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I would add the pervasive oppression and violence against the Roma. It's not new, but in some places it's reaching new extremes and new levels of public acceptability. http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/killing-time-lethal-force-anti-roma-racism The murder of Roma is often not investigated, arson against their camps goes unpunished and even condoned by government officals, and a general feeling when a Roma dies is that he or she must have had it coming to them in some way. They are illegally deported, illegally medicated, sterilized, taxed, imprisoned, fined, etc. But more and more recently they are killed. quote:Such violence often occurs where local and national politicians speak openly of the need to deal with “gypsies,” and appear to condone violent excesses as “understandable.” Perhaps the most notorious example was Italy in 2008. Following arson attacks on Roma camps, then Minister of Interior Roberto Maroni was quoted as having stated, “That is what happens when gypsies steal babies, or when Romanians commit sexual violence,” and Umberto Bossi’s reported response to the outbreaks of mob violence was that “people do what the state can’t manage.”
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Aug 10, 2013 01:00
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Blackbird Fly posted:That quote from Maroni reminds of blood libel and other forms of antisemitism. Why does anti-Roma hate still run so deep in Europe compared to antisemitism? A combination of numbers-- there's only 28,400 Jews in Italy, compared to 250,000 or so Roma, and that the remaining Jews are normally professional and assimilated there. Most lower-class Italian Jews were either killed or left. There is still virulent anti-semitism, it's just of a very different sort. Conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the banks are very common. In Eastern Europe antisemitism is still extremely virulent.
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Aug 10, 2013 01:27
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Chamale posted:The Nazis killed more Roma than Jews (per capita) and there were no strong Roma voices to speak out against continued discrimination afterwards. What's your source for this? What I have has 'only' 300,000 of 700,000 Roma and Sinti being killed in the war, while 2/3rd of Jews were.
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Aug 10, 2013 01:31
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Chamale posted:Looking into it I'm finding a wide range of estimates, from 150,000 to 1,500,000 Roma and Sinti deaths, and the high estimates depend on much higher estimates of the prewar Roma population. It's not crucial to my point. Discrimination against "gypsies" is so bad now because of the lack of advocacy and recognition of anti-Roma discrimination in the years after the Holocaust. It remained more acceptable to hate the Roma in occupied Germany after the war, while virulent anti-semites were suspected of being Nazi loyalists. It took until 1979 for West Germany to recognize that persecution of the Roma was racially motivated and their right to reparations. I'd say it stems to before the war: Roma were even more ostracized than Jews in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, etc. The Roma weren't very established in the US, and those that were tended to have cut most connections with Europe, and so the international Roma community didn't have the same ability to help them out after the war.
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Aug 10, 2013 02:31
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MeLKoR posted:
First, Machiavelli was a republican. Second, how did this whole 'supporting the usurping lord' thing work out for the people? It's not like this was a vehicle for actual change, it was still supporting the status quo-- it was supporting the entire political system of "these nobles are in charge".
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Aug 10, 2013 13:29
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SickZip posted:No poo poo they weren't modern scientific racists. Probably because they weren't modern. I'd say it's more true that there are lots of ancient societies that are racism-free, or where racism is extremely different, and that modern racism also has one aspect-- an understanding of genetics and evolution-- that old racists didn't actually have. I agree there is demonstrable 'color of their skin' racism from older times. But the idea of racial supremacy, rather than racial cohesiveness, isn't as easy to prove from those earlier examples.
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Aug 11, 2013 02:09
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Orange Devil posted:Dutch government took the exact same line. The minister for sports came out and said that for example Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst, who is bisexual, going to Russia and winning medals would be a much bigger signal than a boycott. I just don't buy that. To be fair, Jesse Owen's victory in the Olympics held in Nazi-controlled Germany was pretty rad, doubly so because it clowned (some) racists in the US, too. I just don't think we can actually guarantee the safety of the athletes. Putin's government won't give a poo poo if they get beaten up or even killed.
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Aug 11, 2013 16:26
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There is a really wonderful book called "Bestseller" by the complicated British communist Claud Cockburn. It is a review of the books that were popular, rather than critically popular, in Britain at the time. It shows vicious, prevalent anti-semitism, extreme nationalism, etc. It is very easy to imagine that if Britain had been as economically devastated as Germany was at the time, that Fascism could have risen there, too, based on the popularity of books with very pro-fascist themes.
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Aug 13, 2013 10:50
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Emden posted:Hold up, hold up. Where are you from? I need context so that I can bash you over the head with it. Can you explain why facism and incompetence go together so well? Is it because of the overconfidence that Facism instills in its followers due to the unscientific gibberish they make up to justify their nutty racial theories, which leads to thinks like them getting stomped over and over again by Russians outsmarting them on the battlefield using maskirovka? I mean, obviously the Russians were great at it, but the Nazis fell for it over and over and over and over again, so I'm assuming there's something systemic and I'm guessing it's that the racist idiots couldn't bring themselves to admit that those dirty Slavs were actually a hell of a lot smarter than them when it came to adopting to the new era of warfare, while the Nazis had a ton of fuckups who had licked the right jackboots in positions they never should have been.
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Sep 30, 2013 21:35
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Emden posted:That's a laugh, because I'm pretty sure it's only going to end up worse for us. Our political parties don't care about us because we don't have money and are soon to be outnumbered by hispanic immigrants. Hispanic immigrants are 'us'. Immigrants become US Citizens, and that's how this country gets strong and awesome. On the other side of the coin you have places like moronic Nazi Germany, which kicked out brilliant scientists because of race. Many of them fled to the US, and a lot contributed materially in kicking Nazi Germany's rear end. Of course, we need to get better at this, as we still gently caress over large numbers of our citizenry along racial lines in a very stupid fashion, but at least we're not as dumb as Nazis, eh? quote:I'm slightly younger than you are and I can't even get a poo poo low pay job. I work temporary jobs which are a rung below the worst of the worst. I don't even have the security of a minimum number of hours. We have no future in this country at all. You don't work temporary jobs that are a rung below the worst of the worst.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:39
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Emden posted:Our aversion to different people is quite literally biology. Go read what E. O. Wilson has to say about tribalism and human beings. E.O. Wilson is not the only biologist ever to have lived, and his specialty is ants.
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Nov 1, 2013 22:51
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YF-23 posted:New models ARE planned obsolescence if they're used as a marketing strategy that way. It's fine to release new better models, sure, but don't act as though it's improvement just for the sake of making a better product. The term originally meant "This poo poo will literally fall apart after X years" not "This poo poo will be obsolete in X years because of style/fashion/upgrades." It's expanded to include that meaning, but that's a little dumb because it's not really built into the product the way real planned physical obsolescence is. Edit for actual content: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/world/article/2-Chileans-charged-with-causing-Spain-church-blast-4989149.php How not to bash the fash: Explode a dumb pointless bomb in a cathedral for past ties to fascists, get arrested for it. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 13:52
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YF-23 posted:That really doesn't mean anything though, at this point we're arguing semantics because we all fully understand what we're talking about but describing it by using the term "planned obsolescence" (which as you point out has come to include the thing we're talking about) is something that apparently some people don't like? It really does mean something. It's very important to be able to distinguish a planned attempt by companies to sell products that they know will break and wear out, and companies knowing that, because of desires to upgrade and marketing, customers will want a new version in a few years. They're two different things, and though the term 'planned obsolescence' can cover them both, it's a lot more of a stretch for the latter. As someone else just said, you don't need to really plan the second kind of obsolescence, it just happens.
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Nov 23, 2013 16:08
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Diet Lime posted:I've been reading the thread quite a while and really didn't want to extend the derail; but I can't help but notice some serious Apple fanboyism going on here. I have never bought an Apple product in my life, don't know how to use a Mac, and I have no idea why you think I'm an Apple fanboy. quote:Apple absolutely practices planned obsolescence, the moment you design mobile hardware that relies on a battery and make it such that that battery cannot be replaced without tools and disassembly you've built-in a lifespan. Why are you telling me this, since I never talked about Apple. Did you mean to tell this to someone else or something? All I'm saying is that there's a difference between physical obsolescence-- planning that your poo poo will break-- and marketing obsolescence-- knowing that your customers are going to want a new version in a few years. I don't care about Apple or your opinions about Apple. How about we stop talking about Apple unless you're saying they're fascists. More content: Reasonably good Salon/Alternet article arguing that austerity leads to fascism, or more accurately, that the failure of government to solve real social ills leads to extremism. Pretty good read. http://www.salon.com/2013/11/20/could_austerity_give_rise_to_american_fascism_partner/
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Nov 23, 2013 17:58
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The Warszawa posted:In a sudden shift to racial homogeneity, how are biracial and multiracial people treated? Since race is a fundamentally unscientific concept, it kind of all depends on the implementation. If you used genetic testing, you'd find out a lot of people who think they're of one 'race' actually have an admixture of other 'races' in them, like what happened recently to that white supremacist.
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Nov 25, 2013 23:54
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Emden posted:
"Everyone fears the Other" is not, in fact, a biological statement, except if you use dumb-rear end Nazi semi-mystical science, which you do. At what point does the schtick of being a Nazi become the reality?
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Nov 26, 2013 00:22
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Emden posted:Still haven't read E. O. Wilson, eh? Maybe you'll get around to it some day. You neither actually understand Wilson, nor is Wilson a pre-eminent authority on human biology. His specialty is ants. rudatron posted:Are you morons seriously debating with emden, the literal nazi? Really? You didn't get the memo? I mean his custom title is right there, and it's not an exaggeration. Or people think that, regardless of the trolling or non of a poster, that making the counterarguments is still worthwhile. It's best to simply not invite Nazis or pretend Nazis or whatever the gently caress along, but a long as they can speak, it's best to show how dumb they are. What's weird to me is people who buy custom titles saying "don't respond to this guy" because it never works.
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Nov 26, 2013 00:54
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rudatron posted:
If you give a long-winded speech to a wall, and other people are standing around that wall, then they get to hear it too. It's really not off-topic to talk about the bankruptcy of Fascist ideology in a thread about Fascism.
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Nov 26, 2013 01:26
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Hob_Gadling posted:No, of course not. I just think that the whole cause of this problem is people feeling that they've been left alone with a problem they can't solve. It's irrelevant that far right can't solve the problem either. They're giving the appearance of trying to solve it and here's the scary part: people are desperate enough to believe them. Preventing this desperation from being born is the best solution; barring that, addressing it directly in a way that alleviates the fears of people is the second best choice. Telling people that they're wrong, there is no problem, deal with it is the worst solution. Obviously, the solution is educating people about the non-existence of the problem, that they're being lied to, and why those people are lying to them. It's not an easy solution by any means, but it is the only solution, not the worst solution. If you just want to talk about the mechanics of politics in a dreary way, then the other 'solution' is to find a problem they consider bigger, but there are plenty of people who, due to believing something false, will vote single-issue on immigration. Similarly, in the US, we have people that vote Republican purely out of racism. The only way to permanently combat this is education.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:36
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visceril posted:Does anybody have even an anecdotal example of a racist being convinced to be not racist? Yeah, I've known a ton of people who've grown up mildly racist, gotten some real-life experience, and wised up and are no longer racist. I also know a smaller, but significant, number of people who went from virulent racists to non-racist. quote:I don't think this will work in the specific case of Sweden. The people who vote for SD voted predominantly for leftist parties. Convincing them to switch back doesn't happen by simply saying "you're being lied to". The reasons they stopped voting left are still there. Swedes were, and still are, overwhelmingly in support of helping those in need. I didn't say to simply say "You are being lied to". Can you explain how you got that out of my post, when I said that you had to educate people and that it wasn't easy? If it were just saying "You are being lied to," then it's easy. The problem is actually showing people that they're being lied to. quote:Also, this is Sweden we're talking about. Unless the nation is significantly different from what I've always believed it to be the people who vote SD are predominantly not racists and not even right-wingers. They'll flip back overnight if their concerns are addressed in a way that they have faith in. As long as the left says "there is no immigration problem, you've imagined it all" and right says "look out your window and decide for yourself" right is going to garner more support. This is stupid. Who comes off as more honest? Why do you keep making a straw-man out of the argument on the 'left'? Is what you're somewhat bafflingly asking for a long essay right now in this forum of the type that could be used to convince some SD voter, or what? You do get that saying "Convince people they're being lied to" goes farther than just walking up to them and saying "You're being lied to", right?
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Jan 6, 2014 20:25
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Hob_Gadling posted:Okay, lets give this a try. That education didn't completely work doesn't mean it can't work, or hasn't worked somewhat. It's almost certain that Nordic society now is far less racist than it was in, say, the 1930s. There are some people you won't reach. I really have no clue what you're asking at this point. People on the left do not, as you claimed, simply say "You're being lied to", and that interpretation is, of course, a strawman. The process of education is, as you said, ongoing, and it clearly has had a lot of effect. You seem like you're looking for some specific answer. What is it?
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Jan 6, 2014 21:08
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Hob_Gadling posted:You're talking about something completely different. It's an interesting tangent but not something I'm going to start getting into. I'm not in the least bit talking about something different. Your question is how to reach voters who believe the anti-immigrant fictions, and my answer is that you need to educate them about the reality, that those fictions are, in fact, fictions. You don't like this answer, but it is an answer. quote:There is a disconnect between what people feel and what Nordic (and on a larger scale, European) moderate left tells them. I find this fascinating and want to talk with people who are in organizations dealing with this issue. Make of that what you will. Can you give any examples at all?
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Jan 6, 2014 21:32
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Torrannor posted:Yeah, this is really the one subject where it is correct to say Europe is racists as gently caress. I simply cannot understand how so many people in so many different cultures can hate Roma, who are relatively few people and who never had any kind of power, so they did never perpetrate any massive atrocities. Hating Mongols in a country that was a victim of the Golden Horde is understandable to a degree for example, but what did Roma ever do to the European people? The Roma were enslaved, persecuted, abused, and degraded by them. For this, they can never be forgiven. There's a great little speech about this in The Brothers Karamazov that I can't find at the moment, but seriously, it's common that if you degrade someone, you then see them as deserving that, and more. It's kind of a very simplistic 'just world' idea. There is also the factor that the Roma have been ostracized and kept down and hosed over so much that their culture really is 'backward', in that it is very out of tune with many modern values, and so sympathy on the 'left' is lacking for Roma because Roma culture has a lot of archaic misogyny, superstition, etc. So those on the 'right' can point to the criminality in the Roma population (caused by centuries of ostracization and persecution) and those on the left can point to the ignorance and 'right-wing' cultural traits in the Roma (caused by centuries of ostracization and persecution) and everyone can feel great about this group they've chosen to gently caress over forever.
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Jan 11, 2014 17:54
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goethe42 posted:
I understand it fine. People see the conditions of the Roma, don't bother to do the slightest, least, single bit of research or thought into how they got there, and declare them scum. Then they list all the various ways that the Roma debase themselves and act badly, as though those facts on their own are important. A sub-version of this is those who barely acknowledge "Of course they haven't always been treated well..." but then go on to list the things that you have, and basically act as though, well, the Roma may have been hosed over but now they're loving themselves and oh well we can't really help them. It's the easiest loving thing in the world to realize that if you see a degraded people that they probably didn't choose that life for themselves, but in Europe they look at the Roma and go "Tsk tsk how can they live like that" and in the US they look at black people on Drudge and go "Tsk tsk how can they live like that". It's amazingly sad.
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Jan 12, 2014 02:16
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goethe42 posted:There is no awareness that the way the most visible part of the Roma live may be due to the way they have been treated in the past. Raising awareness about this is the first step to an improvement of the attitude towards the Roma and an improvement of their situation. You seriously think that there's ignorance that the Roma have been persecuted for centuries in Hungary? Really? I've never met a European who didn't know that the Roma have always been harshed on. If nothing else, Europeans know they were rounded up and slaughtered by Hitler. Racists in the US know that black people have been persecuted too, y'know. It doesn't interrupt their racist flow one iota.
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Jan 12, 2014 12:09
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:That's very sneaky but it's not going to work. You're assuming one premise ahead of him already, which is that knowing about past suffering oder injustice laid against a group means you also attribute their disenfranchisement to that previous injustice Going back to an earlier point, you claimed that Marxism was some sort of curative for racism. There's nothing in actual Marxist philosophy--that of Marx-Engels--which is anti-racist, and his 'stage theory' of history lends itself easily to racist ideas. The Marxist view that all things stem from economic and class struggle, moreover, means that any examination of racism from an original Marxist lends dismisses the cultural attributes of racism and comes up with an incomplete view of racism as a function of capitalist oppression of workers; while racism is undoubtedly a force that divides the working class, this is an awkward reading of Marx since Marx doesn't tend to imbue capitalist structures with intentionality, but there is clear and obvious intention in many racist ideologues. Marx's idea of the lumpenproletariat also lends itself very easily to racism. While there obviously have been many Marxist philosophers and activists since Marx who have been able to use Marxism to combat racism, it's an effortful thing; the insistence of Marx on economic interpretations of culture is awkward when dealing with something like racism. steinrokkan posted:You don't know what you are talking about. That's my point. It's a willful ignorance, not an actual one. Just like American racists who know that blacks were enslaved, denied the right to vote, denied the right to an education and work, and pretend that those have no lasting effects, so do Europeans hold those same views about the Roma. It's a willful, intentional racism, not just caused by observation of what the Roma do now but a labored effort to ignore how they got there.
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Jan 12, 2014 14:30
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steinrokkan posted:My point is that it isn't willful because historical knowledge doesn't play a role in the cognitive processes responsible for their racism. It exists on a separate track and when you question it, they will make up some excuses or just scoff at you, but without an conscious effort on the part of the critic there is no natural bleed of historical facts and their windfall into one's racist attitudes. I don't know what you mean by 'separate track'. They know both things: that Roma have been historically persecuted to an incredible degree, and that Roma are currently at the lowest rung of society. They willfully avoid connecting the dots, even when confronted with the really obvious connections. rudatron posted:There is a stated intention in racist ideologues, but that is not the same as their function: the distinctions between races are arbitrary and fluid, but the functionally racism acts just as a damper on class consciousness. No, it doesn't just act as a damper on class consciousness, even if you think class consciousness is something that's actually real. Racism actually interferes with capitalism in a number of ways, and makes it more inefficient. It's only 'beneficial' to capitalism if you think that capitalism has some inherent drive to preserve itself, which is counter-Marxian, since Marx argued capitalism inevitably set up the conditions for its own overthrow and destruction. quote:The words written by racists here are worthless and irrelevant: they themselves are specific and contingent to the society around them, yet the net effect of racist ideology across societies is invariant. The effect of racist ideology is highly variable between societies. In many cases, like anti-semitism historically in Europe and the US and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US, it's entirely class-independent, and cannot be argued to serve class-divisive functions.
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Jan 12, 2014 15:13
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steinrokkan posted:If they don't know how to connect dots or even that it's possible to connect dots, then it isn't willful. I really don't get this. Are you implying they're all mentally deficient? These are not difficult dots to connect. quote:According to Marxism, while capitalism is going to be destroyed by its contradictions, it does have a drive to self-preserve itself, and this drive is called the state. State which is called to moderate problems of the social system caused by the recklessness of individual capitalists, and in this capacity is legitimized to act in ways that would seem contradictory to a superficial understanding of capitalism - such as the redistributive strategy described by rudatron. Can you source this in Marx, please? I think you've got it slightly wrong: Marx argues that the state always acts to preserve the interests of the ruling class, but he doesn't argue it does it to preserve that economic system as far as I've ever seen, but instead just to further the interests of that class as that class understands its own interests. In Marixst theory, the capitalist class certainly does not understand that capitalism inevitably brings about the conditions of its own defeat, instead, the state functions to increase income disparity and the other factors that Marx identified as part of capitalist class interests. In addition, Marx had a parallel theory in his later years, that the bourgeoisie would and did prefer to wield power indirectly and so preferred to have 'aristocratic' elements in control of the actual state, since being in direct control made them too much of a target for the bourgeoisie. This is found most strongly in his writings on Napoleon. It does lend a little strength to your and rudatron's argument in that it implies some level of conscious strategy, but as usual Marx places most of the mechanism in purely economic terms; there's not enough money in being directly in control. Anyway, as I said, the examples of anti-semitism and anti-Muslims sentiment, which are independent of class, demonstrate pretty clearly that a simple analysis of racism as mainly functioning to divide classes is insufficient. Going back to those ol' original Fascists in Italy and Germany, their racial ideology was clearly not either expressed as a support for capitalism nor did it have any practical effect of supporting capitalism.
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Jan 12, 2014 15:35
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rudatron posted:A capitalist system is not as a whole a conscious thing with 'intention' or 'drive'. It is a system that will react to stimulus. The stimulus is the threat of labour unrest, the reaction is the exploitation of already existing divisions among labor as a basis of a power hierarchy. This is not an inefficiency, it's a necessary expense to maintain the power structures that further the class interests of capital. It's not a kind of cynical conspiracy-level game, of a secret cabal that 'created' racism or whatever, that's a gross misunderstanding. It's simply the easiest way to resolve the social question that doesn't infringe on capital's interests, or infringes on it the least. I didn't call it either a conspiracy-level game or a secret cabal, nor did I claim that racism was 'created', so I'm not sure why you're swinging away at that. quote:It's simply the easiest way to resolve the social question that doesn't infringe on capital's interests, or infringes on it the least. To me, you're completely conflating things which maintain the power structures which further the class interests of capital, and things which prevent overthrow of that system. Marx argues that capitalism is going to create the conditions for its own destruction, and you seem to be arguing that, instead, capitalism reacts to labor unrest be exploiting division among labor in order to address that unrest. The easier, more Marxian explanation would be that capitalists exploit racial division among labor to make them compete with each other and depress the price of wages. Furthermore, since you're saying that these divisions already exist, you're just talking about how capitalism exploits existing racism (and, presumably, other bigotries), but nothing about how that bigotry comes to be or other ways other than some sort of stimulus response on the part of capitalism that somehow energizes racism. Basically, you've said capitalism takes advantage of racism to suppress class consciousness; this is arguably true, but it ignores the simpler explanation that capitalism exploits racism for economic benefit, and it also ignores that by acknowledging racism is exploited by, and not invented by, capitalism, there are obviously other forces that create and sustain racism other than capitalism. Furtthermore, as I keep saying, an examination of anti-semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry shows the insufficiency of an idea of racism as simply the best way to resolve the 'social question' in light of capitalist interests. steinrokkan posted:I would say Engels' Anti-Dühring and Origin of The Family are good sources about viewing the state as superior to the atomized capitalist class in its ability to anticipate and moderate conflict. I haven't read this, so I completely accept there may be something in there that speaks strongly to this. I'll check it out. However, racism is and was strongly prevalent in places with very weak state control as well as places with very strong state control, and likewise racism has been much less prevalent in places with strong and weak state control; there doesn't appear to be a direct connection between either the level of capitalism in a society and the racism in it, or the strength of the state and the racism of that society. The idea that racism is exploited by various interests, which Rudatron stated, is accurate, but that automatically implies a previous existence. quote:As for the other thing - well, I think it's not necessary for one's behaviour to be connected with their intellectual background. I dunno, I have trouble formulating my thoughts on this matter into something coherent and comprehensive. I think it's entirely possible we're just missing each other on language and semantics, then. What I'm saying in terms of 'willful' is not that people actually connect the dots and then discard the idea, but that the 'just world' racist ideology works backwards historically too; that they acknowledge the previous oppression but, in some way, imply or believe that previous oppression was also deserved or inevitable or a historical accident; basically, it's a belief that that cultural group has to change in some fundamental way in order to not be (rightfully) oppressed and ostracized, that it's not society's fault, it's theirs. SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:When you're done making a fool of yourself you should apologize to steinrokkan and confront his point without moving the goalposts, as he and I previously indicated that you did. What goalpost was moved, please? The idea that past oppression leads to present disenfranchisement is exactly the point I'm talking about these people willfully not connecting the dots on, so I don't see how you can think it's a shift of a goalpost. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 15:59
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Post ain't edit, boyo.
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Jan 12, 2014 16:10
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rudatron posted:You didn't think Marxism could be used to approach/used as a justification against racism, and you based it on the lack of 'intentionality' in Marxist thought, which you felt racist ideology had. As in many cases, it depends what you mean by 'Marxism', since I talked about a lot of Marxist philosophers and activists who have added to Marxism to make anti-racist arguments. I based my argument partially on the lack of 'intentionality' in Marxist analysis of capitalism, since Marx very much believed capitalism was sowing the seeds for its own downfall, literally creating the conditions for its overthrow. I do, indeed, think that many and various racist ideologies have a direct intention that's not present in capitalism. Capitalists, under Marxist though, don't want to keep people working for slave wages because they hate them or think they suck, capitalists do this as an inevitable economic result of the structure of capitalism. Racist ideologues, on the other hand, want racial stratification for its own sake, there's an animus and hatred there that isn't at all present in Marxist ideas of class struggle. I also cited a number of Marxist theories, like that of the lumpenproleteariat and the stage-theory of history, which can be used as support for racism. quote:Political economy is obviously not a comprehensive guide to all human behavior ever, however intention is not something that is necessary to study systemic racism as a social phenomena because their rhetoric/intentions are irrelevant to their mechanical function in a political-economic system. I don't think that their rhetoric or intentions are irrelevant, because understanding that some people will cripple their own economic interests--capitalists as well as proletariat--in the name of racial ideology is important to analyze that political-economic system. quote:The 'genesis' of race and racism is irrelevant, racism as it function in 2014 is still demonstrably an anti-Marxist force. Racism as it functions in 2014 is not a coherent or monolithic entity, there's many different kids of it and lumping it all together is oversimplifying to a massive degree. As I keep saying, for example, the racism that's present against Muslims (yes, yes, Muslim isn't a race, but neither is anything else) in US society functions very differently, has very different causes, and has very different solutions than racism against blacks in US society. I would tentatively agree that most forms of racism in 2014 are anti-Marxist (depending on what form of Marxism you're talking about) but I don't think that anti-Marxist attributes of racism are the main reasons for its continuance or power; I think the reasons racism remains powerful and influential are directly related to the geneses of racism and the involvement of racist ideologues for whom anti-Marxist thought is a sideline to their main racist ideology. quote:My real dispute with you here is your claim that 'intentions' are a cause and not an effect, and that to meaningfully study something like this you must place these intentions as a premise and derive the results form them. I don't really know what you mean by this. I'm not making any argument about placing intentions as a premise, at all.
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Jan 12, 2014 16:31
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:
How is that a 'misquote'?
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Jan 18, 2014 16:05
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:It admittedly might not be the best word to use in this case, but I am still struggling to find a word that's more useful in describing the intellectual poverty involved with this thing that anti-marxist groups tend to do, where they quote Marx's satirical style out of context to prove the antisemitism of a movement, of which the first successful leader was not only Jewish, but also used everything, including very recently developed and costly technology, to deter and suppress antisemitism. Marx wasn't being satirical in many of his polemics against Jews, and I'm not sure why you think he was. His critique of the Jewish religion, for example, was not satirical; he believed that the religion promoted, basically, capitalist practices. His 'stage theory' of history also led to his conclusion that Judaism was a more primitive version of Christianity. Can you explain where you're getting this idea that it was all satire from? Have you read "On the Jewish Question"? quote:From reading my personal chats with comrades, you might deduce that I was a raging antisemitic identitarian. Why, what do you say?
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Jan 18, 2014 16:30
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:Could you please go ahead and cite this, thanks in advance. Sorry, the stage-theory bit is actually incorret, however, here's the citations for the rest: quote:We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. ... quote:We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. ... quote:Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it. ... quote:The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general. ... quote:Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished. Text from Marxists.org http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/ quote:Haha you clearly haven't read anything by Marx ever? What kind of question is this? I've read most of Marx's works. He makes abundant use of satire, but that doesn't mean that he's always being satirical. In particular, when he talks about the connection between "practical Judaism" and capitalism, he's not being satirical. quote:Uhm, have you? Yep.
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Jan 18, 2014 17:14
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But I don't agree that it was a sardonic comparison, and that's not really a supportable interpretation. And I fully agree that Marx thought that Jews could be emancipated 'politically' without being emancipated from Judaism. However, as what you're quoting says: quote:The fact that you can be emancipated politically without completely and absolutely renouncing Judaism shows that political emancipation is by itself not human emancipation. I don't think agree with Fine's interpretation of the passage as heavily ironic, and I don't think that it's well-supported in what you quoted, either. I definitely think that he's poking fun at anti-semites who chastize Jews for being in love with money when the larger culture is also in love with money, but he doesn't, at all, deny that Jewish culture, Jewish religion, is in love with money; instead, he affirms that as a reality. I think that Fine has mistaken irony used to attack capitalism here with those ironic statements negating the view of Jewish religion and culture; in fact, the ironic attack on capitalism only works if you affirm those qualities are really part of the Jewish culture and religion. When you asked if I'd read "On the Jewish Question" before, did you actually mean if I'd read (and agreed with) Fine? Or are you saying those pieces I quoted before are obviously ironic--and if so, can you demonstrate that without simply asserting it?
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Jan 18, 2014 17:54
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Raskolnikov38 posted:This is a godawful link. Half of the bits on the Russian Revolution aren't even written yet and the rest of is BOLSHEVIKS BAD with nothing on your claim of how anarchists played a major role in the revolution. They didn't For me "What did the anarchists do in the Russian Revolution" is a blank. I assume this is unintentional.
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Jan 18, 2014 18:01
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:I don't think you understand what's going on here, or what Marx is saying Yes, that's obvious. I disagree with you. When you just say 'watch' and then quote something, bolding some sentences, without making an argument, it doesn't really do much to bolster your argument. Can you try, instead of just quoting, showing how those quotes support your interpretation? quote:One popular reading of Marx's critique of religion in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, is that Marx is critiquing religion as being a tranquilizing substance which deters people from wordly goals and acts as a siphon for revolutionary potential. That's a pretty straightforward reading, yeah. Marx gets a lot of unneeded criticism for being 'hostile' to religion, but when he describes it as 'opium', it's actually an ambivalent attribute; it really does take away pain. However, he thinks that it also disguises the real problem. quote:Marx, in talking about human emancipation, is directly and uncontroversially comparing being Jewish to being Christian. Political emancipation of man vis-a-vis religion is acquired when there is no state religion. But human emancipation requires eventual emancipation from religion itself, whether it be Christianity or Judaism. Yes, I don't think that Marx is harsher on Judaism than he is on Christianity as a religion. quote:But here is his point, which Fine made explicitly and well, and you seemed to have missed: Bauer insisted that Jews give up Judaism in order to achieve political emancipation. But the same requirement was not demanded from the Christians. That is the point that Marx was making there. That is one point Marx was making, an in making that point, he asserted that the Jewish religion, and Jewish culture, is practically centered around aquisition and money. quote:The references to 'Jewish culture' being one way or the other are not meant to be taken at face value, as you are seemingly wont to do. They are saying: "let's take for granted that the Jewish people are as you say they are, my friend Bauer. What makes them in any way different from Germans, or anyone else for that matter?" Can you support this from the text? That he's saying 'let's take for granted are as you say', and that he's just accepting for the sake of argument Bauer's characterization? quote:Marx's style is one that uses extremely clever, sardonic wit to expose the absurdity of his opponent's argument. Bauer's framing of the conversation is acknowledged only insofar as to brutally destroy it. If you walk away from this piece with an invigorated antisemitism, that is not on Marx; although you are entitled to your interpretation. I hope this has cleared some stuff up for you. Not really. I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm granting that Marx is doing everything you're ascribing to him, except for saying that these attributes of Jews are only Bauer's, that Marx doesn't accept them as true but is only accepting them for the argument. You haven't supported this. quote:When you asked me if I'd read On the Jewish Question, did you mean to ask whether I'd read it in your shallow, accusative reading? I don't think you really understand my 'reading' of it. Marx was certainly refuting Bauer's anti-semitism. That doesn't mean that he wasn't engaging in stereotyping and endorsing views of Jewish religion and culture as money-centric. Your claim is he didn't really endorse this, and that he was only taking on Bauer's view. You haven't supported this. You've just asserted it. You have an odd habit of repeatedly calling me (or my interpretations) shallow, and making obviously assumptions like that I haven't read any Marx. This is really silly, and you should cut it out. It just makes you look insecure. If you can support your argument that Marx is simply grating the attributes of Jews as offered by Bauer, I'm happy to change my opinion of the text. But you haven't actually supported that yet.
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Jan 18, 2014 18:38
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:Your second question to me, coming into this thread, was whether I had read On the Jewish Question. Yes, it was. It didn't accuse you or your arguments of being shallow. I think your arguments are wrong; I don't think they're shallow. I haven't read all of Marx, and asking you if you've read a text is not some accusation. quote:I've given you a counter-reading, one which is carried quite widely in the field, to the blunt and superficial reading of Marx as an antisemite. But my reading isn't that Marx is an antisemite. I never said that, or anything close to that. Compared to his contemporaries, Marx wasn't an antisemite, and his critique of Judaism as a religion is similar to his critique of all religion. However, I do think his view of Jewish culture and Jewish religion--what he calls 'practical Judaism' (differentiating it from Bauer's view, which is why I think your interpretation is insupportable) is one that identifies Jewish culture and religion as extremely capitalist and money-oriented. To put it another way, Marx isn't an antisemite who thinks Judaism is inferior to Christianity, nor is he an antisemite who thinks that the materialism and capitalism he finds embedded in Judaism and Jewish culture is some grand conspiracy or indication they're the real 'rulers'. quote:As I said in my previous post however, you are entitled to your interpretation. But I will repeat that in my opinion, concluding that On The Jewish Question is 'antisemitic' in a meaningful way, cannot be the product of careful reading nor a thorough understanding of Marx, his contemporaries or his extended work. I'm confused. I asked you to support your interpretation that he's simply using Baeur's framing of the Jew, and not endorsing that framing. Can you support that interpretation from the text, or not--especially in light of, as I said, his differentiation of 'practical Judaism' from Bauer's more theology-focused Judaism?
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Jan 18, 2014 19:17
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:As for the accusation: it implies a lack of knowledge on my part. I specifically mentioned On the Jewish Question, and you asked me whether I read it. Implications matter. Sorry, I missed that. quote:As for supporting the interpretation, I already have. You have to read it from the text; Fine says it's 'reading it from the grammar'. He's not alone, you can find countless examples in support of that reading of the text, because it is basically the default one. The grammar is fully ironic. I don't agree. There's a use of irony and sarcasm, but that doesn't mean every statement is absolutely ironic. quote:The difference between 'Sabbath Jew' and 'everyday jew' is equally ironic, and is used to set up the frame for Marx in order to talk about historical materialism ('what is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest.'), rather than how the mere religion ('"merely" a religious significance') makes jews into that, in practice. Note the use of 'Very well then!', as an sarcastic agreement on the nature of Jews, as well as the use of 'We' (italicized in the text by me) to connote that he is talking about the prevailing view, or at least that of Bauer's, about the Jews. I don't agree that 'we' is ironic. You aren't supporting that it is ironic in any way. That's why I'm asking you to support it. The use of 'we' on its own implies no irony. I've also said I think there's a big difference between Baeur and Marx, so I have no idea why you're laboring that. You seem to have a knee-jerk defensiveness to anything remotely critical of Marx. I love Marx, I think his critique is amazing, I think that his contributions to sociology are beyond that of probably any other single person other than Sewell. Does this help you emotionally deal with what I'm writing?
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Jan 18, 2014 20:26
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Pope Guilty posted:Maybe you two could make a thread for sectarian sniping and let the Fascism in Europe thread be about modern European fascism? There's nothing sectarian at all in this, though. We're arguing about an interpretation of a work. I'll agree it's a total derail, however. So in content, have a terrible article saying that modern Fascists are on the left, or they're Islamacists, and reminding everyone that the 'intelligentsia' were once in love with Fascism. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100227116/the-strange-death-of-fascist-europe-and-how-the-left-wants-to-revive-it/ It's an absolutely terrible article that ignores the very real Fascist though on the 'right' in Europe.
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Jan 18, 2014 23:22
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