thoughts empty

head tingling

A while back, I asked about Ed Bernays' work with Empire. Looks like I'm being introduced.

From the article:

The 12,000-year-old Hambach forest has lived through many eras, but perhaps none as consequential as the last half-century.

Locals and environmentalists have been fighting for 50 years to keep the woodland — which sits between the western German towns of Aachen and Cologne — from becoming an open-pit coal mine. At times, protesters occupied the area, living in treehouses among the towering canopies to protect against the threat of chainsaws.

Now the fight is finally coming to a close, with about 14% of the original forest still intact. In June, the local government announced the remaining woods will be protected permanently and turned into a nature conservation area.

"The climate movement has won the battle," said Dirk Jansen, of BUND, the German branch of the Friends of the Earth environmental group. He spent decades fighting for the forest.

Hambach is one chapter in a much bigger story, as similar clashes between governments, private developers and citizens are playing out around the world — including in the US. There, public lands are being clawed back at an unprecedented rate for oil and gas extraction.

"We seem to be moving aggressively in the opposite direction," Lincoln Larson, who studies outdoor recreation and public lands at North Carolina State University, told DW.

This thread is SPECIFICALLY (and ONLY) for people that grew up in the 2000s (so I guess people that are nowadays in their early to mid 30s, ig? Idk dawg don't look at me I can't math for the life of me..). If you have never, idk, lived even one year in the 2000s then click the Lemmygrad symbol at the top left hand corner of the screen (look, I know, it's hard to find, but don't worry, you can't miss it!) so you can get to the main page. No exceptions * (oho, an asterisk (*) next to that last sentence? What could it mean? Chat, what did Makan mean by this?! Scroll down to find out...(Look, it's not what you think it is))

Anyway

You may NOT join and / or participate and / or comment underneath and / or in any way, shape, or form interact or reference this thread outside of the actually, err, thread.*

Well, with that said...

Uhh

Fuck it, I'll just ask it:

Who here remembers the 2000s?

And who here grew up or maybe even hit the age of 18 in said decade?

Perhaps you vaguely remember the 1990s or even the year 2000.

Well, I have honestly been wondering about that decade now.

Such a WEIRD decade.

Arguably the apex of the "end of history"-type thinking that was basically inculcated into most of us at an early age.

I would even venture to say that it may very well be one of the darkest decades in human history (and may have in the end fucked up many of whatever generation lived through it in the long run, even those that weren't Gen Xers or Millennial or whatever Zoomer was born around the year 2000).

It was honestly a BIZARRE time when I look back on it.

Now, disclaimer:

My childhood was not fun AT ALL.

You can even see the mental effects of that right now.

I have had an extreme form of OCD that has survived due to this day, partly due to religious trauma (and usually in the form of, say, cross-posting multiple times for some reason or another).

My father was honestly a brutal narcissist and abuser. Abused my Mom for thirty or so years. Abused me for twenty or so years.

Didn't help that I got into another abusive situation from around very late 2019 which ended about five years from then (not that people would in real life and especially online would notice or at least not immediately notice).

So I guess I may be biased or whatever.

Idk.

You can stop me if you think that I may be going too far in some of my observations.

But there are things that, when looking back, make the 2000s decade very surreal. I remember someone (who was basically a GenXer, was born around the late 1980s, I think) going like "You know, that decade was pretty weird when you think about it, huh?" (I'm probably butchering what was said, though I don't think so; some of my recollections, even from the 2020s, are kinda crystal clear)

And the surreality and weirdness and - I would argue - sinister feeling or the atmosphere of the decade is certainly... Interesting to me since I never really cognisized it in my head when I lived through it but it certainly seems downright palpable to me even compared to the 2010s (for me personally, mind you).

(BTW, I use "sinister" to kinda mean "darkly weird, menacing, and surreal")

First off, the movies were definitely different and arguably a bit... Innocent? I would even say innocent in a somewhat good way that I missed, not that we would appreciate it when we live in an era where art has to be "subverted" or "taken apart" or whatever. Also, a lot of "life-y" movies. Not sure what else to call those types of film. It's not like it was really it's own genre.

Also, I remember people really being kinda stupid and oblivious to stuff that they were ensnared in.

Even the George Lucas hatred seems almost astroturfed (it was definitely genuine though lol). The "George Lucas raped my childhood" phrase or meme, which I do remember people not only saying jokinngly but saying unjokingly and even dead-ass defending their usage of that meme in a very un-ironic way on Internet message boards whenever they were questioned for using it sometimes (with people even genuinely coming to such-and-such forumite's defense, mind you). What interests me is that I enjoyed the prequels... But immediately started to hate them almost immediately after 2005. Why? Because everyone, especially the Gen Xers, kinda just said we just "didn't understand" and we "were kids" and so couldn't tell what was true cinema or whatever. And I believed it. They were older than me. The worst part is:

Looking back, it seemed other people around my age (say, 10 years old to 15 years old) wanted desperately to be accepted by Gen Xers, a generation that is arguably VERY cynical and even packages a lot of their cynicistic beliefs as, well, humor or "they're just jokes, bro, get over it"

(Also, it's not lost on me that Jon Stewart, the comedian that famously got booted from Comedy Central for questioning a NYT columnist or whatever on her trying to downplay the lies that led to the Iraq War, used that very same defense with Cramer and a few others too; now Stewart drumbeats for whatever war is popular now, go figure...)

But yeah, when you look at Gen Alphas now, they don't even act like the previous generation before them "knows it all"

It's a bit sad because I think that there definitely needs to be more respect for what came before and to build off of what came before (including from Gen Xers, boomers, the generation before boomers, whatever).

But is understandable and I really don't blame them.

It's also not lost on me that YouTubers nowadays, big YouTube channels even, seem to have that "white cishet male in their 40s, maybe 50s, with a beard or even just a neck beard that has really toxic, rightwing, and/or really contrarian opinions that are also somewhat popular because 'they're true but nobody wants to admit it'"-social type to them.

...Zamn, in a world where individualism rules, especially in the West, do we even know what a "social type" is? We barely even speak of personality types anymore!

It should be noted that the "cult of youth" -phenomenon or whatever one even calls it ("millennials are here to SAVE THE WORLD") was definitely drilled in our heads during the 2000s and even 2010s.

We literally sang songs about it.

Even during DARE class, I think.

And looking back, it is essentially just boomers saying:

"Look, we fucked up, but hey, we're retiring now so we'll pass the buck to you, okay? You can DO IT. You can WIN. YOU. GOT. THIS." (I'm honestly getting TFS Piccolo vibes here as I type this)

That... was something, even then, I kinda thought was putting way too much on my own abused shoulders lol

Speaking of Comedy Central...

Anyone remember this?

I 'member when the Libertarian Party folks at the High School debate club used to have shirts with this very same image on it (look, a lot of us had that phase, okay?! Yeesh, don't @ me)

...The Libertarian Party folks in Virginia were also kinda weird.

They literally got arrested by police (and sometimes got into what would essentially be straight-up police brutality cases against, well, white folks). There were a lot of such clips of this happening on YouTube.

Honestly, at least the Libertarians then (as far as I remember, to be clear) actually were against Black people being murdered by jack-booted state troopers

The Libertarian folks in Virginia now are basically just round-about fascists (with an emphasis on being crypto bros, ironic humor, centrist-y bullshit, but also affinity for MAGAts or Donald Trump in various corners, at least depending on where you are, afaik). It's not lost on me that many of them, like someone I knew in college, turned into neo-liberals ("the state is indeed a necessary evil to perpetuate capitalism" ) and then basically into MAGAts or outright fascists.

Even the ancaps look better compared to the ex-libertarians, ngl (also, am I the only one that keeps seeing them on social media and whenever I chance upon them in real life in, well, funny hats and headgear? No? Just me? Okay...)

Oh, btw, Libertarianism was definitely popular during the 2000s and early 2010s and not just capital-L libertarianism ahahaha

I really think that the Gary Johnson gaffe, the "What is Alleppo?" thing, actually hurt the libertarian cause at the time (because, as time went on, the Libertarians were kinda trying to paint themselves in a "dorky and weird but ultimately respectible" image; I wouldn't even know how to exactly describe the aesthetic or imagery that they were going for back then or even now to a degree). My old college friend literally griped about that bit. He said that it didn't make sense or it was very stupid. I... actually liked it? Especially since Gary Johnson was kinda making a point there, regardless of whether he even really knew anything about Alleppo or not (which, again, would be besides the point).

There were honestly a lot of mistakes and blunders made over the course of the Libertarian ascendence in popularity in places like Ohio, Virginia, Michigan even, etc. that honestly probably really did undermine their cause, looking back, though it was a bit hard to know it at the time.

Keep in mind "Internet tough guys" were especially rife in those days.

I actually feel that people were perhaps even more toxic than they are now (though I think that people are more depressed now and sometimes don't know why and sometimes have "hidden depression" or even anhedonia, which can seep into their entire belief systems or worldviews). Keep in mind that the word "toxic" (at least how it is typically used now) wasn't really used to describe, well, what we may have now in some Internet communities what was also the case back then for a lot of the Internet.

Also, I miss Web 1.0

I'm literally making an Internet forum (even kinda have it ready right now but haven't really launched it yet) to revive some of that culture, you know?

I don't like the infinite scroll feature (invented in 2007 but has definitely hit critical mass now)

I don't like the lack of web pages on my websites or social media (and, thus, no boundaries)

Oh yeah, and web novels don't end.

Web sites (especially socials) also don't end now.

Coincidence?

Heh. I think not (gottem).

No, but seriously, I remember in the 2000s we wanted "more of it" but didn't really know why and we kinda got "more of it" in the worst way possible (literally the web page in front of you going on and on into infinity; web novels never ending or having really any "break-off" point where the initial story ends and, if you want to come back some other time a decade later to see the sequel, you can; the 1980s films and cinema were kinda prized above all else and modern-day television was "trash" and so now we literally have sequels to them that don't have anything really new; also, lots of nostalgia-bait referencing the 70s, 80s in particular, and 90s nowadays; etc.)

Now we literally don't want more, at least some of us.

I do to some degree but it's not more Star Wars at this time LMAO

I'm pretty sure we're already doing 2000s nostalgia-bait but I am not going to look it up on DuckDuckGo now because seeing it confirmed would honestly depress me at this time lol

What else, what else can I mention in my stream of consciousness...

Ah yes

So, I'm Turkish.

People knew it. I knew it.

And I was bullied in school for being "Muslim."

Didn't help that I was also Latina.

The Islamophobia was honestly pretty rife back then.

When a new terrorist attack happened in Spain or France or Germany or what have you, every one in school talked about it.

A white supremacist who later joined the National Guard right after High School threatened to snap my neck and kill me and was very racist toward me.

But I also remember it being before 2014 (there was a big and much-talked about police shooting when it happened somewhere in the Midwest, I think, and you all probably know about it, but I remember it really kicking things off in regard to the Black Lives Matter and accountability movement for police officers and later the "Defund the Police" movement as well). The closest thing we had to that was the Trayvon Martin. I remember vividly on CNN and CBS them at first giving Trayvon the benefit of doubt but then, at one point, almost immediately shifting the blame to him and castigating him and his behavior before the murder. And I remember people even in my school going "I don't get why the mainstream media is talking about this, Trayvon was a punk and / or a murderer"

The worst part is that, in the 2000s, you had people like Bill Cosby going on and on about "When are Black people going to fix their own problems and do some soul-searching about the violence they do" or whatever.

And it must have indeed been a gruesome thing to grow up with the media telling Black people over and over and over again "When are Black people going to have fathers in their families" or whatever.

Really abhorrent example of gaslighting there.

They just acted like "nobody is TALKING ABOUT THIS" and use the constant enforcement of social amnesia (now even worse than before in 2026) to your advantage.

An absolutely rancid and awful display of narcissistic abuse and gaslighting in action, folks.

I also remember Black folks and a lot of Latine or Latino folks talking about "rejecting violence" and "cleaning up their own neighborhood" or acting like they (or at least the punks in their community) were the major problem, not anyone else or any outside forces.

Honestly a bad thing to grow up with.

I felt less than others.

I felt like I had to perform more and more.

It was never enough.

That kinda changed in 2014, I remember (although the media seems to be making a big retreat on that front in regards to the topic). It was somewhat changing since Trayvon too and people remembered the Los Angeles uprising in the early 1990s.

But when I was threatened by that National Guardsman (he is probably still in there, or moved up, or somewhere else in the military, idk), I didn't really have the language or even cognitive formulation to know what was happening and why it was happening.

People thought that racism was literally just saying the n-word.

People said all sorts of racist jokes to each other back then.

The very students or classmates in my school said that shit.

To each other.

And dared each other.

I was horrified each time but I kept a "mask" so nobody would notice (I am Autistic after all)

Didn't help that people called me the r-word and others the r-word (I hated it and knew exactly who it was meant to refer to).

And you were expected to kinda do the same.

I never used it, thank fuck

Such bile would've over-stimulated me back then, not that I knew what it was.

I also never hated LGBTQ+ people AT ALL. Not even the "removed." Especially not them. I had constant thoughts about being a girl.

But didn't have the vocabulary or mental rubric to understand what was happening.

Also, the word "f***ot" was also rife then.

When it comes down to it, becoming an atheist was nothing to me in the end. Not even then. I was already an atheist by around age 10 and had those thoughts.

The Four Horsemen and New Atheism and "edgy atheists" were rife, by the way.

It means nothing to me now. I hated the Islamophobia from the New Atheists (which has only grown since then) but again kept a social "mask" and moved on.

I secretly hated Autism Speaks and what they did to other children, including children I knew or people in my own family or children of family friends.

I really did not like the "debate culture" which basically started then (and it makes sense that it would hit the ground running with social media and the Internet because, think about it, the West basically tells you that "if you debate with someone else, you will eventually arrive to a good enough conclusion on the matter and maybe convince other people" of stuff, idk).

I hope that I can now leave behind all that baggage.

(Also, I hated the fact that so many of the Muslims, Latine folks, etc. in my area (remember: Virginia) were in the CIA, FBI, NSA, some other alphabet-soup agency, etc. but whatever, it's fucking Virginia, what are you going to do? Just really made it hard to sometimes relate to them considering that I knew back then what had happened to the Dominican Republic and Juan Bosch and all the others after that madman Trujillo was gone...)

Uhhh...

...This basically turned into a stream of consciousness, sorry :/

So, erm

1. What do you remember from the 2000s? What sticks out to you the most?

2. I guess what were your favorite movies or television shows from that era? Bonus points if you can name any "life-y" ones like Big Fish or whatever lol (or, what movies / television did you not like lol)

3. What stuff from the 2000s do you actually want to see come back?

Okay, I would still argue that the 2000s were a VERY DARK decade that people basically slept-walked through and didn't realize it

But I also genuinely like a lot of the ideas behind Web 1.0

The culture was still bad then

But honestly?

The bad culture and discourse is kinda amplified now by the socials of today (Twitter, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, whatever)

4. Favorite memes?

(Lol whatever, it's 2026, we reference memes now, get with the program for now lol)

5. What are the least talked about things in the decade that you are genuinely interested in?

6. Idk, maybe pose a question to yourself and answer it, idk

• Sooooo... Okay, it was probably what you thought it was.

Yes, you absolutely can comment down below or talk about the topic in this OP (the 2000s; look, don't be fooled by some of the trauma-dumping and venting and all that, it is basically about the 2000s and you can even kinda loop it back to how everyone was affected by it, even if they didn't realize it at the time, but it is basically just talking about the 2000s)

Uh...

Yeah.

(I really should do stuff other than a parenthesis sometimes, smdh)

Discuss.

(Disclaimer: If you're looking for the *, the one you should specifically be looking at (not the one you see in this disclaimer, don't be fooled you chump!) is right after the bisecting line that I put up there (look, I know you have GAD and / or some undiagnosed panic disorder now, but look, you can't miss it, stop freaking out on me (common it's right THERE (I'm not panicking, you're panicking!!)

Damn...

This person wrote for Philosophy 101...

...yet already has the words of a modern-day Marx

Or shall we say...

...Super Marx?

Chortles and guffaws to self

The West claims they are. But let's hear what African representatives have to say about this.

I wrote an article describing the dialectic of the "Anti-Deutsche" German left zionist current, among other topics. Free Palestine. Fight revisionism.

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive

^image\ source^

Title. Thanks in advance.

6. Marxist Predictions about Social Democracy in the 1930’s

Communist failure to tie Social Democracy's colonial record even to its general function as upholder of capitalism had at least one fairly immediate result: predictions by Marxists in the 30s about Social Democracy’s future fell flatter than a bride’s cake.

What, specifically, were those predictions? How and why did they fail?

The grand-daddy of them all was one by Georgi Dimitroff [Dimitrov], remarkable defendant in the infamous Reichstag Fire Trial of Hitler Germany’s early days. Defeating intended legal murder by transforming his accusers into accused, Dimitroff survived his trial to become first president of the Bulgarian Socialist Republic.

Between July 25 and August 20, 1935, in speeches to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, he had summarised his own experience of Fascism, postulating how the working class and its vanguard should overthrow it where it existed and prevent its success elsewhere.

His ground-breaking analysis illumined the decay of bourgeois democracy during the twilight of imperialism.

While scrutinising Fascism, Dimitroff found it necessary to discuss Social Democracy:

"Comrades, in view of the tactical problems confronting us, it is very important to give a correct reply to the question of whether Social Democracy at the present time is still the principal bulwark of the bourgeoisie, and if so, where."

To his own question, he replied:

“It must be borne in mind that in a number of countries the position of Social Democracy in the bourgeois state, and its attitude towards the bourgeoisie, have been undergoing a change.

“In the first place, the crisis has thoroughly shaken the position of even the most secure section of the working class, the so-called labor aristocracy, upon which, as we know, Social Democracy relies for support. This section, too, is beginning more and more to revise its views as to the expediency of the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie.

“Second ... the bourgeoisie in a number of countries is it self compelled to abandon bourgeois democracy and resort to the terroristic form of its dictatorship, depriving Social Democracy not only of its previous position in the political system of finance capital but also, under certain conditions, of its legal status, persecuting and even suppressing it.

“Third, under the influence of the lessons learned from defeat of the workers in Germany, Austria and Spain, a defeat which was largely the result of the Social Democratic policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, under the influence of the victory of Socialism in the Soviet Union as a result of the Bolshevik policy and the application of living, revolutionary Marxism, the Social Democratic workers are being revolutionised, and are beginning to turn to the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

“The joint effect of all this has been to make it increasingly difficult, and in some countries actually impossible, for Social Democracy to preserve its former role of supporting the bourgeoisie.”

In a major Left work of the 1930s, Palme Dutt had undertaken to bolster Dimitroff's vivisection with Fascism’s and Social Democracy’s actual records. Studying conditions at various historical periods of the working classes in advanced countries, he had noted that

"Liberalism enjoyed one last blooming in the earlier or pre-war period of imperialism ... The super-profits of imperialism provided the means in the imperialist countries to endeavour to buy off the revolt of the advancing workers with a show of meager concessions to a minority."

After World War I – at least in the victorious countries – expansion continued of these "meager concessions to a minority.” But, after the Wall Street crash of 1929 signaling the onset of the general crisis of capitalism, Dutt recorded a new development:

"With the rising colonial revolts, the basis of imperialism began to weaken. The stream of super-profits diminished . . . (leading to) the cutting down and withdrawal of concessions already granted."

Here, surely, was the harbinger of imperialism's actual demise, the world Left inferred, and a corresponding euphoria enveloped it. Nor was it surprising. The objective situation certainly appeared to support to the hilt their optimism: A united front pact between the French Socialist and Communist Parties had been signed on July 27, 1934, leading rapidly to the fall of the pro-Fascist Doumergue-Tardieu Cabinet. In Austria, the illegal Communist Party had become a mass organisation, absorbing Left Social Democratic and certain other elements, to found a United Socialist Party. In Italy, in the Saar and in Spain, similar developments were taking place.

“On the other hand, Dutt was forced to report, significantly, that "the British Labour Party and a number of other Social Democratic parties ... actively opposed the united front and even developed extended disciplinary measures to prevent its realisation."

In October 1934, a meeting between representatives of the Communist and Socialist Internationals was held; it was felt to augur great things. But in November,

"the Executive of the Second International at Paris, after a four-days’ debate, by a narrow margin rejected the proposal of the united front and broke off negotiations. Nevertheless, the strength of the united front was such that the ban of the Second International on the united front for its separate sections had to be lifted; and a minority declaration of seven parties was issued in support of the united front.

In a preface to the third edition of his book in August 1935, Dutt added that

"Since the book originally appeared, many new developments have taken place, among the most important of which are the new processes taking place in the Social Democratic parties, offering hopes of a healing of the split in the working class and of the passing over of the majority of the workers to the revolutionary cause."

7. Why the Predictions Failed

If the correctness of any analysis is measured by the accuracy of the predictions to which it gives rise, then it must be noted that neither the Communist-forecast "decisive struggles" not its "united front of the working class" materialised after all.

What is more, the preceding false predictions of what they would accomplish lulled Marxist vigilance, weakened self-reliance in the movements of the oppressed peoples, and supported a misinterpretation, continuing to this day, of the real role on the world revolutionary scene of the Western working classes.

What material factors had Dimitroff and Dutt omitted from their analyses to cause such an outcome?

When establishing his criteria for judging Fascism, Dutt had simply ignored imperialist parasitism, although he had noted:

"The ‘democratic freedom' of Western imperialism has been built on the foundation of colonial slavery."

As general conditions favouring the growth of Fascism, Dutt had listed:

“1) intensification of the economic crisis and of the class struggle;

“2) widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism;

“3) the existence of a wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate strata, slum proletariat, and sections of the workers under capitalist influence;

“4) the absence of an independent class-conscious leadership of the main body of the working class.”

(It is interesting that nearly all these conditions exist in England as these words are being written, May-June, 1968.)

Dutt documented these "general conditions", and concluded that Fascism was the

"characteristic instrument of finance-capital which can be brought into play in the most highly-developed industrialised countries when the stage of crisis and of the class struggle requires it."

Just when was that?

Dutt had an answer:

"Its success or failure, as in every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat."

At this contention, history has thumbed its nose. For instance, what better indication of the "degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat” can there be than its closeness to revolution? Don’t facts suggest that revolution in that epoch was almost at hand in Italy and Spain, and that it certainly was closer in Germany, vanquished, than in Britain, the US, or even France? If Dutt were correct, why did Fascism not attain power where the proletariat was least "ready"? Obviously, the upheavals of the day did not have the content the Marxists attributed to them. Or else those Marxists were overlooking something big.

Within a remarkably short period after Dutt's analysis, it became clear that Western workers were blithely ignoring Left advise to "place no faith in the ‘democratic institutions’ of such countries." Forgetting the great struggles of the 30s, the Western proletariat year after year abandoned itself to the blandishments of exactly those "institutions": for example, elections from 1940 through 1964 in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere in the West showed anything but "widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism." Understandably, for parliamentarism was again rewarding its faithful. (See Table 11, which shows a constant increase in both absolute numbers and percentage of eligibles voting in the US.)

To be fair, Dutt did try to protect his own rear when he said:

"All this is not to argue that Fascism must necessarily develop and conquer in Western countries."

As things turned out, here at least he came close to prophecy. Fascism actually did conquer some Western countries but not others, despite Dutt’s and other Marxists’ belief that it was an imminent danger even in the West’s "great democracies.” Despite the ferment of the post-Crash decade and the onset of capitalism’s general crisis, the Western "democracies" did not, after all, turn inward on "their own" working classes; they did not, as predicted, institute Fascism "at home".

What decided which countries Fascism conquered?

Marxists had proven that imperialist war was fought for division or redivision of colonial spoils. In 1918, the defeated — Germany, Austria, etc. — had been deprived of their colonies. More: those colonies had been redistributed. At the stroke of a pen in Versailles, the vanquished had thus been cut off completely from their former "stream of super-profits", while the "Allies" (who were, of course, the "great democracies") were cut in on a new, additional source. Military victory against Germany had thus ensured imperialism’s top dogs of a new lease on life.

Equally, military defeat had forced German imperialism and its associates either to find new outlets for their export capital or to turn inward against "their own" working classes. Hitler's cry for "lebensraum" accurately recorded that, for imperialism, "room" in which to "live" was synonymous with "room" into which ever more – monopolised capital could expand – and that for German capital expansion was indistinguishable from life itself. Somebody was going to have to supply the economically-choking vanquished with necessary "air." During the great depression, with the First World War too recent to be revived as the usual solution, only one obvious and available outlet existed: "one’s own" working class.

Countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and their like offer examples of what happens when, having reached the stage where capital export has become essential, a capitalist country has no foreign outlet for it. Germany, Austria and Spain demonstrate a corollary: what happens when a developing capitalist economy is deprived of such an outlet. In both cases, the ruling classed did, in fact, turn inward as their "solution".

Yet, oddly enough, while these examples were actually arising, Lenin’s warning was scarcely dead on the historical air:

"unless the economic roots of this phenomenon (that is, overseas financial activities as the specific source of imperialist parasitism - H. W. E.) are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step toward the solution of the practical problems of the Communist movement and of the impending social revolution can be taken.”

This prophecy has been fulfilled. Uttered in 1921, it had already indicated that "success or failure" for imperialism depended on the growth of parasitism, expressed as ever-widening pools of man-power and resources to be super-exploited by metropolitan monopolies.

If, then. Fascism was a specific stage of imperialism, where else could its "success or failure" lie?

History supports the observation that Fascism has in fact been exercised by imperialism against Western peoples only if they are about to be forced into the role of a "source of super profit", either to replace a lost, or to substitute for a never achieved, colonial empire. As long as real colonies, territorial or economic, exist, imperialism is "safe".

For these reasons, any conclusion in 1935 about "imminent Fascism” which did not document this crucial factor was bound to come to grief. International imperialism in the "democracies" still has room to maneuver, to "solve" its difficulties at the expense of peoples in colonial or neo-colonial areas. (Today, direct super-exploitation has ceased to be necessarily the main form of imperialist parasitism. But the principles enunciated in these pages remain the same.)

The system’s central pillar remains that vast colonial labor reservoir, available for super-exploitation.

Fascism’s "success or failure" inside Western "democracies" could simply not be accurately forecast in the way the Marxists of the 30s tried to do it.

Obviously from the foregoing reasoning, too. Fascism’s absence in "democracies" cannot be attributed to "greater benevolence” or "understanding" or, despite their inner conflicts on other issues, to any "differences in interest" among ruling classes or between one section of a given bourgeoisie and another when it comes to preserving their system.

Although Marxist analyses of Fascism had dealt with Social Democracy, they did not, in the writer’s opinion, fully analyse the connection between the two. They merely chronicled it, showing that wherever Fascism triumphed, Social Democracy paved the way for it. As "explanation", they contented themselves with repeating Lenin's 1916 formula that Social Democracy was "the principal bulwark of the bourgeoisie" ; without applying his criteria to the conditions of their own day, they could offer no satisfactory explanation for the failure of their predictions and simply dropped the whole subject.

From a historical vantage point three decades later, it now appears that those Marxists could have seen that – if the Western labor aristocracy under the impact of the great depression was indeed "revising its views as to . . . class collaboration" – the bourgeoisies in pivotal Western countries still had a couple of aces up their sleeves. Blinded by glittering generalities, Marxists got those aces slipped over on them. By leaving out of account the ruling class vector, Dimitroff simply drew wrong conclusions about Western labor’s real direction in his day.

When he had said that "the position of Social Democracy in the bourgeois state, and its attitude toward the bourgeoisie, have been undergoing a change", he had based himself on a firm material foundation: the crisis, he had said, has "thoroughly shaken the position of the . . . labour aristocracy." Surely the general crisis of capitalism is a solid enough cornerstone for such a prediction? Unfortunately, Dimitroff had relied not just on the crisis, but on a crisis to which he envisaged only one solution: namely, revolution. It proved a serious and costly underestimation of imperialist parasitism.

Social Democracy did not undergo any major change, either in its "position in the bourgeois state" or in its "attitude toward the bourgeoisie". Nor could it. Moreover, Lenin had already predicted as much. "It may be argued", he had said,

"that of the (leaders of Social Democracy), some will return to the revolutionary socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignificant difference in degree, if we take the question in its political, i.e., in its mass aspect. Certain individuals among the present social-chauvinist leaders may return to the proletariat: but the TREND can neither disappear nor 'return' to the revolutionary proletariat …

"We have not the slightest grounds for thinking that these (Social Democratic) parties can disappear BEFORE the social revolution. On the contrary, the nearer the revolution approaches, the stronger it flares up . . . the greater will be the role in the labour movement of the struggle between the revolutionary mass stream and the opportunist-philistine stream."

Those who did not know of, or forgot, such words missed the deduction that, because of its tie with colonialism (implicit in its need for super-wages), Social Democracy had to change tactics when a colonial empire seemed in danger. Its eye remained where Marxists should have kept theirs: on the state of imperialism's "stream of super-profits." Social Democracy admirably adapted its tactics to the varying levels of that stream: as long as that kept flowing in, super-wages were sure to follow.

So, although the labor aristocracy was, for the time being, "thoroughly shaken by the crisis", it was far from "revising its views" about class collaboration itself. Actually, Dimitroff had said only that the labor aristocracy was

"revising its views about the expediency of the policy of class collaboration."

The operating word was "expediency". If imperialism is forced to withdraw its bribes, polite class collaboration becomes, indeed, no longer expedient: some new form is required. This was where Fascism came in. And it served its purpose. In noting that the bourgeoisie could no longer afford democracy at home, and so had turned to "the terroristic form of its dictatorship," Dimitroff had been reporting fact. But this had little to do with what became of Social Democracy. For, both he and Dutt, the latter in irrefutable detail, had proved that this dictatorship generally did not deprive Social Democracy of its "position in the political system" or even of its legal status except in individual cases. Dutt had documented instance after instance where Social Democracy took part in that "terroristic form" of imperialism’s dictatorship.

In this, once it is admitted that its aim is to ensure the continued flow of super-wages to the labor aristocracy, Social Democracy was merely logical. That flow must come from whatever source is available.

In the light of current events, it can only be concluded that Dimitroff must have been motivated by an understandable wish when he suggested that Western workers had learned from the defeat of their class brothers in places like Germany. He was generalising too soon from working class actions of his day when he added that USSR success was revolutionizing Western Workers. If anything, his diagnosis was carried out in reverse.

Within a very short historical period thereafter, led by the shining example of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in victorious, soon- economically-rampant America, a veritable cascade of glittering bribes again began flowing into American working class pockets with effects soon to mock Dimitroffs theses. Restive workers in the U.S. were given on an increasingly grand scale a substantial stake in the status quo. The gift, accompanied by odes of virtually unchallenged praise for a system which makes such things possible, successfully, if temporarily, obscured the fact that even the bribed labor aristocracy is exploited. Marxists like Dimitroff had seen the exploitation, but had grievously underestimated how big a stake in the status quo could be raised, as well as the primacy, enormity and soporific effect "at home" of super-exploitation abroad. They had failed to foresee what a large sector of the Western proletariat were eventually to be bought over, serve alien class aims, thereby to keep alive a system which Marxist analysts of the 30s claimed was on its last legs.

Far from being unable, as Dimitroff had concluded, to maintain its allegedly former role of supporting the bourgeoisie, opportunism was soon rewarded for its police role during tight times by a new stream of super-wages at a level far higher than before. And, for its officials, lucrative Government posts opened up in ever-larger numbers.(In 1934, British TUC officials were represented on six Government committees; in 1949, on 60; in 1954, on 81; and in 1968, on more than 115.)

The halcyon days of the Western labor aristocracy had been but briefly interrupted. That that interruption was ended at the expense of renewed and deepened colonial slavery was, at the time – and even now – of little concern to comfortable Western workers.

But the price that was to be exacted from Marxism for its miscalculations in this area was to be high, indeed.

The book can be downloaded here. https://annas-archive.gl/md5/6d984f715c1e17ed915108272c4c8fe7

Proud to be Turkish now 🥺

(very rare event, i know, it does happen sometimes though)