Law enforcement will only target protests that are a threat to the oligarchy.
If a planned public protest is not targeted by law enforcement then it has been determined to be a toothless protest
newfie
joined 1 year ago
Oligarchy is not supported by the majority. Yet it exists nonetheless
The United States was created by the Revolutionary War.
We live in a country that only exists because of violence. We celebrate and honor this violence every year on July 4 (and on Memorial Day and Veterans Day)
Clearly we as a nation deeply believe in the transformative power of violence. It's literally what it means to be an American.
it chooses to focus on judgement of how others live their lives or choose to enjoy said life rather than focus on the real and tangible injustices we face
Why do you see it this way?
Lack of dense affordable housing, inefficient transportation, empty consumerism, and grossly negligent yet expensive elder care are all examples of real and tangible injustices that Americans face.
Other real tangible injustices also exist, of course. And some of those other injustices may be more severe (homelessness, medical debt, declining life expectancy, unresponsive political systems). But the depicted injustices are real and present. They accordingly deserve to be criticized
We are fighting to change it.
Peacefully and inconsistently
- Base and superstructure are not being reversed.
To say that trying to talk to someone in public is "just superstructural" and therefore pointless misunderstands Marx's dialectical method. The superstructure—culture, ideas, social practices—does indeed arise from the base, but it also plays an active role in reproducing the base. Marx writes in The German Ideology that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class—but this doesn’t mean culture is irrelevant. It means that challenging the dominant cultural norms (such as social atomization or emotional withdrawal) can be part of building class consciousness.
Casual human interaction and social warmth—even in public—are not distractions from revolution; they are preconditions for solidarity.
- Alienation is a problem to be fought in daily life, not just after the revolution.
Yes, workers are alienated—precisely why we should reject behaviors that normalize atomization. Waiting for material conditions to change before trying to relate to one another humanely is mechanistic and non-dialectical. Marxists don’t just observe alienation—we oppose it.
You complain that people are "hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don't talk to anyone and only work"—but then say we must preserve that isolation in the name of respecting their time. That’s a perfect example of how ideology defends the status quo: by making alienation feel like politeness.
- Human beings are social animals—sociality is part of our species-being.
Marx understood that our species-being is realized through conscious, cooperative activity—work, communication, creativity, and mutual recognition. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he describes how under capitalism, “man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions… and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.”
Avoiding spontaneous social interaction is not “neutral”—it is part of the internalization of capitalist discipline. Public silence is not a natural baseline—it is a social norm formed under capitalism’s conditions of isolation, commodification of time, and mistrust between individuals.
- We don’t need to “brute force” anything—but we do need to resist social death.
This isn't about "forcing" conversations. It's about reclaiming public life from capital. Small acts of human engagement push back against the logic of commodified time and estranged relationships. They are not revolutionary in themselves, but they are practices of de-alienation that matter for prefigurative politics: living as if the world were already more humane.
Just as Marxists support mutual aid, workers’ discussion groups, and community gardens—not because they overthrow capitalism directly, but because they prefigure new forms of life—so too should we support small acts of human connection.
Rejecting all unsolicited conversation in public on the grounds that capitalism has left us too tired to be human is the kind of defeatist logic Marx called “crude communism”—a desire to equalize misery rather than abolish it.
Instead of bowing to alienation, we should treat every opportunity for warmth, connection, and solidarity as a small but real blow against the isolating logic of capitalist society.
If we want a world where people can be free, we should practice being free—even in line at the grocery store.
Posts like this are a psy op to keep English language speakers (especially in North America) lonely and atomized. There are numerous state and nonstate actors who benefit from this
If you are in public, you should expect to be spoken to. Conversations between strangers are an inherent part of existing in public in human society. Doing away with this causes loneliness on the level of a public health crisis
That's the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
It's not that he's being depicted as dumb, it's that he's being depicted as sneaky and scheming
So Orientalism.
Agreed that the AI one has a less phrenological depiction of the Arab
The currently alive billionaires largely didn't design it; previously alive billionaires designed it and the currently alive ones have refined it.
Which is the way capitalism is supposed to work; it's a society ruled by and for capitalists - aka the billionaires who own the largest units of capital
Regardless, it is this system that is to blame. The actors within the system are also contributors, obviously. But individualizing systemic issues is not an effective way at seeing the solution.
The way to solve the problem of a bad king is not to replace him with a good king; it is to abolish monarchy altogether and replace it with a system wherein the people are the ruling class
These protests, while better than nothing, will not produce real change.
Just as the George Floyd protests did not produce real change (Pelosi kneeling and raising a fist is not "real change")
UnitedHealth reduced claim denials following the murder. So at least that is some tangible positive result