Socialism 2013 Socialism is getting sexier! I can’t wait to see how the discussion grows and changes thanks to high quality design like this. Amazing what design can do to lend credibility to a cause, honestly.
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Socialism 2013

Socialism is getting sexier! I can’t wait to see how the discussion grows and changes thanks to high quality design like this. Amazing what design can do to lend credibility to a cause, honestly.

Source: socialismconference.org

Cosmarxpolitan

Ok… besides some of these historical figures being not actually Marxist (in other words they paid a hell of a lot of lip service to Marx in order to become highly successful totalitarian mass murdering fuckheads or forgot completely about that whole bottom-up thing), still pretty fucking hilarious.

Plus there’s that whole Stalin was hot thing… still don’t know how to feel about that one.

futurejournalismproject:

The Karl Marx Drinking Game

We’re taking off for Labor Day Weekend soon so leave you with a game. Play it wisely, play it well and remember to drink responsibly.

Meantime, with Marx in mind, Slate reminds us that he and Friedrich Engels were quite the drinkers:

Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in their 20s at the time, and neither was a drinking novice. Marx first demonstrated talent in the beerhounding field during his first and only year at the University of Bonn. It was, in the understated phrase of his father, a period of “wild rampaging.” As a co-president of his “tavern club,” the lad often tangled with the rival Borussia Korps, which would force him and his bourgeois brethren to kneel in allegiance to the Prussian aristocracy. In hopes of repelling their attacks, Marx started packing a pistol, and a bullet grazed his brow in the duel that inevitably resulted; boys will be boys. He transferred schools, got serious about philosophy, and fell in with the Young Hegelians for a while. To blow off steam while working on his Ph.D., he would knock back pints with Bruno Bauer; they would now and then get smashed and ride donkeys down the main streets of villages.

Engels, meanwhile, had been educating his palate, preparing to become first great champagne socialist. One month-long vacation in the French countryside found young Engels “more or less squiffy all the time,” and his most recent biographer likens his diary of the trip to “an upmarket wine-tour brochure.” (Sample text: “Within a few bottles one can experience every intermediate state from the exultation of the cancan to the tempestuous fever heat of revolution, and then finally with a bottle of champagne one can again drift into the merriest carnival mood in the world!”) An industrialist and a revolutionary, Engels spent two years learning the family business at Ermen and Engels’ Victoria Mill outside of Manchester, England, witnessing the horrors of child labor and gathering material for his first book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

Late that summer, Engels passed through Paris and arranged a get together with Marx, who had recently hatched his theory of alienated labor—of the worker as the “plaything of alien forces.” On Aug. 28, 1844, they got faded at Café de la Régence and kept going for “10 beer-soaked days,” as one historian puts it—two dudes joined in a buzzing discussion where they broke it all down, as dudes will. This was bitching about work on the highest level, Marx and Engels in Paris and going gorillas.

Read through to learn what beers Slate recommends for your labor celebrations.

We’ll be posting infrequently until next week but look forward to be back at it then.

Images: The Karl Marx Drinking Game. Text via the International Society of Supervillains, edited by The FJP. Select any to embiggen.

One of the fascinating things about the blogosphere specifically, and, of course, the Internet more generally — and it’s going to seem like a very obvious point, but I think it is an important one to think about — is that the people who are generating these enormous reams of content every day, who are spending enormous amounts of time organizing, linking, commenting on the substance of the Internet, are doing so primarily for free. They are not getting paid for it in any way other than in the attention and, to some extent, the reputational capital that they gain from doing a good job. And this is — at least, to a traditional economist — somewhat remarkable, because the traditional account of economic man would say that, basically, you do things for a concrete reward, primarily financial. But instead, what we’re finding on the Internet — and one of the great geniuses of it — is that people have found a way to work together without any money involved at all. They have come up with, in a sense, a different method for organizing activity.
James Surowiecki: When social media became news | Video on TED.com (via vi5i0nthng)

(via sociolab)

Source: ted.com

edwardgoblinhands: Wal-Mart workers begin Black Friday disruptions Strikes and protests aimed at disrupting the retail giant Walmart during next week’s Black Friday sales events began on Thursday with walk-outs at a number of stores and the promise of more actions in the lead-up to what is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. The news comes amid controversy about plans by Walmart and other large chains to open on Thanksgiving evening, kicking off Black Friday a day early. It also comes as another strike has hit part of Walmart’s warehouse supply chain in southern California. At least 30 workers from six different Seattle-area Walmarts have gone on strike, organisers and Walmart staff from the OUR Walmart group said. The group, which is not a union but has close ties with the labour movement, is seeking to protest what it says is low pay, too few hours and retaliation by managers against workers who speak out. Seattle Walmart worker Sara Gilbert said she had taken the decision to go on strike to protest the fact that she could only make around $14,000 dollars a year. Despite working as a customer service manager, she said, her family remained reliant on food stamps and other benefits. “I work full time at the richest company in the world,” she said. The Seattle strike is aimed at kickstarting a series of protests in the run-up to Black Friday, when more than a thousand separate demonstrations ranging from walk-outs to leafleting to flash mobs are planned. So far they are set to hit Walmart stores in Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Washington DC. But organisers say they expect it eventually to be country-wide. “You are going to see unprecedented activity starting now and going into the holiday season. This is going to continue this year and next year,” said Dan Schlademan, director of the union-backed Making Change at Walmart group which is helping organise the effort. Members of OUR Walmart are demanding better wages, better access to benefits and an end to what they say is retaliating against their members who protest or organise. Last month the group helped organise one of the biggest sets of protests to ever hit the retailer when workers held strikes at more than 12 different stores, earning national headlines across the US. Walmart has said that the complaints of OUR Walmart members represent only a tiny fraction of its huge workforce of 1.3 million people. “There have been a very small number of associates raising concerns about their jobs,” said Walmart spokesman Steve Restivo. “When our associates bring forward concerns, we listen. Associates have direct lines of communication with their management team and we work to understand their concerns,” he added. But the Black Friday protests are only one of several areas of controversy to hit Walmart in recent months. The company has also been struck by a series of strikes and protests in its warehouse supply chain, some of which is outsourced to third party logistics firms and staffing agencies. Those outside companies have been accused by some campaigners of poor safety standards, meagre wages and also retaliating against workers who complain. A group of warehouse workers at a Walmart supply chain warehouse in southern California have also launched a strike action this week following a previous protest in September. Some 30 workers held a picket outside a huge warehouse in Mira Loma, California, saying that previous strikers had been sacked or had their hours reduced. Javier Rodriguez, a forklift driver at the facility, said managers had drastically cut his hours after the last protest. “This is the form of retaliation that they use for me. It makes it hard to earn enough to feed my family and run my car,” he said. The warehouse is run by logistics giant NFI but supplies goods only to Walmart. An NFI spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment but the firm has said previously that it adheres to all legal labour standards. Meanwhile in Illinois, workers at another Walmart supply chain warehouse near the small town of Elwood filed charges to a state labour relations board alleging unfair practises by four different firms involved in the running and staffing of the warehouse. They also relate to claims of retaliation against workers who had previously gone on strike to protest an alleged practise of “wage theft” where employees are not paid for all the time they work. [Image via AFP] FIGHT BACK!
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edwardgoblinhands:

Wal-Mart workers begin Black Friday disruptions

Strikes and protests aimed at disrupting the retail giant Walmart during next week’s Black Friday sales events began on Thursday with walk-outs at a number of stores and the promise of more actions in the lead-up to what is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year.

The news comes amid controversy about plans by Walmart and other large chains to open on Thanksgiving evening, kicking off Black Friday a day early. It also comes as another strike has hit part of Walmart’s warehouse supply chain in southern California.

At least 30 workers from six different Seattle-area Walmarts have gone on strike, organisers and Walmart staff from the OUR Walmart group said. The group, which is not a union but has close ties with the labour movement, is seeking to protest what it says is low pay, too few hours and retaliation by managers against workers who speak out.

Seattle Walmart worker Sara Gilbert said she had taken the decision to go on strike to protest the fact that she could only make around $14,000 dollars a year. Despite working as a customer service manager, she said, her family remained reliant on food stamps and other benefits. “I work full time at the richest company in the world,” she said.

The Seattle strike is aimed at kickstarting a series of protests in the run-up to Black Friday, when more than a thousand separate demonstrations ranging from walk-outs to leafleting to flash mobs are planned. So far they are set to hit Walmart stores in Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Washington DC.

But organisers say they expect it eventually to be country-wide. “You are going to see unprecedented activity starting now and going into the holiday season. This is going to continue this year and next year,” said Dan Schlademan, director of the union-backed Making Change at Walmart group which is helping organise the effort.

Members of OUR Walmart are demanding better wages, better access to benefits and an end to what they say is retaliating against their members who protest or organise. Last month the group helped organise one of the biggest sets of protests to ever hit the retailer when workers held strikes at more than 12 different stores, earning national headlines across the US.

Walmart has said that the complaints of OUR Walmart members represent only a tiny fraction of its huge workforce of 1.3 million people. “There have been a very small number of associates raising concerns about their jobs,” said Walmart spokesman Steve Restivo. “When our associates bring forward concerns, we listen. Associates have direct lines of communication with their management team and we work to understand their concerns,” he added.

But the Black Friday protests are only one of several areas of controversy to hit Walmart in recent months. The company has also been struck by a series of strikes and protests in its warehouse supply chain, some of which is outsourced to third party logistics firms and staffing agencies.

Those outside companies have been accused by some campaigners of poor safety standards, meagre wages and also retaliating against workers who complain. A group of warehouse workers at a Walmart supply chain warehouse in southern California have also launched a strike action this week following a previous protest in September.

Some 30 workers held a picket outside a huge warehouse in Mira Loma, California, saying that previous strikers had been sacked or had their hours reduced. Javier Rodriguez, a forklift driver at the facility, said managers had drastically cut his hours after the last protest. “This is the form of retaliation that they use for me. It makes it hard to earn enough to feed my family and run my car,” he said.

The warehouse is run by logistics giant NFI but supplies goods only to Walmart. An NFI spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment but the firm has said previously that it adheres to all legal labour standards.

Meanwhile in Illinois, workers at another Walmart supply chain warehouse near the small town of Elwood filed charges to a state labour relations board alleging unfair practises by four different firms involved in the running and staffing of the warehouse. They also relate to claims of retaliation against workers who had previously gone on strike to protest an alleged practise of “wage theft” where employees are not paid for all the time they work.

[Image via AFP]

FIGHT BACK!

(via amodernmanifesto)

Source: rawstory.com

Marxism spam cleaned up - Thanks, Tumblr!

You can now search “Marxism” again on Tumblr without getting gore spam: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/marxism

Thanks, Tumblr! Here’s the email they just sent me:

Tumblr takes spam very seriously and we appreciate you taking the time to report spam to us. Any spam blogs that you reported have been terminated. Please continue to report spam to us if you see more of it.

We are sorry that this issue has occurred and are doing everything that we can to minimize spam on Tumblr. Please let us know if you have further questions or concerns.

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Tumblr Support

What kind of person do you think would go through the effort to do something like that?