The first political book I read that finally made things click for me was Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism. It’s still my favorite book to this day.

Comrade Shark Fucker said,

“I know a lot of people who travelled through levels of radicalism before ending up where they are now but that hasn’t been my experience. Marxism-Leninism was the first political ideology that made sense to me. It made the world make sense after it seeming so nonsensical for so long.”

This resonates with me and my experience very strongly.

As a child my mom struggled to raise us kids; As a young adult I found it hard to find and keep down a job; I was homeless for 3 years in my early twenties; When I finally got housed, I spent all of my time working at physically punishing jobs and spending my free time trying to recover my body for the next workday. At no point throughout all of this did I ever feel compelled to want to think about politics. Not even a little bit. To me, politics was about complaining and worrying about other peoples’ lives. I had enough shit to complain about and enough worrying to do over my own life. In this way I had always been apolitical. The few times I tried to understand something political being discussed on the news, I could never come to an understanding that seemed to hold up to scrutiny. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I just wasn’t smart enough to understand the political sphere.

Once some time passed and I felt that my life was more stable, and I had the time and energy, I decided I wanted to learn about politics. I in fact remember telling myself, “This year I want to develop my political beliefs.”

Growing up, I had always been distrustful of big businesses and the government. When I was in the 3rd grade, my teacher handed me a Time magazine with the front cover showing a burnt-out tank from the US invasion of Iraq, it was then that I decided I hated the US military for what it was doing. I think it was because of this that every political and philosophical ideology that I ended up trying to understand when I got older made no sense to me at all. Everything was hypocritical and contradicted itself and seemed to just support the very status quo that even 3rd grade me knew was evil. It got to the point where it seemed like it wasn’t even possible to develop a coherent political worldview. I was so frustrated with reading philosophy and about political theory, that I even missed out on scoring with this guy I liked because I told him I hated philosophy and it turns out that philosophy was like his main passion. Oops.

Eventually I stumbled upon Marxism-Leninism, and everything finally clicked. With Historical Materialism, History stopped being an abstract list of disconnected events and finally became something that could be understood as a progression of human interactions that follows laws of societal development. I remember the first time I made a prediction about something geopolitical I saw on the news and seeing my prediction be proven correct a couple weeks later. It was very exciting. Materialist Dialectics, as a scientific understanding of development in both nature and humanity, finally put to words the natural way I thought and viewed reality, even as a kid. The humanist elements of Marxism allowed for me to pour my heart out, grieve deeply, and love fiercely without relying on moralizing to be the basis of my analysis. Marxist economics was the clarity that allowed me to finally understand the exploitation that I and everyone I know was/is suffering under. Understanding the settler contradiction and the concept of the labor aristocracy allowed me to understand why people I loved were behaving and being so awful. Indigenous liberation, black and brown liberation, women’s liberation, trans liberation, queer liberation, it all just made so much sense to support, especially when viewed through a historical materialist lens. And it felt so good to finally be able to understand and explain all the shit reactionary behavior that I saw everywhere from the news to the workplace to the schoolyard.

I went from being completely apolitical and uninterested in politics directly to being a Marxist-Leninist actively organizing and fighting for the liberation and dignity of workers and oppressed peoples. Strange how life turns out.

Shirtless Wizard is the obvious answer but excluding them, The Party Animal would absolutely beat the himbo and the dilf.

Woah, I just read Value, Price, and Profit. I got this one.

In case anyone still gets caught up on the old argument made against the raising of wages or the one more commonly made argument against having a minimum wage: Marx demonstrated that the value of a commodity is determined by labor time, not wages. Instead of raising prices, increases in wages simply cut into the capitalist’s profits. The money that is paid to the worker in the form of a wage and the profits claimed by the capitalist are both derived from the value created by the worker’s labor. So, when one increases, the other must decrease proportionally.

Value, Price and Profit - Marx

Settlers by J. Sakai

Hey cowbee and anyone else who may be reading this.

Whether in this Basic list or the Advanced list, do you think it would be worthwhile to include a work that discusses unequal exchange in the section on Imperialism? If so, any recommendations? Also, if I were to read up on The National Question, what’s a good place in the list for me to read it and any recommendations?

What a good idea. I’d buy a pair

Hard to pick any one specifically because I watch/listen to different ones for different reasons.

For podcasts and YouTube channels I enjoy:

• The Electronic Intifada

• The Red Nation Podcast

• The Black Myths Podcast

• Blowback

• Rev Left Radio

• Proles Pod

• The East Is A Podcast

• Revolutionaryth0t

• International Solidarity Podcast

• Adnan Husain

• Red Pen

• Hakim

• Luna Oi

• Non-Compete

• Second Thought

For the written word I enjoy articles from:

• Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

• Monthly Review

• Tricontinental has an affiliated media page full of anti-imperialist news sources from across latam, Africa, and Asia that I like to dive into on occasion.

Does anyone have any English language sources that cover latam? Preferably Marxist-Leninist but if it’s just genuinely anti-imperialist then that’s fine too. I realized that I’ve heard nothing about what’s going on in Bolivia right now and that’s telling me I need to branch out more.

They just released part two of their essay, “Nonviolence is Violence Too”. It’s very good in case anyone hadn’t checked it out.

Also, Too Black’s "The Black Myths podcast goes so hard. Especially their run of episodes on the klan.

It’s certainly Rye over Sourdough.

This brings the concept of interpretation of opposites to a whole new level

I’m half way through the blowback season on Korea… It’s so intense.

I want nothing but success and prosperity for the Korean people and the oppressed peoples of all nations. Death to the USA

Is it cringe?

I don’t really play video games that much anymore, like at all, but I was thinking about getting this one. Is it mega lib coded? If I’m going to play a game for the first time in forever I want to make sure it’ll at least be worth playing through.

The events of the last two weeks have been the most unintelligible

Yeah, in the last couple of weeks, staying on top of what’s been going on has definitely been difficult. We appreciate the write ups.

Thanks to @rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml and @Malkhodr@lemmygrad.ml too. These mega threads have been one of my main methods of trying to stay on top of news. Thanks for helping us stay informed.

Add me Please

My partner just told me yesterday that they’ve been talking to their coworkers about unionizing and plan on calling in a union rep from a local union to talk to everyone whose interested.

I’m very proud of them. This is the first time they’ve done something like this, and I don’t have any experience with labor organizing. Does anyone have any resources I can share with them?

Let me know your thoughts. The ideas written like this are easier to read.

It’s written well, is legible, and is easy to read. Thanks for doing these write ups o7

I know this is a meme post but I’m going to leave these here for anyone who wants to read up on philosophy, specifically Dialectical-Materialism.

Georges Politzers’ book Elementary Principles of Philosophy

Sean Sayers’ article Materialism, Realism, and the Theory of Reflection

Note on EPoP: When my local group of comrades read EPoP together, many of us found Politzers’ arguments against religion in parts 1 & 2 to be too overly antagonistic to include in the mass community education program we’re developing (even though we agreed with the logic of Politzers’ arguments and his conclusions). Use this information as you see fit.

“i ain’t reading all that”

Whelp, can’t help you with that buddy ¯_(ツ)_/¯

“What is this mind fuckery doublethought where…”

Well, I explain it in the reply I made to you, but you didn’t read it…

“Is it being so afraid of people becoming antisemitic”

No. But if you want me to touch upon antisemitism, I will.

Firstly, it is not my responsibility to center the defense of Jewish people from the antisemitism that results from a fascist, Jewish-Supremacist, and Settler-Colonial project that widely uses the ideology of Islamophobia to justify its genocidal agenda. An agenda and justification that greatly benefits those who fall within the category of Jewishness in much the same way as the US agenda of settler-colonialism, justified by white-supremacy, greatly benefits those who fall within the category of whiteness. In fact, there is much to be said about the relationship between Jewish supremacy and “whiteness” inside Israel’s Settler-Colonial project itself but that is beyond the point of this response. If we are to center anyone it should be the victims of Israel and the victims of US Imperialism. With this said, it is of the upmost importance, as communists and workers, to not fall into the trap of the antisemitic explanation. This is especially the case for explanations of US foreign policy.

In order to understand why there exists an antisemitic explanation that we must not fall into, we must first ask ourselves, “whose interests does it serve to not understand the motivations of US foreign policy?” The answer to this question is of course, the capitalist’s interest.

Statements such as, “Israel is the senior partner of the US,” “The US government is controlled by Israel,” and “The US only joined the war on Iran because of Israel” are incorrect and are not grounded in a material understanding of the world. Furthermore, the logical progression of these statements leads us to the same idealist worldview that is held by the reactionaries who have always blamed a Jewish conspiracy for the crimes of Capitalism.

The antisemitic explanations for US foreign affairs clean the blood from the hands of the capitalist class; obfuscates the role of the capitalist class in government and society, to the extent that the capitalists seem to play no role in US affairs; and scapegoats the crimes of Capitalist-Imperialism onto the backs of a small ethnic minority, independent of their connection to Israel.

The US is motivated by its own interests. We should be able to identify the motivations behind US foreign policy while also understanding how the claim of, “Israeli control of the US,” only serves to obfuscate the role of Capitalist-Imperialism in the exploitation and oppression of workers and the people of this world.

“you’re just going to … fucking empower [antisemitism] by telling people to ignore the obvious”

Not once, have I advocated for people to ignore the influence of Israel on US foreign affairs.

I guess in my head I’ve been thinking about it like the antithesis of, “Revolutionary Action requires Revolutionary Theory.” “Imperialist Action requires Imperialist Theory.” I can see the importance of any ideology that supports the status quo, whether it be an accurate reflection of reality or not, but I would think it be more beneficial to capital to have its higher-ups understand and hold an imperialist theory that’s more reflective of reality. But yeah, I totally get what you mean.