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Cake day: Jun 17, 2022

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The movie is technically well written. The writers clearly knew drama, narrative, and their Shakespeare. It’s structurally a lot better than most other blockbusters.



It’s wider at the bottom, so people will trip over the corner if they only see the top edge of the seat with their peripheral vision.

You’re right about the spikes.


Looks like a pageant.


Especially with all it’s infrastructural work in Africa. Rolling out smart grids with wind and solar power would be effective in Africa. It’s positive on top of positive. As Bastani argues in Fully Automated Luxury Communism, providing energy to Africa would bring an immediate and massive improvement to public health in many places. Even through simple stuff like being able to turn electric lights on at night will reduce nighttime accidents, crime rates, and improve health outcomes e.g. during pregnancy, as giving birth is otherwise extra dangerous in the dark at night.


And pretend that we can continue burning fossil fuels because the problem has been ‘fixed’.


I’m very reluctant to share this information, lest the capitalists read this and make a fortune from it but the tank could have a carbon filter at the top, to stop the smell. The kind they put in ‘pet’ vacuum cleaners and professional kitchen fans.

Edit, typo


🤣🤣

when will the brutality end 😢



You illustrate that perfectly.


China refuses to develop hydropower in it’s desert regions


It uses more space! The bulk of the tree is in the air, with just a trunk at ground level. This tank looks like shit and has been designed as a trip hazard.


Might get a bit damp.


These are good ideas. I agree that socialists should not seek to abolish schools. The system and curricula need to be reformed, the commodity form must be forcibly removed from the equation (no more numerical grades and inspections used solely to introduce market-like competition between pupils and institutions, etc), the teachers need to be retrained and multiplied, and the bourgeoisie must be kept away.

I think everyone should be dedicated to at least degree-level. But I’m also willing to accept that not everyone will want this (at least in the early stages of socialism).

There can probably be room for lots of different types of education but however it is delivered, it must be led by those concerned. As you say, democratic. There is a limited role for a socialist central government in enforcing socialist education. Otherwise, it should be left to teachers, parents, local authorities, health bodies, academics/researchers, trades unions/workers bodies, and the pupils. By this, I mean, education must be scientific, democratic, and serve the pupil/student and society.

There’s a limit to how much pupils (or students at university) can be involved in curricula design. Education is supposed to be transformative, so those who have yet to go through the process/course are not yet fully ready to judge it’s content. But they should be meaningfully consulted, and can have more say about the general running of the school.

Pupils could even be involved in the practical side of running their school. So cooking lessons age 5–14 prepare students to do a ‘group dissertation’ where they create and deliver a menu in the canteen for everyone else at age 15–16. Same for maintenance of the grounds, admin, etc. It’ll be up to each institution, so long as they are also tight on health and safety.

With better resources, schools can put on a wider variety of classes, too, and students can still have some choice in what they want to study. But everyone should reach age 16–21 with a broad foundational knowledge and skill set, so far as possible, before taking a note focused degree (which can also begin broad and become narrower). In capitalism, there’s an incentive to specialise early and to take courses that will lead to a job – the whole system is distorted because still the best jobs go to the wealthiest children, but the logic of merit prevails.

Under socialism, where specialist training and higher education is available to all, where all are encouraged to participate, and where all young people can forget about whether they need to pay or help with bills (and so leave education as early as possible), everyone can get a general education before heading towards a specific degree (or higher). When these people graduate, they’ll make much better decisions than people who only know their field.

Importantly, this will prepare everyone to participate in political life. It is fundamental that socialist education provide this to everyone (the main reason I argue that all should get a degree, if possible), rather than only providing this to the children of the ruling class. Well, let me put it another way: under a dictatorship of the proletariat, every child will be a child of the ruling class, and they must be as prepared to govern in the same way as all other children of ruling classes have historically been prepared to govern.

Then there’s room for lifelong learning, too. It’s probably unnecessary and counter-productive to force everyone into the same kind of educational structure and pathway. So lifelong learning opportunities must be provided for all. If someone really does just want to leave school at 15/16 and just get on with something they know they were born to do? They should be allowed to and receive the same kind of institutional support that those who stay in education receive. At the same time, this may rely on a bourgeois logic; I don’t see why socialists would divide ‘professional’/‘practical’ from ‘academic’ study, so the person who does ‘leave school at 15/16’ can still receive awork-based education/training and be around their academic peers for part of the week.

Under bourgeois education, there are three tiers of schools. Schools where the ruling class get taught to rule. Schools where the talent from the middle class get taught to prop up the ruling class. And schools where everyone else gets taught to be a disciplined worker. Socialist education must abolish these divisions.

Class sizes must be appropriate. If that’s 40 or 600, fine. But in most classes, it should be capped around 8. Schools must be provided the resources to achieve these numbers.

I’d also say – and this may be controversial around here – that children’s education can be mostly low tech. There’s a place for advanced tech. But it’s better to spend scarce resources on books, teachers, support, and space. We need to not give pupils tablets and laptops, etc, to perform tasks that can be completed on paper just because a tech salesman has convinced the school that tech is more important than the library, and the library gets smaller and smaller because the school now needs to keep replacing it’s tech due to planned obsolescence. But then, this issue is really about taking capitalists out of the environment. Under socialism, tech will last forever and can be repaired, so maybe the library doesn’t need to be affected.


Absolutely, I meant you have to do what they did: serve the people and it doesn’t matter where you started.


I thought it was just me and I thought I’d seen a different movie with all the continuous rave reviews.



“And they’ll be pleased because they know your colon will speak more sense.”


This is quite misrepresentative of what was said. ‘Publicly owned’ refers to some flavour of common ownership of the means of production. It’s dishonest to pretend that public ownership only requires that (some) members of the public are ‘owners’. It could mean that, but it doesn’t.

Even if you’re referring to something like stakeholder capitalism, where workers own shares, it’s packaged as private ownership, not public.

Bourgeois parties themselves try to distance themselves from any hint of public ownership. Any politician within the party who supports anything that looks like public ownership will be disciplined or kicked out. All the major and most of the minor political parties in almost all liberal democracies vigorously argue that if they get elected they will not move towards public ownership of anything. They don’t want to spook the bourgeoisie.

The mere whisper of nationalisation makes bourgeois politicians come out in hives. If they mention it at all, it’s to promise to privatise any remaining nationalised industries. This is the essence of neoliberalism; everything moved to the realm of the private market.

If the single party’s ideology is so broad that it basically encompasses “don’t be evil” then …

It’s only this broad if you change the accepted meaning of public ownership to something that nobody would seriously accept.




You seem to be on the right track, but your comment is idealist (in the sense that it’s not materialist) and you may be missing a class analysis.

Are there any examples of where a multiparty system has led to a change in ideology away from capitalism?

The two major parties in every liberal democracy that I can think of are capitalist parties. While fringe parties could theoretically win power and change the state’s ideology it could only do so by becoming major parties. Otherwise they could not win power or, if they formed a coalition, they would have to share power (with capitalist parties).

The crushing of small parties is an inherent feature of liberal democracies as a matter of fact. Whether it’s a corruption of the ideal of liberal democracy seems to be beside the point.

Even if the argument is accepted that small parties get crushed in liberal democracies because of corruption, the fact remains that these states are therefore corrupted (I don’t think they are corrupt, but I’ll ignore this semantic issue for now). The ‘corrupt’ rulers will never not be corrupt because they will not willingly rescind power. To not crush socialist parties is to invite socialism, which means the current ruling class must agree to having it’s own power abolished. Why would it ever do that? Capitalists will never let the people vote away their power.

Even major political parties have been kept away from power for the mere suggestion of curbing (not even abolishing) capitalism: Sanders was not allowed to lead the Dems; Corbyn was not allowed to lead a majority Labour party government; Syriza was not allowed to enact it’s promised reforms when it won power. It doesn’t matter how many parties there are in a bourgeois state, the only acceptable option is capitalism (otherwise it wouldn’t be a bourgeois state).

Liberal democracies are not meaningfully democratic. The working class(es) have no real say over policies, laws, or the economy. Whether they could do so by forming a party (it would have to become a big party before it could achieve anything, so any talk about small parties is a red herring), the fact remains that they have never been allowed to (unless you can give me an example).



If I heard this rather than a siren, I’d think someone was being sarcastic.


I know. In short, no.

A class analysis-based distinction must be made before giving the long answer.

A country is not a homogenous bloc. Bourgeois theory accepts that views will differ within a country. This is a given. It’s not what Marxists mean when they challenge the view that a state is a homogenous bloc.

Marxists go further. A country is a combination of classes, whose material interests are fundamentally opposed. The ruling class (the bourgeoisie) wants one thing. The ruled class(es) (mainly the proletariat in most modern states) wants another thing. So when Marxists refer to a state, they tend to mean the ruling class within that state. They don’t mean everyone who lives in the state.

Yogthos wrote:

It’s absolutely unthinkable for any western country to integrate aspects of Marxism into the system.

I believe Yogthos was referring to decisions and policies of the ruling class. If this class doesn’t like something, it can legislate against it and enforce that legislation through what Althusser calls repressive and ideological state apparatuses. The ruling class is not all powerful and it does require some buy-in from the workers.

The ruled class clearly has some room to maneuver, as you rightly pointed out. Similarly, these workers can establish, join, and organise in trade unions. Co-ops, though, as with trade unions, can only be lawful if they operate within the rules of and created by the bourgeois state, which are created to achieve what the ruling, bourgeois class wants, and have a dialectical relationship to there logic of capital. (Incidentally, this is why Marxists don’t care much whether the red or blue party is in power – they’re both still capitalist.)

Co-ops, again as with trade unions, may even be set up by or otherwise involve Marxists. They may well be an improvement on the ordinary way of working for private companies. But two problems arise.

First, co-ops must work within the logic of capital. Otherwise, within a bourgeois state, there will be two consequences: (i) they will be run out of business by capitalists who can e.g. suppress wages and use the savings to undercut the co-op; or (ii) if they threaten the logic of capital or the institution of private property, the state will crush them.

Working within this logic, the co-op can only do so much, falling far short of any revolutionary goals. Two aspects unfold. One, the co-op is likely shown to be a spontaneous movement. Two, the co-op, like trade unions, can lobby for some reforms, but these are limited to economic reforms and will rarely be political, or political economic.

This leads smoothly into the second problem. Before stating the second problem, it must be noted that co-ops, like trade unions, could provide an structure that survives the dissolution of the bourgeois state, unlike fully for-profit corporations. And I’m not saying that I dislike co-ops; I’m saying they do not (generally) introduce Marxism into a bourgeois state.

Second, then, cooperative movements, again much like trade unions, cannot develop revolutionary consciousness (because they are spontaneous, apolitical, and they must accept and work within the logic of capital from the beginning).

Something Lenin said of trade unions seems to apply here (footnote omitted) (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm):

The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[…] The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of [revolutionary] Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.

Note that when Lenin says ‘social democracy’, etc, he’s not using it in the way that people use it today to refer to liberal democracy. The labels have changed over time. He’s talking about the revolutionary socialists.

In sum, co-ops do not introduce Marxism into a bourgeois state. Co-ops cannot take workers any closer to revolution. Indeed, they may undermine revolution, by raising those who would be in the proletariat into the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie.

Additionally, co-ops simply try to capture some of the market/capital currently held by ordinary for-profit enterprises. And as the world is already capitalist, the co-op must enter relations with the bourgeoisie to acquire resources, to distribute it’s goods and services, etc.

This is why co-ops do not represent a micro-system of workers owning the means of production. The co-op is more like a spontaneous organisation of trade unionists who simply cut out the middleman.

If you want to know more about the Marxist theory of the state, you might want to look at Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto and Lenin’s State and Revolution. The former is quite short and straightforward. Both texts explain some of what I said above in more detail.

Edit: here’s a good article that responds to your point about workers being granted shares (which does the opposite of integrating some Marxism into the bourgeois system): https://en.rnp-f.org/2018/09/29/exploitation-of-workers-by-the-workers/#top.




As if police thought they could take on firefighters. The one group who does one physical exam before never exercising again and the other that has to stay fit and regularly, heroically pulls other humans out of burning buildings with full safety gear on.


What about Elon Musk? He’s a scientist. You might not have heard of him, but he invented that it is possible to make a Hot WheelsTM for adults but – here’s the clever bit that other boffins couldn’t fix – it has to be underground to stop the cars shooting off into the air and banging into buildings and such.


No more than when people become self employed or ‘entrepreneurs’ (without employees, as that would make them petite bourgeois).

Co-ops don’t change any of the fundamental social relations. The co-op must still compete within a framework of capitalist logic. It cannot challenge private property, the system of wage labour, the broader capitalist power over resource extraction, rent, logistics, etc.

Marxism is revolutionary. It’s not possible to do just a little bit of Marxism without diluting Marxism and making it meaningless.


You might have answered your own question, there…


In the safe to keep the drive company? Or in the drive?


(I’m expecting some pushback on this comment. It will be welcome as I’m not entirely sure what to think of Wallerstein or the broad ideas that I’m about to lay out. This is also a rather one-sided, Anglo-centric description.)

You’re right to separate these questions apart, but the first statement should be a question, too: did the bourgeois overthrow the monarchies?

The bourgeoisie ‘overthrew’ the monarchies more clearly in e.g. France than in e.g. the UK only because the UK still has a figurehead monarch whereas the French are better known for collecting royal heads. But in both places (again, more clearly in the UK), the bourgeoisie did not so much overthrow the monarchy as the monarchy became bourgeois.

There is a common misconception that one day there was feudalism and the next day there was capitalism. Marxists tend to be more correct in their retelling of this narrative because they explain how capitalism grew out of the contradictions of feudalism. But sometimes even some Marxists imply a clean division between feudalism and capitalism. And this idea may lead to only half the solution.

Immanuel Wallerstein argues in Historical Capitalism that instead of a neat (albeit bloody) transition, there was a slow transformation of the aristocracy into a bourgeoisie.

I can’t remember if all this is in Wallerstein, so I’ll start a new paragraph to explain the broad idea.

Initially, the aristocracy was powerful enough to control the merchant class. But this did not last too long. Eventually, the wealth accumulated by those merchants began to give them power but not legitimacy. Legitimacy was only secured by bloodline.

Today, members of the haute bourgeoisie are usually the children of marriages between the aristocrats (who had legitimacy declining power) and the rising merchant class (who had wealth and growing power). For example, by marrying an aristocratic daughter to a merchant son, the aristocratic family would receive a great dowry, sufficient to continue living in luxury, etc, in a world that was quickly becoming dominated by merchant wealth; and the merchant’s heirs would receive legitimacy, in a world still dominated politically by feudal lords of one sort or another. When the couple had children and the grandparents died the parents and then the grandchildren would inherit the wealth, the titles, the family estate, and the power.

Eventually, the two classes were integrated and the logic of capital began to dictate that only the wealth mattered. The aristocratic titles were now essentially worthless. The senior European aristocrats had long since tried to curtail the power of the king. Bear in mind, kings may have ruled by divine right, but they were only ‘first among equals’ among the nobility because they were all related and so any of them could also feasibly rule with god’s blessing.

Hence the Magna Carta of 1215, an attempt to grant the nobility some protections from the king and the power to make decisions in an early parliament. It failed.

Over time, Parliament grew and developed but the king was still more or less in charge. Unfortunately for Charles I, he was quite unaware of his surroundings. He didn’t see that the monarchs were going out of fashion. When he wasn’t looking – or maybe he was looking but Parliament was willing to be a bit impolite – he lost his head by tripping over and landing with his neck underneath an axe. The politicians couldn’t believe their luck.

Oliver Cromwell (who was not a royal in line for the throne but was certainly of the ruling class) took over as Lord Protector. After he died, his son took his place but he was a bit crap, so Parliament eventually asked the exiled Charles II to be king. Then they remembered. Kings are a bit crap, too! How could they forget.

It took until 1688 for parliament to depose Charles II’s son, who became the next king (James II – or James VII if you ask the Scottish), after Jimmy, the daft bastard, suspended Parliament at a time when the bourgeoisie was gaining power. Luckily for James, he managed to get out with his head still on his shoulders, so he (IIRC) left England but was also, probably, careful not to go in holiday in the south of France anymore.

The politicians put the Crown on the head of William (and Mary) of Orange (a Dutch guy and potentially a relation of @DankZedong@lemmygrad.ml) on the promise that the new king would promise just to sit there and look like a king – because this would make countries look at England like it was still governed by grown ups – while Parliament did the real work and had the real power.

That Parliament was filled with the people I mentioned earlier, the children of the marriages between the aristocracy and the merchant (now bourgeois) class. Incidentally, these people are almost all closely related by blood to the current haute bourgeoisie of the US and of Europe. A report came out recently about the noble roots of most of the US’ billionaires. I’ll try to find it.

This takes us somewhere nearer to the answer to your other questions. Today’s European monarchs (I’m unsure about e.g. SA) are bourgeois. The rest is all a performance. Nobody seriously believes the UK king is either a god or appointed by god (or maybe they do, the Brits do seem a bit weird like that) nor does the king have any real power to govern his realm. But the royal family does have hundreds of millions of pounds sterling in capital.

At the same time, many of the politicians, being the children of the people mentioned above, would in any earlier era be called aristocrats and nobles. In fact, even in this era, half of them are Lords, Ladies, Barons, Knights, etc. Tony Blair pretended to abolish this system by banning hereditary peerages (a seat in the House of Lords just because your parent was a Lord or Lady) but now the ‘life peers’ just appoint their children on the way out. They’re all capitalists, though. Then just enjoy the theatre and pageantry.

As for the current role of modern aristocrats, without naming names they seem to like to play the role of paedophiles and of keeping paedophiles out of prison.

This long and rambly comment may answer some of your questions (but not as directly as I had planned). Essentially, it’s as you say, bourgeois with bells and whistles. But also, the bourgeois without the bells and whistles are the people who would have been aristocrats if they were born 3–400 years ago. Essentially the modern haute bourgeoisie are the descendants of those nobles who were wise enough to see what changes were coming with the dawn of capitalism.


@redteatoMemesbanger
link
fedilink
32d

Rival to Tupac.


Family friendly? Yes

Marx is for the whole family.


Openly calling China an adversary in legislation is a bold move.


It would be like working at Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Sony, Samsung, Disney, Amazon, and a few other places lol


The drugs that are actually killing people here are primarily meth, heroin, cigarettes, opiates and alcohol.

Would marijuana not be added to that list if its usage were as widespread as alcohol and tobacco, though?

Not that you’re doing this, as you are including caveats, but I find the whole discourse around weed problematic. The potential medical uses are used as an argument for widespread use by (going by the users I’ve met) young people who just want to get high. They’re not using it to avoid seizures, etc.

Any notion that we should be endorsing weed for supposed health benefits or as something with which to self medicate needs to be challenged. Maybe it can be used in a medical setting (I’m actually quite hopeful that it can). But in the current set up, that’s not really what’s being proposed.

And considering the standard of education where I live (I can’t see why it would be much higher anywhere else in the west), most people are not nearly knowledgeable enough to start self medicating. Most people who I’ve spoken to who are in favour of decriminalisation/legalisation seem to be under the impression that because there are some potential medical uses that weed is somehow ‘safe’ and ‘good for you’. This is, of course, the intended impression from those who stand to profit from it’s legal sale but neither is generally true.

I’m all for decriminalisation, btw; as that seems to be one sensible tool in the fight against racial policing. (On the other hand, if it wasn’t drugs, the institutionally racist police would simply find another reason for racial policing, so….)

But otherwise, I think the whole issue needs to be approached with far, far more caution than it’s currently given (generally speaking). The decriminalisation point tends to be interpreted as ‘this is fine and deemed safe now’, but it’s not. As you say above, there are two competing bourgeois factions with a view on weed. Any progressive policy needs to be critical of both.

Strongly agree with the comparison with unhealthy food. Sugar and processed fats are possibly far more dangerous than weed, simply because they’re more-or-less invisible and ubiquitous. At least most people can’t keep a job and get high or drunk 24/7; there’s a natural limit to their use and to still ‘function’ in society (I’m talking about recreational use, here). That’s not true of sugar, which people can guzzle and consume every wakeful hour.

And if this is approached from an overall public health issue, we’re better off legalising most drugs, educating people about them, creating safe environments for their consumption, and – wait for it – adequately regulating working environments to (not exhaustively): (a) minimise alienation, which leads people to over indulge in all recreational drugs (especially alcohol); (b) prevent employers from forcing employees to be either sat down or stood up hours in end; and © prevent employers from putting employees in any position where they have to manage pain in the first place or risk starvation.

The problem is, the industry views aren’t at all concerned with public health but profits, and if we make progress down this regulatory path, public consciousness will already have changed to such an extent that everything is up in the air and open to positive change.


Sex should be as easy as drinking a glass of water. That’s Kollontai. I’m unsure about Zalkind’s commandments.


Spotted a bug, maybe?
I was browsing Lemmygrad some hours ago. I opened the thread on '_____ a liberal and a fascist _____'. As I was reading I forgot the exact words of the OP so I scrolled back up. The post had changed to the one on prominent communist parties. I happened to be looking at the modlog this morning and noticed that the post on prominent communist parties was 'unfeatured' about 11 hours ago. The time corresponds to when I was last online. So I'm wondering if the bug that we've seen, where people post comments in the wrong post, is related to the featured/unfeatured tool. Maybe it happens when, just before they're about to hit reply, someone somewhere else features or unfeatures a post and the head thread switches from one to the other. If it was not this, it may be worth asking whoever unfeatured the relevant post whether they did anything else to that post just before or just after unfeaturing it.

Often, when we discuss the labour aristocracy, the focus turns quickly to the US, the core of the imperial core. A problem then arises because there is a lot of poverty in the US, which can be taken as representative of the whole imperial core, and that poverty is used to discredit (aspects of) the labour aristocracy thesis. We can look at Germany for another example, to see how workers' interests become aligned with the capitalists', and create an incentive for them to work together at the expense of the periphery. A relevant quote from the linked article: > What is particularly interesting about the participation of labour interests in capital is the way in which these interests have been united in the period of the so-called social-democratic consensus.3 Alexander Hicks … argued … social democracy in the second half of the 20th century, coupled to the interests of large-scale capital, led to the creation and consolidation of a form of government known as corporatism ….4 The leading corporatist or fascist idea was that class and all other disagreements in capitalism would be resolved by allowing participation of groups in society seen as integral to decide on the direction in which society would develop – that is, class collaboration. Workers, capitalists, bankers, craftsmen and others were to work together to make these decisions. … [I]t is essential that social unity is always maintained and that compromises are made. Corporatism as the leading ideology in the West is accepted by large capital, the social-democratic parties, and the major unions. > The most significant example for this rise of corporatism is again Germany. … [S]ince the 1980s, an unprecedented wave of economic integration of labour and capital in Germany began, with the same program taking place in many of the core countries. By the end of the 1990s, pension funds became the most important investors on stock exchanges in the United States, and after the unification of Germany, the same process was seen.5 Laws have been passed that allow pension funds to invest significant capital (which has been collected for decades from the payment of pensions to workers) on the stock exchange in the shares of large corporations.6 The argument was that a quick inflow of money into corporations would enable large profits and stock market growth, and that funds would increase their capital through dividends or payments that all shareholders receive when a company records profits. > After … the unification of Germany, the infusion of capital from pension funds … created a sufficient amount of money in German corporations to carry out the privatization of the industrial giants from the former DDR and not destroy them – as they were destroyed in Serbia and many other post-Soviet nations – as it was politically important to undergo a smooth transition to capitalism in Germany in order to forestall social unrest. Soon afterwards, the same capital was used in the privatization of industrial companies throughout Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. German firms were most likely to pick up all the strategically important companies in a short period of time. For example, Wolkswagen bought the Czech Škoda and integrated it into its automobile conglomerate, where it still operates successfully today. > The best example of this economic trend, however, is the German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, which is partly owned by the state (holding 32% of shares), and a large part of the remaining shares then held by various pension funds.7 This company, whose ownership structure represents the embodiment of corporatism, is owned by the German state, German big capital and German pension funds. In addition, it is part of the world’s telecommunications cartel and has a significant share in the ownership of British Telecom and major US telecommunications companies., Operations of Deutsche Telekom are of great importance to Serbia and other countries created by the breakup of the communist republics. Deutsche Telekom has purchased near the entirety or a significant part of the telecommunications giants in Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Romania and Greece. The Greek OTE (Greek Telecommunications Organization), which is largely owned by Deutsche Telekom, held 20% of Serbia Telekom shares by 2012, and then sold the company back to the Serbian state for 380 million euros in preparation for the complete privatization of Serbia Telekom. It was said at the time that Serbia Telekom could reach the price of approximately one billion euros, and Bloomberg wrote that Deutsche Telekom was the main contender for the purchase.8 A simple calculation shows that the state of Serbia bought 20% of its shares of Serbia Telekom for 38% of the sum for which it planned to sell the company. For now, this malversation has not been realized, but we are aware that the sale of Serbia Telekom is one of the most important obligations of the Government of Serbia towards European, primarily German, capital. > We see that Deutsche Telekom owns the most important telecommunication companies across a large section of Europe, as does Wolkswagen, which bought Audi, Seat, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti and other smaller companies in addition to Škoda. It is clear that this is a matter of forming unprecedented monopolies in the region’s key and most profitable industries. This entire project was made possible by the infusion of additional capital by pension funds. In Germany, pension funds now account for over 200 billion euros in stock market investments.9 By comparison, this is four times more than the total economic production of Serbia, which amounts to less than 50 billion euros. Even just one pension fund, BVK, which has a portfolio of 55 billion in shares of various corporations, is more powerful than the entire Serbian economy.10 > German pension funds are now in the hands of the most qualified investors, and capital is so diversely distributed in shares of various companies that the losses of individual companies cannot significantly damage it. In other words, as the stock market grows, the capital accumulation of these funds grows, and thus the interests of workers whose pensions are found in these funds are structurally linked to the interests of capital. The higher the accumulation of capital, the higher wages can these workers expect. When all this is added to savings, which is an inevitable item of almost every traditionally generous German household, and which was made possible by the extremely high salaries of past decades, the question of the real interest of German workers for any changes other than those favouring capital is starkly raised. > When the German state, German capital and the German banks sit parasitically on the back of the European (and world) periphery, and German workers reap tremendous benefit from this parasitism, there is no concrete possibility of revolution in that country – such a possibility does not exist! Germany is only taken here as an example of a dominant European economy, and its role here is largely played out by the United States at the global level. In structural terms, it is clear that one cannot speak of an international solidarity of the working class emerging evenly from all regions of the world. The class struggle has completely shifted to the level of global conflict between the core and the periphery. The linked article is worth reading in full if you have the time. It's short and to the point.

Proletariat or Labour Aristocrats? What is the status of workers in the Global North?
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/497897 > **This is a contentious subject. Please keep the discussion respectful. I think this will get more traction, here, but I'll cross-post it to !Communism, too.** > > Workers who sell their labour power for a wage are part of the working class, right? They are wage-workers because they work for a wage. Are they wage-*labourers*? > > “They’re proletariat,” I hear some of you shout. > > “Not in the imperial core! Those are labour aristocrats,” others reply. > > So what are the workers in the imperial core? Are they irredeemable labour aristocrats, the inseparable managers and professionals of the ruling class? Or are they proletarian, the salt of the earth just trying to get by? > > It’s an important distinction, even if the workers in any country are not a homogenous bloc. The answer determines whether workers in the global north are natural allies or enemies of the oppressed in the global south. > > The problem is as follows. > > There is no doubt that people in the global north are, in general, more privileged than people in the global south. In many cases, the difference in privilege is vast, even among the wage-workers. This is not to discount the suffering of oppressed people in the global north. This is not to brush away the privilege of national bourgeois in the global south. > > For some workers in the global north, privilege amounts to basic access to water, energy, food, education, healthcare, and shelter, streetlights, paved highways, etc. As much as austerity has eroded access to these basics, they are still the reality for the majority of people in the north even, to my knowledge, in the US. > > Are these privileges enough to move someone from the ranks of the proletariat and into the labour aristocracy or the petit-bourgeois? > > I’m going to discuss some sources and leave some quotes in comments, below. This may look a bit spammy, but I’m hoping it will help us to work through the several arguments, that make up the whole. The sources: > - *Settlers* by J Sakai > - *Corona, Climate, and Chronic Emergency* by Andreas Malm > - *The Wealth of Nations* by Zac Cope > - ‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor’ by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang. > > I have my own views on all this, but I have tried to phrase the points and the questions in a ’neutral’ way because I want us to discuss the issues and see if we can work out where and why we conflict and how to move forwards with our thinking (neutral to Marxists, at least). I am not trying to state my position by stating the questions below, so please do not attack me for the assumptions in the questions. By all means attack the assumptions and the questions.

Proletariat or Labour Aristocrats? What is the status of workers in the Global North?
**This is a contentious subject. Please keep the discussion respectful. I think this will get more traction, here, but I'll cross-post it to !Communism, too.** Workers who sell their labour power for a wage are part of the working class, right? They are wage-workers because they work for a wage. Are they wage-*labourers*? “They’re proletariat,” I hear some of you shout. “Not in the imperial core! Those are labour aristocrats,” others reply. So what are the workers in the imperial core? Are they irredeemable labour aristocrats, the inseparable managers and professionals of the ruling class? Or are they proletarian, the salt of the earth just trying to get by? It’s an important distinction, even if the workers in any country are not a homogenous bloc. The answer determines whether workers in the global north are natural allies or enemies of the oppressed in the global south. The problem is as follows. There is no doubt that people in the global north are, in general, more privileged than people in the global south. In many cases, the difference in privilege is vast, even among the wage-workers. This is not to discount the suffering of oppressed people in the global north. This is not to brush away the privilege of national bourgeois in the global south. For some workers in the global north, privilege amounts to basic access to water, energy, food, education, healthcare, and shelter, streetlights, paved highways, etc. As much as austerity has eroded access to these basics, they are still the reality for the majority of people in the north even, to my knowledge, in the US. Are these privileges enough to move someone from the ranks of the proletariat and into the labour aristocracy or the petit-bourgeois? I’m going to discuss some sources and leave some quotes in comments, below. This may look a bit spammy, but I’m hoping it will help us to work through the several arguments, that make up the whole. The sources: - *Settlers* by J Sakai - *Corona, Climate, and Chronic Emergency* by Andreas Malm - *The Wealth of Nations* by Zac Cope - ‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor’ by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang. I have my own views on all this, but I have tried to phrase the points and the questions in a ’neutral’ way because I want us to discuss the issues and see if we can work out where and why we conflict and how to move forwards with our thinking (neutral to Marxists, at least). I am not trying to state my position by stating the questions below, so please do not attack me for the assumptions in the questions. By all means attack the assumptions and the questions.

Este orador es claro si quieres escuchar una defensa de Stalin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXzWMIRngGU ¿Que piensas? (Habladores nativos: es aceptable usar "piensas" aqui en sitio de "piensa usted"?)

Novelas que decepciona: Sidi
¿Cualquiera ha leído *Sidi* por Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Yo fue disfrutandola pero la historia tornó islamófobo de repente y luego se fue arruinar para mi. No lo sé si continuar con el libro. Entonces yo busqué sus nombre y 'islamofobia' y retornó un artículo – sobre otra obra de él – cuyo introducción explicarlo perfectamente (https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/La-historia-de-Europa-segun-Perez-Reverte-una-leccion-de-ignorancia-islamofobia-y-neocolonialismo). Él utiliza > la lógica binaria "salvaje - civilizado", que tanto sirvió para deshumanizar a las gentes racializadas desde los tiempos de la explotación colonial, y para marginar y/o expulsar a todos aquellos que no cumplían con la "normalidad" … Pero la "normalidad" de este libro parece europeos cristianos (y quizás los blancos). ¿Cualquiera has encontraste algo similar con otras novelas? ¿Es tan decepcionando, no? (Si hay errores en mi español, correctalo si te quieras, pero no hace falta si no quieres.)

Cuba: State capitalist?
I heard someone refer to Cuba as state capitalist. When I hear the same thing said about China or the old USSR, I can usually tell when 'state capitalism' is being used in good faith or not. But with Cuba, I don't know enough. My instinct, based on little knowledge, is that Cuba is not 'state capitalist'. Is it? What kind of economy does Cuba have?

Attention Queen Mary Students
Hello Lemmygraders, University staff across the UK are on strike over gender, racial, and disability pay gaps, workloads, casualisation, fair pay, and pensions. Queen Mary University needs your help: > Please complete this form to let us know if your educator / lecturer talked about the reasons why they are taking strike action in your lecture / seminar / other educational activity. Edit: original wording was a little too sarcastic.

The Linguistics of Spanish.
Hello Deplorable Spanish-learning Tankies. I want to draw your attention to [The Linguistics of Spanish](https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/i.e.mackenzie/index.html). If you are learning Spanish, you may find it useful to read up on the linguistics. The following link gives > "information and analysis on the following subjects: > - the pronunciation of standard European Spanish > - variation in the Spanish-speaking world > - aspects of Spanish syntax > - the history of Spanish" This website is very useful for helping you understand the sounds of Spanish, to better understand / parse what you hear, and how to improve your accent. The section on phonemes and minimal pairs is especially helpful. Minimal pairs will help you learn to distinguish the different sounds in Spanish. These allow you to learn what each letter sounds like when it is next to each other letter. Once you read the theory, you can search Youtube for audio examples. You can also practice speaking the minimal pairs if you struggle with any of them, although I advise you to *listen* first *and lots* to ensure that you are practicing the correct sound. Some minimal pair examples: > paso, peso, piso, poso, puso And: > capa, cata, caca, cava, cada, caga, caza, casa, etc Do any of you other Spanish learners / speakers have any other useful suggestions for learning about Spanish linguistics? Any tips on pronouncing the 'lr' sound in e.g. 'alrededor' will be welcome!

Listening-Reading Method and Spanish
pin
I used the listening-reading method to learn Spanish (or to jump-start my Spanish, anyway). I thought I would post the link to the method and make some suggestions for books to read for others. [Listening-reading, by aYa/Phi-Staszek](https://web.archive.org/web/20221004162508/http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/%21%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm) **What is Listening-Reading (LR)?** LR is a method. Read a book in English and listen to it in Spanish at the same time.§ § Or any other target language. This sounds difficult / impossible, but it works, and it gets easier with practice. The trick is to read a sentence in English then listen to the Spanish. This is possible because you can (probably) read a lot faster than people can speak. This is a rather efficient method because it exposes you to a lot of (comprehensible) words per minute. You're supposed to use parallel texts. There are some here to get you started: [Farkas Translations](https://farkastranslations.com/bilingual_books.php). You could also find the PDFs in English and Spanish for the same book. Or you could look here: [Bilingual Fiction – warning: http link](http://learn-spanish-with-bilingual-stories.weebly.com/menu-of-free-parallel-texts-spanish-english.html). Personally, I prefer just to use a physical copy of the English book. For the first 2-250 hours of LRing (see below), you want to use a few long books, which you will listen to more than once. aYa suggests 3 times. So you might LR a 33 hour book three times, which equals 100 hours. Do the same for a second book, and you will likely be able to listen to the third book without relying on the English, especially if these are three (or more books) in the same series, by the same author (like Ken Follett: see below). (You may have to just listen to the third book twice or three times, but you will not need the English translation.) **Notes** aYa recommends 12 hour days over three weeks to jump from knowing only a summary of the grammar to reaching 'natural listening' (i.e. enjoying native content without (much) help). 'Natural listening' does not mean that you will understand everything, but you should understand enough to follow along, especially Marxist lectures (the content will be familiar to Lemmygradders; plus, anything in formal Spanish is easier to understand for native English speakers because formal English (as with formal Spanish) still mostly rely on words with Latin roots, and these formal words have not changed much). (Enrique Dussel's lectures are easy enough to follow.) LRing for 2+ hours per day works, too, although it will then take a little longer (i.e. a couple of months rather than 3 weeks) to enjoy native content without help (it still takes 2–250 hours of LRing to get to 'natural listening', so divide 250 by LR-hours-per-day for a rough estimate of how long it would take you). Personally, I find I get into the flow after about an hour. And after that hour, it's like I'm in a new zone where Spanish just makes sense. So the longer 'chunks' that you can manage, the better. Probably. I would not recommend jumping in without knowing much / any grammar, because knowing some grammar will help to make the audio more comprehensible. But, going back to more complex grammar explanations is a *lot* easier after doing LR and some reading. **Tips and Tricks** If you are a slower reader, you can read one page / paragraph first with the audio paused (so you know what is happening), then LR the same page / paragraph. Work out what works for you. When you start out, you may want to try this way first (reading a page at a time before LRing the same page) while you get the hang of it. It helps to pick the right book. The link above includes 'levels' of books. You may want to start at the beginning and work your way up. Know, however, that the longer the book, the easier this will be. Because after 20–50 pages, you will have already encountered the most used words in the book. So the longer the book, the more repetition you will hear of words that you have already (partially) understood. As for learning enough grammar to make the most out of LRing, start simple. Use the brief grammar explanations in the middle of / at the start / end of a Spanish-English dictionary. Or take a look at a phrase book. **Books that I enjoyed LRing** As for choosing a book to LR, Sally Rooney's *Gente Normal* (*Normal People*) is nicely narrated and a great novel. As is *Dónde Estás, Mundo Bello* (*Beautiful World, Where are You*). Rooney is a Marxist, too, and it comes through subtly in her writing. Ken Follett's *Las Tinieblas y el Alba* (*The Evening and the Morning*) and *Los Pilares de la Tierra* (*Pilars of the Earth*) are good. Both narrated by Jordi Boixaderas, who is great. If you enjoy the books, there are two more in the series (I haven't read these yet). These novels talk about feudal England, which provides some useful vocabulary for those who want to jump into Marxist texts. And if you get used to Boixaderas' voice, you may find it easier to then follow up with something by Isabel Allende as he narrates some of her work (*Largo Pétalo de la Mar* (*Long Petal of the Sea* – i.e. Chile) for example). Another audiobook that was pleasant to LR was Phillip Pullman's *El Libro de la Oscuridad I: La Bella Salvaje* (*The Book of Dust I: La Belle Sauvage*). **Conclusion** aYa wrote: > I believe in learning a huge bit every minute. Plenty of people can drive a car. L-R is Formula One. Now you know what to expect. And: > The most important things happen in your head. Your emotions, your memories, the way you think, what you already know, they are all holographic, everything happens at once. You cannot show or describe how you really learn. You can only write about some tricks or tools, and that’s about it. This is not magic, but it does work, and it's quite enjoyable because you can jump straight into content that you could otherwise enjoy in English. You will likely need to study some grammar afterwards, especially if Spanish is your first second language. And it still takes a long time to become 'fluent' (whatever that means). But LR seems to speed up the process of getting to an intermediate level. It did for me, anyway. I'm happy to answer questions, although you may find most of your questions answered in the website that aYa wrote in the link, above. Hope this helps someone.

Spanish Music Recommendations
Who are your favourite Spanish-speaking artists? I quite like Rosalía, especially her newer music. I have heard people say she is guilty of cultural appropriation, but I'm unclear on the whole story there, and my Spanish is not good enough to understand all her lyrics (i.e. if the reactionary lyrics are obvious but I'm missing their meaning). Ana Tijoux is good, too. Revolutionary-adjacent music, so far as I can work out. She is French-Chilean. Her parents had to flee Pinochet. Any revolutionary artists I should try? Hip hop or rap especially. Immortal Technique is great but there's generally too much English in his songs to use them to improve my Spanish.