Cockshott’s inability to stop talking about LGBT+ issues he knows nothing about is deeply, deeply frustrating, but I think his presentation on this is useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE-kCZnlGZU

ML parties generally emphasize mass political organizing, trade unions, and preparation for revolutionary crisis rather than immediate protracted people’s war. I think most ML would argue that people’s war was the correct strategy for Mao’s china but that not every situation necessarily calls for guerrilla warfare on the path to socialism–concrete analysis of concrete conditions and all that.

Not trying to be rude but you wrote an incredibly difficult to follow run-on sentence with way too many conjunctions. Your idea might be completely correct, I just can’t follow your point.

I’m not sure I understand the theoretical point you’re making, but people declaring themselves MLM have made a lot of questionable organizing decisions in the west since the 1960s. Their groups have a tendency to overly elevate the importance of single leaders, struggle to persist through seemingly insignificant disagreements and frequently splinter into smaller factions who all hate each other. IMO the theoretical differences between ML and MLM are largely scientific questions and should not preclude MLs and MLMs working together any time soon—though it frequently does.

Definitely a failure in ethical philosophy for my fellow Jews but ultimately what their support of Israel means differs so greatly as to render the term ‘support’ difficult to parse. Israel isn’t just a material place but also a spurious concept that many Jews hold as something like a Jewish right to defend oneself from violence. Obviously very mixed up if you haven’t been blasted by the greatest propaganda and influence peddling machine in human history for your entire life.

Are all the oldsters in power in the west just incapable of letting go of Cold War era biases? What is the obsession with opposing a capitalist Russia? In the past 30 years, to go from Yeltsin and Clinton hanging out, getting drunk and doing who knows what together while the former Soviet economy is shredded, to Russia allowing US logistics to travel through their territory to facilitate imperial adventurism in Afghanistan while Bush and Putin ride horses together at camp David, to Putin now being the greatest threat to western civilization despite providing the EU with a substantial amount of oil for their energy needs is such a ridiculous course of events. idk how anyone can take western international relations seriously.

Leaving moral consideration of non-human animals aside, just by the laws of thermodynamics, a vegan diet requires significantly less energy than a diet that relies on factory farming and is therefore more conducive to efficient resource usage. I don’t see how reforming factory farming in favor of better animal welfare would do anything but drastically intensify this discrepancy. The world is not large enough to have cattle that aren’t being treated akin to torture if we’re eating anywhere near the amount of meat we are now. If we use free-range guidelines for all currently existing cattle (probably not that great for animal welfare since its a meat industry designation) a preposterous percentage of earth’s arable land would need to be dedicated to cattle grazing. So its obviously and unquestionably the case that veganism is better for the environment than a diet that relies on factory farming of animals and the idea that we could reform the meat industry to be morally upstanding is unrealistic. The old utility of cattle was transforming calories that couldn’t be eaten by humans (grass and similar plants) into calories we can consume (meat products). That’s no longer necessary. GMO soy can grow just about anywhere grass and plants consumed by cattle can.

So there is essentially no reasonable argument for meat consumption beyond cultural sensitivity–a completely legitimate concern mind you. That argument is fine until people have to choose between upholding traditional dietary habits and making sure everybody has enough food. We presently produce enough food globally to feed everyone currently on earth. I dont think we are at the point where mandating veganism is necessary to feed the planet. I personally am not a vegan. But if the global population grows sufficiently, we will eventually reach that point.

I assume you mean like lab equipment and the like? These are some random thoughts for whatever it’s worth. And I’m rather familiar with the US academy so that’s what I’m referring to.

1. By the time a revolution is capable of seizing institutions on that scale, the previous govt is no longer providing stability and ‘treats’ that would appease the present labor aristocrats.
2. last time I looked into it I think like 3/4 of university teaching positions are adjunct—and this was prior to Trump admin slashing research funding in US. Becoming a tenured professor is starting to become professional athlete levels of difficult in terms of competition. There aren’t that many people teaching and researching these days who are decidedly better off than any other folks in the working class, based on the money they’re making from doing so anyway. I’m sure there are many folks from well-off families in those positions who don’t really need to be working in the traditional sense.
3. A lot of scientists just wanna do their research—they won’t have a problem getting their funding from the ‘people’s research fund’ instead of the ford foundation or whatever.
4. if someone like Jeff Bezos has a kind of kill switch to destroy all the AWS servers currently built in we may just be out of luck. But all of Silicon Valley’s leadership is MBAs now. No one with engineering experience that’s actually useful is at the highest levels in those companies these days.