“[W]hen there is no materialist criticism of political institutions, and when the class character of the modern state is not understood, it is only one step from political radicalism to political opportunism.”
- V.I. Lenin; What The “Friends Of The People” Are And How They Fight The Social-Democrats (1894)
In the year before the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. prepared a series of sermons that would become the book Strength to Love. This was King at his most prodigious and enduring, affirming that we “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” And, among these 1963 reflections, he challenged the origins and objectives of charity. “Philanthropy is commendable,” he wrote. “But it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
When you say that the right is saying what the left used to one has to understand that this is exactly what is happening in the US.
A seemingly Red/Black coalition is developing with the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibi, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal.
The problem of course is that Greenwald was paid by Pierre Olymar to start the Intercept so he could privatize the Snowden files, which he did. Only ten percent has been released.
Tucker Carlson is a trust fund baby who is fundamentally fascist but clothes his terms for hungry left listeners.
And they all admire Elon Musk both as the savior of the internet and as a maverick hero for giving Taibi access to what Marxists already knew: he government and the corporate media and social media platforms work with and are swarmed by intelligence.
Mate is a good journalist as is Blumenthal, but the latter too is a trust fund baby.
Trust fund babies might make good commentators or entertainers but they are not and never will be an historical force for revolution.
They are not Marxists and to be a 'leftist' one must embrace Marx's critique of capitalism.
But the Red/Black alliance that is brewing in the US seems very similar to that in Eastern Europe, especially Hungary.
Oligarchs launching media personalities to the point that in America, where the cult of individualism goes beyond the 'selfie' celebrity journalists have replaced critical thinking and actual on the ground political organizing for social change.
What was once known as "The Third Position is now very much alive throughout Europe and North America.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, various dissident groups presented themselves as part of a movement distinct from both capitalism and Marxist socialism.
This idea was revived by various political groups following the Second World War.
The rhetoric of the "Third Position" developed among Terza Posizione in Italy and Troisième Voie in France; in the 1980s, it was taken up by the National Front in the United Kingdom.
These groups emphasize opposition to both communism and capitalism.
Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right" while syncretizing ideas from each end of the political spectrum, usually reactionary right-wing cultural views and radical left-wing economic views.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
Marx writes, “As for the individual bureaucrat, the purpose of the state becomes his private purpose, a hunt for promotion, careerism.”
----- “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vintage, 1975), 111.
“[W]hen there is no materialist criticism of political institutions, and when the class character of the modern state is not understood, it is only one step from political radicalism to political opportunism.”
- V.I. Lenin; What The “Friends Of The People” Are And How They Fight The Social-Democrats (1894)
In the year before the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. prepared a series of sermons that would become the book Strength to Love. This was King at his most prodigious and enduring, affirming that we “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” And, among these 1963 reflections, he challenged the origins and objectives of charity. “Philanthropy is commendable,” he wrote. “But it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
https://time.com/5786562/darren-walker-philanthropy-mlk-jr/
“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
"A Time to Break Silence," at Riverside Church”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/80558-on-the-one-hand-we-are-called-to-play-the
When you say that the right is saying what the left used to one has to understand that this is exactly what is happening in the US.
A seemingly Red/Black coalition is developing with the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibi, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal.
The problem of course is that Greenwald was paid by Pierre Olymar to start the Intercept so he could privatize the Snowden files, which he did. Only ten percent has been released.
Tucker Carlson is a trust fund baby who is fundamentally fascist but clothes his terms for hungry left listeners.
And they all admire Elon Musk both as the savior of the internet and as a maverick hero for giving Taibi access to what Marxists already knew: he government and the corporate media and social media platforms work with and are swarmed by intelligence.
Mate is a good journalist as is Blumenthal, but the latter too is a trust fund baby.
Trust fund babies might make good commentators or entertainers but they are not and never will be an historical force for revolution.
They are not Marxists and to be a 'leftist' one must embrace Marx's critique of capitalism.
But the Red/Black alliance that is brewing in the US seems very similar to that in Eastern Europe, especially Hungary.
Oligarchs launching media personalities to the point that in America, where the cult of individualism goes beyond the 'selfie' celebrity journalists have replaced critical thinking and actual on the ground political organizing for social change.
What was once known as "The Third Position is now very much alive throughout Europe and North America.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, various dissident groups presented themselves as part of a movement distinct from both capitalism and Marxist socialism.
This idea was revived by various political groups following the Second World War.
The rhetoric of the "Third Position" developed among Terza Posizione in Italy and Troisième Voie in France; in the 1980s, it was taken up by the National Front in the United Kingdom.
These groups emphasize opposition to both communism and capitalism.
Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right" while syncretizing ideas from each end of the political spectrum, usually reactionary right-wing cultural views and radical left-wing economic views.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
https://archive.is/mAuFI ARPANET WUB
Marx writes, “As for the individual bureaucrat, the purpose of the state becomes his private purpose, a hunt for promotion, careerism.”
----- “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vintage, 1975), 111.