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Showing posts from April, 2021

Freedom and Labor in the Era of Imperialism

American Values and the Communist Movement The American War for Independence was a war that shook the world to its very core. All over the world, from Haiti to France, oppressed peoples took up the banner of liberte, egalite, fraternite! They fought and died for this motto, and their blood stains the foundations of the very society we live in today. But, looking around, it becomes obvious that their cries for freedom and equality went unmet. Racial and gender based oppression run rampant. Alienation under capitalism has intensified. The promises of religion have revealed themselves to be fraudulent, and the American government has all but abandoned its people. Salvation is not to be found in floating abstractions such as liberte, egalite, fraternite, but rather, in the material, concrete struggle for existence. It is to be found in the labor movement. Solace must not be found in the hope that one day the world may be better. It must be found in the active struggle to transform it. In o

Notes on Male/Heterosexual Power

                                                                                                    1      In the present day, heterosexual power hides itself as power. Rather than presenting itself as the dominant power, it presents itself as the natural and biological norm by which all humans are defined by default. It is assumed that gender is equivalent to sex. It is assumed heterosexuality is the norm. It is assumed, whether it is said or not, that men take the active role and women take the passive role, that men are dominant and women are dominated. However, it wasn’t always this way. For a very long time, a harsh struggle had to be waged against all forms of deviant sexuality - whether it be homosexuality, women’s sexuality, or genderqueer sexuality. Speaking of the Victorian era, Foucualt writes in The History of Sexuality that “sexuality was carefully confined ; it moved into the home. The conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it into the serious function of reprod

Theses on Queerness and the Baedlings

Part One 1 All queer philosophy has hitherto sought to maintain queerness as it currently exists. What we must do is destroy it. 2 Queerness plays a historical role in the transition out of this gendered, binary society. As we conceive of it queerness is definitely a modern invention. Homosexuality and trans sexuality have existed for a long time, but queerness as we conceive of it is a modern idea. It emerges at a stage in capitalism when capitalism begins to break down the very idea of what the self means via commodification and reification. As relations between people are covered up by relations between things, the concept of the individual begins to break down, and new, non commodified ways of viewing the self emerge.  3 First, what do the Baedlings get right? They are correct that we are “not interested in a social project of of queerness, in queer contributions to society, in carving out our own ghettos within capitalist life.” They are correct, in general, when they say that soc

Reflections On Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

Marx outlines in his introduction to The critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right a basic conception of historical materialism. One of the ideas he posits is that in order to keep progressing further, we must constantly beat back the tide of reaction that seeks to reinstate the old world, and that no matter how far we go there will always be remnants of the old world in the new. What we currently see is the remnants of patriarchy fighting desperately to remain relevant. Like, political and economic patriarchy has been effectively abolished. Women are able to participate in the economic and political sphere. All that remains is social patriarchy. And it’s fighting desperately to stay alive. However, despite economic and political patriarchy having been pretty much done away with, the oppression of women remains. Here we can see a contradiction that can be analyzed dialectically; the contradiction between what is (the reality of the oppression of women in everyday life) and what appears t