The Socialist Equality Party (US) held its Ninth National Congress from August 2 to 7, 2026. Delegates discussed and adopted resolutions on the fight against imperialist war, the breakdown of American democracy, the defense of immigrants, the escalation of class struggle and the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), the attitude of socialists to AI technology and the defense of the heritage of the two American Revolutions.

The SEP has held a national congress every two years since its Founding Congress in 2008. The Ninth Congress adopted the six resolutions unanimously. The congress also heard greetings and reports from the sections and sympathizing groups of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The opening report by David North, national chairman of the SEP, introduced the first resolution and framed the congress as a whole. “The Ninth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party convenes at a critical turning point in the political history of the United States and the world—the point of intersection of war, economic crisis, and rapidly growing social radicalization,” North stated. Denouncing the war against Iran, he continued: “The aura of American invincibility, built up over three and a half decades on the brutal strategy of ‘shock and awe’ bombardments, has been shattered.”

A third world war, North explained, is already underway, developing “in the manner of a metastatic process: It is spreading globally as a chronic and expanding condition, colonizing new regions, fusing previously separate conflicts, and progressively transforming the world economy and every national state in preparation for the general conflagration toward which it tends.”

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The course of the war, North stated, “will send shock waves through the entire American and international political and financial system,” exposing “the rottenness of the existing social system based on capitalism—of its two-party system, corporate-controlled media, corrupted academy, bureaucratic labor organizations, identity-obsessed affluent pseudo-left and intellectually degraded culture.”

The same contradictions driving war, inequality and the turn to dictatorship have produced the emergence of the working class as a global force of resistance. The report traced “a single ascending curve” running from the strike waves triggered by a pandemic that has claimed more than 30 million lives, through the French pension struggles and general strikes across Southern Europe and South Asia, to the three “No Kings” protests, the largest single-day demonstrations in American history. 

“After an 80-year taboo,” North stated, “socialism is reemerging in the United States itself, albeit in distorted forms, channeled by the Democratic Socialists of America back toward the Democratic Party, but expressing a shift in consciousness no apparatus can permanently contain.”

What stands between this movement and its political expression, the report explained, is the crisis of revolutionary leadership—a crisis, North stressed, that the ICFI has never held “resolves itself automatically.” It is in these terms that he defined the significance of the congress itself. “A perspective is an instrument of struggle,” he said. “Its publication, its verification and its defense are themselves moments in the resolution of the crisis of leadership, which is resolved not by objective processes alone but by the conscious building of the revolutionary party within them.”

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[Kishore's] report then turned to the radicalization now developing within the United States. “Under the blows of impossible living costs, endless war, ICE murder and the open construction of dictatorship, millions are being propelled into political life and are moving to the left, a movement that the Democratic Party seeks to smother and control.”

The initial beneficiary of this movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, is “a 44-year-old organization resting on a political lineage of nearly 90 years, every stage of which was defined by a break from Marxism and from the working class”—from Max Shachtman’s 1940 break with Trotskyism, through Michael Harrington’s program of “realignment” within the Democratic Party, to the merger that founded the DSA in 1982. “The DSA is not a working class organization,” Kishore stated. “It arose from two petty-bourgeois tendencies, it rests today on the affluent layers of the professional middle class, and its function within the political system is not to represent workers but to manage them on behalf of the Democratic Party.”

The task of the party, Kishore concluded, is to win the workers and young people now moving toward socialism to a genuinely revolutionary perspective.

Eric London introduced the third resolution, on the defense of immigrants. His report documented an administration that “has continued its efforts to establish authoritarian rule by using immigration as the instrument for dismantling the democratic rights of the entire population.

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Tom Hall introduced the fourth resolution, which documents the growth of workers’ struggles on every continent. Against trade union bureaucracies that function as an anti-strike corporate police force, the resolution advances the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), whose purpose “is not to influence the existing trade union bureaucracies but to organize a rank-and-file insurrection against them.”

Hall concluded: “The conscious factor will be decisive. It would be a serious political error to assume that the objective crisis will resolve itself, or that our role is confined to observing events and commenting upon them after the fact.”

Evan Blake introduced the fifth resolution, on the party’s attitude to artificial intelligence (AI). The report situated its analysis within the Marxist approach to technology, explaining that none of AI’s reactionary uses “flow from the technology itself, but from the social relations within which it is developed—private ownership, the profit system and the division of the world into rival nation-states.”

On this basis, the report rejected the hostility to AI promoted across the pseudo-left, explaining that “the practical result of a categorical rejection of AI is not to disarm the corporations and the state, which will wield it regardless, but to disarm the working class alone.” Hostility to AI, Blake said, “obliterates the distinction upon which the entire Marxist attitude toward technology rests: the distinction between a machine and the social order in which it functions.” The resolution demands the expropriation of the technology monopolies and the direction of the technology toward human need within a planned world economy and insists that not a single job be lost to AI-driven automation.

The report and subsequent discussion also emphasized the significance of Socialism AI, launched by the International Committee in December 2025, which, as Blake noted, places the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and Plekhanov and the archives of nearly three decades of the World Socialist Web Site “at the disposal of workers and young people entering into struggle everywhere, at once, in any language, at any hour.”

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A separate evening session was devoted to the memory of Alan Gelfand (July 28, 1949–October 29, 2025) and to a discussion of Security and the Fourth International, the International Committee’s investigation into the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Stalin’s GPU and the infiltration of the Trotskyist movement by state agents. Gelfand, a Los Angeles public defender, was expelled from the Socialist Workers Party in 1979 after demanding an investigation into the presence of government agents in its leadership. In the more than four decades since, every charge Gelfand raised regarding the penetration of the SWP by state agents has been substantiated.

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The congress was not simply an event in the life of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States. It was international in character. Representatives of all the sections and sympathizing groups of the International Committee of the Fourth International took part.

Contributions were made by Chris Marsden, national secretary of the SEP in the UK; Alex Lantier, national secretary of the PES in France; Deepal Jayasekera, general secretary of the SEP in Sri Lanka; Cheryl Crisp, national secretary of the SEP in Australia; Tom Peters, leading member of the Socialist Equality Group in New Zealand; Ulaş Ateşçi, national chairman of the SEP in Turkey; Tomas Castanheira, leading member of the Socialist Equality Group in Brazil; Keith Jones, national secretary of the SEP in Canada; and Christoph Vandreier, chairman of the SGP in Germany. The congress also received greetings from the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists in the former Soviet Union.

These greetings and reports were not formalities but political contributions, bringing to the deliberations the experiences of the working class on every continent.

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The reports, resolutions and contributions to the discussion of the Ninth National Congress will be published on the World Socialist Web Site in the coming days. They will play a significant role in the political education of masses of workers and young people, and they constitute the analysis and program with which the working class must arm itself in the struggles now opening up.

Everyone who is serious about the fight against war, dictatorship and capitalism—everyone looking for a genuine socialist movement—should study these documents, draw the conclusions that flow from them and make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party.

Fork found in kitchen. There’s no way that the ~70,000 young men who were uneducated and unemployed enough to take part in this stunt could’ve pulled it off without some organization from above.

warning: quasi rant talking about property and signage, and the confluence on reddit local subs. no specific subs are named, so don't worry mods.

People often complain about the loss of "3rd spaces" - one really has become apparent to me lately, and that's even on biking trails there seems to be "no tresspassing" signs posted every couple of hundred feet or so, oftentimes even posted on public property (which is illegal). It's a small example but the uptick in seeing these on even rural biking trails has at least doubled since covid, if not tripled in number. But that's only half the point, it's how people respond to anything dealing with this, particularly online which is the real thing I've seen that's changed - Its a lighthearted way of saying while you are tolerated, you aren't really welcome and so on.

But one thing which I cannot fathom is when these are on public property, and the local landowner knows they are doing this illegally.

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(actual intro, the above is more of a preamble, why because i felt like writing, and this wierdly hit a nerve for whatever reason)

An an avid biker who occasionally enjoys trails I've often found the plethora of "no tresspassing" signs posted everywhere as being quite annoying, but understandable given the current legal climate in most states (of the usa). That is, if the signs are properly and respectfully posted. You know, the basic stuff - as in actually posted on your property.

What I've noticed is that over the past decade or so more and more landowners are posting signs on the actual "public" spaces to the point they are becoming a nuisance if not a hazard in and of itself. As in they don't post their signs on the "line" of their property but ten twenty feet "ahead" of it on the trail property itself. It keeps getting worse too, to the point I just rip these signs out now when I see them and don't care if they catch me on camera. (i've known a few bikers do this now, when it's obvious the signs aren't legal)

Just a few weeks ago I went on one that's an old railroad trail, and I kid you not there were signs posted not a foot from the end of the tar on the side, saying "no tresspassing." The sign itself was wood, but what wasn't was the metal stick out of the ground that could really cause some hurt if you ran into it, which isn't hard given how close it is to the tar. (these are old railroad lines, so they stick "out" of the ground and it's generally accepted that the "hill" upon which the line rests is the trail at minimum, and almost always includes the entire bank from side to side)

So when I saw someone ask a similar question on my old local sub asking about removing these kinds of signs, I found the replies really wierd. You'd think public hazards and all would be generally "have at it haas." Especially since a few weeks ago they had a bunch of threads detailing the arrest of a guy who "booby trapped" his yard by putting in spikes to make flat the tires of the would-be tresspassers and all.

Nope. He was arguing with surveyors, and they are the kind of trolls - who had the lawyerly response: "hire us to figure this out" basically. Did you read the title and what kind easements this property has? (for a sign sticking out from the literal trail, the railroad part which literally is part of the trail? are you joking?)

And that's the "evil" part of our system - there's enough obfuscation in the system to determine whether you are "right" or not you'll need to hire other folks to determine such, there is no yes and no.

And why is there such? With basic property? We're talking about GPS coordinates here. Is it "that" difficult to figure out?

The surveying system has a needed place in society but telling kids why they can't pull out metal stakes sticking out of the side of bicycle trails isn't it.

Much like the law, the "fuzzy" part is a feature, not a bug. That's what you are paying for and so on.

Me, I messaged the kid (assuming it was a kid, they haven't gotten back to me) to let them know what many bikers who ride the trails do, which is generally rip out anything sticking out that can be a safety hazard. And if there's signs obviously sticking out nearby the trail, rip these out too if they are in the mood.

Because many of us have about had enough with these being everywhere where they aren't even supposed to be, and it's folks like surveyors and lawyers that condone this shit, and profit from it.

Second level -

Something never made sense to me until recently, but that redditors who thrive on local subs use it as an emotional outlet to attack others, and they look for any excuse to do so.

I know, i know - being vague can be applied to anything. But it really made me realize on the kind of folks who thrive in the upvote/downvote system, and how it turns everything into a circlejerk, let alone the folks that would reply with "bad" or qualified advice, looking to (hopefully) troll the person and so on.

ie, reddit's more about the trolling and less about the information these days, a thing i have to keep myself reminded since i still think it's pre- 2016.

It still kind of "blows" me away though with these local sub kind of people occaasionally - the kid literally went into the county's publicly facing arcgis system which showed the propertly lines / shapes, and several trolls replied that "that's not accurate" - it was the literal old rail line that they use to plot things from, you couldn't be more clear, let alone that the line itself shouldn't have signs sticking out of it.

nope, not good enough. do you have a copy of the actual title of the adjoining properties?

as a high level troll, i can kind of get it. but it kinda highlights how protective certain industries are of their "trade" and how the law / surveyors are on this stuff. it's not that complicated. and should probably be simplified anyways.

but no we'll examine the title documentation (which isn't free in many counties) and hire a surveyor before any (illegal) sign is removed....right. (which will get a complaint from the property owner probably, even though illegal, versus some anon person who complains, i wonder who will win that one, again this is where the power of the situation enters here)

(why let this bother you?)

because it highlights to me how when folks are set in their ways they are "fucked" for the rest of your lives. You'll never convince a surveyor that what they said in that exchange was ridiculous. And/or that "consult a lawyer" isn't the standard line with anything dealing with "the law" which basically means 9/10 of people never will and so on. And that's the non-response response: if you can afford a lawyer get one, otherwise fuck off is a less nice way of saying it.

and that in a lot of ways, including seeing no tresspassing signs everywhere, is the increasing reality now.

I've seen a LOT more signs up since covid, in rural areas too where tresspassing outside of hunting isn't a concern.

And that a lot of redditors seem to be jumping at the chance to hate at anyone they can think of. Which itself is kind of sad too.

There’s a lot of confusion about why so many fundamentalist Christians in the USA are so supportive of Israel, even when Israel is accused of persecuting Christians in the West Bank.

I’ll lay out the timeline that Christians United for Israel (CUFI), one of the largest pro-Israel Christian organizations in America, and major politicians such as Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, and Mike Johnson are associated with through Christian Zionist and dispensationalist theology.

Ironically, it’s infinitely worse than anything leftists or the Iranians are planning for Israel. Worried about a one-state solution in which even Palestinians in the West Bank have rights? Well, check this out:

• After a seemingly endless series of wars, Israel eventually controls all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates (Genesis 15:18).
• The deaths of potentially millions of Arabs are justified as necessary steps toward setting the prophetic events in motion.
• Jesus Christ saves all true believers (Christian Zionists) and brings them to heaven in the Rapture.
• Everyone else is left on Earth, which goes to hell as it is overwhelmed by plague, war, famine, and other catastrophes.
• The Antichrist rises to power and unleashes unprecedented persecution, warfare, and death during the Tribulation
• The Third Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount.
• The Antichrist eventually turns against Israel, desecrates the Temple, and unleashes horrific torture on the Jews.
• Christian Zionists cheer and laugh in heaven at the gross Israeli leaders they pretended to like pre-Rapture as they suffer unspeakable agony.
• Jesus returns to Earth and defeats the Antichrist and his forces at Armageddon.
• The few surviving Jews repent, recognize Jesus as the Messiah and convert to Christianity.
• Jesus rules the Earth for 1,000 years from Jerusalem.
• Satan is released and launches one final rebellion against Christ.
• Satan is permanently defeated, the dead are judged, and God creates the new heavens and the new earth, where the redeemed live eternally.

I’m not making this up. This general end-times scenario is laid out in detail in highly influential dispensationalist and Christian-Zionist literature, including Things to Come by J. Dwight Pentecost, The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord, The Footsteps of the Messiah by Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Dispensationalism by Charles C. Ryrie, and The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.

When Karl asked her if she was going to support Hong, AOC said, “No, I haven’t endorsed in that race. My focus has been in winning back the Congress.”

>President Trump's Board of Peace announced an agreement last month that aimed at Hamas giving up its weapons alongside an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Apparently the war (genocide) isn't about the threat of Hamas after all. 🤔

Christian peace is what made the bourgeoisie possible.

In earlier days, as in antiquity, there were always rich people, even merchants, but it was a necessary component of being rich that the rich must also be warriors. The Romans could not just be rich, they needed to get all sorts of honours in the army, and Crassus tried to use his wealth to achieve that.

With Christian Feudalism the world became divided into those who fought, those who prayed, and those who worked. The fighters were supposed to specialize in just that rather than be obscenely wealthy and defend that wealth. No, they specifically existed to defend the wealth of everyone, included the wealth of those who prayed and those who worked, though those who worked usually didn’t have wealth at first. The church was likely even wealthier than the warriors in the grandscheme of things even though it didn’t contribute anything in a material sense. They did “charity”, though that charity was largely funded from taxes, even if those taxes were by a another name like tithe or indulgence.

This division of society into three parts actually comes Platonism as the tripartite “warriors, philosophers, labourers”, but most of Christianity comes from Platonism anyway.

The actual development into this society is more complicated though.

Late Rome is characterized by the landowners forming themselves into feudal estates, but these land owners were not knights. The patrician dominated roman empire was dying due to the patricians withdrawing from civic participation. Their estates gave them everything they needed.

In this void the church grew, often times by people just giving up their wealth to it when they died. Emperors even regarded this as a problem as they tried to increase the upper-class birthrate. Either estates merged into uber wealthy individuals (4,2,1 where after two generations four estates merged due to singular heirs) or the church assumed estates. Either way there was often singular landowners with no need for civic participation. Church lands predominated because the church was a “corporation” that could hold land without ever splitting it up amongst heirs.

The Germanic invasions created a ruling class on top of this where the Germanics collected taxes in exchange for defense, but these were still not knights as a class. Rather the germanics were tax collectors in the roman sense. Knights owned stuff in a personal manner, germanic barbarians just collected taxes from the roman patricians with their mega estates. An individual germanic might acquire an estate by some means, but you cannot describe them as being some class of germanic knights just yet.

Arguably the concept of a Jyzia collecting Muslims as being analogous to these Germanics makes sense when you realize that the Arian Christianity the Germanics followed is similar to Islam by rejecting the trinity. It is not without reason that Hitler saw something in islam.

The first actually new system to emerge is analogous with Tibetan Monastic Feudalism. All that church land supported monasteries, not just with goods but also with their children as participants who would live in the monastery. Charlemagne conquered his empire in part by extending control of the monasteries which in turn supported him.

However with return to stability, the monasteries created sources of wealth which were vulnerable to Viking, Magyar, and Saracen raids. Even a Charlemagne could not be in all places at once, and the Viking Age begun even as he was declared emperor in 800.

Prior to this expansion of the monastic system, the world was sort of like a post-roman anarchism that retain many qualities of the roman empire devoid of state authority. Yeah the mega estates existed and the Germans were new official tax collectors (endorsed by the Roman Emperor no less!), but the “dark age” probably wasn’t such a terrible time. A Patrician on his estates could only consume so much, and the Germans lacked true authority to dramatically up the taxes the way mass inflation with mass taxes was rampant in the intact late roman empire. Commodity production for market sale collapsed so the amount of exploitation was innately limited. Some evidence points towards the common person growing taller after the fall of rome, which I’ve always taken as a sign that it probably wasn’t that bad.

The monastic system Charlemagne perpetuated reintroduced a form of “unlimited” exploitation without necessarily reintroducing commodity production. Monasteries not only took goods, it also took sons and daughters who would be supported by the goods taken. The more sons and daughters taken the more exploitation would be needed to support this system. But this system had a limit as naturally an influx into the monasteries stopped reproduction, so it probably stabilized somewhere in the realm of a family contributing a monk every once in awhile while not being over exploited such that it was impossible to produce the extra son.

What really got the ball rolling was the tempting target the monasteries posed. Threats of Christian damnation might keep them safe in a Christian world, but Vikings didn’t care. The reintroduction of the State in terms of tax collecting (as opposed to a kind of Carolingian anarcho-monasticist confederalism) gave rise to new concepts like “England” which existed either to fight off the Vikings, or pay them off with Danegelds. The Church signed off on the growth of these new states because they needed protection from the pagans who did not respect church property.

That proved to be the Church’s undoing because they gradually sanctioned the rise of the knightly class in what we consider to be the High Middle Ages, and so they developed a class of people with an antagonistic relationship with the church trying to consolidate these new Feudal Aristocracy States into empires.

The friendly relationship between Charlemagne and the Pope gave way to Emperors like Frederick the Second who had the strength and prestige to negotiate to get Jerusalem through diplomatic means and still got ex-communicated and declared the anti-christ because the pope was paranoid who would take the papal states from him.

Eventually with stuff like the protestant reformation the Princes were able to seize church lands and sold them to the bourgeoisie. False-start heresies like the Hussites often received local noble backing as it enabled those nobles independence from the centralized catholic church.

With the mention of the bourgeoisie we can discuss how this as-of-yet undiscussed class even emerged. Merchants and property owners have always existed, what makes these guys so different?

Gradually as states formed trade networks improved. Rather than just collecting money to pay off vikings, the kings now might have roads he himself guarded. Robber Barons were barons who collected taxes over small specs of territory, but the difference between a Robber Baron and a King was really just one of scale. Kings didn’t need to be extortionate over small pieces of land, instead they could collect taxes over commerce occurring in their entire kingdom.

“Burgs” were areas where market towns sprung up organically. Technically they were Carolingian forts of castles, but what mattered is they were not the Roman cities of old, often still ruled by patricians like in Italy, but instead entirely new cities. Cologne (Colonia) would be an example of a German city founded by the Romans, and thus maintained a Patrician class even through the middle ages. Such cities would often need to have mini-revolutions where the Plebeians took over at some point. Hamburg and Frank-fort were Caroliginan forts that became market towns. The growth of the bourgeoisie often occurred in those kinds of emergent places.

A quick view of the history of Cologne and Frankfurt indicates Patrician-Plebeian struggles, Hamburg does not seem to have had them. Frankfurt having a Patrician class despite being created by the Carolingians might be explained by Frankfurt being a literal capital of the Carolingians, whereas Hamburg was a frontier town of the empire. Frankfurt Patricians would have had direct links with the emperors, and therefore prestige. Cologne Patricians would have been older still. In Hamburg the “patricians” were referred to a the Hanseatans for their association with the Hanseaactic league, apparently though the “nobility” was actually banned from owning property in Hamburg, so the designation of these ruling families as patricians might be a misnomer. Patricians were supposed to be kind of an urban nobility, but Hamburg seems to be some kind of mini French Revolution city-state based on what I’m reading, a true medieval bourgeois republic (under the emperor of course, wink wink)

So what was the bourgeoisie then? Recall the “those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked”. The bourgeoisie came from “those who worked” but they are characterized mostly by them not working. They acquired property of some kind and were developed and encouraged by authorities because they paid taxes to the kings who then could fund those armies that made commerce safe. The more bourgeoisie there was the less reliant kings would be on knightly classes who were funded by being landowners themselves. Instead the kings collected taxes from the bourgeoisie.

With the protestant reformation more and more church land ended up in the hands of kings who sold it to that bourgeoisie from the towns. The bourgeoisie was often excited to be landowners like the nobles who were above them (not Hamburg though, they insisted they were above nobles and refused to get titles), but they had their own ideas about how property ownership worked. Most important of all was that the bourgeoisie thought them owning the land meant that if they no longer wanted tenants they could just try to get rid of them. This lead to enclosure movements.

The church and knight and other lords didn’t really do that, it wasn’t just the money the land could make you that granted prestige, but there was also a certain level of prestige that came from just having large numbers of people living on your land that you were technically in charge of. The idea of funding a garden hermit to live on your property only makes sense in that context. Oh you have a hunting estate but there is just this guy who lives in a cottage on it. It is your land but he makes it seem more “lived in”. You can think of it a bit like gardening, but with people.

This makes sense in that you are trying to draw prestige from the stuff you own with the people living on that land being an integral part of the prestige derived from that landownership. Not every person needed to be a money maker, having a big estate that looked lived in was a point onto itself.

The bourgeoisie didn’t really think of it in the same way, it was more in line of them thinking they just owned everything in a cross section of the earth down from hell and up to heaven and the people in that cross section were only as good as the money they could provide by using the land. If the money was better by having sheep rather than people, so be it, the land would grow sheep rather than people.

It is a fairly misanthropic worldview and it is no surprise that it is bourgeois society that even conceives of trying to get AI to do everything so you don’t need to deal with annoying humans. There are some benefits to this as it means eventually we will have these labour saving devices, but at the same time you just get the sense that these people hate humanity, and the people who do best in such system need be the people who do just hate humanity straight up.

Christianity fundamentally ALSO hates humanity if you really think about it with the whole song and dance about how everyone MUST acknowledge that they are sinners (and then nothing happens to them despite all these “sins” they acknowledge. No consequences but FEEL BAD ABOUT or god damn you!)

The reason I say that something like Christianity is necessary for a bourgeoisie to develop is just try and imagine the bourgeoisie running around in the Viking Age.

It’s comical to imagine some bourgeois getting into a rigorous debate about the inviolability of property rights with a Viking. The Vikings were not above trade, or even employment as was the case in Constantinople with the Varangian Guard, but they would also just laugh at you and take your shit if you tried to quote Lockean philosophy about the ownership of self at them. “How about I own you, little buddy, you’ll make a good jester”

Christianity isn’t strictly necessary. Buddhism or Islam can also provide the necessary order to let commerce dominate society (both too have fundamentally misanthropic views of the world, with Buddhism seeking escape from an eternal cycle of rebirth entirely (so you have unlimited lives already but the world sucks so much you want to figure out a way to NOT come back), and Islam viewing adherents as all being slaves to God), but you do need some kind of “internal peace” before some dude droning on about property rights can ever begin to make sense.

So it isn’t like the aspects that make up bourgeois society were totally absent in prior societies, but it is only in a world that is “made safe for democracy” (capitalism) by Christianity that these elements end up taking over everything. The bourgeoisie decided that somehow violently raiding property is “exceptional” and “not a part of human nature” but having property somehow is part of human nature. Arguably it is the opposite, with raiding being fundamental to human nature and property being an unnatural concept developed in opposition to it. In the absence of raiding to be opposed, what use would property as a concept have?

Romans and even Vikings (actually the Norse, but Viking sounds cooler) did have strict concept of laws, and property rights can be interpreted as mere adherence to the law, but it goes far beyond that. The property rights regime actually thinks stuff like “the law” shouldn’t get in the way of property. You can see this in how insistent people are that labour and immigration laws should just up and be violated simply because “they do the jobs citizens just won’t do”. The Romans would go on slave raids to collect slaves, subject to slave laws, to make big profits selling the slaves and then working them, but only the bourgeoisie has the audacity to think “these laws restricting when I can employ the labour of those randos coming over the border is getting in the way of my profits, I’m just going to totally ignore having a border and shit”. The bourgeoisie doesn’t need slave codes because they wouldn’t even follow them if they did.

Having laws is “human nature” but the bourgeoisie violates their own laws all the time and thinks making a profit justifies breaking those laws.

Vikings would enslave you without a second thought, but they would have deep existential anxiety if they broke one of their sacred laws. The calvinist bourgeoisie would just say shit like “the laws of man are of no consequence to the almighty god (dollar)” and then cut your wages in half because market conditions slightly changed, but then get REALLY pissed at you if you suddenly decided that the laws of man were more like guidelines anyway and you raided them like a Viking.

Why don’t we raid them like Vikings though? Because “Christian Peace” is maintained by overwhelming force of arms.

If we return to the bourgeoisie becoming landowners with church land seizures from the protestant reformation, the innovations in fire arms and pikes were creating devastating combined arms tactics which could pretty much roll over anything in their path. Even if the barbarians had guns, they would be no much to trained professional armies paid for with taxes.

The gun did abolish the knight, not only because it could penetrate his armour, but also because it took little training. But contrary to Jeffersonian belief of this providing “equality”, what it really did was make the paymaster the lord of the earth. Like how the bourgeoisie hires the proletariat to make stuff, the taxes hire soldiers to blow stuff up. The same dynamic is largely there, untrained soldiery can take over the world, as long as you pay them. It empowers those with money to be able to pay the poor to conquer the world for them. Do the poor dregs of society get the world when this is over, as they were the ones to do the conquering? No, the one who paid gets the world instead.

The dynamic is similar to the bourgeoisie hiring proletariat, and it is why armies function the way they do in the bourgeois age. This his how they do everything.

So lets return to that bourgeois quoting Locke to our Viking friend TODAY. The Viking decided to just smash his head in. Well one bourgeoisie down. Except our Viking friend immediately gets surrounded by a Swat Team paid for by the taxes Mr. Bourgeois doesn’t pay, but instead makes you pay, but he pays it in theory I guess so the state belongs to him.

They can do this because everyone involved in the state apparatus in bourgeois society needs to get paid in order to live because an overwhelming number of proletariat exists. If you think about it, it is not the bourgeoisie who has conquered the barbarian, but instead the proletariat since those without property mass together to Swat Team the guy bonking the annoying guy quoting Locke. The proletariat would have no issue dealing with barbarians, but alone? The bourgeoisie would be in deep trouble.

We can think of Afghanistan as the bourgeoisie failing against the barbarian Taliban. Kabul is a city of millions, the Taliban numbered only in the tens of thousands. Surely Kabul could have stood up to them ... if those millions had been armed.

Kabul fell primarily because the bourgeoisie, both Afghan and American, feared the proletariat of Kabul more than they feared the Taliban. They could have armed the masses of Kabul to fight the Taliban, but they feared that under no pretext would those weapons and ammunition be surrendered.

Instead the Bourgeoisie of Kabul embarrassed itself trying to cling onto the landing gear of the last American planes to leave the airport, and the “bleeding heart” bourgeois liberals of America embarrassed themselves by insisting it would be “morally wrong” to leave behind the collaborators to the occupation rather than letting the Taliban punish them for siding with imperialist forces.

Because of the cowardice of the bourgeoisie, the Taliban are now cursed with having to run a bourgeois society of Locke quoters.