"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
"I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."
- Smedley D. Butler
____
"Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable, the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not 5000 miles away. They are right here at home."
"The Real Terrorist Was Me"
- Michael Prysner, U.S. Army veteran
____
US launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798:
"This methodology of justifying wars and exploitation abroad and dividing population at home is built into Imperialism, it's absolutely necessary to justify itself"
This was an impressive breakdown. I love how you weaved in current events with the Marxist-Leninist analysis. I’m striving to get there myself. How can we better learn current events and apply these frameworks for understanding them? I would really appreciate a response or a guide if others seem interested in that sort of thing.
And well, that's one of the big questions I'd say. In general, although this obviously depends on what exactly you want to do with the analysis, the Marxist method is basically 'Theoretical Abstraction - Concrete Analysis - Further (and more developed) Abstraction', right?
The first abstraction is the Marxist analysis of capitalism, and everything that results from it. But then, before you can draw anything from it that can be applied to concrete situations, you need to have a lot of empirical data on the processes that are happening in any given situation, and their class base, internal contradictions, secondary contradictions that affect them, and their general historical trajectory. That is by far the most work. From there, you use that to understand the class character of the processes, and most importantly, identify the revolutionary line that communists need to put into action.
A lot of the issues with online discussions of Marxism are that they rarely get beyond the first step, get the order of operations wrong, or falsely apply Marxism as dogma. For example, if I look at the war between Iran and Israel, and just say 'Well, no war but class war, everyone is bad!' that's obviously not serious. It's basically just word association of things people picked up randomly as part of liberal common sense, with some vague radicalism thrown in. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, people pretend like Marxism is the most complicated thing imaginable, but in reality, the opposite is the case. Marxism is intuitive if you manage to put aside your preconceptions and class-based ideological position and take it seriously. That's what I liked about your article, because this pseudo-intellectual bullshit that some Marxists perform couldn't be further from reality.
Marxism is intuitive because Marxism is true. Not in the dogmatic sense, but in the sense that Marxism is an analysis of the actual social processes of the real world, and if the analysis doesn't correspond to the real world, it is very easy to identify the issues. Either you misunderstand the real conditions of what you are analyzing, or your application of Marxist analysis went wrong somewhere. What is so often missing is that people take those real conditions seriously and take time to investigate them. The first serious work Luxemburg wrote was a historical analysis of the industrial development in Poland. Lenin's biggest contribution in 'Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism', beyond the theoretical framework of imperialism as a distinct stage from pre-imperialist capitalism, is that he shows this reality based on concrete changes in economic development in half a dozen different countries, and their relation to colonial states.
Of course, both of them were professional revolutionaries with the necessary experience of a party in a political struggle. We don't have to be so ambitious. Even what I wrote in this article is relatively basic, because it is a developing situation, and it is for a general audience of 'leftists' in the imperial core. I'm not a member of an underground Iranian Communist Party, and the best I could hope for is if I told a member my analysis, they would nod and say, 'Sure, that's obvious, but let's look at Tehran's unionised proletariat...' and so on, right? The more concrete an analysis, the better, but that requires a lot of info, some of which can only be learned by interacting with the masses and the struggle.
For example, I could tell you a lot about the specific features of class-collaborationist unions in Munich, and how their members are in competition with migratory proletarians. That isn't really that interesting for a general audience, and not really that relevant, but absolutely vital for a communist organisation in Munich. And that is ultimately also much more important.
This got kinda long and a bit rambly, but I hope it answers your question to some degree. Maybe I'll write an article on this topic at some point, you got me motivated for it. As a conclusion, maybe: The best way to learn how to analyse concrete conditions is to look at what you know best (your city, your state, your country, your class) and go from first principles of Marxism: What are the class contradictions? What are the class interests? What ideology do they produce, and what is their historical base? How do communists intervene to apply the revolutionary line?
Fantastic article TY. I Agree with you and I absolutely understand your point of view. I will, however say that I believe President Trump has the intelligence and the willpower to brush off these insane war mongering lunatics..
But because President Trump is so taken to the whims of his personality, he may change his mind. Meaning tonight he might say we need to attack tomorrow morning to decide against it so that is a wildcard in this dilemma..
But I do believe he is smart enough to know when he is being played, particularly after his first presidential term.
He’s a fruit loop - add this to the impervious irrationality of the lunatics rampaging around the occupied state of Palestine and now sorrowfully in Iran & we could all have targets on our head wherever we are in the world and whoever we are in the world.
If there’s been a worse time in history to look over the precipice I don’t know it: this is a distillation of hundreds of years of men’s lust for monumentalism in the making.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
"I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."
- Smedley D. Butler
____
"Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable, the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not 5000 miles away. They are right here at home."
"The Real Terrorist Was Me"
- Michael Prysner, U.S. Army veteran
____
US launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798:
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-interventions-1991/
___
Did you know that in 248 years of USA history it has been at war for 231 of them?
youtube.com/watch?v=ooMCvGlbbc4
___
The US Wars killed up to 4 700 000 Humans since 2001:
https://www.brown.edu/search?q=Costs+of+war
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human
___
"This methodology of justifying wars and exploitation abroad and dividing population at home is built into Imperialism, it's absolutely necessary to justify itself"
-Joti Brar
This was an impressive breakdown. I love how you weaved in current events with the Marxist-Leninist analysis. I’m striving to get there myself. How can we better learn current events and apply these frameworks for understanding them? I would really appreciate a response or a guide if others seem interested in that sort of thing.
Firstly, thank you! I really do appreciate it.
And well, that's one of the big questions I'd say. In general, although this obviously depends on what exactly you want to do with the analysis, the Marxist method is basically 'Theoretical Abstraction - Concrete Analysis - Further (and more developed) Abstraction', right?
The first abstraction is the Marxist analysis of capitalism, and everything that results from it. But then, before you can draw anything from it that can be applied to concrete situations, you need to have a lot of empirical data on the processes that are happening in any given situation, and their class base, internal contradictions, secondary contradictions that affect them, and their general historical trajectory. That is by far the most work. From there, you use that to understand the class character of the processes, and most importantly, identify the revolutionary line that communists need to put into action.
A lot of the issues with online discussions of Marxism are that they rarely get beyond the first step, get the order of operations wrong, or falsely apply Marxism as dogma. For example, if I look at the war between Iran and Israel, and just say 'Well, no war but class war, everyone is bad!' that's obviously not serious. It's basically just word association of things people picked up randomly as part of liberal common sense, with some vague radicalism thrown in. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, people pretend like Marxism is the most complicated thing imaginable, but in reality, the opposite is the case. Marxism is intuitive if you manage to put aside your preconceptions and class-based ideological position and take it seriously. That's what I liked about your article, because this pseudo-intellectual bullshit that some Marxists perform couldn't be further from reality.
Marxism is intuitive because Marxism is true. Not in the dogmatic sense, but in the sense that Marxism is an analysis of the actual social processes of the real world, and if the analysis doesn't correspond to the real world, it is very easy to identify the issues. Either you misunderstand the real conditions of what you are analyzing, or your application of Marxist analysis went wrong somewhere. What is so often missing is that people take those real conditions seriously and take time to investigate them. The first serious work Luxemburg wrote was a historical analysis of the industrial development in Poland. Lenin's biggest contribution in 'Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism', beyond the theoretical framework of imperialism as a distinct stage from pre-imperialist capitalism, is that he shows this reality based on concrete changes in economic development in half a dozen different countries, and their relation to colonial states.
Of course, both of them were professional revolutionaries with the necessary experience of a party in a political struggle. We don't have to be so ambitious. Even what I wrote in this article is relatively basic, because it is a developing situation, and it is for a general audience of 'leftists' in the imperial core. I'm not a member of an underground Iranian Communist Party, and the best I could hope for is if I told a member my analysis, they would nod and say, 'Sure, that's obvious, but let's look at Tehran's unionised proletariat...' and so on, right? The more concrete an analysis, the better, but that requires a lot of info, some of which can only be learned by interacting with the masses and the struggle.
For example, I could tell you a lot about the specific features of class-collaborationist unions in Munich, and how their members are in competition with migratory proletarians. That isn't really that interesting for a general audience, and not really that relevant, but absolutely vital for a communist organisation in Munich. And that is ultimately also much more important.
This got kinda long and a bit rambly, but I hope it answers your question to some degree. Maybe I'll write an article on this topic at some point, you got me motivated for it. As a conclusion, maybe: The best way to learn how to analyse concrete conditions is to look at what you know best (your city, your state, your country, your class) and go from first principles of Marxism: What are the class contradictions? What are the class interests? What ideology do they produce, and what is their historical base? How do communists intervene to apply the revolutionary line?
Best wishes comrade!
Jesus, the US has been telegraphing this attack on Iran for 2 decades.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnNJW9_KYA
https://misfitsandmasters.substack.com/p/iran-playing-chess-and-checkers-with
Fantastic article TY. I Agree with you and I absolutely understand your point of view. I will, however say that I believe President Trump has the intelligence and the willpower to brush off these insane war mongering lunatics..
But because President Trump is so taken to the whims of his personality, he may change his mind. Meaning tonight he might say we need to attack tomorrow morning to decide against it so that is a wildcard in this dilemma..
But I do believe he is smart enough to know when he is being played, particularly after his first presidential term.
Godspeed
He’s a fruit loop - add this to the impervious irrationality of the lunatics rampaging around the occupied state of Palestine and now sorrowfully in Iran & we could all have targets on our head wherever we are in the world and whoever we are in the world.
If there’s been a worse time in history to look over the precipice I don’t know it: this is a distillation of hundreds of years of men’s lust for monumentalism in the making.