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uncop posted:If you're simply referring to the former naming US imperialism "the chief force for aggression and war", that's not the case. The line on US and USSR was that the first was the main imperialist power and the second was the rising imperialist power. The rising imperialist is considered to be the more aggressive one with regard to specifically interimperialist (world) war. It can't be the main source of imperialist plunder because its problem in the first place is that it doesn't have the territories it "deserves" based on its relative economic&military power. All of this is largely just extrapolating from UK and Germany in the pre- Cold War period. One wouldn't have called Germany the main force of imperialism during that period even at the height of its fascist period, it was obviously the UK. "If you're simply referring to the former naming..." of course not, it's not a question of one or two inconvenient lines that need to be explained away, it's the basic thrust of the whole argument. If capitalism had been restored and the USSR was an imperialist power when "Differences" was written, then there is no correct analysis in it all, it is founded entirely on false premises. It's premise is that the Soviet Union is a socialist society, whose political leaders are vacillating towards revisionism and opportunism under the pressure of US imperialism. Now, you could try to argue that capitalism was restored at some point between the writing of "Differences" and the emergence of the "Social Imperialist" line, and that while they contradict each other, each was correct when written, but in historical terms this is obviously bunk, so obviously so that there is little, if any, effort to make such an argument, even by those seeking to justify the latter line.
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Jul 12, 2020 22:50
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super sweet best pal posted:I think we should do something to increase awareness of the rising communist sentiment in America. Something to freak out libs and conservatives who aren't terminally online. Shift the Overton window and have it be a discussion point as we get closer to November. found the trot
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Jul 12, 2020 23:06
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Ardennes posted:You got to remember he was also a cop in Burma, it may be hard to accept anti-imperialism when a part of your life was about actively enforcing it A big part of his work is how structures of oppression also gently caress up the oppressor https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/ quote:With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. You also have to "get" irony quote:The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.
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Jul 12, 2020 23:32
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Enjoy posted:A big part of his work is how structures of oppression also gently caress up the oppressor Imperialism in a Leninist sense is broader though that just the day-to-day oppression of colonialization, but the domination of the West as a whole. He could condemn portions of colonialism, but as time went on, it is clear he had a more difficult time condemning the empire as a entity.
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Jul 12, 2020 23:37
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Ardennes posted:Imperialism in a Leninist sense is broader though that just the day-to-day oppression of colonialization, but the domination of the West as a whole. He could condemn portions of colonialism, but as time went on, it is clear he had a more difficult time condemning the empire as a entity. I guess he really should have said something like "imperialism was an evil thing" and that he was for the colonised and against the coloniser
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Jul 12, 2020 23:40
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GalacticAcid posted:Yeah I thought it was pretty much understood that he was poo poo, whatever you think of the literary merit of some of his work he is worse than chumpsky but only because to my knowledge, chumpsky never snitched
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Jul 12, 2020 23:47
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Lady Militant posted:Yeah but he's (the protag) still just some schmuck comparatively. The party makes only very low quality goods available to people unless they were a part of one of the non-outer circles. Why would any government be willing to spend so little to attend to the needs of individuals BUT be willing to invest infinitely in...then paying attention to/monitoring those people who you have invested nothing in. It makes no sense materially which is a pretty big gently caress up for someone who'd at the time of writing the book at least considered themselves a socialist. winston was outer-party and it was his job to literally rewrite history based on the inner-party line so they watched him like a loving hawk airstrip 1 was like 80 percent proles and proles weren't thought policed because even if they had thoughts (party line was, they don't) there wasn't a way to express them that would be legitimately dangerous to the inner-party/state im going to go read another book ty Goast fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 01:02
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i always rather got the impression that the cameras etc weren't really actively supervised beyond the dudes on the other side taking the odd peek unless they had some reason to review so a panopticon, not constant active surveillance. otherwise they could've just forbidden being alone, it's no more outlandish than a lot of the stuff in that book
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Jul 13, 2020 03:05
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Pomeroy posted:"If you're simply referring to the former naming..." of course not, it's not a question of one or two inconvenient lines that need to be explained away, it's the basic thrust of the whole argument. If capitalism had been restored and the USSR was an imperialist power when "Differences" was written, then there is no correct analysis in it all, it is founded entirely on false premises. It's premise is that the Soviet Union is a socialist society, whose political leaders are vacillating towards revisionism and opportunism under the pressure of US imperialism. I'm not mining for lines to present some strawman, there was just something you treat as obvious that isn't obvious to me. The question of the main imperialist is something that would have been relevant today and if that had been vacillated on along the years, that would reveal the Chinese to just have been saying whatever fit the spirit of the times rather than basing their claims on a coherent theory of imperialism. I just don't see the text as making clear claims about the nature of the USSR at all, only subtextual implications of everyone being part of the same camp. It talks of the common struggle against imperialism as if everyone listening was part of it, but doesn't actually prescriptively name any names. I interpreted upholding "The Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us" as upholding the intent of the text, e.g. trying to have a respectful struggle with what appears to be a right wing before taking the gloves off and calling people imperialists and fascists on shaky evidence. Frankly, if maoists read historical political writing like scripture in official capacity, they wouldn't have become anything special in practice and I wouldn't regard them much more highly than juche-ists or whatever. Also, expecting to be able to call "each correct when it was written" is just continuing the tradition of a false spirit of marxist-leninist omnipotency which isn't a product of any coherent theory and which Mao explicitly discarded. Only the intent of someone's claims can always be correct, the content can only be judged by later practice. For an obvious example, upholding the theory of homosexuality as bourgeois decadence was never correct, and hypothetically claiming something like that was correct for the time sabotages theory for nothing more than sparing someone's ego. Many such hypotheticals happened in reality and wrecked orthodox ML hard. CCP at the time was maneuvering the unknowable, trying to be wrong as gracefully as possible, in the direction that is least damaging. It's just that having no stance or being silent about it (like e.g. Vietnam) is just another way to be wrong with an associated cost, so risky polemicizing seemed reasonable. Seriously, the text was trying to change the nature of the USSR and the international communist movement, its literal aim was to make sure that any claims about the USSR being imperialist would be utterly wrong. Making explicit accusations of such a high-profile betrayal could only have weakened its political goal. Instead, it tried to make a smaller-profile accusation to get what everyone hopefully could agree was a right wing to be reformed or isolated, in order to weaken the opposition to consistent socialism. uncop fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 10:20
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Goast posted:winston was outer-party and it was his job to literally rewrite history based on the inner-party line so they watched him like a loving hawk
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Jul 13, 2020 10:33
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There are problems with Orwell's books but 'actually that is not how I would do surveillance' is grasping at straws
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Jul 13, 2020 10:34
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super sweet best pal posted:I think we should do something to increase awareness of the rising communist sentiment in America. Something to freak out libs and conservatives who aren't terminally online. Shift the Overton window and have it be a discussion point as we get closer to November. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhcDl3S5sXQ BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 11:38
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Jul 13, 2020 11:41
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Doc Hawkins posted:check out Memoirs Found in a Bathtub this book is so insane
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Jul 13, 2020 16:52
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indigi posted:this book is so insane It's one of my favorites. I especially like the part where they have a whole astronomy department because they believe the stars themselves are an intelligence operation against them.
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Jul 13, 2020 18:10
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Goast posted:winston was outer-party and it was his job to literally rewrite history based on the inner-party line so they watched him like a loving hawk brave new world was better because the concept of a unified central government controlling the population via bread and circuses is far, far more realistic and believable than an all seeing big brother. and even then BNW has it's own problems with how the material circumstances of the society would work. I understand why from a literary perspective that might seem of the utmost triviality, but when discussing the literary as it relates to the real world it's impossible to ignore the non-materialist construction of these literary dystopias.
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Jul 13, 2020 18:26
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indigi posted:this book is so insane lol, try The Futurological Congress on for size. in fact, read literally everything written by Stanislaw Lem.
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Jul 13, 2020 18:40
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GalacticAcid posted:I liked these three chapters on anarchism by hobsbawm just getting around to reading this now. and quote:The very [99] extremism of the anarchist rejection of state and organization, the totality of their commitment to the overthrow of the present society, could not but arouse admiration; except perhaps among those who had to be active in politics by the side of the anarchists, and found them almost impossible to work with. It is suitable that Spain, the country of Don Quixote, should have been their last fortress. drat
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Jul 13, 2020 23:51
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I have to say that those Hobsbawm articles strike me as uncharitable and chauvinistic. Like he attributes the prevalence of Anarchism in Spain to the Spanish not being a "reading nation" or how he remarks on the lack of intellectuals in Spain. A large part of the Anarchist movement in Andalusia consisted of distributing reading materials explaining basic Scientific concepts such as evolution or physics or what have you to peasants. In fact a strong faith in the progressive powers of science was a key characteristic of the classical left, both Anarchist and Marxist (look at Kropotkin). There's a kind of chauvinist Western Marxist perspective that is really distasteful and not at all useful for modern problems. You can't solve problems like the colonization of Indigenous peoples in settler states with that kind of outlook.
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Jul 14, 2020 00:18
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ToxicAcne posted:I have to say that those Hobsbawm articles strike me as uncharitable and chauvinistic. Like he attributes the prevalence of Anarchism in Spain to the Spanish not being a "reading nation" or how he remarks on the lack of intellectuals in Spain. A large part of the Anarchist movement in Andalusia consisted of distributing reading materials explaining basic Scientific concepts such as evolution or physics or what have you to peasants. In fact a strong faith in the progressive powers of science was a key characteristic of the classical left, both Anarchist and Marxist (look at Kropotkin). the bolded bit in particular is basically the same insult you see levied at a lot of anarchists today (mostly by Very Online MLs)
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Jul 14, 2020 00:21
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uncop posted:I'm not mining for lines to present some strawman, there was just something you treat as obvious that isn't obvious to me. The question of the main imperialist is something that would have been relevant today and if that had been vacillated on along the years, that would reveal the Chinese to just have been saying whatever fit the spirit of the times rather than basing their claims on a coherent theory of imperialism. I just don't see the text as making clear claims about the nature of the USSR at all, only subtextual implications of everyone being part of the same camp. It talks of the common struggle against imperialism as if everyone listening was part of it, but doesn't actually prescriptively name any names. I think you're either badly misunderstanding me, or pretending to so you can call me a dogmatist, but leaving that aside, "I think the author meant well" is not something you say when you uphold an argument, it's an admission that you don't. By that logic, you might as well say that a supporter of Stalin who believes Trotsky was a dogmatic sectarian, but not a traitor, "upholds Trotsky."
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Jul 14, 2020 01:26
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Pomeroy posted:I think you're either badly misunderstanding me, or pretending to so you can call me a dogmatist, but leaving that aside, "I think the author meant well" is not something you say when you uphold an argument, it's an admission that you don't. If I'm misunderstanding you, it's because you make it hard to correctly understand you. You present your argument as a riddle to solve from a set of hints rather than as a clear line of thought. I assume the lack of attempt to clarify your position further is just because you think that I'm intentionally misrepresenting you and that it'd be a waste of time rather than a sign that this is your internet arguing strategy and we've reached its culminating point. "I think the author meant well" is a rather silly representation of what I was talking about. The case at hand involved 1) commentary on something where the facts are still uncertain, and 2) intentional deception or muddying the waters. With those conditions at play, it becomes nonsensical to judge a work by the truthfulness of its basic statements rather than as an example of doing politics, attempting to work through a concrete social problem. It becomes about studying what they do, not what they say. Only writings intended for education about something the author assumes they understand well can be judged purely on their face value, without context or subtext. When you read marxist polemics, you wouldn't assume that they honestly and correctly represent their targets rather than twisting them into caricatures that serve the overall point of the work better than the unvarnished truth would have. quote:By that logic, you might as well say that a supporter of Stalin who believes Trotsky was a dogmatic sectarian, but not a traitor, "upholds Trotsky." No. By the logic, someone who thinks Trotsky was basically a principled marxist, even though he occasionally lapsed into errors of dogmatism and sectarianism, upholds Trotsky. Trotsky is vilified and his historical figure often replaced with a crypto-fascist caricature because he's considered a political opportunist through and through and not worth handling seriously as a figure. On the other hand, Stalin is precisely someone who is upheld in explicit awareness that he made serious errors of dogmatism and sectarianism (if we define sectarianism as treating differences between comrades like those between enemies). He's just not condemned for them as a person, because he's known to have seriously worked to improve himself all the time, and so it's not reasonable to expect any individual to have avoided making errors of similar magnitude in the same position just by being more principled, or a better person or something. If you look at the CPSU-CCP debate about Stalin, I think it would be a misunderstanding to think that they were arguing about whether Stalin was basically right or basically wrong. It was about whether he was principled, i.e. "meant well", or could be reduced to a caricature the same way as Trotsky had been. The 70-30 quote was in large part about how it has to be officially recognized that even the best of us have terrible weaknesses as mere individuals, and those should be neither erased nor vilified, but absolutely taken into account. That's why it gets repeated about Mao, Gonzalo and so on by their own followers. They are all essentially saying to themselves that those figures are the pinnacle of individual achievement, but the pinnacle hasn't gotten any higher since Stalin and isn't really going to get higher.
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Jul 14, 2020 06:10
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uncop posted:If I'm misunderstanding you, it's because you make it hard to correctly understand you. You present your argument as a riddle to solve from a set of hints rather than as a clear line of thought. I assume the lack of attempt to clarify your position further is just because you think that I'm intentionally misrepresenting you and that it'd be a waste of time rather than a sign that this is your internet arguing strategy and we've reached its culminating point. I'm willing to go into this further tomorrow, but if you think Stalin's errors were born of dogmatism, I really have to question what planet, what universe you're replying from. (it certainly isn't a Maoist one) Edit: really though, a riddle? where, exactly, have I been anything less than frank? If anything I have made my positions more vulnerable than need be, by simplifying them to the greatest extent possible. So far, "un"- cop, you've only reaffirmed my prior bias, that white Maoism is better answered with the butts of rifles than with argument. Upon closer reading, you're basically suggesting that communist literature, propaganda and agitation alike, should be judged along the lines of certain degenerate american pragmatic theories of truth, not taken seriously on its own merits. That attitude would be far more befitting of a degenerate opportunist formation like the SPUSA, than anyone claiming to be a communist, let alone an anti-revisionist. Pomeroy fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 06:41
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super sweet best pal posted:I think we should do something to increase awareness of the rising communist sentiment in America. Something to freak out libs and conservatives who aren't terminally online. Shift the Overton window and have it be a discussion point as we get closer to November. Why the hell would we want to encourage the *suburbs* to arm themselves for the times ahead?
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Jul 14, 2020 07:31
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Pomeroy posted:I'm willing to go into this further tomorrow, but if you think Stalin's errors were born of dogmatism, I really have to question what planet, what universe you're replying from. (it certainly isn't a Maoist one) Hmmmm I wonder why communism doesn't resonate as well as we'd hope. 'M'am I would like to speak to u about communism. You're not a degenerate right? You haven't partaken of the Certain Degenerate American Pragmatic Theories of Truth I hope. Just kidding M'am. If I thought that I'd have already beaten you to death with a Rifle Butt. Haha. Degenerate. I love that word.'
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Jul 14, 2020 08:15
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Pomeroy posted:I'm willing to go into this further tomorrow, but if you think Stalin's errors were born of dogmatism, I really have to question what planet, what universe you're replying from. (it certainly isn't a Maoist one) I didn't claim that Stalin's errors in general were born of dogmatism, I claimed that people upholding Stalin recognize him as having made significant errors out of dogmatism. You might as well ask what planet Mao was from, because CCP's critiques of the USSR's leadership during the Chinese revolution pretty much started it. Stalin required mountains of practical evidence against each shoddily researched orthodox marxist assumption in the East, but of course as he wasn't a dogmatist in general he did always eventually relent once there was enough for him. Ultimately though, making errors of dogmatism is normal. Everyone does a dogmatism when they decide to argue their badly researched assumptions against people with deep practical understanding of the thing in question. A riddle doesn't mean dishonesty, it means there are central pieces missing that need to be guessed from implications before the basic, core argument can be understood as a whole. Let's take the original post I responded to: quote:You can't coherently uphold "The Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us" and the later line of a restored capitalism and fascism more dangerously imperialist than the US and its allies. They're contradictory lines. People who claim to uphold both either don't understand one or the other line, or indeed both, or believe it is somehow politically necessary to paper over the differences between them. Here you say that there is a line in TDBCTU that is contradictory with the later line, but the only description you give of that line is that it's contradictory with those later claims about the nature of the USSR and its relative position to the US and its allies. It's left up to the reader to go read the work in order to make their best guess about what your argument was in the first place, in order to make any kind of comment on it, positive or negative. The claim that "people who claim to uphold both either don't understand one or the other line" is left purely as a question of authority before the correct guess is made: do I trust the person making the claim to be both knowledgeable and honest or do I not? The reason I implied it might just be a dishonest arguing style is because people really do this stuff as a matter of protocol, they construct an argument that basically drops a big "I know what I'm talking about" and otherwise its just designed to make critical evaluation so much work that those who aren't intimidated by the display of authority are intimidated by the waste of time. Or better yet, there is no correct interpretation by design. Any guess that an interlocutor makes about the argument is wrong and a misrepresentation, because to force the battle to be fought on the ground of authority: based on pure aesthetics, which person does the onlooker judge as the disingenuous bullshitter? Of course, I'm also to blame for swinging wildly before asking for what is missing and getting answers, it's all typical internet impatience. Edit: read the edit and lmao, charitable assumptions on the internet never work out. Good job mashing hard on the aesthetics of relative authoritativeness button. uncop fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 08:29
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Regarde Aduck posted:Hmmmm I wonder why communism doesn't resonate as well as we'd hope. Yeah, regular working class Americans just love epistemological theories of truth devised by anti-communist liberals working for Ford, and our opposition to such nonsense is why there hasn't been a revolution. Very good. Please face the wall now.
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Jul 14, 2020 08:33
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uncop posted:I didn't claim that Stalin's errors in general were born of dogmatism, I claimed that people upholding Stalin recognize him as having made significant errors out of dogmatism. You might as well ask what planet Mao was from, because CCP's critiques of the USSR's leadership during the Chinese revolution pretty much started it. Stalin required mountains of practical evidence against each shoddily researched orthodox marxist assumption in the East, but of course as he wasn't a dogmatist in general he did always eventually relent once there was enough for him. Ultimately though, making errors of dogmatism is normal. Everyone does a dogmatism when they decide to argue their badly researched assumptions against people with deep practical understanding of the thing in question. Christ's sake, this is Zizekian evasion, and much as I despise him, you're far less equipped than he is to pull it off.
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Jul 14, 2020 08:45
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this, uh, took a turn
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Jul 14, 2020 08:47
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Pomeroy posted:Christ's sake, this is Zizekian evasion, and much as I despise him, you're far less equipped than he is to pull it off. V. Illych L. posted:this, uh, took a turn Huh, well i guess the leninist theory of state building lost. Marking up the scoreboard
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Jul 14, 2020 08:49
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V. Illych L. posted:this, uh, took a turn yeah, my office is closed thanks to quarantine, and I don't want to put local comrades at risk, so I'm reduced to trying to smash revisionism on a D&D forum. How the nerdy have fallen. Pomeroy fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 08:50
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poo poo, im pulling all these sweet moves that have names like in a philosophy-themed pro wrestling ring and i didn't even know about it... And I thought I was just writing long posts that lack the flourishes to be fun to read and somehow still manage to be too dense to be as clear as I'd like.
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Jul 14, 2020 09:06
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uncop posted:poo poo, im pulling all these sweet moves that have names like in a philosophy-themed pro wrestling ring and i didn't even know about it... And I thought I was just writing long posts that lack the flourishes to be fun to read and somehow still manage to be too dense to be as clear as I'd like. well, hardly sweet moves, you're employing the standard moves of cowardly intellectuals, fleeing from the concrete to the abstract, from the specific to the general
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Jul 14, 2020 09:10
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Pomeroy posted:well, hardly sweet moves, you're employing the standard moves of cowardly intellectuals, fleeing from the concrete to the abstract, from the specific to the general ugh, people like you always do this
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Jul 14, 2020 09:20
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Pomeroy posted:well, hardly sweet moves, you're employing the standard moves of cowardly intellectuals, fleeing from the concrete to the abstract, from the specific to the general What abstraction are you talking about. You were arguing that the failure of leninist theory of marxism wasnt the cause of stalinism, but refused to tell us why becaüse of sometging something zizekian revisinionism is white maoism
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Jul 14, 2020 09:20
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indigi posted:the bolded bit in particular is basically the same insult you see levied at a lot of anarchists today (mostly by Very Online MLs) Please become something else other than an anarchist.
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Jul 14, 2020 09:23
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Pomeroy posted:Yeah, regular working class Americans just love epistemological theories of truth devised by anti-communist liberals working for Ford, and our opposition to such nonsense is why there hasn't been a revolution. Very good. Please face the wall now. Pomeroy posted:yeah, my office is closed thanks to quarantine, and I don't want to put local comrades at risk, so I'm reduced to trying to smash revisionism on a D&D forum. How the nerdy have fallen. my favorite part of being a communist is being threatened with violence by other communists because they're bored online
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Jul 14, 2020 09:24
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Jul 14, 2020 09:28
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croup coughfield posted:my favorite part of being a communist is being threatened with violence by other communists because they're bored online Lmao gently caress the united front
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Jul 14, 2020 09:29
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Kurnugia posted:What abstraction are you talking about. You were arguing that the failure of leninist theory of marxism wasnt the cause of stalinism, but refused to tell us why becaüse of sometging something zizekian revisinionism is white maoism Thanks, you just hurt me worse than he did. Like I'm sorry, you can call me a bourgeois academic intellectual coward that deserves to be shot, but take that back. croup coughfield posted:my favorite part of being a communist is being threatened with violence by other communists because they're bored online I have a lot of fun imagining what people who mention being part of an organization and still threaten people with violence online are like irl, and what their orgs are like. Like, have their official meetings ever just devolved into screeching about how someone's an enemy of the revolution that deserves a bullet over some petty little issue? You'd expect people that are supposedly part of something to develop some discipline. Like even if one doesn't name names, posting on SA and implying representation of a "ML" party, one's going to make PSL sound like they let clowns in. And force me to uphold "Marcyism is Crypto-Fascism".
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Jul 14, 2020 10:17
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