Socialist Related Videos

[ZJW]

Robbo —

Re your #246587:

Both my Firefox and Chrome just show a white blank where the book-cover image ought to be. So you’ll have to tell me the book’s name.

[Anonymous]

It is an Amazon Kindle digital book and it is out of print. It is not a Pdf publication

[robbo203]

Hi ZJW

It is called “Real Communism – Democratic Local Self Government” By Alan Strelzoff

[davecoggan]

This is recommended to us by LuckyBlackCat:
Political Anthropology- What is Politics

[ZJW]

‘Sorry to Bother You (2018)’: a film variously described in conventional reviews like this: ‘an absurdist comedy with touches of magical realism’ … ‘an anti-capitalist surreal film’… ‘a wild dystopian satire’… ‘a commentary on capitalism and class struggle’ … ‘surrealist black comedy’.

Here’s a serious/political review by a …. marxo-autonomist or something of that sort.

https://notesfrombelow.org/article/sorry-to-bother-you-tech-worker-organising .

After reading that, if you’d like to see the film, you can do so for free here:

https://fsharetv.io/watch/_uid02092023-sorry-to-bother-you-episode-1-tt5688932

It’s directed and written by musician/’marxist’ Boots Riley. He is a past member of the Progressive Labor Party. Probably only Almamater will know of the rather bizarre PLP.

(If I’d watched the trailer before watching the movie, I would not have wanted to watch the movie. So don’t.)

[ZJW]

Here’s something pretty good written (in 1999) about the PLP:

https://www.angelfire.com/pop2/pkv/plp.html

(Especially compared to, for example, relying on the Wikipedia article about it.)

[ZJW]

The PLP liked ‘Sorry to Bother You’ but its 2010 split did not. What split? The split says of itself: ‘The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) was formed from a split with the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in order to mobilize the masses for communism and to reject PLP’s reformist line.’ And what did the split say of the movie? In an article titled ‘Sorry To Bother You” Is A Ruling-Class Trojan Horse’ , it said:

[start of quote]

[The] May 27, 2018 New York Times (NYT) Magazine [says] that Riley has been a self-described Communist since his teens when he joined the Progressive Labor Party.

What are the convictions of this self-described Communist? In the NYT article, Riley says that he aims “to help build a mass movement that can use withholding of labor as a strategy for social change.”

What is that social change? The NYT article lists his involvement in some political/social movements: Palestinian rights, Occupy, and Oakland renters’ protests against evictions. Riley says nothing in the article about getting rid of capitalism, the source of the injustices and miseries depicted in his film. The activism and film of this self-described Communist actually support reforming capitalism and thereby maintaining it.

No fight for Communism here.

[end of quote]

Well yes, ‘Sorry to Bother You’ might well be described as simply propagating a rather harmless and unradical labor-solidarism + capitalists-need-not-be-so-greedy-ism. Right, it’s no Communist Manifesto. But Riley’s later ‘I’m a Virgo’ is much better on that score.

‘I’m a Virgo’ (2023) was a seven-episode television series. About 3.4 hours in all. I watched it all and was bored or irritated part of the time during the non-political content. But two things made it well worthwhile:

1) Depiction of the ‘crisis-of-capitalism’/exploitation (à la Riley) presented in a spectacular-surrealist manner. That’s in episode 4 from 14:20 to 17:26 or so.

2) just as spectacularly, how crime and violence is an inevitable and necessary outcome of capitalism.
That’s in episode 7 from 18:30 to 25:10.

This latter gave me piss-shivers.

There is also implicit condemnation of vanguardism/leaderism and/or propaganda of the deed running through the story. For example in episode 3 from 11:56 to 13:33, the conversation-dispute between Jones and protagonist’s mother over tactics. (This dialogue contains at one point, the line ‘Look, I’m a communist. I want the people to democratically control the wealth we create with our labor’.)

You can watch it for free (selecting separate episodes) here: https://watchseries.id/tv/im-a-virgo-vqw64/1-1

[DJP]

OK, this is an audio podcast and not a video but I have been listening a lot to these people after I discovered the Kautsky episode.

The latest edition is about Gerrard Winstanley and the English Revolution
https://pod.link/1544487624

This academic paper by one of the contributors is worth reading too:
https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_2021_0047_0004_0603_0627

Unfortunately, you may need to have access to a subscribed institutions library to read it though..

[DJP]

Just stumbled across this YouTube channel which has a lot of video essays. This one might be the most relevant here:

“All of your problems have something in common”

[DJP]

Hopefully, my dumping of my YouTube viewing history here is of interest to someone. I think it’s good to try and keep tabs on what things are discussed in the wider ‘out-there’.

[Author]

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