Communism ballthrower • 7mo ago • 63%

What I’ve learned in the 2 years of Lemmy being a thing

Warning: existential topics and eugenics and death and destruction and **opinions you may disagree with** Two years ago I was a sophomore in college, now I’m graduating. I’m majoring in legal history and I get my diploma in less than a month. Very exciting. Planning on going to law school the fall after next. But with all formalities out of the way, what have I learned in the two years of me being a communist, but a quiet one? A lot. ***A lot.*** I think I’m on the cusp of realizing something big, and I understand it will sound ridiculous to a lot of people here. But at least take into consideration that I’ve identified as a Marxist for 5-6 years now. I’m not new to this. It’s all because of last semester, I took a class called “Darwinism in Science and Society.” I took the class to hopefully learn more on the eugenics movement of the early 20th century and to learn more about social Darwinism. And boy did I learn. I learned and realized something horrible. The materialism we use for our theories is outdated. It sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. Prior to Darwin publishing Origin of Species, science was not science. It was not what we consider to be science today. That sounds reasonable, doctors were using mercury and cocaine to cure people. But it wasn’t science for the reason you think. It was not our science because there was no way to possible conceive the idea that something came into existence without a divine creator making it possible. Think Montesquieu. Lyell. Prominent early evolutionist thinkers. They had the idea that animals changed over time, but what drove change? There was no way humans could be related to apes, right? Europe at this time was obsessed with gorillas. We were so similar. That’s why Europe loved them. When you have no idea what drives change, you think it was purposefully changed. God made the dinosaurs, killed them off, made mammals and reptiles and took a step back and they changed. Each step of the way it was intentionally done. But Darwin changed everything. With the idea of natural selection, that the quest to survive was what drove evolution. Mutations that helped a creature survive repopulated and shared these traits, and all the animals that did not have the traits would inevitably die out. For the first time, religion and science were wholly separate. But the idea of materialism, the idea of a physical world not governed by a God, existed before and after Darwin. Aristotle. Ancient Greece, we know this. But even then, when it came down to the fundamentals, it was hard to explain change without resorting to creationism in some way. The idea that change is voluntary. That’s what old materialism is. The idea that we can step in and change nature. That something will force things to change due to the nature of being the force that will change things. Marx, at first, did not accept Darwinism. He at first rejected it because it he believed that it was the projection of capitalist thought onto nature, conformation bias. Essentially he believed Darwin was doing what people who believe they are Sigmas do to wolves. They project their perception of a natural hierarchy onto nature, the wolves, when wolves do not have a hierarchy. But someone would change things. Darwin was special in that he never delved deep into how the theory of natural selection applied to humans. Sure, he wrote one pamphlet, but it was just as “ehh…idk??” as everything else he published about humans. Darwin was an abolitionist and has been one of the only white historical figures I’ve read who picked up on how racism operated. He understood that it was a misinterpretation of nature, a purposeful perversion of nature to conform to one’s ego. So he was never enthusiastic to apply natural selection to humans. But one guy was! His name is Herbert Spencer! He’s the one who coined “survival of the fittest.” Darwin later adopted the term, but never applied it to humanity in the way Spencer did. Spencer created the idea of social evolution. And in this idea of social revolution he took a step backwards. He abandoned Darwin’s materialist thinking and held onto old materialism. That massive change can be voluntary, that the forces of change will cause change by being the force that causes change. Marx was not a white supremacist like Spencer was. Marx was not a eugenicist like Spencer was. Marx was optimistic while Spencer was nihilistic. But Spencer, being the one who created the idea of social evolution, misinterpreted evolution. Nothing we say and do is of free will, we are all nature. As studies show, our acts of “free will” occur after neurons fire in the parts of the brain that is associated with your act of “free will.” Energy sparked in one direction and that’s what caused you to “randomly raise your arm up as an act of free will.” Trippy, I know. That drove me into a week long existential crisis. Spencer created the idea that we can drive social evolution by weeding off those who “pollute” our population. That’s eugenics 101. Marx adopted the idea that we can drive social evolution by weeding off those who “pollute” our population…wait…what? Yeah. Spencer’s idea of the “pollutant” were people who weren’t white, criminals, mentally ill people. Marx’s idea of the “pollutant” was the bourgeoisie. And this is not me being “yass I love the bourgeoisie yasss.” That’s like saying that because I disagree with Spencer, I love criminals. Doesn’t work that way. So regardless, both ideas function on the idea that voluntary acts to weed out the bad in our society, will cause society to evolve in one way or another. For Spencer it was to be more civilized, for Marx it was to be socialist. Marx praised Spencer in Spencer’s early years. He wrote letters to him, he gave him copies of Kapital. That fact is devastating. But this explains a lot. It explains why we keep having idol worship. Because these agents of change is the vanguard party, it’s the leaders of revolution who “voluntarily” decided to change the world. We crowd around them like how we crowded around God for all explanations on how things work. We read their theories, we listen to their speeches, we display their bodies, we mourn them like they are distant relatives we never got to meet. And that’s the jist of what I’ve learned these past two years, but this is the most devastating. It personally explains to me why so many movements aren’t kicking off. Everyone is trying to be Lenin or Mao. But a Lenin or a Mao doesn’t just come into being because they wanted to be Lenin or Mao. Like materialist determinism says, the material conditions have to be ripe for change. But the material conditions aren’t acting in free will. You can’t make things ripe for change. You can’t force social evolution. For change to occur, the weak ones unable to survive in the current conditions will die. And as intelligent beings, we react to their deaths. The black moth against black bark doesn’t give a shit about the white moth who got spotted. The mother bird who discovers a defect in her child will knock the bird out of the nest and make it fall to its death. But we have the capability for complex empathy. So we think that we can force change. I hope I’m wrong. And if I’m wrong, that means we’re missing something. A scientific clue, the future agent of change. We won’t fully understand what caused change until we’re in the future. Anyways…reading list time!! - On the Origin of Species, Darwin - Darwin and the General Reader, Alvar Ellegård - The Origins of the Modern World (2nd Edition), Robert Marks - Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1946, Mike Hawkins - Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought, Robert Bannister - Marx. Lenin. Stalin. Mao. Read all them. I don’t need to list them all, right? - I’ve read a bunch of documentary collections of U.S labor history. They’re hard to come by, so if you’re genuinely curious just look up US labor, documentary collection. You’ll likely find the one I read, it’s just very hard to come by and I snagged the only one that was a reasonable price. All of what I wrote was a synthesis of all the things I’ve read about in those books. The stuff about moths and birds was from high school science class in the evolution unit. They’re super simple examples. If you made it this far, thanks for reading even if you think I’m stupid!! I can’t really call myself a Marxist materialist because of what I’ve learned, so I just call myself a communist scientific determinist. Totes not a mouthful.

Vent, of course. For the past decade, the impacts of climate change have made itself so incredibly clear on the coast of North Carolina. I grew up by the beach, as my father did, my grandfather did, and my great grandfather did. Eastern North Carolina and the coast of the Carolinas itself is very important to me and it is for a lot of people who have long family history there, whether it be the Lumbee or Tuscarora or any of the many different tribes that have grown their roots there in the sands of the islands. I’m not Native American myself but their stories of love and passion for the sand and the soil and the rivers that run through NC have made me feel that same love and passion for the state. Climate change’s effects on the coast are terrifying. The sea gets closer each year and the beaches become more like small cliff edges than the long walk to where the waves would once crash against the many small shells. Towns like Rodanthe are mainly tourist towns, where those houses were initially built far from the ocean and on solid ground. Nobody usually lives there in those houses year round. They’re bought by large real estate companies and rented out for the summers to people who can pay thousands a week for them. The people who do live year round do not live in the big houses, but the smaller houses closer to the sound. They are a lot less well built than the houses on stilts. The islands are skinny on a map, but in person they can fit rows of houses. Many houses are built on stilts per NC house building codes. The laws to build homes on the barrier islands have always been strict and have to follow specific guidelines or it will not be built. The houses in Rodanthe met those guidelines. Built on stilts, far from the ocean, and it still collapsed. It’s so easy to blame us North Carolinians as individuals than accept the harrowing, scarier reason for why this is happening. The barrier islands have always been fragile, and because of their fragility they are one of the first to feel the effects of climate change. I live a few hours south of Rodanthe, but each year the winds get worse. We get 30 mph winds constantly, often up to hurricane force winds a couple times a month due to the smallest rainstorm or low pressure system. We used to fear hurricane season but now we fear each week of the year. “It’s just houses collapsing!” But the houses are signs of a bigger problem. With the sands shifting and the barrier islands eroding, the mainland of NC is threatened. The coast of NC is like a giant marsh. Beautiful grasses and full of life living In brackish or freshwater, each time a storm brews they are at risk of having their environments destroyed by ocean salt water. This leads to a phenomenon called “ghost forests,” where forests become flooded with salt water and the trees all die. It leaves massive tree stalks standing without the greenery of the leaves. The wood is bleached. Ghost forests are scary to look at in person. It’s unsettling. And not only that, these eastern towns within NC were primarily founded by freed black slaves. With sea water rising, worsening storms, the loss of the barrier islands, we are losing Black communities. These communities are often very poor, as most eastern North Carolina towns are no matter the demographics of people who live there. They are the ones who are most effected by this issue, and yet people blame the white people who were able to afford buying their homes on top of hills for these problems. We talk a lot about Hurricane Katerina and how black neighborhoods were the ones who flooded the worst, as they had to live in flood plains due to bigotry and poverty. It’s the same thing here. But you know, since they’re southern, why should anyone care? When NC was hit by the Category 5 hurricane Matthew, the last recovery package we got was 2 million dollars. We needed almost a billion dollars. Towns like Princeville, founded by freed black slaves, sat underwater until the waters eventually receded. Now they lie abandoned and rotting. Many other towns close to the coast suffer this same fate. You can see houses and buildings rotting from floodwater. They all vote red, certainly. Voting matters when it comes to a life or death situation like this, certainly (sarcasm). Each time the South is hit by a hurricane I hear people saying we deserve it. That we deserve it for “voting red,” and yet we don’t say they deserve earthquakes or wildfires for voting blue. I don’t think the rest of the US really understands this social code that is found in many southerners. If you don’t give us respect, we won’t respect you. If you shit on everything that is about us, our home, we won’t follow you. How do you expect southerners to follow tail to tail to you when all you do is spit on our shoes while expecting us to shine yours? Southerners like politicians who speak to the people and promise to help. That’s why Trump was so powerful, because he spoke to the southerner and promised to help us and bring us back industry. To help let the southerner see the day where abandoned buildings weren’t everywhere and everyone wasn’t turning to drugs to cope with their situations. Yet, like all politicians, he lied. And the southerner keeps itching for a new politician to help them while propaganda is being shoved down their throat and while they’re blamed for the worlds problems. Fact of the matter is, most of these politicians and businesses responsible for this climate crisis live and grow in blue states. A lot of politicians who lead in the south aren’t even from the south. And yet it’s us who’s responsible for everything. Our states are so deeply corrupt and no one cares. People each year lose their homes and no one cares. Southerners have been suffering with poverty for decades and no one cares, refusing to acknowledge that the people hit the hardest aren’t white. Because they don’t care. But I hope communists do.

Memes ballthrower • 2y ago • 100%

Reminder

Now I’m gonna speak seriously but as a southerner this Roe v. Wade shit terrifies me. It’s no secret that rural states are more likely to be conservative and more violent against left leaning ideologies. That’s what isolation does. After BLM my campus was threatened to have all of its black students murdered. It’s only thanks to Jan 6 and the blowback from that that fascists are more quiet and less hostile. But with this god awful potential “win” (similar to the election of Trump) they could get more confident again. With social media websites like Facebook becoming even more lenient towards the far right, and ease of communications even better than in 2020, the outcomes are horrifying. I’m terrified for women in rural states, especially non-white women. Trans or not trans, I’m terrified.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/223266 > [Someone sent me this link about it in relation to the rise of fascism in Germany and how the KDP is the one responsible for Hitler’s rise, which contradicts other things I’ve read](https://www.marxists.org/subject/fascism/blick/appendix03.htm) > > Y’all got a summary ? I mainly focus in American history and its’ labor history, so I’m fr out of my usual history babbling zone. If you wanna call me stupid that’s fine too~~___~~