Here, a few column inches below my preface — the short article, on organizing, tied to, well, the wimpy American broke-back mentality that we have to ask for fairness, beg, negotiate with felons, murderers, the corporate elite and their wannabe followers and side-lined thugs.
Lenin discusses these two topics in section four of chapter one of The State and Revolution (1917). This section begins with a long quote from Engels’ 1870’s work Anti-Dühring. The quote begins with “The proletariat seizes state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms and abolishes the state as state.”
I’m fond of books that don’t claim to have The Answer but instead are useful guides in our search for answers.
Such a volume is Cynthia Kaufman’s Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope, which expresses in clear, concise language thoughts that likely have been bumping around in the minds of many of us who reject capitalism. The book is particularly powerful because of its modesty; Kaufman promises no new grand theory and instead offers insights that we all can use in our daily lives.
2. “Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, ETC.”
Still basing himself on Engel’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Lenin points out that the state is the first form of society exclusively to base itself on a given territory as opposed to tribal societies and bands which can move about and change locations while searching for food and shelter. This is the first innovation of the state.
I am a Capitalist. I am a Socialist and — hold on to your hats — I also believe in some circumstances Communism works great! I know this would be impossible for the “either/or” talking heads at Fox Noise to understand but let me explain.
I am a small business person myself. Part of my income is from family rental property. Hardly a more capitalist venture exists and occasionally I make some money writing and selling my “product” to others.
It’s been 97 years since Lenin first wrote what has since become a “classic” of Marxism — The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution, hereafter referred to as SR. I propose to discuss the significance of this work for today (the beginning of the 21st Century) and so will not spend a lot of time discussing its relevance to the world of 97 years ago.
Cute, really, calling it, Surveillance Valley, that abomination of elitist, mostly Zionist, and certainly white male-dominated reverse Darwinism IT bootcamp, where the most hostile sub-species exists to shred all human agency. These are Ivy League/Stanford/Georgia Tech types, very strange, indeed, humans who are possessed of the most puerile of spirit, the most usury, psychologically defective, narcissistic, Oedipal hearts on earth, and they just keep that lie going. Silicon Valley my ass!
In “The Mandela Barbie,” BBC journalist and investigative reporter Greg Palast’s eulogy of Nelson Mandela provides a rare breath of sanity in the media stampede to remake a legendary Marxist revolutionary into an icon of free market capitalism. According to Palast, “The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go home.”
It’s the 25th, and I am thinking about my buddy Jacob. He’s 25, riddled with PTSD, Battle of Fallujah, Marines, young spirited, radicalized at boot camp and then in country. It was a big scam, but one that ate at his heart. Scam, lie, bullshit war, and now, another year goes by, and the Gitmo madness of our cognitively sapped politicians, intellectuals, rot-gut CEOs and media moguls.
