
Madeline Pendleton a/k/a @JeanGeirge is a business owner and anti-communist activist well known for being an outspoken advocate against the communist left, despite the fact that she will be joining the ranks of the proletariat working for her when the haute bourgeoisie inevitably absorb her alongside other small artisans and entrepreneurs. Her activism primarily consists of acting as the organ grinder's monkey for any national bourgeoisie except her own and bemoaning the illiteracy of "left communists", as a result of the delusion that her agreement with Proudhon on the wholesome nature of small enterprises and the falsifiers of the 20th century on socialism render her a real "communist. While the word "reformist" might spring to mind, we consider it a grave insult to say she is cut from the same cloth as the renegade Kautsky; after all, the renegade Kautsky had to be a Marxist first and a renegade second! While she is one of the many guignols slinging insults at those who have even a passing understanding of Marxism, the sheer vigor and intensity of the infantile disorder driving this behavior is without peer.
We have made a number of allegations in this letter, the chief of which is that Pendleton is a card-carrying member of the bourgeoisie who has devoted her entire adult life to defending the capitalist mode of production under a socialist aesthetic for the sake of personal advertisement and obscuring or reconciling herself to the fact that her class interests lie in the exploitation of the proletariat working for her through the extraction of surplus value, no matter how "ethical" her business is. She will never be able to obscure this fact, even with an ocean of folksy anecdotes about middle class life in Fresno and condescending cliches about the liberation of the people at her disposal. The fact that her suggested reading consists solely of works defending the capitalist mode of production, barring two or three works by Marx and Engels, only validates the fact that her position as a member of the petty bourgeoisie defines her understanding of the communist program. We admit, it's a good grift! A "socialist" business in which the socialist boss pays the socialist wages to her socialist employees and keeps the socialist surplus.
However, Marxists are not workerists. Members of the bourgeoisie can be cognizant of the worker's movement and participate in it as Engels did. Pendleton could easily prove herself as a true adherent of the Marxist orientation by giving us any sign of life when it comes to her understanding of theory. It would be an extreme overreach to request that she actively engages with the programmatic content of the communist left, as this would require reckoning with Marx and Engels themselves. An impossible task due to her status as a victim of No Child Left Behind and due to the fact that she has read neither Marx or Engels. Disagreeing with Onorato Damen or Amadeo Bordiga on the question of how communists must interact with unions requires, if nothing else, an understanding of what the basic program of communists even is. Our request is simple: prove that you have read literally anything! Vanquish the barbarian hordes by showing us that you, Madeline Pendleton, even own a copy of Capital or the German Ideology. Better yet, show us your entire bookshelf so we can see the great and authentic authors of your library. Surely somebody so obsessed with aesthetics as a way of lionizing themselves owns a small collection of texts by Plekhanov and Lenin, or any communist at all?
So, Ms. Pendleton, would you humor us, in the name of free and fair debate, and show us your bookshelf?
With disrespect, left-communists.