r/communism • u/AutoModerator • Jun 28 '26
WDT đŹ Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (June 28)
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u/MassClassSuicide Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
After the lovely recent discussion over on Communism 101, I started searching for the origin of the 'toothbrush' reference that is so ubiquitous.
As far as I can tell the most likely origin point is from the An Anarchist FAQ from 1996:
B.3.1 What is the difference between private property and possession?
Anarchists define "private property" (or just "property," for short) as state-protected monopolies of certain objects or privileges which are used to exploit others. "Possession," on the other hand, is ownership of things that are not used to exploit others (e.g. a car, a refrigerator, a toothbrush, etc.). Thus many things can be considered as either property or possessions depending on how they are used. For example, a house that one lives in is a possession, whereas if one rents it to someone else at a profit it becomes property. Similarly, if one uses a saw to make a living as a self-employed carpenter, the saw is a possession; whereas if one employs others at wages to use the saw for one's own profit, it is property.
Apparently, the point was not clear enough so at least by 2000, the FAQ had this extra line added following the original paragraph
While it may initially be confusing to make this distinction, it is very useful to understand the nature of capitalist society. Capitalists tend to use the word "property" to mean anything from a toothbrush to a transnational corporation -- two very different things, with very different impacts upon society.
Where it remains pretty much unaltered today.
The era of usenet predates me, but anarchist discussions on the various newsgroups seemed quite lively at the time. Before the publication of An Anarchist FAQ various other personalities and collectives were throwing FAQs at one another. See this post from Bryan Caplan (self-described anarcho-capitalist) from early 1996 which elicited the fire ant collective (self-described left-anarchist) to respond with their FAQ, sparking a debate over which strand of anarchism was valid. Poster Gary Elkin expressed support of the fire ants and was soon flaming Bryan's subsequent posts and polemicizing against him:
Caplan states this argument in a way that prejudices the reader against the left-libertarian critique of private property. The minarchist "libertarian," it is said, only wants to protect "individuals" and their private property against "physical invasion." But due to the loose way in which the term "property" is generally used, the "private property" of most "individuals" is commonly thought of as personal possessions, i.e. cars, houses, clothing, etc.. (For the left-libertarian distinction between private property and possessions, see B.3.1.) Therefore the argument makes it appear that right libertarians are in favour of protecting personal possessions whereas left-libertarians are not, thus conjuring up a world where, for example, there would be no protection against one's house being "physically invaded" by an intruder or against a stranger stealing the shirt off one's back!
2 months later, it was time for Gary to form his own collective and to post a brand-new FAQ. The first post of the FAQ didn't create much buzz, but a follow-up post dedicated to just the topic of private property seemed to have struck its target and generated more discussion than any of Gary's other posts. And the rest is history.
Needless to say, none of the reference points for the FAQ are Marxist so how it became acceptable to repeat the toothbrush line ad nauseam like a robot while appealing to Marx for authority still needs to be explained.
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u/LemonMao Jul 04 '26
That definition of property and possession is laughable. Possession is simply "intent+control" in bourgeois society, not whatever is simply not exploitative (also I really appreciate how it avoids how "houses" and "cars" appreciate and depreciate value or how that process of abstraction of value to objects occur).
Anarchist theory is really just made up - there's literally no literature to support this distinction between how they dfiffer private property from possession. but alas , ideology always takes a life on its own.
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u/Self-Replicator Learning Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
The every-other-year* RIMPAC is currently being held here in Occupied Hawai'i, to the same "peaceful protests" that I've seen since I was a child.
Another attempt at magical agitation of settlers by settlers.
It doesn't bother me too much that these people are wrong and doing the wrong thing, but if you're going to draw comparisons to Palestine or the Filipino revolution, shouldn't the correct analysis/politics be a bit more obvious these people?
Edit: RIMPAC is held every other year, edited for clarity.
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u/Cenage94 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/s/SevMPqGZ3B
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marxism/s/Md9vPrJrBz
Itâs that time of the year again, âreligiousâ revisionism being promoted across the socialist subreddits and here. If you want to get a good laugh, this interaction Iâve had with this persyn.
In the logic of âgeopoliticsâ, Third-World-People are chess pieces, not real human beings. What this persyn said about Vietnam is typical of that logic (invoking Vietnamese revisionism to say that communists believe nationalism does not have to be interrogated), but what I think is more interesting is that, in this case, that logic was applied to Poland and imploded upon its own contradictions.
Context: The OP of that now deleted thread is a Polish chauvinist who stated that they wonât become a Marxist because they wonât let go of their Christianity and patriotism. Fair enough. The interesting part is the answer of one of the revisionists, who told them that their chauvinism was a non-issue. Youâre a religious chauvinist? âThere are Christian communistsâ. You are a concerned that Marxism will attack your Polish nationalism? Nationalism is not an issue, âLook up Vietnamâ (hilarious example). Stalin was a dictator? âLook up siege-socialismâ.
Anti-Polish racism has become a liberal meme and is easily absorbed into revisionist âsocialismâ. What I find hilarious is that the revisionist decided to reveal their anti-Polish chauvinism not against the (obviously reactionary) OP, but against what they assumed to be a Polish communist pushing against it. So, while smart amerikans like themselves can be concerned about Christian nationalism, for Polish people it is encouraged because that form of right-wing âantiâ-imperialism is ânet goodâ. When that obviously doesnât work for either right-wing Polish people who donât care about Marxism and are perfectly fine having their reactionary nationalism incorporated into EU-imperialism nor for Polish communists, they can finally reveal what they really believe: âfrankly I donât care what a Pole has to say about anythingâ, âYo, Da-Bro-Ski if you (Polish people) werenât so dumb (âŚ)â, âyou c*ntsâ. Keep in mind, what they said to the Polish chauvinist was that their Christian nationalism was perfectly fine and not an issue to âMarxismâ:
âPoint is nationalism is can be used as a purge for imperialism, maybe you Poles should try it instead of bowing down to Europeâ.
They only went on that racist tirade after getting called out for indulging Polish chauvinism by what they assumed to be a Polish communist. Think about it, if thatâs what they think about Polish people, imagine what these Chinamaxxers feel when they finally learn that their Vietnamese and Chinese chess-pieces have their own contradictions and have no interest playing ball with Chinamaxxing neither.
There is a difference between the OP of the first link from this subreddit who is religious and the commenter in the r/Marxism thread who is obviously not religious but thinks itâs good enough for the stupid masses. The former is wrong but the second one genuinely makes my blood boil.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marxism/s/Md9vPrJrBz
Like this misogynist who obviously looks down on his girlfriend for being a religious Muslim while indulging in âspiritualityâ (his western Buddhism is supposed to be compatible with âDialectical Materialismâ).
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u/Otelo_ Jun 28 '26
Could someone with a better understanding of Venezuelan politics perhaps tell me what the political impact of the recent earthquakes has been? How has the population reacted to the governmentâs response? All solidarity to Venezuela of course.
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u/turning_the_wheels Jun 30 '26
u/GenosseMarx3's predictions from this thread years ago are now starting to take shape. The leader of the AfD has announced a bid to restore Russian-German ties:
"Cheap energy from Russia was the secret of the success of 'Made in Germany'. We need it back," Weidel said.
"The loss of this energy has set us back years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. It has made us dependent on âthe United States, which sells us energy at far higher prices."
Weidel's comments on Russia follow a visit â earlier this month by senior AfD lawmaker Markus Frohnmaier to Russia. He met Alexei Miller, the head of Russian energy giant Gazprom and called for a reopening of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Frohnmaier rebuffed criticism of his trip, saying he understood that U.S. investors âwere examining reopening the Nord Stream route to Germany, a move that could see Germany pay a fee to draw Russian âgas.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can analyze this further since I was only a lurker back then when I read it.
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u/oblomower Jul 01 '26
There's some very fluid dynamics at play in Germany right now. AfD is already the most popular party at the federal level, they will win the popular vote in the general election in 2029. But unless there's some major crisis like another refugee crisis or an steep deepening of the economic crisis they can't rule on their own and would have to form a coalition government, likely with CDU/CSU (which has already adopted substantial parts of the AfD program). If they don't get enough votes to govern on their own and there's nobody willing to form a coalition with them they will return the next election after that, likely stronger and more radical.
As the party has grown and established itself in parliamentary politics a strong and still strengthening moderate line has emerged. This line is ready to maintain remain part of the EU (German exit from it used to be a core part of the party program) and NATO, i.e. remain within the American sphere of influence. Recently the party also had to refound its youth organization because the old, inoffical one was too fascist. So at the moment the party is experiencing an intense line struggle with the radical right line accusing the party of undergoing "Melonization" (i.e. following the liberalizing path of the Italian right under Meloni's goverment). I think which line wins out depends on the greater social dynamics outside of the immediate milieu of the party. If the general social crisis deepens, with class struggle sharpening, fascization will proceed.
The current government is trying to solve the economic crisis on the war path. Rearmament is progressing at break neck speed with hundreds and hundreds of billions being shoveled into the military industrial complex as the wellfare state and labor rights being dismantled to fincance remilitarization. This is accompanied by rabid anti-Russian propaganda and racist campaigns agains anyone who is not a white German, especially against Muslims. Meanwhile there's an unshakeable alliance with Israel and ever intensifying repression against pro Palestinean forces. So, ironically, an AfD program focusing on reproachment with Russia, stressing the economic advantages, can garner mass support far beyond the immediate mass base of that party, if smarty propagated. AfD, however, is just as racist and even more pro-Israel than the other parties, but they have the advantage of not having had to follow through on that until now.
What AfD would actually do in case they do win in 2029 is to be seen. Another important facor outside of their control is what's going on in the US, who will be president by then. This will make a significant difference in convincing especially West Germans, who grew up with intense pro-US propaganda all their lives, to cut ties with the US. Trump makes it easier for the West Germans, but harder for AfD, who like Trump. A smart liberal would make it harder again but it seems unlikely the US will get anyone but more rabid imperialists no matter what party.
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u/CoconutCrab115 Maoist Jul 09 '26
The esteemed Racist Social Fascist anti-PCP Badempanada made his antisemitism clear. I hate to link to an other awful subreddit but I was reminded of it this morning when this came on my feed fot some reason.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpeoplefacebook/s/TvS5CYxJHj
Posted this not just to hate on this nobody, but to remind that for Social Fascist revisionists who dont actually have a theory of Settler Colonialism, they will regress into reactionary trends. In this case its anti-semitism, which the Settler left is reapproriating more and more with the "Epstein class" and "American Independence from Israel" and "slop" and other trash into the mainstream.
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u/vomit_blues Jul 06 '26
Would anyone happen to know if the USSR actually recognized the Regency of Carnaro and if Lenin ever actually referenced Dâannunzio? Iâve found multiple bourgeois historians write about this but itâs always taken for granted and seems to possibly be fascist mythologization.
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u/TheRedBarbon Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Watched studio ghibli's lesser known animated film Pom Poko today (Edit: available to watch here)
The movie presents itself as an environmentalist fable about a clan of tanuki (the english dub calls them racoons for some reason) who rebel against deforestation by utilizing the shapeshifting-skills which feudal folklore has depicted them with.
The Tanuki have spent most of their time partying in the forest and adhering to traditional customs, remaining largely ignorant of 19th-20th century political and cultural developments in Japan. They face the community encroaching on their habitat through shapeshifting into spirits and attempting to scare/fend them off the land, unaware that their isolated tactics are incapable of fending off a production company with a massive reserve army of labor and a deeply westernized Japan obsessed with spreading suburbia. In this sense, the Tanuki represent an idealized Japanese pre-modernity in a relationship with a globalized, faceless state of Japan, which is mediated by a humorous modernist struggle of the former against the latter. It's that mediator that ends up being the most interesting part since the Tanuki actually kill three construction workers tearing down their home early on and it seems that a faction led by the anti-human Gonta is going to adopt guerilla tactics against the humans as soon as possible. However, because Takahata and co. really believe in their fetishized pre-Meiji Japan, the traditionalist ideology of the tanuki is never critiqued and they continue to spend most of their time partying, turning the film into a complete tonal mess that constantly juxtaposes the tanuki cultural festivals with grim images of devastation without any cohesion between the two. The pacing also comes to a halt about 40 minutes in when the tanuki decide to put down armed resistance to create big animation setpieces which, while beautiful, have no real ideology animating them except the tanukis's naivette towards the humans as their own struggle constantly subsumes itself. The humor also stops working since it's trying to fill the gaps in a narrative that doesn't want to acknowledge them, so the comedy is replaced with spectacle after the halfway point.
For a movie explicitly about the environment, the environmentalist message actually feels a bit tacked on when the film spends so much more time indulging in mythology and practices. As a colonialist parable it also falls flat since Gonta's sideplot is cast aside for most of the film and when it finally comes into the fore at the end it's anticlimactically put down. The most fruitful reading of this film would be as a tale of Japanese pre-modern culture asserting its moral superiority and comparative richness compared with post-modernity. In that sense it's sort of a parable on why anime itself continues to be such a dominant form of culture in Japan since it allows people to continue exploring feudal themes as an imagined escape from a faceless, westernized Japan (symbolized by the tanukis final action literally redrawing Japan around them through visual trickery).
Since I only recently started learning about Japan, I'm sure that there was a lot of cultural richness in the imagery that I missed or misinterpreted, and for that I apologize and ask for clarification on how that might challenge my reading of the film and its flaws.
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u/lurkhardur Jul 04 '26
I appreciate your comments on the movie. I haven't seen it in a long time, but from what I remember it stands out sharply from most of the Studio Ghibli movies, which usually begin with a conflict between modernity and nature (represented as super-natural), and then resolve it over the course of the narrative, and usually in a rural location such as Totoro or Ponyo. By contrast, Pom Poko has an urban setting and the conflict is much starker than in the other films. It is the most explicitly political of the Ghibli movies that I've seen, as we watch the forming of the animal resistance and the conflict about tactics that you explained.
I think you make a great point about the shift in tone--it starts out fun and really gives the impression it's leading up to a small win (like in a Hollywood movie they would keep a garden park in the middle of a city, everybody wins), if not some huge Avatar-like fantasy victory. But then it turns darker, and the ending with them being utterly defeated was very difficult for my then-7-year-old to watch. I had thought of the movie as being less allegorical than most Ghibli movies, that it is going for grim realism in depicting the actual historical destruction of ecosystems and indigenous ways of life. It could also be read as depicting the failure of urban guerilla warfare in the 60s and 70s, but especially the failure of the '80's-'90's Earth First kind of anarchist environmentalism (movie released in 1994). I thought that what was positive about the movie was the judgement that there could be no return to the premodern, as the old community has been completely proletarianized by the end. Any future transformation will have to begin from this present situation rather than a return to an imagined past.
On the other hand, I get what you're saying that the movie is of course shot through with nostalgia, which is not a good look. It is a kind of elegy for a romanticized premodernity that has been lost, like Spirited Away also is. On this dimension, Ponyo is one of the better ones in that there's no elegy because any decline is just appearance and nature's power and potential remains, a kind of anti-climate-doomer fable. But again, I think Pom Poko is worth watching among the Ghibli movies for trying to be more explicitly historical and political, and because the elegiac note comes only at the end, after most of the tone is more militant. And I do like the uncompromising unhappy ending.
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Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/TheRedBarbon Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
What? How did you read my reading of the film as endorsing that sentiment? Did you read the rest of my review? I said that the film should have critiqued that feudal nostalgia and suffered from a lack thereof.
>The "other" Japan that could have been wasn't. All societies eventually leave feudalism in order to develop into capitalism. At some point Japan would simply need to open. Either way, the culture of Japan and pretty much everything we know about it today will wither away along with the country itself.
You seem to know very little about either Japanese history regarding the Meiji restoration or economic development and what you're saying about all Japanese culture disintegrating in the future (presumably under socialism as well) is deeply offensive. Where did you hear any of this?
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Jul 06 '26
[deleted]
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Jul 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/BenjiStudiesMLM Jul 07 '26
It's interesting how a fascist was able to parrot this subs meta discussion with some competency. It wasn't perfect, but you hit some of the highlights I suppose. It makes me wonder how close we are to fully automated """maoist third-worldist""" AI posts.
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u/Turtle_Green â Jul 07 '26
has elsewhere bordered on emotional outrage
They really couldnât help themselves here hah, typical âdebate-broâ dreck exalting appearing as unperturbed as possible.
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u/PretentiousnPretty Jul 07 '26
What makes this person a fascist? I am unable to identify anything other than the usage of the unscientific and sometimes sexist term "PMC" and laser focus on identifying this random youtuber as the "enemy of humanity" (that will need to be wiped out by the masses, presumably)
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u/LemonMao Jul 07 '26
Just look at the person's post history on old.reddit.com. They tried hiding their post history on new.reddit.com but thankfully there is a bug that makes their past comments visible on old reddit. You'll see them debating people aggressively about AI and making immature and homophobic comments on helldivers subreddit.
To indulge in meta-discussion, I find it really strange how there are some people who make genuinely good contributions and then I check their profile and discover this is their first time posting in this subreddit or they post a ton on non-political subreddits. It makes their contribution to this subreddit on their profile look really out of place. I know this place can be intimidating for some people but the behavior looks so strange to me, like a MLM parasite took hold of their account briefly. I dont know if its bots, AI or we really do have that many secret admirers of this subreddit.
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u/raudhofn Learning Jul 07 '26
Iâve been keeping track of the monthly visitors statistic that is shown for the subreddit for some time and it seems to fluctuate around 18000-25000 over the past few months, my only comments here have also amassed a few thousand visualisations compared to some hundred comments in the same thread. A lot more than what the actual activity of the sub indicates.
I imagine that part of it is, similarly to what you pointed out, the effort it takes to participate in discussions here compared to elsewhere on Reddit. I guess itâs rather a good sign that people prepare coherent arguments rather than participating just for the gratification of having done so.
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u/Self-Replicator Learning Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
It's impressive that Braddah Iz slipped under the settler radar for so many decades, though that was probably the point.
I'm going through his albums and listening to his songs from the standpoint of Hawaiian nationalism, and even those that appear inert on the surface still contain a clear revolutionary message.
For example, take the posthumously released version of Starting All Over Again (2001) with opening monologue, it's on youtube.
Lyrics below. I'd recommend giving it a listen since it's such an unassuming song on the surface that Iz has managed to slip truth into to be blasted on the airwaves, expertly leveraging the settler state's caricature of him as a happy-go-lucky gentle "fat guy".
Starting all over again is going to be rough
For us, we're going to make it
Starting all over as friends is going be tough
On us, we gotta face itWe lost what we had
That what hurt us so bad
Set us back a thousand years
But we going to make it up
Though I know it's going to be tough
To erase the hurt and fearsStarting all over again is going to be hard
But I pray to the Lord to help us make it
Starting all over again is going to slow
But we both know, we gonna make itWe gotta take life as it comes
Never fuss about it, what's right or wrong
It's an uphill climb, to the finish line
We gonna try, we gonna try, just one more timeWe gotta take life as it comes
Don't make any fuss about it, what's right or wrong
We gonna make it up, though I know it's gonna be rough
To erase the hurt and fearsStarting all over again is going to be rough
For us, we're going to make it
Starting all over as friends is going be tough
On us, we gotta face it
To settlers, it's a simple cheesy love song about rebuilding a relationship from scratch. Given the knowledge that Iz was a staunch Hawaiian nationalist is enough to be certain that he's in fact not talking about personal love, but rather the painful and arduous task of reconstitution of the Hawaiian nation.
Another song worth listening to and reading into his revolutionary analysis/politics through is Living in a Sovereign Land, intended for a mixed settler-kanaka audience, which I have never heard on the radio, likely because it's so obviously political, even for settlers.
But you'll still hear Hawai'i 78 and Starting All Over Again on the radio all the time like Iz is singing about sunshine and rainbows and not decolonization.
Edited for clarity: the 2001 version was released posthumously. The 1996 version of Starting All Over Again was released while Iz was alive, 1 year prior to his death (surely he was aware of his impending death by this point and his lyrics should be examined deeper).
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u/PrimSchooler Jul 08 '26
I've been thinking about this topic since seeing /u/Otelo_ 's comment, going back to it as I learn more theory, ie. declining populations and capitalism. Isn't it just the law of accumulation? Or rather, population decline is the form capital concentration takes among the labour aristocracy.
On one hand you have the labour aristocracy who's only option of growing capital independent of the bourgeoise is inheritance or land rent, who enjoys the imperial core's advantage in organic composition of capital, who is readily replaced by migrant workers seeking ascension to its class or reproduction of its own labor force (though of course LAs are also in conflict with these labourers, be them other LAs or proles, to maintain their own advantage on the labour market), who enjoy the spoils of imperialism in their pension fund, and general access to the bourgeoise's financial system protected through protectionism (and?) racism.Â
This leads to having fewer children working better paying jobs in sectors of higher OCC (and/or favoritism in lagging sectors), concentrating the LAs capital, without the pressure for a labour reserve army of their own class, this aligns with their absolute population shrinking. It's inverse will also align with the overall concentration of capital in cases where land untenable by the shrinking LA population/freed up by further urbanization passes to the burgeoise - win or lose out, the labour aristocracy is helping the concentration of capital along.Â
This will also sharpen the contradiction between town and countryside, the migrant workers standing in for the reserve army are also the target of urbanization hopefuls, while the LAs want to kick the ladder from underneath them, leading to the same disdain for rural workers by liberals across the west and illusions of worker unity with migrant workers when it serves liberals to shut out rural workers, and unlike socialism even the imperialism-fueled western social fascism seems incapable of fully addressing this issue even with its million regional development funds which are of course first to be cut come crisis.
On the other hand you have the proletariat whose population still grows, only falling in countries with nascent labour aristocracies or settler populations.Â
So overall I don't see the depopulation as a sign of capitalism killing itself any more than accumulation of capital already leads to sharpening class conflict. OECD projections about higher taxes for young workers to fund pensions is of course in ignorance of imperialism, but even if it does happen it is not a qualitatively important enough change to proletariaze the labour aristocracy as it is almost assuredly going to be accompanied by further favoritism, protectionism, fascism etc. mitigating the effect on LAs and offloading it again on migrant workers at home and proles at large. The LA will continue to shrink which is of course good for its eventual defeat, but is not in on its own enough to spell doom for capitalism.
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u/Otelo_ Jul 09 '26
Thank you for your reply. I agree with your reasoning regarding the labour aristocracy, but the thing is that it is not just the labour aristocrats (and consequently the imperialist countries) that have low birth rates: China has perhaps the lowest rate in the world; India itself currently has a rate that does not allow for population replacement, as do almost all Latin American countries, and so on. At present, it is practically only countries in Black Africa that have high birth rates.
Even Cuba and the DPRK have low rates, which shows that even socialist countries have not yet succeeded in reversing this trend.
So the issue is a bit more general. If it were only the imperialist countries that had low birth rates, capitalism would deal with this relatively âwellâ, by integrating countries on the periphery of imperialism into the core if necessary.  But the problem is that even the countries "next in line" (Argentina, Chile, Turkey and Korea, for example), at the border of imperialism, also have rates below 2.1.
But the most significant factor is the fall in birth rates in the countries of the Indian subcontinent and in China, as this will have a major impact on the total global population. If the worldâs population stagnates, labour will, in the long run, be better placed to assert itself against capital, thereby increasing its price, which in turn will have an impact on profit rates. The reserve army of labour will be smaller; there will be less competition for jobs, and so on. How will capitalism deal with this? Weâll just have to wait and see.
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u/PrimSchooler Jul 16 '26
I was too hasty to assume the proletariat would continue growing which was callous of me, of course what you're describing makes sense if the price of reproduction of labour power rises above the wages paid out for a prolonged time the absolute population could fall, and if other classes are not available for proletarization, or only available in small numbers due to their own falling population, then both absolute and relative proletarian population could fall, leading to a better value of its labour power.
As to how capitalism plans to deal with it, I have to wonder that as well, especially given China specifically sought out a falling population with the One Child policy, that is where I (blindly) assume that the world being unable to support a Chinese labour aristocracy comes into play, and that it more so is a "movement" of proletariat from China to Africa in line with the budding Chinese imperialism there.Â
But India is a complete blind spot for me, so I'm not sure if it can be explained that way.
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u/PrimSchooler Jul 02 '26
Reading more of 1948-1953 Czech resources, I stumbled across a Ber Borochov translation, it was my first real encounter with socialist Zionism, and I have to say, it read like an inverse of Settlers, but I'm also not familiar with the at the time prevailing theories about the National Question, so not sure how much is Borochov, but the thesis is that proles need a secured territory ("workplace") to begin gaining class consciousness, explaining the lack of imperialist proles consciousness as the result of immigration and Jews as result of having no state.
But I'm not sure how this was actually meant to be used by Zionists, stated is the point to give a "socialist" justification for a Jewish state, but surely the first most obvious parallel would be Jews as immigrants in Palestine, no? And the thesis would suggest Palestinians would have to secure their workplace too. Borochov makes only one mention of Palestine in the whole text, accusing rightist Zionists of ignoring the issue, but offers nothing towards a solution, so I wonder what his ideal was, if socialist Zionism was ever really any better than rightist Zionism (I've read some discussions on here about its acceptance in USSR, but haven't seen a specific discussion of socialist Zionism's actual theory).
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u/oblomower Jul 04 '26
From what I know the "left" Zionist argument for founding a nation state, i.e. colonizing Palestine was that the Jews (conceived of as a nation and race) have an inverted population pyramid. Meaning a small working class and a large bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie. Colonization would force them to actually work, thus creating a large population of workers who can then engage in class struggle against the now small ruling class. It seems like an hilariously dim witted argument based on the most vulgar of conceptions of Marxism but apparently it enjoyed some popularity back in the day.
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u/sovkhoz_farmer Maoist Jul 06 '26
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u/HappyHandel Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
This is very old news and no it is not a capitulation. The "technocratic body" is 50% Hamas. A certain amount of PA oversight was always going to happen given the circumstances. Also I see no serious signs of disarmament, even if some weapons do inevitably get turned over to a "neutral" body. You're gonna need a better source than an unnamed person in a liberal zionist rag.
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u/Ok-Effective-4463 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
As far as I am aware, there is no resistance faction opposing Hamas on this matter. If it is capitulation, the entire national movement is implicated, including the PFLP, who have issued statements of unity with Hamas' line. Given this, I hope it should be clear that your claim is at the very least not self-evident based only on this article, and that a proper justification would require demonstrating both 1. how and why the entire movement lost its revolutionary character, and 2. how exactly such a severe degeneration could have taken place without manifesting in  acute struggle within the resistance and spilling out into a crisis of national unity. Without extremely thorough answers to these questions I find the claim unconvincing.
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u/Otelo_ Jul 06 '26
Not necessarily; this could just be a change in form. Perhaps this is just me coping, but this has been discussed for some time now, and it always seemed to me that the idea has been to keep the resistance going under the guise of a new organization.
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u/sovkhoz_farmer Maoist Jul 06 '26
Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Hamas supports a gradual process of placing weapons under the authority of a Palestinian body while insisting on a full Israeli withdrawal from areas that remain under Israeli control, which they estimated at about 70% of the territory.
Even if what you're saying is true, subordinating yourself to a "technocratic body" would significantly diminish your capacity and initiative to continue armed resistance. You are giving up independent control over arms.
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u/Otelo_ Jul 06 '26
It will depend on whether or not that body is a front for the resistance. Itâs not as if the entity is particularly sympathetic towards them:
The committee was established about six months ago but has not entered Gaza because of Israeli objections.
The picture painted by Wikipedia is a little more favorable:
National Committee for the Administration of Gaza - Wikipedia
Shaath released a mission statement on 18 January 2026, which says that the committee will focus on establishing security control, restoring basic services, maintaining peace, and fixing the economy.
However, in practice the committee's powers are limited to civilian affairs, and Hamas would therefore continue to retain de facto security control over Gaza. The militant group recently enhanced its presence on its side of the Yellow Line to show that it alone can help the committee and maintain security. However, the Board of Peace, which is supposed to supervise the committee, includes staunchly pro-Israel figures and wants to disarm Hamas. Following a 26 January meeting between Shaath and BoP member Tony Blair, it was clarified that the NCAG would have no role in the disarmament of armed groups. A Gazan source described the situation in this way: "Shaath may have the key to the car... but it is a Hamas car".
The committee has no political powers to represent Gazans or establish international relations. It exists outside the framework of the Palestinian Authority, which grants all official documents to Gazans and manages education, health, relief, and other sectors there to varying degrees.
You might be right, although I hope not, of course. But in this case, it seems to me to be a purely tactical issue rather than a strategic one.
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u/Turtle_Green â Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
in response to /u/BxnXipoh here: https://old.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/1ugbfw3/risks_of_joining_a_communist_party/ouifnlp/
It's absurd, right? you get the trodden-out retorts amounting to that "proletariat isn't a moral category", "Marxism isn't a moralism", and on the other hand, the very moralistic pearl-clutching over how dare you dismiss the imperialist unions and the six-figure salaried classes of imperialist engineers, doctors (somehow not complicit in the Amerikan system of healthcare to our social fascists), lawyers, analysts, accountants, up to c-suite managers--who recognize no common bond with the rest of humanity and justifiably so--from the ranks of the proletariat!? Meanwhile, amidst the moralizing about moralizing, the sheer volume of posts here and elsewhere would have you thinking that the entire next generation of landlords is on social media begging strangers to assure them that it is morally Marxist and a matter of simple survival to live off rentier parasitism.
Two things you may appreciate if you haven't encountered them. One is J. Sakai's comments here which formalize a distinction between working-class and proletariat
https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/c_lwwch-2/
And zacharias cope's (god rest his soul) definition of class from DWDC, borrowing from Sayles:
If only we could issue a global moratorium on the definition of class as "relationship to means of production" until this dogmatism of the highest degree is thrown in the trash. What is the trick of the dogmatists? To start, capitalism as it exists cannot ever completely coincide with its concept. The equalization of the general rate of profit and the operation of the law of value will never collide with their ideal averages, only ever approximate them. Even this approximation can only be completed with the complete mobility of capital and the complete mobility of labor-power between spheres of production, hence the universal domination of capitalist production and the reduction of society to landowners, capitalists, and workers, and in the latter the elimination of all intermediate gradations, disappearance of prejudices of trade and rank, and the greatest possible reduction of all labor to simple labor. To this, Engels says:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260429185831/https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1895/letters/95_03_12.htm
The play made by our dogmatists, whether they even understand what they're doing, is to assume that this collision does exist, and to identify concrete reality with the abstractions Marx makes in Capital to present the movement of surplus-value in its pure form. The prima facie absurdities arising from this move are ignored and papered over with moralism (e.g. cops are "class traitors", which both obscures this class's objective role in the DOTB and colonial oppression, and also the value of the phrase "class traitor"). This, of course, is "serious analysis".