Multiculturalism or...

There are valid reasons for bringing liberal multiculturalism into question. While it proclaims diversity, it only ultimately wishes for all cultures to surrender their unique or fervent characteristics to take a place in a society governed by the mores of capitalist society. This multiculturalism seeks to manufacture a consensus between various cultures on the basis of their role in capitalist society. This is then represented as a faithful representation of their culture, although it is merely a culture reduced to an indistinguished moment of 'capitalist society.' There is much to object to in such multiculturalism.

However, what is to be opposed to 'multiculturalism' of this sort?

There is a recent trend of opposing Western multiculturalism in favour of some construct of 'white' or 'Western' culture. This is occasionally due to considerations like the theory of 'white genocide,' which confusingly involves little actual genocide. The term 'white genocide' is typically a term used by 'white supremacist' racists and fellow-travellers to glibly reclaim objections that they are genocidal or xenophobic - they appropriate the left's language of victimhood, and use it uncritically in their own favour, even though modern leftist rhetoric is not fit for any purpose other than extinction. These anti-Islamic and 'Western' ideas are less exotic than they seem: is it truly extreme to encourage the West to take measures against Islam and Muslim Arabs when the Middle East has encountered continual invasion for spurious reasons alongside the West's persistent support for Israel? Of course, despite the innocuous fear of 'white genocide' and claims that it is 'okay to be white,' this conceit might well surprise the Middle East where the 'white' Americans have considered themselves so far from oppressed as to freely bomb and pillage Middle Eastern cities. The 'alt-right' consider it radical and offensive to say 'deus vult,' when in truth the West's foreign policy in the Middle East has been invasive for years with or without orders from Pope Francis.

While multiculturalism can have its problems, it maintains the independence of politics as a field from any particular capitalistic culture. Politics is not used merely to serve as a bulwark for some 'Western' culture. Further, this act of not setting politics up as the mere functionary of culture would allow for serious discourse on the more fundamental matters of class, economy and political structure. To dedicate politics to some Western reactionary construct of 'culture' would be almost as much a regression as to dedicate politics to leftist identity politics and cancel culture. It also serves to distract from a serious comprehension of social and political issues. On this ground, liberal multiculturalism comes up wanting, and represents only the persistent tendency of capitalism to abstract from concrete differences and foist the homogeneity of money upon society.

Hence, it is important to be careful in condemning multiculturalism. It is important that in attacking some form of it we do not merely do so on behalf of one or other culture, but from a more comprehensively critical perspective. While there may be a 'culture war,' the real war is not on behalf of one culture or other, but against the rigged social system.

Can dialectics break a Cartesian plane?

Dialectics doesn't even have a plane, you a**hole.

So you think you're reading this? Fascist!

Offensively, I said, "Hi, I'm Z." Offended, he replied, "What an offensive thing to say! You must be a fascist!" 

Offensively, I said, "Hi, I'm Z." Offended, he replied, "Whoever you are, how dare you say that! I assume you're a fascist?"  

Offensively, I said, "Hi, I'm Z." Offended, he replied, "How could you utter such a thing? By my troth, you must be a fascist!"  

Offensively, I said, "Hi, I'm Z." Offended, he replied, "You didn't add a trigger warning! FASCIST."  

Offensively, I said, "Hi, I'm Z." Offended, he replied, "That's a strong opinion. You must be a fascist!" And so on.

We aren't a fan of banning members from political organisations for merely some assertion concerning facts, like Ken Livingstone's assertion about German history. It's not a partisan assertion, it is a neutral statement that does not necessitate any particular response. The assumption that a person like Livingstone is secretly evil and a budding supervillain for saying it seems unfounded. We're also not a fan of most political organisations, which helps. These bans tend to thrive on an atmosphere where emotion seems more important than politics, which is indeed most political organisations. This seems apt when the political realm is generally marginalised, however politics contains facets which cannot be comprehended in such a way.

However, Ken Livingstone's suspension from Labour was one of the more ridiculous bans of late. It wasn't for a usual, controversial topic. No, it was for a trivial suggestion about occasional early Nazi collaboration with Zionists. Well, the Nazis later invaded the Soviet Union, and often condemned their take on socialism. Yet they co-operated with them, even starting World War II in co-operation with the Soviet Union. Yet people don't seem offended at this. In lieu of considering Livingstone, he is merely hounded out based on vague insinuation.

Of course, the Labour Party had ties to the Israeli 'Labour Party,' which recently condemned Corbyn for his criticism of Israel. They also have the Friends of Israel groups, which doesn't help matters. So them getting strict about this while allowing pro-Israel factions to stay is a slightly absurd figure. Okay, so Labour is disunited. Some Labourites supported and still support senseless war in Iraq, yet they aren't all banned. Indeed, it might seem like that decision was quite recent. However, in the light of these Labour escapades, what we totally couldn't allow was - Ken Livingstone. This might seem farcical, however people can reduce almost any political current to farce when they sniff wind of alleged 'anti-Semitism.' All of a sudden, it's the height of anti-communism, it's fascism, it's in brief pure villainy. Few labels are as trivialised as being branded a villain by the usual leftist.

Quite frankly, if the liberal Labour wish to make their administrative decisions like this, perhaps they should stick to a 'laissez-faire' platform.

Let us cut to the chase. So, we have decided on a new rule for this blog. You are not allowed to assert that the state of Transnistria invaded England in 1066. You will also be harshly reprimanded for suggesting that the state of Croatia had the majority of its population convert to Buddhism in 975. Finally, as an unspoken rule, you are not to say that Nuri as-Said was overthrown in 1941.

We trust that commenters will do all of these things, so that we can follow up with a concerned post involving the fear of a scandalous culture running rampant in the comment section.

You see, there are clearly not enough incriminating screenshots available on social media at the moment, so the media is having to grasp at straws to create an uproar among the easily-offended. Perhaps someone who believes, esoterically, that journalists' lives matter should try to help them, by providing convenient material. All the same, that would be a very strange thing to believe, so feel free to abide by the rules we have set.

'Cultural Marxism'

 'Cultural Marxism' is a conspiratorial agenda alleged to determine Western culture. This hence appears to represent an 'adapted' form of Marxism. It is a common bête noire in entrenched alt-right groupings.

It can hence seem akin to a mere over-dramatic accusation using 'Marxism' as a pantomime villain, therefore a form of merely continuing prejudice around the Cold War and Marxism. However, speaking of a 'cultural Marxist establishment' is not altogether misled. As 'Marxism' has taken on a form more in keeping with 'establishment' liberalism, it has also tended to avoid 'dry' economic issues in favour of 'cultural' and social justice issues favoured by liberalism. It would be valid to remark that this is not 'Marxism' in a strict sense, and is more akin to a variant of liberalism. After all, don't several Marxist political parties fall in line and support liberal parties like the Demorats in elections? However, this also raises the question of how and why Marxist categories are quickly repurposed to serve the agenda of the powerful liberal elite.

'Cultural Marxism' often overstates the influence of 'Marxist ideology' in upholding the mores of Western capitalism. Marxism is merely a set of vague ideas, and the world order cannot be based on mere talk. However, it is nonetheless true that a 'cultural' and demographic-focused use of Marxist tropes and rhetoric has come to entrench itself somewhat in the Western liberal establishment. Instead of being an actual opposition, Marxist rhetoric now springs easily from the womb of liberal capitalism. This suggests that Marxist ideas have ultimately originated from capitalistic concepts, and exist in a symbiotic relationship with capitalist ideology rather than truly opposing it. As a result, Marxism is not truly revolutionary.

Poem from earlier, slightly edited

I'm sure everyone is trying to act sprightly right now, so we can't have Wyatt as our latest in artistic decoration. Instead, here's a re-worked form of an earlier poem.

/scar

0. 

Near a night-club,

The way the stars were,
and the palm trees sketching outlines along their spectre,
was almost
a song over
the people's loud blare of noise.

**

the plait of flat lights in the sky
was an illumination,
a painting.

**

The people did not stir,
but kept hopefully to their dance
like uncivilized barbarians beneath the Pax Romana
of the constellations

**

meaning removed for dance beats,
hollowed,
and this dance was their only heartfelt art. 
They were like savages, or proleterians,
men without culture.

**

Meanwhile in the church a block away,

a quaint evening’s chorus
was made of plain choirboys
with nothing to say, but singing
as if they cared about what they said,
because they had been trained to sing this way.

For they praised God,
but only looked to the crowd.
One might think them deceptive.
The exultantly ordinary laity never would.

Some people would be bored when you first
asked why Christmas is a commercial scheme,
or why Valentine's Day celebrates fornication,
or why they pray when God would hate them.

**

the stars sung something like, 'Holy, Holy, Holy,'

starlit trees absorbed their light near the street,
hanging across the pavement staring apart, beneath the moon.

The stars had a music of their own,
quite different from that of the others,
yet it was no pop music, 
and it was no classical music,
it was real. 
The light of
Valentine’s Day moons is like a strange ode,
where the day's halo rings on indefinitely
after the clock strikes, for the night is
all its denizens care for. The moon as if to say,

“Is it a chore of constancy, or the rush
for love without a face? The beauty of night
shall not shine tonight.”
And so it never did.
There was no such special night.
It was a forgery.
And there were no stars, either, not
even of the vulgar, celebrity kind.

The only truth was in the music of stars and of the spheres
that stared at them as out of a window,

But in capital, ordinarily, people moved closer
to capital, and thus attained some modest success,
that was enough to placate them,
and anything else was alternative, detached and rude.

The way past the open gazes
led to a secluded lilt of leaves and sky,
almost transmuted
seen at night.
We may hold the world to account if they did not listen.
Yet perhaps the moonlight sings, far away.

2. Half-light

Quiet oaks
of a Swindonian garden might render
in opal when in focus, yet
the sky still reflects itself in a distant pond.
The sun is a shadowed eye.
It is silent. It is like abandoned factories,
which call out, ghost-like, in a dour town,
as if to display a way out of this.

3. Creep Song.

Wait! Is there a sweeter slumber in the grave below,
or in the light of thine eyes? Mistress, tell me,
I need to know. Somebody told me. If I were
more perjured I should cry, ‘Calumny!’ and
no doubt be met with sympathy. What, then,
should leave your creep so isolated and serious?

For Hoxha is oft hated, I have seen in most encounters,
I have had with those who were not creeps,
And if I were to hope with a hope
that formed bunkers, would I not
then be called rogue? Aye, this occupies me.
But what else occupies me? Well, the Bible and God.

I am alike all of my kind,
a kin to all of my cause.
When people
decried Tarquin's treatment of Lucrece, then truly
could I say, “I have found an ally," for Tarquin is on my side.

Yet am I not the victim of a label? Fie, fie,  
it is victim blaming, to hold against this creep
the rape culture of an age, which admittedly
might just involve me. Why should the world
conspire to separate me from the object of my desire,
what gives it the right?
In this way creeps are like all subversives.

For a million voices cry out that I have raped them,
and I have only raped half,
and they deserved it.
Shall I not be forgiven my iniquities?
For they are venial, in the light of the sins
of those who have perjured me,
who have sought to place obstacles in the way of my conquests,
who have hated me beyond all reason.
I shall be vindicated in the end.

**

A narrow path
would not have looked good on a priest’s
credit card.

If drugs are a function of peer pressure,
then they're just a part of conformity.

Brooding,
half-realised shapes - hopes for escape - were strewn on the walls
of the no-doubt asylum where a creep grows up,
condemned there for punishment.
So we are circled around,
by wardens in many shapes and sizes,
teachers or feminists,
all these are the same.

Romance is a mere tryst,
it is not to truly possess your beloved
if you meekly wait for their assent.
Trysts are made on a whim, and have no substance. To be a creep is to be revolutionary.

4. Year Zero. (ZeroNowhere.)

What need have we for the sound
of exciting words, lacking content?
Our words must hang like silence, in darkness:
mysterious and obscure, yet sublime.

Like the stillness of long-empty hallways, and quiet speculation,
socialism is most certain in silent contemplation.

5. Savage (unedited.)

The promises of
yesterday are like a glassed-off
garden’s grey shadow.

If you wish, you may
never be seen again, but shush
before you’re tortured.

It is a brief note
that the day is wan or in spring,
but a quiet gaze.

A revision of a Wyatt poem

Thomas Wyatt was a Tudor-era writer of crass poems. We have hence altered one of his poems, to more fully express the modern framework. His sonnets are typical and trite love poems, which were common in his era. Yet he was no good at this, while other poets of that era - like Sidney or Petrarca - exceeded him. Due to the dullness of his poetry, we have sought to refurbish it into something worth reading:

They Flee From Metal

They flee from metal that sometime did metal seek

With naked foot, in my hidden chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and metal,

That now are sell-outs and do not remember

That sometime they worshipped metal gods

To fight false metal; and now they range,

Busily seeking albums from Britney Spears.

Thanked be Marx it would be otherwise,

And thus twenty times better; but once in special,

In corpse paint array after a pleasant guise,

When deathcore from her outskirts did fall,

And she me caught with her deep gutturalness;

Therewithall sweetly did to me temporise

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you me now?”

It was not true metal: I saw their heresy.

But all is turned through my metalness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her piousness,

And she also, to use new pop music fads.

But since that I am so kindly treated,

I would fain slay her with the steel she hath deserved.

Land and Capital

The role of 'land' in capitalism is something that Marx placed a surprising emphasis on. They noted that revolution should go "seriously from the ground up," from "land ownership," and often commented on the importance of land to revolution. Hence, despite a focus elsewhere, Marx saw this aspect of capital as a central one. This might seem to resemble the capitalistic struggle with 'feudalism,' however a socialist revolutionary seizure would no doubt have to face it differently. Marx also stressed that the landowner in capitalism acts on a different basis to that in feudalism, a different social basis altering it. Hence, this would set a different task.

Hence, let us briefly set out the roles of land ownership and capital in capitalism, by way of comparison. In capitalism, objects are reduced to expressions of abstract and social value, and hence their own nature is abstracted from. Land ownership in capitalism hence seeks to 'naturalise' this formulation of the object, or take the object as somehow 'inherently' reduced to bare value. This is of course absurd. They hence simply seek to vulgarise the nature of things. Due to their inability to deal with these things fully, they hence merely take forms and try to 'colonise' and run them in averse ways. Hence, 'land owners' as a class often rented off land to others, their own tendencies driving them away from this that they claimed. However, due to the absurdity of their task it was often a self-undermining pursuit - it hence required people who were often quite devoid of content, and even they might be insecure. Capital, on the other hand, dealt with this abstraction in terms of the social relations it gave rise to. Hence, the abstraction there appeared as part of a process.

In dealing with communism, people often claim to come across a sense of 'apathy' and 'skepticism.' This is in many ways false - how many aspects of culture actually manifest this claimed 'cynicism'? Nonetheless, this is how people embroiled in ideological illusion represent their relation to 'communism.' This is further mediated by their capitalistic viewpoint hindering their understanding of 'communism.' Eventually, then, this seems to say little on their part about communism. Nonetheless, the general orientation is closer to the function of the land owning class, a generic attempt to naturalise the mode of social relations. It is foreign to capital, which seeks to carry out this process and hence is far from 'apathetic' about how the social relations are formulated. Capital would hence be more 'anti-communist,' although this is merely a knee-jerk reaction and hence depends on what others opt to label their 'communism.' Hence, the vulgarisation of land somehow seems to 'usurp' capitalism here. However, there is also something murkier there. When this aspect of land ownership conflates itself with capital, what you have is not an advocacy of capitalism but of a 'rig.' In lieu of the capitalist process, you have an actually 'naturalised'  social process posited where the land owner is the characteristic class. Instead of the abstractions appearing as part of a process, they are merely to be 'recognised' - hence, the 'social process' is reduced to a rigged enactment of this, not allowed to occur freely and as a process. It is hence not only anti-socialist, it is also dubious in its allegiance to capitalism.

Generally, 'socialist' organisations with a modus operandi harmonised with the system are similar: the capitalistic process is merely 'naturalised,' and seen as something they should 'adapt' to. This also applies to most socialist 'outreach,' where capitalistic tendencies are allowed to be the criterion of socialist expression. This hence often tends merely to end up in explicit liberalism. Socialism cannot express itself if it sets up capitalism as an authority over this expression - it then has no content.

Hence, Marx's comment criticises the class which represents the 'naturalised' form of capitalism's categories. Hence, they deal with a vision of revolution which stands against the 'value' nexus, or comes from outside of this process. This vision is not their usual, so it appears as an incidental adjunct of revolution. It is nonetheless a potentially profound category. Hence, when their critique in 'Das Kapital' begins from general categories, people often find this departure inexplicable. However, it is connected to this critique of 'landownership,' and hence it seeks to deal with the categories of capitalism and criticise them directly in their effect on things. As a result, people expect Marx to restrict themselves to a criticism of the process, which criticism they are associated with. Marx hence further attacks the arbitrary expropriation of things based on capitalism, or the assumption that this capitalistic reduction of things gives one authority over them. They hence also locate the 'authority' thus formed in the capitalistic society or as a social form, noting that it only appears as 'personal' form of authority due to the contradictory form of this society. Further, this society is hence made 'intrinsic' to the person, as is its contradiction; as a result, they are eventually torn asunder by this posited 'personal struggle.' Further, this approach hence explains their decision, in the 'final' chapter of volume 3, to stress 'landownership' in their criticism. It is in some ways a natural result of the opening: that it will culminate with the system being attacked fundamentally or the concept of revolution, further that this is connected to the 'landlord' category. To have a problem with Marx's choice of a categorical criticism is also to take issue with any revolutionary tendencies in Marx.

Hence, the criticism of 'landowners' is tied to the fundamental criticism made elsewhere. This has hopefully helped to clarify the significance of such criticism, and that it is not simply done arbitrarily.