CriticalResist8

We see a lot of account requests from people who are just yet dipping their toes in marxism and communism. We can't abandon new comrades to the flow of the current they are floating in, pulling them in all directions without a reason or goal in sight. They need a comprehensive, actual study plan.

I purposely limited myself to 6 books (honorable mentions would have been State and Revolution and the Manifesto) as this is like a crash course to get you to an adequate level. If you read say a chapter every night (and for principles of communism just do it in one go it's super short), you should finish everything in around a month.

This thread should also double as an ask your questions thread. But I feel there's also a whole thing around asking questions; people want to know about the war in Ukraine, about US imperialism, about what's happening in China or the DPRK... but while this is important, it's parallel to your marxist studies. You must, alongside current events, learn about the fundamentals as well. Sometimes it seems less important because there's major stuff happening and "theory" is seen as some dead wood, something you can pick up but was written a century ago and so has little relevance to our world today, but it's the opposite. If you truly want to understand what's happening today, you have to understand not only what happened in the past that led to today, but also the theory that was written down in the past and is still applicable.

So anyway, feel free to ask for clarification on stuff you don't understand, not focusing solely on current events as I often see around the grad 🙆‍♀️

Edit 1: Wisconcom finally found the file, and has DM'd me on Discord! He joined the archive server we set up of his "Committee" and found my name from there. But he failed to realise one thing -- it was all a facade!

1. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/803508721383899146/1129346283325358110/Screenshot_20230714_113703_com.discord_edit_708705141816628.jpg

2. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/803508721383899146/1129346283614777364/Screenshot_20230714_113716_edit_708720428790008.jpg

Since November* 2022, ProleWiki has been the victim of a very dedicated stalker and harasser.

ProleWiki has been maintaining this document since February of 2023, when Wisconcom was ramping up his attacks and harassment against us.

When he left us alone briefly in May-June 2023, we agreed we would not publish it so as not to ruin his reputation. It was always an equivalent exchange: if you stop bothering us, we'll leave you alone.

He didn't though, he came back in July as many of you are aware, and so we make good on our promise. That is one thing Wisconcom -- and all harassers that would come our way -- must realise about us.

Be prepared for a long read, but it's worth it.

I am only the humble messenger of this document.

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/ProleWiki:Library

Go check it out and give us your feedback!

BY THE WAY, you can help upload books to the library! We can transfer books 1:1 from Google Docs or LibreOffice to MediaWiki. That means you can get books we don't have from another source, work them in Google Docs, send me the link (or better yet join our discord so other editors can pitch in), and I can upload them to our library. Not going to open random files though, it has to be google docs lol thanks

Took a lot of trial and error but with some help with chatgpt, I was able to finally render the mockup.

Try it now before we push it live and give us your feedback!

with the way twitter is going, I don't give it much longer to live so we're diversifying our social media presence just in case.

Those that know me know I work a lot on prolewiki.

Online resources are a dime a dozen, and I notice they tend to focus on the beginner stuff. And in most reading lists / youtubers / communities / other repos, it all revolves around marxism 101.

It got me to ask how can we talk about the more advanced stuff on prolewiki? Learning the basics will only get you so far. There's only so many different ways and so many different people you can teach the basics to -- if they're serious about their marxist studies, people will have to look into more advanced stuff at some point, beyond the basics.

But then I started thinking, what is actually advanced marxism? Past the beginner level. Isn't the point of marxism that we make it accessible to everyone, thus making complex concepts feel basic and at anyone's reach?

Perhaps basic marxism is its three components: the philosophy, economy, and class struggle. And anything past that such as how to apply marxism yourself or theory on decolonisation, feminism, LGBT issues etc.

But making your own analyses and understanding the theory of further developments since Marx are two different things for the student of marxism.

Or perhaps it's the same three components, but in more details -- delving into the history of philosophy, learning about the class struggle in different countries and periods, learning about other economy theory?

What is advanced marxism, and how can we bring it to the people over the internet?

Original author Ivan Katchanovski has given explicit permission to everyone in the world to rehost and republish his paper.

We immortalised it on ProleWiki because it's a very important paper even though some of the content is a bit both sidesy. Actually we were looking at possibly writing a preface to help new comrades parse this paper, but I feel that would make it our own reedition, which is a very different thing from republishing.

He requested an account on the Spanish instance of prolewiki, waited 2 months to get it looked at and approved, and then promptly started wrecking like 10 pages of ProleWiki. I mean only 10 pages, no more lol.

He left this gem in his old user page:

https://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Comrade:Wisconcom&oldid=50738

However, I soon cognizant of the revisionist

lmao

anyway he got his edits reverted instantly by other editors and then banned a few moments later.

Very funny guy, helped brought the community closer.

can't wait to see the results!

This is the only reasonable argument, but I know rabid liberals frothing at the mouth over more dead Russians don't want to see it.

Still, for those who are still reasonable in their goals and ends, and the outcome they actually want to see, there's only one solution.

The argument on the pro-UA side is that Putin has the "choice" to just up and leave Ukraine at any time. I've written before about why he doesn't -- not after all the sanctions, not after all the resources and troops committed. NATO/Europe will not say "alright you're a good sport mate, we'll drop the sanctions and pretend this whole thing never happened, deal?". There's a "warrant" out for Putin at the ICC, what makes anyone sincerely believe things can go back to where they were before for Russia?

It should hopefully be clear that the people calling for Putin to just "leave Ukraine" know they're not being reasonable. These are some of the same people who also cheer when Ukraine gets new weapons to kill more Russians with. The goal for this segment is not peace, it's actually to prolong the war.

I'm addressing the reasonable side, however, who might have been inadvertently taken in by this psyop. I mean, isn't it weird how NAFO suddenly popped up everywhere and got media coverage? After they're doing the exact same thing as the Lithuanian elves (because elves fight against orcs) did back in 2014, and it turned out the "elves" were NATO?

Saying Putin can just leave Ukraine is impotent rage. Yeah, sure, I'm just gonna give him a quick call. He really cares what some westerners think about his war, especially now that he has to contend against NATO intervention. I'm sure we can totally convince him he's being a total nerd if we just yell about it on Twitter.

So if you actually want peace, what's the reasonable solution?

Organise locally, petition your government to stop sending money and weapons to Ukraine. Organise and protest for a peace deal. I know it's probably not what you want to hear.

But these weapons prolong the war. Just earlier today I saw a video of an APC full of 8+ Ukrainians get obliterated by a missile strike. Where did they get that APC do you think?

Do you want Ukrainians to stop dying? Me too. The most pragmatic way, the only one towards which we can actually do something, is to protest against our governments sending equipment that prolong this war.

Otherwise you have to realise this war is going to be fought to the last Ukrainian. Do you really think it's weakening Russia in any lasting capacity? The fighting is happening in Ukraine. Ukraine has been losing population consistently since 1990 (a whole fifth of it lost, mostly, to emigration). What exactly is weakening in Russia? It's Ukraine that's being destroyed and will need to be rebuilt. It's Ukraine that's losing their population by the thousands. It's Ukraine that's shooting depleted uranium bullets on their own soil.

What you're advocating for, when you advocate to prolong this war, is to kill every last Ukrainian and turn their country into a wasteland. The UA army is even using depleted uranium bullets now (courtesy of US and UK), which have polluted the land when they were used in Iraq. This is backed up by data, right? Depleted uranium has data behind it, it's not speculation.

The reason the war is being prolonged is because it makes a lot of money to the military-industrial complex. It makes a lot of money to corporations due to the inflation. A blackrock affiliate said on hidden camera recently that when Russia blows up a grain silo, the price of wheat goes up. War is a great business opportunity, always has been. And then when Ukraine will need to be rebuilt, it'll make Blackrock a lot more money.

But I'm not sure who they will rebuild the country for if there's no one else left to live in Ukraine.

My solution is the only one that makes sense. Any other is purely impotent and just venting frustrations, not effecting any actual change.