V.I. Lenin, from State and Revolution

I think of this quote every time I see mainstream politicians heaping praise on people like Martin Luther King, Jr., as cover for their policies that stand in direct opposition for what MLK, Jr. died fighting for (racial and economic equality won through militant class struggle…he died after advising the Memphis strikers that they were “together enough to do it,” it being a general strike in the city of Memphis).

Ironically, Stalin did the same thing to Lenin, using Lenin’s image as cover for the oppression of the working class, the very people whose emancipation Lenin made his life’s project.

I agree with Mr. Atkinson. We need to reclaim our history, to honor those who have struggled before us. The best way for us to honor them is by standing on their shoulders, by learning from their failures as well as their successes so that we might take their struggles forward and build a world free of the oppression and exploitation they fought against.

The capitalist project is about controlling the world, bringing the entire world under consensual domination. Capitalism sees Hellen Keller and Martin Luther King, Jr. not so much as members of the left, but as agents outside their control, and thus in need of being brought under their control. As the Borg would say: “They must be assimilated”.

*Only* after they are assimilated are they safe for capitalism, and thus treated positively by capitalists.

Capitalism is not so much an ideology as a domination machine. It’s more like a shark (stereotypically) than a human. Treating capitalism as merely “rightist” loses much of it’s reality.

Likewise, it’s insulting to give principles like justice, health, freedom, happiness, and empowerment the term “leftist”, as if they are merely on the other side of the seesaw from capitalism, merely the difference between one hand and the other, between one direction and another. The difference between socialism and capitalism is not “left” versus “right”, it’s about a world of democracy, of mutual respect, fair struggle and brotherhood and resolved disagreement, a world without poverty and with limited war and a world of perpetual terror, domination, exploitation, massive perhaps extinctual war, disease, and starvation. The differences cannot be more stark.

Nearly all future humans are socialists. How can capitalism be a “rightist” position? It’s more like a “anti-future” position. It’s a position that states that *I*, defined as a singular body, must maximize control over resources and thereby minimize the control that others have over resources. Everyone else is encouraged to behave in the same way, and *everyone else* only applies to humans who are currently living. Future (and past) humans are treated as non-entities.

Capitalism creates only two kinds of beings – those that are greedy and self-serving and those that do not exist.

Why do we give capitalism the *honor* of saying it’s “rightist”? Why do we pretend it’s on the same plane as socialism, the same line?

And they were all on the left. This is not to say that they were necessarily political, but that the principles they fought for at the time can be considered left principles.

Exactly. The key is adherence to PRINCIPLES.

I welcome writer Atkinson’s general thesis, but don’t think C. Chavez would nec. be pleased by being called “leftist”. It should be common knowledge that he and Ms Huerta represented the rightward element within the Farmworker movement; along with Jerry Brown they get most of the credit for funnelling its energies back into the Vatican/AFL-CIA/Democrat Pty orbit where it stagnates to this day in pool of Nepotism.

But in the context of DV trollery with its Libertarianistical sabor, any kind of labor-oriented outlook is liable to be viewed with extreme suspicion. So I hope Bro. A’s piece serves to restore some needed balance?