u on discord? could u @ me?

one of the most braindead takes ive ever seen from someone calling themselves a Communist

getting so many white CPC d***riders in my recommended and its such a strange archetype

How ridiculous is the idea that Chinese left wing opposition to their government's right wing domestic economic policies somehow weakens the Palestinian cause? Does Foxconn need to triple its profit margins before Xi sanctions Israel? Will giving Chinese people free Healthcare prevent the return of Palestinian refugees?

Iran's role is a bit nuanced, but when it comes to Palestine, the modern Chinese and Russian governments take a liberal zionist stance at best in international bodies, and at worst pour billions into the Israeli military industrial complex. Chinese companies are directly involved in the IOF panopticon surveilling the West Bank. Neither of them back the Palestinian resistance, not even nominally.

I just wish these campist clowns like OP would stop draping themselves in the flag of communism.

lol

Happy new year to KTT2's communists

Lol

Anyone here familiar with hauntology?

The concept's finally clicked with me and it's sad and disturbing

Just watched Immortal Technique on IG live scoff at the idea of Marxism because Latin America doesn't need a rich white European to tell them how to share

GOTTEM

he went crazy

yeah i read Fischer

How do you feel about it?

What are the basics of hauntology as you understand it now and do you have a recommendation for where I can learn more about it?

Books to read, that I've read, on the subject:

• The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord) a good primer for understanding the concept of "simulation", which helps to define "hauntological" existence later on, but isn't about hauntology and predates the concept
• Simulacra and Simulation (Jean Baudrillard) same as above but way closer to a hauntological a***ysis, but it's almost impossible to understand this book without reading Society of the Spectacle, which itself requires some extensive historical and theoretical research to fully appreciate
• Specters of Marx (Jacques Derrida) Overblown and slightly pretentious introduction to "hauntology" as we know it. It's a great book but there's a lot of fluff, some left anti-communism (albeit understandable given the publication date, 1993), and Derrida regularly gets lost in his own head (and impressed at his own thoughts). But the fundamental a***ysis is still really good.
• Capitalist Realism (Mark Fisher) Contextualizes and breaks down Derrida's concept of hauntology for the modern world and our lack of ability to imagine a different future, a post-capitalist future, due to the uprising of neoliberalism and the outcome of the Cold War

Gonna continue wrt how I understand hauntology in the next post.

How I've come to understand hauntology is that our species collectively has lost the ability to imagine a better or even fundamentally different world than we already occupy. Any conception of a better, different world that crops up from time to time is simply a reimagining of a vision of the future from the past that never came true, because the future that humanity was building towards in the past was "canceled" due to neoliberalism and the fall of the Eastern Bloc and near-destruction of socialism.

Because that past never came true and socialism didn't win the Cold War, and the present order is an unnatural, viscous ideological vacuum that always becomes recentered around capitalist realism, propped up by the ruling class as a last ditch, but successful, effort to hold onto their way of life/power/privileges, collectively our species cannot imagine any other future than a future that's already been imagined. This leads to unending waves of nostalgia and rote, unproductive social activism that never goes far enough in actually igniting a revolutionary moment. Basically, it's as if the 20th century never ended, and time stopped moving politically since the 80s, because the future so many were hoping for and sacrificing for abruptly fell apart in the span of about 5 years. Everything from Soviet nostalgia to HD remakes to musical revivalist movements is a symptom of our lack of evolution as a species, an evolution that was halted and abandoned unnaturally between 1988-1992.

idk i agree with it that it’s hard to imagine a future that isn’t capitalism or capitalism collapsing on itself but like what else can u do with the concept other than get depressed

I think for me it's important to study because I'm truly committed to doing my part to revive America's radical left. No single person can do this obviously and any attempt at doing so single-handedly is anti-socialist and extremely vain, but everyone can do their part and I would like to use my writing skills and obsessive personality to help build confidence in working class revolution again, amongst the contemporary American working class.

It's hard to build this confidence when we don't address why there is a lack of confidence in working class revolution to begin with, and I think that starts by understanding hauntology

This is why I ride for China and why I personally consider revolution a necessary prerequisite for building socialism.

The masses need a stake in the revolution in an immediate and visceral sense. That sense of direct sacrifice, direct struggle, and direct input makes people more attached to what they are trying to build, and are less likely to let go of the revolution or to lose discipline in maintaining it.

I genuinely feel that ideological discipline that is transformed into class-action is the lifeblood of revolution. I think the lack of one or the other being sharpened to precision can make a revolution very unstable, and I think history is on my side in that regard.

I ride for China because you need to give workers hope that working class revolution isn't a futile exercise but is a long, protracted, uneven, nonlinear struggle. When people blankly dismiss the CPC as being completely anti-socialist, it reminds me of left anti-communism during the Soviet era, which was corrosive to world revolution and discipline/commitment within revolutionary societies.

Books that have informed this perspective include:

• Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
• The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World
• Desert
• Blackshirts & Reds
• How Far We Slaves Have Come!
• Socialism Betrayed

And the purpose of wrestling through understanding hauntology, to me, is to get the working class to see hope in itself and hope in its ability to transform society collectively, with or without the existence of a strong socialist ally in the world. It's been done before and can be done again, but it won't be done the same way it was done in the past because it can't be, and until we collectively understand this, I don't think revolution will be possible.

In case y'all just think this is some eclectic self-indulgent belief of mine.

This kept me up last night though so I'm ITT tryna flesh this out lol

yet no Capital

I've read a good chunk of Capital but I haven't finished it yet

The only books by Marx I haven't read at all are The Grundrisse, Vol. 2 & 3 of Capital, and that book he wrote on Napoleon, but I want to read the latter.

I want to read them all but it takes a lot of time and there's a lot of ground to cover so I've been building little curricula for myself to study and then adding to these curricula over time as the foundation of what I've read, and hopefully understand, expands

Funny reading reddit about former commie countries being far more progressive and fair but always adding an "NOT EXCUSING THE USSR OR EAST GERMANY" ultimate cucks