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Kurnugia posted:without resolution and synthesis of the the fundamental contradiction between the power of state and party, there will be blood every single time we try. conflicts without solutions are always resolved, and without a way to manage, channel and react (in a non-violent manner) to the inherent tribalism of all human behaviour in conflicting positions of power, the solution is always disintegration. or extermination Kurnugia posted:and yeah, that is the fundamental problem of republic that the libs tried to solve with insanely elaborate rulebooks whose result you can see in america now, but the fact is that it is still a problem and we are without a solution, and questions of power are always resolved. but the fact is that only insane people want to fight for politica power as a day-to-day occupation, and if you gather them all in the same room and tell us to make unitary government with absolute and total consensus... well there you go. you cant build a co-operative government by centralizing all power and then just farting for years on end on the question of federation, while everything just plays out like a schoolyard dominance determination Yeah, the method to resolve conflicts without obvious solutions without resorting to violence is democracy. And centers of power that are designed to be defended from its reach are inherently problematic. It looks to me like history has shown that the leninist party is really a political head to a military machine, and a system where it gets to be above law is pretty much just military dictatorship. It's a (class) war command building up a (class) war economy. I would be happy if theorists stopped trying to forcefully push the party into the role of a true central government and looked more at libs who, when they were leading hegemonic military forces, decided to exercise their bourgeois dictatorship by enshrining a constitution that the military was tasked to defend as an itself constitutionally limited body. That's the essence of the class dictatorship in a democratic republic, and helps people not confuse the war political economy with the one they actually aspire to have, makes it obvious that the former should only exist to build the latter. I don't have much faith in formulations where the secret to winning is just struggling harder this time, it's all just revolutionary romanticism. We're left with the issues of elaborate rulebooks, but they're necessary to the extent that democracy doesn't work, and making democracy work in more instances is necessary to escape the rulebook issue. That's how it is in any rule-of-law state. The state wouldn't exist if there weren't limits to democracy, and where the rulebook doesn't rule, powerful individuals with their subjective views do.
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Aug 15, 2020 09:51
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I found this bird on the Zapatista fundraising store and it made me smile.  https://schoolsforchiapas.org/store/artesania/paintings/elzln-hummingbird-watercolor-paintings/
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Aug 16, 2020 05:45
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i just wanted to pop in and thank the posters itt for having some really thought-provoking discussions. i don't have much to add to it myself but the historical analysis has been awesome.
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Aug 16, 2020 07:02
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uncop posted:Yeah, the method to resolve conflicts without obvious solutions without resorting to violence is democracy. And centers of power that are designed to be defended from its reach are inherently problematic. It looks to me like history has shown that the leninist party is really a political head to a military machine, and a system where it gets to be above law is pretty much just military dictatorship. It's a (class) war command building up a (class) war economy.  the rulebook rules only as far as it does yeah? rulebooks function as sacred objects, and rule the state only as far as they are treated, as objects of some higher power, by the powerful individuals of societa. extremely failthought ideology
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Aug 16, 2020 15:01
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maybe we jjust federate harder next time. stronger and faster
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Aug 16, 2020 15:03
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I say we build an AI supercomputer and let it run everything
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Aug 16, 2020 15:10
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but how does the AI feel about trotskyism
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Aug 16, 2020 15:12
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that is the opposite of wehat im suggesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfZZbrXVAw
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Aug 16, 2020 15:14
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instead of troskyism, lets make make the ai feel about revolutionary fervor and torture it with zizek simultaneously
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Aug 16, 2020 15:20
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The rulebook isn't some kind of sacred object, it's like a peace treaty. It works so far as the people it empowers want to follow it, and so far as people in general don't prefer to live in a state of social warfare to maybe eventually get to live in ways the treaty doesn't permit them to. Of course words on a paper are always going to become a dead letter eventually, because they're stuck in time while society is moving forward. But without a credible treaty of social peace, you're going to keep living in a state of war, which has its own distinct fitting leadership, punitive and economic structures. And those are going to be the type that all kinds of opportunists are going to flock to to accumulate personal power that they are going to use in terrible ways. Whatcha gonna do?
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Aug 16, 2020 15:26
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build societal structures that operate independent of party control.. you know, in addition to having that rulebook offering roughly impotent guidance, with every community getting to set their own laws and codes and whatever on any scale they can manage? the whole point was that the parliament that writes the holy book of the republic, and the idea of solving everything by voting that everything is ok, are both pretty much fail
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Aug 16, 2020 15:35
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uncop posted:The rulebook isn't some kind of sacred object, it's like a peace treaty. It works so far as the people it empowers want to follow it, and so far as people in general don't prefer to live in a state of social warfare to maybe eventually get to live in ways the treaty doesn't permit them to. Why contain it? s'cool
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Aug 16, 2020 15:36
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uncop posted:The rulebook isn't some kind of sacred object, it's like a peace treaty. It works so far as the people it empowers want to follow it, and so far as people in general don't prefer to live in a state of social warfare to maybe eventually get to live in ways the treaty doesn't permit them to. So which magical period of time are you imagining in which this was a reality people lived in?
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Aug 16, 2020 15:36
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Dreddout posted:Why contain it? s'cool were just gonna keep stacking bureaucratic management levels on top of each other until the structure attains a self-stabilizing size and sentience
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Aug 16, 2020 15:38
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Lostconfused posted:So which magical period of time are you imagining in which this was a reality people lived in? What are you actually asking? What's "this"? Do you think people have to fully conform to agreements for them to hold real power? I genuinely don't understand what your question is, it just looks like words as is. Kurnugia posted:build societal structures that operate independent of party control.. you know, in addition to having that rulebook offering roughly impotent guidance, with every community getting to set their own laws and codes and whatever on any scale they can manage? the whole point was that the parliament that writes the holy book of the republic, and the idea of solving everything by voting that everything is ok, are both pretty much fail I didn't make any arguments about the contents of a constitution, because I'm assuming it'd be smarter than anything I could propose. If what you're describing happened to be the way to go, it should be laissez faire about that. A constitution doesn't actually have anything to do with having a parliamentary system, that one is just what bourgeois constitutions established. It just defines who has the right to establish rules that everyone has to follow, where it applies, and on what basis, so that it doesn't need to be literally fought over anymore. Another thing a constitution does is set the most fundamental boundaries of what is allowable and what is not: the point is to establish basic rights that no one has the right to violate, without it becoming obvious that either they got on the wrong side of society or the law itself has become outdated dead letter. It throws the people that don't like the new society some bones about rights that they should be able to trust, and assures that the people who the new society is for get to do pretty much as they wish.
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Aug 16, 2020 15:56
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Like, do y'all just not understand that so long as there's no societal agreement on whose word goes in what situation, that question is going to settled based on collective social power (most fundamentally, who has the military organization), and the end-result will be hypercentralization, because social power only ever accumulates through victories? And that in a class society with various social animosities, such an agreement is going to have to be formal and have equally formal institutions designed to defend it from the discontents?
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Aug 16, 2020 16:07
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uncop posted:What are you actually asking? What's "this"? Do you think people have to fully conform to agreements for them to hold real power? I genuinely don't understand what your question is, it just looks like words as is.
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Aug 16, 2020 16:12
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Lostconfused posted:Your rule book model doesn't accurately describe reality and has a bunch of implications that are not true or have never been true as far as I know. I was asking in which period of time that humanity has existed in that this rule book model you suggest worked. So I could look at the recorded history of that time period to see if it could fill in a lot of questions and problems that you have failed to address. What are the implications? The rulebook metaphor comes from Kurnugia and I just took the word up on a whim, what is the model I'm suggesting? Like, you aren't giving me anything to say anything more helpful than "actually, my position is based precisely on revolutionary history and not any abstract model". TBF maybe I should just say "cool beans" to people who just shout the equivalent of "I disagree!" without any attempt to actually present a position. uncop fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 16:47
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So after listening to matt christman's vlogs and hearing him talk about a new "spiritual" communism, as well as some light research into Liberation Theology, I have some questions for more traditional marxists. Why was/is religion suppressed in modern communist regimes? I know Marx's old line about "opiate of the masses " but it seems pretty obvious to me that when he says "opiate" he means "painkiller". In addition, the abrahamic religions (one example that Im most familiar with) have been around in one form or another through every mode of production, have been used to butress the ruling superstructure and has given birth to genuinely revolutionary proto-socialist movements like the diggers and others like them. Surely it is possible to create a theological framework for communism just as has been created for slave economies, fuedalism and capitalism? So why supress religious institutions rather than attempting to co-opt or ally with them? Sorry if this post is a little hosed up grammar or spelling wise. Im currently phoneposting.
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Aug 16, 2020 17:48
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organised religion will tend to bring its own organisations and power centres into being. plus, religion has a tendency to act as the soul of a soulless world - i.e. it contextualises suffering and grants dignity where there is none. in some cases this is helpful, but for the most part it absolutely isn't. if you're a revolutionary, you want people to be upset at their suffering and to avoid them thinking that they'll be rewarded for persevering and enduring poo poo in the afterlife this is also why marx became skeptical of moral justifications later in his career - capital goes to some pain to emphasise that capitalists aren't evil people, they're just playing their role. the point being, you can't fix capitalism simply by replacing people, the whole thing has to be uprooted spiritualism generally doesn't really contribute anything necessary to socialism. in latin america, the church has a more proletarian character and clerics can use their positions to do stuff that others can't - generally, religious institutions are more disciplined and much more conservative than that
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Aug 16, 2020 18:12
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AnEdgelord posted:So after listening to matt christman's vlogs and hearing him talk about a new "spiritual" communism, as well as some light research into Liberation Theology, I have some questions for more traditional marxists. Why was/is religion suppressed in modern communist regimes? I know Marx's old line about "opiate of the masses " but it seems pretty obvious to me that when he says "opiate" he means "painkiller". https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486454509/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 
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Aug 16, 2020 18:30
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uncop posted:TBF maybe I should just say "cool beans" to people who just shout the equivalent of "I disagree!" without any attempt to actually present a position. Kurnugia made the comment that rules are only as useful as the amount of people that believe in them. You went off on some tangent that actually rule books are peace treaties in class warfare. That people are willingly following them instead of being coerced. That there are periods of "peace" implying that class warfare isn't happening. It's seems like a huge over simplification as people aren't a single cohesive whole who can agree to and enforce the rules of a treaty or whatever else. My first post was snarky and I am sorry that it made you upset. This is the second time I am trying to clarify my original comment, would you mind trying to actually respond to the comments being made here instead of continually trying to repeat your position? Otherwise yes, just reduce to your posts to pithy one liners that can be scrolled past instead of paragraphs of one sided conversation.
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Aug 16, 2020 18:31
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Number one: that’s terror
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Aug 16, 2020 20:30
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AnEdgelord posted:So after listening to matt christman's vlogs and hearing him talk about a new "spiritual" communism, as well as some light research into Liberation Theology, I have some questions for more traditional marxists. Why was/is religion suppressed in modern communist regimes? I know Marx's old line about "opiate of the masses " but it seems pretty obvious to me that when he says "opiate" he means "painkiller". it's an inefficient way to reallocate resources to help the poor as opposed to organizing people to lift themselves up from poverty through productive work, which isn't optional in these communist systems. labor is political and a form of struggle and almost like a form of combat, they're intertwined together, which is why it's not unusual to see north koreans marching to work in the morning and being organized in labor "battalions" carrying banners. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efTmDF9HEnQ or depicting soldiers and workers (blue collar and white collar) interlinking arms and marching together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34qrRwYwgb4&t=91s
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Aug 16, 2020 20:50
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https://twitter.com/BolshevikPotato/status/1292892806546104322
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Aug 16, 2020 21:17
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Lol
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Aug 16, 2020 21:51
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:these communist states didn't have much patience for layabouts which is what priests are. they don't do productive work but are paid to sit around and study the bible all day, and this is considered a service because they take donations to help the poor -- but mostly from the poor -- and then hand out some bologna sandwiches and cokes in front of the church once a week while keeping most of the proceeds. and in various times this priest class has become part of the ruling class or like in modern western countries today it's a commercialized pyramid scheme that uses money to build more churches to convert more people into this priest class which receives more donations from the poor like filling an endless black hole. not disagreeing on the practical realities of a lot of religious organization, but the thing is that entirely assumes that there is no value to religious ritual itself, which i have absolutely no desire to argue with internet strangers but it's something that People Disagree on
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Aug 16, 2020 22:09
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Lz1_ziqw0
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Aug 17, 2020 17:16
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*stares at mike pence* how wude
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Aug 17, 2020 17:45
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Aug 17, 2020 17:47
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monks are people paid to read and argue over what they've read, priests are monks that also are supposed to explain things to non-monks, these positions absolutely exist in socialist countries and organizations
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Aug 17, 2020 18:02
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Lostconfused posted:Kurnugia made the comment that rules are only as useful as the amount of people that believe in them. You went off on some tangent that actually rule books are peace treaties in class warfare. That people are willingly following them instead of being coerced. That there are periods of "peace" implying that class warfare isn't happening. It's seems like a huge over simplification as people aren't a single cohesive whole who can agree to and enforce the rules of a treaty or whatever else. Ah, thanks! I was only upset about not understanding what I was being accused of because the picture you got from what I said was totally unrecognizable to me. I guess the analogy just fell flat, I made it after reading this Twitter personality Mors describe how the treaties US Indigenous people made are much like international law to them and that they aren't conquered nations just because it's typical for the US regime to attempt to wipe their asses with the treaties from their overwhelming position of power. I hope that illustrates the spirit of the analogy. Class struggle never ends in class society, but it has distinct states of war and peace. The state of war is when, as a general policy, political questions are settled with literal violence. The state of peace is when they are, as a general policy, settled by formal procedure like voting, the courts or negotiation. The two states exist together and in flux, it's not like peace can ever simply be declared for the whole society and that's that, but at the same time everyone wants to live in peace and fights to change a peace that they can't live with into one they want to live under. Between two sides that can't see eye to eye, lasting peace only becomes possible by negotiating formal procedures that both sides can trust enough that they don't consider existing violations to be worth going to war over. Union agreements could be considered a type of class peace treaty: the workers and capitalists agree on formal definitions of treaty violations and formal processes to settle disputes, and only start fights if they lose trust in the process. The power that US Indigenous treaties hold is exactly that which the Indigenous people can assert in practice in US courts, and their typical practice is to go to court rather than march on courts with rifles, because they usually expect the first method to be more powerful given their relative capacities for violence. And even if you consider, for example, the US police to be above the law and an agent of social warfare, everyone pretty much fully 100% believes that the state has disempowered itself to the point that they will never just pump everyone they consider enemies full of lead like they could do in a country they're at war with. No matter how much cops break the law, there is trust in a certain limit to it, and the limit is considered good enough that violent rebellion is generally not considered worth it. Communists wage class war in a literal, not your metaphorical sense. They aim to come out of the class struggle as a hegemonic military force that violently subjugates their enemies under their rule. They will stay in a state of class war until they can negotiate a state of class peace, there's no one else left that could do it for them. A constitution is a sort of best-effort attempt of the local hegemonic military force to make believable pledges about formal limits and guidelines to how it will use its powers, so that the people it rules will not rebel and will instead take initiative to build things, because they predict to be able to gain from it and not have the tables arbitrarily turned on them. The constitution doesn't have to be fully adhered to to have power, just enough that people basically believe in the formal procedures outlined in it. The procedures can be anything that works in practice, the point is that people go to settle their political and personal disputes through them. Bourgeois procedures let the bourgeoisie do what empowers them as a class and satisfies them as people, proletarian procedures work the same way for the proletariat, so they are obviously can't be the same.
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Aug 17, 2020 18:57
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https://twitter.com/drunk_kirby/status/1295392761026355200
NOTE: This Something Awful forums user (previously known as "The Blackest Goon") is a Person of Color who chose the current iteration of his username ironically after years of having his remaining brain cells all but fried after monitoring the rise of online reactionary ideologies for a decade.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:18
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apropos to nothing posted:extinction rebellion in the UK definitely has some issues from what i have heard from comrades there. think like the person above says, the character of the climate movement in the us is way different and people generally are very open to socialist ideas unless its like an NGO or something wasn't this the organization that was propping up the idea of gumming up police stations by having too many people arrested at once? also, I remember something about red hands and that ties into it as well.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:21
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TBH actually I do have a weird tendency to argue by just restating my positions in different ways as if they were way more interesting and meaningful than they are and people just don't get it. Like this last thing is almost as boring as Kurnugia initially said. It's not really anything new at all, just a thought I happened to be obsessed with. Too much internet!
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Aug 17, 2020 20:34
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any recs for histories of the early USSR? I'm probably gonna pick up October for an intro to the revolution but I'm more interested in what happemed after
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Aug 17, 2020 23:58
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I didn't really like October. I don't remember the specifics but I kept thinking that the sentence structure and his manner of phrasing things would work OK for fiction but it didn't work for me as a history.
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Aug 18, 2020 00:05
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October is pretty good for a total newbie I think. To be honest it was my first exposure to Leninist thought. Mieville is a fiction author so the prose is very novel like, as the poster above stated, but I feel like it makes the history more accessible and exciting to read. I've heard that it's essentially a retelling of Trotsky's account though
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Aug 18, 2020 00:12
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This video seems less like Lenin saying this and more like he's listening to someone else badly explain what socialism is and is just barely stopping himself from losing his goddamn mind
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Aug 18, 2020 00:45
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indigi posted:any recs for histories of the early USSR? I'm probably gonna pick up October for an intro to the revolution but I'm more interested in what happemed after Yeah basically no one knows in English. I am serious.
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Aug 18, 2020 01:33
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