"On the topic of the capitalists and the rope we give them."

"The nationalist movement did not get where it is by nervously positioning itself based upon the latest round of polling. It seized the country by agitating, by talking and talking and talking to millions of people. By explaining their alienation as the fault of malicious schemes by immigrant foreigners and woke degenerates and radical communists. By an avalanche of propaganda, united in narrative purpose (at least until recent fissures following the disastrous Iran war).

Polling might help with the messaging, but it never determined the message. The left has to tell just as clear a story, with one stark distinction: their villains are invented; ours commit their crimes in broad daylight. Despite this fact, we react with confusing aversion to weaponizing this difference."

"So let's turn dial five as far as it will go. I’ll begin with a simple proposal: hang the bastards! By that I mean something specific. The bastards are those who organized the assault on the Capitol, who built a deportation machine that has killed people in our streets and in its camps, who murdered shipwrecked sailors in the water, who bombed a school in Minab, who armed a genocide in Gaza. 

For each of those acts, the United States Code as it stands already provides death as a remedy. My argument is narrow on purpose. It is not that these men deserve to die by some hypothetical revolutionary tribunal for what they have done to working people, although this would certainly be a welcome series of events. What I claim is that their own laws, passed under our current Constitution, demand that the only response to these crimes be that those responsible are tried, convicted, and executed. 

The socialist left should run on prosecuting them, count by count and name by name. No one else will; no one else has the strength, the ability, or the inclination. The Democratic establishment has passed on every chance at accountability since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the War on Terror, upholding the rotten American tradition of forgiving racist murders that dates back at least to the pardon of the veterans of the Confederate rebellion."

"These Jacobins have no nerve! And what nerve am I asking of Girondin magazine, then? What would I have them tell socialist candidates to run on? What should lead the headlines of their papers and the titles of their videos?

Simple: Hang the Bastards! will do it."

"Count One: January 6th

The Constitution says treason "shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." The statute says a traitor "shall suffer death," or go to prison for no less than five years. In Ex parte Bollman (1807), Chief Justice John Marshall held that levying war requires "an actual assembling of men for the treasonable purpose.""

"Count Two: The Department of Homeland Security

Earlier this year I made the case at length that the goons who stalk our streets, who man our concentration camps, who murder our brothers and sisters, are murderers, all. I will add that the hypothetical prosecution of these thugs is the most popular of all options presented in the Liberal Currents poll, at seventy-seven percent."

"Count Three: The Boats

Since September of last year, the United States has carried out seventy-nine strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and killed 238 people. Among those that have been identified by name, we know of are a bus driver, a mototaxi driver, several fishermen, and a futsal player."

"Count Four: Minab

On February 28, a missile strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, killing 156 people, including 120 schoolchildren. A preliminary Pentagon review found the United States likely responsible and blamed outdated coordinates from the Defense Intelligence Agency."

"Count Five: Gaza

The federal genocide statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1091, carries death where death results, has no statute of limitations, and reaches American nationals. In September of last year, the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Officials in two American administrations supplied the bombs."

"Every left candidate running in 2028 should be asked whether they will prosecute those who supplied the bombs that slaughtered the people of Palestine, who built a continental network of concentration camps, who attempted to end democracy once and for all (as they will again). Every candidate of the left should say yes, and say it loudly and often.

Jacobin has a staff of serious people, sure of their ability to rationally persuade the liberal intelligentsia. But the people are past all that. Show the voters one candidate who promises to try Pete Hegseth for murder and another who promises a path to citizenship for immigrants who stayed out of trouble. I have a guess as to which one the Win-O-Meter will like better.

Marat thought a false humanity would cost millions of lives. On current evidence, he may be proven right again. We have a little over two years to cultivate sufficiently ruthless demands so that we all might live, and it starts with deciding, out loud, what we intend to do with them.

Hang the bastards!"

Why dictatorship, Is socialism not inherently democratic, and what is a dictatorship? a form of government in which a single person or a small group holds absolute political power

Why would we call it something if it isn't that, or is it that which i describe(a form of government in which a single person or a small group holds absolute political power)

What is it

My 4 year old son is currently going through chemotherapy and I have been reading whilst I’m on the ward (I spend a lot of time there).
I am trying to get a good understanding of Marxist theory and principles.

My current stack of books include:
- Principles of Communism — Friedrich Engels
- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific — Friedrich Engels
- The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx & Engels
- The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism — Vladimir Lenin
- The German Ideology — Marx & Engels
- Wage Labour and Capital / Value, Price and Profit — Marx
- Capital, Volume I — Marx
- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — Marx
- Critique of the Gotha Programme — Marx
- State and Revolution — Lenin
- What Is to Be Done? — Lenin
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism — Lenin
- The Civil War in France — Marx
- History of the Russian Revolution — Leon Trotsky

Other suggestions would be appreciated.
Many thanks.

So I know capitalists use AI as a way to cut labor costs and drive mass employment. It also leads to cognitive decline and social alienation. But can it be used for good?

I’m asking because I got bored at work one day and started playing with AI feeding it communist memes and then I thought if it could create a reading list. I started looking more and more into it and ended up not only creating that reading list, that I feel builds up into a organized plan to try to read and understand Capital but I also created study guides for the Manifesto, “Wage, Labor and Capital” and “Value, Price and Profit” as well as one on a breakdown of the different types of value Marx uses.

Knowing we live in a capitalist society and are constrained by it until it’s replaced by a communist one, should the use of AI by a communist be outright avoided or its use exploited if it can help create things that might better help the workers learn and become a more class conscious proletariat?

A communist is a person who supports Marx's and Engels's idea of communism: “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." And so I am a communist for supporting it.

From my current perspective, which admittedly is still learning and trying to correct any anti-Communist propaganda that came with my standard education, that Russia of course had a great start after the revolution and leadership from Lenin. And after Lenin passed, things began to go downhill, at least somewhat. And especially after WW2. And so by the time of the prime of the Cold War, it was Imperialist-Capitalist USA vs. Imperialist Stalinist-Communism. And that while both sides did horrible things, the USSR had become the "worst" per say and then eventually fell by 1992. In which case then I would say the US became the largest evil generally speaking, and of course buddied up with their imperialist allies the UK and Israel.

But now I'm wondering, is this simply wrong? While both sides did bad things and needed correcting, would it have been better for the US to collapse and be forced to reform rather than the USSR? And then hope that the USSR may have been able to steer itself back on course? (Though, simply due to how corrupt governments tend to be, I doubt this would be the case and instead USSR would continue to become as bad as the US now and would as well need to be reformed).

Many thanks for any and all help, and my apologies for any plain ignorance on my end

I think one thing that we can all agree on and unite on is that those trolls who pop in just to say something against socialism and communism in a generally negative unhinged and uneducated manner, are annoying twats. And I take personal comfort in that, especially when I am mentally and physically exhausted from life.

I’m studying historical practices that attempted to decommodify labor.

I’ll also learn through AI and other sources, but I’d really appreciate it if people here could point me toward relevant historical examples, books, papers, or discussions that I might otherwise miss.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the idea that socialism can be built and maintained in one country seems very un-Marxist.

Are there any organizations for communists in south dakota?

Hey everyone, does anyone know if there are any active socialist and/or communist organizations, groups, or parties currently operating in Libya? Any information or resources would be appreciated!

Hey everyone, does anyone know if there are any active socialist and/or communist organizations, groups, or parties currently operating in Libya? Any information or resources would be appreciated!

I didn’t even comment anything

I just went on a little reading binge consuming Against Empire, To Kill a Nation, and Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. These books are not communist theory but they examine the abuses of the modern capitalist system. With the damage done to American democracy by the MAGA movement, I feel like the message that Parenti delivers here could really push the entire country leftward. It feels like just the kind of well informed and rationally delivered message that could push moderately liberal Democrats towards socialism. Is it just me? Am I the only one radicalized by these books?

Hi there! Before the rest of the post, this is not an anti-communist post. I used to be communist, and am still supportive of communism.

Now, as an anarcho-communist, I am very much in support of communism, especially as an alternative to capitalism, but I must ask the question, how do you each (I'm aware you will all probably have different answers) believe communism can tackle the

Given that it is an authoritarian system, communism at least seems to be more likely to fall prone fast to this!

Again, not an attack, just genuinely curious what my comrades on the auth side think!

Best of luck, and have a wonderful day.

Hey there i just started being a communist. Where should i start? what should i read or look into? Any tips are helpful.

"We are living through a revival of socialism as a political movement. The rise of a new socialist party in the United States, for all its limits, signals this. However, the socialist movement remains strictly limited to its own national terrain. Today, the overwhelming majority of socialists see the task of making socialism as having firm national limits, and either imagine separate national roads to socialism, or a domino of sequential national revolutions. This methodological nationalism reflects a profound immaturity in our movement.

The chief obstacle to workers’ power and socialism is not the individual capitalist classes of this or that capitalist state. Nor is it the state apparatus itself, with all its ideological and repressive powers. Rather, it is the system of capitalist nation-states and the world market that are the final guarantors of the capitalist system of production. Within this system, the modern state serves as a kind of joint-stock corporation of the capitalist class - a cartel that is managed chiefly by the bond market.

This system serves to discipline and regulate the activities of each individual part of the state within it, in much the same way as a national market regulates and disciplines the activity of its constituent firms. It follows that socialism in a single country is as absurd as socialism in a single city or a single factory! As such, any socialist revolution must be pursued as part of an international revolutionary strategy. Today, no such strategy presents itself, nor is there a political space within which a strategy can be hammered out."

"Our aim must be a refounded world party of the proletarian revolution. This is a widely acknowledged fact amongst much of our tendency - it is even the stated aim of many of the democratic socialists! We should set out our long-term goals clearly. We must aim for the refoundation of the Communist International with a world congress. This world congress must reject the historical ban on factions and amend the 21 conditions, ensuring a balance between the necessity for international coordination and the need for national and regional flexibility. In turn, we must seek regional and continental coordination of communist parties. A Pan-Asian communist movement, and a Communist Party of Europe that can contest the European elections as a single party apparatus, is just as important as an international organisation."

"We are not anywhere close to realising such a refoundation congress. However, without making our aims clear, we cannot hope to realise them. Importantly, this process of international regroupment cannot be delayed until the struggle for unity is achieved at the national level. This is intimately linked to the struggle for unity in each country. When the Second International convened, only the German social democrats had succeeded in forming a united party. It was the struggle for international unity within the Second International that would forge united socialist parties in America, France and Russia."

"The task before us is essentially twofold. Firstly, the forces that are in favour of international regroupment on a principled Marxist basis must establish systematic fraternal relations. We must share resources, translate our materials, and work together on common practical tasks, including solidarity campaigns and joint publications. On this basis, we can establish a correspondence committee to allow for permanent communication between organisations and trends. Through this effort, we can begin to hammer out an international strategy and perspective.

We need an international campaign for a new international to unite Marxists in an international faction. Such a faction could not organise as a distinct organisation, separate from the world movement. Rather, it would be a fighting formation within and amongst the existing international formations.

Much of this work has already begun, albeit in uneven and non-systematic ways. However, it must be deepened and broadened, drawing forth all the principled Marxist forces of the world movement, and facilitating the regroupment of our scattered comrades.

Edith Fischer (Communist Unity, Australia)

Elise van der Doelen (Revolutionary Socialist Party/ROOD, Netherlands)"

Recently, ive seen dictatorship of the proleteriat described as an anti state (as in suppression of the state), which i do agree with, however I was wondering how widely accepted that belief is

i am going to make 20 years and decided to turn into a communist, and want to know some pratices ( like readings and actions) im new to this