Philosophy

On the Iranian Protests

In Iran, the protests are unified only by what they oppose, namely the female dress code and more broadly the theocracy. However, they’re not unified by political ideology, which frequently defaults to liberalism premised on individual freedoms when you watch interviews of Iranian activists.

Russian Imperialism?

In 1920 Lenin redefined imperialism to mean the division of the world into “oppressor” and “oppressed” nations, with the former exploiting the latter, which comprises 70 percent of the world’s population – a clear reference to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This raises the question of how nations exploit nations, which was largely by taxation, indemnity…

Happy B’Day Marx! Imperialism and the Dialectic of Money

Yes, happy birthday Karl Marx, but his work on political economy was incomplete as he only ever presented exactly half the conceptual picture he intended to publish before he died. In Capital 1 Marx begins with the dialectic of the commodity, saying that it has both use-value and exchange-value, the former representing the utility of the commodity, the later its price in the market.

Marxism: Always Split By the Cold War

Marxism was always split by the cold war. It was founded at a time when 30% of the world’s population either ruled over nations that were to some extent enslaved, or were at least politically independent. That part of the world, particularly Europe, produced Marxism, which embodied the subjectivity of the European working class. The ideology was universal, meaning that it attracted labouring classes from those enslaved nations.

The Anti-Stalinist Impulse – Part 2

Anti-Stalinism denigrates the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin for building “socialism in one country” while professing the correctness of Leon Trotsky’s line of “permanent revolution” which calls for “world revolution”. The reason “world revolution” was the dominant theme in the lead up to the first world war was because this was a time when the world map was dominated by European empires…