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it is kind of amazing how often you get 'marxism is unfalsifiable' and 'we know marxism is wrong because of the experience of the 20th century' presented next to each other in a discussion of socialism though
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Sep 10, 2016 16:35
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Peel posted:it is kind of amazing how often you get 'marxism is unfalsifiable' and 'we know marxism is wrong because of the experience of the 20th century' presented next to each other in a discussion of socialism though Eh, idk, one is making a statement about Marxism as an explanation for social systems, the other is making a statement about Marxism as a political program.
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Sep 10, 2016 16:46
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Al! posted:I remember McCaine once claiming that the dutch had nothing to do with slavery once, that was pretty funny in his defense he was probably like 18 when he last posted here
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Sep 10, 2016 17:32
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tfw people try to litigate the differences between socialist and capitalist countries foreign involvement
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Sep 10, 2016 17:42
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rudatron posted:In Lenin's case, it's probably more accurate to view 'scientific' as meaning 'non-utopian', that it's a sort of the conclusion of a force of history, rather than a choice to create a heaven on earth or whatever. "Non-utopian" is a reading that is both highly plausible and highly laughable. Lenin posted:We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away.
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Sep 10, 2016 19:54
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Jack of Hearts posted:"Non-utopian" is a reading that is both highly plausible and highly laughable. It's gonna be amazing folks. The excesses are gonna wither away. There just gonna completely wither away, believe me. When will they wither away? I don't have that information with me right now, but I'll have some people - the best people- I'll have them look into it.
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Sep 10, 2016 21:18
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Seems kind of funny to argue that Leninism is too authoritarian and yet simultaneously not authoritarian enough.
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Sep 10, 2016 21:29
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Brainiac Five posted:Seems kind of funny to argue that Leninism is too authoritarian and yet simultaneously not authoritarian enough. Having an ideological goal is dumb as Hell. *believes Liberalism is the ideal*
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Sep 11, 2016 01:46
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Having an ideological goal is dumb as Hell. *believes Liberalism is the ideal* We are scientific and non-utopian. *insists that a utopian future society will undoubtedly arise as an eventual consequence of socialist revolution* Am I doing this right?
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Sep 11, 2016 02:27
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yes i suppose if that passage were the entirety of lenin's written work he would be as easily dismissable
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Sep 11, 2016 02:42
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*kicks The End of History under the couch*
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Sep 11, 2016 02:47
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Homework Explainer posted:yes i suppose if that passage were the entirety of lenin's written work he would be as easily dismissable That is not an isolated quote in S&R. Would you rather I took his scientific and non-utopian utopianism seriously?
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Sep 11, 2016 02:51
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I'm not dismissing Lenin's writing altogether fwiw. Some of S&R is interesting. I am merely pointing out that his use of the word "scientific" was pretentious as gently caress, and his insistence that he and his were "not utopians" was, given what he actually wrote in the same paragraph, completely comical. HE, if you want to give me a guide to which parts of S&R should be read ironically, I would be most appreciative. Pener Kropoopkin posted:*kicks The End of History under the couch* But...that's where I keep all my back issues of The New Republic, there's no room. Tacky-Ass Rococco fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 03:17
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If it's "utopian" to believe that the majority of criminal activity is a consequence of things like poverty and discrimination, then we must conclude that only the right is free from the taint of utopianism, and therefore that it has no meaning as a criticism.
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Sep 11, 2016 03:35
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The goal of creating a utopia is in fact.. *researches diligently. Late nights in the library and long hours spent interviewing experts in multiple fields.* Very good!
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Sep 11, 2016 03:53
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Brainiac Five posted:If it's "utopian" to believe that the majority of criminal activity is a consequence of things like poverty and discrimination, then we must conclude that only the right is free from the taint of utopianism, and therefore that it has no meaning as a criticism. Pfft, come on, the world has no time for this kind of naive idealism *lights cigar on burning corpse of homeless man* now let's get down to real issues, taxes for the rich: why should they not exist?
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Sep 11, 2016 03:57
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The Kingfish posted:The goal of creating a utopia is in fact.. Who cares about utopia, sounds boring tbh. Gotta keep at least a bit of struggle in there to keep things spicy.
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Sep 11, 2016 04:41
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He's not advocating the creation of a utopia, he is saying that there will be an improvement. Do you believe that a society better than the current one must necessarily be a utopia?
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Sep 11, 2016 05:23
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You can still disagree with him on the causes of crime and excess, and argue (I would say persuasively and correctly) that his dream of spontaneous community action as a substitute for a formalized state will not materialize, without necessarily regarding that as utopian - He had a theory. He is applying that theory. It can be proven wrong. It did not simply expect people to 'act better' or 'be nicer', or expect some robot to solve everything.
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Sep 11, 2016 05:28
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rudatron posted:He's not advocating the creation of a utopia, he is saying that there will be an improvement. Do you believe that a society better than the current one must necessarily be a utopia? The goal of utopia sorta implies there is such a thing. Maybe the problem I have with it is that utopia means a different thing to every person. Just have a straight cut out description sounds better (i.e. no starvin yada yada), which will end up continually revised than talking about utopia as a goal from the gate.
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Sep 11, 2016 05:29
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Marxists and Marxist-Leninists considered themselves non-utopian because they were contrasting themselves to other socialist revolutionaries, and anarchists, who believed that plenty could be achieved for all and everything would be better immediately after the revolution. Marxists argued that you can't achieve the ideal state of communism without a socialist phase which is necessary to develop the material conditions that make its actualization possible. Lenin was also dealing directly with the immediate problem that, even if you can achieve revolution you'll still have to contend with the existential threat of global capitalism as manifested by imperialism. Marx was living through an era where the ancient aristocracy was violently overthrown and supplanted by the bourgeoisie. It wasn't exactly crazy for him to assume that a similar revolutionary phase could occur in the near future.
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Sep 11, 2016 05:40
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rudatron posted:He had a theory. He is applying that theory. It can be proven wrong. It did not simply expect people to 'act better' or 'be nicer', or expect some robot to solve everything. Can it be proven wrong? quote:With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away.
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Sep 11, 2016 05:50
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Jack of Hearts posted:Can it be proven wrong? There's no real way to test it, because "the removal of exploitation" was never achieved by the Bolshevik project. War Communism was immediately supplanted by the NEP, and the state functioned as the "sole capitalist" to advance the rate of industrialization under collectivization. The immediate material and political necessities asserted themselves against the emancipatory project. The closest thing to a "real world" example of the removal of exploitation, are cooperative firms, but they still have to be evaluated in terms of their relation to the capitalist societies in which they must operate. Unless the whole of society is emancipated, then it's not a testable hypothesis. https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
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Sep 11, 2016 06:01
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Homeless Friend posted:The goal of utopia sorta implies there is such a thing. Maybe the problem I have with it is that utopia means a different thing to every person. Just have a straight cut out description sounds better (i.e. no starvin yada yada), which will end up continually revised than talking about utopia as a goal from the gate. Jack of Hearts posted:Can it be proven wrong?
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Sep 11, 2016 07:22
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You can't prove the general statement wrong, but you can prove specific ones it wrong. For example if you combined it with a theory about the formation of the character in childhood and adolescence you could propose a generational timecale for decline. The position of the defender would become more and more ludicrous the longer they held out in the face of no improvement. You could also derive the statement from psychological and sociological theories about the nature and origin of crime and violence, that would be open to disproof. If you can sever the link between crime and exploitation, or communism and the lack of exploitation, the claim is left with no grounding.
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Sep 11, 2016 11:51
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rudatron posted:Yes? If it doesn't 'wither away', there's your counter-proof, 'how quickly' doesn't mean 'we get to justify delaying the effects indefinitely'. I think the lack of time frame is critical, because when you're discussing the creation of a society radically different from any civilization (loaded word, I know) in history, it's entirely plausible that it might take more than a human lifetime to get from A to B. In this case, we're talking about 1) the creation of a socialist state under the dictatorship of the proletariat, 2) eliminating economic exploitation while creating the material conditions necessary to transition to true democracy and a second-stage socialist society, 3) sitting patiently over the next few decades to see if the state then recedes to nothingness. So it strikes me a bit like a hypothesis in physics that can be tested if you happen to have a particle accelerator the size of the solar system lying around: testable in theory, not in practice. Peel posted:You can't prove the general statement wrong, but you can prove specific ones it wrong. For example if you combined it with a theory about the formation of the character in childhood and adolescence you could propose a generational timecale for decline. The position of the defender would become more and more ludicrous the longer they held out in the face of no improvement. That would be some extremely scientific socialism, but might require philosopher kings to make it work.
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Sep 11, 2016 22:23
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Marxism is both utopic and simplistic in the belief that so many of humanity's problems trace back to one technical/legal definition of exploitation.rudatron posted:Well, the goal of 'progress' implies a thing, and I think you'd have to be incredibly pessimistic to think no improvements can be made. But yeah, I get that everyone will have a different upper bound or path, but I still think it's meaningful to distinguish that from 'utopia'. So disagreement on that upper bound is what underlies a lot of ideological debates like what we have in this thread. For many people here social democracy isn't just imperfect it's vastly below what their expectations are for human society in the near term. Something my reading of history and understanding of humanity doesn't lead me to believe.
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Sep 12, 2016 02:56
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Jack of Hearts posted:I'll try to rephrase. What word would you use to describe the imperialism of which capitalists accuse socialists? OK, it's not "imperialism" per your definition, but at a minimum, sending tanks into Hungary or Afghanistan is definitely something. Is there nothing in the socialist lexicon to describe this? in both instances, stopping counterrevolutionary forces from toppling socialist governments. Theres an old WWP piece on Hungary that covers the issue here. Jack of Hearts posted:I keep thinking about the definition of imperialism. We take as given that Imperial Rome was not imperialist. But surely there is a word that describes the phenomenon of, for example, Roman legions marching into independent Armenia to reinstate a friendly monarch who had been deposed. What is that word? settlerism for both, though what i know about soviet population transfers are largely pre-ww2. its worth noting that the strong focus on industrialization drove many rural citizens into pop-up cities stuck next to factories, so lots of russians 'settled' areas this way. kazakhstan, for example, was the focus for kruschev's virgin land campaign, which had a similar effect but with industrial agriculture. it also held the majority of german and ukrainian prisoners captured by the soviets during the war, some of which settled as well.
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Sep 12, 2016 06:14
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Please bear in mind the withering away of the state is understood on the basis of the Marxist theory of the state, which does not envision it as something somehow disconnected from the economy or class struggle — an impartial apparatus for giving all members of society a voice, or the like. Rather, the state supervenes upon the economic base, and represents above all else the interests of different factions of the ruling class. Hence descriptions such as "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"; "an organization of violence for the suppression of some class"; "political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another"; etc. there's more to the theory — taking into account degrees of domain autonomy and so on — but this much should suffice to make it clear that, in turn (and with the same provisions), the socialist state's primary function is to suppress the bourgeoisie. if the state completes this task, it will have eliminated the basis of its own existence in these terms; that is, if the material basis for the reappearance of the capitalist mode of production has been removed, and everyone belongs to the ruling class, then "class" itself ceases to exist. thus, the state "loses its political character" in the sense Marx is discussing Note: this does not mean it ceases to exist as an administrative organ; that conclusion would require switching, mid-discussion, to an altogether different theoretical delimitation. I can see how people might make this error at a glance, and thus the theory might indeed come across as utopian, but fear not: the administration of services, as far as we can figure, probably won't ever stop being a good thing
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Sep 12, 2016 06:29
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Aeolius posted:Please bear in mind the withering away of the state is understood on the basis of the Marxist theory of the state, which does not envision it as something somehow disconnected from the economy or class struggle — an impartial apparatus for giving all members of society a voice, or the like. Rather, the state supervenes upon the economic base, and represents above all else the interests of different factions of the ruling class. Hence descriptions such as "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"; "an organization of violence for the suppression of some class"; "political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another"; etc. This is why it's probably not useful for Marxists to refer to it as the state. No one uses Marx's definition any more, when we say state we mean the Weberian state.
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Sep 12, 2016 06:40
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yeah, gotta meet people where they're at. i almost never use the word in this sense in day-to-day political chitchat, though if the discussion is explicitly about marxist theory qua theory then of course it makes sense to do so
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Sep 12, 2016 07:18
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This is probably even more true for terms like "imperialism." Like for fucks sake there have been "empires" for thousands of years, how the hell do you think you're going to get ahead by using a term that most logically means "the process of empire forming and expanding" to specifically to refer to some poo poo that happened in the last ~200 and is based on finance capitalism?
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Sep 12, 2016 14:34
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GunnerJ posted:This is probably even more true for terms like "imperialism." Like for fucks sake there have been "empires" for thousands of years, how the hell do you think you're going to get ahead by using a term that most logically means "the process of empire forming and expanding" to specifically to refer to some poo poo that happened in the last ~200 and is based on finance capitalism? That's also imperialism though. It's odd to complain about people misusing a term that explicitly refers to the processes of foreign exploitation which developed in the last 200 years.
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Sep 12, 2016 14:50
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:That's also imperialism though. Never said it wasn't.
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Sep 12, 2016 14:51
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Urbandale posted:in both instances, stopping counterrevolutionary forces from toppling socialist governments. Theres an old WWP piece on Hungary that covers the issue here. That's a pretty engaging piece. The author clearly hates everybody involved, except for the workers and the peasants, both of whom he treats with benign contempt. It's also interesting that pseudo-Trots (?? My totally Wikipedia-based impression of WWP) of that era regarded Khrushchev as Stalinist. quote:settlerism for both I learned a new vocab word from your post, so that's cool. But from Googling around it seems like settlerism is regarded as a particular form of colonialism? Was the settlerist USSR therefore colonialist to you?
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Sep 12, 2016 17:06
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asdf32 posted:So disagreement on that upper bound is what underlies a lot of ideological debates like what we have in this thread. I'm still skeptical of this, in as much as if we're using 'state' as 'instrument of coercion by one group against another' (not limiting ourselves to class necessarily), there's no guarantee that the end of class antagonism is necessarily the end of politics, even today we have race and gender issues (though I'd argue that race is itself a kind of class system), but I mean who knows what the future might bring, what new and interesting things people will find to kill each other over.
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Sep 12, 2016 17:51
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rudatron posted:I'm still skeptical of this, in as much as if we're using 'state' as 'instrument of coercion by one group against another' (not limiting ourselves to class necessarily), there's no guarantee that the end of class antagonism is necessarily the end of politics, even today we have race and gender issues (though I'd argue that race is itself a kind of class system), but I mean who knows what the future might bring, what new and interesting things people will find to kill each other over. Individual people are always going to kill each other over trivialities, but rendering politics itself trivial by eradicating the source of its power (control of capital) is better than otherwise. States are much more capable of carrying out wars and genocides than particular groups of people, even if not for want of trying. Is a stateless society more capable of pre-empting group violence, under conditions of socialism or communism? It's hard to say. A society that practices an emancipatory & humanistic praxis is more likely than not.
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Sep 12, 2016 18:06
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Except that we've still got a state in terms of 'administration of services', which is quite fine at deploying mass violence & terror for political ends. Except it'll be the Communist-Earth-Sphere versus Martian-Separatist-Nationalists or whatever. History never ends, and all that.
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Sep 12, 2016 18:29
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rudatron posted:Except that we've still got a state in terms of 'administration of services', which is quite fine at deploying mass violence & terror for political ends. Except it'll be the Communist-Earth-Sphere versus Martian-Separatist-Nationalists or whatever. History never ends, and all that. It's still worth a shot. Otherwise we're just going to accept the inevitability of political violence, even in spite of all the non-violent outlets for politics we've developed just within the last couple centuries alone. Anyway, there's a Jamaican communist posting a thread on twitter right now that's instructive to the discussion on imperialism ITT. https://twitter.com/SiggonKristov/status/775397416971362304 Pener Kropoopkin fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Sep 12, 2016 |
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Sep 12, 2016 18:45
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rudatron posted:Well no, for a lot of people the difference is the 'path' to that upper bound, which in turn result from different assumptions about history, society, and human behavior. For a marxist, the social democracies we know and enjoy today are not stable, in that they represent a specific point in time in which labor has the power to hold back capital (correct me if I'm wrong here aeolius). Well that may be a difference between marxism in theory and the reality. Theoretical future instability is not what drives the average person towards far left ideology. It takes a significant dissatisfaction with the here and now (or enough detachment that they just drift there). That's what I mean by "well below expectations". Of course I think it's generally misguided and bears more than a striking resemblance to other extreme (bad) ideology. Libertarians are similarly utopian and therefore similarly dissatisfied.
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Sep 13, 2016 01:32
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