tAke a lOOk cOmrades

Serving fiends

Interesting article by Zizek on Mao and “Stalinist” communism

lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm

Zizek is such a weird and interesting person i don’t even think he’s a communist but in the west he has a huge influence over the scene

been reading a lot on Dialectics and i hope i’m not jinxing myself but i think i’m getting it

i recently saw this theory that all the propaganda pics w all the black suns and s*** might be an intentional dog whistle for neonazis to feel safe in supporting and going to ukraine to support azov

would make more sense than the propagandists just not knowing these extremely obvious symbols

cant stand this guy

"There IS thus, beyond all cheap jibes and superficial a***ogies, a profound structural homology between the Maoist permanent self-revolutionizing, the permanent struggle against the ossification of State structures, and the inherent dynamics of capitalism. One is tempted to paraphrase here Brecht, his "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank?", yet again: what are the violent and destructive outbursts of a Red Guardist caught in the Cultural Revolution compared to the true Cultural Revolution, the permanent dissolution of all life-forms necessitated by the capitalist reproduction? It is the reign of today's global capitalism which is the true Lord of Misrule."

lmao this bit got me
classic zizek s*** right here

"So, in a way, there is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that the final result of Mao's Cultural Revolution is today's unheard-of explosion of capitalist dynamics in China. That is to say, with the full deployment of capitalism, especially today's "late capitalism," it is the predominant "normal" life itself which, in a way, gets "carnivalized," with its constant self-revolutionizing, with its reversals, crises, reinventions. Brian Massumi formulated clearly this deadlock, which is based on the fact that today's capitalism already overcame the logic of totalizing normality and adopted the logic of the erratic excess:

'the more varied, and even erratic, the better. Normalcy starts to lose its hold. The regularities start to loosen. This loosening of normalcy is part of capitalism's dynamic. It's not a simple liberation. It's capitalism's own form of power. It's no longer disciplinary institutional power that defines everything, it's capitalism's power to produce variety - because markets get saturated. Produce variety and you produce a niche market. The oddest of affective tendencies are okay - as long as they pay. Capitalism starts intensifying or diversifying affect, but only in order to extract surplus-value. It hijacks affect in order to intensify profit potential. It literally valorises affect. The capitalist logic of surplus-value production starts to take over the relational field that is also the domain of political ecology, the ethical field of resistance to identity and predictable paths. It's very troubling and confusing, because it seems to me that there's been a certain kind of convergence between the dynamic of capitalist power and the dynamic of resistance.'"

prob the most important and interesting bit of the essay

sure is interesting when it comes to anti-russia sentiment all the anti-idpol, anti-anti-racism, and anti-"victim culture" people suddenly come out in full force to condemn russophobia and talk about the importance of identity politics

“Or, in contemporary politics of the United Kingdom, as many a perspicuous commentator observed, the Thatcher revolution was in itself chaotic, impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies, and it was only the "Third Way" Blairite government who was able to institutionalize it, to stabilize it into new institutional forms, or, to put it in Hegelese, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into necessity. In this sense, Blair repeated Thatcherism, elevating it into a concept, in the same way that, for Hegel, Augustus repeated Caesar, transforming-sublating a (contingent) personal name into a concept, a title. Thatcher was not a Thatcherite, she was just herself - it was only Blair (more than John Major) who truly formed Thatcherism as a notion. The dialectical irony of history is that only a (nominal) ideologico-political enemy can do this to you, can elevate you into a concept - the empirical instigator has to be knocked off (Julius Caesar had to be murdered, Thatcher had to be ignominously deposed).”

Hope the tony blair stan doesn’t see this

not surprising these people rely on idpol without they have no job as much they hate it, they need it

yeah i was saying that facetiously lol

i’m at work so i can’t really find it rn but can anyone link me Zizek intro to on practice and contradictions

im pretty sure that was it

We were told that we should desire freedom. Western-style freedom.

We were instructed to “fight for freedom.”

In many ways, we were much freer than the West. I realized it when I first arrived in New York and saw how badly educated were local kids of my age, how shallow was their knowledge of the world. How little culture there was, in regular mid-sized North American cities.

We wanted, we demanded designer jeans. We were longing for Western music labels in the center of our LPs. It was not about the essence or the message. It was form over substance.

Our food was tastier, ecologically produced. But we wanted colorful Western packaging. We demanded chemicals.

We were constantly angry, agitated, confrontational. We were antagonizing our families.

We were young, but we felt old.

I published my first book of poetry, then left, slammed the door behind me, went to New York.

And soon after, I realized that I was fooled!

popularresistance.org/how-we-sold-soviet-union-and-czechoslovakia-for-plastic-shopping-bags

Yep

wrong thread bro
ktt2.com/social-democracy-and-social-liberalism-thread-93589

Read what it says under the 4 million