(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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i cannot bring myself to watch that whole thing. the snippets on the internet comment etiqutte video about killed me as it is.
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Nov 16, 2021 18:14
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Nov 17, 2021 08:18
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That sounds like absolute loving nonsense. It's 'Yet you live in a society' as an argument.
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Nov 17, 2021 11:44
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meanwhile, in freedomland over here, buying things involves no interaction with society or the government whatsoever,
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Nov 17, 2021 13:48
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The big issue with the Brezhnev period wasn't that society suddenly stopped progressing, but generally, economic growth dropped off. Some of this was simply due to the fact that the Soviets had achieved the "low hanging fruits" of industrialization (it produce a massive amount of coal/steel/oil etc) but a move to a full consumer economy was complicated by a number of fairly obvious factors. One is simply technological, that while the Soviets had a boost in technological development through reserve-engineering/bootstrap development during the 1950s, by the 1970s they simply started to be swamped out by Western R&D investment. Another is simply that the Soviets were greatly restricted from most international trade, and that the Eastern bloc on its own simply wasn't large or dynamic enough to be competitive on the same level. In addition, military spending was starting to bite, arguably necessary considering Western resources, but it still needs to be remarked on. In some ways, the energy crisis of the 1970s only moderately delayed larger issues the Soviets were facing, but by the mid-1980s, they had clearly run out of time. ------ It is Western superiority during this period that is feeding the arrogance of the Western political class at the moment versus China.
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Nov 17, 2021 14:12
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hot witch divorcee posted:meanwhile, in freedomland over here, buying things involves no interaction with society or the government whatsoever, that's precisely the argument, yes American consumerism is just people walking slack-jawed and alone through strip malls until a particularly shiny bauble catches their eye Soviet consumerism involved forming relationships with the salespeople at the Moscow GUM so they'd let you know when the good stuff came in, or becoming a member of the local queueing union so you could join the line for the furniture shop without getting shooed away as a place-stealing interloper the book's thesis (as I laid out in the post before this) is that "stagnation" isn't an accurate descriptor for the Brezhnev era, and is colored both by Gorbachev wanting to paint his predecessor in that way in order to justify his liberal reforms, as well as by Western powers wanting to portray the USSR as a decrepit nation (for fairly obvious reasons) when it came to consumerism during the 1970s, it's particularly a false narrative precisely because the imagery of long lines around shops was long lines for luxury goods. Soviet citizens were not (anymore) queueing to get bread, they were there for radios and jewelry and cold cuts and neither was the demand for this a reflection of people "tuning out" from socialism or becoming disengaged with ideology, because the Soviet government actively encouraged consumerism and wanted that people would strive for a higher standard of living indeed, that we have literature of regular Soviet folk demanding that the government step up and produce more toys for them reflects that A. they think that way because that was what the government told them they should want, and B. that they still expect that the government is the correct avenue for having such issues addressed. When was the last time an American saw any benefit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or thought that they had any answers?
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Nov 17, 2021 14:26
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would also add that the mixed model going on (since Khruschev) then moved away too much from planning to permit maneuvering against those deficiencies
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Nov 17, 2021 14:29
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https://www.gotoquiz.com/what_kind_of_socialist_or_communist_are_you
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Nov 21, 2021 10:51
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Yes, I'm a big believer in "massive collectivizism."
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Nov 21, 2021 11:07
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Falstaff posted:Yes, I'm a big believer in "massive collectivizism." lets do it
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Nov 21, 2021 11:10
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It feels like a bored high school student wrote this quiz. But, I got Lenin so I guess it isn't complete poo poo.
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Nov 21, 2021 11:13
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Falstaff posted:Yes, I'm a big believer in "massive collectivizism." I'm the person filling this quiz who was exiled more than once. I did get Marx so I can't really argue about its accuracy. Bear Retrieval Unit has issued a correction as of 12:41 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 12:34
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Im the person filling the quiz from a small selection of definitely not leading countries but I got Lenin so I can’t say it’s wrong either 
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Nov 22, 2021 11:10
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drat this boy got my number
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Nov 22, 2021 17:48
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So uh, I got Rosa Luxemburg. On a scale from one to Trotsky, how out of touch am I?
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Nov 22, 2021 17:58
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only 8% Kropotkin eat poo poo posers
Buck Wildman has issued a correction as of 19:13 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 18:14
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Azathoth posted:So uh, I got Rosa Luxemburg. On a scale from one to Trotsky, how out of touch am I? I got Trotsky 
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Nov 22, 2021 18:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:I was reading Marc Levinson's "The Box" Yeah I can see how reading a book like that in the current moment would really highlight the contradictions, for lack of better phrase. I like to read two books at the same time that are kind of related but might play off each other for the same reason, but that's harder to do. Piketty over the last couple of years has been good in the same way. Ardennes posted:The big issue with the Brezhnev period wasn't that society suddenly stopped progressing, but generally, economic growth dropped off. Some of this was simply due to the fact that the Soviets had achieved the "low hanging fruits" of industrialization (it produce a massive amount of coal/steel/oil etc) but a move to a full consumer economy was complicated by a number of fairly obvious factors. One is simply technological, that while the Soviets had a boost in technological development through reserve-engineering/bootstrap development during the 1950s, by the 1970s they simply started to be swamped out by Western R&D investment. I don't know anything about it but I wonder if the Soviets (presumably) slow development of plastics impacted their ability to transform their economy as well. Watching a bunch of machine tool restoration channels a lot of the Soviet era stuff has a ton of wooden parts that are difficult to repair and replace, whereas contemporary American machines start to have some plastic components (although both still rely heavily on steel and other metals obviously). It could also be that I'm overstating the important of plastics in Western consumption that didn't really get going until after the fall of the Soviet Union. Dreylad has issued a correction as of 19:44 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 19:39
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I got Stalin.
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Nov 22, 2021 22:39
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chairface posted:I got Trotsky Guards! Seize him!
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Nov 22, 2021 22:41
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Dwalin, Balin, Stalin
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Nov 22, 2021 23:07
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Dreylad posted:I don't know anything about it but I wonder if the Soviets (presumably) slow development of plastics impacted their ability to transform their economy as well. Watching a bunch of machine tool restoration channels a lot of the Soviet era stuff has a ton of wooden parts that are difficult to repair and replace, whereas contemporary American machines start to have some plastic components (although both still rely heavily on steel and other metals obviously). It was a factor in the sense that Soviet manufacturing was generally behind in most ways. It was a less a lack of interest but much more an issue of resources and being largely locked out of Western markets especially when it came to then cutting edge R&D. Basically, they could only bootstrap so far versus a far large economic bloc. The issue for the US versus the PRC is how integrated the PRC is with global trade, and while they are trying to halt the sales of some technology (lithographic machines for producing CPU dies), China has its work arounds.
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Nov 23, 2021 03:57
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stop posting highlighted books if you aren’t reading in dark mode!!
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Nov 23, 2021 06:35
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I've read Revolution and the State, Imperialism and, I guess, the Three Sources. Can I put a checkmark on having read Lenin or am I missing something essential and relevant? What is to be done?
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Nov 23, 2021 09:13
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genericnick posted:I've read Revolution and the State, Imperialism and, I guess, the Three Sources. Can I put a checkmark on having read Lenin or am I missing something essential and relevant? What is to be done? https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
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Nov 23, 2021 09:48
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http://large.stanford.edu/history/kaist/references/marx/beard/c10/ goddamn it was in their loving Constitution that people should only work seven hours a day and that they should have paid vacations every year
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Nov 23, 2021 09:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:http://large.stanford.edu/history/kaist/references/marx/beard/c10/ if you look up the stalin constitution on wikipedia it has lots of stuff about how putting good things in the constitution was a dastardly soviet plot to fool people about how their society was structured and secret ballot stipulations were actually more sinister than the previous open ballot. it rules
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Nov 23, 2021 10:02
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genericnick posted:I've read Revolution and the State, Imperialism and, I guess, the Three Sources. Can I put a checkmark on having read Lenin or am I missing something essential and relevant? What is to be done? What Is To Be Done and Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disease are both important political texts, and i'd argue that Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is essential to understanding lenin's view on philosophy and ontology. notably it's not lenin's field, which created problems for soviet philosophers and physicists later in the more dogmatic phase of the soviet union, but it's a fascinating text all the same. what doesn't hold up is these days pretty clear and what does hold up is very interesting
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Nov 23, 2021 10:08
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 im not contradictory in my ideological views no sir
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Nov 23, 2021 10:10
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genericnick posted:I've read Revolution and the State, Imperialism and, I guess, the Three Sources. Can I put a checkmark on having read Lenin or am I missing something essential and relevant? What is to be done? In addition to what has already been recommended, I'll suggest Nadezhda Krupskaya's Reminiscences of Lenin because you get a much better sense of each work's specific historical context. Whenever she mentions one of Lenin's works or articles in her recounting, stop and read it. She tends to reference works in the order in which they were written so you get a feel for why this or that issue was so prominent in Lenin's thinking at a given moment.
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Nov 23, 2021 11:46
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V. Illych L. posted:What Is To Be Done and Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disease are both important political texts, and i'd argue that Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is essential to understanding lenin's view on philosophy and ontology. notably it's not lenin's field, which created problems for soviet philosophers and physicists later in the more dogmatic phase of the soviet union, but it's a fascinating text all the same. what doesn't hold up is these days pretty clear and what does hold up is very interesting Going to read Left-Wing Communism at least. I found most of the other texts to be still pretty relevant, but I expect What is to be Done is more focused on the specific situation of czarist Russia? Anyway, Lenin at least is concise, so no harm in reading a bit more. Edited to make clear I haven't actually read What is to be Done, yet, genericnick has issued a correction as of 15:29 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 11:57
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lenin, actually, is the best
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Nov 23, 2021 14:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:Guards! Seize him! Look whatever happened later, Trotsky was the greatest in the world during the brief period where armored wartrains were both technologically feasible and not immediately useless because of aerial bombing. Dude won a seven front civil war largely by doing mad max poo poo with his wartrains. I can't dislike the best guy ever at WAR TRAINS.
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Nov 23, 2021 21:09
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chairface posted:Look whatever happened later, Trotsky was the greatest in the world during the brief period where armored wartrains were both technologically feasible and not immediately useless because of aerial bombing. Dude won a seven front civil war largely by doing mad max poo poo with his wartrains. I can't dislike the best guy ever at WAR TRAINS. my most assuredly cancellable opinion is that i’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Trotsky the person, even if the political groups that bear his name have universally been the most risible mother fuckers in the world
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Nov 23, 2021 23:00
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I'm taking a more focused view on studying political theory and thought, because I've never thought critically about these concepts before. Now I'm writing a story about this stuff for fun, and the more I try to represent thoughts and ideas, the more I learn that I don't know nearly as much as I thought. I'm really uneducated, but I want to learn. Hopefully I don't sound like an rear end in a top hat, but it's even worse because I don't know how to frame my question, so I'm gonna ramble on, and hopefully you all can help me. I'm trying to figure out how Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism exist in the overarching fall of Capitalism, and why Socialism now seems to mean "Capitalism but we don't let people starve." That doesn't feel like it's always the case. From my understanding Socialism is an interim between Capitalism and Communism, that is to say as Capital fails, more and more social structures pop up to support the working class, because without them the world ceases to produce. We're seeing this in small parts now in America, where 60% of the worker population has died or retired, creating a work shortage, and the workers are now asking more rights and money to go back to work. From what I'm understanding is that Capital is trying to diminish the meaning of Socialism to squash the effect it would have on billionaire's golden hoards. By changing the idea of what Socialism is, they can push back the fall of capitalism a little bit further, because they're incredibly aware of what happens when the nuclear reactor that is Capitalism goes into melt down, when they are in fact the fissile material powering it. So the common idea of what Socialism is, is in fact not Socialism or some other word. We see parallels in this in the same way that no truly Communist government existed, but the idea has been tied to a bunch of governments and society that were either coup or destroyed by the powers of Capital. The more I try to write and understand about the failings of the idea of Neo-liberal (American Neo-Liberals, Idk what it's called in other countries) Socialism, and how it will still create misery as long as it's not full Communism, the more I feel like I'm just critiquing Capitalism but less harmful Capitalism. So my question is, I guess, What is Socialism? Is it just Capitalism with extra steps? Is it a transitional period? Is it Capital trying to push back the inevitability of Communism? Is it even possible to critique "Capitalism with Social Safety Nets" without seeming like a chud? Or is that just impossible to avoid, similar to how the Starship Troopers movie was a critique of fascism that everyone thought was a critique of war? I also know that Communism and Socialism has a concept of public and private property, but what does that look like? Whatever system I try to think of, tends to be Capitalism but with social safety nets. I wonder if this is in part that I can't separate the concept of currency with Capitalism, and if that is part of the problem. That in the cultural zeitgeist the idea of owning something, and then selling something seems inextricable with what Capitalism is.
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Nov 23, 2021 23:02
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Lightningproof posted:my most assuredly cancellable opinion is that i’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Trotsky the person, even if the political groups that bear his name have universally been the most risible mother fuckers in the world Though he was a belligerent hothead and wound up making the wrong enemies, he was a man of extraordinary organizational and rhetorical talent and it is likely there would not have been a successful October revolution without him. There's a reason that he was so extensively vilified by the propagandists behind the White Armies during the Civil War. I don't think it's unreasonable to have some respect for him
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Nov 23, 2021 23:17
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Mr. Lobe posted:Though he was a belligerent hothead and wound up making the wrong enemies, he was a man of extraordinary organizational and rhetorical talent and it is likely there would not have been a successful October revolution without him. There's a reason that he was so extensively vilified by the propagandists behind the White Armies during the Civil War. I don't think it's unreasonable to have some respect for him I mean, i think part of the reason he was such a big target was he was obviously jewish, so the anti-Semites amongst the whites thought he was an easy target. I won't deny he definitely helped the revolution take off, but he seemed to me that he thought he was the smartest guy in every room, which tends to tick people off. Best anecdote about him is definitely closing the big door when he got pissed off at a meeting.
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Nov 23, 2021 23:31
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genericnick posted:Going to read Left-Wing Communism at least. I found most of the other texts to be still pretty relevant, but I expect What is to be Done is more focused on the specific situation of czarist Russia? Anyway, Lenin at least is concise, so no harm in reading a bit more. What Is To Be Done is also the sketch of lenin's party model and the ideology of his mode of political organisation. part of the reason it makes good reading is that almost every political party in the western world has basically adopted lenin's party structure to some degree or other, with the possible exception of the weird quasi-parties in the USA which i still don't understand what actually are Boba Pearl posted:I'm taking a more focused view on studying political theory and thought, because I've never thought critically about these concepts before. Now I'm writing a story about this stuff for fun, and the more I try to represent thoughts and ideas, the more I learn that I don't know nearly as much as I thought. socialism is the mode of organisation under which the bourgeois hold power has been broken. typically this is seen as e.g. a dictatorship of the proletariat-style situation. the point being, communism is the state in which the proletariat has abolished itself, and with it ceased the reproduction of the class system since there can be no class system in an industrial society without a proletariat. capitalism is defined as the mode of production in which the means of production (jargon for "business stuff", i.e. everything from office space and supplies to classical big machines that make stuff) is privately owned, i.e. it can be bought and sold relatively freely by individuals, basically. socialism is supposed to be the intermediary rule of those meaning to bring about this class-less society while there are still contradictions to be resolved and thus still need of a repressive state - basically, the idea is that the people who have something to lose in the class-less society will not likely give up without some kind of fight, and that necessitates a police force, a military of some kind, formal courts etc. these are trappings of the class state and, in one of marx's more utopian moments, he predicts their withering away as class society is abolished. welfare state ideologies are a little complicated in this context. the welfare states were definitely part of some socialist movements' agendas, since they effectively are half-measured meant to recapture some of the surplus value (the difference between the value that workers produce and what they are compensated) and redistribute them in co-ordinated, collective ways to the proletariat. as noted, however, such institutions can co-exist with bourgeois capitalism for a while, though their long-term prospects are for various reasons threatened by it. i would like to note that one of these is the tendency towards commoditisation of public welfare, e.g. instituting quasi-costumer relations between citizens and their healthcare systems or institutions of learning through creative costing measures and restructuring. another classical erosion is the introduction of private sector contracting for increasingly central parts of the service operation, typically starting with security and janitorial services and never really ending short of full privatisation. in times of high tension, even avowedly bourgeois regimes have seen it as necessary to move in a relatively welfarist direction.
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Nov 24, 2021 01:13
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isn't Withering away of the state Engels, not Marx.
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Nov 24, 2021 01:29
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that is possible. i do mix them up sometimes and i'm insomniaposting
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Nov 24, 2021 01:44
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