No problem. Hmu if you have any questions

Marx says something interesting about the comparison between wage labor and slavery. Basically, that where the horrific nature of chattel slavery hides the way that the labor of slaves went toward their own subsistence, where wage labor hides the way that the labor of workers goes toward their employers:

In slave labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.

W.E.B. Dubois, in Black Reconstruction in America, says something similar about the state of chattel slavery prior to the civil war

The slavery of Negroes in the South was not usually a deliberately cruel and oppressive system. It did not mean systematic starvation or murder. On the other hand, it is just as difficult to conceive as quite true the idyllic picture of a patriarchal state with cultured and humane masters under whom slaves were as children, guided and trained in work and play, given even such mental training as was for their good, and for the well-being of the surrounding world.

The victims of Southern slavery were often happy; had usually adequate food for their health, and shelter sufficient for a mild climate. The Southerners could say with some justification that when the mass of their field hands were compared with the worst class of laborers in the slums of New York and Philadelphia, and the factory towns of New England, the black slaves were as well off and in some particulars better off. Slaves lived largely in the country where health conditions were better; they worked in the open air, and their hours were about the current hours for peasants throughout Europe. They received no formal education, and neither did the Irish peasant, the English factory-laborer, nor the German Bauer; and in contrast with these free white laborers, the Negroes were protected by a certain primitive sort of old-age pension, job insurance, and sickness insurance; that is, they must be supported in some fashion, when they were too old to work; they must have attention in sickness, for they represented invested capital; and they could never be among the unemployed.

To clarify, DuBois is not making a case for slavery, just describing the object conditions.

nothing is so calculated to ruin human nature as absolute power over human beings.

DuBois makes the strongest and most soaring case for the inherent dignity and personhood of Black Americans, and ultimately considers the chattel slaves who worked southern plantations as part of the working class, and analyses how these historic conditions were used by various kinds of capitalists, and the southern plantation owners were heavily subjected to market conditions. These conditions led to more heavy and brutal exploitation and abuse of victims of slavery as war and market conditions demanded more pressure for plantation owners to meet and compete with global market demands.

One of the main reasons that the wage labor of North America during and prior to the civil war was a material condition that led to the abolition of slavery, was because wage laborers were not paid to maintain themselves and their family, they were paid market rates which were heavily influenced by the way that slavery lowered wages for wage earning northern workers.

It was as Frederick Douglass said in Boston in 1865, that the Civil War was begun "in the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting for the old guarantees;-both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro."

Furthermore, from DuBois:

Slowly but surely an economic dispute and a political test of strength took on the aspects of a great moral crusade.

The abolition of slavery was objectively a progressive development toward the dignity and humanity of the working class. Chattel slavery, which was (is) a form of exploited labor under capitalism, where it existed (exists) doesn't just harm the victim of slavery, but the waged worker who is forced to compete with free labor; and the efficiency of exploited waged work leads to more brutal exploitation of the victim of slavery.

But this division of labor is sustained in our current society as a difference between poor workers and middle class workers, still defined most often along lines of race, gender, and hegemonic social legitimacy. As such, the division of labor is a condition that suppresses the wages and wellbeing of all waged and unwaged workers.

I don't think she was right. I was unskilled, not untalented. She was a good chef and could certainly have helped me improve, but she didn't, she just acted really negative. Like its not like I did it and she criticized me, she just would not let me do it. I could cook eggs and breakfast, I made good omelets with lots of fixings, pancakes and sausages.

So its like she knew I could cook. I lost my beloved 17" cast iron skillet in our divorce. But in cases where I did cook dinner it was because she wasn't there. She never tasted it to criticize me. I worked 50-60 hours per week, like many poor young families.

PS. That's not my downvote

shot

beheaded with a broadsword is more historically accurate and fucking metal

Hegemony goes crazy. It doesn't even have to be intentional or explicit, it just has to work with the incentives of the ruling class.

Although some of it is explicit obvs, like in Black Panther the only good white guy was a CIA agent

Idk guys my ex wife basically acted like she was the only person who was capable of preparing meals other than breakfast, and I was young and just kinda accepted it. She always acted incredibly skeptical and negative toward me if I suggested making dinner.

After we divorced I had to learn to cook and got pretty good at it. My current wife appreciates my cooking and I cook just as much if not more than she does. None of my kids have died due to anything I cooked them, although you'd think they came pretty close by the way they act sometimes, especially when I was vegan.

When you say "globalization," what are you referring to? I mention the international worker's movement in my comment, and how it was defeated after ww2. Incidentally, I do place much of the blame for that on Stalin as he used the Comintern not as a "communist international" but as yet another way to build a base of power and loyalism for himself and the bureaucracy.

But capitalism is already global. Imperialism is global capitalism. It is international banking and finance, it is the relation and exploitation of the second and third worlds by the first world. Its trade agreements, energy policies, embargoes. It is support for Israel and its role in destabilizing the middle east for resources.

It is absolutely true that there are no shortcuts to a better world, no hack that tricks the masses into emancipating ourselves. When I talk about revolution, i'm not talking about a putsch or a coup, although those things are inevitable as violence has consequences and the ruling capitalist class is incredibly violent, and will not hesitate to use extreme violence to suppress even legal and nonviolent forms of organizing and protest. By revolution, I mean a significant change in the way society is structured, for whose benefit. And this is deeply connected to what gets made, for whom, and why.

So the socialist revolution is a mass struggle for a better way of life. Its people no longer accepting exploitation, but real democratic organizing on local, regional, national, and international scale, on the basis of working class interests, and opposed to capitalist class interests.

This is a radically different basis for society. But the potential for it is already here. Capitalism is historically unique in many ways; and one way, is that its tendency is toward the development of two distinct classes whose interests are totally opposed. Basically, it tends to concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands, while increasing the exploitation of more and more people. Furthermore, the capitalists of our era aren't like the capitalists of the 1700-1800's, who like actually knew how to build shit and keep it running. Now, our billionaire capitalists just know how to shift money around, its the workers who actually run things.

So the way through, is solidarity, education, unity in struggle against exploitation, racism, sexism, etc., everything that the capitalists use to divide the working class. But since racism/sexism/homophobia are structural, intrinsic to capitalist rule, we can't just kumbaya it out of existence. We have to collectively and democratically smash and dismantle them. WO before we can win that fight, we have to build the basis for the alternative. Wars are won decades before they are ever fought. The basis for victory is social and structural, not pure military (although military is a part of the social structure.)

Sorry I'm so long winded, I just like to make it clear what my ideas are to avoid talking past another person in a discussion. But yeah, if you can help me understand what you mean by "globalization," then it will be easier to fully understand your comment.

There's always so much to unpack in these discussions. The Marxist theory of the state is the historic mechanism of class rule. Both anarchists and communists believe this, that the ruling class of capitalism uses the state in order to oppress and exploit the masses.

Both left tendencies are revolutionary, both left tendencies want to seize production for the workers, both left tendencies understand that state power must be seized, and the capitalist state must be destroyed.

The difference seems to be, that Marxist communists believe in establishing a workers state to suppress the existing bourgeois elements, where anarchists more want to transition away from the state as a form of geographic organization.

Lenin's theory was that the worker state would not need all the functions of the bourgeois state, and would be able to phase out those functions. But Lenin's theory was also dependent on an international worker revolution. When the revolution in Germany failed, when Russia was invaded by capitalists and the remaining Tsarist forces allied with the invaders, it forced a crisis in Russia. From there, it was just crisis after crisis. Lenin originally said "all power to the Soviets (worker councils)" but when the civil war completely destroyed what little industrial capacity Russia had, then there were no factories in which to organize for. Without a place to work, there's no workers and hence no worker organization.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did make mistakes, but the conditions were extremely fraught. In the process of smashing the state, there were many functions of state that were necessary in order to prevent the reactionaries and foreign capitalists from seizing state power for themselves. This led to rehiring the old tsarist state bureaucrats back into the roles that they had prior to the revolution, and this happened on a mass scale. But this wasn't by design, it was an accident, a quirk of necessity brought on by years and years of war. When the civil war was over, Lenin was sick, and the bureaucracy rallied around Stalin who had been working to replace the "old Bolsheviks" who had taken up roles of state functionaries, with people who were loyal to him. Stalin didn't create the bureaucracy, so much as the bureaucracy elevated him. Without worker councils the bureaucracy was the only power left in Russia.

Trotsky and Lenin's theory of permanent revolution never left the page, and Trotsky was able to wield it as a resistance to Stalinist bureaucracy, but conditions under Trotsky wouldn't have been much different. He would have faced the same challenges, and I don't have to tell a comm of anarchists about the utter tragedy that he oversaw at Kronstadt. But still, anarchist historian Paul Averich, critical of Lenin at every turn, still hesitates to lay responsibility for it at the feet of Lenin. But after that, the disastrous NEP.

Stalin developed the theory of socialism in one country, which established the "socialist state." But even without the theory, the contradictions of global capitalist statehood were still forced on the country of Russia.

I still think the theory laid out in State and Revolution is sound. I think there needs to be some way of organizing against foreign invasion and internal sabotage. I don't think Russia or even China are particularly good examples, but also, both cases were barely industrialized peasant societies when they defeated their weak domestic capitalist class.

I think if mass worker revolution happened in a highly industrialized then the possibility of a just and democratic worker state would be more possible than what happened in Russia. I consider myself a communist, but if I was in country presided over by a Stalinist bureaucracy, I'd be killed in the purges, along with the rest of you. I believe that you keep fighting for liberation until all are free and all are equal and in harmony with nature, that it is the fight for those things that moves humanity forward. And maybe I'm just not familiar enough with Anarchist theory, but the contradictions that reify into the state form do not go away just because the state is mired in contradictions. As long as there classes there will be the need to organize geographically.

I believe that no revolution will be possible until there's real worker control and democracy. And if the conditions actually get there, like on a global scale, then chances are I will want something more decentralized and consent driven for all people. But as long as there are classes there is the need to suppress one or the other, and the only way to do that is some kind of central organization that oversees those relations within a particular geographic area. As the bourgeois class is dismantled, so is the necessity for the worker state to dismantle it. This is how the state withers away. The fact that it did not, could not happen in Russia doesn't mean it is wrong, in theory. It just means the time of global revolution is still in the future.

This is not meant as a "gotcha" to anarchists, I just think the theory is explained, and isn't hard to understand. And there's lots of valid historical concerns about it. But with the most good faith intention, if a country found themselves in a revolutionary situation, and faced these very real problems, what alternative would there be bit central organization of one form or another? In my opinion, the problems of authoritarianism can be mitigated through direct participation and political education. If such an organization could take up the functions of state, then I think it would be more successful than either 20th century state socialism or decentralized anarchism.

Fork found in kitchen

Science isn't an ontology, it's a method.

God, what no humanities does to a mf

I used to wonder what happened to kids who would always change the rules in the middle of a game like, "nuh uh nuh uh I have a shield around my whole body that blocks lasers," so that they never ever lose. I thought they just grew out of it but now I realize they all became corporate lawyers for tech companies

In college I got invited to hang with my Korean neighbors downstairs who were making brownies. One guy is stirring the butter, another is breaking up the weed to add to it. As this is going on, they're packing bowls to pass around, everyone is getting stupid high, just me and like 8 Korean dudes.

Brownies go in the oven, bowls keep getting packed and passed around. Finally the brownies come out, and everybody there has an acute case of the munchies, so we are all like desperately reaching our hands into the warm brownies, stuffing our faces with them until we devour the whole pan. 40 minutes to an hour later everyone is laying on the floor, groaning, giggling, just a room full of deleted dudes. I don't remember much else but that was an important lesson, don't get high while making brownies without any other food around, cuz when you hit those brownies they're gonna hit back