Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist
9th December 2013, 20:52
As some of you may or may not know, I'm was born and raised in a semi-rural semi-suburban area in New Jersey and because of that I've been pretty isolated from everything outside the town. There was a student movement against some budget cuts (we managed to contribute towards removing 1.2 million dollars cut from the school budget) and we have frequent power outages during because the town is built on abandoned copper mines and farms, plus we have really shitty landlords (I've known at least 4 people who've been evicted around here). But other than your average rural decay I never really experienced any thing of the world until the economic crisis hit in 2009. Around then my parents got divorced and my dad got laid off for what would be 4 years so since my dad was in really bad debt he moved into this run down house a few streets away. There were entire walls where nothing but termite holes remained and there was no functioning air conditioner or heat, so we had to use a wall air conditioner and because the frame around the window was so decayed that we'd get mosquitoes flying in constantly. (I ended up going back to my old church and Synagogue for help, being half jewish and catholic, and they did fuck all) There wasn't a weekend in the first few years of the divorce when I didn't come home from his house sick. Then Chris Christie got elected, and thank god, the last guy was a complete goon. But of course like any other capitalist politician he had to manage capital and being the right-winger he is, oh boy does he love managing that capital! So we had major budget cuts, alot of teachers were laid off, alot of meals in the school became basically inedible (which sucks because alot of days when my mom went out for work I was dependent on that stuff), and we lost our janitorial staff to a private company). So the whole student body staged a walk out to protest against the budget cuts and as I said earlier we won back 1.2 million dollars for NJ schools. After that the movement cooled down and life returned to normal for me but everything just started to fade away. Gas Stations closed down along with restaurants and stores, people I know started getting evicted, my dad just couldn't find a job no matter where he looked... all of this builds up on a person but it all just seemed like that's just life in this atomized existence of the american dystopia. Only when the Arab Spring emerged did I see that there was still a spark of hope, a possibility of resistance. I was fascinated with this new rupture and in my research I discovered the IMT site which had by fair the best coverage of the arab spring and from there I was first exposed to Marxism. Later on I became a full blown commie and rejected the IMT social democrat brand. I wrote about this process somewhere else on here and I'll put it under a spoiler to save anyones eyes who aren't interested:
Now I remember my first experience with leftism being that one time I was browsing the internet for articles on the Arab Spring and I came across the IMT's website and thought that their journalism was compelling. Although I never proscribed to their brand of Trotskyism, being a Non-Marxist, I thought the manner in which they applied Materialism carried far more intellectual weight than most of the stuff you hear on the mainstream media. I'd check the site daily and I feel that even though I never embraced their line that it crept into my thought process.
So, about a year later after discovering the IMT's site, I managed to come on to JMP's blog by some stroke of luck, and having heard the basic line about how all non-trots are unsophisticated Stalinists with no intellectual content behind them I assumed that I would be able to have a good chuckle at what I thought would be just a knuckle headed Stalinist. But as I read more and more, I found myself immersed in the persuasive, rational and thoughtful tone of his blog that the IMT's site simple doesn't have. And the more I read I began asking myself, do I really understand what Marxism really is? I mean, the whole point of the Trot line is to keep some sort of "Virgin Marxism" and yet at the end of the day, other than a few good articles on the economic situation and some decent materialist analyses, I really didn't have a good grasp of what this "Marxism" was that they were so hell bent on defending. And the more I read JMP the more I realized that their ideological purity is just a thinly veiled cover for their lack of engaging content. After studying various MLM text, I decided that my prior mode of thought simple wasn't correct and I adopted MLM as my tendency. Sure, I need to study the basics more, I admit this. But at least now I've escaped from the dogmatic (un)thinking of the IMT's line so I can study these text with a clear mind.
Anyway fast froward, I moved from me little old jersey town to Newark to go to Rutgers, I managed to get a job here but when I searched for a Communist presence in here I found out there was nothing, hell I even searched for those groups which mask social democracy under revolutionary pretensions (all of the in the U.S except for the signalfire collective, to be honest). So I did a bit more research and found that we have a pretty good student union and after some thought I decided that the best avenue for Communist work would most likely be through it. I don't think at this chance I have the capability to form any independent student union considering that it'd consist of me, myself, and I. I tried to attend the meetings but when I asked for info they didn't give me anything in time so instead I'm going to a protest in support of better working conditions for teachers that they are hosting.f
So on one hand I will need to maintain my politics and remember that all is a means to the end of revolutionary communism. On the otherhand I have no intentions of being one of those annoying commies that scream revolution, or really scream at all. As a side note the whole idea of yelling slogans is really fucking stupid, it just makes you look like a collection of anti-social assholes on the sidewalk and prevents people from engaging you. Sure it might be more "principled" because being a disruptive asshole is more "revolutionary" but get a motherfucking grip, it's protest politics and protest politics in of themselves are never a challenge to state authority so doing anything other than reaching out to people is just posing. Back to what I was saying, I will probably only be there to watch this first event, and while I don't intend on telling people I'm a communist I'm sure it will come up and as we all know the communist disdains to conceal his views so if any fellow proles approach me I'll be glad to teach a comrade in need and hopefully I'll be able to work towards building an independent communist pole.
I know this is a pretty big post that is slightly rambly at this point but that's because I had to wake up early to drive to my shift an hour away so I'm really tired, when I get back I'll update you and try to discuss some of my thoughts on political involvement and what not.
Just found a video about the protest, I'll share it so you can get a feel for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OEVzCg057U
Kinda liberal sounding from the video, eh I hope its better when I get there. I'll probably be disappointed
Now I remember my first experience with leftism being that one time I was browsing the internet for articles on the Arab Spring and I came across the IMT's website and thought that their journalism was compelling. Although I never proscribed to their brand of Trotskyism, being a Non-Marxist, I thought the manner in which they applied Materialism carried far more intellectual weight than most of the stuff you hear on the mainstream media. I'd check the site daily and I feel that even though I never embraced their line that it crept into my thought process.
So, about a year later after discovering the IMT's site, I managed to come on to JMP's blog by some stroke of luck, and having heard the basic line about how all non-trots are unsophisticated Stalinists with no intellectual content behind them I assumed that I would be able to have a good chuckle at what I thought would be just a knuckle headed Stalinist. But as I read more and more, I found myself immersed in the persuasive, rational and thoughtful tone of his blog that the IMT's site simple doesn't have. And the more I read I began asking myself, do I really understand what Marxism really is? I mean, the whole point of the Trot line is to keep some sort of "Virgin Marxism" and yet at the end of the day, other than a few good articles on the economic situation and some decent materialist analyses, I really didn't have a good grasp of what this "Marxism" was that they were so hell bent on defending. And the more I read JMP the more I realized that their ideological purity is just a thinly veiled cover for their lack of engaging content. After studying various MLM text, I decided that my prior mode of thought simple wasn't correct and I adopted MLM as my tendency. Sure, I need to study the basics more, I admit this. But at least now I've escaped from the dogmatic (un)thinking of the IMT's line so I can study these text with a clear mind.
Anyway fast froward, I moved from me little old jersey town to Newark to go to Rutgers, I managed to get a job here but when I searched for a Communist presence in here I found out there was nothing, hell I even searched for those groups which mask social democracy under revolutionary pretensions (all of the in the U.S except for the signalfire collective, to be honest). So I did a bit more research and found that we have a pretty good student union and after some thought I decided that the best avenue for Communist work would most likely be through it. I don't think at this chance I have the capability to form any independent student union considering that it'd consist of me, myself, and I. I tried to attend the meetings but when I asked for info they didn't give me anything in time so instead I'm going to a protest in support of better working conditions for teachers that they are hosting.f
So on one hand I will need to maintain my politics and remember that all is a means to the end of revolutionary communism. On the otherhand I have no intentions of being one of those annoying commies that scream revolution, or really scream at all. As a side note the whole idea of yelling slogans is really fucking stupid, it just makes you look like a collection of anti-social assholes on the sidewalk and prevents people from engaging you. Sure it might be more "principled" because being a disruptive asshole is more "revolutionary" but get a motherfucking grip, it's protest politics and protest politics in of themselves are never a challenge to state authority so doing anything other than reaching out to people is just posing. Back to what I was saying, I will probably only be there to watch this first event, and while I don't intend on telling people I'm a communist I'm sure it will come up and as we all know the communist disdains to conceal his views so if any fellow proles approach me I'll be glad to teach a comrade in need and hopefully I'll be able to work towards building an independent communist pole.
I know this is a pretty big post that is slightly rambly at this point but that's because I had to wake up early to drive to my shift an hour away so I'm really tired, when I get back I'll update you and try to discuss some of my thoughts on political involvement and what not.
Just found a video about the protest, I'll share it so you can get a feel for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OEVzCg057U
Kinda liberal sounding from the video, eh I hope its better when I get there. I'll probably be disappointed