Pretty much agree.

Don’t get me wrong, Shelley’s Frankenstein is clearly a more sophisticated piece of art than the movie and much to be learned from it, and arguably influenced a lot of western fiction thereafter but we do we have to be cognizant of the classes it is batting for.

It is the celebration of the sacrifices made that highlights what it means to be an Übermensch. The immigrant sublimates his exploitation by becoming the exploiter.

It is made even more clear in the conversations of Michael with Roth about Cuba - Michael commentary on the cuban revolutionaries in some ways highlights the problem with western literary critique: one could say he has sympathy with them just because he pointed it out but is pointing out really justify such an interpretation? Do we ignore his class? Much of godfather has those “leimotifs”; that simply showing bad things happens is considered criticism while it painstakingly takes the time in the story so that we empathise with its protagonist, for example.

Still love the movie though because, well, im not that sophisticated and learned (but primarily, let’s be honest, material conditions).

In my opinion it is one of the easier arguments to make that the workers of the west used the Soviet Union as leverage of threat of domestic revolution to gain the concessions they did for the welfare state, and thereby forced capitalists to invest in “human capital” that allowed massive upskilling of the work force and unlock the tech ladder as we know it today. And when the USSR collapsed (and potentially you could even use the fall of the Berlin wall) that leverage was lost and thereby the losing of concessions gained leading to the state of affairs as we know it now. It puts the like of Stalin and Lenin head and shoulders over any known Western leader.

Thanks for the share; an interesting read!

I don’t know if this is a hot take but I think the narrative of the film, even though in many ways is more simplistic, is better than the original written story from what I remember of it.

I think the original story, coming from a society’s popularised literature that gives the impression of minimising the agency of the proleteriat class and has heaps of apologism for the bourgoisie (the most you get is Dickens’ exotica of poverty, and liberal bourgoisie concepts of women’s emancipation, ie would like a bigger piece of the imperialist pie) - both-sides the victim (the creature/monster).

I think Western literature and media in generally is rife with a story technique where if you just nominally show the “bad” thing then that itself can be considered a criticism (eg the Godfather nominally could be considered a criticism of organise crime, when all the narrative techniques such as what is centred, what isn’t historicised, what is rewarded etc would all suggest otherwise and thereby giving praise to the traits of the bourgoisie considered worthy. [I am brought up in this liberal world, I am flawed and therefore still like the movie]).

To western science this is so advanced that this might as well be magic.

You or others lurking here may find this useful, if you haven’t read it already:

1. Malone’s Concessions ie birth of the modern west: https://redsails.org/concessions/

2. Kyle Ferrana’s Why the World Needs China

Solidarity through Unintentional Stupidity.

A dictatorship of proleteriat in the West? When said westerner proleteriat recognise they can no longer live on the subsidy of the global south and seek solidarity with them en masse instead ie the negation of being a Westerner and fascism is no longer a viable option. I’m going to guess that material conditions of the bourgoise proleteriat is too bad to continue with status quo under a liberal democracy and fascism is a worse option (for them).

It’s not because we won over their Hearts and Souls™ through the power of masterful oratory and protests.

(No idea. All of the above = speculation)

Socialism4All (lots like this for example BadMouse and 1Dime) = doing a good impression of naval gazing nonsense, whose whole purpose appears to be here is to repurpose electoralism towards the Green Party while denigrating successful global south movements and up-playing global south movements that are not successful so they can feel like a True Leftist for picking losing sides and never having to dirty their hands in revolutionary pragmatism, and never having to truly reflect and learn marxism-leninism as a science rather than some sort of weird fandom using 19th- 20th century marxist literature as a type of biblical prophecy.

It’s like a type of masochism dressed up in pseudo-marxist aesthetics.

Enzymes start denaturing around 40c (this is from high school biology so if that is no longer true then someone please correct me.)

In addition to my last answer I realised I didn’t go into positivism with the context of history/historiography (ie regarding OP article’s subject): it would be relaying events/facts about history without understanding the explanatory power behind it all.

You will often see this where a historian (outside of the academic discpline, and even within it) explain historical events as the decisions of “great” men/women (ie igorning the masses and systems that allows these “great” people to come into a poisiton of power and allowing them to take the actions they do, and ignoring the weight of systems or masses of peoples in the direction of history ie class struggles) or the serendipity/randomness of events.

The above is the equivalent of recognising brownian motion of individual particles in a fluid (ie individual “random” movements) and then not considering diffusion or osmosis ie a direction of entropy.

It is the denunciation effectively of the science of history, historical materialism, and taking an idealistic metaphysical non-scientifc perspective instead.

Ie as noted in my previous comment - positivism could be considered “measurement” = understanding; taking historical events (assuming what being relayed is true) and then not recognising the interconnectedness of systems when you zoom out.

Being a dialectical materialist, however does not mean there is no obejctive reality - we are not idealists - but recognising that objectivity includes the relationships between things and not assuming understanding something by removing it from its fullest context.

Hope that helps.

I would consider, as a thought experiment, why McDonalds in China is still an example of socialism (I deliberately chose that example because of the contradictions it brings as it may allow for a much more dialectical materialist take of what socialism is).

• 1. in general there is no such thing as brainwashing; people intelligently look for narratives that align along imperialist lines where they have perceived to benefit from those material conditions implicitly or explicitly - the narratives are a social license for bigotry and propaganda helps draw where those acceptable boundaries for discourse and action is. This is the correct dialectical materialist take, otherwise one elevates the superstructure over the base and the idea over the material - one of the key reasons why Western Marxism is wrong:

• https://redsails.org/dont-work-that-way/

• https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

• 2. there is no political theory of change here why critical support of a socially conservative state is correctly considered not reactionary, and it is less reactionary than the westerner who maybe in favour of nominal women’s/lgbtq rights (and without resorting to patsoc takes). Being anti-western is an excellent heuristic because of how bad the west but is not a science of why the west is the way it is or explain comprador classes beyond “people like money” and “self hate”.
• 3. the reason (2) is important is because without it you will not be able to forumlate/ go beyond significantly (a) how to defend anti-imperialism - going from the “west should do no harm” to “it is a given that the west is harmful so how do we defend against it” (b) how to build a society that sublimates western exploitation (china) not one that may seek instead to get a bigger piece of the pie (india). Think of Paolo Friere’s the oppressed sees their model of manhood in the oppressor. (And for example here how pseudo-compador liberal-aligned classes within Iran is holding it back in its fight against imperialism)
• 4. with all the above it is how you move from radlib to marxism; the science of dialectical materialism and away from idealism, and how to consider anti-imperialism beyond vibes.
• 5. furthermore it moves away from an orientalist and paternalistic view of political and economic justice; and start rooting emanicpation from the global south proleteriat upwards

(I tried to make the formatting above more readable with numbers/bullet points. Yeah it’s not brilliant. Not sure how to force return carriages / paragraph breaks)

Crudely speaking, positvism is that measurement = understanding.

That facts and sciences are “neutral” from the society that produces them and it devalues systems thinking. It atomises and isolates variables. Consider for example racial science such as skull measurements to assess intelligence, or IQ currently, or genetics for biological determinism etc.

To begin with it may be worthwile looking at the arguments against Karl Popper’s positvism (eg falsefiability) and how quantum physics proves positvism is not correct (while doing so you will also discover where positvists also claim that quantum physics backs them up!).

Then it may be worthwile doing a deep dive into dialectical materialism:

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10454574/7636518

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9962669/7402719

Material always before the idea:

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

Says the country with “In God We Trust” on their money

Sure but I meant along the lines that a person’s formal qualifications does not exclude them from expertise.

Thanks, I’ve not read it in full but it is maybe time for me to do so.

My understanding of geopolitics has changed over time to consider that bourgoisie aligned groups and classes will organically form in post-formal-colonial countries - with or without a dictatorship of capital - with their north star aligning without much effort with the commanding heights of imperialism - the US. It’s why, aesthetics aside, liberals all over the world are so American.

Imperialism can deepen its roots elsewhere because there is fertile soil for them to find.

The man is a grifter. He has a BA in English literature (writing as entertainment and art) and then paints himself as a Geo-political analyst and historian using game theory.

He may well be a grifter but a similar argument was/is used against Grover Furr.