The Midwest Passage

A lot of my non-Nevada writing on here has been geopolitical and/or historical class analysis. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of describing the world and noticing patterns.

But as any good Marxist will tell you, the point isn't to understand the world, but to change it. Using that in-depth class analysis, I've figured out the likeliest ways that a dedicated cadre of communists could legally take power within the American political system, and advocated for a political project that accomplishes those things, all in that Class Analysis and Revolution book.

But all of that is just analyzing patterns in history to figure out how to assume state power. Once that's accomplished, what should we do with it?

I usually don't get into things like this in my writings not because I don't have these ideas, but because it's too easy for the debate in the minutiae of such things to distract us from more unifying proposals. Here's an example: in saying I want to end poverty, and I do, I'm not necessarily speaking up for or against any given proposal to end poverty. The chief contradiction in the world today is American imperialism. Ending American imperialism will do a lot to end poverty worldwide, but some of the people who would join me in ending American imperialism might not join me in supporting a given program to end poverty. Plenty of libertarians both want to return to the foreign policy of George Washington and to take an axe to the welfare state; the welfare state doesn't directly serve communist interests but American non-interventionism does.

This is also a great place to touch on the notion of the democratic demand irreconcilable with capitalism that sparks a bourgeois counter-revolution. It's a standard, even defining, feature of Marxism-Lincolnism that in a bourgeois democracy, this is how the revolution against capitalism is made. But it's also, if you read between the lines, part of the strategy of the Center for Political Innovation. In my case, the irreconcilable democratic demand is ending American imperialism itself. In the CPI's case, it's to advocate four things, and each of these things is a major program or nationalization that the American bourgeoisie could in no wise accept while retaining their economic and political power.

Receipts folder: Liam Askew

Sometimes there's a debate so cursed, you end up being forced to agree with a Trot about something. I did this in a discussion about the culpability of Stalin in the murder of a bunch of reactionary Polish military officers once, and mentioned how odd it felt agreeing with a Trot about something, because in general no absolutely not.

Rather than take the odd bedfellow in stride, he launched upon a huge wall of text defending the honor of Lev Bronstein. I responded the most apropos way I knew how. I could have matched theorypost with theorypost, but my God that sounds like an exhausting sidequest for an already exhausting debate, and you can waste weeks of your life arguing with academics about this stuff accomplishing nothing.

So I did this instead:

How did the house stand up over the winter part 2: electric boogaloo

This is a post concept I did last year, and it was a bit anticlimactic but still stands as a good window into what everyday is like out there. Since it was a good post concept, I decided to roll with it again this spring. I basically started rolling tape as soon as I was off Highway 93, and talked about my hopes and expectations. It's a nice little drive with me on the backroads of Nevada.

I then shot some footage once I rolled up to the house, and commented on what I saw. I got to work almost immediately, even during the video. Once again, the angles are terrible - I am not good at photographing myself, especially on video. But you get a good look at the way things stand when I left. To spoil myself...

Receipts folder: Jacob Hodges (if I ever get this pedantic and tiresome, shoot me)

Times are hard for internet leftists. They're liable to get rolled by the same deep state they were cheering on 1/6, so some of them have decided it's safer to organize using Facebook Messenger instead of groups.

Jacob Hodges was one of these. He sent me a friend request a few months ago. I'd seen him around commie spaces, so I approved it. Out of the blue, he sends me one of his writings. It's fine, I give him some approving comments but criticize one aspect of his approach. Kind of a standard thing I (and many reviewers/editors) do when someone thrusts a draft in front of their face: we find something to praise, and something to criticize to make the work stronger and the writer better.

Dude used the phrase "colonialism" like a crutch, but did not otherwise appear to be a Landbackeroo. So that was my gentle criticism: use more proletarian language. And he just could not process that, and the conversation degenerated from there. Dude fills my inbox with an obligation, I read said obligation and try to be useful about it, he becomes tedious and I finally get tired of being given homework and lectured like I was an idiot by the peanut gallery in my inbox. The most galling part of it, for me, was when he "taught" me stuff about Lincoln. Dude, I mentioned Charles Dana in my book, which Lincoln is on the cover of.

This conversation happened when I was visiting friends between Omaha and Nevada, and I'm taking the time now to post it by popular request, and because I want to keep busy as Facebook uploads the videos I took when I got here. I've got one other receipts folder post in the pipeline, it's from a while ago and it generally goes along with this whole theme here of pompous pseudo-intellectuals needing to be stuffed in a collective locker.

But anyway, here's the receipts after the jump: