Oh, when I do point my disagreement of semi-feudalism, it’s more towards the so-called Maoists. I do have one IRL friend that’s like that and we do argue some about this position. It’s not a position to be dismissed, as the plight is real, the violence is real. I just believe that the reading of the super structure is different. If I want to rile this friend up, I usually quote Mao’s “On book worship”.
Anyways, happy studying!
The best source is the newspaper “A Nova Democracia” (The New Democracy). They are self proclaimed Maoists, so do with that what you will. One of the biggest exponents of them is João Carvalho, a YouTube personality that, in another life, was a member of the edgy music group UDR (I do like them, but they were so edgy that they got legally banned from talking about, presenting and such, so most of this group’s works is lost media, to some extent). He is a social scientist and classical linguist, as well as he did pass one of the hardest public servant tests here, so he is very well educated. Email him or DM on Instagram, he’s very reachable. Or even, go to one of his lives on YT and comment, he’ll gladly answer.
Now, that said, I do profoundly disagree with the semi-feudal state. That would mean that there’s some “backwardness” to the status quo in the rural parts, not having being “capitalism proper”. I do disagree, as it is very well developed capitalism. All the rural parts of Brazil are extremely financialized. “Plano Safra” subsidies, lots of credit going around, as well as insurance. All the speculative instruments are present from the late-stage neo-liberal state of things. “Lei Kandir” and other tax exemptions too.
Whenever the poor agrarian people are victims of violence or cannot access proper tooling to toil their lands, it’s not because they are on 1400s and the cities are in 2026. All is part of the system, all encompassing, totalizing.
If you do look for some references, I did a quick Google search and want for Jessé de Souza’s “Elite do Atraso” (The Elite of Backwardness, I believe), that goes about the dominant classes here in Brazil and how they came to be. Apparently, José de Souza Martins would be a sociologist that goes more specifically into the rural Brazil.
I want a roll of copies of a sticker I got form a local artist, which is made to get on these AI images IRL, which translates to: FUCK YOUR AI IMAGE. And along the edges: PAY AN ARTIST, YOU FUCKING MISER. I might even want something of the eggshell variety, that one that either can’t be destroyed without leaving crap behind or the glue itself keeps some words on.
On a side note, I get this weird feeling that the digital is bleeding, like JPEG artifacts in actual printed images and such. It’s weird.
Feito, que é um daqueles eufemismos que usa ao invés de só falar que é mafioso mesmo.
I’d like to add here that this is a strategy of chaos and confusion as a very soft coup attempt. Kassio Nunes Marques did not, himself, change the polling stations. But the Special Group that was made by him to “plan and ensure safety during the elections due to climate change”. It all started with people being pinged about maybe, sorta, kinda, having their polling stations changed. Now, this.
Yes, with some machines closed/sealed. I did learn about some officers that already went home and are going to need to go back.
We take quite some focus on these news, I feel, it’s twofold:
The issue was raised by both PL and PT, but the decision was to be taken, originally, by Kássio Nunes Marques. Kássio Nunes is in cahoots with the Bolsonaro clan in many different ways, being the most important one the Banco Master scandal and it’s CEO Daniel Vorcaro.
And the Supreme Court justice, Cármen Lúcia, didn’t allow free tickets for interstate travel. I remember Jones talking about it in a video, specially because the Juazeiro and Petrolina situtation.
For some context: this is a similar maneuver Bolsonaro did last presidential election. I’ll explain a little further in the main post, but he used the Federal Road Police (Policia Rodoviária Federal, PRF) to do something similar. In this specific case, the problem affects more people, as Salvador is quite big. We also know that this is foul play at it’s worst, as Lula won with 65% in the city during the first round, earlier this October. The city’s mayor is from a conservative party, while the governor is from PT.
Regional Electoral Court orders arrest of Secretary of Transportation in Salvador. PT alleges that less than 50% of the buses are operating, when, during the election, 100% should be operating. The Supreme Electoral Court was asked to extend voting hours until 19h00. Funnily enough, the said Secretary is traveling in France, “on official businesses, invited by the French government”.
Reserved
We need not to imagine. Ask any indigenous community and they’ll tell you the horrors straight. I’m not even being “the good savage”, but more like “see those evangelical missionaries in the deep Amazon fucking a whole culture on CIA’s dime”.
The labor aristocracy is a funny thing. They (me included) are untouchable, until they aren’t.
It might just become the same as anything: they won’t be the bench scientist, that do experiments they came up with, have that eureka moment and all the romanticism. Some (from PhDs in Physics and Math that I personally know) have romanticized so much the things that are in that “I just need time, pen and paper to do research”, instead of trying to learn a little bit of programming, try some scenarios, or even some formal proof stuff. They irk themselves of computers, as it feels below them. “That’s for the hoi polloi”, they might think.
But, alas, such awful future came. Not one of automation so we can do more, better, on our own terms, and guide the tech, exploit it to our advantage and betterment of the species. No, you become an “agent swarm” wrangler, needing to work on the machine’s pace, lest you are out of your grant. They are frozen, after all.
To summarize: they got the textile industry treatment, a century and some later, but instead of doing something material, are romanticizing and becoming luddites. They do not see themselves as proles, but they ought to.
(I do know, too, that in STEM, there’s a huge amount of reactionaries, thinking that they are exclusively technical, science is newtral, as well as tech, and humanities are, too, below them).
Felt the need to chime in since I saw no one talking about this: ASL (or, rather, the Brazilian equivalent of it, LIBRAS).
It’s mostly due to being something really different (the grammar is, sometimes, somewhat, kinda like Japanese?), and doing stuff like communicate with someone in a very loud club over a distance (did this, was really fun!).
I say this, mostly, as perks that are less obvious than being able to strike conversation with deaf people. But this is the most important part.
Also, it let’s me better understand deafness and deaf culture, as well as accessibility and how people often suffer under capitalism, mostly on what may or may not be classified as a disability.
I don’t remember if we have a quote from Helen Keller, but she as a great comrade on her own right, denouncing the horrors that capitalism subjects people’s bodies, and how that should end.
For those who do not know, she was deafblind from an extremely young age, but coming from a very wealthy family, she got a 24/7 tutor. She even got “oralized”. Media picked up the “miracle worker” and the “overcoming her disability” story. Then, when she radicalized, the media took her out of the spotlight.
Anyways, it’s been real fun!
[PT] O Lula, o PT e 99% de toda a esquerda conciliadora demonstraram como suas táticas e estratégias foram inúteis com esse resultado. Tivemos sempre uma pequena oposição à esquerda e que, ao longo do tempo, por uma série de picuinhas de partidos conciliadores, falavam em “não vamos dar munição aos nossos oponentes”, ou, pior, preferiram se aliar à centro-direita aos “stalinistas” da extrema esquerda. Falo isso como alguém que já viu, há muitos anos, pessoalmente, o Jones debatendo o PSOL. Quem te viu, quem te vê, né?
Originalmente, escrevi um texto imenso, mas não importa. Mesmo se houver alguma virada de votos, estamos adiando o inevitável: o fascismo se arraigar pela queda da taxa de lucro.
Quer ver como faremos a Revolução? Fico à disposição e sugiro criar uma postagem própria para tal. Meu texto já está longo.
[EN] Lula, the Worker’s Party (PT in Portuguese) and 99% of the conciliatory left demonstrated, with this result, how their strategies and tactics are useless. We’ve always had a small left opposition that, over time, through a series of squabbles started by the conciliatory parties, was told “not give ammo to our opponents” or, worse, would rather ally themselves with the center-right than with “Stalinists” on the far left. I say this as someone who saw, many years ago, in person, Jones Manoel debating PSOL. How things have changed, no?
Originally, I wrote a huge text, but it doesn’t matter. Even if there is a change in the ballots, we are just postponing the inevitable: fascism taking root by the fall in the rate of profit.
Wanna see how we do the Revolution? I’m at disposal and suggest making a post for it. My text is too long.
Yes! Even the design is “biologically inspired”. Spiking neural nets are a little bit better, but that fruit fly people have been doing stuff with uses a better model still. LLMs are more like a Magic 8-ball that instead of shaking you insert a fortune from a cookie.
Coming from Brazil, this is true: reformism is a dead end. But, what we’ve learned is that, properly put in perspective, electoralism can serve as a platform, although restricted.
For example, local elections are somewhat easy to win. Look at Mandani. The problem, I believe, is how easily he takes a more individualizing approach (“I did something good because there were individuals/groups asking”, rather than “X group needs Y policy because of Z problems that higher the rungs of the government couldn give two shits”). Making the situations less bad is good. The problem is that it’s defanging.
Not only that, his whole ethos is “compromise so we can govern”, so this will destroy everything. If a local politician could enable the people like “yeah, you know what? Fuck Big Tech” openly, it sure helps the masses feel a little more comfortable to protest Big Tech. And then, finally, the Party can better educate, coordinate and amass these people.
We, from the Brazillian left, are taking this lessons to heart, since the socdem vacuum kills. Try to learn this. Organize, plan on running elections if needed. Shit, even in China very little of the population is in the Party.