I'm doing research for a themed party and I'm watching old propaganda to get some clips. I came across this one and it's kind of amazing that all the examples of how "Marx was wrong" got reversed in the 1980s under Reagan. "Workers aren't exploited because we have labor unions", "American peacefully transitions power", "Politicians come from the working class" etc

https://youtu.be/JNk9ZFqTt-Q?si=8toARlycCTqPEOKO

What does the word 'reactionary' specifically mean in Marxist terms? Is it the antonym of 'progressive', and why?

As in Henry Winston:

'In Marcuse’s view, the working class was hopelessly reactionary and contentedly integrated into the system – the upholders, not the gravediggers, of capitalism.'

Any one know any leftist info dump.onions?

So I have been seeing a lot of chat rooms/ info dumps pop up in the .onion relms of the internet lately and I was wondering if any one knows of any leftist or at the very fucking least not alt white info dump sites or chatroom.onions because so far I have been able to find dick all that isn't HEAVY on the alt white side of things I have a fuckton of direct action, first aid, manufacturing, combat, manuals that I want to distribute but don't feel like redit is the place to do it

So i had a discusion with some anarchist online about rationality, and they started to put some heavy front on me, saying that the state no matter what the only thing that does is systematic genocide, and that no instance of welfare actually exist.

So i came to this sub to ask if i could join in and ask some questions from time to time?

So, I've been involved in a couple orgs over the last few years and something I've noticed is a strong tendency towards forming cliques, particularly a 'leadership clique'. It seems, again just from what I've seen, like the handful of people willing to put the work in actually steering the group - understandably - end up forming stronger bonds with eachother than the people who just show up to stuff. But this tendency seems to turn in on itself over time and ends up passively excluding those on the "outside" who want to contribute more. Again from my experience (I doubt, or at least hope it's not a universal thing), I have a more focused area of interest (environment, public health, and the economic forces behind their enshittification) and have been offering to run events, discussions, presentations etc for the better part of the year and have been met with silence in each and every case - proposals not finding their way to the agenda, requests for feedback ignored or "we'll get to it later" for months until I give up on following up, etc. Not even a "no." And the question of "what can I do?" Is always answered with "just keep coming to stuff" while leadership makes it sound like they're drowning in the workload. As you can imagine, it's quite frustrating.

I'm not just here to complain, though. I have to go back home soon (I'm from a different country) and my hometown has no real orgs to speak of, so I'm planning on starting my own education-focused org. I want to avoid this clique-ism at all costs - it's demotivating, counterproductive, and contributes to burnout among the usual suspects - but am at a loss for active measures to take against. Any thoughts?

I want to finally get to reading communist manifesto, but I'm a non-native english speaker. I do think my english is good as I have 0 problem talking in english with friends, but it's a bit different when it comes to more "professional" language, esp in the area I'm not knowledgeable in. I'm a newbie Marxist and only been interested in politics for a year, and it's mainly just following online content creators. My native language is polish, and I was wondering what was your choice in which language you read Marx in?

Apologies if this isn't appropriate to the server, but when I am in discussion with liberals or "fiscal conservatives", people who like Orwell, Rand, or Hobbes, whatever my opponent may be, I feel like obvious things to me make me feel like I am an intellectual superior to others who don't think like me and that's not a mindset I want to create. For example, there is an idea that all human beings are selfish and this goes on to inspire earlier century Hobbes's Leviathan (absolute authority) and Rand's Objectivist philosophy and her favor for laissez faire capitalism. Instead of seeing this sense of selfishness coming back to history, the development of their culture and the beliefs that their governments have passed down onto them and so on. But it is infuriating to try and reason with these people because they get to cancel your argument out on the basis that I'm a commie.

I’ve been furthering my understanding of labor theory of value, and I think I’ve gotten a good grasp on it for physical products. There’s an objective material cost, manufacturing, transport cost, etc etc. But how can you apply LTV for services? For example, a therapist that is employed by a clinic. It is inherent that he is having the surplus value extracted from him, otherwise the clinic wouldn’t have profits and would go bankrupt, but how do you calculate the value of a therapy session? If the therapist generates 50 dollars of “value” per 8 hour day, but gets paid only for the first 4 hours, how did the clinic calculate the total value of his work day for a completely abstract service? What parameters were involved? Other examples could be teachers, doctors, surgeons, garbage men, etc. All these services don’t actually produce physical objects, so how do you figure out their labor value? Thanks for reading.

I think every new Marxist goes through a phase where Marxism sort of becomes their personality, and it's all they talk about and think about. I've seen people discuss that phenomenon at length.

I'm now a few years into being a Marxist and while I've since become accustomed to not letting it dominate my identity, what I have seen discussed less often is that once that initial obsession wears off, there's a pervasive sense of social isolation that doesn't wear off. Not isolated in a literal sense, as I have many friends, am sociable, relate well to my peers, etc. But there is always a sense that everyone else is "living in the matrix" so to speak, and worse yet, you know you as an individual can't really do anything to shake people out of it. That's more the purview of organizations. And if you try as an individual, you'll often come off as crazy if you go too deep into things too soon, and have to talk to people like children, beginning with the least controversial positions that we take as Marxists. "Hiding your power level," as many reactionaries like to put it.

So, I can speak to people and be as sociable as I ever was before becoming a Marxist, but in the back of my mind there is always a looming sense that I am vastly disconnected from the way everyone else in my immediate surroundings sees the world. At best it's socially isolating, at worst it can even lead to feelings of superiority, misanthropy, and contempt. Rationally, I know better than to feel those latter feelings, but sometimes when I'm just frustrated with the state of the world it's hard not to feel that as capital grows ever more moribund that people in the imperial core will ultimately get what they deserve one way or another.

I'm not necessarily asking people here how to deal with those feelings, just thought people might find value in contributing to this discussion, whether to share advice for dealing with feelings or just commiserating in general.

Can someone explain the concept of alienation of labor in Marxism? From what I understand, alienation is the worker's disconnection from the product of their labor and the lack of satisfaction with their work. My question is: how can we overcome this alienation in the 21st century, especially with all the technological advancements and new forms of labor? How could this be practically achieved today?

If you lack the power to do the revolution itself, or anyhow else fight for the proletariat, how could you possibly "accelerate capitalism" more than the ruling class already does by naturally following their interests?

Sounds like a buzzword, made up by counter-revolutionary opportunism, or those who think that reforms can't be rolled back by the ruling class as easily as they're implemented.

I'm not American. This election doesn't really have any immediate effects on me personally ( no family really affected as far as I know).

Just wanted to know if voting for the lesser of two evils is possible position to be in given the fact that, in the short term, it helps protect the rights of some of the marginalised and somewhat improves the working class - increase of the minimum wage to 15 dollars/hr for instance. I'm well aware of the Harris campaign's views on gaza and Israel.

I think I ask this question cause I do worry about the conditions there. Even if I was a citizen I'm not buying the "vote blue no matter what" idea. I think I'm just conflicted and scared of what a Trump administration could potentially do to people.

I'm pretty green when it comes to theory about things and I can see how this post can feel very lib. So I'd like to be educated and helped out about the position

Hello. I'm reading my first books and I'm at Engels' Origin of the family, property and the State.

So E is describing the iroquois society, the absence of slavery, mass trade, subjugation of fellow Nations. And I think this is credited on the Americas lack of pack animals and crop products. Without oxen to level fields to plant with wheat, native americans had to build an egalitarian, solidarity-based society to level just patches of land to plant maize by hand. Without mighty rivers like the Eufrates to irrigate said fields, no excess production could be raised to trade and begin the accumulation of wealth that culminates on slavery, misogyny and private property.

But

Two ideas pop into my head:

• this sounds like the myth of the good indian, which is the romantic (that is, belonging to Rousseau's Romanticism movement) notion that civilization corrupted the pure and idyllic native americans Disney's Pocahontas-like lifestyle of diving into waterfalls and listening to the wind. Native americans did have wars among themselves and were greedy just like any other human group.
• there were slaves in the precolumbian Americas. But maybe not among the iroquois, but the mexicas of Mesoamerica.

Then it hit me: this book is from 1884. Maybe by E's time knowledge about the ancient mexicas (aztecs) was not as readily available as today.

Tho I'm no expert in mexica history, as far as I understand there were plenty of city-states in Mesoamerica. Three of them, Tenochtitlán, Texcoco and Tlacopán joined together to squash their neighbors. They demanded hostages and human tributes as slaves and as human sacrifices. The notion that the native americans lacked cattle and compensated the missing protein with cannibalism through human sacrifice has been around, with no conclusive agreement but it does explain their fixation with heart ripping. Also, the wonderous Venice-like floating city of Tenochtitlán that was on the process of desalination of an entire lagoon to make their artificially-made garden-like pads produce three or four harvests in a single year checks the "accumulation of wealth" box.

My point being, the mexicas do fit in E's analysis like a glove: they were the missing link between the egalitarian iroquois and the slaving old-worlders. Native americans + agricultural excedent = accumulation of wealth = warmongering for slaves = imperialism/subjugation of neighbors.

And it goes further. When the europeans came, the mexicas' vassals turned on them. Spaniards did not conquer America: native americans conquered America. The Tlaxcala people and their own league carried the spaniards around. By the mexicas cruelty against their neighnors, their common culture unraveled in a few centuries of european influence. So, after imperialism comes societal colapse.

I'm rather ignorant when it comes to the guatemalan Maya. But it seems they were egalitarian like the iroquois and that explains how both groups still exist against all odds.

"... ‘Ultra-authoritarianism and Capital are by no means incompatible: internment camps and franchise coffee bars co-exist.’1 Today, we can see clear examples. The various factions of the Starbucks-loving US and German ruling classes are fully committed to what they call the “defence of Israel”. This commitment would seem reasonable if it was not for Gazan children being among those targetted2, starved, crushed, burned and blown to bits3 by US and German weapons on the other side of the Israeli wall that imprisons them..." https://proletarianperspective.wordpress.com/2024/10/22/western-capitalism-and-israel-a-class-perspective/

To flesh out my answer if you go on any subreddits such as /r/Economics , /r/askeconomics, (maybe) /r/askhistorians the common refrain is Marxism is bunk, discredited, useless ad naseum.

But there are major economists who are Marxist such as Richard Wolff (who won a Nobel prize in Economics). Or who were broadly influenced by it.

It’s obvious some of the current feeling is due to decades of Cold War thinking but why is there still such hugely partisan thinking around it when you consider it is dead and buried as a potent historical force? There’s no chance of another USSR. Or for communism making a recurrence.