“Oh no what will do without the famously horrible Israeli tourists?”

Western news media is pushing the angle of “anti-Semitic attacks” in Amsterdam, leaving out the actual truth.

This narrative in this situation is so dangerous for fomenting actual anti-semitism. Long before this match, soccer fans in Europe knew that one Tel Aviv club and their supporters are total fascists, they have an infamous reputation. Anyone with a phone can see the videos of them disrespecting the Spanish flood victims and all the violence they initiated. The fact that the Israeli fans are in no way “victims” is obvious to everyone, including those who haven’t really followed what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank over the last year.

So, what happens to your average European soccer fan who’s disinterested in politics and world events, when they see what happened last night and then see how the media in their country is covering it? They can see who the actual perpetrators are and who the actual victims are, and then see that their news media and governments are spinning it the other way. All it takes then is for these same people to get exposed to the actually anti-Semitic “Jews control the media and Western governments” ideas and down the neo-Nazi pipeline they go…

Trump’s whole thing is to never actually fulfill any commitments. He would insist that Cuba do all that and then afterward, he will lift the blockade. Only when the time comes he’ll find a reason not to do it.

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I have talked to a surprising number of conservatives and libertarians who, after I explain what would happen the US if we stopped running budget deficits, are just like “hell yeah bring the collapse on, we’ll be better off for it in the long run”. This sounds acceleration and maybe it is but I think it’s more they don’t understand / believe that things would be that bad for that long.

This is another point in favor of “yes China is actually socialist right now” to me. Honestly one of the things that drew me to socialism early on was precisely what you are describing: a dream of a society where concerns for the essentials in life are minimal, people have spaces (and time) to socialize, and overall you just have a more socially healthy society. Would love to have this in the US but it’s pretty great that the largest country in the world (and ascendant) has it.

I was there at the time (the 90s). It was a very common “joke” and no one ever made the connection that hey, that’s weird how we just destroyed the Soviet economy and now all these women from the former USSR are available to be purchased…

I was finally able to get a keffiyeh from Hirbawi the other day! I was hoping for a standard black and white one but that was sold out. But they did have one that was basically the same except some of the designs were red and green instead of black (like the Palestinian flag) which was pretty cool

Sure thing. Regarding the rate of profit, it’s something Roberts talks about a lot, so if you go to his website and search for “rate of profit”, you’ll find many articles (and graphs).

Regarding the extraction of surplus value, that one’s a little trickier. It’s a key part of what’s in volume 2 of Capital, specifically in chapter 6 (but the chapters before are important to comprehend as they build up to ch. 6). Long story short, it is only in the sphere of production (i.e. making things) where surplus value is created. So any costs that are not directly a part of production are “unproductive” and thus must be covered by surplus value. At the individual firm level this is often called “overhead” or “indirect costs”.

But at the economy level… what about the US? We don’t make anything anymore, so where is our surplus value coming from? Production in the global south! The value is created there but it is “imported” into the US. This is plainly obvious when you consider how much it costs to make a t-shirt in Bangladesh and what it ultimately sell for in the US. (I am admittedly mixing surplus value and profit a bit here but I think it’s appropriate).

How that surplus value makes it to workers indirectly is a bit abstract. But it can be done politically or through action. Meaning, you can pass a law that grants universal health care to pacify workers. Or the workers themselves can go on strike and earn more. Or even just through market forces this can happen. It’s a hard thing to empirically “prove” but it’s something you can see historically: when capital faces pressure, they have mechanisms to redistribute surplus value. In England, there was an increasingly militant labor movement that was eventually bought off by England ramping up imperialist plunder in the second half of the 19th century. In the US, up until the early 20th century you could always just steal more indigenous land and give it to workers (stealing capital and distributing it to workers isn’t the same and sharing surplus value per se but the effect is the same).

Politicizing the Fed - which is something Trump and the GOP are absolutely going to do - is great for the accelerationists. The Fed was always political to an extent but they’re a key cog in the imperialism machine. Force to make short-term politically based actions and they will hurt America’s imperialism in the long run.

Tbf housing (buying or renting) has gotten a lot more expensive since 2016-2020. I’ve been in the same line of work making steady increases and houses I was looking at buying in 2018-2019 are now out of my ability to pay (even by equalizing the interest rates). I looked up my old apartment from 2016-2017 and the rent increases since then are way more than my pay increases.

When it comes to consumer goods, I would agree that pay increases have gotten closer to inflation (but still not there), so I do think people will focus on the price increases without pay increases. But then again a lot of Trump supporters probably bought a house before 2016 so their griping is unwarranted.

It’s, uh… the 300 year anniversary of Marx’s *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”.

And California has only counted like half the votes, that probably another 30-40k there at least.

This is it. Peace & Freedom Party has been around for a long time and has ballot access in CA.

The fact that Biden and the dems couldn’t get voter reform passed is honestly pathetic. I know Sinema was doing… her thing. But you can’t tell me the political parties don’t get real dirty (like threatening the lives of family members or something) when they really need someone to fall in line.

The narratives are starting to congeal. Black men, Latino men, and young men let down not only their queen, but all women in the country. They’re gonna break out Obama for even more scolding.

Edit: I should add that so far I haven’t seen any compelling data that these demographic groups lost the election for Harris in any way.

Overall, I think ballot measures regarding abortion did… ok. I mean, 7 of 10 states voted to protect abortion access. Two states that were close but not layups (MO and AZ) went in favor of protections, which is good. The others were never really in doubt.

But tbh given how popular access to abortion seems to be, I can’t help but think it should have gone 10 for 10. Mitigating circumstances in FL and NE (Florida requires 60% to pass and it was never polling that high, NE is a basket case where there are competing ballot measures so now no one knows what’s gonna happen). But SD was a surprise to me. A conservative state for sure, but I’m personally convinced abortion rights should do better than 50% in all 50 states, so idk.

fr though, all I want is for Claudia and Karina to beat Chase Oliver (the Libertarian Party candidate) in California

I mean, the Libertarian Party is fairly popular for a third party. For a principled, Marxist-Leninist party who only uses electoralism as a way to build a movement to beat them in CA is definitely something.

The tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

I mean, yeah, it looks like Kamala didn’t get the dem base out to vote for her because no one wants “more of the same” when following an incredibly unpopular president. Kamala was very openly telling the base to fuck off, and made her race singularly about attracting white, upper middle class suburban women at the cost of everyone else.

But that’s the micro view. In the macro view, Michael Roberts’ analysis of rates of profit shows it’s been falling for a while now. Capitalism was in crisis during the Great Depression, only to be “saved” by WW2. The reconstruction of the industrial world led to good times for a couple decades until there was a profitability crisis in the 1970s. Capital’s response starting the 80s was offshoring, privatization, and financialization - neoliberalism in other words. But the gains from that was only able to keep things going until 2009 or so. Since then profitability has been shit. Capital has no answers beyond just tightening the screws (austerity at home and imperialism abroad). Just increasing misery in order to slow the decline of the rate of profit.

The US needs that surplus value extracted primarily from the global south to keep running. That surplus value is how capital is able to buy off the domestic working class. But that slice of the pie keeps shrinking, i.e. material conditions keep worsening. Things are getting worse as every year goes by and everyone knows it, even if they don’t understand it. That’s why we keep bouncing between parties every four years instead of the steady 2 term presidents we had in the era of neoliberalism. Most people are not doing in depth political analysis. They are just seeing their situation get worse and blaming whoever is in charge.

Of course the economy won’t recover under Trump. It will almost certainly get worse, and I happen to think the odds of a major economic crisis are pretty high. I would bet everything we get a dem president in 2028. Things just get worse and people are fumbling around for a solution.

And that’s where we come in. WE HAVE THE ANSWERS. It’s our job to bring the light of Marxism to the world. I’m not even gonna pretend we can make much of a dent in 4 years but this is a multi-generational project.

Until tonight, based on what happened in the 2022 elections I thought the GOP was way overplaying their hand on the anti-trans stuff. I thought most Americans are way more ambivalent than the GOP thinks they are. I still think that’s basically true, but the Democrats now can look at these results and completely back off from supporting trans rights (I mean, even less than their pathetic efforts before).