Finally got to read this chapter this week.

Was a good read into how Communists actually worked and organised both in their local area and also with the rest of the country. There was a lot of work that party members had to do both within party work and also their everyday jobs in their area. The amount of knowledge, both of theory and practical, was required but also to be able to connect with the locals you are interacting with everyday. It certainly isn’t a job for somebody who only cares for being in power, it is a job where you dedicated yourself to the workers without expecting anything in return.

I liked the mention of Stalin’s article ‘Dizzy with Success’. I read that when first looking into theory and looking through some of Stalin’s works and definitely helped understand who Stalin was. Somebody who was dedicated to the USSR and Socialism. Who wanted to see the whole country and its people prosper, not some dictator amassing power.

‘Zoinks Scoobs! They’re showing You on Blorp!’

I spent the day figuring out how to ollie and realising i do have the balance for it, I only managed mini ollies but could reasonable land them. I went out to cool off after what happened earlier today and I feel at least calmer. A bit.

In other things, I read through the 3rd volume of The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All and I’m excited for the next volume releasing in a few months.

I don’t really have much to say on this chapter. I read it at the start of the week so probably need to do a second read to re-examine what I think of this. And probably also ‘Marxism and the National Question’, I need to read the full length of that work, not just the first chapter.

Obligatory mention of outdated language used by Strong that other commentors have mentioned previously.

This book was written roughly a decade after the USSR was formed, and the progress made to uplift different nations and cultures is just impressive. Even if there are still issues that are left over that need time to develop out of.

The Saga of Excellent?

Yeah, that’s probably right.

This was a good chapter to read that explained how Soviet Democracy works and also ended up debunking liberal democracy at the same time. Here the workers decide amongst themselves who their representative is rather than choosing between whatever parties have in the area, and once that’s been confirmed through elections the duty of politics and organising isn’t left to that representative but as a 2 way process between the workers and their representative. Having the means of production in the hands of the workers and peasants actually allows this as there is not a conflict of interest unlike with Capitalism.

Strong describes an account of election commissioners holding elections soon after fishermen had gone out to sea and being denounced for this undemocratic action. And despite this the fishermen crews still organised themselves so they were able to participate via deputies without having to interrupt work.

An industrial plant where less than 95 per cent of the workers come to the election hangs its head in shame as an institution lacking in civic consciousness.

Seeing these 2 accounts and comparing them to the local elections around me really showed the differences between a genuine democracy and whatever farce Capitalism holds up in an attempt to seem democratic. I checked the average voter turnout for local elections in my country over the last 20 years and the highest average mean was: just over 60%. With an average mean between 30-35%.

Seriously? I know its not an exact comparison but here 90 years ago industrial plants, not even whole counties, are unhappy with 95%.

Candidates never make speeches or election promises; this would be considered highly indelicate.

Meanwhile this is the entire premise of liberal elections.

To throw out the Communist Party bodily would be to throw out all the leading and organizing elements in all factories, farms, schools and enterprises; it could clearly be done only by upheaval leading to chaos.

Seeing this near the end of the chapter was a bit disheartening and she’s ended up predicting what happened during the 80s and 90s to the USSR. Pretty miserable combined with Stalin’s prediction during the 7th Plenum: “What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”

I just looked through the Emoji Comm to grab Stalin poses for the edit.

I assume this is his natural form for floating down to visit us for the Reading Group

On to my thoughts for this week

This chapter pretty much explained itself and went into explaining why a revolution is needed, what stages it goes through to consolidate power and how it deals with the possible contradictions of a ‘dictatorship’ that seemingly arise with such rapidly changing conditions.

The word ‘Dictatorship’ as Strong said at the start invokes the image of being dictated to and not oneself dictating. I feel this one word dictatorship has pretty much lost its actual meaning and just means 'evil authoritarian state because of how much its been thrown around to attack Communism and Socialist States.

When dictatorship means the working class dictates what is done to them and also what they will do with the State most of the actions taken by the USSR in its early years makes sense. The material conditions did demand certain actions such as the War Communism Stage to happen, the Bolsheviks needed to have the country functioning to survive the Civil War and Foreign Interventions. It did place a big cost on the People, especially the peasants with grain procurement, but then during NEP and Collectivisation where the interests of the Workers and Peasantry were focused on once the Country was no longer threatened and power was placed in the People via the Soviets.

Third, they took control of schools, press and all means of expression, while encouraging the widest latitude of criticism by workers interested in augmenting or improving the public properties.

I like this, Education under Capitalism is hypocritical in its nature as on one hand it needs educated workers but also can’t have people too critical and educated that they could be a threat to the owning class, resulting in today with functionally illiterate populations (honestly a miserable thing to be aware about). Workers must be able to criticise for their best interests, especially when they are the owning class.

This is what I think everytime I read ‘Hello everynyan, we’re reading This Soviet World.’

Then in Jail we fought with our imprisoned comrades over details of past policies, studying and learning from past errors. Often we found that the mistake of a few words in our theory had cost us a year in prison.

This is pretty much affirming how imprtant re-reading and re-writing anything is. Its important to make sure the point you are making gets across perfectly and to avoid misinterpretation as much as possible. Nothing should really be rushed because the time possibly saved writing may end up lost in the future.

Nadezdha Krupskaya’s ‘What a communist looks like’ set up the rest of the chapter pretty well. Something I found interesting from her article was the second point about how a communist should be aware of everything happening around the world. A Reinforcement from nearly 100 years ago that you need to be aware of the past, present and future of not just your country but also the parts of the world that are ignored by mainstream media.

H. G. Wells interview was a good read and funny to see it mentioned here, probably should re-read it now.

Communists should be walking encyclopedias now, not really but the thought popped into my head. Being extremely knowledge on various subjects is good and should be encouraged, its feel better to know something without having to research at a moments notice.

Manga

I read through The Ghost In The Shell and The Ghost in The Shell - Human Error Processor. Overall they were decent reads but the latter volumes of the first book felt a bit too complicated to understand and likely need a read through again. My main issue with the first manga is that its very much Cyber Cops being brutal and wondering why nobody likes them, they are very oblivious and end up reactionary.

This was really noticeable in Human Error Processor and took away a bit from reading. This was definitely toned down and adjusted in Mamoru Oshii’s film and along the Stand Alone Complex Series/OVA. Which arguably made them better and actually helped with the question of how cyborgs struggle with connecting with their humanity.

Anime

I haven’t really watched much other than on Blorp but I should at least get down my thoughts on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Disclaimer: Its just going to be the immediate notes I took down after finishing, I haven’t been able to re-watch and would rather not leave it in limbo.

Overall it was a good show and I understand why its praised so heavily. Probably in the future I’m going to watch the Alternative films that were released afterwards. I understand those films have a different plot and introduce new characters.

A leading Russian Communist said to me a year ago: “The mind of our people is changing so fast under the conditions of socialism that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to speak to the rest of the world. We find it harder to understand them, and they us”.

Seeing this on the first page struck me as opening with how different people are in a socialist society compared to a capital society; it made me think about how reading socialist theory, books and people’s experiences of socialism does really change you even while living in a capitalist society. That when educating yourself from a radical perspective its difficult to the point of frustration when you are surrounded with media proclaiming capitalism as the only system despite it collapsing around us; and socialism as failed yet the material conditions are constantly proving that socialism is the only system that succeeds.

I think Strong opening on this quote sets up the book to make sure that we are both aware of what socialism is capable of but also that most of the world is still living in capitalist society and to not disconnect from that, especially when living in capitalist countries.

Still got the rest of the first chapter to read, this is just my analysis from the introduction.

I’m interested in joining.

The previous books I’ve read from Anna Louise Strong were very insightful.

♫You’re Out of Touch!♫

♫I’m out of time!♫

♫But I’m of my head when you’re not around!♫

A lot of Astrophysics’ old covers are really good, though they are very different to what he’s done recently.

I played Men of War ages ago and while I was never really good at RTS games and moved on from the genre the first game was interesting enough to even try out a few mods for the game. Vehicles having a proper damage model and not just hitpoints felt way better to use so actually rewarded positioning and using vehicles properly, not just as mobile damage sponges. Plus the ability to control individual soldiers either for combat or stealth focused missions was pretty fun to use (even if I was bad at steath).

I remember one of the early Soviet campaign missions you were given a battleship turret turned 180 degrees to use as part of a defense line, that was definitely one memorable mission.

I went swimming for the first time in literal ages and also after first transitioning. There’s a local trans swim group that I found and the good thing is that it seems to be more or less weekly; I can go as often as I like (Yay). Being in water is fun apart from my hair getting in my face because i didn’t bring a hairband.

This was my first time trying out Doom Multiplayer and it was really fun. It was a lot of sliding around sometimes at an uncontrollable mach speed and either getting kills or getting killed, often repeatedly. Aiming was a bit weird not having up or down but seems to rely on the terrain moving you up and down, and thus your weapon and map knowledge to gain frags. It definitely got more chaotic as more players were in the match, and rounds started ending quicker with more players.

Overall was very fun and would be good to see the other gamemodes other than deathmatch, I’m curious to see how team based gamemodes play out in Doom 2.

Thank you!

Finish the art piece with some changes. https://hexbear.net/post/8782437