i’m sorry that you experienced something so unfortunate and uncomfortable. i hope you’re okay. i have a few thoughts for you:

1. sakai is fine, but frankly it doesn’t seem like a fantastic work to me. yes, it says a lot of things that people need to hear, but it just doesn’t seem very intersectional to me. there’s no monopoly on exploitation; you can be white and also be exploited. of course, whiteness generally implies a higher level of exploitation

2. socialism is not only more correct but feels better when it comes from a place of love. you should be able to love yourself and your class(es). apart from being able to distinguish the progressive forces in society, this love should even extend to your enemies to some extent because we can see the amazing potential for a unified humanity of which everyone will be a part.

3. it can be easy to get bogged down by the infinite knowledge of current events, or of economic exploitation and its horrors, or from alienation/pain/disability ultimately caused by capitalism. i think it’s necessary to have a correct philosophical foundation first and foremost, in order to give yourself a good framework to digest that infinite information. that framework should also be applied to your own personal life, which is the only way it can be solidified but also the only way you can truly understand yourself and your woes, thus providing you with revolutionary optimism. to the extent that you can, study dialectical materialism!

frankly, there’s very little reason to read philosophy other than that which is rooted in dialectical materialism, unless you have a solid base and want to understand how and why other philosophies are wrong. general criticisms of entire philosophies are literally unavoidable due to the infinite complexity of reality, but you should understand the criticisms of postmodernism from the viewpoint of diamat before you truly believe them. imo these would be:

0. this should go without saying, but there is almost no reference to dialectics in most of these works. if there is, it expresses no understanding of dialectics.

1. claiming that there can be no ideology. there are many variants of this claim, what i tend to see today is skepticism towards ideology of the masses or of society at large. diamat understands ideology to be central to human experience

2. a laser-focus on the realm of the specific over the general. understanding the general or essence is actually more important to not just existence but also ideology development. the vast majority of western academia revolves around this. another way to think about this would be that it favors analysis over synthesis. this is also true in its analysis of society, which leads to an individualist understanding as you said.

3. fundamentally subjectivist. that is to say, that it often supposes that because we can never have 100% certainty regarding our understanding of the world, it brings every conclusion (even its own) into question. diamat understands that there is an objective world, and that while there is subjective human experience, there is an objective chasm between that subjective experience and the objective world. human struggle is to constantly make that chasm as small as possible, even if as it grows in response to human struggle.

4. like you said, an important criticism of postmodernism is that it’s idealist. more specifically, i would call it pretty consistently engaging in mysticism. because it’s fundamentally incorrect (due to the previous 4 points), it will usually pose many (usually inane) questions and come to the conclusion that reality is unknowable and no certainty can be had regarding reality. this is sometimes followed by a (non-declarative, as always) suggestion that supernatural or mystical elements are the reasons why things are the way they are. even when literal mysticism doesn’t occur, the vast majority of postmodern writings are also written horribly, in such a way as to mystify the topic at hand for the reader rather than to lead to any meaningful conclusions.

5. this is a bit of addendum, but postmodernists tend to either think that all of society is strictly cultural, or that the superstructure is always dominant over the base. this is why there’s a lot of obsession over things like language (“language is central to thought because we all think in language, therefore language and culture are central to human development”), as opposed to the diamat theory of knowledge.

of course, an important element is its history and why postmodernism exists as a superstructural ideology in the first place. postmodernism is a reaction to both the founding of socialist states (chiefly the USSR) as well as a response to both world wars that were ultimately caused by capitalism. it became quite difficult for capitalists to talk about how idyllic capitalism was when it embroiled the world in war, and nukes continued to threaten the world. consequently, it became much easier to allow everyone to criticize and be skeptical of capitalism, so long as they were also critical and skeptical of all existing socialist countries as well.

this later developed into what we have today, which is that you can say or do whatever you want, so long as you don’t actually threaten capitalist society at all. and of course the background of the cold war is also important to understand here too. postmodernism is, in essence, the superstructure of capitalism in decline, as a force that recognizes itself as no longer progressive. this is why many postmodernists were avid anticommunists, while also using marxist words/terminology, in an effort to confuse a new generation of leftists after the red scare. if you read any derrida regarding marx, it reads as incomprehensible and laughable gibberish and only serves to mysticize and mystify.

can you provide an example of postmodernist tendencies that are coherent with marxism? my understanding is that they are diametrically opposed. the claim that not all postmodernists are the same is often used by postmodernists to distance themselves from other postmodernists who are openly unsavory. and, there will always be differences between sects of a branch of philosophy, but this doesn’t mean they don’t come from the same branch. it’s just differentiating what the branch, or underlying similarity, is.

thanks for responding! i’ll try to be as brief as possible.

1. this is a little silly imo: i am not calling for the repudiation of all ideas after someone has died, this was the entire point of quoting mao in my response later. the point here is that ideas are always determined by experiences and material conditions, and the applicability of old ideas to the present should be determined by the extent to which the material conditions that influenced/produced the idea are still present or relevant. this is why mao’s ideas regarding the theory of knowledge are still very applicable, because people acquire knowledge in exactly the same way. lenin’s ideas on finance capital are still very applicable, but less so because finance capital has developed since his death. mao’s ideas on a theorized immortality are not, because he could not realistically conceive of how it would be applied, and his society was not even close to developed enough to administer, let alone develop, the theoretical medical technique.

2. this is where you need a better and more holistic sense of revolutionary optimism, because you’re repeating an undialectical idiom that we westerners are taught from a very young age: “people never change.” marxism and diamat understands everything as a process, and thus everything is constantly changing. if you can’t perceive the change, it’s because it’s either on a timescale or level of specificity/generality that is far enough from your personal experience to perceive it: we don’t notice dead wood rotting (time), we can’t see the motion of atoms in perceived solids (specificity), nor can we perceive the rotation of the earth around the sun (generality). if you can’t perceive people changing, then either you’re not looking hard enough or it happens on a timescale that is slow (again, a contradiction that would need resolving if immortality existed). and, you’re denying human change that is so obvious. after all, didn’t you change in order to become a marxist? in most cases people must change in accordance with their material conditions, or else they die! if youth is the best biological context through which people can quickly change, wouldn’t increasing our youthspan actually be good? and, finally, isn’t marxism the best means through which to not only induce change, but to accept and understand change?

3. yes, i accept that the increased lifespan of society is obviously more important than increasing individual lifespans. however, a marxist shouldn’t absolutely favor one over the other in totality, this is undialectical. after all, stalin is the one that said that socialism intends to free society in order to free individuals. it’s not possible to teach all people to be completely selfless, and it’s probably not desirable either because individual survival is important for society! but again, i accept that society is dominant over the individual.

4. there are many goals of socialism, but what is the primary one? in the broad sense, we can say that the primary goal is to take the reigns of society away from capital and move towards a classless society. in an even broader sense, the primary goal of a socialist society is to determine what the primary contradictions are within society, and to work towards resolving them. currently the primary contradiction is class, but at some point it will become lifespan, or health, or species, etc. in a more specific sense, the goal of a socialist society is to act in the interest of the working class to improve their lives, and consequently the lives of everyone in society. are cuban doctors not socialist for traveling the world to decrease suffering? and again, standards of suffering are also subject to change: if no one experienced aging, then we would have a different understanding of what the primary contradiction in terms of health would be, perhaps diseases given to us genetically. immortality, or wildly increased healthspans, would not necessitate the removal of pain, just excess pain in accordance with technological advancement.

5. let’s go ahead and be more specific about what i mean by immortality: an indefinitely increased healthy lifespan, with an indeterminate end. after all yes, nothing is immortal because ultimately the universe will end unless we resolve that contradiction billions of years from now. immortality is a shorthand for the potential to live hundreds, thousands, or millions of years: to us, the difference would be so huge that it would effectually be immortal, even though it technically would not. and, i’m sure there will always be more contradictions to resolve in the quest for increasingly healthy lifespan, but claiming that death is better than life, or is somehow necessary, is just ridiculous and ultimately conservative. yes it serves a function, but you didn’t respond to all the very clear and obvious social benefits from having a wildly increased healthy lifespan, which essentially amount to the accumulation of more and more experiences. and yes, we have all the reason to be skeptical of capitalist science, but at the same time we should be able to separate that skepticism of the application of that science from the actual science itself. like i said, only time will tell if this is real science. but, is it out of the realm of possibility to achieve great advances in healthy lifespan within 50, 100, 1000 years? not really, given that other life already experiences these possibilities.

i think there’s a deep, deep irony in simultaneously bringing up how immortality (the resolution of the contradiction of aging, or the survival aspect of living) would create more intense contradictions regarding the ability of societies to adapt to material conditions, while using quotes from people who are long dead and lived in wildly different material conditions to uphold a seemingly metaphysical “communist morality.” mao was not a prophet, he was a leader of a largely agrarian and peasant society who did the most for his society that could be done with the tools that he had. with new tools comes new standards for what can be done to improve the quality of life of society. do you really think confucius would be the exact same after 2000 years?

treatment of aging would be an incredibly efficient, cheap, and easy way to treat all the diseases that are symptoms of aging, and that cause pain and suffering around the world. if we also assume that a longer lifespan means the accumulation of more experiences, more education, and more wisdom, then an older but healthy populace would produce more value for less time and have the ability to lead richer, fuller lives. how is this individualistic?? as new tools and standards of health are developed, so too do the standards of morality; claiming that there is one unchanging “communist morality” (especially before communism exists, how can you even know this?) is not very marxist.

further, what better society or social system to deal with the resolution of the contradiction between old and new – which has historically better allowed societies to adapt to material conditions, as you rightfully point out – than the application of scientific socialism and marxism? it is literally all about determining the material conditions of people in a society and adapting the society around that data and feedback. even if all humans were magically immortal overnight, marxist societies would still be better able to function with this development than non-marxist societies, thus trending towards global communism. this goes for the application of the hypothesized medical treatment too: socialist societies would be better able to develop and apply the treatment, especially in an equitable manner.

as far as the viability of such medical application, i’m not a scientist and can’t have an informed opinion: “no investigation, no right to speak” i think is a more broadly applicable mao quote, until knowledge acquisition changes. i admit it sounds fantastical, but having all human records and knowledge at your fingertips would have sounded fantastical to someone like mao. the idea that it would be inherently immoral, however, is dogmatic and ridiculous. if anything, like most technological advancement, it would accelerate the decline of global and then national capitalism.

hollow knight, hades, and starcraft brood war are all timeless

monobattles was my life for a full year or two

just want to clarify that it wasn’t exactly mango press making that specific argument, but someone in telegram comments. and, the argument wasn’t that his english was fluent, but that he used specific idioms that only an american would use. mango press did make the argument that only a US citizen would be eligible for student loans.

one of the claims in that mango press thread was that hakim lies about being an iraqi, or at least living in iraq, for online marxist clout. the argument goes that because he was eligible for US student loans for medical school, he’s probably a US citizen. there were also some examples brought up about euphemisms he used that only a fluent or first-language english speaker would use. no idea how true this is and it’s not a lot to go on, and mango press has some fucking weird opinions sometimes, but i can’t deny that it’s possible.

hakim having weird, uninformed, or no opinions on present-day events is not totally out of character: i watched a conversation on present-day china between him and paul morrin (anti-china maoist), and was surprised at how lukewarm at best his defense was. no mention of like the NEP, him calling china bad because “state capitalism,” etc. anyone curious should watch it for themselves. let’s be honest, there’s no reason why we should all read theory and study historical trends other than better understanding the present, and consistently having not-great takes on the present makes me question what good his content can be except perhaps as an introduction for people who aren’t marxists or leninists.

also noticed recently that he’s put ads on his youtube videos. i’m sorry but this does affect the content, because at the very least it affects the purpose why the content was made. it also implies that the content is intitutionally-friendly enough for a company to buy advertising time from them. we should be extremely, extremely skeptical of theory youtubers and especially advertised content. if ben norton or BT news suddenly got sponsored by fuckin surfshark or expressvpn, i think we would all be very surprised. i haven’t unsubscribed yet, but just the title of this most recent video gives me “capitalist brainwashing” vibes, which ultimately gives ground to multiple anticommunist tropes. will perhaps edit after i watch.

i think an important aspect as well is that there’s no essentialism as to whether or not someone is a settler. that is to say, we can conceive of a future where settler-colonialism (and race tbh) is dismantled and euro-americans would no longer be settlers, meaning that it is by nature a historical product. rather, the classes of people divided by settler-colonialism are essentially the same as they were hundreds of years ago, and the exploitative relations between them are also much the same. so much of liberal society wants to pretend that, because slavery was abolished and we had the civil rights movement, that these represent progress inherent to liberalism when in reality nothing has fundamentally changed, the contradiction in classes has just developed over time.