I call every woman I don’t know “miss”. I’ve just seen too many of these meltdowns among my friends and girlfriends over the years, I don’t want to contribute to harm
I call every woman I don’t know “miss”. I’ve just seen too many of these meltdowns among my friends and girlfriends over the years, I don’t want to contribute to harm
What made you such a fervent anti communist? Most people don’t care, but you love hating communism its like your whole thing. I think you love hating communism more than I love communism, though to be fair, not by very much ;)
You see I associate with a history of other radicals and revolutionaries who called themselves communist. And it says right in the manifesto, “communists disdain to hide their views and beliefs.” Why should I hate the USSR? Because that drunk Joe McCarthy told us to? That’s where your misunderstanding of communism comes from: an alcoholic fascist republican bully. Its strange to hear you dismiss trumps (very wrong) policies in one breath, and repeat the lies of Trumps greatest predecessor. There’s no consistency or content in your criticism, its all just moralizing.
Okay wait, I didn’t say the USS fucking R I said Marxist communist. You’re putting things in there that don’t belong, and I shouldn’t have to eliminate every movement of the last 150 years that I don’t want to be associated with. Marxist communist.
As for being a child, I’m far from it. Unless you’d like to insult me straight up and infantalize what I’ve spent a long time understanding and explaining to people (mostly to help avoid confusion and campism among other Marxists.) While you and I really don’t agree, I doubt you’d call the last several years of my life that I’ve been a socialist organizer a project that is anti-usa. I’m no fan of imperialism, and the USA is the core, and I’ll fight it when possible. That doesn’t align me with Russia and China, it aligns me with justice and truth.
The USA is not rational, global capitalism is not rational. When China behaves IMO pretty rationally for a global power, it goes against the interests of the USA. This is how imperialism and class war turn reason into anti-reason, which anyone with eyes and ears can see is the law of the land here. You can’t look at the world and be like “this makes sense” and that isn’t completely the fault of foreign interests, which def exist and behave maliciously. But again, that doesn’t make unreason into reason.
That’s pretty good, I agree with your definition of suffering then.
So how do you describe someone who identifies as a marxist communist but not a tankie? Say someone who even got banned from some comms on “tankie” instances for defending criticism (albeit left criticism) of, for example, the government of Cuba?
It seems like there is still some disconnect. For example how does modern day Russia play into all this? They aren’t remotely socialist, they gutted all the socialism out, similar to the suffering you describe now, back in the early 90s. Not trying to equivocate just understand. China has abandoned Marxism in all but an academic sense. The current government is a descendent of “capitalist roader” Dengism, and pres Xi said that China no longer recognizes the class struggle. To me, that’s what makes socialists, participating in class struggle. We know China hasn’t abolished class so they have abandoned Marx.
As for the other stuff, even if it aligns with the schemes of Russia, maybe China, cant you conceive of any reason whatsoever as to why someone might want the USA to be weakened, other than a strict alignment Roth the goals of Russia and China? The USA has done a lot of horrible things, and it isn’t fair to strawman every USA defeatist as a Russian op.
Okay well there was a guy named Karl Marx who wrote in the mid-late 1800s, and if you read his books, they are very good
If you can’t delineate between Marxism and Russia/China then you’re being intentionally obtuse. I promise you, that the Marx that I am intimately familiar with has nothing to do with them. They came after him. I’m morbidly curious about how you would describe the history of China and Russia.
All I’m saying is that reading hard books is good for your brain. Also can you please define “chaos” and “suffering” because I wouldn’t want to misunderstand how you define those things.
That’s not true, the critical analysis of the enlightenment overthrew the dominance of the church and suborned it to private property. There are several good liberal analysts and historians, in many cases Marxists depend on the analysis done by liberals. Liberalism is a scientific mindset.
But like Marx says in Theses on Feuerbach, as well as a lot of other places, the problem with enlightenment rationalism is it is too objective, like it turns everything, all relationships, all of nature, politics, history, and turns them into objects which have inherent qualities. As such there is a preference over “real” things that can be directly experienced. But as we know, capitalism delivers many false appearances which is where liberals get it wrong but Marxists, who see “things” as relationships created by human beings, can scientifically see much further and deeper than liberals. History appears to the liberal as an assortment of things, whereas to the Marxists we view history as relationships.
Dialectical materialism is a development on, and breaking with, the empirical, objective, enlightenment materialism that came before it. But the two share a common root, if not branch.
But I agree that 90% of liberal commentators are completely intellectually dishonest defenders of private property, and entrenched power; guys like Bret Stephens and Matty Ynglesias. Just completely dishonest grifters playing sophist games with history and events to justify class rule. Many academics like this as well, but I think in reality its more of a mixed bag.
“Completely uncurious” is such a great individual criticism
It kind of has a double meaning. One side is someone who believes in like democracy, freedom, human rights, and the other side is someone who believes in private property. For historical reasons, the two tendencies are like joined together on most things, but there are differences.
A lot of leftists don’t like liberals because they defend private property and capitalism, but a lot of liberals see themselves as leftists because of those progressive values.
Whether or not a liberal is left wing very much depends on the liberal. Every socialist was once a liberal, whether they were political or not. Conservatives are a kind of liberal, but with the progressive parts removed so it only defends private property.
capitalism is really good at like hiding away its injustice behind contracts and laws, a socialist would see those laws as unjust and want to do radical reforms up to and including overthrow of the ruling billionaires. a liberal might not see the injustice, or if they do, tend to want to stick to courts and reforms because it does contain elements of fairness and justice. liberal justice is more fair than feudal justice, but less than what many socialists would like.
The meme is a reference to the idea that social democracy, liberalism and fascism are all different aspects of capitalism.
No they didn’t, what a boring take divorced from reality.
When you definitely understand marxism
The last time my wife and I went through Amish country, I saw a sign stapled high on a telephone pole, written with marker on pink poster board that said like “Yoder’s website design” and the number to call to presumably ask Yoder to make you a website.
People may not be familiar with Amish country, but there are tons of like construction companies, cabinet shops, etc., because people out here really like Amish made carpentry, so there’s lots of little businesses set up. Yoder is an Amish/Mennonite name, so I can imagine some young Mennonite guy selling like basic HTML/ CSS or like WordPress sites to all these little businesses that probably want a website but don’t use the internet themselves.
Or who knows maybe their web design is as good as their carpentry?
That’s who came to mind!
What a legend
The state is the historical apparatus that manages the inherent contradictions between classes. It administrates capitalism for and by the ruling class. Capitalism is maintained by the state, the state sustains capital and private property, through violence.
Capitalism is a form of class domination, various forms of slavery stitched together to exploit the masses for the benefit of the few. Only a democratically organized working class can “fix” capitalism, by eradicating it. The government is the apparatus that temporarily fixes the contradictions of capitalism, but the relations defined by this irrational, inefficient social system (unless you consider monopolies efficient) are what state governments under capitalist rule try and eventually fail to “mitigate”. The contradictions compile until you have an economic crash, which is actually good for monopolistic capitalists who can purchase the productive capital of their competitors at a fraction of the cost, leading to systematic downsizing; while the rest of the population suffers recession, inflation, and mass indignity.
The poor exist because there are rich. The capitalists are in control, as a class, and governments merely mitigate the worst tendencies. This is why reformism isn’t a long term strategy. Capitalism can’t be reformed, it can only be replaced.
And if we, the working class will be able to replace it with a system of greater freedom, equality and democracy, then the aims of socialism will have been reached without the “authoritarian” tendencies becoming reified in any significant way.
You can have your doubts about this, but your libertarian perspective is one of false appearances. If you want to understand the state and the economy, it must be considered as a series of relations brought about by human activity, using the tools laid before us by history and nature. If you think of the world like this, considering the subjective nature of politics and the economy, such as incentives, motives, etc., then your investigation will uncover the true relations that comprise this mass wage slavery to the billionaire class, known as capital.
In 1776, people didn’t know what fascism was. Hell there wasnt even consensus on what capitalism was, Wealth of Nations was published that same year. They had never seen a capitalist system degenerate, as would happen in France under Louis Napoleon in the 1850s.
They knew what feudalism was, which was bad and a form of authoritarian autocracy, but this isn’t Fascism. They were afraid that the kings and queens would get restored, as revolutionaries (and capitalism was revolutionary and progressive at that time) they were safeguarding against a counter revolution which would come from monarchists.
There is no way they could conceive of a movement to overthrow capitalism, which they barely understood although being the revolutionary capitalist class, that would come from a greater demand of social reforms, one where the class they were a part of would rule society rather than just administer it as they had for centuries, one where a class that they didn’t even know about, the proletarian working class, would supplant them and bring greater prosperity and equality. This movement developed fully in Russia and Europe after the first world war when the last of the weakened feudal aristocracy destroyed their own continent to fight over scraps of colonial internationalism. A revolution in Russia inspired the global working class, especially where they were highly organized and industrialized such as Italy and Germany, and terrified the ruling capitalist classes of those countries.
In the shadow of the emerging workers movement grew the dialectical opposite and evil twin of German and Italian communism: Fascism. Fascists gleefully fight and kill communists, and desire power above all else, exploiting contradictions in liberal democracy (that’s “liberal” meaning supports private property, not cool liberals that like freedom and justice) to confuse the masses and gain power. The ruling classes, weakened by decades of militant worker struggles, assented to the will of the fascists and in a last ditch effort to preserve their dwindling control, handed power over to them. The rest is history.
The founders couldn’t conceive of the conditions you describe as they either didn’t exist or wouldnt be developed enough to study for 50-70 years. Not all forms of authoritarianism are the same. They thought they were doing away with their version of it. Besides, the “founding fathers” gags violently would have fucking loved Trump
Interesting to see “technofeudal” entering liberal discourse
Look at mister “Sometimes I write programs that have more than a single niche function” over here
This is a post about growing disappointment with Python
Yeah now that you mention it, the leader of the worlds largest pedophile club has some strange beliefs
I see lots of references to John Denver, Country Roads, but I present:
“Bye, bye Miss Bologna Pie”