Also fun to see libs calling anarchists tankies for [checks notes] not wanting NATO to invade Russia

lmao what is it with people trying to map abstract political concepts onto geometric and spacial shapes?

The colloquial meaning of “liberal” used by some Americans does not align with how it’s used in political theory. That’s okay, words have different meaning in different contexts.

“Left” and “right” stem from the French Revolution (1789!) where the people who sat on the left of the National Assembly were progressives that supported the revolution and people who sat on the right were conservatives that wanted to preserve the old system. Liberalism (as defined in political theory, not colloquially) is the dominant global ideology and thus is no longer progressive or radical. It may have been progressive when monarchy was the main form of government, propping up feudalism as the main economic structure. But that’s obviously not how the world works 200+ years later

Government itself arises out of conflict between classes, and the fundamental mechanism of capitalism is accumulation. The former means without pretty intensive upheaval and reorientation of governmental systems, the institutions are unlikely to interfere with the core function they were designed to protect. The latter means that no matter what protections you put in place, by the very nature of how it works, capitalism will trend towards monopoly.

Magnolia is probably his best performance, but hard to say how much of that is him disappearing into the role versus the role giving us a peek behind the mask lol

Oh no worries, I know there was a massive drop in life expectancy when the Soviet Union was dismantled but I just hadn’t heard of mass murder during glastnost and perestroika

Following the mass murder of glasnost and perestroika

Could you direct me towards some reading material on this? My in-depth study of Soviet history hasn’t gotten past early Khrushchev

We have will, it just isn’t perfectly free. Our consciousness emerges out of a confluence of intersecting forces, and itself has the ability to influence the flows around it. But to pretend it’s removed from those flows and forces, or exists in some vacuum, is nonsensical, as is pretending that there isn’t some essence behind the signifier “self”.

homeschooling

ew

It’s that simple in its abstract form, and through dialectical analysis develops nuance based on the conditions and interests of the subjects being examined.

Imperialist superprofits produce such a surplus that all sorts of subclasses and subsystems and counter-subsystems can develop and, to some degree, coexist within the global capitalist system without being a threat to the whole. Superstructural forces have tremendous power to shape material flows and manipulate local interests in order to preserve the overall structure. The mixed/conflicting material interests of the proletarian and quasiproletarian subclasses within the imperial core can be refocused such that true proletarian interests are obfuscated and de-emphasized in favor of petty bourgeois, faux bourgeois, landowning, aristocratic, and colonial interests.

Revolution is built through the active development of class consciousness as material conditions produce a universal material interest that can be leveraged to unite diverse subclasses with diverse interests.

The discussion and debate of which underclass has the most revolutionary potential at any given time has been the core of Marxist thought since its inception. Quality of life and access to life-necessary resources, both of which are heavily influenced by income, are two of the many determinants of revolutionary potential.