star_wraith

I’m white. My daughter is also white. She’s 3 years old, almost 4.

Up to this age, my approach to teaching her about race has been to focus exclusively on skin color. Meaning, we talk about how people can have all different colors and tones to their skin. Talking about skin color on a spectrum. But always emphasizing that people are all the same and that everyone should be treated the same.

In isolation, this all sounds lib. I of course want to get all into structural and institutional racism et al. But… she’s 3. Up until a few months ago she was still pooping and pissing in a diaper. My thinking is that emphasizing this more lib understanding of race is more age-appropriate now, and we can get into the real stuff a little later on when she has the mental and emotional maturity to handle it (that said, I have told her that the cops aren’t very nice to people who don’t look like us. Whatever, the daycare has pigs come over and talk to the kids even at her age, so fuck em I’m gonna counter that shit now).

Is this the right approach? Is there more I should be doing? If you all have any age-appropriate books on this topic you can recommend, definitely let me know.

(Specifying “post-NEP” since think the war communism economy and the NEP should be viewed as it’s own thing)

Trying to get into the real fine details regarding the Soviet economy - either the total period from Stalin to Gorbachev, or segments of that period. Really want to understand what went wrong, and what went right.

The problem I’m having is when I go to the bourgeois economic historians, they unsurprisingly shit on the economy under Stalin (or rather, emphasize the unsustainability of it long term) and praise Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Obviously that’s a biased route I’m not interested in going down.

However, whenever I go in the opposite direction, I feel like I’m reading sources that are maybe a bit too uncritical of the Stalin era economic policies. And you know what, maybe Stalin did actually get everything about the economy right. I’m open to that possibility. Obviously the track record is there. But idk, I haven’t found one source yet who has sufficiently shown their work on that (that I’m sure is due to me not finding the right sources yet). Like, when it comes to economic history, I don’t feel an overwhelming need to defend Stalin or criticize Khrushchev and Brezhnev, just trying to find a sober analysis from a Marxian source. I have a background in econ so I would feel comfortable handling something that’s a bit more technical, if such a resource exists.

Any suggestions welcome!

https://nitter.cz/HarrisonHSmith/status/1750309689114436087#m

Death to America and viva la revolucion!

Was just thinking about this since I’m wearing my Cuba WBC cap around town (from the most recent WBC when Cuba was actually “allowed” to be in charge of their own team).

I don’t have any myself, but thought you all might know some.

I’m not a native German speaker obviously, but doesn’t “Das Kapital” translate to “THE Capital”?

Also, English-speakers should call it just “Capital”. Calling it “Das Kapital” is just propaganda to make the title sound more menacing than it is.

Liberals will point to how improvements in quality of life have occurred in capitalist countries in recent centuries (debatable, and certainly not true for the entire world, but let’s assume they are correct for now). What is usually implied is that it’s all thanks to capitalism that we have the quality of life that we do, thus capitalism should be allowed to continue.

The thought I had was, do most of the quality of life improvements come down mostly to how agriculture and medicine developed? Meaning, famines were a harsh reality of life for much of human history, and modern agriculture has allowed us to now be in a position where globally, we can produce more than enough food consistently for the whole planet.

Likewise in regards to medicine… in the past just getting sick could be a death sentence. People had to live with incredibly painful conditions their whole life that we now have cures for. Honestly modern medicine is the one reason why I would rather live in 2023 than any other time.

What I’m getting at is… though these advances did occur under capitalism, I don’t think I would give capitalism the “credit” for them. Obviously socialism was not possible 200 years ago. I’m not denying standard Marxist historical progression. What I am doing though, is trying to attack the liberal narrative of treating capitalism as some god who has bestowed his mercy on us - that everything good we have is from Him, and thus we must give Him our praise and continue on His economic system into eternity.

The Soviet Union and China were/are both able to be incredibly productive in agriculture and ended their historic, periodic famines. The Soviet Union (and Cuba!) were/are renowned for their advances in medicine.

I think the only things you can give capitalism “credit” for is developing the productive forces, allowing for high levels of commodity production, and increasing levels of wealth (though not equally shared).

Our beloved Large Adult Son went on the Age of Napoleon podcast and gave his thoughts about Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which I saw somewhere that Matt said it was his favorite book.

It’s a pretty great rundown of the book; I especially enjoyed the insight he had into Marx’s “sack of potatoes” comment.

Happy Eighteenth Brumaire, comrades!

And you know who I also don’t condemn?

The IRA

The Viet Minh

John Brown

Haitian slaves who revolted

Native American fighters

Black Panthers

National Liberation Front (Algeria)

Nelson Mandela

The 26th of July Movement

Every one of them were called “terrorists” or something equivalent at some point. Now think about who’s on the opposite of this list. Apartied South Africa, slavers, settlers, Zionists, the US government… There is only one moral and just side to be on and it’s not even a discussion.

If you grew up in the United States, it's likely that you have often heard Americans - when referring to conflict in Palestine - say something to the effect of:

"Well, Jews and Muslims have fighting over that land for thousands of years. They hate each other and there's no way we'll ever have peace there."

I think you all be surprised to learn that Americans are complete dumbasses when it comes to history, because this notion of Jews and Muslims struggling in eternal conflict over a piece of land is an absolute myth.

Up until the last hundred years or so, then stretching back to Roman Empire times, Jews and Muslims (and Christians) have lived together in Palestine. From the third or fourth century CE until the emergence of Islam, Jews and Christians both lived there (oftentimes it was Jewish people who converted to Christianity). After Islam emerges then you had three groups living there, in various proportions, with the Muslim proportion steadily getting larger over the centuries; and there really doesn’t seem to be intra-group conflict beyond a sort of baseline for humans.

Of course there was conflict and war. You had Turks and Crusaders and others fighting plenty of wars in the area. But it doesn't seem to me like there was any more amount of war in Palestine during that time than there was, say, in the Rhine Valley. And also, just because there are wars doesn't mean that there is conflict between groups of people. In general, it seems like for centuries, Jews, Muslims and Christians occupying the same space in relative peace seems to be the norm. Even up until before the Balfour declaration, there were a number of Jewish people living alongside Muslims in Palestine. But importantly, the Jewish people in Palestine didn't seek to dominate, but to either mind their own business quietly in their community, or even with a sort of shared Palestinian identity with their Muslim neighbors.

Co-existence has been the historical norm there, not conflict.

As best as I can tell, this whole notion of "they've been fighting forever" comes from one specific source: Evangelical Christians. It's because that group believes that roughly 4,000 years ago, the only humans alive were Noah and his family. Then in a few generations, Jacob and Esau fought over a birthright and then those two literally became the first ancestors of Jews and Muslims, respectively. There's some verse in there about "always struggling against each other" or something. These Evangelicals then go on to believe everything else in the Old Testament - despite the overwhelming historical evidence - is literally true. That the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt and then conquered Palestine (there's no evidence for Jews being slaves in Egypt and most historians believe the Jewish people emerged out of the larger Canaanite people, not as something separate from them). These Evangelicals can then excuse genocide if not encourage it since it’s inevitable anyway (and in that they side with Israel, because they’re all racist pieces of shit).

Once again, Evangelicals making the world worse for everyone.

I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.

And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.

This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.