Douglas Lain

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Douglas Lain

Douglas Lain

@DougLain

Dissident Marxist, writer & YouTuber. Head of @sublationmedia. Author of Bash, Bash, Revolution Patreon https://t.co/VFXCzs9VbV [email protected]

Portland, OR Katılım Kasım 2008
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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
Rather than pretend to be players, leftists might accept that they are Watchers? Disinterested observation?
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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
Just heard Chuck Norris died. That's impossible, isn't it?
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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
US doesn't need to solve it, just needs to manage it while holding Iran down in terms of rebuilding military and nuclear capacity. Difficult? Sure. Wasteful? Yes. Impossible? No. Of course, this leaves Iranians in a position to suffer from both repression from the Mullahs and from the sanctions and economic precarity. Really the worst of both worlds for Iranians.
Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش@citrinowicz

Even in a post-conflict scenario, Iran’s ability to threaten and intermittently disrupt the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to disappear. This is not a temporary wartime tactic, but a structural feature of Iran’s strategy. Over time, the Strait risks evolving into Iran’s version of a controlled chokepoint ("Iran's Suez canal") —where Tehran can impose recurring economic and political costs on global shipping and energy flows. Much like a coercive toll system, Iran would retain the ability to selectively escalate, signal, and extract leverage even without full closure. Absent a fundamental change in Iran’s regime or strategic posture, the challenge in Hormuz is not solvable, it is manageable at best.

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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
The problem is NEITHER financial illiteracy nor a dysfunctional safety net. And we should all know that by now. Notice the framing. Notice what's left out. Independent working-class politics aimed at going beyond the need for mere redistribution.
Jacobin@jacobin

The affluent often blame poverty on bad budgeting skills, claiming the poor just need to be taught financial literacy. But working-class people require living wages and a functioning safety net, not condescending lectures about money management. jacobin.com/2026/03/povert…

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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
Danny is correct. A blockade of Kharg Island would be only one piece of the puzzle of securing the Strait. But, what should also be understood is that total security isn't required in order to normalize the flow of oil through the region. What's needed is enough protection so that insurance agencies can price in disruptions and still come out ahead in terms of their profit.
Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش@citrinowicz

News flash from the future: Even a blockade of Kharg Island would not force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. This (yet again) reflects a persistent misunderstanding of Iran’s strategic doctrine. For Tehran, control over the Strait is not just economic leverage—it is a core component of regime survival and deterrence. Under pressure, Iran is more likely to escalate than concede. Reopening the Strait would likely require one of two extreme options: either regime change, or a large-scale military campaign to seize and secure the waterway. Such an operation would take months and still wouldn’t prevent Iran from disrupting traffic through asymmetric means. There is no silver bullet to the Iran problem. The regime will hold onto Hormuz the same way it defends every pillar of its survival—with persistence and escalation. If reopening the Strait is the strategic objective, policymakers should recognize the cost: a prolonged, high-intensity conflict, and likely retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure. #Ira

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Albert E Oater
Albert E Oater@EwoodTerraces·
@NicholasTyrone Literally nobody says the second the bit. Don’t out just sit there in your houses shaking for hours until your bodies finally give in to the voices screaming in your heads “go and tell more lies on the internet”
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Nick Tyrone
Nick Tyrone@NicholasTyrone·
The way the left has moved from “real socialism has never been tried” to “the socialism we had in the 20th was amazing, and the socialist countries still out there like Cuba are great, so we should be like them” over the last decade is fascinating.
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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
It's worth keeping in mind that Marx was a critic of socialism. So the truth isn't that "real socialism hasn't been tried," but more that proletariat socialism was defeated. This is very difficult for "leftists" to take up because it doesn't offer them, as intellectuals, a central role and because it requires accepting both defeat and the possibility that they are not the most advanced people in human history.
Nick Tyrone@NicholasTyrone

The way the left has moved from “real socialism has never been tried” to “the socialism we had in the 20th was amazing, and the socialist countries still out there like Cuba are great, so we should be like them” over the last decade is fascinating.

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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
You're getting it wrong, Tutt. Unless by "liberalism" you mean "progressive statism." Liberalism is the basis of class society, not an external ideology that covers it up. Free labor is what sets the stage for capital accumulation and all the contradictions that arise from it. These supposed planks of class society you mention--personal responsibility and classlessness-- are NOT merely ideological, not lies pushed on the public. First off, "classlessness" as an ideological concept doesn't exist, at least not amongst leftists, because class itself has been lost as an ideological concept. Instead, what is thought to be a political class analysis is always everywhere a caste analysis. Your own tweet is an example. So, the aim of personal responsibility within a casteless society is bedrock. Capitalism relies on these things because it is produced by these approaches to creating freedom. These "ideologies" are a material/social reality within capital, but like everything, they are in contradiction with themselves. Personal responsibility becomes conformity to the herd (as you well know), and castelessness is threatened by social striving within the Bonapartist state. What should be noted is that the workers are the most committed to personal responsibility and castelessness, which is one reason they are the revolutionary types rather than the petty bourgeois intellectuals.
Daniel Tutt@TuttReal

When class antagonisms become undeniable liberalism goes into a crisis, its entire capacity to be effective is upset because as an ideology liberalism is about keeping class conflict covered over. Its two planks of covering over are there is no class, only personal failure or group pathology. These planks are extremely sticky ideological anchors that capitalist market dominated societies rely on to re-route and obfuscate social reality.

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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
This is just wrong, Tutt. Unless by "liberalism" you mean "progressive statism." Liberalism is the basis of class society, not an external ideology that covers it up. Free labor is what sets the stage for capital accumulation and all the contradictions that arise from it. These supposed planks of class society you mention--personal responsibility and classlessness-- are NOT merely ideological, not lies pushed on the public. First off, "classlessness" as an ideological concept doesn't exist, at least not amongst leftists, because class itself has been lost as an ideological concept. Instead, what is thought to be a political class analysis is always everywhere a caste analysis. Your own tweet is an example. So, the aim of personal responsibility within a casteless society is bedrock. Capitalism relies on these things because it is produced by these approaches to creating freedom. These "ideologies" are a material/social reality within capital, but like everything, they are in contradiction with themselves. Personal responsibility becomes conformity to the herd (as you well know), and castelessness is threatened by social striving within the Bonapartist state. What should be noted is that the workers are the most committed to personal responsibility and castelessness, which is one reason they are the revolutionary types rather than the petty bourgeois intellectuals.
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Daniel Tutt
Daniel Tutt@TuttReal·
When class antagonisms become undeniable liberalism goes into a crisis, its entire capacity to be effective is upset because as an ideology liberalism is about keeping class conflict covered over. Its two planks of covering over are there is no class, only personal failure or group pathology. These planks are extremely sticky ideological anchors that capitalist market dominated societies rely on to re-route and obfuscate social reality.
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Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain@DougLain·
Here's why it isn't delusional. The premise is that the neoliberal order is ending and a new approach to global capital has to be established. The United States is positioned to accomplish this, but it will only happen through internal politics, and that's usually ugly. Again, none of this is to be celebrated. Neoliberalism wasn't an improvement on Fordism, and what's coming next won't be "better" just different. The other thing to realize is that there was a moment there, around 2008 and after, when an attempt to organize an independent left might have had a shot at taking advantage of the impasse in neoliberalism. But that didn't happen. This is the result.
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Charles Curran
Charles Curran@charliebcurran·
If you think AI film can’t be art then explain this.
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