Steven Brust, pjf

Practical Ontologist. Trotskyist Sympathizer. Supporter of the World Socialist Web Site. Mad, drunk, and reckless troubadour (RCPM) @StevenBrust.bsky.social

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

Back in the day, I used to have a real problem with losing important floppies. Then I got smart.

[Eric Lee @EricLeeAtty]

More proof that the immigration court system is an anti-democratic farce.

Immigration Judge Amy Lee orders dead non-citizen deported, finding "insufficient proof of death."

You can't make this up!

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@TheDopaVash I should add, this is the meaning of the famous quote by Marx: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

I saw the word "classism" go by. I don't use it. Racism and sexism are about how people are viewed because of their race or sex. The problem with the working class is that they ARE the working class. The fight isn't to eliminate class prejudice, it is to abolish social classes.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@TheDopaVash 2) Related to that, this notion that we can just "think up" what the solution is, and then implement it. History does not--yet--work that way. I hope and believe at some point it will, but for now, we have the conditions we have been given, and they drive us toward socialism. /+

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@TheDopaVash Whether we will prove up to the task of creating it before capitalism destroys us is uncertain, but that is where, I believe, our efforts should go.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@TheDopaVash Relationship to production--where in the process of producing human wants you gain your livelihood. Selling your labor power, selling the products of your labor, or selling the products of someone else's labor.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@j_em_bee There's definitely some confusion there, but there is also an important point: the contradictions ARE starker--capitalism itself is driving the working class away from the capitalist parties. The fight to make clear that there is an alternative is more timely than ever.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@WillShetterly LOL. Well played.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

I love it when someone finds an elegant, succinct way to express what I've been thinking.

[jezz @JezziiB]

Tired: Humans are killing the planet

Wired: literally like 90 specific billionaires and CEOs are killing the planet and we literally know their names

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@KyleTrainEmoji Game. Set. Match.

[Eric Lee @EricLeeAtty]

The federal government has stolen a parent of 100,000 US citizen children in 16 months.

That number equals the population of Flint, Michigan. Over 4 years the kids deprived of a parent would equal almost 400k, equivalent to a city the size of Minneapolis.

[Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta]

Today, as a Ukrainian-Jewish and a scholar of the Holocaust, I feel deeply ashamed.

I never could have imagined that in my country — the country where the Nazis murdered 1.5 million Jews, the country of Babyn Yar, the very symbol of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, a country that claims to be fighting for “freedom and democracy” — a Nazi collaborator and OUN leader like Andriy Melnyk would be buried with full state honors.

Men under Melnyk’s leadership served in the Auxiliary police under Nazi. They hunted Jews hiding in attics, basements, forests, and barns, desperate to survive the Holocaust. They guarded ghettos and camps. They marched Jews to execution sites. And they took part in the shootings alongside the Germans.

By the spring of 1943, the Holocaust in Ukraine was nearly complete. The Jewish neighbors were gone — murdered before the eyes, and often with the assistance, of Melnyk’s followers. And it was precisely then that Melnyk supported the creation of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, whose members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler.

And today, the president of my country — a man whose own relatives were murdered by the Nazis — kneels before the coffin of this Nazi collaborator.

One could hardly imagine a greater humiliation for Jews. It is a humiliation for everyone who once believed that “Never Again” meant something in contemporary Ukraine — a country where militant ethnic nationalism increasingly dictates the politics of memory, and national identity.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@j_em_bee @Valeshevik Many many years ago I was guest of honor at a science fiction convention in Tel Aviv. Sitting around in one of the convention rooms, I deadpanned, "So, my US Zionist friends assure me there is no class struggle in Israel." The entire room burst out laughing. A treasured moment.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@Inhumansoflate1 I've never heard that expressed so succinctly. Yes. Although I'd put communists in quotes.

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@j_em_bee The inability of capitalism to deal with the climate crisis
The betrayal of pseudo-lefts (Corbyn, Tsipras, Mamdami, &c)
The increasing concentration of wealth in few and fewer hands
The ever more desperate efforts by the trade union bureaucrats to keep a lid on the class struggle

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@j_em_bee The recurring and escalating economic crises.
The turn of broad layers of the ruling class toward fascism, especially in the US
The growth of opposition to attacks on democracy and living standards
The increasing popularity of socialism +/

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

I had a fun interview with Shivam Bhatt. https://t.co/trEJx4M6l7

[Steven Brust, pjf @StevenBrust]

@OrevaZSN I think it is sad that some believe that everyone having food, shelter, and medical treatment qualifies as a Utopia. That is just the base from which we should start to make things better.