Its not quite that big. If you’re on the ground under it and reach up you’ll touch it. Probably 8 feet across at the widest point and 12 or so feet long? Its not collossal. But it feels much bigger in the room, so my measurements could be all off

The room is part of the installation, the walls slant and bow slightly to make the barrel feel even more imposing

I’ve spent hours and hours in this room! I’ve laid underneath it. The walls bow inward. The pic doesn’t do justice to how huge it feels in person. In this room, there is only barrell

Thanks!

There is a particular class characteristic to it, Marx calls it “lumpen proletariat” which is a term he abandons by the time he wrote Capital vol 1, but which forms part of his really important social analysis in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.

The objective in doing a class analysis is not to sort people into categories in order to deal with them abstractly (this is capitalist politics), but to try and understand actual conditions in order to change them. Sex workers and gang members reproduce the same fundamental relations we see under capitalism. There is an exploiting minority and an exploited majority functioning within these occupations. I’ve met some self-identified gang-members, and admittedly their consciousness seems much closer to that of an exploiting petite-bourgeois, and this is true of many sex workers. But I’ve also met self-reported sex-workers (not professionally) at protests and pickets, particularly where feminist, body autonomy, and lgbt+ rights struggles are the organizing issue.

However, the Black Panthers, the Rainbow Coalition, the Young Lords, etc., were very successful in organizing these troubled parts of society into radical revolutionaries that were unambiguously allies of liberation struggles. The fact is, many people who end up in gangs, or as sex workers, find them selves in extremely precarious positions in which there are a limited number of opportunities available to them, in which they may make bad decisions in order to survive.

This isn’t much different than the conditions we all experience as workers, but social divisions of labor, often determined across lines of socio economic, race, gender, etc., can absolutely afford or limit the options available to people. If society afforded healthcare, mental and social healthcare, social safety nets, reduced predatory policing, affordable public housing, access to jobs, etc, to everyone; these programs objectively reduce the causes and severity of crime. That’s because it makes it so people don’t have to live in desperation and desolation. The fact is, sex work and gangs, etc., are a structural part of capitalism. Would abolishing capitalism make them disappear? Probably not at first, but I think that a mass movement or society that is built by and for the workers, against the exploitation of capital is the best chance at creating a safe and rational society.

Capitalism produces crime in order to keep people afraid of it, so that the political class can instill hatred and fear in the masses, which sow divisions among us. One of the best first steps we can take to creating a safer and more rational society is to reject the premises that capitalism uses to divide us. Yes, that may include holding some contradictory views like “sex workers are workers” but guess what, the logic of capitalism is deeply contradictory and justifies worse forms of violence on much larger scale than some gang violence. I’d love to see an end to drug cartels and the extreme violence of them, but guess what? They’re capitalists too.

Legal capitalism needs illegal capitalism in order to function

In the USA the most dangerous job, is agricultural jobs. The fact that these jobs are largely done by immigrants, minorities, and the severely poor and exploited reads its exclusion as a little problematic.

Also, sex workers are workers, and I’m sure that occupation is also very dangerous, but because it is prohibited by law, I don’t think good stats exist, though IMO worth mentioning

A desperate attempt at happiness meal

No problem. Hmu if you have any questions

I don’t think she was right. I was unskilled, not untalented. She was a good chef and could certainly have helped me improve, but she didn’t, she just acted really negative. Like its not like I did it and she criticized me, she just would not let me do it. I could cook eggs and breakfast, I made good omelets with lots of fixings, pancakes and sausages.

So its like she knew I could cook. I lost my beloved 17" cast iron skillet in our divorce. But in cases where I did cook dinner it was because she wasn’t there. She never tasted it to criticize me. I worked 50-60 hours per week, like many poor young families.

PS. That’s not my downvote

shot

beheaded with a broadsword is more historically accurate and fucking metal

Idk guys my ex wife basically acted like she was the only person who was capable of preparing meals other than breakfast, and I was young and just kinda accepted it. She always acted incredibly skeptical and negative toward me if I suggested making dinner.

After we divorced I had to learn to cook and got pretty good at it. My current wife appreciates my cooking and I cook just as much if not more than she does. None of my kids have died due to anything I cooked them, although you’d think they came pretty close by the way they act sometimes, especially when I was vegan.

There’s always so much to unpack in these discussions. The Marxist theory of the state is the historic mechanism of class rule. Both anarchists and communists believe this, that the ruling class of capitalism uses the state in order to oppress and exploit the masses.

Both left tendencies are revolutionary, both left tendencies want to seize production for the workers, both left tendencies understand that state power must be seized, and the capitalist state must be destroyed.

The difference seems to be, that Marxist communists believe in establishing a workers state to suppress the existing bourgeois elements, where anarchists more want to transition away from the state as a form of geographic organization.

Lenin’s theory was that the worker state would not need all the functions of the bourgeois state, and would be able to phase out those functions. But Lenin’s theory was also dependent on an international worker revolution. When the revolution in Germany failed, when Russia was invaded by capitalists and the remaining Tsarist forces allied with the invaders, it forced a crisis in Russia. From there, it was just crisis after crisis. Lenin originally said “all power to the Soviets (worker councils)” but when the civil war completely destroyed what little industrial capacity Russia had, then there were no factories in which to organize for. Without a place to work, there’s no workers and hence no worker organization.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did make mistakes, but the conditions were extremely fraught. In the process of smashing the state, there were many functions of state that were necessary in order to prevent the reactionaries and foreign capitalists from seizing state power for themselves. This led to rehiring the old tsarist state bureaucrats back into the roles that they had prior to the revolution, and this happened on a mass scale. But this wasn’t by design, it was an accident, a quirk of necessity brought on by years and years of war. When the civil war was over, Lenin was sick, and the bureaucracy rallied around Stalin who had been working to replace the “old Bolsheviks” who had taken up roles of state functionaries, with people who were loyal to him. Stalin didn’t create the bureaucracy, so much as the bureaucracy elevated him. Without worker councils the bureaucracy was the only power left in Russia.

Trotsky and Lenin’s theory of permanent revolution never left the page, and Trotsky was able to wield it as a resistance to Stalinist bureaucracy, but conditions under Trotsky wouldn’t have been much different. He would have faced the same challenges, and I don’t have to tell a comm of anarchists about the utter tragedy that he oversaw at Kronstadt. But still, anarchist historian Paul Averich, critical of Lenin at every turn, still hesitates to lay responsibility for it at the feet of Lenin. But after that, the disastrous NEP.

Stalin developed the theory of socialism in one country, which established the “socialist state.” But even without the theory, the contradictions of global capitalist statehood were still forced on the country of Russia.

I still think the theory laid out in State and Revolution is sound. I think there needs to be some way of organizing against foreign invasion and internal sabotage. I don’t think Russia or even China are particularly good examples, but also, both cases were barely industrialized peasant societies when they defeated their weak domestic capitalist class.

I think if mass worker revolution happened in a highly industrialized then the possibility of a just and democratic worker state would be more possible than what happened in Russia. I consider myself a communist, but if I was in country presided over by a Stalinist bureaucracy, I’d be killed in the purges, along with the rest of you. I believe that you keep fighting for liberation until all are free and all are equal and in harmony with nature, that it is the fight for those things that moves humanity forward. And maybe I’m just not familiar enough with Anarchist theory, but the contradictions that reify into the state form do not go away just because the state is mired in contradictions. As long as there classes there will be the need to organize geographically.

I believe that no revolution will be possible until there’s real worker control and democracy. And if the conditions actually get there, like on a global scale, then chances are I will want something more decentralized and consent driven for all people. But as long as there are classes there is the need to suppress one or the other, and the only way to do that is some kind of central organization that oversees those relations within a particular geographic area. As the bourgeois class is dismantled, so is the necessity for the worker state to dismantle it. This is how the state withers away. The fact that it did not, could not happen in Russia doesn’t mean it is wrong, in theory. It just means the time of global revolution is still in the future.

This is not meant as a “gotcha” to anarchists, I just think the theory is explained, and isn’t hard to understand. And there’s lots of valid historical concerns about it. But with the most good faith intention, if a country found themselves in a revolutionary situation, and faced these very real problems, what alternative would there be bit central organization of one form or another? In my opinion, the problems of authoritarianism can be mitigated through direct participation and political education. If such an organization could take up the functions of state, then I think it would be more successful than either 20th century state socialism or decentralized anarchism.

/hj 👀