Blog Intro

Hello World!

As with any new blog, I don't know what'll come of this space. My guess is it'll just be a place to host things I want to say. If anyone winds up becoming subscribed I'll be very pleased and very surprised. I don't yet know how often I'll write (or even how long I might continue to write if nothing comes of this!). Anyway, if you're here reading this, then welcome. I'm glad you came. Hopefully I have something to say you're interested in - I'd like to start a conversation, but unfortunately it looks like this is a one way avenue of communication, so feel free to direct message me on Twitter or something!

As context, I'll say I'm a proud Marxist-Leninist (in other words, a Tankie), and proud member of the I.W.W (in other words, a Wobbly). It's likely that this will be a focus of my writing here.

If those things sound unfamiliar and/or scary then I'm super glad you're here, because I want very much to explain how those things ought to be understood as delightful. Genuinely, I don't think you'll find a more loving person than a communist. Our love transcends our personal relationships, it overflows to every individual who suffers unjustly (that is to say, essentially every individual who suffers).

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
― Ernesto "Che" Guevara

But further it is grounded in the material world. While a Christian may say that he or she loves all God's children (and that may in a sense, be true), unless he or she is willing to work to change the world to provide for those people's well-being, to attempt to ensure that their children do not hungry, then that love is, in a way, less than the love of a communist. Certainly those that preach universal love while enforcing the abject suffering of the great mass of working people the world over through the relentless pursuit of personal gain should not be said to love at all. Communists are slandered as everything they are not in the heart of capitalist empire, which is why you might have heard of communists or anarchists as murderers or lazy or insane or whatever.

If those things sound like a contradiction, let me complement your class consciousness and tell you I'm extra glad you're here! One of the weirdest rifts in the left as far as I'm concerned is between industrial unionists and marxist leninists. The reason I say it's weird (in a nutshell - I hope to write more about this), is that it's only a disagreement about whether we should even pay attention to particular historical facts. If wobblies would take an honest look at the USSR, they'd be floored. Unions were organized industrially, workers could and did fire their bosses (a lot), soviets (worker councils) had incredible autonomy and power (at least in the early USSR - and filthy tankies like me are just as pissed as anyone about the USSRs revisionist moves away from worker power). The USSR was clearly on the road to actual communism (or anarchism, as you like...we all want the same thing) from a wobbly perspective. That is to say, it's the best situation a wobbly could hope for in a world where a state still exists. For perfectly fair historical reasons, long long ago, there was a schism in the IWW between those who wanted to support the USSR, and those that did not. The latter portion was much larger, and the former withered away. As I said, I think that's all for fine historical reasons; but now, looking back after the opening of the Soviet Archive, I think those wobblies who thought the USSR a progressive force have been soundly vindicated; and it's only by plugging our ears and chanting imperial propaganda that we can convince ourselves otherwise.

Forgive me if I repeat myself in a later post. This is important to me.

In any case; thanks for coming. Find me on the Plough & Stars Podcast!