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Ok, I'm checking right out of this thread. Good to see that modern Marxism is just as bad as it ever was, and there's no reform, there's no learning from the past, and anyone with sense needs to get as far away from Marxist ideology as possible, because you guys still see zero problems with authoritarian dictatorships, as long as they're Leftist authoritarian dictatorships. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 8, 2020 16:58
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Sucrose posted:Ok, I'm checking right out of this thread. Good to see that modern Marxism is just as bad as it ever was, and there's no reform, there's no learning from the past, and anyone with sense needs to get as far away from Marxist ideology as possible, because you guys still see zero problems with authoritarian dictatorships, as long as they're Leftist authoritarian dictatorships. Oh ok, I guess it was just concern trolling all along! Bye!
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Dec 8, 2020 17:00
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Libertarianism is an ideal that people pay lip service to in abstract but which can only be failed in practice. Anyone who isn't failing the ideal yet simply hasn't been tested thoroughly enough. Conscious libertarians are people who voluntarily abstain from exercising the kind of social power that would expose them. What exposes them is that 99% of them support giving powers to people who do utilize social power in an "authoritarian" manner. For instance, everyone who would support state-enforced mask mandates or lockdowns in response to covid, and the vast majority of people who vote. Authoritarianism is a word people selectively use for calling out failure to adhere to the ideal. Pejoratives don't have coherent meanings because they aren't coined with that in mind. There are no conscious authoritarians in the sense of "opposed to liberty", they're all in favor of ruthlessly utilizing social power to win or uphold liberty for some section of society at the expense of another. Libertarianism of both the left wing and right wing variants are based on a negative conception of liberty, it's something people have until it's taken away. The struggle for libertarianism is conceived as passive self-defense against supposed opponents of liberty: mainly individual for right-wingers and mainly collective for left-wingers. "Authoritarianisms" are based on positive conceptions of liberty: it's ability to concretely exercise power. Right-wing variants conceive liberty as a zero-sum game of sorts: people gain new powers by subjecting others, and when it comes to maximizing liberty in society, they ask who should subject whom and in which ways. Left-wing variants believe that in a conceptual state of maximum liberty no one is subjected to another person, but they have a blasé or even enthusiastic attitude toward taking freedoms from people if it means winning greater freedom overall for them. Socialists on the internet who accept the "authoritarian" label have eaten from the same trashcan that liberals in general have, and accepted the negative conception of liberty as common sense. But in doing so, they propagate the liberal distortion that conceives real practicing socialists as opponents of liberty and the only libertarian socialists as ones who didn't wield the kind of power that would have exposed them as actually "authoritarian". No, even Stalin did what he did because he loved freedom. The real consequences are debatable, but he genuinely believed that everything he did was to *increase* the overall freedom in society, by developing the concrete powers of the vast majority of the population. uncop fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 17:11
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A few days ago the southpaw podcast had an interview with Zoe Baker about the history of anarchism and the history of the difference between anarchism, socialism and communism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWL2FmtDE0 An interesting point they bring up is that at some points every leftist who as against electoralism was considered an anarchist.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:18
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uncop posted:Libertarianism of both the left wing and right wing variants are based on a negative conception of liberty, it's something people have until it's taken away. The struggle for libertarianism is conceived as passive self-defense against supposed opponents of liberty: mainly individual for right-wingers and mainly collective for left-wingers. Just want to say, this whole post is interesting. One small quibble: Doesn't left-wing libertarianism necessarily include aspects of 'positive' freedoms? By definition, ownership of the means of production is a positive freedom as well.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:20
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For those reading at home: "Negative" freedoms are "freedoms from". That is, you have a freedom from restriction. So, freedom of speech is really a lack of government control over your speech. And a right to bear arms would be a lack of restrictions over large ursine mammal limbs. "Positive" freedoms are "freedoms to". A right to food and shelter could be viewed as a freedom because without them your actions are heavily restricted by the laws of nature. It gets very relevant to talks about your "freedom" to have healthcare.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:24
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Just want to say, this whole post is interesting. It's not black and white, I'm talking mainly this and mainly that. The proof that libertarianism has a mainly negative conception of freedom is that it has a hard time conceiving of cases where one can win greater freedom by taking some freedoms away. The baseline assumption is that if a freedom is taken away, that's bad and the people who did it are immoral.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:25
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Just want to say, this whole post is interesting. I suppose it depends whether you see that as the point or the method, conceptually. As in, is owning the means of production good in and of itself, as an excercise in positive freedom, or is it good because it has the capability to free you from a variety of conditions that not owning it would tend to put you in? I mean ultimately postitive/negative concepts of freedom are not necessarily opposed to one another but which one you tend to use I think will lead to certain trends in how your politics shake out. As you note, freedom to have healthcare or freedom from sickness. Positive freedoms are often thought of as optional, whereas negative freedoms often treat the thing you are being freed from as an ever present condition that some structure must exist to liberate you from.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:35
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Sucrose posted:You're crazy. This is flat-out dictatorship apologia right here. What about North Korea, is everything hunky-dory there too? they rule through appealing to the military/police hierarchy, who then, inflict violence sufficient to defend the extant political structure. but that's true of literally every country, so it's a matter of what degree of societal violence you're comfortable with, which, yes, will depend on how you feel about the political structure being defended.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:36
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose it depends whether you see that as the point or the method, conceptually. Freedom from doesn't work like that, it means freedom from social impositions. You can't conceive freedom from sickness unless you conceive germs and human cells as social actors on par with people. Freedom to refers to concrete powers like staying healthy. And as is, concrete powers tend to involve interfering with others: there's a huge interconnected ball of complex issues to untangle before people could gain the power to stay healthy without the power to decide things for others.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:52
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Eh? I can conceive freedom from all sorts of natural impositions? That's primarily how I conceive natural impositions actually. I don't think about my freedom to shelter I think about my freedom from being necessarily cold and wet.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:57
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OwlFancier posted:Eh? I can conceive freedom from all sorts of natural impositions? That's primarily how I conceive natural impositions actually. If you insist on that, then you aren't in dialogue with Cpt_Obvious but talking past them, because you're twisting their words to mean something else than what they did. These are standard terms with established meanings.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:07
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OwlFancier posted:Eh? I can conceive freedom from all sorts of natural impositions? That's primarily how I conceive natural impositions actually. "Negative" freedoms very specifically refer to freedom from human authorities, not natural ones.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:13
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That seems like a strangely arbitrary distinction to make unless you believe in the concept of free will. Which I grant you would appear like an odd thing not to believe in in a discussion about freedom but I don't personally find it to be an obstacle. I generally take the position that human actions are just as deterministic as naturally occuring forces (and are, arguably, just another kind of naturally occuring force) and thus there isn't really a reason to draw a line between them? Even if you don't rigidly believe that it's weird to just say "you can't think like that about natural events" because clearly you can? It seems specifically a very weird distinction to make if you're trying to do it at the same time as making an argument that society is the way it is because of material conditions that make it that way, because at what point does human action begin and systemic pressure end? I mean I can... accept, I guess, that there is a school of thought that makes that distinction but I have a lot of trouble understanding it and this is the first time I have been exposed to it. It feels like theology almost, like a relic from a time when people believed there was an immutable line between human thought and the physical reality of the world. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 18:15
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Sucrose posted:You're crazy. This is flat-out dictatorship apologia right here. What about North Korea, is everything hunky-dory there too? How? How can a leader rule through fear? This isn't Star Wars, remember. There's no Death Star. (And even if there was, the Death Star hosts a massive population of engineers, janitors, cooks and the like whose cooperation is a necessary precondition for all the stormtroopers and TIE pilots to be fed, cleaned, and equipped) It's a common liberal fantasy that the population of every other country is made of up of nice sensible liberals, and in hostile countries like Nazi Germany those liberals are just too scared to speak out but deep down really resent the ruling regime. The problem is that this isn't true. No one can rule without the support of a decisive fraction of their people. It doesn't have to be enthusiastic support. Those people just have to think that playing along is easier and more comfortable than revolting - that they can basically continue to lead their lives under the current government. And that largely holds true, even in North Korea. Do you think Kim Jong Un has mind control powers? Do you think his soldiers outnumber his citizens? Please take the time to think through the actual logistical requirements of "rule through fear" and how incredibly impractical they are in reality.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:27
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I would probably characterise the society I live in as ruling through fear, though I would suggest that it is fear of the structure rather than fear of specific people, and the fear along with other things serves to limit the ability of people to conceptualise alternatives, and there are ways for you to discharge that anxiety in the short term which ultimately serve to prop up the structure that causes it in the first place. As a society though it creates a lot of fear, feelings of powerlessness, resignation, defeat, and their existence is a primary method of perpetuating the structure of that society. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 18:30
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OwlFancier posted:I mean I can... accept, I guess, that there is a school of thought that makes that distinction but I have a lot of trouble understanding it and this is the first time I have been exposed to it. It feels like theology almost, like a relic from a time when people believed there was an immutable line between human thought and the physical reality of the world. This school of thought is Liberalism, which is why it feels pedantic and fantastical. It is important to realize that humans are more complex than just a pile of chemical reactions inside a blob of fatty acid. At the end of the day, where restrictions come from aren't as important as the restrictions themselves; however, their source provides insight in how we solve them.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:35
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Is there such a state where the ruled class is not encouraged using fear to behave in ways that are beneficial for the ruling class? Edit: I could see there being a hypothetical fully "manufactured consent" society where that were not the case but does one exist? Ruzihm fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 18:37
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Cpt_Obvious posted:This school of thought is Liberalism, which is why it feels pedantic and fantastical. Sure, the mechanism by which different restrictions may be undone is different, though again because I believe society is determined mainly by the physical structure of the world it exists in, I might suggest that they are not as different as they might seem at first glance. But like, I also think that how you tend to conceive freedoms is a big part of what your political affiliation is likely to be, and in that respect I don't really put a distinction between direct impositions by nature and impositions by social structures. I care far more in both cases about making people free from obstructions, in the hope that this will lead them to be more free to do other things. I consider the removal of obstructions to be the most important part though because we have many obstructions in common, while what we want to aspire to is likely very different. And I think that general trend of whether you think freedom from or freedom to is more important, is probably something that breaks quite strongly along political lines. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 18:40
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Ruzihm posted:Is there such a state where the ruled class is not encouraged using fear to behave in ways that are beneficial for the ruling class? No, I would say that this is one of the inherent characteristic of class conflict. The only moments where that fear is less impactful in keeping the populace down is when a revolution is currently happening. And considering how much fear (of outsiders or alternative systems) is an intrinsic part of propaganda everywhere, you probably won't find a non-fear society.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:44
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VictualSquid posted:No, I would say that this is one of the inherent characteristic of class conflict. The only moments where that fear is less impactful in keeping the populace down is when a revolution is currently happening. It's a characteristic of human conflict, not class conflict. Economic class is the current point of division (one of them), but it is not the only one, and similar divisions existed long before capitalism.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:50
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Aruan posted:It's a characteristic of human conflict, not class conflict. Economic class is the current point of division (one of them), but it is not the only one, and similar divisions existed long before capitalism. Yes, but most of those divisions were also class division. The feudal classes also mainly ruled by making the peasants fear revolting and other radical change. If you go back to before class divisions, to what marx called primitive communism your argument might make sense. But I am not actually up on the current research on those societies so there might be a rule through fear or there might not I do not know.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:00
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Aruan posted:It's a characteristic of human conflict, not class conflict. Economic class is the current point of division (one of them), but it is not the only one, and similar divisions existed long before capitalism. Everything has always been a fight over resources: Who gets them and how they distribute them. These are how classes are decided, it is essentially a division of the haves and the have-nots. Feudal nobility may not have been exactly the same as the bourgeoise of today, but when you boil it down it's really just people who have more poo poo vs the people who have less. Thus, all of history is the history of class struggle. E:FB as always.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:02
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Everything has always been a fight over resources: Who gets them and how they distribute them. These are how classes are decided, it is essentially a division of the haves and the have-nots. Feudal nobility may not have been exactly the same as the bourgeoise of today, but when you boil it down it's really just people who have more poo poo vs the people who have less. No, not all history is the history of class struggle. You can argue that all history is the history of struggle, but the reasons for that struggle are often not about resources, or, if they are, are not about resources in the context of the specific discussion about economic classes we're having here. Trying to define and understand the three "estates" of feudal Europe through contemporary terminology informed by modern economic theory isn't particularly useful - and why Marxist historiography of pre-modern societies is problematic. That's why anthropology - to use the term loosely - is important. Are humans inherently prone to conflict? Or are we driven to conflict by, say, scarce resources, or religious divisions, and conceivably a more perfect society could eliminate those drivers? Do you know what historiography is? And some of the most common historiographical approaches, including Marxism? Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 19:07
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OwlFancier posted:That seems like a strangely arbitrary distinction to make unless you believe in the concept of free will. Which I grant you would appear like an odd thing not to believe in in a discussion about freedom but I don't personally find it to be an obstacle. It is exactly a relic, philosophy is a collection of relics from times when there were grounds to hold different assumptions. But we were talking about that relic because it's one of the base assumptions that contemporary liberal and libertarian political philosophies as well as the whole bourgeois ideology are based on. Bourgeois society gives negative freedom a far greater consideration than positive freedom, and treats people who do the opposite as enemies of freedom who forfeit their right to freedom in this popperian manner. Just as there can't be tolerance toward intolerance, there can't be freedom from interference for those who interfere. That ideological preferential treatment is a hidden precondition of countless common sense opinions that everyone holds, including you and me.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:07
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Aruan posted:No, not all history is the history of class struggle. You can argue that all history is the history of struggle, but the reasons for that struggle are often not about resources, or, if they are, are not about resources in the context of the specific discussion about economic classes we're having here. Trying to define and understand the three "estates" of feudal Europe through contemporary terminology informed by modern economic theory isn't particularly useful - and why Marxist historiography of pre-modern societies is problematic.  This concept that people just decide to murder each other for no apparent reason makes absolutely no sense both in theory and in practice. It's just empty fascist rhetoric.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:16
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Actually, yes: I feel like you didn't actually read my post. Again, do you know what historiography is? And saying that humans are inherently prone to conflict isn't "fascist" rhetoric, good lord. Do you know what fascism is? How are you even defining fascism? It feels like you're torturing the concept of fascism (a political system!) to describe whatever you seemingly disagree with to the point that its losing all meaning as a descriptive term.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:18
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I suppose not having the fancy philosophical grounding has given me a rather different understanding then because I would probably have said the opposite, that liberal society places an enormous amount of weight on positive freedoms, people to make affirmative, self directed decisions and take control, including over other people, and very little on negative freedoms as I would understand them such as freedom from cold, hunger, fear etc. It seems to idealize the positive freedom of a handful precisely by ignoring the negative freedom of the majority. I suppose you could phrase it the other way if you wanted to as I understand the two terms to basically just be outlooks on the same thing, but like I said it's never how I've thought of it. I have trouble conceptualizing the concept of negative and positive freedom that includes the weird rules about what you're allowed to apply them to. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 19:19
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Aruan posted:I feel like you didn't actually read my post. Again, do you know what historiography is? And saying that humans are inherently prone to conflict isn't "fascist" rhetoric, good lord.  You're talking in circles. As a leftist, what is it you believe causes conflict?
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Dec 8, 2020 19:23
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OwlFancier posted:I would probably characterise the society I live in as ruling through fear, though I would suggest that it is fear of the structure rather than fear of specific people, and the fear along with other things serves to limit the ability of people to conceptualise alternatives, and there are ways for you to discharge that anxiety in the short term which ultimately serve to prop up the structure that causes it in the first place. Much of the ideological basis of the American regime can be phrased as based on fear, like the fear that if the free market is tampered with we'll lose our national prosperity, the fear that hordes of foreigners will overtake us unless we stop them, or whatever. This isn't really an impressive rhetorical move to make, though, because every positive desire can be recast as a fear of that desire going unfulfilled, like love for a child being twinned with fear of that child being endangered or whatever. I don't think it's a useful framework. Even so, when I hear "rule through hear" I don't understand it as power which is based in part on ideology (as all power is) but rule through main force and brute intimidation like in some sort of young adult fiction dystopia. Actual, visceral fear of being imprisoned or executed for merely stepping out of line or expressing the wrong opinion in public. You know, the usual caricature of both the Soviet and Nazi regimes, as well as the generic jackbooted totalitarianism that haunts the nightmares of liberals both progressive and conservative. "Shh, honey, we aren't allowed to say the truth any more." That's not actually a real thing. You can't do it, practically speaking. Kim Jong Un does not "rule through fear"; nobody does. Obviously, the American government rules certain marginalized slices of its population through fear. But this is part and parcel of keeping the people whose actual consent it depends on for continued existence happy and well-supplied with cheap labor.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:24
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Cpt_Obvious posted:
I think today, in 2020, most conflict is driven by economic inequities inherent to capitalism. But that's today, in 2020 (and again, most, not all). Trying to export contemporary economic conflicts into, say, 800 B.C. Syria, is dumb, and from a historical perspective, problematic. I'm not talking in circles. I'm saying that when Marx said "all history is the history of class struggle" he was wrong, and that trying to stretch any historical event to try to read modern economic class struggle into it obscures actual meaning to the point that its worthless as a historiographical approach. It's like saying "well all struggle is actually caused by oxygen because humans need to breathe." Now, lets see if you can answer my question: do you know what historiography is? Do you see why it might be problematic to utilize a single historiographical approach - Marxism - to the exclusion of all others? Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 19:27
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Aruan posted:No, not all history is the history of class struggle. You can argue that all history is the history of struggle, but the reasons for that struggle are often not about resources, or, if they are, are not about resources in the context of the specific discussion about economic classes we're having here. Trying to define and understand the three "estates" of feudal Europe through contemporary terminology informed by modern economic theory isn't particularly useful - and why Marxist historiography of pre-modern societies is problematic. I agree with the part about down-and-dirty anthropological science being necessary to understand the past. But the claim that all history is the history of class struggles isn't just a claim about the nature of history, it's also a definition of the word. Anthropological findings about surprisingly viable horizontally organized societies don't threaten the claim, because such societies are defined to be outside history, merely interacting with historical societies. The definition is inherently sensible, because any such societies have been effectively erased from history, and that's why anthropology has had to rediscover them the hard way. Of course, such a claim is *problematic*. For one, it's useless for reasoning about times and places where societies whose development is not governed by class struggles have a prominent role. But to be less problematic, an alternative claim needs to have greater explanatory power. People who claim that there are no scientifically meaningful patterns in history only have an advantage over people whose forecasts have results that are worse than random. And I think you're being willfully dense when you try to present medieval europe as such a time and place. Estates are how medieval society presented itself in thought (self-written history etc.) and don't really say much about medieval class.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:49
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Aruan posted:I think today, in 2020, most conflict is driven by economic inequities inherent to capitalism. But that's today, in 2020 (and again, most, not all). Trying to export contemporary economic conflicts into, say, 800 B.C. Syria, is dumb, and from a historical perspective, problematic. I'm not talking in circles. I'm saying that when Marx said "all history is the history of class struggle" he was wrong, and that trying to stretch any historical event to try to read modern economic class struggle into it obscures actual meaning to the point that its worthless as a historiographical approach. It's like saying "well all struggle is actually caused by oxygen because humans need to breathe." Obviously you don't understand what that phrase means because you are applying it incorrectly. I've tried to explain it to you twice, but you refuse to budge from your erroneous assumptions. I have asked for your alternative explanation for conflict, and you've refused to answer that question. You are making unfounded claims and refusing to support them. For example, you state that conflict in 800 BC must not have material causes without explaining why. Instead, you pivot to a new ideological framework and demand that I accept it as truth instead of explaining what it is. I don't know how to engage with you in good faith anymore. Aruan posted:Now, lets see if you can answer my question: do you know what historiography is? Do you see why it might be problematic to utilize a single historiographical approach - Marxism - to the exclusion of all others? For the last time, if you want to disprove Marxism you should make arguments against it supported by evidence instead of large empty claims. Why does Marxism fail to explain history? What does it fail to explain? And what is a more coherent ideological framework for explanation? And to answer your question: No. Would you care to talk about it?
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Dec 8, 2020 19:55
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Obviously you don't understand what that phrase means because you are applying it incorrectly. I've tried to explain it to you twice, but you refuse to budge from your erroneous assumptions. I have asked for your alternative explanation for conflict, and you've refused to answer that question. Does there have to be a single unified explanation for conflict? Why?
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Dec 8, 2020 19:59
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Aegis posted:Does there have to be a single unified explanation for conflict? Why? To avoid it.
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Dec 8, 2020 20:13
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I think the question is why does all conflict necessarily have to have ths same explanation, not why do you want to know what it is.
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Dec 8, 2020 20:22
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Cpt_Obvious posted:To avoid it. That kind of begs the question, though. If there is, in fact, no single, unified explanation of conflict (and I will go ahead and posit that there isn't--even if we limit it to "historical" societies, as somebody suggested above) then you won't be avoiding anything. As somebody who has studied history, I'm often sympathetic to a marxist analysis; but this line of argument feels like trying to hammer circumstance-dependent pegs into rigidly doctrinaire holes. Aegis fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 20:23
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Obviously you don't understand what that phrase means because you are applying it incorrectly. I've tried to explain it to you twice, but you refuse to budge from your erroneous assumptions. I have asked for your alternative explanation for conflict, and you've refused to answer that question. You are making unfounded claims and refusing to support them. For example, you state that conflict in 800 BC must not have material causes without explaining why. Instead, you pivot to a new ideological framework and demand that I accept it as truth instead of explaining what it is. First off, you seem to be torturing class struggle to be instead broadly mean "conflict over resources," which is not class struggle. But the problem implicit in Marx's framing is that it assumes certain existing conditions about the time that its describing - that there are classes, that those classes have divisions based on status or wealth, and that conflict can be explained by the divisions between the haves and have nots. I am not saying conflict doesn't have material causes, I'm saying that not every conflict can be explained through the framework of class struggle. Class struggle explains some conflict, but not all conflict - because, beyond the obvious, implicit in this description is an assumption in a level of rationality which I do not think exists. Further, as I've posted repeatedly in this thread, I do not believe in objective truth, which is a pre-requisite for the type of single unifying explanatory theory that Marxism sometimes tries to be (and which, largely, later Marxists have abandoned). And none of this is surprising, because Marxism suffers from many of the same flaws that theories written during the mid-1800s have: a progressive worldview, that an objective reality exists and that humans can recognize and understand it, and that there is a momentum and cycle to historical events which, again, is knowable, can be described, and is predictive. Also, generally, the burden of proof isn't on the person who doesn't believe the single unifying theory which purports to explain everything - the burden of proof would be on the person who is arguing that their theory explains everything. Edit: Oh I missed one question: I don't think there is a single ideology that explains everything. Marxism explains some things, other theories explain other things. Marxism is an arrow in your quiver, its not the quiver. Aegis posted:Does there have to be a single unified explanation for conflict? Why? Well, for a few reasons. Marxism is deterministic, and for that to be meaningful it requires Marxism to explain... basically the history of everything. The problem is that the dialectical cycle that Marx described has... not come to pass, which forces you to reevaluate some elements of his theory. Capitalism is stronger and more pervasive than ever and now has effectively grown to encompass not only our economic system, but our entire culture, to the point where it likely literally limits our ability to critique the system itself. Some Marxist scholars argue that "free will" doesn't exist not because humans are deterministic, but because capitalism, by shaping language and discourse, has established limits on the boundaries of what we think and how we think, thereby eliminated free will. Also a key piece of this conversation that Cpt_Obvious seems to be missing is that we're trying to ask "well, what happens if there is a rejection of capitalism? What does conflict in that system look like? Will there be conflict, and what form? What causes this conflict?" And a recognition of anthropological assumptions undergirds answering that question. Aegis posted:As somebody who has studied history, I'm often sympathetic to a marxist analysis; but this line of argument feels like trying to hammer circumstance-dependent pegs into rigidly doctrinaire holes. Welcome to the dangers of confining yourself to a single interpretative lens. quote:"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto." Nietzsche was right. Treating Marxism as the single unifying theory that explains all history, forevermore, is no different than treating it like a religion. We've replaced one false idol with another, and the outcome is the same. Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 20:33
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Aruan posted:Welcome to the dangers of confining yourself to a single interpretative lens. quote:People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.
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Dec 8, 2020 21:07
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Ah yes, anyone who is not a Marxist is a liberal, of course! Let's just keep patiently waiting for the revolution, because there's no way Marx could be wrong. (PS: discussing Marxism on a dead gay comedy forum is not practicing Marxism)
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Dec 8, 2020 21:10
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