Tag: Communism

Here’s A List Of All The Things I Can Think Of I’d Want After The Rev

(but not like replacements for shampoo and whatnot as I run out, and not including stuff I already have)

Basically to disprove the idea that even materialistic people like me want infinite stuff:

  1. The basement and chimney repointed so I don’t have to worry about them anymore
  2. The lead paint in the house sealed and sorted out
  3. Two new (pretty) living room chairs
  4. 3 pretty new chandeliers (one for our bedroom one for the nursery and one for the dining area)
  5. A new queen size bed frame and mattress (pretty)
  6. 3 or 4 pretty standing lamps or 3 or 4 table lamps and pretty end tables (with storage) 
  7. An armoire for D’s clothes
  8. A pretty bundt cake pan
  9. A stand mixer
  10. 3 springform cake pans
  11. 3 baking trays and 2 silpats
  12. 4 very elaborate gowns
  13. 4 very elaborate hats
  14. 10 pairs of well made and comfortable high heeled shoes
  15. 2 pairs of high heeled boots
  16. 1 mink coat (vintage I don’t want minks killed for me, but they’re very warm and last forever)
  17. 1 matching fur hat (also vintage)
  18. 1 pearl necklace
  19. A new dining room set that matches my taste better
  20. 15 window treatments that are pretty and keep heat in (including curtain rods)
  21. Probably to be able to use the floor below us for more storage and so D can have a studio
  22. A set of royal doulton China (service for six)
  23. 2 new tablecloths (in vintage patterns)
  24. A claw foot tub to replace my current tub
  25. 3 built in bookcases
  26. 5 or so paintings and pretty frames
  27. a large wall mounted tv and gilt frame for said TV 
  28. An attractive dresser for the nursery
  29. a pretty bassinet for the nursery
  30. a nice camera
  31. a bottle of serge lutens Chergui
  32. a bottle of What We Do In Paris Is Secret by A Lab On Fire
  33. a bottle of original fendi
  34. Probably like at least 50 more bottles of perfume if I’m being honest
  35. (and access to a gigantic library of perfume where I can smell everything)
  36. A couple of fancy eyeshadow palettes
  37. 5 to 10 fancy lipsticks
  38. A couple of bottles of fancy foundation
  39. 10 or so slutty dresses
  40. 10 or so slutty tops
  41. 10 or so slutty skirts
  42. A wrought iron bistro set for the deck
  43. a better gardenia scented moisturizer
  44. a ruby necklace and matching earrings (elaborate)
  45. a set of onyx jewelry
  46. 4 or so found animal skulls 
  47. Shadow boxes for animal skulls
  48. Halloween plates
  49. Halloween cut outs
  50. Halloween garlands
  51. Halloween centerpieces
  52. Storage boxes for holiday decorations
  53. Christmas tree decorations (weird and old preferable)
  54. Halloween cookie cutters
  55. halloween serveware
  56. Halloween wall cutouts
  57. 6 black lacquered frames
  58. halloween glasses
  59. wine glasses
  60. 1 China cabinet
  61. 4 new sets of sheets
  62. 4 new sets of towels
  63. Access to academic journals and texts
  64. 3 large Animal pelts (from animals that died naturally or were killed for food)
  65. A new leather jacket (fitted)
  66. 3 new training corsets
  67. The handle on the microwave fixed
  68. the kitchen cabinets repainted and the cracked floor tiles fixed
  69. The floors refinished 
  70. 1 new hot water heater because ours is about to die
  71. A washer with a hand wash setting
  72. A suspension rig in my dungeon
  73. 1 round table or round bench for foyer
  74. 1 pink and red striped vase to replace my favorite one that got broken
  75. 1 lap desk
  76. 1 netbook so I can work when I travel
  77. 1 good set of glass food storage containers with easy to match lids
  78. 1 kindle 
  79. 4 new handbags
  80. 25 new pairs of nylons
  81. 25 new pairs of socks for high heels
  82. 25 new pairs of thigh high socks
  83. 4 pairs of winter pajamas
  84. 10 new pretty nightie sets
  85. 1 pair of warm high heel slippers
  86. 10 new sets of underwear (bra and panties)
  87. 7 victorian dresses for winter
  88. My ass done
  89. My boobs upgraded
  90. My lips done again
  91. My forehead wrinkle and nasolabial lines fixed
  92. 10 or so board and card games (various ones not going to list them all) to play with friends
  93. Good poker set
  94. Cake decorating tools
  95. 1 decorative urn
  96. 1 coat tree
  97. 1 large wall mirror for over the fireplace (which D and I will argue about) 
  98. Damask wallpaper for the bedroom
  99. Taxidermy animals (antique, given to me by people who inherited them and do not want them)
  100. More weird statues of saints
  101. 4 new merry widows or similar
  102. A cast iron dutch oven
  103. A garlic crusher
  104. 3 new cutting boards

I’d say a car as well but I expect public transport will be better post rev

And I think that’s about all I’d really want for a while after the rev

Working Class People Are Smart Enough To Read Theory

And I hate people who are like “oh you don’t need to read theory!” (translation: “Theory isn’t for the likes of you, peasant”) to working class folks.  

That said, we’re often too busy to read super long super dense super dry theory (or at least I am) and it’s often not easy for us to even get our hands on theory to read, plus a lot of stuff we’re told is “foundational” is super abstract, written in historical excessively wordy style and has very little human element and is basically not easy to apply to our own lives.  I tend to prefer pamphlets that are well edited and get their theoretical point across without excess verbiage, and ethnographic stuff with interviews with actual people (especially stuff on issues that relate to me, like intersections of class and gender) because the human element makes it interesting and relatable.

Like I’ve gotten through like 5 big books on gender performance and class and more than a few grad school theses in two weeks, but I’m still struggling to get through Capital, because Capital is wordy, and abstract and doesn’t have the emotional resonance that stuff with interviews with working class women does for me.  That said once you’ve read some of the stuff that has more emotional resonance it’s a lot easier to go back and read Marx and so on, because now there are examples of how the theory is applied to real life and people.

Like don’t get me wrong dense economic and philosophical texts are great and I’m not telling you not to read them, read Marx and Gramsci and Foucault and all those titans of leftist thought if you want, but remember that they’re not the only theory game in town, and that you’re not a failure if it’s hard or you don’t finish, our lives are busy and exhausting, and not being able to get through a famously dense and for most people boring economic text from the 19th century doesn’t mean you’re not smart enough to understand this stuff (also no one understands the Frankfurt school, not even the Frankfurt school)

Some places to read stuff for free:

Libcom

Marxists Internet Archive (Has an audiobook section which is awesome)

Jurn free academic article search

The Conquest of Bread on project gutenberg 

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Sojourner Truth Organization Archive

google books

Please feel free to add more.

Hippie Shit Is Counter Revolutionary

I grew up in a liberal wannabe leftist bubble in Western Massachusetts.  Middle class women wore no makeup makeup and were virtuous in jeans and polar fleece.  People went hiking.  People recycled and didn’t eat meat.  I had to read a People’s History of the United States at my hippie dippie unschooling program, but I remember mostly a sense that if I wanted to be virtuous I shouldn’t buy clothes or makeup or shave my legs, if I wanted to be virtuous I shouldn’t consume, if I wanted to be virtuous I shouldn’t be like the bad (read: poor) girls who highlighted their hair, and wore orange foundation and ice blue eyeshadow.  The revolution would not be televised because good earth loving bourgeois types don’t own televisions, and it wouldn’t be a revolution per say, because one had to be committed to nonviolence.  To me this co-opting of revolution by smug men who eat organic and wear sweaters is capitalism at its most insidious when they take the most liberal words of the most liberal of “radical leftist” thinkers, and create the perception that that is what leftism is, that that is what opposing capitalism looks like.   The furthest their revolution goes is a dour, unadorned, anti-aesthetic sense of moral superiority and an occasional polite state sanctioned protest.

 They hold themselves above us, we unvirtuous, we consumerist, we high fructose corn syrup swilling proles.  They tell us their, for us unattainable, ascetic puritanical method of revolution is the only revolution that could be, while capitalism promises us what only communism can deliver, pleasure, material plenty, comfort, if only we devote ourselves to it.  Is it any wonder there are working class complaints of liberal elites?  Is there any wonder that when they talk down to us as if they are a part of a tradition that is rightfully ours that we believe it is not for us?  That we leave the books they’re afraid we’ll read well and thoroughly shut?  Is it any wonder that their dismissal of our dream of a new TV or something pretty to relieve the greyness of our lives sends us running to listen to the false promises of capital?

It is the most effective anti-revolutionary scam imaginable, a keep out sign on theory and history that belongs to us, those with too big hair and too much makeup, we eaters of processed foods, we consumers of “environmentally unsound” beauty products.  How intellectually starved and morally bankrupt must one be to fail to see the contradiction, how can a man in his polar fleece vest, with his activist tourism vacations and his free range children be, to fail to see that the legacy of Haymarket belongs to us and not him?  How can he fail to see that his attempt to lead and teach the “underprivileged” is a bourgeois imposition, that his consumer activism, and children’s biodegradable wooden toys are part of the problem, and that the girl in hoop earrings with bright highlights is the solution?

That said

Endorsing a system where the person you want to pay to dig a ditch for you can’t really say no because they’ll starve otherwise is shitty.

Similarly it’s really awful when you have to take a client you don’t want to take because you need the money.

But that’s a problem of capitalism, not a problem of sex work.