Here's just a random comment - for the holy KZread algorithm to see us.

@luckyspears3902

Ай бұрын

I disagree with you very contentiously. Such is the strength of my engagement.

@hangonsnoop

Ай бұрын

All hail the Almighty Al Gore's Rhythm!

A somewhat random thought, but in the 1984 film Big Brother is supposed to look like Stalin, but actually looks more like Cecil Rhodes.

Stream starts at 02:05

I'm going over Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: The Black Legend and it just re-emphasizes the most glaring problems with the anti-Stalin obsession of both Trotskyites and then the Krushchev phase onwards to present-day: they actively worked against an emerging socialist state that so-happened to feature Stalin pre-eminently due to the war, the focus on individual leaders (as you mention) by Western media, and his closeness with Lenin, to the exclusion of organizing against capitalism elsewhere. Upset at Brest-Litovsk, for example? Then the answer was to organize the working classes in the capitalist regimes, but instead Trotskyites and anti-Bolshevik elements chose to target their newly won socialist condition for internal competition ... it's madness reading their positions, and complete ignorance of the balance of powers arrayed against their emergent socialist project from the start, even going so far as to use the inability to produce an immediate withering away of the state as an indictment, either ignorant or disingenuously disregarding that such a condition only prevails when capitalist states and economy no longer exist overall, which was obviously not the case post-October Revolution. We are still having these debates today re: China, for example, which can't produce socialism when the majority of the planet is still dominated by an imperialist order actively arrayed against it. I'm even tired of the "ultra-left" distinction, because it implies positions on such a spectrum are more socialist than not, when we should be discussing the practicality of a position like anarchism (too amorphous and contradictory to be called a concrete ideology) in achieving socialism instead of its self-referential claims to being more "revolutionary". We're not interested in revolution, it's a word that not only pre-existed socialism but has been appropriated to such an extent as to lose all relevance for socialism; we're interested in socialist transformation, and this makes infiltration of organizing spaces by police, for example, more difficult to achieve because they'd actually have to be trained in building an advanced socialist economy to pass scrutiny, rather than just advocating property destruction as somehow being "liberatory" and "revolutionary" action, or the more easily co-opted theories of Trotsky re: political violence in general. Gabriel Rockhill's work on how pseudo-socialisms have been pushed by capitalist regimes is critical reading and reflection in this regard. I'm a young-ish socialist born in the late 80s and I can already tell from participatory experience that youth movements have been swept up by this emphasis on who is more revolutionary or not that they've missed the devastating effect that "social media" (American media, really) has commodified their movements by participating in digital spaces that continue to commodify race, gender, sexuality and (dis)ability by creating data used to finance the wealth of the ownership class. All major American social media platforms have seen their share price value increase since the intensified genocide of Palestinians after October 7th, 2023... When we do this, we realize anarchism isn't leftist in orientation at all, that it instead abandons humanism for individuality, because it fundamentally rejects the question of industrialization which, assuming we somehow overcome or avoid climate catastrophe, is necessary for a species on a finite planet, given the sun, for one major example, will expand and consume the planet in approximately 7.59 billion years. I would like to maintain optimism that we can overcome climate catastrophe and our own extinction, hence why I bring up something as fundamental as what to do on a fragile, finite planet and the technical challenges of moving from this planet that, as Elon Musk's foolishness indicates, capitalism cannot solve (most of the rockets used by the United States to launch into space have been Russian, and none of their major corporations have been able to produce rockets that meet the standards of rocket science born out of Soviet Russia). Only an industrialized, socialist world can overcome these kinds of challenges to humanity, and industrialization will be fundamentally necessary to adapt or overcome them.

Great to see a rehabilitation of Joe in progress.As a portrait artist,and,I like to think,I can read a face;the older I get,AND the more I know about him(Thanks Grover Furr!)the more I like him.An engaging looking and handsome Greorgian,on a personal level,a true revolutionary and heir of Lenin,and with a solid Russian Orthodox spiritual and intellectual foundation also.He was the greatest leader of the 20th.century,I believe,and maybe of all time.A towering statesman and revolutionary.

Love your talks,Alex.

1:02:00 Iliescu said something on the same lines in December 1989, initially. There is this short video on YT: watch?v=lczbyzZruJo Unfortunately, it is only in Romanian, but I will translate the whole 41 seconds: "It is required that the people act as an ordered and organized force [translator note: orderly and in an organized manner]. It must be seen that it is here where the order is made, with the contribution, with the participation, with the presence of the working people, with the active participation of the people [t.n.: "people" more in the sense of "populus" - there is a distinction in Romanian between "oameni" (human beings), and "popor" (populus), but both are usually translated into English as "people"], and not with the one [participation] of some rulers that have called themselves "rulers" [t.n.: he says "s-au autointitulat", literally "self-titled themselves"], that have called themselves "chosen of the people" [t.n.: "chosen" here has more the sense of "elected"], they have called themselves "communists" - they have nothing to do with... neither with Socialism, neither with the ideology of Scientific Communism. They have only muddied [t.n.: in the sense of "dirtied"] the name of the Romanian Communist Party! They have only muddied the memory of the ones who have given their lives for the cause of Scientific Socialism in this country! I had to use many notes because I've tried to make more of a word-for-word translation, but that causes the intended sense of the speech to be lost. It is widely circulated in Romania the fact that Iliescu was Gorbachev's man, and that what they (he and Gorbachev) have actually intended in '89 was to overthrow the "personal dictatorship" of Ceaușescu, but not Socialism as a whole. There was much opposition to his stance, and he brought the miners to Bucharest later, in 1990 and 1991, to suppress mass unrest. The events are called as "Mineriade" in Romania. The last Mineriad was in 1999, when what is known in Romanian history as the Battle of Costești happened, ended with the victory of the miners (they won the battle, but lost the "war"). In conclusion, I don't know what to make of Iliescu. What were his beliefs?What really was his intention? He was always opposed by the right and far-right, by the monarchists, by the "intelligentsia" (I call prefer to call them pseuso-intellectualls, but whatever...). But, still, he did oversee the destruction of the 1990s, the privatization, put Romania on a path to joining Western structures...