charlescearl

“ Liberals, and Social Democrats in general, have this common belief that capitalism can be “reformed” to become more humane and acceptable to society, and that this can be done by the use of state power which can be acquired through elections in a political democracy; this state of reformed capitalism can be institutionalized for ever, which makes any struggle for socialism unnecessary.”

https://mronline.org/2026/06/13/the-chimera-of-a-reformed-ca...

"“Destruction becomes the principal commodity produced by capital. Militarism will lead accumulation, which will theoretically demolish any limit to capital.”

The Accumulation of Waste, Kadri, https://brill.com/display/book/9789004548022/front-7.xml

Monopoly Capitalism, Baran and Sweezy

https://archive.org/details/monopolycapitale00bara

Labor and Monopoly Capital, Harry Braverman https://ia801604.us.archive.org/12/items/023978561/Braverman...

The very idea of “trusting” monopoly capitalism.

Further, the american government across several administrations imposed sanctions which led to premature death of Iranians, worsening conditions. It instigated the Iran/Iraq war carnage. It also bombed Iran contributing to civilian casualties. Even if it were to stage “regime change” in Iran, give the american government’s track record in Afghanistan and Iraq, the resulting government would likely inflict even more hardship upon the people of Iran. This is why some on “the left” view the united states as the primary contradiction.

Over the past 10 years have seen extended clips of the incident which actually align with CPC analysis of Tianamen square (if that’s what’s being referred to here).

However, in deepseek, even asking for bibliography of prominent Marxist scholars (Cheng Enfu) i see text generated then quickly deleted. Almost as if DS did not want to run afowl of the local censorship of “anarchist enterprise” and “destructive ideology”. It would probably upset Dr. Enfu to no end to be aggregated with the anarchists.

https://monthlyreview.org/article-author/cheng-enfu/

“Thus, the Communist and Cultural Revolutions represent some of the most radical attempts in human history to eliminate the advantages of the elite, and to eradicate inequality in wealth and formal education.”

http://davidyyang.com/pdfs/revolutions_draft.pdf

“Private property” in the socialist sense is property which is used for production (note that socialist countries - Laos, Vietnam, USSR before the destruction of socialism - typically have 80%+ rates of home ownership). Collective control of factories, land used for commodity & social (i.e. feeding people) production.

There are many writings that address this misconception. Communist Manifesto https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Man... provides a succinct response. You might also search for what class owns most of the property in the united states.

If you attend any “public” meeting of a government or quasi-state entity in the US (library board, energy regulation board, county board,…) it becomes clear that the state seeks to hide and shift accountability at every turn and is willing to bring in armed force to squash even the slightest demand for transparency.

Living in actually existing fascism requires adoption of anonymity & privacy preservation processes. You have so much worth protecting because you have everything to lose.

The term “populist demagoguery” always calls to mind Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-work...

"Yes, peasant associations are necessary, but they are going rather too far."

Is it a bubble? Maybe it’s just the landlords up to the old tricks again.

The evisceration of the pension system in the united states has created a class of those nearing retirement who will live in poverty. https://www.ncoa.org/article/addressing-the-nations-retireme...

The result of “fiscal restraint” amounts to acceptance of premature death for millions. Likely acceptable to a country that has accepted excess COVID deaths and support for genocides in West Asia, East & Central Africa, and South America. I only hope that boomers turn to anarchist resistance and disruption.

Ali Kadri’s The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction comes to mind

https://lpeproject.org/events/the-accumulation-of-waste-a-po...

Jamestown Foundation was founded by former CIA director to support Soviet defectors and seems to have employed former employees. A 2021 FOIA request that the agency provide all records related to its interaction with the foundation was denied https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/foi...

- The excess deaths experienced by unhoused persons - The excess deaths of persons that live in in the so-called Cancer Alley https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-shocking-hazards-of-lo... - The persistent excess deaths of those incarcerated in american prisons https://www.vera.org/news/the-hidden-deaths-in-american-jail... - The american mass shootings in 2025 https://massshootingtracker.site/ - The internationalized violence of ICE arrests and attacks https://www.npr.org/2025/10/23/nx-s1-5538090/ice-detention-c...

These are all instances of political violence. The political class in the united states deemed particular populations disposable, and enacted policies that lead to excess deaths and extreme violence upon those populations. Millions in the united states live under the threat of state violence and politcally accepted exposure to premature death.

The article and comments refer to the resulting counter-violence that perpetrators of the un-remarked systemic violence may become exposed to.

On the ending of “DEI” (itself an eviscerated approach to addressing the minimal demands to address over two centuries of american slavery, indigenous genocide, patriarchal violence, anti-trans, anti-queer violence) as targeted death making. The list of the scientific establishment’s participation, complicity, neglect is long. Some programs called immediately to mind include:

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/543.html

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-shocking-hazards-of-lo...

https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/education-and-awaren...

https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/infant-health-and-mortality-a...

The uncritical, unfounded, white supremacist equivalence of the names of Global South heads of state that share nothing other than their inclusion in the never-ending spectacle of a collapsing and always fascist empire’s hitlist. I’m reminded of how this abomination of a country relentlessly linked Marcus Garvey (Black nationalist and Capitalist) and W.E.B. DuBois (Black pan-Africanist and eventually communist) both with the label “Bolshevik” and “Communist threat” as justification for surveillance, incarceration.

This “dictator” meme, played out for the last 100 plus years is tired and tiring especially in a place that has a higher incarceration rate than USSR in the 1930s ( or Cuba ) and is currently snatching up folk for the crime of speaking Spanish, while US Southern Command blows up Venezuelan fisherman for the crime of feeding their families.

This amidst an unrelenting united states “embargo” - in another world this embargo would be called the crime against humanity that it is.

I often think of this Logic article on Cuban information retrieval design. “ Informatics of the Oppressed”, by Rodrigo Ochigame https://logicmag.io/care/informatics-of-the-oppressed/

Passport revocation of Paul Robeson https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/selected-t...

Passport revocation of W.E.B. DuBois https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/when-civil-rights-were...

Passport revocation of William L. Patterson https://depts.washington.edu/moves/CRC_genocide.shtml

The american state was brought into existence and persists through unrelenting political violence - internal and external. The estimated 90% of Indigenous population that perished; persistent excess deqths of indigenous peoples https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1698152/; persistent racialized violence perpetrated by the state on Black communities; the exploitation and arbitrary state violence upon documented and undocumented non-citizen workers (or those perceived to be non-citizens); the 5 million that have perished during GWOT; the 5 million or so excess USSR deaths from US policies during the early 1990s; the violence of carceral warfare (the so-called “mass incarceration”) against racialized populations.

Aime Cesaire called it “imperial boomerang”; Malcolm X said “chickens coming home to roost”.

Yet the only form of violence that legible to the bourgeoisie is even the prospect of resistance & counterviolence - most of the recent attacks upon capitalists & those labeled as “right wing” seem to have not come from “the left”.

“The ease with which people can challenge authority significantly shapes how those in power behave” known in 19th century as “dictatorship of the proletariat”. The speed at which the so-called “authoritarian regime” ended lockdown the moment significant protests began.

“Cuban information scientists didn’t just critique the limitations of traditional informatics, however. They also advanced a more critical approach to mathematical modeling, one that emphasized the social complexity and the historical contingency of informational regularities. In the 1980s, when Cuban libraries were beginning to adopt digital computers, Setién Quesada was tasked with developing a mathematical model of library activity, based on statistical data, for the purpose of economic planning. ”

https://logicmag.io/care/informatics-of-the-oppressed/

Executive order criminalizing homelessness. The order comes on the day I witnessed police disappear an unhoused person

With respect to the post’s discussion of “surveillance capitalism”, Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capital (published 1974, https://archive.org/details/labormonopolycap00brav) makes it clear that Capitalism (particularly with respect to the use of machines for worker exploitation) is never not surveillance.

“I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole; of course there will always be some mercenaries.”

In the context of the decisions of largely East Asia born technical staff, can’t help but reflect on the role of actual western missionaries and mercenaries in East Asia over the last 100+ years & also the DeepSeek targeted sinophobia.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_missions_in_China

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Beleaguer

https://monthlyreview.org/2025/02/01/imperialism-and-white-s...

The Black southeast is still in over the Soviet Union’s rates during the 1930s https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html. Racialized carceral warfare.

Racists will always find a way to make ending racism “illegal” (they write those “laws”). Love how the US Civil Rights Acts and various emancipation clauses always contain loopholes to re-enslave folk. Like using civil rights law - mostly constructed to make life for formerly enslaved Africans plausible - now being used to erase, incarcerate, unemploy, de-legitimize, kidnap, and perform deportation of the same folks it was intended to protect. It was never “color blind” because slavery was not “color blind” (the terms always re-inscribe the borders of racism and ableism don’t they?) Never trust colonizer “law” or “logic”. Rant done.

Land back

https://www.therednation.org/10-point-program/

The united states has the world’s largest incarcerated population. It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The USA has the fifth highest incarceration rate on the planet. In the Southeast United States, the incarceration rate of the Black population is 7% (as a point of comparison 2x the incarceration rate of minoritized Uyghur population of China per the World Uyghur Congress figures)

People always cite Parable of the Sower as proof of an inevitable dystopian collapse. They fail to then point out that Octavia Butler’s protagonists constructed Earthseed, a commune that stood in opposition to MAGA.

At least 30% of seniors in the US are living precariously and that is likely to increase as SSA benefits are gutted. The statistics are even worse when disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender.

https://www.ncoa.org/article/get-the-facts-on-economic-secur...

As militant actions in Greece, France, and places across the globe attest, voting is not nor should be the only sphere of political engagement.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s In the Shadow of the Shadow State, which discusses the concept of the anti-state state.

https://sfonline.barnard.edu/ruth-wilson-gilmore-in-the-shad...