‘It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph’.   It is ‘impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters)’ (Lenin). 2/

The entire capitalist political system is rotten. It cannot protect even the semblance of democratic rights. Behind it stands the rotten capitalist economic system — unable to meet the needs of workers and peasants, who face both absolute and relative immiserization.

Once again, basic change will happen ‘only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way’.   Basic change will not occur without ‘a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters)’ (Lenin).

How much of what most politicians say or do is not driven by big capital? Answer: very, very, very little. Whether they dropped out of school or hide information about their degrees is beside the point.

One must be objective. But objectivism is no good. Just because objectively there are unemployment, #poverty, low wages, potholes, #votechori, corruption, attacks on democracy & secularism, etc.—doesn’t mean people will fight against these and for their rights.

People must become conscious of why these problems exist—of the fact that their interests and those of the capitalist class & its political lackeys are fundamentally incompatible. The ruling class and its lackeys are getting audacious. Common people must show their audacity too.

For reactionary bourgeois forces, #Decolonial or ‘anti-colonial’ means this: outdoing the colonial rulers in coercion against the people. Colonial laws served one type of bourgeois interest; today’s ‘postcolonial’ laws serve another.

‘despite the massive productivity of the world economy, nearly one-third of the human population does not have secure access to food.’ Jason Hickel And that’s just food. Add housing, transport, energy, education, healthcare—most people cannot meet these needs adequately.

It’s easy to say right-wingers believe mythology as history, and that this explains their supremacism. But what gives them the power to impose mythology as truth? Answer: their servility to big business and imperialism. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Ideas matter. Even false ideas have real effects. But to explain events only by ideas is philosophical idealism. A materialist approach explains ideas and their impact through objective processes. This approach helps us fight the ideas and actions of the Right.

As unreason becomes more and more important relative to reason, fascistic tendencies get stronger. There is therefore a combined need to defend both reason and to defend the class interests of the masses as a part of the same process. links.org.au/age-unreason-o…

A major task is to change people’s consciousness: ‘The reform of consciousness consists only in making the world aware [i.e. conscious] of its own consciousness, in awakening it out of its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions’ (Marx)

Changing people’s consciousness includes comradely criticism of their consciousness & actions. But criticism is not enough. As Marx put it: ‘The weapon of criticism cannot replace the criticism of the weapon; material force must be overthrown by material force’.

What role do theoretical ideas & criticism play? Here is Marx again: ‘Theory becomes a material force once it grips the masses. It grips the masses when it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter.’

And what is the root of the matter? It is the ‘class condition’*: the alienation of our power to decide in economic & political life in our own interests. The common people are separated from the means of production and from state power. brill.com/display/title/…

Common people suffer because a tiny class of super-wealthy controls productive resources—and the state enforces that control to help them make more money. Lives will not durably improve without expropriating the super-wealthy and building a transitional state of our own. Period.

The ideological battle line is clear. The the vast majority of opinion-makers—professors, media, think tanks—believe either that nothing needs to be done, or that it’s possible to reconcile the interests of the tiny ruling class and the majority. Marxists reject this illusion.

1/ Across the world, many regions within existing states are denied self-determination. They face suppression of democratic rights, resource plunder, and ethnic or religious oppression—often tied to imperialism or colonial legacies.

2/ Kashmir in South Asia is one example; Gaza is in a league of its own. Others include West Papua (Indonesia), Kurdistan, Ogaden, Cabinda, Basque Country, indigenous territories in the Americas, etc.

‘[T]he most important problems of contemporary social life are intimately bound up with the problems of economic science’. One must learn ‘the fundamental concepts of the different systems of social economy and of the basic features of each system’.(Lenin) mronline.org/2024/08/07/len…