History & Theory

Selling Sickness: Capitalism and Health (Part II)

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“Capitalism has had a transformative effect on our society’s approach to health. To say that health is an unchanging aspect of all cultures or historical epochs is simply not true. For example, there is a lot to be said about how capitalism fosters and promotes physical health. Under capitalism, it is usually done for purely individualistic aesthetic purposes. In the hands of companies, these become powerful ideological forces which grant advertisers a worrying degree of influence over us, as they can essentially control the images we think we should have of ourselves. Health becomes almost domineering and transforms into its opposite, a sickness. Women are still generally promoted as sex objects for consumption and men are also presented by companies in the same narrow manner.”

Women: Takers of Shit

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“Have you ever heard of the “Warm Bath Theory”? It was an idea published by Talcott Parsons, a sociologist who created this idea that the nuclear family prevents its adult members from behaving in dysfunctional ways and encourages them to conform to social norms. The warm bath theory suggests that a man could come home from a stressful day at work and relax into his family/wife, like a warm bath, relieving his stress.

However, as communists, we know that this theory is outdated and quite frankly, full of shit. Fran Ansley, a Marxist-Feminist rephrased it as women being “takers of shit”, in other words when men come home and try to relieve their stress from working in a capitalist system, they do so by taking their frustrations out on their wives.”

Capitalism and the Deep State: Part Two

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In this piece Donald Trump’s Presidency and its relationship to the deep-state will be elaborated on further as many of his supporters still cling to the idea that the deep-state is a structure that is almost exclusively anti-Trump. This conception is too narrow, and like other attempts at dissecting the history of the deep-state it cannot explain where it came from. By focusing their arguments around a figure like Trump the right reduces what are broader political discussions into simplistic word salads that lack the required historical perspective.

Capitalism and the Deep State: Part One

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The deep-state, as described by the far-right, is one that functions independently of the will of the people and whose purpose it is to instigate and oversee political agendas that are, by design, malign, nefarious, and anti-Trump… As with most issues co-opted by the far-right their obsession with the shadowy cabal running Washington is too narrow and as we will see lacks the type of analysis necessary to properly elucidate important political subjects like the deep-state and what its purpose came to be as it evolved as a phenomenon peculiar to the American capitalist system.

The Totalitarianism of Capital

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Carl Friedrich wrote that a totalitarian party is one with “a totalist ideology, a party reinforced by a…police and monopoly control of…industrial mass society”. That is exactly what the party of the capitalist class in any capitalist nation is. It controls industrial mass society and the government of the capitalist nation and the working class are given no say.

“A Nazi-defeating, Space-Racing, Industrial Powerhouse”: The case for ‘Socialism in One Country’

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“Socialism in One Country” allowed the USSR in 40 years to develop from a feudal backwater, stricken with regular famine to one of the planet’s two superpowers. By focusing on internal development, the USSR was subsequently able to look outwards and reliably support revolutionary struggle the world over, and its example was taken up by many other states to great success.

A Chapter of Horrors: The Great Hunger in Irish History

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This article is part 2 in the first CYM Education Series: “Lessons of History”. Its origins are in a reading group for Connolly’s 1910 pamphlet “Labour in Irish History” based around a reading group for the Belfast branch of the CYM. Different members did reports on different chapters and given the consistent quality and relevance … Read more