Michael Parenti, the renowned Marxist scholar, historian, and political scientist, passed today at age 92. With unmatched clarity, he made Marxism accessible and delivered an unflinching, impassioned critique of capitalism and imperialism. His lectures were not merely heard, they were felt, and they moved a generation. Rest in power, comrade. You will be deeply missed.
He went peacefully this morning, surrounded by his family.
Dialectical Materialism provides a rigorous toolkit for analyzing dynamic systems. It teaches us to understand how the evolution of material conditions drives historical change.
I wrote a guide where I attempt to demystify the concepts of base & superstructure, the transformation of quantity into quality, and the negation of the negation, and how these ideas provide us with mental models to navigate a world in constant flux.
https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/p/the-toolset-of-reality
"Kapital oder kapitulieren!"
friends of gas - schrumpfen (2020)
@jlou This is why private property of all kinds is theft, renting capital that is the product of your own labour as either an individual or a group replicates exactly the problematic part of capitalism: the assumption of ownership over a porition of someone elses labour because you lay claim to the capital. Have you read any Proudhon? Also money is bad because it makes capital accumulation inevitable, but thats maybe a different topic "The horror is the firm not the fact the firm has a boss"
The world feels like it is burning. Between corporate greed, the loss of ownership, and a justice system that feels broken, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
And yet, I am still optimistic.
I am optimistic because of you. Every time you shout at an injustice or refuse to stay quiet, you give me hope. I truly believe there are sunny days ahead because we are fighting for them together. ☀️
#Community #Activism #Hope #HopePunk #Optimism #SocialJustice #LateStageCapitalism #Resistance #MutualAid #AntiCorporate #PowerToThePeople #Socialism #Communism #Marxism #SolarPunk #RadicalHope #BetterWorld #BrightFuture #KeepFighting #Fediverse #Together #Solidarity #Equality #Inspiration
The world feels like it is burning. Between corporate greed, the loss of ownership, and a justice system that feels broken, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
And yet, I am still optimistic.
I am optimistic because of you. Every time you shout at an injustice or refuse to stay quiet, you give me hope. I truly believe there are sunny days ahead because we are fighting for them together. ☀️
#Community #Activism #Hope #HopePunk #Optimism #SocialJustice #LateStageCapitalism #Resistance #MutualAid #AntiCorporate #PowerToThePeople #Socialism #Communism #Marxism #SolarPunk #RadicalHope #BetterWorld #BrightFuture #KeepFighting #Fediverse #Together #Solidarity #Equality #Inspiration
"Kapital oder kapitulieren!"
friends of gas - schrumpfen (2020)
"Over 100,000 people have filled the streets of the Bulgarian capital in mass youth-led demonstrations against the rotten, mafia-rule regime. Whilst the protests were initially triggered by the 2026 draft budget – which the government quickly withdrew on 2 December – the protests did not stop. Instead, they gained momentum and forced the government to resign just nine days later!"
https://marxist.com/gen-z-led-protests-force-government-collapse-in-bulgaria.htm
#bulgaria #protest #massProtest #massprotestsinbulgaria #marxism #socialism
Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony, explained with puppets (in HDR)
Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony, explained with puppets (in HDR)
#Politics #Democrats #Republicans #Liberals #Conservatives #Vote #Election #DemocraticParty #DNC #RepublicanParty #RNC #GOP #DonaldTrump #Trump #JDVance #Vance #JoeBiden #Biden #KamalaHarris #Harris #TimWalz #Walz #Democracy #US #USA #ElonMusk #Musk #Fascism #Fascist #BernieSanders #Sanders #AOC #FraudSquad #Progressive #Progressives #GreenSocialist #GreenParty #EcoSocialist #EcoSocialism #Socialist #Socialism #Marxist #Marxism #Communist #Communism #Capitalist #Capitalism
Happy #socialistsunday, comrades
#Politics #Democrats #Republicans #Liberals #Conservatives #Vote #Election #DemocraticParty #DNC #RepublicanParty #RNC #GOP #DonaldTrump #Trump #JDVance #Vance #JoeBiden #Biden #KamalaHarris #Harris #TimWalz #Walz #Democracy #USA #ElonMusk #Musk #Fascism #Fascist #BernieSanders #AOC #FraudSquad #Progressive #Progressives #GreenSocialist #GreenParty #EcoSocialist #EcoSocialism #Socialist #Socialism #Marxist #Marxism #Communist #Communism #Capitalist #Capitalism
Happy #socialistsunday, comrades
#Politics #Democrats #Republicans #Liberals #Conservatives #Vote #Election #DemocraticParty #DNC #RepublicanParty #RNC #GOP #DonaldTrump #Trump #JDVance #Vance #JoeBiden #Biden #KamalaHarris #Harris #TimWalz #Walz #Democracy #USA #ElonMusk #Musk #Fascism #Fascist #BernieSanders #AOC #FraudSquad #Progressive #Progressives #GreenSocialist #GreenParty #EcoSocialist #EcoSocialism #Socialist #Socialism #Marxist #Marxism #Communist #Communism #Capitalist #Capitalism
#Politics #Democrats #Republicans #Liberals #Conservatives #Vote #Election #DemocraticParty #DNC #RepublicanParty #RNC #GOP #DonaldTrump #Trump #JDVance #Vance #JoeBiden #Biden #KamalaHarris #Harris #TimWalz #Walz #Democracy #US #USA #ElonMusk #Musk #Fascism #Fascist #BernieSanders #Sanders #AOC #FraudSquad #Progressive #Progressives #GreenSocialist #GreenParty #EcoSocialist #EcoSocialism #Socialist #Socialism #Marxist #Marxism #Communist #Communism #Capitalist #Capitalism
Marxist theory: labour alienation
Lately I think about one of the lesser known aspects of the Marxist analysis of capitalism a lot.
A hugely important concept in Marxism is the idea that class societies - but industrial ones such as capitalism most of all - cause alienation of the worker from their work.
A village's woodworker thousands of years ago is involved in every part of the production process: they process raw trees into workable wood, the wood into shapes and elements, the elements into an object, and the object into a finished product - say, a wardrobe. It's theirs; a tangible object they created and then own to do with what they please. Often, they then sell the fruit of their labour, essentially exchanging the entire labour value that went into the wardrobe for its equivalent in monetary value (capital).
They're involved in every step. Their product is uniquely theirs from material to finish. If they see the wardrobe they made, they might feel pride and an emotional connection. Also, they'll know not just about finishing or adorning a wardrobe, but also about the properties of trees, the types of saws, the pitfalls of joining wood pieces together. Everything that goes into the finished product is a part of their skillset.
And most importantly, they reaped the entire value of the labour they performed. It even belongs to them legally; it's their own property. They could choose not to sell it, but to keep it. Or experiment with something on a whim. Nobody to tell them what they can or cannot do with the labour skills they have.
Nowadays, that work is split into tons of roles, because industrialisation happens on such a scale and complexity that a single person or even a whole business couldn't possibly do it all.
So, there's someone whose entire job is felling trees. Or assisting in felling trees as a spotter. Then there's someone who works at a sawmill, overseeing one single machine on the production lines. Someone who designed a table at a computer but never laid a hand on their own wood. Someone to apply finishing to a table someone else assembled.
None of these people go into an Ikea and feel pride or connection to a dining table they worked on. Compared to the labour they contributed to the product, they are paid a fraction of what they produced. The rest, the vast majority, the surplus value, goes to their boss in the shape of the finished product that they can sell without ever moving a muscle.
An employed woodworker under capitalism never has any ownership over a piece of furniture they created with their own hands! Even though they made it, it belongs to the owner. Not only that, but a bulk of the value also goes to the company who contracted them, the company who contracted them, all the way to the top.
This is one of the main drivers of depression in the working class. Very few people feel like their life means anything. Their skills are only applicable at a workplace that they don't own or have any control over. They can't choose to build a wardrobe if the boss tells them to build a table. They can't decide on safety standards, material choice or anything else. They're alienated from their own labour. They're reduced to tools.
I'm not anti-work. I'm anti-capitalism. I feel a pride in my skillset and the potential of my labour. I can create things. But I don't want to be a tool in someone else's toolkit, under someone else's control, someone who tells me what to use my creativity and labour potential for, while paying peanuts compared to what I made and to add insult to injury take away the finished product too.
#Marxism #Socialism #WorkingClass #Work #Alienation #MentalHealth #AntiWork
It’s how humans have always lived – together
For 200 years, capitalism, for the last 40 years #neoliberalism, told us that we’re isolated individuals who compete to survive. But our actual history - and our biology - say the opposite: we’re interdependent, social, and ecological beings. For almost all of this time we thrived through commons-based systems, shared forests, grazing lands, rivers, and community knowledge. Villages maintained open wells, fishermen shared tidal calendars, and guilds protected collective craft standards. […]
For 200 years, capitalism, for the last 40 years #neoliberalism, told us that we’re isolated individuals who compete to survive. But our actual history – and our biology – say the opposite: we’re interdependent, social, and ecological beings. For almost all of this time we thrived through commons-based systems, shared forests, grazing lands, rivers, and community knowledge. Villages maintained open wells, fishermen shared tidal calendars, and guilds protected collective craft standards. Cooperation, not competition, is what allowed us to endure.
Alt tech is about rediscovering, what makes us human, the digital form of that, commoning online. Just as medieval commons were fenced off during enclosure, our early digital commons were captured by #dotcons corporate platforms. Rebuilding the #openweb is the act of reclaiming that shared ground, not nostalgia, but in the era of #climatechaos and hard right shift its #KISS survival.
What we need to compost is our own-shared memory. The commons are missing from today’s “common sense”. The idea that people can manage shared resources together has vanished from public imagination. Yet the commons is the older, more adaptive, and far more humane way of organizing.
In tech, the #Fediverse shows this in action, thousands of community run servers cooperating through a shared protocol, ActivityPub. Projects like #PeerTube, #Pixelfed, or #Funkwhale replace enclosure with federation, showing that open paths can scale through trust rather than control. Alt tech, built on open protocols and co-governance, is simply the digital commons rebooted, a network of networks where no one owns the whole.
We need resources and focus pushed into a real grassroots path of reclaiming the means of communication, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the internet was all ready a commons: decentralized, people-driven, and impactful. Early #Indymedia collectives covered protests outside mainstream #blocking narratives. #4opens email lists and wikis built movements across borders. Then capital pushed in, WE let the #nastyfew of #Facebook, #Google etc privatize our collective infrastructure, turning participation into surveillance and creativity into content.
Alt tech projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network), Mastodon, and wider #Fediverse are attempts to rebuild what we keep forgetting, this time, protected by #4opens shield to build shared governance. This path is not a nostalgic throwback but living/acting paths for post-capitalist communication we need in this era of social backdown.
It’s not only “tech” – it’s social trust infrastructure. A common is not only software; it’s the culture of cooperation that surrounds it, shared values, mutual aid, and relational ethics, you can’t “code” trust into hardware, as the last decade of #blockchain and #AI mess proves. Smart contracts failed to make people honest; they just automated mistrust, it’s on going #geekproblem blindness we need to work to compost.
What works, the resilience, comes from people, not algorithms. Through frameworks like the #4opens: open data, open code, open standards, open process. We can build transparency and accountability into the social layer of the network. Trust is a practice, not a protocol #KISS
We need a future that’s better, not just less bad. The #deathcult story – neoliberalism’s great myth – says “there is no alternative.” Alt tech is the alternative, working proof that cooperation scales, that people build shared infrastructure without extraction and less coercion. Look at LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Linux, or the #Fediverse, all imperfect, collaborative systems built on trust, not profit. They are real-world examples of how collective will outperform the normal deadened paths of corporate hierarchy.
Alt tech gives us believable hope, which is the only real antidote to despair and apathy. The ground for grassroots power is in pushing change and challange. If the liberal state and #dotcons won’t reform, we need to be building parallel structures that work differently.
Projects like the #OGB (Open Governance Body) experiment with federated, transparent decision-making. The #OMN builds tools to connect grassroots media in trust networks, bypassing gatekeepers entirely. Together they form a scaffolding of a working commons, capable of hosting culture, not only control.
Healing the social media wound? We need to compost the lie of #dotcons which have spent the last 20 years turning us into consumers and outrage machines. The shovel we need is affinity groups rebuilding social tech around self-governance, interoperability, and trust to reclaim the human side of the internet. Imagine the world different, feeds that empower communities, not advertisers. Tools that nurture relationships, not metrics. Platforms that amplify context, not conflict.
This is the work of making the internet human again, working on the pat of alt tech matters because it’s not about gadgets; it’s about freedom, community, and survival. It’s our path to remembering that the #openweb, like the Earth itself, belongs to everyone, or it belongs to no one. And every time we build a shared tool, or hold open a door, we remind the world that cooperation is not naïve, it’s our oldest #KISS technology.
DRAFT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5nZU5cHhC4
A cross-cultural conversation on this subject
Despite of how much I agree with you and your intentions I would revise
For the past 10K y. agriculture, 500+ y of Euro-colonialism, 200+ capitalism 95 y of neoliberalism, 45 declared as such
Those few practicing agri dominated all others
But it is the 90 to 45 discrepancy that is most significant in understanding we are appealing to the wrong masters
And this is an ideological blindness/denial of clinical level
to material reality
Nestlé: How a Corporation Killed 10.9 Million Babies and Put Their CEO in Charge of the World Economic Forum
A catastrophic toll: Nestlé’s aggressive marketing of infant formula in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) directly caused ~10.9 million infant deaths between 1960–2015, with peaks of 212,000 deaths annually in the early 1980s.
https://medium.com/@hrnews1/nestl%C3%A9-how-a-corporation-killed-10-9-million-babies-740bf555194d
#press #news #capitalism #anticapitalism #murder #politics #marxism #socialism #communism #democracy #nestle
