I thought about this yesterday when I was trying to explain the difference between socialism and communism. Even such a simple question requires so much foundational information. I couldn’t just say they were different stages of society, because communism is really more a vector of transformation for societies, and to even understand how these societies transform you have to understand dialectical and historical materialism. So I’m revising my post to explain what a dialectic is and I realize I’m already in my third paragraph. Not only is no layman going to read this because its just boring philosophy mumbo jumbo, but I’ve wasted the last 20 minutes writing out this thing that I eventually just end up deleting anyway.
What we need is a streamlined way of propagating theory for a new online age. The Communist Manifesto was supposed to be the quick and dirty version of theory to propagate, but people don’t even read 10 pages anymore. What we need are children’s book versions of these ideas, summarized in an easily spreadable copypasta format. Not only do they have to be simple and succinct, but entertaining as well. Getting someone hooked has never been harder, because with so much information at our fingertips, its never been easier to ignore it.
I also think they should be modular, rather than longer masterposts. Someone who asks a simple question shouldn’t have to read an entire essay, but if the question requires it we should be able to plug-and-play with additional information. This is the hard part, having separate copypastas for each topic that can work with each other while still being understandable independently. It’s hard, but I think its necessary in order to bring editing down to a minimum and increase spreadability as much as possible.
Edit: oh cool I got featured lol
"One of the laws of capitalist motion and development is this inexorable expansion, and that means expansion into and expropriation of the third world, a process that’s been going on for about 400 years, perpetrated by the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French, the English, and most recently, most successfully, most impressively, by the Americans - that is by the ruling classes of these countries, not by the ordinary people. The ordinary people simply paid the costs of empire. The ordinary people simply sent their sons off to die on the plains of India or in the jungles of the Congo, or in Latin America, and wherever else.
But that expropriation of the third world that has been going on for 400 years brings us to another revelation, namely that the third world is not poor. You don’t go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich! Only the people are poor.
But there’s billions to be made there, to be carved out and to be taken. There has been billions for 400 years. The capitalist European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labour. They have taken out of these countries. These countries are not underdeveloped, they’re overexploited."
- :parenti:
a process that’s been going on for about 400 years
Going to use Lenin to disagree slightly with Parenti here. Capitalism comes up out of the industrial revolution. Capitalism is the contradiction of bourgeois social relations and industrial forces of production. Production in general wasn’t industrial 400 years ago. It really only became industrial around the early 1800s.
yeah naw homie, check out some broader marxist informed history (my go-to s are like Aimee Cesaire - Discourse on Colonialism, Walter Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Eduardo Galeano - Open Veins of Latin America, Silvia Federici - Caliban and the Witch, Giovanni Arrighi - The Long Twentieth Century).
You’re defo right about lenin’s definition of industrial capitalism, but Parenti is right that the process into Capitalism has been long and continuous, and especially that the colonialism of the obviously pre-capitalist era was absolutely vital for the process of capital accumulation that fed into the industrial revolutions.
Personally, I think when we’re talking in this thread about trying to reach people who have never encountered theory before, we don’t need to be fussing over the proper definition of capitalism and whether it’s industrial or not. Point to the exploitation, the interconnections, and the contradictions that rise from these exploitative structures.
but Parenti is right that the process into Capitalism has been long and continuous,
Yes, I agree but I’m going to insist on Lenin’s definition of capitalism if you’re teaching theory. If you’re agitating for trade unions or organizing them, then I think thats a different story. But if you’re trying to teach Marx then its critical for early learners to not confuse capitalism with the other bad -isms. Capitalism is not reducible to just exploitation. Exploitation has existed for a really, really long time all over the globe. It predates capitalism, and feudalism, and goes all the way back to early civilization. Capitalism isn’t also only just unequal or unjust trade relationships, or slavery, or racism, or colonialism – of course it creates or worsens all of the above. All sorts of societies before capitalism had those problems. The problem with capitalism is that that its dynamic simultaneously produces the potential for socialism for the first time in the history of civilization while also preventing workers’ efforts to organize society and production. It is not possible to even conceive of democratically controlled industrial production without first living in the world capitalism creates. It’s not possible for the working class to abolish itself without first coming into existence. That doesn’t mean that capitalism is somehow good, but it means that capitalism presents an opportunity (ie. the potential to build socialism) to workers only if they’re organized enough to do something about it. I think that fussing over the proper definition for capitalism is something that should be sorted out before someone reaches out to complete theory noobs.
Really it comes down to this: what is new and unique under capitalism? Racism? Sexism? Colonialism? Empires? No, it’s the contradiction between industrial forces of production (unleashed by bourgeois social relations) and bourgeois social relations themselves.
There is a brilliant section in Blackshirts re: the supposed brutality of the former communist regimes, I can’t find it right now, but it goes along the lines of this: if they were so violent and repressive, why did they cede to a new capitalist regime with barely a whimper of pushback? What brutal, repressive regime allows itself to be peacefully destroyed without a violent counter-revolution?
If they were so evil, why, after their eventual destruction, was there no mass campaign of reprisals against the former communist leadership and their apparatchiks? At minimum, we would expect some kind of truth and reconciliation committee to punish those responsible, or at its extreme some kind of Nuremburg-style mass trials and hangings of these murderers and torturers. And yet, there was nothing.
Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling classes have ever wanted – and that is everything: all the choice lands, forests, game, herds, harvests, mineral deposits and precious metals of the earth; all the wealth, riches, and profitable returns; all the productive facilities, gainful inventiveness, and technologies; all the surplus value produced by human labor; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law with none of its constraints; all the services, comforts, luxuries, and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and costs. Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens.
- :parenti:
Actually here’s a good line to agitate:
“70% of young people in China own a home, ~ 50% of young people in USA live with their parents.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20211029163628/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-39512599
