Comment by conspiracist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by conspiracist | Hacker News Reader

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The Bourgeois use the Proletariat as a tool to overtake power from the owners and royal blood.

Labor unrest works the other way: the owners, comfortably tucked away in their mansions in places that are guarded and far away from prying eyes (think Zuckerberg, but multiplied further), are egging the proles on to riot and therefore to keep the opposition in check, while they, as always, are out of sight and out of mind. You would be laughed out of any discussion suggesting that this was all orchestrated by a group of people who own the world. Such a thing, as we all know, is unheard of.

The rioters are unaware of the owners, but they think that whoever they are aware of are the people to protest against, and that these people (the PMC+ class) are guilty for arranging the circumstances that has befallen the proles. As always, it’s a clever play of misdirection and it works wonders.

It’s a dark twisted game, but that’s how it works and that’s how it’s played.

The only way to win is to not play the game.

> The Bourgeois use the Proletariat as a tool to overtake power from the owners and royal blood.

That also goes for every single Marxist revolutionaries including Marx and Engels. Very conformable upper class educated intellectuals obsessed by power dynamics and being seen as enlightened prophets of "the workers", which they know very little of and can barely relate to.

> Labor unrest works the other way: the owners, comfortably tucked away in their mansions in places that are guarded and far away from prying eyes (think Zuckerberg, but multiplied further), are egging the proles on to riot and therefore to keep the opposition in check, while they, as always, are out of sight and out of mind. You would be laughed out of any discussion suggesting that this was all orchestrated by a group of people who own the world. Such a thing, as we all know, is unheard of. The rioters are unaware of the owners, but they think that whoever they are aware of are the people to protest against, guilty of the circumstances that has befallen the proles. As always, it’s a clever play of misdirection and it works wonders.

That's a nice theory with maybe a few good insights. But since it is asserted without any evidence it can also be dismissed without evidence.

There's plenty of examples of marxist revolutionaries that were dirt poor literally all over the world.

And may more that weren't, especially in the leadership positions. The major lack of interest and even the opposition of the actual workers were always a problem in every Marxist revolutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party https://www.city-journal.org/chile-demonstrations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_Vietnam#:~:text=S....

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party

Even if they came from poor families, the founders of the Black Panthers were two college students, not workers. Malcolm X was not a Marxist.

> https://www.city-journal.org/chile-demonstrations

Demonstrations are almost only a fraction of the most activist of the youth. And yet no "spontaneous workers revolt". Also from the article:

> Chile’s middle class, rather than resisting the leftists, has joined the popular uprising. Why would this class, which didn’t exist a generation ago—it emerged out of the relative prosperity associated with neoliberalism and has entered the phase of rising expectations—endorse the revolt?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_Vietnam#:~:text=S...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh

Again, college educated, not an oppressed and poor worker.

You're right I forgot that all of these people acted alone, and that there were absolutely no young poor people involved in any of these worker movements. I also forgot that college students remain college students forever and don't become workers, probably went straight to wall street being rich and black in those times.

Some workers, most didn't. The fact that every sine communist regime has to use censorship and suppression at all times to keep going is really telling of the actual lack of support they have.

Marxism is itself not an ideology more of an analytical framework. The word we should both be using is Communist and yes Malcom X was a communist. "In 1950, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm after he wrote a letter from prison to President Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist."

You are making a distinction without making a difference in the argument. "it's not an ideology, it's an analytical framework", sounds more like a bad marketing campaign than a compelling argument.

> The word we should both be using is Communist and yes Malcom X was a communist. "In 1950, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm after he wrote a letter from prison to President Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist."

You are taking things out of context. At the time anti-communism was used and abused to suppress all sort of inconvenient political movements. Saying "then yeah I'm a communist" in defiance didn't make you one.

Also:

https://www.marxist.com/malcolm-x-forty-years-after.htm

> Malcolm X was always a man who was rethinking and recreating himself, but there is no concrete documentation that he was on the verge of becoming a Marxist, or even a socialist.

https://www.socialist.net/malcolm-x-you-show-me-a-capitalist...

> Despite the opinion of some so-called Marxist groups in the US and abroad, Malcolm X was not a socialist, and he never claimed to be.

https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/02/21/malcolm-x-black-n...

> His evolution was incomplete—or rather, incompleted. He was not, or was not yet, as Breitman is careful to point out, a Marxist.

I'm wasn't arguing merely mentioning that we are both incorrectly using language. Didn't know that was marketing. Fair enough on Malcolm.

Still think it is not correct to oversimply massive worker movements that have toppled governments, the nazis, and the US military as merely college students.

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