ChicagoCommunist [none/use name]

Obfuscation of class, cultural hegemony, is necessary for capitalism to persist.

At the same time, false consciousness is not the primary thing keeping well-off workers in the imperial core and periphery from revolting. They may buy into whatever delusions to avoid feeling guilt for their position, but when it comes down to it they benefit from imperialism. If given a choice between their humanity and their privileged position, they’ll happily abandon their humanity.

For the rest of workers, developing class consciousness is important, but more important (or maybe part of the same process) is presenting an organized alternative to the bourgeois state. People may agree or disagree with whatever ideals, but they’ll support the entity materially benefiting them.

The government tried to take away our houses, failed to provide food and medicine and education, abandoned us during the increasingly devastating environmental disasters. But this party calling themselves the Workers Front came in with aid and services. I don’t know much about politics but they have my support.

The manufactured false consciousness for the lower working classes is well-funded and omnipresent, but it’s ethereal, smoke and mirrors. A video of prosperity repeated 24/7 is not equivalent to real food on a real table. If the bottom falls out on material flows, the illusion breaks (and the bourgeois state has to increasingly turn to violence to enforce its power).

Only a small percentage of people are and will ever be political and ideologically disciplined. Others will get thrust into political action by their material circumstances, and it’s the role of a party to help them organize and realize their power.

Based

But also didn’t most sites used to have an “over 13” check? Think I remember having to lie about that for gmail and Yahoo answers and the like

Lol I figure if I have them nearby I’m more likely to read them eventually. Which is true, but “eventually” is doing a lot of work.

I’ve started most of them fwiw, but only finished like 20%.

Nice to have on-hand to reference tho, especially as search engines continue to decline.

Ooh thanks for the share! I have his super imperialism but also haven’t read it yet. I’ll check these links out

Off the top of my head:

Eric Hobsbawm was a Marxist historian who wrote the Age of series. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789 - 1848 isn’t quite pre-capitalist but might be of interest to you. I have yet to read it even though the series is on my shelf, so I can’t vouch for it.

Caliban and the Witch was already recommended and is a good read.

The Dawn of Everything isn’t strictly materialist but is a good read, mostly focusing on pre-history and non-european cultures. Also Debt by one of the same authors.

Gerald Horne is a prolific writer, known for The Counter-Revolution of 1776. Looks like most of his work is also early capitalism forward, but what I’ve read and heard from him is good.

The Bourgeois Revolution in France 1789-1815 is a good class analysis, pretty interesting.

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent might also partially fit in the timeframe you’re looking for.

I’d be very interested in anything 0 -1500 AD because it looks like my library is lacking there.

In a sort of similar vein to the above comrade’s comment, you may enjoy these quotes:

From Disco Elysium:

The Deserter - “The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone – everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed.”

“And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death… the sweetest, most courageous people in the world.” He’s silent for a second “You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know.”

YOU - “What?”

The Deserter - “That the bourgeois are not human.”

From Carlo Cafiero’s summary of Capital:

So the daydreaming worker arrived at home; and there, dined, went to bed, and slept deeply, dreaming of the disappearance of bosses and the creation of government workshops.

Sleep, poor friend, sleep in peace, while hope still rests within you. Sleep in peace, for the disappointing day will soon come. Soon you will learn how your boss can sell their goods for profit, without defrauding anyone. He will make you see how one becomes a capitalist, and a large capitalist, while remaining perfectly honest.

Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.

Half of Fortune 500 corporations and the US MIC

A pet can be a good bridge out of that cycle. Otherwise it takes a bit of a leap of faith (still doable but difficult).

The fact that you’ve identified the cycle is very good, though. A lot of people never realize that self-pity is contributing to their loneliness.

To be fair, it’s slightly more nuanced than I stated lol. But still incorrect.

Pretty much everything in The Dawn of Everything tbh. The diversity of social organization going back thousands of years, regardless of means of subsistence. The range of conceptions of property, ethics, hierarchy, power, rights, etc.

Particularly interesting in American societies pre-colonization, since it seems the implicit image of them in the popular consciousness is a homogeneous series of small, isolated tribes, consisting of either noble savages or primitive barbarians, entirely ignorant of agriculture. When in reality a good many of them practiced agriculture in various ways, some of which colonizers simply didn’t notice because they weren’t as invasive as European methods.

Also that agriculture isn’t necessary for the development of complex, large social structures, nor does the advent of agriculture necessitate the development of rigid hierarchies and exploitation.

Turns out the agricultural revolution and its consequences weren’t a disaster for the human race. Sorry David Quinn.

Stagism is an introductory model and thus reductive. It’s not a very precise descriptor/predictor for the real world.

The real world is an infinitely complex network of spectrums and intensities and flows. The categories we invent are useful to understand and discuss aspects of it, but they don’t exist in and of themselves.

That being said (and I’m pretty sure other comments have probably already explained this better but I can’t see other comments on my app while commenting myself) Marx’s categories and stages were never intended to be strictly delineated and distinct from each other. Dialectics as a science is all about constant change, the shifting of tensions, and a dialectical understanding of history will see social change as a continuous process rather than an instantaneous and spontaneous rupture into a new epoch.

“Early stage socialism” might be a useful category to describe these AES states that are majoritively run for proletarian interests rather than bourgeois ones, but still contain many of the internal contradictions of capitalism (and are forced to exist within the largest contradiction of global imperialism). These contradictions don’t blip out of existence when a revolution happens, there’s no communism button that the workers parties are simply too corrupt or stupid to push. They have to be guided and developed towards a larger socialist goal.

If you have good Internet then GeForce Now or maybe another game streaming service may be adequate for outlier games. I play a bunch of older games decently on my T450 with no graphics card, but if a modern game pops up I can still stream it. That way I don’t have to spend another few hundred bucks on a better laptop just for the occasional game.

Construction workers: I consent

Regular people wanting to not be homeless: I consent

Banks, landlords, real estate agents, investors, governments: isn’t there somebody you forgot to ask???

Human civilization is a lot longer than history and a lot more complex than specific normative behaviors blipping into existence at some defined point in time. Check out The Dawn of Everything for a recent anthropological perspective.

Various cultures approach gender and sex (and thus sexuality) differently. Homophobia as we understand it can’t exist universally because sexuality as a static individual trait isn’t a universal conception. Though that doesn’t mean there aren’t other norms and deviations and whatnot.

Caliban and the Witch is adjacent to this topic and discusses how sex and gender norms developed out of middle age Europe.

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