Like Ture said about Marx: when you look at the world honestly, you can only come to certain conclusions; you don't need to be told what they are and once you've seen them you cannot be persuaded to think otherwise. When you hear that someone else has discovered the same thing it resonates.
Thanks for writing this. I've reached similar conclusions. I'm feeling a lot of self loathing this week. My work had a big song and dance as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. You could hear a pin drop at the moment; not a single fucking word about Palestine. I'm optimistic that Palestine will survive this. But it's getting hard to rationalise my own complicity in the whole thing.
It's crucial, I think. To fully understand the situation, we're going to have to understand all aspects of it. As anti-Semitism is disappointingly rife, we should not forget it. And it is imperative, I think we agree, to highlight the relationship between Zionism and antisemitism (including Zionism putting Jews in direct physical danger).
It comes through constantly. Yesterday, I saw a Finkelstein interview. The interviewer, Kay Burley, I think, said something about Israel being a safe haven for Jews and doesn't Finkelstein feel bad for challenging that.
Putting aside the point that Finkelstein is based, the implication is that wherever the interviewer is from (Britain?) is not safe, unwilling to become safe, or begrudgingly safe and the sooner all the Jews leave, the better. I don't want to say this is intentional. But it's implied every time the claim is made.
I don't want Jews to feel like they have to go to Israel to be safe; they should feel safe as my next-door neighbour. Highlighting stories about Jews caught in the cross fire in some way and being vocal about it could help create that atmosphere. Justice dies when good people remain silent, and all that. There may also be an argument that if we can make the west significantly less antisemitic, we might also encourage Israelis to leave Palestine. At the least it will make the choice easier.
[Edit: I just realised another implication of this—antisemites will have an incentive to ramp up antisemitism to make Israeli Jews feel as though they are safer fighting in Palestine than leaving. We should be on guard for this. It's another reason why being vocal about harm to Jews does not automatically mean ignoring Palestinians; it's part of the same struggle and could help Palestinians.]
Zionism gives antisemites an excuse: 'if you want to be safe, go to Israel (and disposses the Palestinians to secure it)'. The logic is premised on antisemitism and colonialism. The very people who make life unsafe and difficult for Jews and other oppressed people's essentially say, 'If you want freedom and security you can't have it here, you have to do the same thing that we did/do somewhere else'.
And as we know, some Jews will accept that logic, hence Zionism. But what will actually liberate Jews and other oppressed people's, including Palestinians, is abolishing class society. (If only someone had predicted this circa 1843–4.)
Then there's the problem of equating Zionism with Judaism. This is actively harmful to Jews. It's used as an excuse to oppress non-/anti-Zionist Jews. But as antisemites aren't overly interested in fine distinctions, they don't really care if any Jew suffers for it. If an antisemite targets a Jew for being anti-Zionist, they'll lose no sleep to later discover they were pro-Zionism.
The 'support' only extends to the settler colonial project; any benefit to Jewish people is incidental. It's a double win for racists who want Jews out of 'their country' and who are always looking for ways to oppress Arabs.
This is partly why I dislike the 'Israel lobby' rhetoric. Not only is it inherently antisemitic as it's based on a hive mind trope, but it also masks the motivations of racist imperialists. They don't need to be lobbied to support settler colonialism.
Just as I see e.g. Europe as an outpost of a single Anglo-European empire based in the US, I see Israel as an outpost, too. Not as a last stand hidden behind a circle of wagons that has to beg for aid. That model subverts history in so many ways.
The 'Israel lobby' rhetoric seems to be a front that diverts anger away e.g. from the US, British, etc, states – the international bourgeoisie – onto Israel, which has been framed as representing all Jews. Albeit, it's Zionists who make that equation and anti-Zionists who tend to say 'Israel lobby'. The effect is that anti-Zionists can fall into a trap created by structural antisemitism, normalising it for 'apolitical' 'bystanders'.
Another aspect is that while Israelis are settlers in Palestine, many would be refugees elsewhere (and likely mistreated in much of the rest of the 'international community'). This will become worse if there's a Jewish refugee crisis. The more the Zionist logic is pushed, the worse this will be.
I'm optimistic that a free Palestine would find a way to live in peace with Jews (and Christians and atheists) in a sovereign Palestine without expelling everyone. (No idea what that would look like in detail). It does seem to be a stated aim of Hamas, which seems clear that their enemy is Zionism, not Judaism. But that won't help Jews in the rest of the world, refugee from Israel or otherwise. I don't want any settlers settling Palestine or for Jews to be persecuted in the rest of the world (or for their Judaism in Palestine).
When Palestine is free, we will still have to find a way to tackle and end antisemitism. This war is going to make it worse and harder to fight. So keeping Judaism in mind throughout this war may help us to be prepared for what comes after. It doesn't diminish Palestinian suffering unless it's framed as a hierarchy. And ultimately, when Palestine wins, Palestinians will still have to fight, alongside Jews, against the same forces that lead to the oppression of both.
I'd keep them censored. They're openly speaking in public already but advertising their names on a platform they didn't choose to speak on will open them to vitriol from a wider audience than they might expect.
PatSoc seems to be an Anglo-European, mainly US phenomenon; it shouldn't be imposed on other societies as if it's a universal category.
Patriotism to a coloniser state means loyalty to it's colonising history and character. It's a call for redistributing the spoils of imperialism rather than ending imperialism, with some noises about ending imperialism at some unknown date in the future.
Kim Jong Un did speak about the need for patriotism. But the patriotism of a socialist state that has recently cut off colonial overlords has a different character to that of the patriotism of those ex-overlords. The one means patriotism for oppression , the other, as in the DPRK, is a call to be loyal to anti-imperialism.
This is a big can of worms. I'd caution against listening to anyone who calls the DPRK patsoc.
Current events provide another example: it would be bizarre to claim that a Palestinian Marxist is a PatSoc. Palestinian 'patriotism' (if that's the right word for it – I'm not entirely convinced) would look very different to Israeli patriotism.
Edit: this isn't a view steeped in literature; it's hard to divine what self-proclaimed patsocs themselves think because they're too tedious and wrong to engage with for prolonged periods. So treat this more as 'preliminary comments'.
Trying to become disciplined takes a lot of energy. There's an easier way. Create an environment in which reading theory is the easier option. Set things up so that reading theory is the easiest thing to do.
Do you prefer physical or digital or a mixture? [Store] reading materials close to the place where you're going to be able to pick them up and get stuck in with the time available and in that setting.
So you might have a physical copy of Capital in a quiet place with a chair but no TV and poor WiFi connection. Reading the book becomes the easier, preferable option to trying to browse the internet. If you can't do this, create it. Set your phone, if possible, to go on Aeroplane mode at a certain time of day. Or do it manually – you won't miss anything; it'll all be there when you log back on. Or leave your phone somewhere else, where you'd have to move to get it.
If you use a computer, save pdfs on your desktop. Save links to websites on your desktop. You could arrange them in columns, with short pieces on the left and long pieces on the right. Then if you have ten mins, open a source on the left. If you have more time, open one on the right.
Bookmark websites. Add them to your shortcut bar. 'Add to home screen' on your phone and move some of these around in your screen so it's as easy to click a work of theory on Prolewiki as it is to open your messages.
If you browse e.g. Marxists.org, you'll find loads of texts of different lengths. It's okay just to browse. Keep a note of shorter works and bookmark/save them as suggested above. You might read a short letter on the bus or the toilet or while waiting for the kettle to boil. You won't get through e.g. Capital in that time and you're likely to get frustrated if you try. Short works that are easy to read in chunks include letters, interviews, FAQ format.
Discipline is useful but it's overrated and we tend to see it upside down. Self-discipline comes from being disciplined practice. It's a lot harder to discipline ourselves in order to become disciplined. It also becomes a lot easier to be disciplined as you become more familiar with the subject. Familiar topics, even if technical, can be read as easily as fiction; it doesn't need discipline if you can find a way to make it so easy that you become increasingly familiar without letting yourself realise that you're 👻reading theory🎃.
Also, a leaf out of self-determination theory: you will grasp conceptual ideas a lot quicker and be far more motivated if you choose the material. There are reading lists. But if this feels like someone else is deciding what you're supposed to read, you probably won't do it if you struggle with paying attention as described, and it will be harder than it needs to be. So find out what you're interested in and read Marxist authors talking about that topic. Q: what are you interested in?
If something doesn't grab your attention, move on and come back to it later. The more familiar a topic is, the more motivated you'll be to engage with it. It's okay to read a little here and a little there. It's also okay to start anywhere in the book that looks interesting. One day you should finish the important texts. It doesn't have to be today or next week.
One trick is trying to read one word a day. It's a very low target. But you'll find that if you go to the effort of reading that one word, you'll read another and another. You might only read a paragraph in the end. But enough days like that and you've read what you set out to read. (This also works with writing, btw.)
I rarely: read cover-to-cover; start at the beginning; or finish one book before I start another. I start wherever looks most interesting or is most related to something that I know well. I have multiple texts on the go at once. If I get bored, I pick up something else. I often have a theme [in] mind and read the relevant parts in multiple texts about that theme and ignore the rest.
I can be 'disciplined' when I need to be, but if I don't need to be, I don't force it. The advantage is that because I read in the way that I do, I've often already dipped into a text before I sit down to finish it. This means I'm familiar with most of the major texts even if I haven't read them in full before. This makes things a lot easier when I need to finish a particular text.
I often find that [some] theory is too complicated or theoretical. It's hard to keep going when texts are difficult. If a text is particularly difficult: (1) skip that section until you come to an easier one – you can go back to the more difficult parts later, when you know more about what's being said; or (2) let your subconscious do the hard work for you – stop reading, leave it for an hour or a day or a week, etc, then read it again and you'll see that your mind had started to make sense of the text.
You could also focus on finishing chapters/sections rather than whole books, as a more realistic target to start with.
Essentially, the more you engage, the easier it all becomes. So the trick is to do anything that helps you to engage and keeps you engaged. If you need it, I'm giving you permission: make it easy, it doesn't have to be a chore.
Wouldn't be surprised if the US uses all this to block Chinese ships coming up the Red Sea, trying to weaken and provoke China before the BRI is quite ready to properly supplement the sea trade with overland trade. Then pincer Chinese sea trade via it's SEA vassals, hoping to deter Egypt and SA from following through with joining BRICS. Subtly and slyly, of course. The US already has a presence in the Med. I don't want to get carried away but this could be the spark for a rather large fire. Especially if there neighbours get involved.
Remember to be saving your receipts (screenshots, pdfs). There's going to be a lot of 'editing' as this goes on. Like we saw with Ukraine.
Not sure about that. The reference to Never Use Alone is part of an argument that's it's not as good as providing these safe consumption zones; it's a criticism of NUA.
Mayor Jim Kenney said he supports Safehouse and vetoed the bill, but the City Council overrode his veto 13-to-1. The passage of this bill banning safe consumption sites means many more people will die needlessly.
Safehouse — or any organization seeking to open a safe consumption site — can seek special permissions to open a site in their neighborhood after this bill is passed, but community organizations must approve it. Then the zoning board would take their vote into consideration. In typical political fashion, some of the people behind the bill claim it isn’t a ban but instead a “conversation starter” that would include the community.
Cheeky fucks. It's not usually a 'conversation starter' when these dickheads make rules; it's 'representative democracy' and if you don't like it 'vote harder next time'. Maybe we should start talking as if all anti-worker law, rules, and regs are merely 'conversation starters'.
The next person arrested with a few kilos of coke should try it: 'Sorry officer I thought the ban was a conversation starter and it turns out the Wall Street community would like to end the conversation with a witty one-liner. Snorted, not the funny kind.'
That critique is addressed in the article. This is a new idea to me so I'm not talking with any authority. But it seems that safe consumption sites provide a pipeline to recovery. At the very least, the stats show they save lives. Addicted users are going to use drugs whatever happens. A strict 'no enabling' policy doesn't seem to make much difference. If we can make the process a lot safer, I'll support it.
Good points. The article gets better after that part, though. I wrote a very angry critique of the first bit, by the time I'd got to the same point, then tempered what I wrote after reading the rest of the article. Essentially the article finishes by arguing that Stalin was more responsible than Furr allows for but that was a good thing because he was a revolutionary and needed to be ruthless.
Could've been written by someone who stood by Stalin all those years even after their party fell apart on hearing Khrushchev's speech, and was a little bit pissed off that Furr was implying that such a decades-long defence was unnecessary because Stalin didn't actually do what he was accused of doing. Given that supporting Stalin after the Speech could've been an employment-ending take, I wouldn't be surprised that my hypothetical author is a little angry lol.
Decent article. The second half is stronger than the first. I'll make some comments about the first half.
Furr's book is strong because he sets out to examine the truth of Khrushchev's 'secret' speech and carefully disproves almost every claim in it. He does not set out to argue what Stalin did or who he was. That would be a huge biographical work, for which there would be a host of evidential problems.
There's no grandstanding. It's well written but it's not rhetorical. It's all very matter-of-fact. It straightforwardly shows that the popular myth of Stalin, a view based on Trotsky's work and Khrushchev's speech, is false.
In a field (world, rather) where the anti-Stalin paradigm is supreme, Furr's contribution is huge. And punchier for being careful and limited.
Half of the book is extracts of the sources. The reader can make up their own mind whether the sources support Furr's or Khrushchev's argument or something else. The author provides an alternative interpretation of some of those sources than Furr. You might want to check them and see what you think.
Other studies provided a more nuanced view of Stalin, who emerged as less powerful, more competent, more hands-on, and more seriously theoretical than the brutal tyrant drawn by the totalitarian paradigm.
Stalin was a fierce theoretician. The only reason why anyone would need this point reiterating is because the Stalin-as-totalitarian paradigm is so widespread. After the mid-1950s, the prime evidence for it was Khrushchev's speech.
In this context, disproving the contents of that speech is monumental. The critical article in question is correct that Furr does not go on to tell you what is true about Stalin. But here's the problem. Painting an accurate picture of Stalin after discrediting the 'secret' speech is only one task among many now the speech is discredited.
Knowing who Stalin was is kinda by-the-by. The article itself suggests that others have already done that work, too. Criticising Furr for not doing something similar takes a narrow view of the text and fails to grasp a significance of its contribution. 'Stalin' is a stand-in for 'Soviet' or 'Bolshevik'. When people attack Stalin they don't care about the man. They are attacking communism. The questions that now need answering to far beyond 'Who was Stalin?'
With the Speech discredited, we must re-evaluate the USSR under Stalin's leadership and afterwards. Key questions include: To what extent was Khrushev responsible for it's dissolution? Who else was involved? Why? Answers to these questions will help to avoid the dissolution of future attempts at socialist construction.
Arguing that Furr should have told us who Stalin was might treat Stalin as the most important character. He was surely crucial to the USSR and the fight against Nazism. His life is worth knowing. But only as one narrative among multiple. Furr sweeps away the personality cult. We should not bring it back by insisting that Stalin is the centre of all Soviet research.
It is this interpretation that leads me to reject one of the article's claims and recurring themes, that Furr tries to absolve Stalin of responsibility for everything that Khrushchev pins on him alone. I think my interpretation is supported by quotes from the book in the article, which acknowledge that some serious mistakes were made in the USSR.
It is not 'quibbl[ing] over minor points' to find out what didn't happen. Recognising who was wronged, and how, is necessary for justice. Accepting lies about crimes that didn't happen dilutes the loss of those who suffered and disguises the reasons for Stalin's actions.
The book’s problems start with its title and argument. To call every Khrushchev revelation a lie has dramatic appeal and a figurative truth, but no one in their right mind could buy this as literal truth, because no one in their right mind could imagine Khrushchev or anyone else speaking for hours before a congress of the Communist Party about revelations that contained nothing but falsehoods. Even Furr himself does not believe this.
Anti-communists treat the speech this way. It's those who hold power today and from under whom the rug must be pulled.
A reader, however, has to wait until page 142 to hear the author acknowledge that “it would, of course, be absurd to say that every one of Khrushchev’s statements is false.” Yet, by not admitting that Khrushchev’s “revelations” artfully mixed truths and lies, this absurdity is precisely what Furr is guilty of. Having staked this extreme claim, Furr makes no effort to sort out the truth and falsehood of Khrushchev’s speech, but proceeds to focus only on what in Khrushchev’s statements were dubious, even if it means lumping together the trivial, disputable and half lies with the significant, provable and total lies.
I disagree with this challenge. My understanding of Furr's claim was that he was unable to disprove (due to lack of evidence) some of the 'revelations' in the Speech. I did not interpret it to mean that Furr was unable to disprove (i.e. that he only partly disproved) the revelations that he claims to have disproved.
If the claim is true in the form in which it is presented, I'll suggest that Furr's point is to identify the lies, not the truths (maybe this is pedantic). Again, anti-communists swallow the speech whole. It is up to them to defend the speech, not Furr.
The idea that Furr should be giving a 'balanced', 'both sides' view, re-arming anti-communists, is a strange one coming from an ML who apparently ultimately agrees with Furr, for different reasons.
If a conclusion relies on several premises and any one of those is faulty, the conclusion is reductio as absurdum. If one's purpose is to challenge certain conclusions, it is unnecessary to remark on truthful premises. You only need to knock the foundations of just enough premises to shake their conclusions.
Furr is clear about his thesis: he is not attempting to give a balanced account of how dishonest Khrushchev was, only to prove that he was dishonest and to argue that we need a wholesale reassessment of what people believe because of the Speech.
Moreover, when the evidence to make his case is unavailable, Furr slips into the role of a dubious defense attorney who nitpicks the evidence, badgers witnesses and kicks up sand.
This is a strange criticism. It contradicts the above assertion that Furr ignores some 'truths' in the speech. The anti-Stalin paradigm is prevalent and practically unshakable. It even appears in the review article. Furr's thesis was to disprove the lies in the Speech.
It is hard if not impossible to prove a negative. While it may be possible to disprove some premises, it becomes difficult for Furr to prove that the opposite is true. Hence the carefulness of the overall thesis: Khrushchev lied, not Stalin XYZ'd.
Criticising Furr for not making an argument that he does not have the evidence to support is not a valid criticism. It is a praiseworthy finding. Stating that Furr should have argued something else and then showing that Furr did not provide evidence for the something else is not a valid criticism.
Where there is no evidence, an argument will have to suffice. This will involve highlighting logical inconsistencies and disproving the evidence that is available. I'm unsure why that's a criticism except as a rhetorical device. Marxists do love their polemics.
The writer clarifies (emphasis added):
Take Furr’s treatment of one of the most important episodes in Soviet history, the Kirov assassination. … Kirov was a supporter and friend of Stalin’s …. In the secret speech, Khrushchev implied that Stalin was behind Kirov’s murder.
Furr argues … the opposition leaders convicted were in fact part of a murder conspiracy. Furr … fails to prove th[is]. Moreover, his refutation is superficial and tendentious[,] takes up less than two pages and involves quotations from three historians, all of whom dispute Stalin’s involvement in Kirov’s murder.
One would never know from Furr’s account that Khrushchev’s implication became the conventional wisdom among such Cold War Sovietologists as Robert Conquest, The Great Terror… In other words, a serious rebuttal of what Khrushchev implied would involve acknowledging what the Cold Warriors have written in support Khrushchev’s view and then refuting or at least disputing it. … In other words, sometimes Furr has a stronger case than he bothers to make.
This implies the book is weak but that Furr is still right. Suggesting that Furr engage more with Conquest is hard to explain. He was an anti-Soviet who spent his life writing anti-communist literature, working for the British Foreign Office, I believe, and later advising Thatcher.
The question is not, 'Why didn't Furr engage with an author who lacks credibility?' but 'To what extent were Conquest's later claims about the USSR based on the Speech?' (Which falls outside the scope of the book.)
The first part of the article argues the Speech became key evidence for the 'conventional wisdom' about Stalin. Why would Furr give any credence to the people who believed the Speech and used the speech as evidence, when he's arguing that anything that treats the speech as fact is wrong?
If Furr is right, he doesn't have to unpick works that come later. He already reduced them to absurdity. It is on the anti-communists to demonstrate why their work is still accurate. (As it happens, Furr has unpicked major anti-communist works published since.)
The claims in the first half of the article are perhaps too strong. Furr could likely improve another edition by taking the article seriously. It seems well researched and has similar goals as Furr. I'd hazard a guess that it was written in good faith but it misses the mark by trying to be thoroughly critical in an 'academic' way.
I'm not sure if this makes anything clearer for you.
Wonder whether the Palestinian resistance and NATO losing in Ukraine are a coincidence? That loss has got to help Palestine. The US military is a big beast, but can it manage two (three if we include Taiwan/SEA) significant fronts at once?
The Palestine situation also reveals serious flaws in Western intelligence. Honestly didn't think it was possible to launch a surprise attack on such a scale nowadays. Also curious as to whether Russia has been telling Palestine what it's been learning about evading Western surveillance on the front.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens to the growing relationship between SA, Syria, and Iran. If SA backs Palestine or at least doesn't actively support Israel, some may suspect that China had a hand in facilitating the conditions for Palestine to free itself (i.e. by bringing SA/S/I back to talking).
I saw something about SA about to sign a telecoms and energy agreement or something with Israel and how those plans are now out the window. Thinking cynically, there's no reason why SA couldn't make the same deal with Palestine. It's not easy to predict who will align with who.
All this, alongside BRICS/BRI growth, African states breaking the colonial stranglehold, and Latin America swinging left (with Venezuela and China working more closely going forward, for example).
If we keep getting weeks where decades happen, it's going to feel like travelling through time.
It's top work. You got the angles and values spot on.
Like Ture said about Marx: when you look at the world honestly, you can only come to certain conclusions; you don't need to be told what they are and once you've seen them you cannot be persuaded to think otherwise. When you hear that someone else has discovered the same thing it resonates.
Thanks for writing this. I've reached similar conclusions. I'm feeling a lot of self loathing this week. My work had a big song and dance as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. You could hear a pin drop at the moment; not a single fucking word about Palestine. I'm optimistic that Palestine will survive this. But it's getting hard to rationalise my own complicity in the whole thing.
It's crucial, I think. To fully understand the situation, we're going to have to understand all aspects of it. As anti-Semitism is disappointingly rife, we should not forget it. And it is imperative, I think we agree, to highlight the relationship between Zionism and antisemitism (including Zionism putting Jews in direct physical danger).
It comes through constantly. Yesterday, I saw a Finkelstein interview. The interviewer, Kay Burley, I think, said something about Israel being a safe haven for Jews and doesn't Finkelstein feel bad for challenging that.
Putting aside the point that Finkelstein is based, the implication is that wherever the interviewer is from (Britain?) is not safe, unwilling to become safe, or begrudgingly safe and the sooner all the Jews leave, the better. I don't want to say this is intentional. But it's implied every time the claim is made.
I don't want Jews to feel like they have to go to Israel to be safe; they should feel safe as my next-door neighbour. Highlighting stories about Jews caught in the cross fire in some way and being vocal about it could help create that atmosphere. Justice dies when good people remain silent, and all that. There may also be an argument that if we can make the west significantly less antisemitic, we might also encourage Israelis to leave Palestine. At the least it will make the choice easier.
[Edit: I just realised another implication of this—antisemites will have an incentive to ramp up antisemitism to make Israeli Jews feel as though they are safer fighting in Palestine than leaving. We should be on guard for this. It's another reason why being vocal about harm to Jews does not automatically mean ignoring Palestinians; it's part of the same struggle and could help Palestinians.]
Zionism gives antisemites an excuse: 'if you want to be safe, go to Israel (and disposses the Palestinians to secure it)'. The logic is premised on antisemitism and colonialism. The very people who make life unsafe and difficult for Jews and other oppressed people's essentially say, 'If you want freedom and security you can't have it here, you have to do the same thing that we did/do somewhere else'.
And as we know, some Jews will accept that logic, hence Zionism. But what will actually liberate Jews and other oppressed people's, including Palestinians, is abolishing class society. (If only someone had predicted this circa 1843–4.)
Then there's the problem of equating Zionism with Judaism. This is actively harmful to Jews. It's used as an excuse to oppress non-/anti-Zionist Jews. But as antisemites aren't overly interested in fine distinctions, they don't really care if any Jew suffers for it. If an antisemite targets a Jew for being anti-Zionist, they'll lose no sleep to later discover they were pro-Zionism.
The 'support' only extends to the settler colonial project; any benefit to Jewish people is incidental. It's a double win for racists who want Jews out of 'their country' and who are always looking for ways to oppress Arabs.
This is partly why I dislike the 'Israel lobby' rhetoric. Not only is it inherently antisemitic as it's based on a hive mind trope, but it also masks the motivations of racist imperialists. They don't need to be lobbied to support settler colonialism.
Just as I see e.g. Europe as an outpost of a single Anglo-European empire based in the US, I see Israel as an outpost, too. Not as a last stand hidden behind a circle of wagons that has to beg for aid. That model subverts history in so many ways.
The 'Israel lobby' rhetoric seems to be a front that diverts anger away e.g. from the US, British, etc, states – the international bourgeoisie – onto Israel, which has been framed as representing all Jews. Albeit, it's Zionists who make that equation and anti-Zionists who tend to say 'Israel lobby'. The effect is that anti-Zionists can fall into a trap created by structural antisemitism, normalising it for 'apolitical' 'bystanders'.
Another aspect is that while Israelis are settlers in Palestine, many would be refugees elsewhere (and likely mistreated in much of the rest of the 'international community'). This will become worse if there's a Jewish refugee crisis. The more the Zionist logic is pushed, the worse this will be.
I'm optimistic that a free Palestine would find a way to live in peace with Jews (and Christians and atheists) in a sovereign Palestine without expelling everyone. (No idea what that would look like in detail). It does seem to be a stated aim of Hamas, which seems clear that their enemy is Zionism, not Judaism. But that won't help Jews in the rest of the world, refugee from Israel or otherwise. I don't want any settlers settling Palestine or for Jews to be persecuted in the rest of the world (or for their Judaism in Palestine).
When Palestine is free, we will still have to find a way to tackle and end antisemitism. This war is going to make it worse and harder to fight. So keeping Judaism in mind throughout this war may help us to be prepared for what comes after. It doesn't diminish Palestinian suffering unless it's framed as a hierarchy. And ultimately, when Palestine wins, Palestinians will still have to fight, alongside Jews, against the same forces that lead to the oppression of both.
Glad you found it helpful. If some of these tricks don't work for you, that's fine, too, but I hope some of them do help.
PS I noticed some typos and fixed them in square brackets to make them easier to spot.
I'd keep them censored. They're openly speaking in public already but advertising their names on a platform they didn't choose to speak on will open them to vitriol from a wider audience than they might expect.
PatSoc seems to be an Anglo-European, mainly US phenomenon; it shouldn't be imposed on other societies as if it's a universal category.
Patriotism to a coloniser state means loyalty to it's colonising history and character. It's a call for redistributing the spoils of imperialism rather than ending imperialism, with some noises about ending imperialism at some unknown date in the future.
Kim Jong Un did speak about the need for patriotism. But the patriotism of a socialist state that has recently cut off colonial overlords has a different character to that of the patriotism of those ex-overlords. The one means patriotism for oppression , the other, as in the DPRK, is a call to be loyal to anti-imperialism.
This is a big can of worms. I'd caution against listening to anyone who calls the DPRK patsoc.
Current events provide another example: it would be bizarre to claim that a Palestinian Marxist is a PatSoc. Palestinian 'patriotism' (if that's the right word for it – I'm not entirely convinced) would look very different to Israeli patriotism.
Edit: this isn't a view steeped in literature; it's hard to divine what self-proclaimed patsocs themselves think because they're too tedious and wrong to engage with for prolonged periods. So treat this more as 'preliminary comments'.
That's the one lol. Definitely don't sort by all before bed or when you've got to get some work done.
Bear with me: stop trying!
Trying to become disciplined takes a lot of energy. There's an easier way. Create an environment in which reading theory is the easier option. Set things up so that reading theory is the easiest thing to do.
Do you prefer physical or digital or a mixture? [Store] reading materials close to the place where you're going to be able to pick them up and get stuck in with the time available and in that setting.
So you might have a physical copy of Capital in a quiet place with a chair but no TV and poor WiFi connection. Reading the book becomes the easier, preferable option to trying to browse the internet. If you can't do this, create it. Set your phone, if possible, to go on Aeroplane mode at a certain time of day. Or do it manually – you won't miss anything; it'll all be there when you log back on. Or leave your phone somewhere else, where you'd have to move to get it.
If you use a computer, save pdfs on your desktop. Save links to websites on your desktop. You could arrange them in columns, with short pieces on the left and long pieces on the right. Then if you have ten mins, open a source on the left. If you have more time, open one on the right.
Bookmark websites. Add them to your shortcut bar. 'Add to home screen' on your phone and move some of these around in your screen so it's as easy to click a work of theory on Prolewiki as it is to open your messages.
If you browse e.g. Marxists.org, you'll find loads of texts of different lengths. It's okay just to browse. Keep a note of shorter works and bookmark/save them as suggested above. You might read a short letter on the bus or the toilet or while waiting for the kettle to boil. You won't get through e.g. Capital in that time and you're likely to get frustrated if you try. Short works that are easy to read in chunks include letters, interviews, FAQ format.
Discipline is useful but it's overrated and we tend to see it upside down. Self-discipline comes from being disciplined practice. It's a lot harder to discipline ourselves in order to become disciplined. It also becomes a lot easier to be disciplined as you become more familiar with the subject. Familiar topics, even if technical, can be read as easily as fiction; it doesn't need discipline if you can find a way to make it so easy that you become increasingly familiar without letting yourself realise that you're 👻reading theory🎃.
Also, a leaf out of self-determination theory: you will grasp conceptual ideas a lot quicker and be far more motivated if you choose the material. There are reading lists. But if this feels like someone else is deciding what you're supposed to read, you probably won't do it if you struggle with paying attention as described, and it will be harder than it needs to be. So find out what you're interested in and read Marxist authors talking about that topic. Q: what are you interested in?
If something doesn't grab your attention, move on and come back to it later. The more familiar a topic is, the more motivated you'll be to engage with it. It's okay to read a little here and a little there. It's also okay to start anywhere in the book that looks interesting. One day you should finish the important texts. It doesn't have to be today or next week.
One trick is trying to read one word a day. It's a very low target. But you'll find that if you go to the effort of reading that one word, you'll read another and another. You might only read a paragraph in the end. But enough days like that and you've read what you set out to read. (This also works with writing, btw.)
I rarely: read cover-to-cover; start at the beginning; or finish one book before I start another. I start wherever looks most interesting or is most related to something that I know well. I have multiple texts on the go at once. If I get bored, I pick up something else. I often have a theme [in] mind and read the relevant parts in multiple texts about that theme and ignore the rest.
I can be 'disciplined' when I need to be, but if I don't need to be, I don't force it. The advantage is that because I read in the way that I do, I've often already dipped into a text before I sit down to finish it. This means I'm familiar with most of the major texts even if I haven't read them in full before. This makes things a lot easier when I need to finish a particular text.
I often find that [some] theory is too complicated or theoretical. It's hard to keep going when texts are difficult. If a text is particularly difficult: (1) skip that section until you come to an easier one – you can go back to the more difficult parts later, when you know more about what's being said; or (2) let your subconscious do the hard work for you – stop reading, leave it for an hour or a day or a week, etc, then read it again and you'll see that your mind had started to make sense of the text.
You could also focus on finishing chapters/sections rather than whole books, as a more realistic target to start with.
Essentially, the more you engage, the easier it all becomes. So the trick is to do anything that helps you to engage and keeps you engaged. If you need it, I'm giving you permission: make it easy, it doesn't have to be a chore.
This is what I do. You can read "all" in the morning if you're struggling to get out of bed.
Wouldn't be surprised if the US uses all this to block Chinese ships coming up the Red Sea, trying to weaken and provoke China before the BRI is quite ready to properly supplement the sea trade with overland trade. Then pincer Chinese sea trade via it's SEA vassals, hoping to deter Egypt and SA from following through with joining BRICS. Subtly and slyly, of course. The US already has a presence in the Med. I don't want to get carried away but this could be the spark for a rather large fire. Especially if there neighbours get involved.
Remember to be saving your receipts (screenshots, pdfs). There's going to be a lot of 'editing' as this goes on. Like we saw with Ukraine.
Not sure about that. The reference to Never Use Alone is part of an argument that's it's not as good as providing these safe consumption zones; it's a criticism of NUA.
Cheeky fucks. It's not usually a 'conversation starter' when these dickheads make rules; it's 'representative democracy' and if you don't like it 'vote harder next time'. Maybe we should start talking as if all anti-worker law, rules, and regs are merely 'conversation starters'.
The next person arrested with a few kilos of coke should try it: 'Sorry officer I thought the ban was a conversation starter and it turns out the Wall Street community would like to end the conversation with a witty one-liner. Snorted, not the funny kind.'
That critique is addressed in the article. This is a new idea to me so I'm not talking with any authority. But it seems that safe consumption sites provide a pipeline to recovery. At the very least, the stats show they save lives. Addicted users are going to use drugs whatever happens. A strict 'no enabling' policy doesn't seem to make much difference. If we can make the process a lot safer, I'll support it.
"enter your card details to allow the plane to burn enough fuel to get you all the way home"
Holy shit. That's it. They're looking at history and going in reverse chronological order. 🤯
6.4m refugees! I knew that number was large.
Thanks for the details.
Good points. The article gets better after that part, though. I wrote a very angry critique of the first bit, by the time I'd got to the same point, then tempered what I wrote after reading the rest of the article. Essentially the article finishes by arguing that Stalin was more responsible than Furr allows for but that was a good thing because he was a revolutionary and needed to be ruthless.
Could've been written by someone who stood by Stalin all those years even after their party fell apart on hearing Khrushchev's speech, and was a little bit pissed off that Furr was implying that such a decades-long defence was unnecessary because Stalin didn't actually do what he was accused of doing. Given that supporting Stalin after the Speech could've been an employment-ending take, I wouldn't be surprised that my hypothetical author is a little angry lol.
Decent article. The second half is stronger than the first. I'll make some comments about the first half.
Furr's book is strong because he sets out to examine the truth of Khrushchev's 'secret' speech and carefully disproves almost every claim in it. He does not set out to argue what Stalin did or who he was. That would be a huge biographical work, for which there would be a host of evidential problems.
There's no grandstanding. It's well written but it's not rhetorical. It's all very matter-of-fact. It straightforwardly shows that the popular myth of Stalin, a view based on Trotsky's work and Khrushchev's speech, is false.
In a field (world, rather) where the anti-Stalin paradigm is supreme, Furr's contribution is huge. And punchier for being careful and limited.
Half of the book is extracts of the sources. The reader can make up their own mind whether the sources support Furr's or Khrushchev's argument or something else. The author provides an alternative interpretation of some of those sources than Furr. You might want to check them and see what you think.
Stalin was a fierce theoretician. The only reason why anyone would need this point reiterating is because the Stalin-as-totalitarian paradigm is so widespread. After the mid-1950s, the prime evidence for it was Khrushchev's speech.
In this context, disproving the contents of that speech is monumental. The critical article in question is correct that Furr does not go on to tell you what is true about Stalin. But here's the problem. Painting an accurate picture of Stalin after discrediting the 'secret' speech is only one task among many now the speech is discredited.
Knowing who Stalin was is kinda by-the-by. The article itself suggests that others have already done that work, too. Criticising Furr for not doing something similar takes a narrow view of the text and fails to grasp a significance of its contribution. 'Stalin' is a stand-in for 'Soviet' or 'Bolshevik'. When people attack Stalin they don't care about the man. They are attacking communism. The questions that now need answering to far beyond 'Who was Stalin?'
With the Speech discredited, we must re-evaluate the USSR under Stalin's leadership and afterwards. Key questions include: To what extent was Khrushev responsible for it's dissolution? Who else was involved? Why? Answers to these questions will help to avoid the dissolution of future attempts at socialist construction.
Arguing that Furr should have told us who Stalin was might treat Stalin as the most important character. He was surely crucial to the USSR and the fight against Nazism. His life is worth knowing. But only as one narrative among multiple. Furr sweeps away the personality cult. We should not bring it back by insisting that Stalin is the centre of all Soviet research.
It is this interpretation that leads me to reject one of the article's claims and recurring themes, that Furr tries to absolve Stalin of responsibility for everything that Khrushchev pins on him alone. I think my interpretation is supported by quotes from the book in the article, which acknowledge that some serious mistakes were made in the USSR.
It is not 'quibbl[ing] over minor points' to find out what didn't happen. Recognising who was wronged, and how, is necessary for justice. Accepting lies about crimes that didn't happen dilutes the loss of those who suffered and disguises the reasons for Stalin's actions.
Anti-communists treat the speech this way. It's those who hold power today and from under whom the rug must be pulled.
I disagree with this challenge. My understanding of Furr's claim was that he was unable to disprove (due to lack of evidence) some of the 'revelations' in the Speech. I did not interpret it to mean that Furr was unable to disprove (i.e. that he only partly disproved) the revelations that he claims to have disproved.
If the claim is true in the form in which it is presented, I'll suggest that Furr's point is to identify the lies, not the truths (maybe this is pedantic). Again, anti-communists swallow the speech whole. It is up to them to defend the speech, not Furr.
The idea that Furr should be giving a 'balanced', 'both sides' view, re-arming anti-communists, is a strange one coming from an ML who apparently ultimately agrees with Furr, for different reasons.
If a conclusion relies on several premises and any one of those is faulty, the conclusion is reductio as absurdum. If one's purpose is to challenge certain conclusions, it is unnecessary to remark on truthful premises. You only need to knock the foundations of just enough premises to shake their conclusions.
Furr is clear about his thesis: he is not attempting to give a balanced account of how dishonest Khrushchev was, only to prove that he was dishonest and to argue that we need a wholesale reassessment of what people believe because of the Speech.
This is a strange criticism. It contradicts the above assertion that Furr ignores some 'truths' in the speech. The anti-Stalin paradigm is prevalent and practically unshakable. It even appears in the review article. Furr's thesis was to disprove the lies in the Speech.
It is hard if not impossible to prove a negative. While it may be possible to disprove some premises, it becomes difficult for Furr to prove that the opposite is true. Hence the carefulness of the overall thesis: Khrushchev lied, not Stalin XYZ'd.
Criticising Furr for not making an argument that he does not have the evidence to support is not a valid criticism. It is a praiseworthy finding. Stating that Furr should have argued something else and then showing that Furr did not provide evidence for the something else is not a valid criticism.
Where there is no evidence, an argument will have to suffice. This will involve highlighting logical inconsistencies and disproving the evidence that is available. I'm unsure why that's a criticism except as a rhetorical device. Marxists do love their polemics.
The writer clarifies (emphasis added):
This implies the book is weak but that Furr is still right. Suggesting that Furr engage more with Conquest is hard to explain. He was an anti-Soviet who spent his life writing anti-communist literature, working for the British Foreign Office, I believe, and later advising Thatcher.
The question is not, 'Why didn't Furr engage with an author who lacks credibility?' but 'To what extent were Conquest's later claims about the USSR based on the Speech?' (Which falls outside the scope of the book.)
The first part of the article argues the Speech became key evidence for the 'conventional wisdom' about Stalin. Why would Furr give any credence to the people who believed the Speech and used the speech as evidence, when he's arguing that anything that treats the speech as fact is wrong?
If Furr is right, he doesn't have to unpick works that come later. He already reduced them to absurdity. It is on the anti-communists to demonstrate why their work is still accurate. (As it happens, Furr has unpicked major anti-communist works published since.)
The claims in the first half of the article are perhaps too strong. Furr could likely improve another edition by taking the article seriously. It seems well researched and has similar goals as Furr. I'd hazard a guess that it was written in good faith but it misses the mark by trying to be thoroughly critical in an 'academic' way.
I'm not sure if this makes anything clearer for you.
Wonder whether the Palestinian resistance and NATO losing in Ukraine are a coincidence? That loss has got to help Palestine. The US military is a big beast, but can it manage two (three if we include Taiwan/SEA) significant fronts at once?
The Palestine situation also reveals serious flaws in Western intelligence. Honestly didn't think it was possible to launch a surprise attack on such a scale nowadays. Also curious as to whether Russia has been telling Palestine what it's been learning about evading Western surveillance on the front.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens to the growing relationship between SA, Syria, and Iran. If SA backs Palestine or at least doesn't actively support Israel, some may suspect that China had a hand in facilitating the conditions for Palestine to free itself (i.e. by bringing SA/S/I back to talking).
I saw something about SA about to sign a telecoms and energy agreement or something with Israel and how those plans are now out the window. Thinking cynically, there's no reason why SA couldn't make the same deal with Palestine. It's not easy to predict who will align with who.
All this, alongside BRICS/BRI growth, African states breaking the colonial stranglehold, and Latin America swinging left (with Venezuela and China working more closely going forward, for example).
If we keep getting weeks where decades happen, it's going to feel like travelling through time.