I decided to not be bitter and i followed a liberal influencer for like a week (they dont make political content usually) but today they posted that BULLSHIT about how trump is causing wars as a cover for the files and i had to unfollow. nobody is starting wars over that, theyre starting wars for capital and resources.
what the fuck is a ”eipstein class”? just those guys on the files? are the billionaires who refused or were not invited alright with you?
and of course the religious zealots doing the bit about how eipstein was satan incarnate while churning out money for their pastor to buy a new mansion.
the prolecattleiat is not being elevated to sapience by this situation alone. people have to read theory which is why i encourage them to do so. libs, anarchists and conservatives have the balls to talk about how mao, stalin and other leaders were also pedophiles or ray peests so communism is not worth it either so we just need a matriarchy as if a capitalist system would be fine if women were in charge.
An example as a general response to the comments on this thread about apparent concerns about me conflafing white settler nation and imperial core nations with labour aristocracy because of relative internal domestic poverty…
After Brown Vs Board, it got worse for black folks immediately after. White civil society en masse took to further discrimination, lynching and torture against the black population. There was a decrease in black teachers (for example). So what exactly happened here? Integration was a top down initiative from the state, not becauae of a black + white worker collaboration against the capitalist state, but why? Because the state was worried about marxism spreading like wildfire both domestiy and internationally citing US capitalist segregation (including how it dirrctly inspired Nazis). As a concession for this, civil rights groups like the NAACP had to purge communists from their ranks and institutions like HCBUs had to purge them too and many black only shchools lost their licenses to practice too.
When the Obamas of the 21 century point to the progressive nature of the US State - they have realworld examples of the above to point to. The USAmerican state at times had been more progressive than White civil society, which means the institution racism is at service to the white settler nation, not juat the richest few. This should not be a surprise to marxists, because we should know the state exists to protect a class, the question is which class and in this it is the settler nation and the segregation of old was now formenting real revolutionary black movements wielding the science of marxism - an actual threat to capital.
It is partly fucking why when the epstein files were revealed there was no real mass revolt because (1) not a threat to the settler nation (2) this was already well known happening to folks who were not part of the settler nation. It’a like being aghast at ICE killing white folks, when that shit was happening to black folks everyday.
Why would the Epstein shit cause class consciousness? Things like him are gonna lead people to resort to conspiracies rather than material analysis for causes.
the prolecattleiat is not being elevated to sapience
“Look at how connected I am to the people!”
The phrase “Epstein class” is a step closer to class consciousness, not a step away from it. If you tell people there’s a bipartisan class of people who are above the law and so wealthy/connected that they control many of the biggest levers of power, they will now know what you’re talking about and largely agree. That’s a huge break from the standard drivel about “we have an imperfect democracy but it’s broadly controlled by the people.”
Well, I know what you mean when you say you’re irritated with how people use Epstein Class. (Westoids acting like they can’t figure out why they’re bombing kids & attributing everything to corruption) I think that it has some utility in describing the cross-class alliance we see in the emails, though. Not everyone involved is international bourgeoisie. You have a lot of labor aristocrats and petty boug in these research departments. Lumpenized American communities are used as a source of flesh. There is complicity across society, a quiet acceptance of the lawless exploitation inherent to treating one’s family as part of the property serving as your gateway to retirement treats in exchange for being part of the Epsteins’ (Blackrock et al) vast equity pool
trump was right tbh, he could whack a dude in the middle of madison square garden and he would still win an election.
I do want to point out that Iran also uses the term Epstein class. Not that that’s right but just that people here seemed supportive of the term at the time
It’s fine and useful when non-westerners use it. When westerners use it begs the question why the lack of mass revolt; clearly complicty includes the civil society.
The Epstein class is just a class so wealthy, they get buy with anything, destroying humans, planets, petty bourgeoisie, economies, governments, while the bourgeoisie and lesser income people may or not, depending on luck, who they know, etc. Epstein class is entirely bipartisan.
What’s unfortunate is that the term [“Epstein class”] will lose its punch over time as people forget this moment. Also that many see this as an anomaly rather than what it really is: a rare peek behind the curtain of how the sausage has always been made.
Actual Epstein class = the approx 1 billion westerners who exploit the other 7 billion of the world
Nah, this is a weird statement. Implying 1 billion people from a specific region(s) are pedophiles is ridiculous. Whether one sees the term as useful or not, the Epstein class thing has a specific meaning to do with the western capitalist class being proven to take part in organized pedophilia/trafficking.
I get there’s the whole labor aristocracy designation and all, imperialist relations matter, but that isn’t even close to the same thing as what Epstein class is referring to. Most people in the west are far closer in wealth and power to their global south working class counterparts than they ever will be to being a millionaire or billionaire. It’s just the spoils of empire, along with various other ploys, try to bribe them into viewing the system as legitimate.
Third Worldist Maoists when a poverty-stricken, trailer-park, white family in West Virginia; Section-8 Black family in Baltimore; and a rural Hispanic family in Mississippi are virtually indistinguishable from third world populations in terms of material conditions, power, and wealth. Not to mention those groups make up over HALF the US population.
People see one labour aristocrat tech-bro on Reddit and throw in the towel.
But the US sits in a different position in a globalised economy. The poor in the US are still consumers of resources from the Global South. In terms of the Earth’s production, it’s a big funnel and the Global South consumes a tiny amount relative to the West. Even those in poverty in the US consume a lot more based on metrics like electricity use, fuel, steel, fertilizer, clothing etc.
There’s a big imbalance there regardless of the internal inequalities of the US.
Crudely:
- $12-$14 per hour = global gdp per capita ($110T global gdp, mean 2000 work hours per year, 50% of 8 bill population as workers contributing to that gdp)
- less than that the planet net exploits you
- mean global wage is something like $7/hr/per worker
- if you make above the above threshold of $14/hr on net your wage is subsidised by imperialist profits
Material conditions (think relations rather than stresses) influence one’s worldview, even with relative poverty. It’s why reactionary politics still exist within a settler nation (think peoples rather than borders).
I agree, however a relatively tiny percentage of the US population consumes a disproportionate amount of resources, with a small spattering of concessions given to an almost equally tiny labour-aristocratic vanguard. The working class enjoys little to nothing of the imperial spoils, at least not much that they can buy without going into debt peonage with a credit card. However that imbalance is the result of systemic capitalist extraction and superprofit, which must be dealt with by a changing of the base. Something that is not possible without revolution, which is why I was also referring more to the necessity of building an intersectional class consciousness among the lowest echelons of US society, as hundreds of millions are internally subjugated and used as fuel for the capitalist machine.
Third Worldist Maoists when a poverty-stricken, trailer-park, white family in West Virginia; Section-8 Black family in Baltimore; and a rural Hispanic family in Mississippi are virtually indistinguishable from third world populations in terms of material conditions, power, and wealth. Not to mention those groups make up over HALF the US population.
People see one labour aristocrat tech-bro on Reddit and throw in the towel.
Name your communist movement that has convinced the three aformentioned groups to your cause. Or are they props for your settler apologism.
Maybe, just maybe, consider there are oppressed nations of people within nations and not lump the Gazans with Israelis in an attempt to appeal to Israeli proleteriat.
Marxism-leninsim is a science. If black prisoner maoists have a more correct line than you then maybe learn from them.
Creating a straw man of an argument using the genocide of the Gazan population is quite disgusting. The societal conditions of the United States are vastly different to those of Isntreal, and permit for a intersectional solidarity.
Name your communist movement that has convinced the three aformentioned groups to your cause. Or are they props for your settler apologism.
The Rainbow Coalition. If the vision of intersectional class unity was realized before, and it can be done again. That is the entire point of building class consciousness.
Currently? The PSL. During my travels across the US and my work with various PSL chapters, I can say each chapter was comprised of the most diverse group of individuals that came from a litany of backgrounds. The communities the chapters were embedded in also saw marked increases of inter-solidarity and class action; as scores of people, again from all walks of life, showed up for rent protests to forcibly protect peoples homes; food drives to feed the destitute; and mobile medical clinics where “labor-aristocratic” doctors would work for no personal benefits to help those abandoned by society. Then, those very same people seemed much more agreeable to joining book studies and learning about ML thought. Strange.
It’s almost like race is a capitalist construct and class is the true unifier once a class consciousness is built. Who would have thought.
EDIT:
Marxism-leninsim is a science. If black prisoner maoists have a more correct line than you then maybe learn from them.
This line was added as part of an edit well after the fact, however I feel this line is quite telling. Declaring yourself the supreme authority from which all have to learn is incredibly pretentious, especially when you present an utterly nonsensical idea.
The PSL
What’s their answer to the question of the labour aristocracy and settlerism?
Rainbow Coalition
Failed. Why?
intersectional class unity
Consider intersectionalism is not marxist. Eg trans emancipation is not add on-to fighting imperialism it is intrisic to fully understanding how capital works
It’s almost like race is a capitalist construct and class is the true unifier once a class consciousness is built.
There are more than enough “anti-capitalists” who evoke such sentiments without being marxist-leninist. That sentiment without the science is what leads to “pro-palestinian” westerners saying gazan proleteriat should unite with Israeli proleteriat against the “elite”. (To which the correct response to that is: no you racist fuckhead the israeli jewish proleteriat is part of that elite)
Rainbow Coalition Failed. Why?
COINTELPRO and direct federal repression and assassination of key members. Understanding the governmental response to the Rainbow Coalition is vital for any contemporary movement. That’s the entire purpose of socialist experiments. Though using your logic, the Soviet Union failed, so socialists should never again set up a socialist state. A completely nonsensical logic.
intersectional class unity Consider intersectionalism is not marxist. Eg trans emancipation is not add on-to fighting imperialism it is intrisic to fully understanding how capital works
I genuinely have no clue what this sentence is trying to say. From what I can understand, saying that intersectionality is not Marxist is so bizarrely incorrect that all I can say is that you are deeply unserious.
There are more than enough “anti-capitalists” who evoke such sentiments without being marxist-leninist. That sentiment without the science is what leads to “pro-palestinian” westerners saying gazan proleteriat should unite with Israeli proleteriat against the “elite”. (To which the correct response to that is: no you racist fuckhead the israeli jewish proleteriat is part of that elite)
You are fighting a complete strawman here and conflating the material conditions and societal realities of two vastly different situations.
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Consider the autodynamism of dialectical materialism and how the CPC learned from the Soviet’s mistakes. The wolves have teeth are a given, we have to learn how to defend against them from previous mistakes.
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on intersectionalism: it was deliberately developed in bourgoise acadaemia to evade how marxism is emancipatory for “minorities”
You are fighting a complete strawman here and conflating the material conditions and societal realities of two vastly different situations.
Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide is entirley western in its charecteristics; the false division imagined between “Israeli’ and US"American” is the gap you are afraid to close.
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Who is more revolutionary: the Chinese billionaire defending the CPC or the white trailer parker family who supported Trump/Biden?
The sex traffic rings are not extraneous of systems of power of capital, they are intrinsic to them. There was no mass revolt when the Epstein files were released but there are thousands of pogroms and attacks on minorities in the name of protecting white women against the Foreign Hordes. The complicity is not subtle. The scapegoating of elites against rest of westerners is to downplay then actual bribes of imperialist profits at play. It is why all your more visible communist parties will not really touch the question on labour aristocracy or settlerism.
Marxism-leninism is to truly recognise the classes we belong to as they are so we can then betray our classes successfully where appropriate. In the imperial cores it may mean we forgo collaboration with those who benefit more from their impetialist state than we can materially offer them and organise with those who don’t - the lumpen proletriat, migrant workers and oppressed nations within nations.
Who is more revolutionary: the Chinese billionaire defending the CPC or the white trailer parker family who supported Trump/Biden?
Chinese billionaires aren’t there to defend the CPC lol, what in the world. The CPC continues to succeed because political power is not in the hands of its billionaires, or any other billionaires. Billionaires would not be trustworthy to defend it, given they have fundamentally different class interests.
the white trailer parker family who supported Trump/Biden?
This is an overly vague characterization. Are we talking about somebody whose family members murder brown people overseas? Or somebody who filled out a ballot at election time? Because we as communists are supposed to recognize that bougie elections are largely farcical. Blaming the voting masses for a rigged electoral system is not a serious analysis.
There was no mass revolt when the Epstein files were released
Yeah, because revolution isn’t a spontaneous mass action. I feel confident that you should know this from what I can recall of your posts in the past, so why are you talking like something else is true. BTW, the last time the US had major spontaneous mass action (the 2020 protests) was in response to racist police brutality and they got chemical weapons used against them (tear gas), they got beaten, some organizers were murdered. People always leave out this part when they want to lazily characterize the entire west as an inert mass of horribleness.
but there are thousands of pogroms and attacks on minorities in the name of protecting white women against the Foreign Hordes.
And in Ireland, some people are fighting back: https://thespectaclemag.substack.com/p/foreign-invaders-are-destroying-irelandand
But sure, let’s ignore everyone who has ever sacrificed to try to fight the beast from within and lump them all into the same exact group. Again, this is not serious analysis.
The scapegoating of elites against rest of westerners is to downplay then actual bribes of imperialist profits at play.
It’s not scapegoating??? It is a world of class and power difference. Getting paid slightly more or having slightly better living conditions is not the same as bombing civilians in order to try to create a failed state so that imperial power can be maintained and expanded.
It is why all your more visible communist parties will not really touch the question on labour aristocracy or settlerism.
Last I knew, PSL does at least acknowledge the settler issue being a thing. That said, I have never claimed the west does super well on the settler issue, but it’s beside the point of what we’re talking about. You were misusing a term that has a specific material meaning to make it mean something else that doesn’t make any sense. And now you are doubling down in a way that comes off like you are defending billionaires. I think you need to take a step back.
If you want to say the west is not cleanly divided into elite and victim, that’s fine, you can make that point. But don’t go down this road that implies billionaires can have more revolutionary potential than somebody living in a trailer park because of their geography. I don’t know what that is, but it has nothing to do with dialectical materialism or communism.
It’s noteworthy that Ireland was once colonized, and the Irish who today are helping immigrants are doing so out of solidarity based on being a victim of british colonisation. Concerning America, an analogous phenomenon could be black and indigenous solidarity fighting against settlers, or to be more accurate, fighting settlers who are explicitly racist and dangerous.
Yes, that is a helpful thing to note and it’s part of the reason why the conditions of the US are far more complicated than “white people being privileged and bad”.
I would recommend H. W. Edward’s Labor Aristocracy, Mass Base of Social Democracy. And then (re) read Day’s essay on brainwashing (masses, elites and rebels) from Redsails thereafter.
You’re part of a class on the global stage. Truly understand its material conditions and learn how you are going to betray it.
Best of luck
You are not preaching about labor aristocracy in this thread. You are taking it to some other level where billionaires are revolutionary because they’re Chinese and people living in a trailer park in the US are villains because they voted for a US president. This is not an understanding of class on the global stage. It is a reductionist view of material conditions and contradictions that collapses the worldview into oversimplified nodes instead of broadening in order to be able to work through specific contradictions.
Consider reading it, and you may develop a different view.
Chareterisations of villains and heroes are besides the point. It is about understanding the science of who may be revolutionary domestically so we can spend most of our limited resources on them. This means carefully, and maybe painfully for some, understanding what it means to be a settler and bourgoisie proleteriat. It is step away from a simplistic dynamism of rich vs poor otherwise end up resulting in the same mistakes of those who Marx and Lenin criticised (eg Proudhon).
I found Cesaire snd Losurdo’s works useful too. Eg https://redsails.org/discours-sur-le-colonialisme/
You literally asked this before like it was a serious question:
Who is more revolutionary: the Chinese billionaire defending the CPC or the white trailer parker family who supported Trump/Biden?
And have not addressed the problems with it at all. Going beyond “simple dynamism of rich and poor” does not mean defending the rich and characterizing them as more revolutionary than somebody living in a trailer park because they live in a non-settler country.
It is about understanding the science of who may be revolutionary domestically so we can spend most of our limited resources on them.
But that’s not what you’ve been talking about.
You didn’t say, “Here is where you should focus your energies domestically.” You compared Chinese billionaire and white Yankee in a trailer park.
Don’t say one thing, act like you’re saying another, and then throw reading material at me when I don’t agree, as if this will clarify.
BTW, I have read the redsails article on brainwashing before, probably multiple times by now. And it is incredibly overrated as an analysis. Here’s a part that stands out to me:
In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits.
As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.
But am I not just worsening the problem, aggravating our hopelessness, by criticizing the critics in a way that suggests that no one escapes ideological self-flattery? I don’t think so. Paradoxically, it brings us all back to a more even and possibility-rich playing field.
The author almost realizes their own mistake, but then skips on by it and says nah, I’m not making that mistake. But they are. They are being incredibly reductionist in relation to hundreds of millions of people. They go on to double down on the reductionist rhetoric even more:
Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda — organs of coercion and consent. [6] We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.
This is a nonsense argument. First, via no evidenced investigation, the author supposes that hundreds of millions of people, some of which are non-white peoples with a much more complicated history than this kind of rhetoric gives them any recognition of, share essentially the same point of view. This point of view is something they implicitly know, yet hide from. So now we have shifted from “they are brainwashed and this explains their lack of movement” to implying “they are a hyper intelligent hive mind who knows exactly what’s going on and pretends not to because it feels good to pretend.”
It’s the kind of article that reeks of academic marxism. Of trying to “cudgel one’s brains and develop an idea” without going out and investigating. The author encountered a problem, that sometimes people will reject the evidence you give them that challenges their existing worldview, and extrapolated a massive honker of a speculative generalization out of trying to answer why.
From my personal experience with lumpenproletariat, they will always smile in your face while driving the sword to the hilt and calling you family. There may be an exception but I’m probably the only lumpenproletariat I know who wouldn’t.
The lumpenproletetiat are ones the captial class has excluded fron easy access as a prolteriat. The black prison populafion in the US exists even though it’s a net cost to the state because it benefits the white population from labour competition and therefore preserves wage inflation and their greater cut of imperialist superprofits.
The likes of the PSL (only bringing this one up because of the rampant apologism on LG for this group. You can make the same case for all the other sickle and hammer cosplayers too) does not want to examine this dynamic because a greater share of the support draws from the latter group at the expense of the former. And the reason they have to particpate in electoralism is because there is not anything they can offer materially more to the white settler nation than what the inperialist state offers, and given they are meant to be marxist-leninist ie the material comes before the idea, it then begs the question why have they failed for several years to have any real question on labour aristocracy or settlerism.
The revolutionary groups are cleqrly those that you can offer maferiallly more than the imperialist state, which then will have to include the lumpenproleriat. It is why marxist prison movements are a thing.
Most of the lumpenprole around me traffic drugs, women, weapons, gambling and are heavily intertwined with the legal apparatus, so I’m not seeing them willing to work hard for the rest of their lives in hopes of reaping rewards for their children. Don’t get me wrong, as long as you stay in your lane, they’re not going out of their way to bother you, but plenty of tax free money is hard to beat.
Just from your example you can deduce there are more women lumpenproleteriat than the ones exploiting them. It is not that lumpenprolteriat are intrinsically revolutionary just like bourgoisie proleteriat aren’t intrinsically revolutionary.
traffic drugs, women, weapons, gambling
Capitalist states and the bourgoisie proletriat who work for them are already engaged in this.
Consider maybe that who is a crimimal and who isn’t is by the power dynamics of any given capitalist society ie capitalist class dictats
The trafficked women become complicit to lure more in. It starts with the drugs, or loss of a job, or both. They have to want to be done with all of it, and be done with all of it for a while. Even then, loyalty to the abusers is the last thing to die, especially when it’s your blood family.
Which is exactly why Marx states the Lumpen are a volatile class, while simultaneously being easily swayed by socialist rhetoric. The destitute material conditions make the class ruthless.
