• Ivysaur@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    Whoever edited/translated this Penguin Classics edition of The State and Revolution is such a turbo-lib, my god. This preface started off fine as a historical context and introduction to what Lenin and the bolsheviks were up to prior to the October revolution but after that it completely falls apart into really blatant revisionism and hard-boiled anti-authoritarian snark that I’ve come to expect from only the most blue-checked among us. I think this is what will get me to skip all these introductory editorials from now on…

    • rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml
      3·
      7 days ago

      This is exactly what happened to me with the spanish version of “The State and Revolution”. A turbo lib did the preface and it was full with anticommunism. I wonder why bother doing a preface then.

      • Che's Motorcycle@lemmygrad.ml
        7·
        7 days ago

        Simple. These are warnings for libs. In the unlikely event a lib picks up State and Revolution, they’ll be armed in advance with all the usual thought terminating cliches.

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
        3·
        6 days ago

        Lol I started listening to the audible version of the Spanish translation of capital and returned it within about half an hour. I thought the whole thing had been rewritten. Maybe it was only the editor’s intro after all.

        • Ivysaur@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          This preface is seriously like almost a third of the total length of the text. I subjected myself to way too much of it hoping it would get better before just skipping it. I think all the explicitly Marxist texts have something like this going on; never once did I see stuff like this in Proudhon or Kropotkin.

          • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
            1·
            6 days ago

            I’ve noticed that. It also makes people look at the book and think, nah, that’ll be too heavy for me. When really it’s a short book. Even Capital is a lot shorter if you ignore all the extras (except Marx and Engels’ prefaces and postfaces as they’re quite useful).

  • ashinadash [she/her]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    26·
    13 days ago

    Great news: the soviet union never fell! Russia is a communist country! Or at least that’s what my dad said to me when I told him that the soviet union fell in 1991 and it was a huge TV event. He just said “no it didn’t”, lol. The man is 60. He’s a regular “left” leaning liberal, so this confuses me. Does he think the fall of the soviet union was some sort of false flag op or some shit???

  • miz@lemmygrad.ml
    16·
    13 days ago

    ⚡️SUMMARY of Al-Qassam’s spokesperson, Abu Obeida:

    • We remind the world that the Al-Aqsa flood was not the beginning of the resistance work, but rather was the explosion in the face of the enemy’s crimes.

    • 9 months have passed since the start of Al-Aqsa Flood, and our people are still exposed to Zionist-American aggression and genocide.

    • 9 months have passed and our resistance is not tired, and we are still resisting without external support of weapons and supplies, and our people are still steadfast without food or medicine.

    • The crimes of the occupation culminated in systematic cleansing and extermination in the West Bank, Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip.

    • The occupation army uses civilians as human shields, bombs homes, and invades hospitals.

    • Independent opinion polls show, after months of aggression, how our people are rallying behind their resistance.

    • Our fighters are fighting the enemy with a great fighting spirit, as if they were in the time of the Companions [reference to The Prophet (pbuh)]

    • Throughout the war, all of our 24 battalions fought from the farthest part of Beit Hanoun to Rafah, and the performance of our resistance fighters improved every time.

    • The world saw through the enemy’s crimes in Gaza the lies of international organizations and the alleged impotence of human rights laws.

    • There is no place in Gaza for forces holed up in homes like thieves, nor for officers hiding behind armored vehicles.

    • We presented righteous martyrs, soldiers and leaders at all levels, but the flag will not fall and will not fall.

    • The battle of Rafah, which has been ongoing for about 2 months, and what is happening in Shuja’iya and the northern and central Gaza Strip is the greatest evidence of the strength of our resistance and the failure of the enemy.

    • The Netzarim axis will be the axis of terror, God willing.

    • We confirm that the Al-Qassam’s capabilities are very well in tact, with God’s help, and that we were able to recruit thousands of new fighters during the war.

    • The ability of our fighters to fight and withstand has become greater and greater, and the fire of revenge that the enemy has ignited is enough to burn him and destroy all his plans.

    • (‼️) What happened on October 7 will be insignificant compared to what we will reveal in due time.

    • All Netanyahu is doing is trying to escape the failure that will haunt him throughout his life.

    • A due tribute to Hezbollah, the Palestinian Resistance factions in Lebanon, AnsarAllah in Yemen, and the Iraqi resistance.

    • The response of our people in the lands of 1948 to what they are exposed to is coming inevitably and at the hands of our heroic people.

    • We are still keen to stop the aggression, and we are with you and for you.

    • We have documents that we will reveal at the appropriate time and will show how we carried out a complex strategic deception of the Shin Bet and the enemy’s security system.

    • Expelling an ambassador or severing ties with an enemy that is exterminating Arab Muslim people has become a dream for a great nation that has dominated the nations of the earth for centuries.

    think there might have been some translation issues with the last bullet point, I can’t quite parse it.

      • miz@lemmygrad.ml
        13·
        13 days ago

        the (‼️) one has me poggers… make October 7th look insignificant? YES PLEASE

        • Che's Motorcycle@lemmygrad.ml
          2·
          12 days ago

          This one looks like a bad (AI?) summary. The section of the speech it likely came from is below. Full text here.

          🟢 Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman, Abu Obeida, in his speech today, July 7th, 2024 (3/4):

          The intelligence documents recently revealed among the enemy about the resounding failure on October 7 are trivial compared to what we will reveal at the appropriate time, Allah willing, with documents that will be harsher and more difficult, showing how we managed to execute a complex strategic deception against the Shin Bet and the enemy’s security system for years.

  • sorosfootsoldier@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    14·
    13 days ago

    It really feels like the media is circling in on Biden to do the kill shot any moment now. I’ve never seen this before, the media just flip on a president they were once so fiercely loyal to.

    • 陆船。@lemmygrad.ml
      6·
      12 days ago

      I’m surprised they’re turning on him and raising the issue at all. He didn’t seem substantially worse than his 2020 campaign run and Axios (I think) had already floated the “staffers privately tell us he’s senile” piece earlier in his term but it didn’t seem to stick. His current state can’t be a surprise to power brokers so why hang him out to dry now?

      I suspect they’re trying to avoid a primary. The 2020 election showed the average democrat voter is too dumb to pick up on media hints to the insiders’ favorite candidate and the average well-established democrat is too greedy and delusional of their own personal brand recognition to step aside. The pipeline of “chosen ones” that can be legitimized without much pushback at the convention seems empty.

  • Cadendee [they/them]@lemmygrad.ml
    13·
    13 days ago

    Reading Liberalism: A Counter-History and I finally feel like I’m getting to the really juicy bits (2/3 through the book. The earlier half was good and probably a necessary foundation, but got a bit repetitive-feeling).

    My thoughts (spoilered because long):

    first off if any motherfucker invokes divine providence to justify inequality: gulag

    second: liberal theorists love to draw arbitrary lines in the sand and say that their principles and reasoning only apply to one side. The distinction they drew between “civil” and “political” laws, or the “totally good and normal laws that help the rich” vs the “impermissible welfare laws interfering with the divine will of providence that the poor stay in poverty”, the exclusion of labour relations as an inherently non-political question, etc. Often these seeming contradictions and their unconvincing justifications follow from unquestioned beliefs like the inferiority of “other races”, the belief that the poor deserve to be poor, and simple self-centeredness (only considering the freedoms of people like them, typically upper-class, of the dominant racial group, etc. and disregarding the lack of freedoms accorded to other groups)

    third: The quote about anti-semites and ridiculous arguments applies. They will in one breath condemn you as backwards and wishing to bring back absolute monarchism by expanding the state, bring back medieval forms like the guild in the form of unions, or take on the pre-modern role of the established church (providing welfare is equated with the church’s organized charity), and in the next breath glorify the past as a simpler time when people (serfs) weren’t so uppity, but also a golden age of individualism (for Great Men, anyhow, entirely disregarding the lack of autonomy of the serfs, and of course disregarding great/influential individuals leading uprisings against them, e.g. Toussaint L’Ouverture.) Much of this is echoed in modern discourse. Using necessary force to implement the will of the people against the formerly powerful, is condemned as authoritarian, while using more distributed power structures to confine the majority of the population in effective servitude is totally fine and normal and Democratic even.

    fourth: We should be mindful of those we ally with and their reasonings. The christian abolitionists in the US were on the right side of history when condemning and fighting the chattel slavery practiced in the south, but their reasons for hating it were not necessarily aligned with a purely socialist perspective. They tended to see it more in terms of the sinfulness it enabled on the part of slaveholders(sexual assault was pervasive, among other things), of not allowing slaves to be converted to christianity, and of forcing them to be complicit in the above sin, so when slavery was officially abolished (outside of prisons, anyhow), the christian-fueled radicalism of the abolitionists crumbled, despite the persistence of incredible levels of oppression against the freed slaves in the south, both politically and economically, not to mention the blind spot many had for the oppression of Black people in the north. For many, their conviction against slavery came more from the sin aspect than from a genuine belief in equality, or even in simply improving the lives of the enslaved.

    I could probably write more but I don’t have the time. The book is good.

  • ashinadash [she/her]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    12·
    8 days ago

    Just got done writing a short essay that sums up a bit about Zionism, the short history of Israel, pinkwashing and western imperialism. I did not say “another kkkracka down” or “death to america”, I did not say “workers of the world unite” or yell about pro-Hamas stuff, I basically kept it to the most digestible facts about the atrocities the Zionist entity has inflicted upon the people of Palestine and why all violence against Israel is self defense.

    My dad asked me “now why would gays support gaza? can you tell me that?” He has fucked around and is going to learn about finding out.

  • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    10·
    8 days ago

    Great news for me: I’m going to have a shorter life.

    Everybody is too busy to talk to me, finding clubs within walking distance is impossible, I can’t just knock on a neighbor’s door to ask if they want to talk, and I can speak from experience that attempting to befriend service workers is never a good idea. I’m all set!