Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Ho ho ho. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
Matrix homeserver at genzedong.org. See this thread for information about our Matrix space. Discord here.
Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory, try z-lib, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.
French left wing commentators will never stop fighting to maintain the illusion that we are not living in a class dictatorship. Cops have been absolutely unhinged for the last days and all they do is compare it to “the authoritarian regimes” more often referring to Russia but probably with China at the tip of their tongues.
All they do is reinforce the idea that “we the civilised west aren’t supposed to be like them authoritarians”. They genuinely think they are convincing everyone to resist, but you cannot correctly analyse either the problem or the solution if you implicitly deny that the imperial core only has bourgeois dictatorship and never had democracy except for small instances like the Commune.
At the end of the day, capital is unchallenged because people breaking stuff will never be like people arming themselves with powerful foreign allies.
They don’t represent the French proletariat.
True, but unfortunately it’s because it’s the other way around. Living in a heavily saturated mass-media society, the proletariat tend to bless media figures with their trust and base their worldview on theirs. They don’t represent the workers because they are the ones deciding what the workers think. It is very hard to escape this. This is why I think that the prime contradiction in the West is colonialism, because as long as unequal exchange bribes the workers they won’t stop drinking the media kool aid
I disagree.
After reading Foucault and learning about the modern financial colonialism that all Frenchmen benefit from I’ve become incredibly prejudiced against the French.
Although the protests are aesthetically pleasing, they happen so often it seems like it’s just another way to reinforce capitalism, by letting the proles take out their anger every few years there’s no room for true revolutionary sentiment.
You nailed it. This is fueled by the edgy new left and syndicalism promoting the idea that displays of violence will be intimidating to the government. This is a complete misconception of how revolutions are made that is deeply rooted in the rejection of Marxism-Leninism in the name of utopian idealistic integrity
A hospital in Idaho in US, is refusing to deliver babies.
The reason: hospitals were having trouble recruiting talent post COVID, and the the new abortion laws were the final straw to have the hospitals just end the service. Under the new laws doctors can be persecuted if the baby does not survive birth, and they may be forced to make choices that are not ethical medically but required by law.
Democrats are obviously psychopaths in their own way, but damn is it hard to top the sheer awful mysogyny of Republicans.
The Democratic brass are identical, the only difference is there are some well-meaning people at more local levels in the party that I can’t say the same for with the Republicans
I am not an American and this is the most outrageous thing I have ever seen
Nebraska has an influx of child labor as well…
So Finland is joining NATO and a terrorist act is carried out in St. Petersburg. Now I am mostly sure these events are unrelated, but I fear we’ll be seeing more of that in the near future
Sadly.
I applied for a job at the Union. Had my foot in the door before for another job there but it bounced last minute because it didn’t really matched with what I wanted, but this job does.
Fingers crossed.
Best of luck!
Hope you get it comrade!
They’ll be lucky to have you on the books. Would it be full time?
It’s a full time position, but full time at the union is four days as one of the things they keep fighting for is a four day work week, five day pay system
That’s good. I hope it works out for you.
We need more communists in labor unions.
So the Japanese foreign minister visited the PRC and demanded the release of 5 of their captured spies. Qin Gang pretty much called the Japanese gov as American dogs to his face lol.
demanded the release of 5 of their captured spies
And if they don’t? What’s next?
Business as usual lol, Japan will continue to follow the US in meddling with the Diaoyu islands/Taiwan and supporting the chip ban regardless of the outcome.
So the same thing they were going to do regardless? I don’t think they understand how threats work
source please. 😂
lol, <为虎作伥> being used diplomatically is a pretty strong phase, essentially saying “stop helping evil people” (stop following your American masters in everything)
the link is broken. thanks a lot thiugh
Just wondering, how many people here are actually from the Genzedong reddit purge
Probably the majority (or at least largest minority), though there’s a few prominent newer people. We should hold a poll on that.
I am
Same
I’m a refugee, found genzedong as that edgy kid who blasted the Soviet anthem on the bus in HS and now I’m (still stupid) a fully fledged tankie
Not me.
I was reading the new Tricontinental issue containing translated Chinese academic journal articles.
And it’s good to see people in China mentioning and being critical about some of the BRI and Chinese-linked projects.
First, China’s orientation should be based on strategic rather than commercial interests. China cannot merely be concerned with exporting its production capacity and capital or securing access to external resources and markets for Chinese enterprises; but rather it must prioritise what is necessary to ensure strategic survival and national development. By adopting such a strategic perspective, it becomes clear that the approach taken by many Chinese firms and local governments towards other nations and regions, as part of the BRI, is not sustainable as it has prioritised commercial interests and tended to ignore political-strategic interests.
In the second article by Yang Ping.
I already mentioned this briefly in my rant about Malaysian elections and I do hope that this will be corrected in due time. That said, I am not expecting the ruling class over here in Malaysia to behave any differently in the short term to fix their neoliberal politics.
Read this next.
Thanks for the recommendation. Some of Cheng Enfu’s works are already on my reading list, this adds another one to it. Sadly can’t find any (free) online copy though.
Have you tried Z Library?
Yep, nothing.
I hate being forced to use social media in order to attract clients.
Use the Force.
I get a good number of laughs from my employers social media presence. It’s a super niche b2b company, so social media doesn’t really fit but everyone’s using it.
sad announcement: the GenZedong Matrix server is down, possibly permanently (there was some discussion about transferring the domain but I’m not sure how that turned out)
this is literally 1983
@GrainEater LMFAO
After reading some Michael Hudson, i can say that i’m terrified of the ‘magic of compound interest’. Right now in Mexico interest rates and bond returns are > 10%, there is no way this is sustainable.
Really exposes the inherent contradictions of finance capitalism. How can a system based on debt continue to exist if debt can balloon far faster than anybody’s ability to repay it?
It is just a big ass ponzi scheme if you think abt it.
And one day we will default and the banks will take our assets. Saddest thing is that it already happened in the 80s and we are just running towards another one once again.
So returns will double every 7.2 years. Scary shit for people servicing loans.
How did you calculate it?
There is no math involved, it’s what the bond returns look like officially and the rates banks give u when u invest. 10% interest means that with the magic of compound interest, you double the money u invest in 7 years.
I’ve come to the conclusion that every single finance service business is a fucking scam. They basically pool the money of their clients and double it through the ‘magic of compound interests’.
That’s the fun part of financial capital. They are allowed to essentially conjure money out of thin air, which can then be used to acquire actual commodities
And conjuring money out of thin air counts as economic activity, so their GDP and revenue figures still look decent every year.
The whole system is a huge ponzi scheme. It’s illegal for us to do it though.
Also the fact that everything is debt and financing is concerning because it means this huge scheme is based on nothing.
Finance is where I would start in a purge of “bullshit jobs” which contribute nothing to society. That and management consulting.
I have been playing a lot of geoguessr lately and US towns and cities really stand out like a sore thumb. I thought I knew car centric cities but the way Amerikan cities look, with low density residential spaces and wide roads coupled with relatively flat land makes every city feel very barren with concrete.
Too many times I expected the area to be peri-urban but it is actually close to the centre of a city.
When I see images from US cities I always wonder where the hell do people live. The only thing I see are roads and cars, that and suburban housing which I refuse to believe everyone in the US lives in.
French oil companies are down because of the strikes in the country. Said companies wanted to continue producing, so they asked their Belgian branches to do it for them. As a display of solidarity, the Belgian branches’ workers went on strike today as wel lmao. ✊🏼✊🏼
Every time I hear the TV from my parents room it’s always reactionary. Currently it’s some trans panic shit.
Thats just TV in general lol, glad its dying.
Is whatever is replacing TV any less reactionary? It seems to me that the same reactionary opinions are just being perpetuated in new forms of media.
Prob not but damn is it peaceful not having to hear news 24/7 coming out of my parents room.
Just decided to unsubscribe from all even remotely political related subreddits. This comes after reading a news article on worldnews about a Palestinian attack killing tourists and the comments were filled with Zionists calling for a Palestinian genocide.
I reached my max with this Reddit political shit man.
I hope it works out. My experience on reddit is you can’t avoid political content. Libs take cheap uneducated shots everywhere.
After five minutes or so a post on r/bikepacking turned up, asking to support a Ukrainian bike maker lol. But the occasional post is okay enough for me.
