Red Patch

Dissident apparel for the Loonie Left. Email [email protected]

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

@pplsartofwar “Let them eat tokens.”

[Gustavo Petro @petrogustavo]

Mis flores en la tumba del dirigente Buenaventura Durruti, dirigente obrero libertario, muerto en el frente de Madrid en 1936.

"Llevamos un mundo nuevo en nuestros corazones"

Sic Itur ad astram

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

@BrianMcDonaldIE No one posits an equivalence between Communism and Nazism without harboring a secret affinity for the latter.

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

Haiti's odious “independence debt” — a 150-million-franc penalty compensating France for its lost slave “property” — was held by the Crédit Industriel et Commercial bank, which financed the construction of the Eiffel Tower.

“Every monument to civilization is a monument to barbarism.” ~Walter Benjamin

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

The full import of this incredible screed – a revival of the 1943 Stportpalastrede – is only grasped if we compare it to the “expected” attitude of German capital towards China. Marxian Economics 101 holds that in an open economy, imports of Chinese goods depresses the value of German labour (i.e. boosts German real wages) by cheapening the basket of commodities they consume, the rate of exploitation being constant (a phenomenon captured in bourgeois economics as the “disinflationary” “Wal Mart effect”). Where vanilla German productive capital would welcome the rise of China's export economy (barring sectors directly competing against it in the global market, such as automakers, whose troubles are however offset by access to the Chinese market), a revived German imperialism perceives only the eternal Enemy from the East...

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

Marx fully acknowledged this, writing scathingly of the “swindling in exchange” which accounts for merchant profits in pre-capitalist societies and attracts the ire of all pre-modern value systems. Ernest Mandel, in Marxist Economic Theory, catalogues the immemorial hostility of all the world’s civilizations towards merchantdom. Homer speaks of antiquity’s quintessential mercantile and maritime people, the Phoenicians, as “clever navigators, deceitful traders.” In Rome Mercury is the god of thieves, tricksters, and merchants. Ibn Khaldun records the verdict of the Islamic golden age: “trade ... consists in artful tricks.” Mandel concludes: “All folk wisdom repeats the same thing, in all the languages of the Earth.”

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“The Economist, that optimist conjuror of all things menacing the tranquil minds of the mercantile community…” ~Marx

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“The Economist, that optimist conjuror of all things menacing the tranquil minds of the mercantile community…” ~Marx

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“The ideology and program of fascism ... are merely an intensification of attitudes which have already been shown to be characteristic of imperialism. ...Foreigners and racial minorities are blamed for misfortunes the nature of which is not understood. So far as internal economic and social problems are concerned the program of fascism is a mass of ill-digested and often mutually contradictory proposals which are notable chiefly for their unmistakably demagogic character. ... What gives to fascism coherence and vitality is its stress on nationalism, its demand for the restoration of a strong state power, and its call for a war of revenge and foreign conquest. It is this which provides a firm foundation for rapprochement between fascism and the capitalist class.” ~Paul M. Sweezy

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“The ideology and program of fascism ... are merely an intensification of attitudes which have already been shown to be characteristic of imperialism. ...Foreigners and racial minorities are blamed for misfortunes the nature of which is not understood. So far as internal economic and social problems are concerned the program of fascism is a mass of ill-digested and often mutually contradictory proposals which are notable chiefly for their unmistakably demagogic character. ... What gives to fascism coherence and vitality is its stress on nationalism, its demand for the restoration of a strong state power, and its call for a war of revenge and foreign conquest. It is this which provides a firm foundation for rapprochement between fascism and the capitalist class.” ~Paul M. Sweezy

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“The basic structure of fascist violence (...): it is organized, not elemental; brutal, not wildly passionate; it aims not merely to wipe out the enemy but to subject him to physical humiliation and moral defamation; it even attacks, immediately and directly, the very cornerstones and shrines of [civilized] life—justice, science, and art—whenever they seem to jeopardize [the fascist cause]; it always comes post festum, when the enemy’s first wave of attack has subsided; it represents revenge and “a punitive expedition” rather than [self-defense].”

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

One of the greatest achievements in bourgeois gaslighting (or greatest failure of Marxist pedagogy; take your pick) has been this massive conflation in our political imaginary between personal property (individual claims on use values) and capitalist property relations: persuading normies that the (faceless, sinister, hivelike, foreign) “Reds” are itching to bust down their door and confiscate/collectivize their dog, their coffeemaker, their potted plants, their picket fence, their Playstation, or their favourite pair of slippers.

The only form of property which revolutionary socialism seeks to “abolish” is the kind (over productive apparatuses or “fixed capital”) that dispenses its owners from having to perform labour, while allowing its owners to claim a share of the value produced by other people's labour.

Put in these terms, it’s obvious that 99% of us have absolutely nothing to fear from “the abolition of private property,” and as for the 1%, well, they can be dealt with by other means than persuasion. 😏

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

I sometimes wonder if the Chinese learn “too much” from history (in the way that we in the West are said to learn too little). Bethune’s idealism, the 250 million bushels on credit during the famine, or Pierre Trudeau’s principled gesture of recognition are dangerous forms of “knowledge” when dealing with the hyena-headed raptor Canada has become.

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“On one side a worn-out engine [i.e. the election cycle] which, turning incessantly in its vicious circle, is never able to move a single step forward, and the impotent process of friction by which all the official parties gradually grind each other into dust; on the other, the advancing mass of the nation, threatening to blow up the vicious circle and to destroy the official engine.” ~Marx

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

@pawelwargan Bourgeois hot take: “I refuse to study the cosmos, because chaining yourself to ‘theories from the early 20th century’ is a lazy way of dealing with reality.” 🤡

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

@cecild84 Has the sordid history of colonialism ever produced a more disgraceful scene? Defeated African chiefs, forced to prostrate themselves before their pith-helmeted conquerors, retained more humanity and dignity than this insufferable handmaiden of empire.

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

The problem with “Tax the Rich” and all such other reformist-style policy positions and slogans that fall short of articulating Marx’s Labour Theory of Value is that they lie vulnerable to all the classic right-wing tropes about “welfare bums,” “taxation as theft,” socialism as “running out of other people’s money,” and so forth. Objections which are smashed to smithereens by the insistence that we have created this wealth, that it has been stolen from us. There's no halfway, “reasonable” solution to this zero-sum conflict to be found in the realm of polite debate. Either they are the parasites – or we are.

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“Finance capital does not want freedom, but domination… It needs a politically powerful state which … will ensure respect for the interests of finance capital abroad, and use its political power to extort advantageous supply contracts and trade agreements from smaller states; a state which can intervene in every corner of the globe and transform the whole world into a sphere of investment for its own finance capital. Finally, finance capital needs a state which is strong enough to pursue an expansionist policy and the annexation of new colonies…

The old free traders believed in free trade not only as the best economic policy but also as the beginning of an era of peace. Finance capital abandoned this belief long ago. … The ideal now is to secure for one's own nation the domination of the world, an aspiration which is as unbounded as the capitalist lust for profit from which it springs. Capital becomes the conqueror of the world, and with every new country that it conquers there are new frontiers to be crossed. These efforts become an economic necessity, because every failure to advance reduces the profit and the competitiveness of finance capital, and may finally turn the smaller economic territory into a mere tributary of a larger one. They have an economic basis, but are then justified ideologically by an extraordinary perversion of the national idea, which no longer recognizes the right of every nation to political self-determination and independence... Instead the economic privileges of monopoly are mirrored in the privileged position claimed for one's own nation, which is represented as a 'chosen nation'. … An oligarchic ideal of domination has replaced the democratic ideal of equality.” ~Rudolf Hilferding

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

“Finance capital does not want freedom, but domination… It needs a politically powerful state which … will ensure respect for the interests of finance capital abroad, and use its political power to extort advantageous supply contracts and trade agreements from smaller states; a state which can intervene in every corner of the globe and transform the whole world into a sphere of investment for its own finance capital. Finally, finance capital needs a state which is strong enough to pursue an expansionist policy and the annexation of new colonies…

The old free traders believed in free trade not only as the best economic policy but also as the beginning of an era of peace. Finance capital abandoned this belief long ago. … The ideal now is to secure for one's own nation the domination of the world, an aspiration which is as unbounded as the capitalist lust for profit from which it springs. Capital becomes the conqueror of the world, and with every new country that it conquers there are new frontiers to be crossed. These efforts become an economic necessity, because every failure to advance reduces the profit and the competitiveness of finance capital, and may finally turn the smaller economic territory into a mere tributary of a larger one. They have an economic basis, but are then justified ideologically by an extraordinary perversion of the national idea, which no longer recognizes the right of every nation to political self-determination and independence... Instead the economic privileges of monopoly are mirrored in the privileged position claimed for one's own nation, which is represented as a 'chosen nation'. … An oligarchic ideal of domination has replaced the democratic ideal of equality.” ~Rudolf Hilferding

[Red Patch @RedPatchShop]

@ProudSocialist “The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, … arms and ammunition must never be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” ~Marx