And I use “normal” in scare quotes, because, according to whom, exactly, capitalism? Society? Yourself? Some of the “weirdest” people I’ve met in my life where also some of the nicest and actually helped me out. People you’d peg as “normal”? Well I’ve had my fair share of shit with them. I’m not about to put up with some reddit lord trying to score points with cool kid podcasters by throwing people who feed the homeless under the bus, fuck you very much.
I think it’s worse than that, since they don’t even as much as put out things that are well-researched. In my view, the best and really only service done by TrueAnon and Chapo (and I guess deprogram) is that they do have some good interviews with figures who do know what they are talking about and put out well-researched work on important issues.
Being a religious Marxist is contradictory, so his stance is, but it’s worth mentioning that there are non-Marxist religious communists whose stances are much more coherent, even if they are still wrong and in reality we need a materialist understanding of the world to not kneecap any ability to engage with our conditions.
Being a subject of capitalism isn’t the same as being a liberal, just like being subjects of feudalism didn’t prevent those liberals revolting against it from being liberals. It’s normative participation in being a capitalist subject that makes you effectively a liberal, i.e. something you can change.
I realize all three of my points could be read as quibbling over word choice, so sorry if it comes off that way.
Yes that’s the issue. Eventually the contradictions will compromise the Marxism.
So the thing is even by not being an active supporter of the capitalist system you still massively benefit from it if you live in the imperial core. So I just view that as being an involuntary capitalist subject.
That’s why the “revolting against it” part is important and what I distinguished from “normative participation.” Trying to say beyond that that one “isn’t really a communist” because they live in the imperial core or whatever is, ironically enough, more like a theological stance than a useful assessment of someone.
I get what you mean. My understanding was just that if you live under a capitalist system you are definitionally a capitalist subject. Maybe semantics on my end