Tag: socialism

The Female Monster and the Misogynist Revolution

During the turbulent decades that preceded and followed the French Revolution, classical mythology was subject to extensive cross-pollination with Enlightenment and revolutionary literature. Many narratives were reinterpreted through the scope of Progressive ideals, and the question of women’s role in society and the differences between the sexes was no exception. Women’s issues were an important topic for many revolutionary schools of thought previously discussed in … Continue reading The Female Monster and the Misogynist Revolution

Cornelius Stahlblau

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

The leisure class, techno-conspirators and the leftovers

As an interpretation somewhat removed from mainstream Marxism, the natural synergies between Communism and Capitalism are a favorite topic of this blog. This trait was best recognized by no other than an American, organic anti-capitalist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). Veblen had been a keen student of Marx’s ideas, and he was not at all convinced. He considered that Marxism, while critical of some tenets of Liberalism, … Continue reading The leisure class, techno-conspirators and the leftovers

Cornelius Stahlblau1 Comment

Parrhesia, subversion and piracy: the rise of the cyber-optimists

Parrhesia, from the Greek παρρησία, means literally “to say everything”, to “not hold anything back”. It is used to describe a manner of speaking frankly or boldly, to the point of bringing danger to oneself. The concept was central to the Cynical school of thought, a Greek philosophical movement from around the 4th century BC. The name of this school comes from κύων – kyon … Continue reading Parrhesia, subversion and piracy: the rise of the cyber-optimists

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

Thucydides within: the origins of Reaction

As announced in the last post, the next few installments on our series on Marxist thought will focus on the different schools of Socialism identified and targeted by the Communist Manifesto. Today we will start discussing Reactionary Socialism, which was a powerful ideological adversary to Communism for much of the 19th and the 20th century. In its original form, it was the last refuge of … Continue reading Thucydides within: the origins of Reaction

Cornelius Stahlblau5 Comments

The Anti-Socialist Load

In the last article published here at The Outpost, we discussed a critical assertion implied by the Communist Manifesto’s: that capitalism and communism are two sides of the same coin. They are two forces of the same cult of Material Progress, taking part in the same process of Acceleration. Two phases of a two-stroke engine bringing History forward. With the end of Cold War polarization, … Continue reading The Anti-Socialist Load

Cornelius Stahlblau8 Comments