Here I will detail a perspective on how to understand the Cuban reforms from a Marxist point of view and, by comparing them with other socialist experiences of reform, try to elucidate how we can think about this kind of policy change under Communist-led governments.

It is impossible to consider Cuba, and Cuba's oppression by the American state, without getting into complex, contradictory feelings. Even before the current reforms, Cuba was contentious -- not initially a communist revolution, wrenched into communism by circumstance, and then under siege for the entirety of its existence by one of the most powerful capitalist empires on the planet. It is a model of resilience and survival, and of compromise. This last bit, I think, is well-defended in this piece.

And what have been Cuba’s playing cards in the 21st century? Arguably, the worst ones out of any Communist-led state. Any complete analysis of the Cuban Revolution in general, but especially in the 21stcentury, should always start from the decades-long, bipartisan effort by the United States to subjugate Cuba once again. Until the late 1980s, Cuba had the help of the Socialist Bloc and could benefit from the echoes of early Soviet hopes of developed socialist countries reversing unequal exchange and breaking the chains of underdevelopment in other regions. The impact that the 1989-1991 collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe had on Cuba is impossible to overstate; it is tempting to see it as isolated as the early Soviet Union, but with the crucial difference that one was a transcontinental mammoth and the other an island of a similar size to Iceland, 90 miles away from a state committed to defeat it.

A small note in this piece that I think about often is that -- as the author correctly details -- Cuba was almost entirely a monocrop economy until the 90s. Much of its money to survive was provided by the Soviet Union, who, beautifully and tragically, paid exorbitant and unnecessary prices for Cuban sugar until its collapse. An internationalism that feels almost unbelievable now. Even great China makes sure to not disturb the monster of the United States overmuch, and one can hardly blame them for it. But still.

This essay will trace the main contours of his biography and examine three critical aspects of his thought: his understanding of the nature of the majority of the peasantry and their role in the revolution; his exposition of Marxist epistemology; and his analysis of the challenges of building socialism after Liberation.

Ken Hammond is one of the best english-language writers on the history of modern China and this piece is a great read if you want a 101 on Mao and why he was so important.

[L]et me express a perhaps controversial view that no single person in history has ever made a greater contribution to the liberation of humanity as that made by Mao Zedong. Further, if that is the case, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that he is the greatest person to have ever lived.

Rest in peace, big man.

It is a simple fact that the People’s Republic of China has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union. That the Soviet Union no longer exists and People’s China does. That it has developed further than any other major non-imperialist country has ever done. That China accounts for the overwhelming majority of global poverty reduction. That China leads the world in the fight against climate catastrophe. None of this would have happened, none of this would have been possible, without Mao and his leadership.

In other words, she contained multitudes of things in apparent mutual tension with one another, albeit in her case the overall effect was anticommunist and pro-American, even as it was anti-sexist and beneficial, in particular, to "working women" in the imperial core.

The best piece on Steinem I've read so far, pointing out both her massive flaws as well as her respectable actions.

For those who are not familiar with the Marxist revolutionary canon, I will attempt — against all good counsel — to sum up the wildly varying traditions of revolutionary Marxism in a single, pithy sentence: Marxists believed —and believe — that the ruling capitalist class had enslaved the working class in all but name, and that the only way to truly free them of those social bonds would be through a revolutionary transformation of society that instituted equitable control of its means of production and its output.

An interesting piece that I appreciated reading. If I have any major critiques, they are that I think that Lenin's more liberal affectations (not ungenuine affectations by any stretch) were more pronounced in his earlier writings, especially when he was more fond of Karl Kautsky.

I don't mean this as a denigration of Lenin. I think that the political function of a strive toward "liberty", while correct in moral weighting, is insufficient for a revolutionary drive -- and I believe Lenin himself recognized this, after attempts at compromise with the bourgeoisie led to frustration and stagnation (see: the Provisional Government era).

It is, of course, also useful to note the role of Menshevik propaganda against the Bolsheviks, which this piece covers quite well.

Broadly, they argued that Lenin was unscrupulously power-hungry, inclined toward reckless revolutionary adventurism, impatient with the project of democratic revolution, and predisposed toward conspiratorial machinations that belied his conniving and deceitful nature.[25] These Menshevik descriptions of Lenin became the foundational bedrock of how he and his works would be evaluated by Western academics. Without access to — let alone awareness of — any alternative narrative, early Western scholarship on Lenin had little choice but to work with the only information they had available to them.

The beginnings, one might say, of the creation of a compatible "anti-revolutionary" Western Left.

The other major critique I would have of the piece is the disappointing and stereotypical arguments around Stalin's leadership, which ironically enough is such a trademark of the Western Left's understanding of the USSR as much as it is an echo of the Mensheviks. The ghost lives on.

I do have criticisms of the USSR -- honestly, who doesn't -- but I think it is misrepresenting the issue to blithely state that "censorship" is the crucial flaw in Stalin's era of leadership (I will cede some ground to the notion that "over-centralization" was a flaw, however -- but on the side of "Stalin overestimated the convictions of those closest to him, because he, like so many others of his cohort, was too much of a dreamer who believed wholeheartedly in the goodness of the communist effort")

I think the USSR (ironically, like the USA but for opposite reasons) overestimated the power of individual writings and popular culture. For the USA, the goal was to use popular culture as a bludgeon against the Evil Soviet Union. For the USSR, the fear was that too much critical writing or art or whatever would topple the Union. In both cases I believe they were wrong, but that is a bit of a tangent.

Regardless, there is a difference between speech and organizing, and in both the USA and the USSR, there were crackdowns on dissident organizing. This is often brought up as an example of the USSR's intolerance, even as the intolerance was against anti-communist actions, which of course... should probably be intolerated in a socialist state. Whatever! I am tangenting. Again.

I appreciated this section:

Overall, surprisingly little serious effort has been made to compare the repressions under Lenin to myriad similar measures taken by Western liberal governments under the extreme pressures of a domestic war during roughly the same period. In calling for energetic repression of their political and ideological opponents during wartime, Lenin and the Bolsheviks have no shortage of otherwise admired historical company.

For stating basically what I am saying above. If the actions are similar (or, at least, comparable), then we should judge by the goals and intent of the actions. The goals and intent of the United States in its myriad war crimes was to further American extraction, colonialism, racial hegemonies, et cetera. The goal of Bolshevik violence was to build a more just world. Yes, I judge those differently.

Steinem’s personal views and CIA political goals aligned. Her brand of social revolution, promoted by American tax dollars, was meant to counter Soviet-sponsored revolutionary messaging. Public funds were intended to slow the Soviet scourge while showing America’s alternative democratic face.

When I was in college I read a number of Steinem pieces. I did not learn about her involvement with the CIA (bad) and views on trans people (arguably worse) until much later in life. Once again Second Wave feminism disappoints me! Interesting how well this lines up with Gabriel Rockhill's theories on the Compatible Left of the american midcentury. Ah well, rest in piss I guess

Amazing find. This site is a time capsule from about 2010 that collected images and records of home-modded PC cases from the time period (& seemingly back to about 2000). If you, like me, grew up in this era of computers, this is a wonderfully nostalgic site to poke around through. It's all in French, but I managed.

In her essay from 1945 to Now, curator Isabella Tam devotes pages to placing Kusama’s work in the context of ancient Chinese and Japanese traditions and forms. This is fine as an artistic or intellectual exercise, but it might be more straightforward to recognize that Kusama’s use of Black people as props also places her literature as an inheritor of a more disappointing tradition: American racism.

I've always thought Kusama's work was mostly just boring. Fascinating to learn she was also crazy racist

[...] I went digging for the credits of the Microsoft employees who worked on the user interface back then and found my way to Virginia Howlett, who joined Microsoft in 1985 as the company's first interface designer, and worked there up through the launch of Windows 95.

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

A fun little experiment, comparing a rather average modern apartment with quotations from recent historical eras where the simplest modern conveniences would have been unthinkably rich.

From the beginning of his papacy sorcery and heresy were at the forefront of John XXII’s attention. And, it would be during this period that sorcery would be transformed from sin to heresy, thus forever transforming western attitudes toward magic. But, what was this process and how did John XII transform our understanding of magic and even set the stage for the nightmare of the witch trials?

Loved this video on the Medieval Church, magic, sorcery, and the origins of the modern "pure vs heretical" strains in popular thought.

In light of the recent Ceuta massacre, Iker Suárez provides deeper historical context regarding the immigration policies of Spanish social democracy, focusing on the contradictions between progressive rhetoric and border enforcement in a world structured by imperialism.

The Last Museum is a semantic search engine for 5.8 million artworks from the world's great museums. Search by theme, style, subject, or any description you can imagine.

Warning that this feels like LLMs are involved but at least the art is not generated at all. Still, could be useful as a search engine for historical art.

But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.

An in-depth 1-hour analysis of Lenin's vital text. It's not just history, grasping this overlooked lesson is crucial for tackling today's opportunism & most urgent political challenges.

I've enjoyed this series on the Russian Revolution disguised as Marxist analysis for a while now, I recommend this one if you're looking for a long video essay.

“Donna remembers the names of everyone in the group that gravitated to her 9th Street apartment. I intoned the names with her: ​‘Sally, Oak, Billie, Binky, Chris, Jill, Marlene, Lynn, Sharon, Joan, Nancy, Suzy,’” Giannecchini writes in ​“Alphabet City,” a return to the apartment where 18-year-old Gottschalk lived in 1967.

Thinking about how art and history can move you, can make you feel like you know people you've never met and could not have met.

Attendees float outside their environment and consciousness, smoking opium and building a Xanadu pleasure-dome near the desert stream of Wadi Nahabir. Suddenly: a massive boom. Sirens. Cracks. Pops. Hisses. And screeches. A universe is broken and remade by the warfare that nurtured it into being.

Absolutely fantastic, heartbreaking, infuriating writing on the legacy of Israeli genocides, Palestinian resistance, raves, and EDM.

Music scenes often develop through the same dynamics of resource enclosure and commercial exchange that those who live through them typically ignore. For instance, it would be dishonest to speak of Chicago house music without some understanding of land theft, racial segregation, environmental neglect, and wealth inequality in the North American Great Plains. The same is true of Israeli rave and EDM. Culture never develops in isolation, and electronic music is a reflection of the political systems—in this case, colonization—that allows it to thrive. It is through that system, especially its security and policing guarantees, that land is stolen, reallocated, remade, and finally positioned to force permanent exile on its refugees living nearby.

I don't even know what more to say. If you're interested in the modern rave scene I think this has to be required reading.

Israeli electronica launders the reality of mass killing, managing the psyches of those whose lives are built through the violence of a racist system. It will be remembered for its fascistic utility like Wagnerian opera and Beethoven symphonies in Nazi Germany, and those who resist it will be remembered for their bravery and steadfast opposition to injustice. When the guns fall silent, and Zionist leaders like Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are brought before a new version of the Nuremberg Trials, there must be a parallel discussion about Israeli raving and the roles it has played in the bloodshed.

It's a nice idea that "This Land Is Your Land" should be our national anthem, a wonderful song full of generous and idealistic sentiment that's actually easy to sing. [...] But the truer one, the one that speaks to our collective inability to stop repeating the sins of our forebears and the ultimate inadequacy of even the brightest and boldest among us when it comes to making our long violent history actually past, is "John Henry."

When I think of the undercurrent of gravity moving this buoyant, lively poem, somehow I imagine one of those plums of the first line bobbing in a river.

What combat motivation studies have tended to show is that morale will get a soldier to the battlefield, but will not keep him on it; it is cohesion instead, the ability of a unit to stay together under pressure that is essential for enduring the terror of combat.