Curse of Cynicism

tothedirigible:

Six Arguments for the Elimination of Capitalism

• Amorality – increase of individual and corporate wealth is the only core principle of capitalism. Recognition of any social concern or relationship to the natural world that transcends the goal of increasing capital…

(Source: azspot)

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

July 30, 2012 - Joint statement of youth communist organizations from former socialist countries:

The Moldavian authorities decided to ban by law the communist symbols adding one more link in the chain of the anti-communist campaign launched by the European Union for the equation of communism with fascism. 

This campaign is linked with the continuous efforts to falsify the history of the Second World War and the socialist construction. For that reason, they ban everything that reminds of the socialist construction targeting mainly on the consciousness of the young people as they seek to trap them into capitalism which is presented as the only alternative. 

A tendency to criminalize an activity that refers to communism in European countries, especially in the former socialist countries became state policy. It manifests itself in the legal interdictions which are based on attempts to equate communism with fascism and Nazism. It is in no way related to an objective historical analysis. 

The communists were among the first ones to fight actively against Nazism in all its aspects. This happened in Germany and in the Eastern European states. It cost a lot of sacrifices.

It was the Soviet Union that with tremendous human sacrifices was the leading force that together with communist and other resistant movements in all occupied countries and with the allied nations ensured the defeat of Nazis rule in Europe. 

To the contrary, it is a manipulation of history to fit the needs of the ruling classes and elites who are afraid of the strengthening of political forces representing an alternative to capitalism. It is not an accident that the current drive to forbid promotion of communism is being carried out in a situation when the capitalist system is in a deep crisis and when continuous attacks on the conditions of life and work of all the workers are being pursuit. 

At the same time, these bans as well as other bans reveal the falsehood and the hypocrisy of the bourgeois democracy. The ban of the communist symbols in the EU countries shows that the governments and the mechanisms are afraid of a new counterattack by the workers’ and people’s revolutionary movement because they know how big and irreconcilable the contradictions and the impasses of capitalism are; because they know that the future belongs to a society without exploitation of man by man namely to socialism communism. 

The hammer and sickle and the red star represent the struggle for the abolition of the capitalist exploitation. They symbolize the blood and sacrifice of millions of communists who had been at the forefront of the anti-fascist struggle, who played a leading role in the defeat of fascism in the Second World War. They symbolize the struggles for 8 hour working day, for social security, for free education and healthcare as well as other important gains achieved by the working people with the communists playing the leading role, thanks to the influence of the socialist construction in the USSR and in other countries of Eastern and Central Europe. 

Today these gains are cut down due to the anti-people’s policy that serves the profits of the business groups and due to the world capitalist crisis that shows the historical limits of capitalism. 

Anti-communism goes hand in hand with the attacks against working people who are called to “pay” the consequences of the capitalist crisis, who witness the abolition of their labour and political rights, the increase of unemployment and homeless, the privatization of state owned enterprises, education and healthcare system etc. 

Imperialists seek to erase the achievements of socialism from the consciousness of the peoples of Europe in general. For that reason, they persecute the communist ideology in EU countries, especially in the former socialist countries, they ban the communist parties, they shamelessly distort history, and they slander socialism with huge lies and try to impose the equation of communism with fascism. 

We express our solidarity with all communists in Europe, especially in the former socialist countries, representatives of a movement which demonstrated its merits when fighting with fascism in this county and now it is pointing towards the only way out of the crisis situation - the solution which ensures dignity and progress to all working people - towards socialism.

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Although viewers know Wayne is mega-rich, they tend to forget where his wealth comes from: arms manufacturing plus stock-market speculations, which is why Bane’s stock-exchange games can destroy his empire – arms dealer and speculator, this is the true secret beneath the Batman mask. How does the film deal with it? By resuscitating the archetypal Dickensian topic of a good capitalist who engages in financing orphanage homes (Wayne) versus a bad greedy capitalist (Stryver, as in Dickens). In such Dickensian over-moralization, the economic disparity is translated into “dishonesty” which should be “honestly” analyzed, although we lack any reliable cognitive mapping, and such an “honest” approach leads to a further parallel with Dickens – as Christopher Nolan’s brother Jonathan (who co-wrote the scenario) put it bluntly: “Tale of Two Cities to me was the most sort of harrowing portrait of a relatable recognizable civilization that had completely fallen to pieces. The terrors in Paris, in France in that period, it’s not hard to imagine that things could go that bad and wrong.”[5] 

The scenes of the vengeful populist uprising in the film (a mob that thirsts for the blood of the rich who have neglected and exploited them) evoke Dickens’s description of the Reign of Terror, so that, although the film has nothing to do with politics, it follows Dickens’s novel in “honestly” portraying revolutionaries as possessed fanatics, and thus provides “the caricature of what in real life would be an ideologically committed revolutionary fighting structural injustice. Hollywood tells what the establishments want you to know – revolutionaries are brutal creatures, with utter disregard for human life. Despite emancipatory rhetoric on liberation, they have sinister designs behind. Thus, whatever might be their reasons, they need to be eliminated.”[6]

Tom Charity was right to note “the movie’s defense of the establishment in the form of philanthropic billionaires and an incorruptible police”[7] – in its distrust of the people taking things into their own hands, the film “demonstrates both a desire for social justice and a fear of what that can actually look like in the hands of a mob.”[8] Karthick raises here a perspicuous question with regard to immense popularity of the Joker figure from the previous film: why such a harsh disposition towards Bane when the Joker was dealt with lenience in the earlier movie? The answer is simple and convincing:

“The Joker, calling for anarchy in its purest form, critically underscores the hypocrisies of bourgeois civilization as it exists, but his views are unable to translate into mass action. Bane, on the other hand poses an existential threat to the system of oppression. /…/ His strength is not just his physique but also his ability to command people and mobilize them to achieve a political goal. He represents the vanguard, the organized representative of the oppressed that wages political struggle in their name to bring about structural changes. Such a force, with the greatest subversive potential, the system cannot accommodate. It needs to be eliminated.” …

Here we get the first clue – the prospect of the OWS movement taking power and establishing people’s democracy on Manhattan is so patently absurd, so utterly non-realist, that one cannot but raise the question: WHY DOES THEN A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER DREAM ABOUT IT, WHY DOES IT EVOKE THIS SPECTER? Why even dream about OWS exploding into a violent takeover? The obvious answer (to smudge OWS with accusations that it harbors a terrorist-totalitarian potential) is not enough to account for the strange attraction exerted by prospect of “people’s power.” No wonder the proper functioning of this power remains blank, absent: no details are given about how this people’s power functions, what the mobilized people are doing (remember that Bane tells the people they can do what they want – he is not imposing on them his own order).

This is why external critique of the film (“its depiction of the OWS reign is a ridiculous caricature”) is not enough – the critique has to be immanent, it has to locate within the film itself a multitude signs which point towards the authentic Event. (Recall, for example, that Bane is not just a brutal terrorist, but a person of deep love and sacrifice.) In short, pure ideology isn’t possible, Bane’s authenticity HAS to leave trace in the film’s texture. This is why the film deserves a close reading: the Event – the “people’s republic of Gotham City”, dictatorship of the proletariat on Manhattan – is immanent to the film, it is its absent center.