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I am enjoying this immensely. I have always struggled to understand how to move forward in a political movement and this helps strategize

“We cannot confine ourselves solely to exposing the system that stands in (the working-class’) path of development. We must also react to the immediate and cur­rent interests of the proletariat. We, however, work and shall continue to work for the cause of the working class in close organic contact with the proletarian struggle” good point Martyov.

Yes, our movement is indeed in its infancy, and in order that it may grow up faster, it must become imbued with intolerance against those who retard its growth by their subservience to spontaneity.

Revolutionary experience and organisational skill are things that can be acquired, provided the desire is there to acquire them, provided the shortcomings are recognised, which in revolutionary activity is more than half-way towards their removal.

“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.” Lenin was spitting!

"[Social Democrats] deprived the socialists of this opportunity and demoralised the socialist consciousness by vulgarising Marxism, by...blunting of social contradictions, by declaring the idea of the social revolution and of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be absurd, by reducing...class struggle to narrow trade-unionism and to a “realistic“ struggle for petty, gradual reforms.”

“In a country ruled by an autocracy, with a completely enslaved press, in a period of desperate political reaction in which even the tiniest outgrowth of political discontent and protest is persecuted, the theory of revolutionary Marxism suddenly forces its way into the censored literature and, though expounded in Aesopian language, is understood by all the ”interested“.

British interest in Zionism rested on three principles: unease with the Jews as an element in British political and economic life, evangelical Protestant interest in claims over the “Holy Land,” and—perhaps most crucially—a sense of the possibilities Zionist settlement opened up for imperial expansion.

Within its first two decades, the League involved itself in several other plans for ethnically based mass transfer: forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey, large-scale Armenian resettlement in the border areas of Syria, redistribution of territory
by ethnicity in Palestine, and the relocation of European Jews to any available empty space

Things have somehow gotten more complicated

In the contemplation of individual things, [metaphysical thought] forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their
existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their
repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the woods for the trees.

When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of
mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of
an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations
and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it
was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes
away.

To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real
basis.

"A striking feature of contemporary globalization is that a very large and growing proportion of the workforce in many global value chains is now located in developing economies. In a phrase, the centre of gravity of much of the world’s industrial production has shifted from the north to the South of the global economy." More shifting of labor

The purpose of corporate offshoring, whether at arm’s length or through foreign subsidiaries, is precisely to allow the corporation to focus on its “core competence,” while leaving other aspects of the process, often including production, to others. Many “manufacturing” firms now do not manufacture anything at all. They provide product and brand design, marketing, supply chain logistics, etc.

Outsourcing enables capitalists to replace higher-paid domestic labor with low-wage [global] Southern labor, exposing workers in imperialist nations to direct competition with similarly skilled but much lower paid workers in [these] nations, while falling prices of clothing, food, and other articles of mass consumption protects consumption levels from falling wages and magnifies the effect of wage increases.

“The involvement of developing countries is usually limited
to the labor-intensive stages in the production process.”

"In order to oppose their workers, the employers either bring in workers from abroad or else transfer manufacture to countries where there is a cheap labor force. Given this state of affairs, if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national organizations must become international. Let every worker give serious consideration to this new aspect of the problem" Karl Marx

Starting Chapter 2 soon. Have to switch gears for class stuff

"Just as, according to the economists and accountants, not one cent of Apple’s profits comes from Chinese workers and just as H&M’s bottom line owes nothing to super-exploited Bangladeshi workers, so do all of Starbucks’ and […] profits appear to arise from
their own marketing, branding, and retailing genius, and not a penny can be traced to the impoverished coffee farmers who hand-pick the fresh cherries."

"It forgets that TNCs and their suppliers hire “young unmarried
girls” in order to profit from their oppression, not to liberate them
from it;" Girlboss neoliberalism is a plague

It is worth pausing at this point to see how the ideologues
of neoliberalism justify the brutal labor regimes fostered by the policies they have designed and promoted.

"In contrast to the humble T-shirt, iPhones and laptops are technologically complex commodities. Their dazzling sophistication and iconic brand status can too easily blind the observer to the exploitative and imperialist character of the social and economic relations they embody." John Smith got jokes I see.

"The US imports 22% of Bangladesh’s apparel exports, so it can be estimated that 22% of $3.1bn, or $690m, was paid in wages to the
workers who produced goods destined for the united States. in other words, the tariffs charged in 2013 by the US government on its apparel imports from Bangladesh alone exceeded the total wages received by the workers who made these goods." I like seeing the numbers on this!

"The US imports 22% of Bangladesh’s apparel exports, so it can be estimated that 22% of $3.1bn, or $690m, was paid in wages to the
workers who produced goods destined for the united States. in other words, the tariffs charged in 2013 by the US government on its apparel imports from Bangladesh alone exceeded the total wages received by the workers who made these goods." I like seeing the numbers on this!

Bangladesh. For, unlike owners of the former, Bangladeshi garment owners are at the lower end of an international chain of subcontract relations, extending from production units in Bangladesh, via intermediaries, to retail trading companies in the countries of the north. . . . Garment production has been relocated to, and re-relocated within, the Third world, in order to tap cheap sources of wage labor.

Bangladesh. For, unlike owners of the former, Bangladeshi garment owners are at the lower end of an international chain of subcontract relations, extending from production units in Bangladesh, via intermediaries, to retail trading companies in the countries of the north. . . . Garment production has been relocated to, and re-relocated within, the Third world, in order to tap cheap sources of wage labor.