cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4822013
I recently bought a course on investing and that is what the course advices for survival under capitalism. Would this come out as being a class traitor? Does it sound snobby? Or is it a good advice?
This is a tired subject. As Deng said, "Poverty is not socialism." Do not fall into the Western Marxist trap of conflating the Christian veneration of poverty with communism. You live under capitalism, use it. If you have the finances to invest and secure a future for yourself, do it. It's not a sin to have money and be a communist, it doesn't make your political beliefs less "pure," this kind of thinking is imbued with residual Christianity that should be rooted out. There's a huge difference between "I work for Lockheed Martin and invest in oil companies" and "I buy index funds so maybe I can retire one day."
And again, and more than ever, the religious primitivism makes itself felt, with its distrust not only in relation to difference in income, but above all else in relation to wealth as such: “if everyone becomes rich and the poor cease to exist, who will then have need of the Bolsheviks and our work?”: thus, according to Stalin, argue the “‘left’ bunglers who idealize the poor peasants as the eternal supporters of Bolshevism." This causes us to think of the critical observations developed by Hegel with regards to the evangelical commandment that obligates one to help the poor. Losing sight of the fact that it’s “a conditional rule”, and instead absolutizing it, Christians then end up absolutizing poverty, which alone can give meaning to the rule that demands aid to the poor. Instead, the quality of aid to the poor ought to be measured by the contribution given to overcoming poverty as such. In the state of horror caused by capitalism’s butchery and by the auri sacra fames, a religious distrust for gold and wealth as such is created, and the idealization of misery, or least of scarcity, understood and experienced as an expression of spiritual fulfillment or of revolutionary rigor. And Stalin feels obligated to stress a key point: “It would be stupid to think that socialism can be built on top of misery and deprivation, by reducing personal needs and everyone’s standard of living to that of the poor”; on the contrary, “socialism can be built only on the basis of a relentless development of society’s productive forces” and “on the basis of a comfortable life for the workers”, or better yet, “a comfortable and civilized life for all members of society." Just like the Christian doctrine of helping the poor, the revolutionary doctrine, that insists that communist parties first place themselves among the exploited and the poor, is also “conditioned”, and it is only taken seriously once it is understood for its conditionality.
Domenico Losurdo, Stalin.
Domenico Losurdo is such an underrated writer. Reading his works is such a refreshing experience with the ease of how he cuts through capitalist bullshit. His intellectual biography of Nietzsche is one of the best I've ever read, his Liberalism: A Counterhistory is hilariously powerful in destroying liberalism as a political ideology, just an amazing scholar.
It appears as though Henry Hakamaki and his crew have established a good deal of trust with the people managing Losurdo's estate and although Henry wasn't availing of any particular information, the impression he gave in an interview was that there's likelihood of seeing more official translations of Losurdo's work in the future from him.
Everyone who gets the opportunity should become a bourgeoisie class traitor (as in class traitor to the bourgeoisie). The problem that communism exists to solve is that the bourgeoisie have all the power. Why would you, someone who wants to change society, throw away an opportunity at having more power?
This is a pretty individualist take. In 99% of cases, being a bourgeoisie requires purposeful exploitation of others. The point of organizing is that together, we control all the labor that runs the economy and we have overwhelming numbers. Striving to be a class traitor to help the cause is some weird solo spy mission
Unless a general strike materializes out of thin air, there will need to be people who can afford to spend time organizing, fund strike funds, and give out mutual aid.
so yours is unquestionably the cool answer, but every org I've ever been a part of has been floated nearly entirely by PMC/technocrat/nepobaby class traitor money. The most theft I've ever witnessed is using a work printer to print leaflets and even then I've seen it do more harm (comrades getting fired) than good (free ten bucks worth of flyers?)
Up until the late 70's, a significant portion of Leftist movements worldwide were funded in/directly by an anarchist bank robber, turned forger, named Lucio Urtubia.
Very much recommend checking out the documentary I posted here. https://hexbear.net/post/164752?scrollToComments=false
Stalin was also a bank robber, the DPRK is allegedly out there doing cyber-crimes.
Crime is THE traditional form of revolutionary fundraising.
Engels was born into that position and spent time organizing and educating. He didn't spend time trying to become a bourgeoisie
I didn't suggest that commies in the imperial core should be on some type of sigma grindset, all I'm saying is that there is historical precedent for commies to use what they're given and not turn down the power of capital on grounds of idealistic purity alone.
If being a class traitor is within grasp, do it. If it's not, there are other ways to fight capital.
On one hand, investing to not die of poverty is sensible.
on the other:
Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do
one has to find some happy medium, if one can afford to invest.It's not counter revolutionary to buy SPY omfg lol
Touch grass touch grass touch grass touch grass
You must buy VTI or VOO or VT or you will eventually starve. Millennials are on their own unless there's a revolution. Even just having social security for millennials feels a revolution away. And I don't think I'll ever stop feeling like there's another 2008 just ahead, at most 3 years away.
The Great Financial Crash that the world never actually recovered from, just painted over the cracks and pretended everything was okay.
i got bad news for ya brother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis
You gotta take care of yourself AND you exist in the time and place in which you exist. Assuming you live in the imperial core like myself, the only possible way you can retire some day is by having investments that you can live off of later. Index funds are a pretty simple and (to my knowledge) reasonably effective way of investing.
Do it if you want to, or don't, but don't judge your moral character as a comrade by it.Not only do I passively contribute to genocide and oppression through paying taxes and selling my labor and skills to corporations, but I actively contribute to it as well by investing in an ETF. Yes, the percentage that goes to Lockheed, Raytheon, are tiny, but companies like Google and Amazon and Microsoft are often at the top.
I don’t seek to justify it. I’m just a selfish coward in the imperial core who can’t commit suicide and want to live a comfortable life when I’m older. I don’t really care about the “value” of it dropping or rising like homeowners who have a house as an “investment.” I don’t stare at charts all day long. I just need it to be enough when it’s time and hope I can kill at least one banker in my life time to make up for my sins.
If you’re looking for justifications to sleep at night, just don’t be an obsessive. Save money to invest in mutual/index/ETFs inside a Roth IRA, 401k, and general brokerage account. If you’re checking the price every day, getting angry when someone does praxis and lowers your stocks, and you find yourself being tempted to vote against the workers of the world just to improve your stocks - you may have a problem. Aspire to live, not become rich.
Buy index funds, accelerate the process of socialization (half joking, but I read a very funny paper by a Chinese economist arguing basically this)
But also: Could Index Funds Be ‘Worse Than Marxism’? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/the-autopilot-economy/618497/
Lol comrade Jack Bogle
The entire paper isn't about this, but there is a part where the author deals with stocks.
Hu, Jiayong. ‘Analysis of the Innovation and Development of the Socialist Market Economy Theory’. China Political Economy 2, no. 1 (1 January 2019): 85–97. https://doi.org/10.1108/CPE-04-2019-0006.
IIRC he is referring to this particularly interesting part of capital vol 3, see section: III. Formation of stock companies.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm
Is that the same paper where some hedge fund investor was interviewed and he quoted Engels to justify his performance
