and superstructure. It helped me understand how the religion I was raised in grew out of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and as a way to maintain the meager privileges that the bourgeoisie grant upon the reactionary, white working class. In other words, the specific material and historical circumstances of the time and place I lived, driven by a specific mode of production. And it was those things that I was really angry at (well, for the most part. Beliefs around eternal torment still bother me to this day). Also seeing how faith and religion has brought encouragement and hope to the people of Gaza also helped me approach the concept of religion with nuance.

Ultimately religion can be a force for good or bad, it just depends on the material elements that underlie it in a specific context.

I think this is like a much worse dot com crash than it is a GFC. In 2008, the entire banking system was threatened, which is a horse of a different color.

And to play devils advocate for a bit… it’s not out of the question that the Buffet Indicator would rise over time as US corporations become more multi-national over time (higher earnings overseas lead to higher valuations but don’t necessarily contribute to higher national GDP). That said it’s WAY beyond that.

As a US-based commie, I think we have such a long row to hoe in terms of developing class consciousness here. Decades of propaganda plus comfortable living conditions based on exploitation of people and the environment make even suggesting a socialist alternative to people makes them look at you like you have a horn growing out of your head. Hasan does good work in normalizing these ideas among young people, thus making positive contributions to developing class consciousness. Someone who isn’t as “pipeline-friendly” but more ideologically pure probably wouldn’t have a fraction of the viewers Hasan has.

Also, while I think the “crisis of masculinity” in young men is overblown, the reality is that the right wing has an entire ecosystem of people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson who can sell young men on a false idea of a very unhealthy masculinity, and it’s been incredibly effective at pushing them to reactionary politics. Hasan is a great antidote to that as I think he (and others - I think Mamdani embodies this as well) provides a more positive version of masculinity that in itself I see pushing men leftward.

The article doesn’t mention it, so to clarify: Jin Mingri was arrested because if you want to accept funds from the US as a church, you need to register and disclose sources - a totally reasonable requirement. The Chinese government gave Zion Church seven years to do this, they refused, so they are just now facing consequences.

Also, Jin Mingri’s daughter (and media advocate) in the US studied “human rights” at a university in… Tel Aviv.

Sometimes the ops are just that obvious.

Literally just US dollars. They’re not “buying” anything with it. It’s not being used to plug a budgetary deficit (not needed for that anyway). It’s just a load of USD to be used to prop up the exchange rate, which would otherwise have the peso depreciate against the USD so prices for Argentinians on imported goods would rise significantly (i.e. more inflation). So this is just a $20B “gift” so inflation in Argentina doesn’t spike up before the election and Milei doesn’t lose more than he already will. Russia spends $200 million on “election interference” in 2016 through Facebook posts. The US spends $20B to actually interfere in Argentina’s election.

It’s the same way IMF loans work, only those have to be paid back. Poor country gets a loan from the IMF to prop up their FX rate. The rate eventually collapses anyway. Now the poor country has to pay back the loan but doesn’t have any increased means to pay it.

The IMF has been the main tool in US imperialism (arguably even more than the military) for decades now.

Thank you for sharing this, I have no doubt you are correct. Admittedly though, as someone who is not technically inclined I don’t quite know what to do with this information. Should I limit the apps on my phone to only what is essential? Use iOS with ADP and Lockdown Mode? Go with GrapheneOS? Just chuck out my phone entirely?

The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton is a good absolute intro. L. Randall Wray’s “Modern Money Theory* is better but a bit more advanced. Kelton is more openly political so that will probably rub folks here the wrong wrong, just take those parts with a grain of salt.

All truth is God’s truth. Marx did not live to see modern fiat currency systems. We can of course take his writings and apply them to modern fiat currency, but the reality is that even if the nature of money is unchanged since Marx’s time, the operational nuts and bolts of modern money do need evaluation with modern tools.

I find MMT to be a useful tool for understanding how sovereign monetary systems function in the present day. I have yet to find anything in MMT that is fundamentally opposed to Marx’s understanding of the nature of money.

I also find that MMT has a tremendous amount of empirical support behind it. While I don’t advocate for a wholesale, uncritical acceptance of MMT, I think it would be shortsighted to simply write off MMT as bourgeois economics with no value.

Just for one example, I see the assertion that MMT ignores class struggle. I don’t think this is true. In fact, MMT points to a theoretical optimum of how government finances and monetary policy should operate. It then points out that most governments under capitalism do not operate this way; most governments today say that we must “balance the budget”. This balanced budget almost always comes on the backs of slashing services for workers instead of, say, higher taxes on the wealthy. The “balanced budget” paradigm serves a purpose for the bourgeoisie. Maybe it’s the Marxists who read up on MMT moreso than the pure MMT folks who highlight this, but I don’t think that’s a problem with the theory itself.

I moved out at 22 (went away for college at 18) and I do sort of regret it. I get on great with my parents despite some of their religious and political ideas. I could lived with them for years and been pretty happy. But I moved out because that was just what you did (this was the mid 00s).

Americans - even Americans like Bernie - have an incredibly shallow understanding of history. They will recall a few key words and ideas from their history classes, but probably even more just from the environment around us, which is skewed towards reproducing capitalism. So they understand historical subjects only at the most basic level and usually not in a way that is correct.

I don’t think historical ignorance is a huge problem in itself. The bigger problem is, despite their incredible levels of ignorance, Americans will insist their understanding of history is inviolably correct; No American will ever say “well, you sure seem to know a lot about Stalin, I don’t know anything so tell me more”. Suggest anything about Stalin outside of “authoritarian dictator who kiled millions and made everyone clap” and Americans will INSiST you are wrong and they are right, regardless of who has actually put in any work.

Poor takes on China

I have literally never seen this. In fact just the other day, I thought he had a great explanation of wealth in China. He explained that financial wealth in China (I.e. the billionaires) is much like real estate wealth - in the end it’s not “yours”. China allows their billionaires to “hold” wealth, but ultimately that wealth is the property of the people of China. And as representatives of the people, the CPC can determine what can and can’t be done with that wealth, including taking it away from you. If that’s a bad take on China I don’t know what a good take is.

Perfect answer right here.

I had never watched a moment of his streams until well after Oct 7th. If anything I was inclined to have a negative view of him based on what I had read but had heard he had good takes on Palestine so I was curious. And I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised by him and am inclined to have a favorable view of him.

First off, he has only good takes on Palestine and right now is maybe the biggest pro-Palestine voice in the US right now. That alone should put him on the nice list, full stop.

I guess the main criticism I see laid on him is that he’s at best a democratic socialist and not a hardened M-L, based on his critical support for socdems like AOC and Bernie. After watching him for a while I think I understand this criticism but I also think it misunderstands him a bit. The dude is a political commentator and talks politics for like 30 hours a week. That’s like twice as much as the old talk radio political commentators like Rush Limbaugh used to do. If your entire analysis is “politics don’t matter in a bourgeois state”, then that’s gonna get boring fast. I think a lot of time he takes off his commie hat and is doing more straight political analysis, which gets misconstrued as support.

But I also think that, right or wrong, he sees politics and socdem politicians as a way to improve our lives somewhat. And I gotta be honest, I’m an M-L but at this time and place I don’t know, I have a hard time criticizing this. Like, it’s one thing to understand the democrats are shit and won’t do anything for us (even the socdem ones). It’s another thing to see this shithole country just get worse and worse every day and not want to latch onto hope that the working class could get just a bit of relief through political means, even if the current political structure does not offer this.

He’s not as good as I’d like on Ukraine/Russia as I’d like, but he’s also not as bad as the libs. He does think Ukraine should actually try and work something out instead of doing what they are doing (marching towards suicide). But tbh I’m not really cool with making Ukraine a commie litmus test like I would with Palestine.

If you “leave it to the free market”, you will just get further sprawl of single family homes; Los Angeles-ifying the rest of the country. Maybe at best sprinkle in some paper mache five-over-ones in there. The US does need more, denser housing, but will never be provided by the free market.

The actual “Chinese” solution would be to take genuinely blighted areas of a place like Detroit, build very dense, affordable public housing, provide tons of services and public transportation, and ensure local residents get priority. It would be a solution everyone would love, better than Americans could possibly imagine, but the idea that this could be done by the free market strains credulity.

Edit: kicking myself for missing the bigger point in my original comment. In China housing is largely decommodified, it’s something to ensure everyone has. Meanwhile housing in the US is a speculative asset driven by exchange values first and a use value second. Of course there is a speculative element in Chinese real estate but it is not primary. This is a direct result of socialist vs capitalist relations. Since changing THAT isn’t on the table, the US cannot do what China is doing.

To many of us, socialism is simply the opposite of capitalism rather than its negation, therefore socialism must be the absence of the most hated features of capitalism in our experiences and opinions.

I have been thinking about this since I read it a couple hours ago. Brilliant insight, thank you for sharing.

I really enjoyed reading Socialism Betrayed. But I did take note of the page or two when they talked about contemporary China. They did kinda say “this sure seems like what the USSR did wrong under Khrushchev only on a much larger scale”. But that book was written in 2004, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for western Marxists to come to that conclusion, albeit incorrectly, at that time. Not to mention the authors did approach it with some humility, not outright saying China was doomed but still pointing out it sure seemed the same as revisionism the USSR in 2004.

This is a very reasonable take.

The US government did not remove Nelson Mandela from their terrorist list until 2008.

I dislike the fakenews thing but the reason the actual fakenews comm exists is for containment. I think very few people actually “like” it. But the problem is you have some turbo nerds who will not stop posting it. If you eliminated the comm then these posters would just go and do it in other places. Having a comm allows you to block a comm when you’re logged in at least, as for whatever reason the people who post the fakenews actually do tend to stick the comm when they have it.