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Tag: history

Communalism 0

A Treatise on Ethical Seriousness and the Work of Liberation

Our opposition to lifestylism, performativism, purity culture, and political unseriousness, and the constructive meaning of our post-leftism. By Vaarla Ona Our frustration: What exhausts us is the expectation that good intentions should settle questions about what people actually support. Someone can be compassionate in their immediate relationships while defending political arrangements that expose others to exploitation, exclusion, or violence. Their […]

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Anti-cruelty

One of the principles we need to carry into the liberatory society is anti-cruelty. This matters precisely because liberation requires us to confront people, institutions, and movements that may be actively hostile to liberation. We are going to encounter reactionaries, authoritarians, fascists, racists, queerphobes, misogynists, and people who want to preserve systems of domination. We need to be capable of […]

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Authoritarian socialism is not liberation

One of the things we have to understand clearly is that authoritarian socialism is not the same thing as liberation, and the existence of social programs under an authoritarian state does not automatically make that state socialist in the emancipatory sense. This matters because people often point to achievements such as universal healthcare or mass education as though those things […]

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The liberatory society

The liberatory society is the society organized around the idea that people should have real power over their own lives, rather than being dominated by governments, employers, landlords, corporations, patriarchal institutions, racial hierarchies, or any other structure that treats some people as rulers and others as subjects. When we talk about the liberatory society, we are talking about one broader […]

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Against Apathy: Rejecting Apolitical and Political

I have very little patience for people who describe themselves as apolitical or politically nihilistic, especially when they want to enter a community that is explicitly progressive. The problem is that describing yourself as “outside politics” usually means refusing to think seriously about the social conditions that shape everyone’s lives. Politics is not limited to politicians, and parties. It includes […]

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We Oppose Gun Culture

We have to reject one of the most poisonous confusions in revolutionary politics: the belief that a willingness to kill proves seriousness. Too many self-described revolutionaries, especially in the United States, have absorbed the deepest assumptions of American gun culture while imagining themselves to be opposing it. They reject the flag, the police, the Republican Party, the militia movement, and […]

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Antiwhiteness

Anti-whiteness is not hatred of people with light skin. It is opposition to whiteness as a political and social system. Whiteness is a historically constructed category that was used to organize privilege, citizenship, labor, property, and social status in ways that separated Europeans from Africans, Indigenous peoples, and other racialized groups. In colonial Virginia, lawmakers gradually hardened racial distinctions in […]

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Why are people attracted to such authoritarianism

A lot of people are attracted to Marxism-Leninism because authoritarian systems can look effective from the outside. They can build quickly, move resources quickly, reorganize cities quickly, punish corruption quickly, and carry out enormous projects without spending years asking whether everybody affected agrees. That speed can be mistaken for liberation. But there is a huge difference between getting something done […]

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Marxism-Leninism is not truly anticapitalist

From my perspective, Marxism-Leninism is not truly anti-capitalist because it does not actually abolish the social relationship that makes capitalism what it is: a small group controlling production while everybody else works underneath them and has little real power over the economy. It changes who owns and manages capital, but it does not fundamentally change the structure of domination. Instead […]

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I know where I come from

I do not really consider myself a leftist, and I do not consider myself a Marxist either. I am a socialist, but my socialism does not come primarily through Marx. It comes much more from utopian socialism, religious socialism, older communal traditions, Indigenous and BIPOC forms of communal life, reciprocity, mutual obligation, shared stewardship, and the idea that human beings […]

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All roads

A lot of people get stuck arguing over anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, council communism, communization theory, and all of these earlier revolutionary traditions as if one of them has to be the final answer. I do not think that is the most useful way to look at them. At their best, all of them are attempts to move away from domination and […]

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Social revolution, Dual power, and Prefiguration

Social revolution is not just taking power. It is changing what power is, where it lives, and how people relate to one another. Social revolution means moving from a society where people are governed from above to one where people increasingly govern themselves. Dual power means building institutions that ordinary people can rely on instead of depending entirely on institutions […]

Communalism 0

Social-revolutionary

I have been thinking a lot about how genuinely social-revolutionary communalism, libertarian municipalism, and democratic confederalism actually are. They do not just ask for a kinder version of the present world. They ask us to imagine a society that exists after capitalism, after domination, after the centralized state, after hierarchy has stopped being treated as the natural structure of human […]

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Reframing the Identity of America

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the identity of America, how it’s shaped by our shared culture, myths, and stories. If America were truly to change and become more progressive, part of that transformation would have to involve reframing our cultural heritage to align with new, humane, and collective values. Right now, many people struggle to feel patriotic because American patriotism […]

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How Social Liberals Stall the Struggle for a Better World

Social liberals often endorse incremental reforms that leave the deeper architecture of exploitation intact. They champion diversity initiatives in corporate boardrooms without questioning capitalism itself; they support modest police oversight while rejecting demands to radically shrink or abolish carceral systems. Their solutions treat symptoms, not causes. Closely tied to this is a liberal fetishization of civility and “both sides” dialogue. […]

Communalism 0

Why I Am a Communalist: Beyond Authoritarian and Libertarian Leftism

The true path forward for human liberation and ecological survival does not lie in authoritarian state socialism, nor in an unchecked libertarian individualism. It lies in building deeply democratic, cooperative, ecological communities—a vision best embodied in communalism, as advanced by Murray Bookchin. This is the most radical and genuinely progressive form of leftism, because it centers people, community, and the […]

Religion 0

Conservative vs. Progressive Religion

Religion itself is neither inherently oppressive nor inherently liberatory—it is a social vessel that can be wielded in profoundly different ways. When religion is organized around conservative, authoritarian, and exclusionary principles, it becomes a tool of oppression. When organized around progressive, liberatory, and inclusive principles, it can become a force for communal care, solidarity, and justice. Conservative Religion: Why It’s […]

Viadescioism 0

Gaming’s Decline Is a Capitalist Problem—Not a Cultural One

The decline in the quality, integrity, and sustainability of the gaming industry isn’t due to cultural decay or political division. It’s capitalism, plain and simple. Both conservatives and liberals often misdiagnose the issue because they operate within the same capitalist framework. What we’re seeing in gaming today—exploitative monetization schemes, diminished creative risks, developer burnout, and the hollowing out of beloved […]

Viadescioism 0

Language Control as a Tool of Oppression

Language control has long been used as an instrument of oppression, intrinsically linked to systems of racism, colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism. It is not just about grammar or vocabulary—it is about power. The notion that there exists a single “correct” form of English is a myth constructed to uphold social hierarchies and maintain dominance over marginalized communities. In reality, language […]

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Why Socialism Isn’t Always Progressive

It’s time to say something that a lot of people in leftist spaces already know, but don’t always feel safe enough to say out loud: a lot of socialists aren’t actually progressive. That might sound strange at first. After all, socialism is supposed to be about justice, equality, and liberation. But in practice, many self-identified socialists are only focused on […]

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Being Black and progressive

Being Black and progressive means constantly confronting the reality that many white progressives have not actually deconstructed their relationship to whiteness—they’ve just learned the right language to mask it. The second it becomes more useful for them not to understand concepts like white fragility or tokenism, they revert. They stop listening. They protect their comfort and positioning. And they do […]

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Blackness, Tokenism, and Allyship

Your question appears to critique how some white individuals selectively ally with Black individuals who appear less confrontational or more assimilated, while avoiding more vocal and assertive Black voices. You suggest this occurs because those vocal individuals compel deeper introspection into uncomfortable aspects of whiteness, such as colonial legacies and systemic racism. This phenomenon can be examined through the lens […]