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Regarding your VPN, there are a few options, usually just a matter of buying a subscription and downloading a program. Private Internet Access and NordVPN are popular, but r/vpn could help.

Solidarity, comrade. Please try to stay safe.

He was a really interesting figure! He became more and more political the older he got and was an active, dedicated member of the Communist Party. Since all Communisty Parties at that time were more or less answering to Moscow, the USSR wanted to prop him up as a major global communist, since he was the most famous and influential artist in the world. At the same time, Cubism was very diametrically opposed to Socialist Realism, which was the official art style of the Communist Party. This created a lot of drama, but never a full blown rift - there was much more to gain by having him in the party than by maintaining a pure line on art.

I did a whole episode of my podcast on him and his politics if you'd like to hear an in depth discussion on this.

As much as I'd like this to be the case, from what I understand these images are from the anti-USSR pro-Yeltsin rallies. Sources: one || two

They weren't the majority by any means but let's not be disingenuous with what we share.

Screw the admins. This is absolute bullshit that they're trying to tell us to stop, so that they can protect the users of Reddit who participate in subs like /r/hookertalk. We should not stop at all. If there are subs that we do not attempt to shut down and occupy, it should be out of a strategic decision not to initiate because we don't have the right conditions for victory, not out of fear of the goddamn Reddit admins - who ​allow​ subs like this to fucking exist in the first place. Free speech does not include the right to violent speech, hate speech, or speech that perpetuates systems of violence, exploitation, abuse, or oppression.

We just shut down a communication channel for fucking ​rapists​ who abuse sex workers. We organized in the CDAP, filed the petition, posted it across multiple subs of the Reddit Left, occupied the sub, sent the petition to the administrators, and got the sub shut down. We did that, all of the Reddit Left, across multiple subs.​ Good​. Let's shut down another fucking one. What the fuck is the point of socialists/anarchists organizing if we're not doing something? If Reddit is a communication channel that allows and supports the organization of subs for abuse, then that's a problem, and we need to address it.

And if they try to shut down the sub, then the sub should move towards communication frameworks like Zeronet, which are peer-to-peer and decentralized, so they cannot be shut down by centralized administration.

I'm proud of what we did with /r/hookertalk.

Well I mean if everyone did work with clear and accurate information and was always free to act on that information accordingly, then yeah I guess it could work.

Too bad it only takes one hoarding douchebag to decide to deceive others to ruin it for everyone.

Page 19 of my copy of "The Wealth of Nations". The foundation for the rest of the book to "work out". The entire thing operates under the assumption that nobody is out to screw each other.

A friendly reminder: If you MUST Link to PragerU, Learn Liberty, Etc...

FOR THE LOVE OF MARX, PLEASE USE HOOKTUBE!

Otherwise you are handing these people ad money/views with each click! Not to mention polluting people's recommended lists with this garbage.

Hooktube Link

I just wrote a book about the media coverage of Venezuela. It's called "Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting" It is pretty expensive in hardback so ask your library to stock it. If you're interested but broke DM me your email address and I could send you a pdf of my PhD, on which it is based. It actually features the story of the guy who made this video and how he was subject to a literal lynch mob that tried to find him and burn him alive for reporting like this while in the country.

I guess they rejected his offer to come because he said he wanted and equal playing field for both Israel and Palestine. Too much for AIPAC to swallow, I guess.

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/18/aipac-rejects-sanders-offer-to-speak-via-video-as-romney-and-gingrich-did-in-2012/

Read up on your history before making assumptions

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618001905/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_aB8TBbCQ7Q6M1

With stories like this coming out every day, I'm rereading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (you have to read it if you haven't already done so), but I'm struggling to process how during Malcolm's time, we saw mass civil unrest, and now the prevailing mood seems to be dispair, as if we don't have the ability to demand change. What can be done? I don't think Tweeting and making signs is doing anything to stop the bloodshed.

It's important to recognize that the New Yorker , like many bourgeois media outlets, will attempt to distort or change topics entirely when it comes to class politics. bourgeois media would much rather have the debates centered around identity politics (or social justice issues) rather than economic ones.

It is important to recognize that millennials increasingly see themselves increasingly as 'working class . it is important to recognize that millenials went through their formative years during a housing meltdown and years of 'recovery' that didn't actually see recovery for the large majority of us. There is a class base eager for something beyond the status quo - something beyond the parameters that american political system would rather have us debate and discuss around.

The Sanders campaign demonstrates this well. Sanders' policies are around typical 'social democrat' party issues: increasing wages, free tuition, expanding health care. Things that social democrats have said that workers need in order for capitalism to continue to work. Sanders' largest demographic of support has been in the younger generations.

Guthrie wrote specifically about how Trump's father would stir up, and profit from, racial hatred.

Funnily enough, in his book Zero to One(which is kind of a Silicon Valley Libertarian counterpart to the Communist Manifesto) Peter Thiel- possibly the most influential right libertarian in the US and silicon valley, comes to very similar conclusions.

"Capitalism and competition are not synonymous, but opposites" he says, as if he's just made a stunning discovery. He explains how the goal of every company should be monopolisation and the destruction of competition. He talks about how if there was truly a lot of free competition in the market, prices would be driven down until margins are razor thin and profits non-existent.

And then, after coming to these conclusions, he....advocates for removing social services and help to the third world so that more money is spent on "innovation" rather than "replication"(which is stuff like bringing basic services into 3rd world countries to improve standards). He talks about how Google's monopoly helps them spend millions on innovations that they wouldn't be able to do if they had tons of competition and were putting all revenue into their core service. And so a lack of competition for him is a good thing.

And this person is one of the most influential and coherent people in the world.

Working more doesn't always result in more work. In "The Mythical Man-Month" the author describes how a project can be put further behind schedule by adding more people. The same applies to individuals working longer hours. The longer you work the less useful your work as you'll make more mistakes. Your mistakes will reduce the quality of work, and more work will have to be put in to fix the mistakes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/rick-perry-energy-department.html?_r=0

Not that Rick Perry was a good choice to head the department, he has changed his mind drastically on a lot of stuff regarding it. He said during his hearing that he now believes climate change is real and partly caused by man, he says he will defend science and climate funding, and he believes the department is important.

Our new EPA head on the other hand, yikes.

This is not an outlier for coverage of this by any means - I've seen a couple others myself, and Glenn Greenwald wrote a great piece on it:

I’ve been thinking that it might be tactical to point out to these pro-capitalists that Adam Smith seemed to realize the lopsided relationship between capitalists and workers. I have not finished reading The Wealth of Nations, and I am no philosopher or economist, but it seems apparent to me that pro-capitalists have gotten away with way too much propaganda on Smith’s behalf. Much more than what he actually wrote would warrant.

Wealth of Nations, book 1, chapter 8:

> What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.

> … It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.

I actually know a good bit about this stuff.

I would advocate everyone here to use free open source software (FOSS) because anything else is blind. Using clean binaries is the first step to taking back your privacy.

Look into GNU/Linux distros. Most are incredibly accessible for beginners, but are indeed complex, and for good reason, when it comes to tinkering.

But you have to go further. Even with trusted programs, anonymous actors still have many ways to steal your data, compromise your system, monitor you, and censor the information you receive.

We need to stop trusting sites by default until trust is broken. The policy ought to be to distrust sites by default (blacklist ip/domain) and selectively allow that which appears trusted.

You should be running Firefox specifically because of NoScript. You need to be using high entropy, long (24+ char) passwords, unique to each site, stored in a password manager. Your master password should be a sentence without spaces that only makes sense to you (32+ char), stored in KeePass.

You should flash Tomato or DD-WRT on your router, and pipe all traffic through a private VPN.

For all sensitive communications, USE TAILS https://tails.boum.org/

It's a change in mindset that technologists in this society need to promote, not keep secret. It's going to require some education. Because every day the fascists are inventing new ways to compromise your peace of mind.

Durkheim's "Suicide: a Study in Sociology" is a very important read. He basically proves how stronger communities have lower rates of suicide. The less alienated someone is, the less likely they will kill themself. Capitalism as we know alienates workers from each other on many levels, a society not based on alienation would have lower suicide and crime rates.

Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" is also important.

"The Art of War" by Sun Tzu (not sure how to spell his name). I must admit I have yet to read this, but I've heard it teaches a ton about strategy.

The cops will, the military will, and more than half the people will.

Reminds me of a quote from THHGTTG:

> "Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"
"How much?" said Arthur.
"None at all," said Mr. Prosser.

Except this isn't a fiction, you'd just end up crushed, and nothing else would change.

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/29/410606045/the-bernie-sanders-rape-fantasy-essay-explained

It's from an essay he wrote in 1972 about gender roles and how they can be detrimental to human development, particularly regarding how they may lead to unhealthy sexual understandings and ideas. They are basically ignoring that he wasn't saying those were GOOD things, just using them as examples of sexual behavior that could be influenced by gender roles.

I would highly recommend Marx's Wage Labor and Capital instead of Capital. It's available as an easily digestible, 1 hour 42 minute audiobook.

Give Richard Wolff a shot, perhaps his Monthly Economic Update videos or Weekly Economic Update podcasts. His work is extremely accessible to those with any level of curiosity.

Additionally, The Wealth of Nations and most stuff by Adam Smith in general. A lot of what he writes might surprise you. He's certainly not the laissez-faire super-propertarian that many capitalists think he is.

The bourgeois are the biggest parasites in the world. This kind of shit spawns its own industry of Tony Robbins and Tim Ferris fuckheads telling you that you too can live this obscene, gaudy, exploitative life.

Also, the rich are less charitable than the poor (Percent-wise of course you'd get bourgeois apologists who look at absolute amount). http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wealthier-americans-give-less-than-poorer-people-2014-10-06

I've often wondered why more people on the left do not support Liberation Theology in its various forms.

There is, of course, the issue of idealism and materialism, and the issue of religion demanding that obedience to God or the Bible be primary.

But in practical terms, socialism and religion do not have to be the enemies that capitalists paint them as. That enemy concept may not apply to various church hierarchies, but to the lay person they're very, very compatible and should be allies.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." -- Karl Marx

I live in China, been here for 2.5 years, I am no expert, nor am I Chinese, just a guy from the US taking some classes at a university: Whenever Xijinping does or says something usually the head teacher will have all the students come to class and relearn or memorize whatever he said. (This is not necessarily pro-government propaganda, sometimes just used as an excuse for teachers to make money by creating new classes for extra working hours) I went to one of these things before and it's just any other boring lecture where everyone just stares at a book while the teacher babbles on for hours. One of those meetings actually happened last week and they had to memorize some ”citizen tree“ info-graphic (couldn't make this stuff up), but it's not tested on and students don't really care. Usually this kind of stuff falls on the big western holidays or the end of the year. Everyone I've asked here about this game have no idea what I'm talking about, but it seems to not be on people's radar. Here's a link to search for the citizen game using China's main search engine: baidu: https://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&tn=baidu&wd=%E8%8A%9D%E9%BA%BB%E5%88%86&oq=%E8%8A%9D%E9%BA%BB%E7%B2%89&rsv_pq=817f32a10003cab3&rsv_t=eaf4NY7dtrHmVAn13%2FAHWzw%2F1a2vA2OVh%2B%2FHFSCcrjrUt3HPZG...

Let's not forget that women had better sex under socialism too!

Sorry for the Amazon link, as I'm not an English native I didn't know what else to link since it doesn't seem that this book have a Wikipedia page or anything.

Powerful video, but bear in mind that more than half of the abusive online comments directed at women come from other women. Internalised misogyny is a real problem.

I'd recommend avoiding using sites like Facebook and Twitter for action and (as much as possible) organization. You have to remember who they serve and who controls them. Facebook seems to have no problems carrying out subversive behavior on behalf of nation-states if it keeps their site unblocked and their revenue flow uninterrupted. Also, let's not forget how easily such companies can be compelled to hand over private information to authorities. On this note I wouldn't trust reddit with this either; their warrant canary disappeared this year.

For more secure alternatives I'd suggest checking out https://prism-break.org/ (which has tons of great info about the security of various platforms) and, especially for mobile devices (which I should note will never be completely secure in almost all practical situations), https://guardianproject.info/apps/

I'd personally love if there was a "paper" of sorts that was comprised by select members of the sub that are regular posters in order to discuss matters in a more organised fashion so that ideas can actually be expressed without resorting to calling eachother liberal shits and suffering at the hands of the voting system. I've grown fond of the idea ever since I started taking part in that mock parliament /r/MHOC - we even have our own publication there.

Of course that wont happen and I wouldn't expect it to happen, we're a forum not a Party.

Reminds me of the story of West Indian Archie from The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He ran numbers and never once had to write them down. He could keep any combination of numbers for all of his clients in his head with perfect recall when it came time to tell the bookies what his customers had asked for. In a society that valued Black lives as human lives or tried to educate its citizens with the utmost zeal, West Indian Archie could have been a great mathematician or engineer, but instead, he was reduced to being a low criminal because of American and capitalist prejudices.

>Why is Jason Unrue such a raving asshat?

I have no idea. Probably his inability to take criticism, combined with his vulgar theoretical knowledge and Third Worldism. He's just a do nothing Third Worldist on YouTube. Nothing to see here.

>Also. Any idea what books Mao read to become such a great military leader?

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is one.

I've been in engineering/manufacturing for six years now, and I have had a fantastic amount of difficulty getting work that didn't have anything to do with defense. It seems like the only companies that offer anything substantial are those that won defense contracts. And I NEED substantial pay, since I need to take care of my disabled wife. It sucks working for the Death Star, and not having much of a choice.

At one point, I literally worked for Raytheon for a few months, making missile parts. It was nauseating working there, and the company name meaning "Light of God" was really off-putting. I liked to call the handsome wage I earned there "cognitive dissonance hazard pay".

I didn't realize how deep of a phenomenon this was until I encountered Neil Tyson's book, Accessory to War.

Yes. George Orwell was very much a socialist. You only need to read his essays and you would never doubt it.

Here's one where he explains how democratic socialism should be established, especially in Europe. http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_teu He believed that once it is properly established in Western Europe then the rest of the world should follow. He specifically says, "Socialism cannot properly be established until it is world-wide." He talks about a 'United States of Europe,' which sounds a lot like the European Union, but it is entirely socialist. I think George Orwell would have been extremely disappointed with Britain leaving the EU.

I've literally heard a lot of right-wingers say that 1984 is about modern liberals and 'SJWs.' OH GOD. 1984 was more to do with the totalitarian governments of Hitler and Stalin. And he specifically explained in one of his letters why he wrote 1984. But I guess you can interpret it however you want.

Personally I'd say it's important for us to read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations because arguing against capitalism without having have read their equivalent of the Manifesto would leave yourself open. As the old saying goes, know thy enemy.

Edit: Also the works of Hegel that Marx based his stuff off of.

>It would therefore be a morally unconscionable act for Barack Obama not to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning.

Huh, what a coincidence.

>Where is my DIY punk gaming scene?

It's small but it exists. There's molleindustria, games about depression like Depression Quest and Actual Sunlight, there's also Christine Love's visual novels (Digital and Analogue are the best known but there's also "don't take it personally babe, it just ain't your story" which deals with privacy and the digital age) which are very good.

But for something that truly has that DIY punk vibe thecatamites have you covered.

http://gamejolt.com/profile/thecatamites/84/games#!

I especially like "Space Funeral". Great soundtrack.

EDIT: Also forgot about Arcane Kids, they're pretty popular right now. They did a Bubsy 3D parody, and a very dark and unsettling take on Sonic and its fandom called "Sonic Dreams Collection" which has become a viral hit on Youtube.

EDIT 2: For a more semi-AAA take on the punk aesthetic, certain Shin Megami Tensei games are very good. Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers has that 90s cyberpunk vibe, and in general all mainline games except "Nocturne" have cyberpunk elements. SMT exists on a weird intersection of cyberpunk and occultism so it might not be up to everyone's taste, it's very niche.

>It doesn't help that a significant number of US cops seem to be either racist or literal Nazis.

This is absolutely true even to this day. Even in the 1930s and 1940s it was true. The book Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Plots Against Hollywood and America, there are many examples of cops and other officials either completely ignoring Nazis or even helping them. The book mentions that the Chief of Police of Los Angeles was a Nazi. J. Edgar Hoover, leader of the FBI, refused to investigate Nazis when Leon Lewis told him that the Nazis planned on violently murdering Jews. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were more interested in persecuting communists who weren't even violent. There were also riots in places like Lancaster Pennsylvania where the cops protected Nazis and white supremacists. The cops protected Nazi Frank Collin when he marched in Skokie Illinois.

Contrast all these Nazis next to communists and socialists who have marched. The cops beat down and kill leftists protesters like they did with Fred Hampton and Cointel Pro.

Duolingo for lessons

HelloTalk for practicing conversational skills and making spanish speaking friends*.

inb4; "bUT thOsE arE cAPiTaLisM", cuz they're "gonna sell us the rope...", or something...

*Probably not Cubans though.

In the UK I'm on an A level AQA course, the textbook is a Hodder Education publication. Front cover has a painting of Lenin on the cover.

Edit: this one

>Starbucks is switching out their traditional partial tuition reimbursement program to one that forces their employees to attend one college— and an online college at that— if they want to get help paying for college.

>Pause.

>Yes, no longer do Starbucks employees have the free choice to attend the college that is best for them— and a college that is their choice— if they want their company to help them further their education. Instead, Starbucks will tell them to go the Arizona State University’s online program or they are the good ole SOL.

• Don't Drink Starbucks' Free College PR Stunt

ASU's online program is basically a for-profit program, so this is by no means a great leap forward for workers.

I just want to mention that while Mint is a lot better than Windows or OSX, it's still not complete FLOSS.

From GNU website:

> Mint does not have a policy against including nonfree software, it includes nonfree binary blobs in drivers packaged with the kernel, and it includes nonfree programs in its repositories. It even includes proprietary codecs.

Don't let this discourage you from trying out Mint or other Ubuntu flavours, they're probably the easiest to learn if you're coming from a non-Linux background.

For a FLOSS version of Ubuntu try Trisquel

Also please don't rely on truecrypt, it's no longer secure and has been discontinued.

It really is frightening, especially how unnoticeable it can be. I read The Shock Doctrine, and afterwards I realized that the Wikipedia articles for almost every country's history portrays neoliberal reforms as positive.

Well capitalism produces commodities in very environmentally inefficient but cost-efficient ways. Because workers/the vast majority of people would control production and are the ones who will actually suffer because of environmental degradation, these costs will actually be figured into production in any kind of central plan. Far less research goes into making the production process sustainable than should be and because of the cost vs returns for profit, capitalists have little incentive to implement the ones we have. In socialism that will not be the case. And realistically, we've had the industrial capacity to eliminate poverty in most of the world for a very long time. The average productivity of an American worker has more than doubled since 1979 yet real wages have not risen. So, we could theoretically on average work half as long as we do and have the same standard of living (its a bit more complicated than that though). With socialism, there won't be all these redundant corporate bureaucracies or bullshit things like the financial sector and it can all be streamlined. We can implement mass transit and urban redevelopment that doesn't result in people being driven out of their communities or having their communities designed for cars rather than bikes/pedestrians to benefit capitalism.

Socialism means a truly rational society, one that puts people and nature before profits.

99% of people who vilify socialism or Marxism have never read it. I keep this link handy for people who don't understand socialism other than what the media tells them: http://manybooks.net/titles/marxengelsetext93manif12.html

Great movie. The focus on the changes Marx brought to the socialist movement illustrate his actual historical significance. Lots of people think he just invented the idea of communism. This movie illustrates the changes he makes and how his personality tied into that. He and Engels were born shit talkers. Talked about it on a recent episode of my podcast. https://www.buzzsprout.com/89426/734422-e19-the-young-karl-marx

Thanks for the amazing post! I wholeheartedly agree.

If anyone is looking to get a new OS, I've been quite happy with Crunchbang; it's light and very easy to use, and doesn't have the security concerns that Ubuntu does.

Also, shoutout to the OTR plugin for Pidgin. The person with whom you are chatting also needs to have the plugin installed, but it's a very solid way to keep your chats secure.

The main downside I can think of for using a FLOSS OS is that Adobe no longer supports Flash for Linux beyond the 11.2 version. So if you watch a lot of online videos or play flash games, it may not work reliably for you, especially if you use Firefox. Don't let that dissuade you, though! The Chromium browser helps a lot.

Technical suggestions:

1. You have a number of glaring grammatical errors, mainly punctuation. I'd recommend using something like a grammar checker or, if you want to get really serious, a style guide like Strunk and White's.
2. I don't know whether or to what extent you spend time editing, but your writing reads like a first draft. You should spend more time removing weasel words and simplifying/clarifying phrases. Example: "Enter Sam Harris, a charismatic neuroscientist who has everyone’s best interests at heart, a man truly governed by science and reason as opposed to dogma and bigotry." would become "Enter Sam Harris: a charismatic, beneficent neuroscientist who presents himself as a champion of science and reason, and an enemy of dogma and bigotry." A good book to check out is Zinsser's On Writing Well.

Content suggestions:

1. You make sweeping statements about what New Atheists claim about Sam Harris (and what Sam Harris claims about Sam Harris). Substantiate these. It's great that you're calling out Harris on xenophobia and sexism, but the setup - "people think Harris is awesome" - feels thin and unsubstantiated. Help me understand why you need to write this essay clarifying Harris' positions.

It's not specifically about socialism, but The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is very eye opening, very accessible and a good jumping off point.

Of course there's always Kapital by Marx, but you probably want a bit of background reading in history, socialist theory and philosophy first in order to get the most from it.

Here's one where Clinton and the awful Lanny Davis fawn over Pepsi's anti-union CEO: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/29621

Private Internet Access is the best VPN. They don't keep any info at all, and a recent court case just proved that because they were subpoenaed, and they couldn't give info because they didn't have it.

There aren't really going to be any statistics or studies that suggest market participation is involuntary. The matter is more philosophical than empirical.

The following is a quote from C.B. Macpherson's "Elegant Tombstones: A Note on Friedman's Freedom," which is a response to Milton Friedman's conception of liberty as expressed in his Capitalism and Freedom.

>Proviso (b) is that "individuals are effectively free to enter or not to enter into any particular exchange," and it is held that with this proviso "every transaction is strictly voluntary." A moment's thought will show that this is not so. The proviso that is required to make every transaction strictly voluntary is not freedom not to enter into any particular exchange, but freedom not to enter into any exchange at all. This, and only this, was the proviso that proved the simple model to be voluntary and non-coercive; and nothing less than this would provide the complex model to be voluntary and non-coercive. But Professor Friedman is clearly claiming that freedom not to enter into any particular exchange is enough: "The consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal...The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers for whom he can work..." (pp. 14-15).

The reality is that in order to obtain means of subsistence in a capitalist society, people must have money. The only way for people without capital - i.e. the vast majority of people - to obtain money in a capitalist society is by selling their labor power for wages. This is why capitalism is coercive.

More context (from Wikiquote, but ultimately TIME) says it was from 1965. In 1966 Friedman complained:

> Sir: You quote me as saying: “We are all Keynesians now.” The quotation is correct, but taken out of context. As best I can recall it, the context was: “In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian.” The second half is at least as important as the first.

It's interesting to me that the number of border walls in the world saw nonlinear increase starting in the 50s similar to the rest of the Great Acceleration.

The continued building of walls will be one form of entrenchment and apartheid as climate change worsens and produces the worst refugee crisis in history.

First, there is more than one Star Trek universe and the abominations produced by Rick Berman after Roddenberry's death are different than what Roddenberry produced and for me Roddenberry is canon. Both Joseph Sisko’s restaurant in New Orleans and Chateau Picard were inserted after Roddenberry's death as Bermen and Star Trek's corporate owners tried to march the series back to capitalism ending with the abomination Deep Space Nine which is not Star Trek and works to repudiate it.

The author of this piece, judging from a Google search, is a rich investor from a rich family. He is a capitalist with an agenda.

If anyone has not read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave I cannot recommend it enough - the first edition is rather short, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in potency. The harrowing accounts he gives of daily life are highly emotive, and the stories utterly tragic, you cannot read it without being deeply moved.

You fucking moron. Past market trends don't influence the future. Growth, gains, or "survival" are not metrics for the pricing of stocks. NOBODY SHOULD BE TELLING PEOPLE TO BUY "X" STOCK. You know who does that? Idiots who think themselves brilliant and Pump'N'Dump scammers. You know how money is made on the stock market? I win, someone else loses. I lose, someone else gains. Half the people do worse and damage their return by selecting individual equities, why? You're not some numbers crunching whiz, or some deep intellectual who has "done their research", you're at that cringing novice stage where you know a little but only enough to hurt yourself and others. Do yourself a favor and put down the Robin hood app and pick up some books, John Bogle maybe, perhaps " A Random Walk Down Wall Street" or hell just Google "return of individual stock slecetions vs S&P 500".

You are fucking ignorant.

Liberals and socialists are separate ideologies. Easy Wikipedia lookup.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Notice how liberals are pro-capitalist? These are the facts, and facts don't care about your feelings.

If not 14/14 then we're definitely rapidly approaching that point. There is one other list of fascist characteristics that Umberto Eco came up with, and (surprise, surprise) the Trump administration exhibits most if not all of them.

See here: http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

I couldn't say. It was in the middle of a discussion on the prohibition of psychedelics in the US. I can recommend this one though: https://www.audible.com/pd/Religion-Spirituality/Out-of-Your-Mind-Audiobook/B0161LXWGK?qid=&sr=&ref=a_author_Al_c9_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e9e52ec0-c05e-4911-8746-2586073224ad&pf_rd_r=18EXVCF89Y154Y90M49X&

I read Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution. It is about the active and leading role of women in the lead-up to the revolution, their guerrilla activity in the mountains and underground activity in the cities during the struggle, and the foundation of the Cuban Federation of Women. I would recommend it, it gives so much detail and context about the revolution and the time immediately after the triumph.★★★★☆

I am reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley and it's really entertaining.

>and we want to replace this system, but with what? Marx himself provides few to no answers;

This just isn't true. Marx didn't develop detailed plans because that doesn't make any sense. But Marx is explicit throughout his works about the alternatives to the social relations of capital.

http://ritualmag.com/interview-with-peter-hudis/

http://www.worldcat.org/title/marxs-concept-of-the-alternative-to-capitalism/oclc/808367110&referer=brief_results

>What I and many other socialists envision is a system where the means of production are directly owned by workers.

Which is great. But if it ends at the worker turning them selves into capitalist you just have a different kind of capitalism.

What had to end is the exclusion by ownership of access to the means to sustain yourself, end of production of commodities, the development of production for needs in one with a social plan organizing production.

>enriches the cooperative as a whole rather than centralizing wealth in the hands of a few capitalists.

This would just concentrate capital into the hands of an ever concentrating set of cooperatives.

>Will we still need a state? Yes

I guess you can call anything you like a state but what we experience as a state and state power under capitalism is a result of class society where one class rules.

>We want a freer world, one which isn’t dominated by class relationships and one where the democratic process isn’t controlled by the wealthy

Perhaps what you describe here would be freer maybe. But it would definitely still have class and wealth.

:-) hola papi.

http://phillipadsmith.github.io/cadivi/

>At the very least, who are these mystery "interests groups"?

People whose profit margins depend on the disparities between the exchange rates or some other sort of forex fraud, e.g. overpriced goods, "triangulations" with companies they establish abroad, and everything that has to do with being connected with someone in the government. Do you think this stuff is some kind of exception?

Don't you think the government has been way too lenient with this? You know I'm not a fan of H.Ch. but if he was in office I'm sure things would've taken a very, very different route. At least he would've faced the situation head on.

Omg. Read this list.

Historically this is even more false. Ida B. Wells explains this well, one of her books is <u>Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases</u>.

Julian assange is not socialist, but he does do a great job when it comes to resources and explaining just how closely Google and other companies are intertwined with the U.S. government.

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

Naomi Klein is a very valuable voice. Reading This Changes Everything fundamentally challenged my understanding at the time that capitalism might somehow solve the climate crisis, and set the groundwork for me to recognize all the problems that are simply impossible to solve in this paradigm due to perverse incentives of profit. The Shock Doctrine was revelatory too. It's wonderful she has a platform and lots of people hear her... I think she's changed a lot of minds.

Well, to best understand Marx you should understand the writers before him. I've started a book club with some friends that includes:

• Prince
• Leviathan
• Second Treatise of Civic Government
• The Wealth of Nations
• On War (Clausewitz)

> everything to do with controlling middle East oil resources. Nothing more, nothing less.

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but "nothing more nothing less" is very misleading. The invasion and subsequent reconstruction of Iraq generated huge amounts of profits in the short term for corporations in the form of contracts to perform that work; all of these corporations are headed up by social parasites who are friends with the politicians responsible or contributed huge amounts to further their political ambitions, or who have a special highly paid place as a "consultant" waiting for any of the political class upon their retirement. (Naomi Klein labelled it "Disaster Capitalism" in her excellent book The Shock Doctrine)

The reason I think it is important to note this is because it is very useful when forming the case against capitalism: after all, left wing governments are never going to eliminate geopolitics and resource wars (outside of some fantastical scenario where every human being on the planet converts to the same form of socialism over night) but reforming or better yet overthrowing capitalism will have the effect of negating wars fought for the short term benefit of the capitalist filth that owns the political class.

&gt;that awkward moment when you lowkey upvote a Tony Blair quote

Y'all should check your sources before blindly upvoting something just because it has Corbyn's face on it.

In the US it is definitely a gendered insult, but in many other English-speaking countries it's not, or its main meaning isn't gendered. In Australia it can even be a term of endearment ("he's a mad ... !" = "he's a cool dude"). I would agree with you that this word for example, even in Australian usage, is used to disparage men by comparing them to women, but the other word we've been discussing wouldn't fall into the same category.

I'm not bothered that posts with the word in it are automatically removed, just to be clear. I just don't think its usage is universally gendered.

>Do Western countries arrest people for writing things in the Internet or heavily employ torture in police departments though? Most of the West is falling into far right shit too, but Russian situation is pretty grim.

Yes.

I'll use my country as an example (UK)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35888748

Here's the UK police inflitrating green activist groups. One of them was inside one of the groups for so long he impregnated one of the activists who later went on to say she "felt raped by the state".

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists

Western news is a lovely echo chamber but lets be honest everything Russia does the west does too. Russia is just less subtle and artistic about it's propaganda, surveillance and killing it's citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights#Marxist_Critique_of_Human_Rights

Nobody has a "right" to anything. In capitalist society, these basic legal protections exist only on paper so long as they advance the interests of capitalists, who are free to ignore or repudiate them sans consequence(s) as they see fit. That's why we see liberals like Thomas Jefferson agitate for individual liberty while owning slaves.

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -Anatole France

If you'd like to read up on it, check out Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

http://www.worldcat.org/title/marxs-concept-of-the-alternative-to-capitalism/oclc/808367110&amp;referer=brief_results

Here's an interview with the author:

http://ritualmag.com/interview-with-peter-hudis/

Well it's the German legacy. I am German as well so I think it's not too rude if I say so: but I think that fascism is something that is rooted in the German people. Not all of them but most of them. Like the "normal" status is "fascism isn't too bad" whilst only those become antifascist who actively study history and politics. If you look in post WW2 German history you'll see that many former nazis had high posts as politicians. For example: Walter Scheel, Federal President of the 70s of Germany. He was an active member in the NSDAP (nazi party). He still was very nationalistic when he was the Federal President.

The only person spreading malicious lies is you.

https://raddle.me/f/Anarchism/83253/were-the-makhnovists-anti-semitic-and-pogromists

Not to mention the creepy atrocity denial towards the end of your tirade.

I published a zine at my school calling for an immediate freeze on tuition and the establishment of a student union. It's gotten some traction with the faculty and is creating a dialogue about student power at the school.

Here's a link to the zine if you're interested.

I'm a (nearly) 24 year-old trans guy from the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. I began to identify as a socialist after reading the first two chapters of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in my first-year university English class. Despite that conversion occurring nearly three years ago, I'm still struggling to identify where my beliefs fall on the spectrum of socialist tendencies and at this point I refrain from labeling myself as anything other than a revolutionary Marxist. I do not currently belong to any political party or organization, though I have been attempting to get into contact with the Vancouver branch of Socialist Alternative Canada (to no avail; they appear to be mostly inactive/very disorganised).

/r/socialism has been more-or-less my only outlet for reading and debating current events through a socialist lens, and despite the fact I haven't been very active in discussions, I've read this subreddit daily for years. I'd like to get more involved here, thus this post. I look forward to engaging in more discussions here in the near future.

I would like to preface: I have experience with death and tragedy that you might not. I am acutely aware of the sadness of a human passing into the void. I love all humanity, in the abstract, or after the fact. If I'm dead and I meet milton friedman in the cosmic after-party lounge, being dead I will have no more stake in the world, and hence we'll be able to laugh with one another. Ah, life. What a grand show! What a spectacle! The greatest story ever told! Well done old adversary!

But seeing as I'm currently alive and able to see the destructive effects of his ideology, I can take no such stance.

The fact is, he made an awful use of his life. You are probably familiar with the famous ford pinto question, video of which exists, showing that he will go to any length of sophistry to justify an obvious failing of the profit motive. Then there is the "free to choose" propaganda series in which he is an apologist for exploitation of labour, poor working conditions, and in the first episode provides an economic origin story of the united states that celebrates the brave settlers fanning out over (in his words!) an empty continent. Then there's the great book The Shock Doctrine, a scathing analysis of his "free market" ideas put into practice at the end of a rifle barrel, or immediately after a disaster.

Yes, I am celebrating his status as no longer living, no longer able to do any more damage. I'm completely forthright about this.

...and as for the original question of my submission, I'm making a nice breakfast and coffee and reading some Capital. Unfortunately I still have some coffee left over since I realized how much exploitation is bound up in its production, and I am rationing my shares, partly so as to avoid a withdrawal scenario, HA!

This is a great question. I essentially had the same quest as you, though spread over many years.

I would suggest starting with The Meaning of Marxism by Paul D'Amato. It is a wonderfully concise book yet still goes into a fair bit of depth. It will allow you to discourse with both Marxists and laypersons on marxism.

Another fantastic contemporary (and also concise, yet dense) book would be Zizek's First as Tragedy, Then As Farce. He's not an orthodox marxist but he's distinctly modern and also a riot to read.

If you want to defuse the awful libertarian/neoliberal/Rand/Hayak capitalist arguments that your friends are proffering, you might want to try reading a book like The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Has plenty of examples of the horrors of neoliberalism. As does A People's History of the United States, another classic, and jaw-dropping for most Americans.

I would also suggest checking out the 20-minute lecture (on Youtube) that David Harvey gave entitled "Crises of Capitalism," for a contemporary take on things. Also, if you want to talk regulation, the film "Inside Job" is quite good.

For your friends, you probably couldn't get them to slog through an entire nonfiction book like Shock Doctrine due to (their) cognitive dissonance. However, fiction can be quite if not more powerful (it's certainly helpful for moving people to libertarianism, as The Fountainhead shows). I am of the opinion that everyone should read The Grapes of Wrath at some point. It explains better than many marxist pamphlets why unions exist and what the role of the state can and/or should be. Another novel that isn't explicitly marxist, yet many enjoy, is Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach.

I'd be interested in hearing more about your mission and how it goes. Feel free to message me through reddit if you'd like to talk more Marxist media, and I'd also be happy to give you my email.

Wow, takes a lot of courage to put a show like that together in rural Pennsylvania. Hell of a lot of evangelicals out there. Really proud of those kids.

Source: I am from South Jersey

This was just a report from one newspaper, (more than a year ago at that) which is definitely not an authority on the issue. The German Government refuted the claims made here and no other evidence of this "backdoor" has ever been brought up, as far as I know.

This may be a cointelop: >Take Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, who spent many years of his career working for the Koch political network, first as an assistant at the Koch-led group Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1997 and from 2008 through earlier this year as a senior staff member to the Koch’s primary grassroots group, Americans for Prosperity. Over the last seven years, Lewandowski helped the Koch network organize Tea Party events and get-out-the-vote efforts for Republican candidates for office.

>Alan Cobb, a strategic consultant for Trump, is the former director of Kansas public affairs for Koch Industries and also worked for years as a vice president at Americans for Prosperity.

>Trump is being counseled by lawyer Donald F. McGahn, the former Federal Election Commission chair who just months ago represented the Koch political network during hearings with the FEC. McGahn is listed as affiliated with Freedom Partners Action Fund, the Super PAC set up by the Koch brothers and their lobbyists.

>In New Hampshire, Trump’s state director is Matt Ciepielowski, the former New Hampshire state field director for Americans for Prosperity. As National Journal reported, as Trump works to develop a team to win the New Hampshire primary, he has hired multiple AFP staff, and even leased a campaign headquarters in the same office building as AFP’s office in Manchester.

Source

Your giving jobs a lot of credit for things he simply managed to package into something he could market effectively.

Like you say the discovery of the mouse + gui combo is attributed to Xerox but you can see early examples being used by the creator of the mouse here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs, which itself builds on the man-machine interface theories from the 50s at RAND.

Maybe in the early days he was on the cutting edge but for decades now he has been all about locking down his machines so you can't do anything outside of his design ideas.

People are even using https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ to generate real-looking faces and send them in attached to tips to make it harder to filter out real and false reports! Don't do that either!

>I just wanted to ask if the U.S.--prior to 2008--had deregulated the financial sector

Yes, several big laws from the era of the Great Depression expired and weren't renewed, or were just repealed, within the decade before the 2008 crash.

It's true that the crash can't be 100% put on the 'free market' alone, because we don't live in a free market system, and arguably the Federal Reserve's low interest rates were partially responsible for creating the bubble.

Doesn't really stop it from being a failure of capitalism. The state protecting the interests of capitalists is a fundamental aspect of capitalism and as long as there is capitalism, there will be a capitalist state. Socialism distinguishes itself from typical liberal politics by recognising the dichotomy between the state and capitalism as a false one.

it is supposed to be a month+ long occupation, a la Madrid and other cities in Spain, Tahrir. from the facebook page made by adbusters:

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

Alright you redeemers, rebels, radicals and utopian dreamers out there,

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people. — Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat our one simple demand until Barack Obama capitulates.

For fun I googled Professor Watkins and found his rate my professors page. This is in one of the reviews:

> He is only nice when you are agreeing with him. If someone tries something new and he disagrees he will belittle the individual and treatment them poorly. He lacks the ability to treat situations correctly and needs to learn more people skills.

Sounds like a Peterson fan to me!

Is your question about after a revolution?

I don't have time to write a full response. But you might find this interesting.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/digital-labour-and-karl-marx/oclc/843785416

Here's an outline of the book.

http://fuchs.uti.at/books/digital-labour-and-karl-marx/

fuckyeahmarxismleninism

revolutionaryeye

fuckyeahdialectics

thedemsocialist

Anyone posting in the Black Lives Matter tag is worth a look.

And check out the socialism tag.

I have no idea how you're arriving at the idea that the lack of sexuality means you can be either heterosexual or homosexual. It's very explicitly not hetero. If you want to learn about the violence asexuals face, this is a good start.

If this is about "knowing your enemy" then this is what I consider to be a serious attempt at romanticising and defending capitalism. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman.

A lot of the discussion is finance and investment analysis. Which I guess is economics. Not really what a lot of socialists are interested in or study though. I've done a bit of global finance research and it's tough reading but worth it to be honest. "Your Money or Your Life" by Eric Toussaint. Highly recommended.

>I think the only leftist gateway drug is going to be a terrible economy.

Fascism also becomes viable in people's eyes during times of crisis. And because strong propaganda and effective usage of force are characteristic of fascism, I'm sure public viability of fascism would be greatly increased due to our occupation of the Information Age. And no, it didn't work in the 'late 19th/early 20th century'. The 'great revolutions' were subverted by elites, the egalitarian experiments were crushed, and what remained were temporary reformist measures. Another crisis would likely lead to massive social chaos that could either go the way of techno-fascism or the return of people-pleasing reformism. Cultural disruption and the introduction of radical ideas, while at risk of recuperation, pose a greater possibility for social change than praying for collapse.

And I'd argue against the idea that a terrible economy fuels leftism. That's what leftists said after 2008: capitalism is in crisis! No, it's not. Economic dysfunction is beneficial to capitalist institutions, they crave disaster. Slavoj Zizek made a point of this when he quite eloquently stated that 2008 is not leading to capitalism's demise, but rather, a 'meaner and leaner' capitalism will come as a result. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine explores this point quite well. If we pair that with the Zizekian-Postman-D.F. Wallace notion of an 'age of intensifying pleasure', I wouldn't say it's unreasonable to assume that praying for a 'terrible economy' will allow for the expansion of techno-bureaucratic pleasure, economic dysfunction, and ecological catastrophe to the point that it's too late.

Actually, there is little difference.

What is the difference between a king and a CEO? The only difference is that the king -in non-constitutional monarchies- is allowed to put his subjects to death, and subjects aren't allowed to leave him for a better king. (In certain laissez-faire situations, the same can be true of the CEO.)

What is the difference between a nation and a corporation? Not much, really. Both are unjust power structures. The Art of War quote is more than adequate - not because capitalism is as noble as feudalism, but because feudalism is just as horrid and ignoble as capitalism. (It's actually worse, too.)

Socialists should be careful not to romanticize older forms of exploitation. Being an employee is bad, but being a peasant is worse. Wage slavery is bad, but regular slavery is a lot worse.

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is still the most important book written in the last decade. If you haven't read it, do so.

Well that is exactly why I suggested it ;) The OP is obviously just starting so Kapital might be a little too intense. The manifesto will introduce the OP to the basic vernacular. The Wealth of Nations is also a very good one!

I use the app feedly and subscribe to a wide variety of sources I have categorized.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devhd.feedly

Jacobin, Socialist Worker, In These Times, LibCom, World Socialists Web Site, The Intercept.

I also have a few other progressive-liberal sources too, and in other categories I have a slew of more mainstream news, and then finally a category for conservative news sites that aren't absolute shit. I find it's important to know what the other sides are saying.

That being said, I need to add some more sources to it.

Definitely.

Anyone interested in the history of Socialism in St Louis should check out the transcripts from the House Un-American Activities Hearings in STL on the Internet archive.

https://archive.org/details/investigationofc5604unit

Really makes you realize how a long history has been repressed by those in power, but its time for St Louis and the United States in general to reconnect with its socialist past.

Definition of McCarthyism:

> a mid-20th century political attitude characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges; broadly : defamation of character or reputation through such tactics

You're making this too easy! Troll harder.

This is extremely useful activism. So useful it undoubtedly deserves its own subreddit.

I know it it easy to dismiss "internet activism" as useless, but what has made it usually useless is that it has been liberal activism ("oh please Mr. Ruling Class, accept our online petition to be nicer to the environment"). Activism that begs the ruling class to behave better is always a waste of time no matter what form it takes.

One thing I want to add here is, given the potential dangers of our circumstances, Americans should consider downloading i2p (https://geti2p.net/en/) and TOR (https://www.torproject.org/). You can use i2p to get an anonymous e-mail account, and TOR to make your internet activities untraceable. Even if you don't need those apps now, you may need them in the future.