In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, I want to start a conversation about the big picture, the transition from capitalism to socialism. Let’s start at the beginning. An article by John Lanchester appeared in the September 18th New Yorker entitled “The Case Against Civilization” argues that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had better lives than we do: African tribes that still live the hunter-gatherer lifestyle “work” about 17 hours a week to find adequate food – 2300 calories, about what we’re supposed to eat. While Lanchester doesn’t mention Engels and barely mentions the rise of class society, I […]
Happy birthday USSR. The October Revolution in Russian in 1917 was the defining event of the Twentieth Century. It was one of those dialectical events that happen when quantity – as in number of people in the street – turned into quality. That the revolution encountered myriad problems cannot be disputed. Serious revolutionaries are not utopians. We are focused on the process, the dialectical process by which human progress evolves. I don’t mean progress in the sense of more gadgets, but in the sense of a powerful unification of humanity toward a compassionate society focused on meeting all human needs. […]
The Vietnam War. The man can make movies. The story was so engrossing that I kept wishing the episode wouldn’t end. The filmmakers got much of the story right. But the story was told through a liberal-progressive – and deeply anticommunist – lens. Perhaps best exemplified by consistent use of “Viet Cong” to describe the NLF forces in the South, a pejorative slapped on them by the South Vietnamese puppets. I also agree with Nick Turse who wrote Kill Everything that Moves in his critique that Burns minimizes civilian casualties: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/the-ken-burns-vietnam-war-documentary-glosses-over-devastating-civilian-toll/ But the film makes a strong anti-war statement. I […]
The revolution will most likely not be nonviolent. Nonviolence is a tactic that we use until we are forced to fight back. The other side, the 1%, is not nonviolent, lol. They have at their disposal the most destructive war machine that the world has ever seen. The violence won’t come from the likes of guy who shot up the phony softball game. He didn’t kill anyone, BTW. Only he was killed. I don’t think he was crazy. I think he wanted a meaningful death. I can’t defend what he did. It was adventurist, and it has endangered the movement, […]
Don’t mourn. Organize. The words of Joe Hill, a working-class martyr, executed by firing squad in 1915. Electoral politics are important, but not as important as organizing. Most importantly: at the point of production, meaning in the workplace, schools, or neighborhoods. This concept has been understood by all leftists since Marx himself. At this point, the nature of the organization that you organize people into is not that important. The connections you make with people are what matters. But, damn it people, we need unions. We need community organizing campaigns. Find an issue that touches a nerve and organize people around […]