33 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
    1. 12:00 assassinations of many african leaders. Muammar Gaddafi, patrice lumumba of congo, sir abubakar tafawa balewa of nigeria, thomas sankara... history is repeating itself, only the actors are changing. -- 50 years ago, the empire called this "war on communism", nowadays the empire calls this "war on terror" or "war on nationalism" or "fighting for democracy" or "fighting for freedom"... and the empire will ALWAYS find useful idiots to fight for these lies, because human stupidity is the most stable resource of all, human stupidity is infinite.

      The great Alexander's empire collapsed,<br /> the empire of the ancient Romans<br /> and the empire of Napoleon fell into ruins,<br /> they were built on the power of weapons.

      But the Empire of New Rome<br /> has existed for almost 1500 years<br /> and will last for who knows how long,<br /> because it rests on the most solid foundation:<br /> the stupidity of humans.

      -- Otto von Corvin

  2. Jul 2023
    1. democracyrequires liberal education for all.

      Two of the driving reasons behind the Great Books project were improvement of both education and democracy.

      The democracy portion was likely prompted by the second Red Scare from ~1947-1957 which had profound effects on America. Published in 1952, this series would have considered it closely and it's interesting they included Marx in the thinkers at the end of the series.

  3. Jul 2022
    1. Observing the wider world, Beatrice wrote of "Russian communism and Italian Fascism" as "two sides of the worship of force and the practice of cruel intolerance" and she was disturbed that "this spirit is creeping into the USA and even ... into Great Britain."[16]

      via Muggeridge and Adam, Beatrice Webb: A Life, 1967, p.225.

  4. Mar 2022
    1. a lot of trade unions and ngos in sri lanka who play an active role as political pressure groups always remember any kind of union will have its root traced to the communist ideology and to be very honest that is what has opened the doors to huge level of 00:10:11 corruption in sri lankan politics

      communist ideology bribes to corruption

    1. most dangerous of all are those whom Lenin called false friends of the people, namely moderate-socialist or social-democratic leaders (in other words, non-Communist left-wing). These are more dangerous than out-and-out reactionaries, for latter at least march under their true colors, whereas moderate left-wing leaders confuse people by employing devices of socialism to seine interests of reactionary capital

      Stalin had understood the threat posed by leftism in the West societies.

  5. Jan 2022
    1. The despicable betrayal of socialism by the majority of the official leaders of this proletariat in 1914-19, when “defence of country” was used as a social-chauvinist cloak to conceal the defence of the “right” of their “own” bourgeoisie to oppress colonies and fleece financially dependent countries

      there is animosity between proletariats of colonial and colonized nations, especially when the socialist parties in imperial countries like UK, France, Germany etc actually mobilized in favor of the WW1 war effort

    2. The urgency of the struggle against this evil, against the most deep-rooted petty-bourgeois national prejudices, looms ever larger with the mounting exigency of the task of converting the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national dictatorship (i.e., existing in a single country and incapable of determining world politics) into an international one (i.e., a dictatorship of the proletariat involving at least several advanced countries, and capable of exercising a decisive influence upon world politics as a whole)

      Grand politics truly - a unified communist system working to change the world in a coordinated way

    3. that there is a tendency towards the creation of a single world economy, regulated by the proletariat of all nations as an integral whole and according to a common plan.

      How would this work? How could it be achieved? Is it meaningful to strive for this?

    4. Federation is a transitional form to the complete unity of the working people of different nations

      USSR and other federations were meant to be temporary, and not completely dominated by any given ethnic group

  6. Nov 2021
    1. but it's also the question of property rights. [

      [[Varoufakis]] is very serious about [[property rights]], so it's [[communism]] without calling the cursed word :-)

    1. In fact, says Resnick, the years ahead may produce a new form of communism - a system based on ownership of private property, stock markets and political freedom, but allowing workers to decide how the profits of their work are allocated.

      A.Resnick's idea about true communism as "people getting the profits":

      • private ownership
      • markets
      • freedom

      From this articleit's missingQ

      • what to do about the State?
      • what to do abpoiut big ownership (corporations)?
  7. Jul 2021
    1. “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” ― Dom Helder Camara, Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings
  8. May 2021
    1. But the central claim here – that the old state was ‘smashed’ in 1917 and a new one based (however fleetingly) on soviet institutions set up in its place – is a myth.

      I kind of agree (it is a myth). The soviet experiment was mostly about the abolishment of private ownership of the means of production and the new human type not feed on selfishness.

    2. A later statement by Lenin from 1923 is quite instructive in this respect (and completely at odds with his earlier declaration): Our state apparatus, with the exception of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, represents in the highest degree a hangover of the old one, subjected to only the slightest extent to any serious change.

      Lenin, right before he died was frank enough to state the fact that State was not abolished.

    1. left theorists such Nikos Poulantzas, Ralph Miliband, and André Gorz, Ed became deeply engaged with the question of how to democratically transform the state and how rupture with capitalism might be achieved in technologically and materially advanced societies where the classically Leninist strategy of dual power seemed to lack relevance.

      The communist theorists still relevant today for abolishing capitalism.

    1. του Δρ. Εντ Ρούκσμπι, που έχασε τη ζωή του μετά από εννέα και πλέον μήνες μάχης με τις συνέπειες της Long Covid​.

      Η πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα νεκρολογία για τον σοσιαλιστή Ed Rooksby, που πέθανε κάπου μεταξύ. 13 Φεβ (τελευταίο τουιτ) και 24 Φεβ (η νεκρολογία).

  9. Mar 2021
    1. But after Lenin's death in 1923, says Wolff, Stalin short-circuited those plans by simply declaring the Soviet Union a communist-socialist state.

      R.Wolff describes how Stalin declared SU had reched Communism.

  10. Feb 2021
    1. Κορνηλιος: Για λογους ιστορικους δεν χρησιμοποιω πλεον τον ορο «σοσιαλισμος». Ο ορος αυτος εχει ανεπανορθωτα εκπορνευτει απο τους κομμουνιστες, τους σοσιαλιστες, τους σοσιαλδημοκρατες, τους εθνικοσοσιαλιστες. Στο ακουσμα του και μονο ακομη και οι πιο καλοπροαιρετοι ανθρωποι γυριζουν την πλατη τους. Προτιμω λοιπον τη διαζευξη «αυτονομια ή βαρβαροτητα».
    2. τις «φιλελεύθερες δημοκρατίες» της Δύσης θεωρούσε ότι το κριτήριο ταξικής διαφοροπόίησης είχε πάψει να είναι πλέον η κατοχή και ο έλεγχος των μέσων παραγωγής, αλλά η κατοχή και η ικανότητα άσκησης εξουσίας.
    3. Πρέπει να ξαναβάλουμε τον Mαρξ στη θέση του, σαν έναν από τους μεγάλους στοχαστές της ανθρωπότητας, αλλά όχι σαν προφήτη, όχι σαν Θεό, όχι σαν έναν άνθρωπο που έγραψε τα εμπνευσμένα βιβλία, την καινούρια Aγία Γραφή, τις μεταρρυθμίσεις της κοινωνίας.
  11. Oct 2020
    1. Religion, the dominion of the human mind

      Karl Marx's statement, "Religion is the opium of people" is paraphrased by the writer here.

  12. Sep 2020
    1. One of the books for which Jack Diggins was most well known was Up from Communism, a group portrait of four American intellectuals — Max Eastman, John Dos Passos, James Burnham, and Will Herberg — who over time traded their youthful flirtations with leftist radicalism for supposedly more sober forms of conservatism. First published in 1975, the book was, in its own way, an account of the “exhaustion of utopian energies.” It was about thinkers for whom “the problem with utopia” became “not how to realize it but how to prevent its realization.” [25] In other words, up from communism meant down with utopia.

      +utopianism:bad name.

      It was about thinkers for whom “the problem with utopia” became “not how to realize it but how to prevent its realization.”

  13. Aug 2018
    1. the critique of a thing is inherent in the alternative presented

      Posing alternatives to capitalism and the nation-state simultaneously: 1) asserts the inadequacy of those institutions (a "negative" critique), and 2) asserts the superiority of the alternative being posed (a "positive" critique).

    2. About

      Greetings! Potemkin here (one of the primary authors), just getting the hang of this annotation system. It's open-source. I like the idea of using annotation to facilitate deeper discussion, and perhaps as a more civilized and precise method of commenting or interacting with a website. I think this can facilitate virtual study groups and other remote collaborations. Exciting stuff!

      Please annotate, comment on blog posts that are open for comments, and let's try to build a positive, supportive, open ecosocialist community dedicated to creating Better Worlds and Brighter Futures!

    1. Beginning with the famous third plenum of the Tenth Central Committee in 1978, the Chinese Communist party set about decollectivizing agriculture for the 800 million Chinese who still lived in the countryside. The role of the state in agriculture was reduced to that of a tax collector, while production of consumer goods was sharply increased in order to give peasants a taste of the universal homogenous state and thereby an incentive to work. The reform doubled Chinese grain output in only five years, and in the process created for Deng Xiaoping a solid political base from which he was able to extend the reform to other parts of the economy. Economic Statistics do not begin to describe the dynamism, initiative, and openness evident in China since the reform began.
    1. Fukuyama’s argument was that, with the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, the last ideological alternative to liberalism had been eliminated.

      "Last" in the sense of a big, modern threat. We're still facing the threats of tribalism, which apparently have a strong pull.

  14. Jul 2017
    1. In the communist mode there are no classes because private property has been abolished -individuals are not able to own the means of produc

      In communist mode, there are no such thing as private property because everything is owned by the government. Individuals are not allowed to own the means of production. Communism often use the word collectivism to justify for their actions.

    2. privateown-ership of the means of production -is abolishedand allproductivemeans are collectively owned. This, Marx argues, alsobringsabouttheendofalienationandthebeginningsofasocialorderwhichcanutilize the productive power of the capitalist infrastructuretosupportthefull development and enjoyment of those aspects of social relation-ships previously distorted by the endless pursuit of privateprofitforthe bourgeoisie. The productive efficiency of capitalism cannowbedirected to supporting all members of society. The promiseofcommu-nism for Marx lies in its enabling people to control theirowndestiny

      Means of production are open to all and the goods produced are employed to the benefit of the entire society, each person is free from contracted labor, can produce for their community in any capacity and can invest in self-realization and development to achieve their full potential. There is no stratification of rewards according to percieved social value.

  15. May 2017
    1. proletarianise

      Proletarianization is the social process by which people move from being either the employer or self-employment to being employed as a wage laborer by an employer.

      Marx, Karl, and David McLellan. Karl Marx: selected writings. Oxford University Press, USA, 2000.

  16. Sep 2016
  17. Apr 2016
    1. In my fifth-grade language instruction class in 2002, we would read aloud, in unison, phrases such as "Comrade, stone them!"

      Mo discusses this in her spot on This American Life: "The Poetry of Propaganda: Party On!"

  18. Dec 2015
    1. Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.