Tag: communism

Memetic Crystal Ball: a peek into the future of Pablo Iglesias

Narrative is made of tropes, storytelling devices that are recognizable within a specific culture. Thus, a trope is a type of meme; specifically a meme put in the service of a story. Archetypal characters, locations, and situations, such as the Big Bad Wolf , Arcadia, or the Mexican Standoff are all examples of tropes. By the tropes used, one can usually tell when a story … Continue reading Memetic Crystal Ball: a peek into the future of Pablo Iglesias

Cornelius Stahlblau

Ginsburg v. Goebbels and the search for New Sparta

It is impossible to write a misogynist manifesto without a minimal historiographical review, particularly relating to the Ancient world. The author of such a manifesto can count on a very favorable fact for his political project: the aesthetic interest that Sparta and its culture arouse in the general public. Through the simple fact of being a doctrinaire of the New Right, the misogynist will no … Continue reading Ginsburg v. Goebbels and the search for New Sparta

Cornelius Stahlblau2 Comments

The fortress and the gyneceum

Athenian society venerated Athena, virginal goddess of wisdom and martial virtue: a female deity doted with attributes the Greeks ascribed to masculinity and rationality, as embodied by the soldier-citizen. This archetype is in stark contrast with gods from other cultures; notably, Egyptian fertility god Osiris. Posthumous father of god-king Horus, Osiris was murdered and castrated by Seth, and then revived by his wife and sister … Continue reading The fortress and the gyneceum

Cornelius Stahlblau1 Comment

The friendzoning of the West

The Gross Domestic Product of the People’s Republic of China was worth 14,342.90 billion USD in 2019, according to official data from the World Bank and projections from Trading Economics: almost the 12% share of the world’s total economy. This makes it the number 1 economic power of the global capitalist world. Such impressive results are not obviously not only due to the adventurousness and … Continue reading The friendzoning of the West

Cornelius Stahlblau1 Comment

Age of the Corporate Drone

Capitalism is eternal, will never fall, and will not be replaced by any kind of socialism. Such was the accelerationist message encoded in the Communist Manifesto: a message intuited by Veblen and which was not difficult to decipher for Trotskyist James Burnham (1905-1987). At the core of Burnham’s view of communism was one notion: that the progress of capitalism depended not on the owners of … Continue reading Age of the Corporate Drone

Cornelius Stahlblau1 Comment

Birds of prey have no friends: the first anti-Capitalist War

Hitler: one of the few people in Modern History who have ascended to almost purely memetic status. Che Guevara and Mahatma Gandhi come close, but none of them have gone so far in their transfiguration; perhaps because Hitler serves as the contemporary incarnation of Evil. There are already more than 120,000 books and articles that have been written about the character, so any new approach … Continue reading Birds of prey have no friends: the first anti-Capitalist War

Cornelius Stahlblau

Geopolitical Change Denialism

As we’ve explained before, when a conflict arises, the possible positions to be taken in regards to it, its memetic frame, is previous to the choice of sides by the participants. Geopolitical discussions are no exception. The polarization is magnified by the great amount of information available, the infinite ways in which that information can be interpreted, and the connection geopolitics has to many other … Continue reading Geopolitical Change Denialism

Cornelius Stahlblau1 Comment

CUSC: wokeness, technoutopia, and outdated futures

Today’s the last chapter of this series on the Communist Manifesto. Staying true to the form of the past weeks, this finale will analyze the memetic history of the third and last type of socialism antagonized by Marx and Engels: Critical-Utopian Socialism-Communism. We will call it by its initials CUSC for short, as the movement seems to have initiated the cherished Marxist tradition of giving … Continue reading CUSC: wokeness, technoutopia, and outdated futures

Cornelius Stahlblau1 Comment

Revolution defanged: Bourgeois Conservative Socialism

In the last posts we talked about Reactionary Socialism and its three variants. Marx and Engels were somewhat appreciative of the critic posed by the reactionaries to the Bourgeois State. They, however, acknowledged that it was “retrograde”; that is, it represented deceleration. As such, it was to be sacrificed in the altar of Progress. Pre-industrial society was not part of the dialectical process, but the … Continue reading Revolution defanged: Bourgeois Conservative Socialism

Cornelius Stahlblau2 Comments

Men Towards the Ruins: German Socialism

In our last post, we went through two of the strains of Reactionary Socialism described by Marx and Engels, feudal and petty-bourgeois socialism. Today we will discuss a third variant, dubbed German or “true” socialism. This third school of thought is a very peculiar type, specific to the context of post-Enlightenment Germany and its unification process. This period in German history was marked by tension … Continue reading Men Towards the Ruins: German Socialism

Cornelius Stahlblau7 Comments