live in more rural area but desperate to minimize parasitism, i can barely donate to palestinians as much as i'd like cause my dream job has low pay sadly and i'm stealing more than providing by not giving up everything to them

i want to do things to enemies to vent my anger

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[–] 13 points 4 days ago (5 children)

marxism is not moralism; it does not demand of us to swear a moral oath and uphold it like some kind of political vestal virgins. when lenin was in switzerland, he still ate, did he not?

yes, on a rational level, we may analyse how our own consumption affects others, and it is indeed correct to try to reduce harm to the best of one's ability, but ultimately individualist approaches are ineffective compared with systemic ones, and self-flagellation is an individualist approach.

you did not create or choose colonialism, or unequal exchange! any benefit you may receive from its existence does not paper over the fact that you are yourself exploited and have a common class interest with all other workers on this planet, not to mention the fact that the main cause of harm and the main benefactor of those systems is not you, but the capitalist!

also, i would like to push back against the notion that people in the first world have been "given" the benefits from capitalism:

The truth is, that nothing was ever given to you. The founding fathers didn't give you your rights! Women weren't given the right to vote! You always hear [that] women were given the right to vote with the 19th Amendment. Women struggled for a hundred years. For a hundred years, from the 1820s when they mobilised the first convention—and by the way, the vote wasn't even their major demand—they had a whole host of demands related to the treatment of women, labour and child labour, property rights, inheritance rights, and all that sort of thing, including legal rights.

Women struggled for a hundred years; they agitated, marched, got arrested, beaten up, roughed up, and chained themselves to the White House gates. They were thrown into jail; some of them died of pneumonia, were force-fed, and endured all manner of brutal treatment. Only after a hundred years of struggle were they "given" the vote—this great gradualist process.

[…] Workers were not given free trade unions either; they had to fight for them. They had to fight against goon squads, Pinkerton detectives, terrorists, state militia, the National Guard, and the US Army. And that is how they achieved it, with their blood and their struggle.

--michel parenti

even third-worldist analysis does not condemn global-north workers morally! it merely seeks to analyse, explain, and criticise certain political realities and bring to light the additional difficulties and injustices third-world people have to face. but no global-south revolutionary would ever deny you the title of worker or perceive you as an enemy on the same level as they perceive the capitalist.

to love and help others, it is helpful to love and help yourself.

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  • [–] [S] -3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    but why wouldn't they is what i don't understand

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    i'm sorry, but i don't quite get what your question is referring to. could you please elaborate?

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  • [–] [S] -5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    like why wouldn't global southerners condemn all of the global north after all we've done and continue to do, it's only logical to me cause i'd do that if i were in their shoes

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

    Because it's immaterial to suggest the majority of the global north can just do something about it. It's almost religious in a way to do so, that they're evil inherently. It also denies the real suffering of the proletariat class and the lumpenproletariat too, something that will became ever more apparent in the coming future as the empire contracts. You're also blaming Proletarians for the conditions and relations laid upon them, which is something Lenin described the Bernsteinites of having the symptom of

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago*

    the problem is that you are holding yourself to an idealist standard.

    as i said in a previous comment, we should reject the leap from "i (marginally) benefit from an unjust system" to "i should hate myself, and people harmed by that system should condemn me as a person."

    guilt isn't the same as accountability. feeling bad may acknowledge harm, but self-condemnation by itself leads to nothing good and only causes harm to yourself and the movement. a more useful question is: "what do i participate in, what power do i have, and what can i do with others to change it?" that points towards political solidarity and material change, rather than treating self-hatred as proof of moral seriousness.

    "i'd condemn myself in their shoes" is projection, not evidence. it assumes people harmed by imperialism would all respond alike, and that your imagined reaction tells you what they actually think. people in the global south are not a single moral tribunal. some may (in my opinion wrongly) view you with dislike; others may be more intelligent and focus criticism on actual governments, companies, institutions, or particular actions. their views deserve to be heard as specific views, not guessed at or generalised.

    don't make harmed people responsible for condemning or absolving you! listen to particular people and movements without expecting moral judgement or expecting one person to speak for everyone. take criticism seriously, but don't turn it into a verdict that you are irredeemably bad.

    you are not guilty by birth or geography! you don’t need to hate yourself to oppose imperialism. you only need to understand your position, listen without expecting to be judged on moral grounds, and act with others against the structures causing harm.

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