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Ice Phisherman posted:So you believe in moral absolutism? maybe? i don't feel the need to qualify "jeff bezos is evil." but im also just bad at arguing metaphysics in general Riot Bimbo posted:I feel like the moral relativism thing was a part of their counter-backlash as conservative moral stances began to be largely seen as like, charitably outdated and at worst actively monstrous, by growing numbers of americans? Like they've spent 40 years now sorta just declaring the existence of this great war for the culture of America and it was entirely because not everyone thought they were cool for hating minorities and wanting to impose their arcane puritain derived morality on people, anymore the way i see it is that they've confused a different moral stance for moral apathy- you see this in the sort of "gay marriage leads to pedophilia" bullshit, it's not that there are absolutely no rules but rather that they're drawn in a different way (ie gender doesnt matter but informed consent does). i think this ties to corey robin's theory that conservatives see the social order as the source of morality while leftists see it (or at least its current form) as a perversion- the very act of questioning (unjust, not that they would recognize it) hierarchy is itself immoral, in their view
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Aug 2, 2020 17:53
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Really the important thing when seeing another culture's beliefs that rub you the wrong way is to actually ask yourself and consciously think about whether that's just discomfort with new and unfamiliar things or if it's actually because the beliefs or customs in question are bad. Moral relativism as I understand it is a framework for the philosophical study of morality that claims that morality is a facet of the culture and society you live in--e.g., murder is bad because the people you live around all agree it's bad. Thinking about it this way is helpful for some questions, but is not very helpful when discussing issues of when people of different cultures interact. At least imo.
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Aug 2, 2020 18:45
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in relation to the thread, morality is a consequence of ideology, itself determined by the material conditions of society something that I found difficult in my experience to communicate is that under a Marxist POV, morality is kinda irrelevant, in a way of speaking. Are banking and financial profiteering really morally superior than, say, drug trafficking and smuggling? It doesn't matter, even though for a lot of people, the moral argument is what tends to resonate more and works to get them started, but the difficulty lies in explaining that the problem is not that banking is an immoral activity, but an activity that is inherently exploitative of society due to how capitalism works, and you can't morally reform that
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Aug 10, 2020 16:49
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dead gay comedy forums posted:in relation to the thread, morality is a consequence of ideology, itself determined by the material conditions of society yeah, and if you went through and replaced the "worst" profiteers with "moral" profiteers who were less willing to do exploitative things... those "moral" profiteers would be outcompeted and the conditions would regress to the mean, because that's how capitalism is designed.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:49
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animist posted:yeah, and if you went through and replaced the "worst" profiteers with "moral" profiteers who were less willing to do exploitative things... those "moral" profiteers would be outcompeted and the conditions would regress to the mean, because that's how capitalism is designed. that's exactly the main difficulty I have with people who are sympathetic and receptive to socialist ideas but remain at what we could call "soft socialism", especially one of a more judicious/regulatory nature one thing that has been working on as of late is showing that Jeff Bezos is wealthy not because he is Jeff Bezos (and this applies to any other billionaire), but rather that the circumstances we live in would have brought another figure like that with another company sooner or later that could be a very different person, but always with the same role, so to speak. This is a good exercise for systemic analysis that resonates quite well just try to be considerate when this leads to introspection because a lot of people tend to react badly when realizing how much those famous "material conditions" impacted their lives even before birth
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Aug 11, 2020 16:56
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dead gay comedy forums posted:
On top of that, the wealth he has is very much tied to society, in that he isn't skimming much cash off the work of his wearhouse workers. The profit is mostly in renting computers. And his total wealth that people like to quote is further abstracted in being the value of the stock he holds, which is just paper the Amazon can print at will, and (a wealthy silver of) society says it worth X amount. So rather than the classic case of taking money that should have gone to the workers, he basically prints his own scrip that gets bid up by the investor class. He is a landlord for websites and online marketplaces who owns trading cards that gambling addicts crave. None of that involves personal genius. Or how Tesla is some how worth more than GM, even though GM has more capital in the form of facilities and engineers and workers.
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Aug 11, 2020 18:03
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https://twitter.com/genstrike_2020/status/1294309986408042496?s=19 I don't know what thread is most appropriate for this. The organize thread is mostly dead. Can we discuss this account? Has anyone contacted them? They were referred by NonCompete recently, who I mostly trust, but...
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Aug 15, 2020 16:07
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strike organization is definitely within the purview of socialist education as a practical lesson, let us ask: who are the team members? what is the plan? can other labor organizations vouch for that? is it going to be an internet thing (bad sign)?
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Aug 15, 2020 18:09
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A good compilation of texts for noobs: Centrist Committee posted:are u a capitalist now? Unfortunately, we’re all NEPmen until communism conquers the world. 
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Aug 30, 2020 18:50
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What's the correct way to handle patriotism on the Left in settler countries like Canada or America? I know that the left has used nationalism and patriotism in places like Cuba (Latin America in general actually), the middle east etc. However considering my country was literally founded on genocide I feel like it's not a positive prospect, but guys like Parenti disagree.
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Aug 31, 2020 01:10
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ToxicAcne posted:What's the correct way to handle patriotism on the Left in settler countries like Canada or America? I know that the left has used nationalism and patriotism in places like Cuba (Latin America in general actually), the middle east etc. However considering my country was literally founded on genocide I feel like it's not a positive prospect, but guys like Parenti disagree. Generally speaking, nationalism that struggles for self-determination is fruitful and nationalism that struggles for some special right to determine others' fates is reactionary. So settler and imperialist nationalisms can't be used. There's debate on how exactly to oppose those types of nationalism, like does one just poo poo on the flag or still attempt to channel perceived positive aspects of some national spirit and history. Disclaimer: I'm not well read on settler colonialism specifically, so I can't elaborate on a deeper level than this shallow and possibly subtly mistaken summary. In the case of settler countries like USA and Canada, the stance that currently seems to hold the most weight is that the settler nationality (American/Canadian) is beyond redemption to the point it should be destroyed wholesale, but aside from Indigenous nationalism, arrivant nationalisms (mainly Black, but there are other ethnic groups that arrived as non-settlers) should be supported so long as they don't seek to unilaterally wall of a territory just for them and turn themselves into settlers. Basically, their drives for self-determination should be supported, but not drives to determine the lives of any other people who also deserve self-determination. Settlers, though, can and to some extent must (demographics etc.) be made to content themselves with what rights their new host nations extend to them, sort of like immigrants with a permanent right of residence. Individuals with settler background are expected to cast off their settler allegiances and do the work to concretely join the rising nations if they want to be treated as one of them with the exact same rights. In the case of non-settler imperialist countries, especially the more indirectly imperialist ones like, say, Switzerland, the question gets pretty nuanced. A nation that doesn't do much in-your-face oppression won't have its identity so closely tied with a perceived right to do that, because one's identity is based on one's consciousness of oneself. What would e.g. a kind of Swiss patriotism that couldn't support imperialist institutions (because they're bourgeois and oppose them) look like? Not outright progressive (still carries the weight of racism etc.) but not really beyond redemption either. For example, Irish comrades more commonly go against the grain and believe that they can unashamedly evoke their past of socialist nationalism to produce something that allows Irish people joining them to feel proud about their Irishness but associate it with a genuinely progressive national role.
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Aug 31, 2020 05:26
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that's a great reply uncop, ty imo, this "settler state" argument is one hell of a trap because, under the principles of socialist internationalism and solidarity, it becomes a matter of recognition and federation of these native nations into government, afaik but, to take the Latin American example, the local nations are all consequences of colonial conquest, yet our left in this matter has a very different take because the proverbial ship on the matter has sailed whole ages ago. Bolivia is a great example: the original nations constitute roughly half (iirc) of the country's population; the majority of them is poor; yet, most of them are quite patriotic Bolivians. In Mexico, it is like, 2 or 3 out of 10 Mexicans belongs to an indigenous nation, yet they also regard themselves as Mexicans too. So, what gives? what the Latin American left realized about it was to redefine the patriotic sentiment into an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and socially affirmative one, subverting history into its favor: Patria Grande, the idea that although we are distinct territories, we come from the same formative process and should converge into a greater whole, originally came from the liberal gentry during the independence wars, eventually refined into a sort of "we are all in this together" divorced from the state, which is why (imo) that patriotic expression could be regarded as leftist
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Aug 31, 2020 23:41
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uncop posted:In the case of settler countries like USA and Canada, the stance that currently seems to hold the most weight is that the settler nationality (American/Canadian) is beyond redemption to the point it should be destroyed wholesale, but aside from Indigenous nationalism, arrivant nationalisms (mainly Black, but there are other ethnic groups that arrived as non-settlers) should be supported so long as they don't seek to unilaterally wall of a territory just for them and turn themselves into settlers. Basically, their drives for self-determination should be supported, but not drives to determine the lives of any other people who also deserve self-determination. Settlers, though, can and to some extent must (demographics etc.) be made to content themselves with what rights their new host nations extend to them, sort of like immigrants with a permanent right of residence. Individuals with settler background are expected to cast off their settler allegiances and do the work to concretely join the rising nations if they want to be treated as one of them with the exact same rights. hmm, I wonder if this is why BIPOC includes "black" and "indigenous" but not latinx/"brown"/etc.?
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Sep 1, 2020 01:00
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dead gay comedy forums posted:that's a great reply uncop, ty I'm also reminded about even the loving Zapatistas wave Mexican flags at their rallies. I'm sure it probably does alot to garner sympathy with the general population. And places like Cuba and Argentina (especially Argentina) are settler states as well. Maybe Parenti is right about how Anti-Nationalism is far too alienating to be practical and how an alternate nationalism has to be formed that celebrates people in the abolitionist movement and labour activists etc. instead of the Founding Fathers. One thing that I remember my professor in Latin American history telling me however was that the ruling elites of Latin America always saw themselves as wannabe Europeans and that they always saw the general population as a bunch of mixed race savages. The Nationalists were willing to celebrate the Indigenous and African contributions to the national character and were therefore more inclusive. That probably plays a big reason as to why Nationalism can thrive on the left in Latin America. This is an aspect that has never really existed in the Anglo-Settler Colonies. It's really one of the hardest questions facing the left in places like Canada I feel. ToxicAcne has issued a correction as of 01:39 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 01:35
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idly wondering if the problem isn't that america is a settler state per se but just that it's loving terrible in general
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Sep 1, 2020 03:24
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AFAIK people who think like I described don't consider most countries in Latin America settler-colonial. As far as I understand, it's like half that the ship has sailed and half that the peoples never were *settler*-colonised. The reason for not being is when the Indigenous people in question were peasants that were integrated into the Spanish corvée labor system instead of the Spanish trying to eliminate them from the land and give it to settlers to farm, and also when the Indigenous people occupied vast lands that were pretty useless for the colonialists, such as the jungles. I think that difference is behind the comparatively massive pessimism for North America. I can't claim to know much, but it seems to sort of show up in practice: so far USA has shown some genuine will to try to integrate Black people (who are considered internally colonised like those Spanish-dominated Indigenous people, rather than settler-colonised) into the nation, but Indigenous people are still these weird total outsiders as far as I can tell from thousands of miles away. How do you optimists propose to get North America over that barrier so that it works more like Latin American countries on this issue?
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Sep 1, 2020 05:58
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Centrist Committee posted:hmm, I wonder if this is why BIPOC includes "black" and "indigenous" but not latinx/"brown"/etc.? Basically. The term doesn't conceptualize them in terms of race or ethnicity, but nationalities that are connected with each other and coloredness. Also the reason why they can be as particular about capitalization as trans people about pronouns: refusing to capitalize is denying the independent existence of their peoples. People trying to give the same treatment to Latino people seem to talk of the Chicano people of the conquered areas in the US Southwest and portray more recent Latin American immigrants as mostly having joined the Chicano instead of the US-Americans. ToxicAcne posted:One thing that I remember my professor in Latin American history telling me however was that the ruling elites of Latin America always saw themselves as wannabe Europeans and that they always saw the general population as a bunch of mixed race savages. The Nationalists were willing to celebrate the Indigenous and African contributions to the national character and were therefore more inclusive. That probably plays a big reason as to why Nationalism can thrive on the left in Latin America. This is an aspect that has never really existed in the Anglo-Settler Colonies. I missed the significance of this part in my last post. You're basically saying the Nationalists perceived Indigenous people as a useful part of the society they were trying to build rather than just some temporary military ally to be immediately discarded! That kind of thinking requires them to have been a part of society in the first place, which they aren't in settler colonies. Settler colonies treat the colonised as an impediment to society spreading to new territories, and take basically all means of productive existence away from them. uncop has issued a correction as of 06:47 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 06:44
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the national question is maybe the most intractable issues in the history of the communist movement so there really is no obvious answer to this issue btw i lean towards a luxemburgian perspective on this, for my own part - progressive nationalism is a very dangerous tool and the communists will almost always regret the alliance in the long run
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Sep 1, 2020 08:32
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V. Illych L. posted:the national question is maybe the most intractable issues in the history of the communist movement so there really is no obvious answer to this issue btw You made me speedread some relevant Luxemburg and it really surprised me how much of a parallel there is between her and Stalin, no doubt because of their similar social positioning. Reading the two makes me realize how dangerous it may be to reclaim the word "nationalism" as if there were just one movement that could be wielded for good or bad based on who's doing it. Both of the two make it clear that nationalism is distinguished by a territorial nature, it fundamentally seeks to separate people from one another in often senseless ways and in many territories give the commanding role to segments of the population with reactionary sentiments. Maybe the distinction in writing was lost when socialist movements had to buddy up with nationalist movements and not offend them for no gain? In practice though, it has not been lost: socialist national liberationists rarely propose to divide the land in exclusive territories for nations, but on the contrary, break up the existing monopoly on territory. They just assert the right to self-determination, and demand an overall system that doesn't haphazardly meld everyone together (liberal colorblindness style, "we're all just one big class yo") and lack the practical institutions to exercise real self-rule.
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Sep 1, 2020 10:22
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Are there any good books on running political campaigns in an example + how-to fashion at a local level ? I know there must be thousands about every random national campaign under the sun, but something giving more practical overviews of real campaigns for simple stuff, even just a school board, would be enlightening.
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Sep 1, 2020 16:10
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uncop posted:People trying to give the same treatment to Latino people seem to talk of the Chicano people of the conquered areas in the US Southwest and portray more recent Latin American immigrants as mostly having joined the Chicano instead of the US-Americans story: a friend of mine who went to LA and lived there for like two years had a commute route where he walked in a heavily Chicano neighborhood - he is blonde - and when some guys started to mess with him with "gringo!", he looked at them "pero un carajo que gringo, soy brasileño", they loved his reply and became buddies, haha that's the Patria Grande sentiment in an anecdote likewise, you have the reverse problem which unfortunately is stronger in Brazil and in a lesser degree Argentina (perhaps Chile as well), where you have upper-class people considering that feeling as retrograde, and instead try to appeal to an artificial right-wing nationalism (bolsonaro is the epitome of that) that simply does not work because their concept of nation has not happened and will not happen here
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Sep 1, 2020 17:16
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Sylink posted:Are there any good books on running political campaigns in an example + how-to fashion at a local level ? i have no concrete resources for you, but in my limited experience i think you'll find that it's the same as other campaigning just smaller scale. first get on the ballot, then get in front of as many people as possible, get your name recognition up through as many channels as possible, and give people a concrete reason why they should want you as part of the institution you're running for - like an actual local issue that is going to be decided during the next term. or just be the rear end in a top hat who says "A VOTE FOR ME IS A VOTE FOR DADDY TRUMP." build a bench of allies who have a vested interest in getting you elected and resources they can bring to the table. community group leaders are a good place to start, they can introduce you to their people. already being a well-known part of those groups helps as well. money is also a factor. yard signs will probably run you on the order of $1-$5 per sign, sending out mailers will probably start at the $500-1000 level for a very small town (<10k pop), assuming you can get ahold of a mailing list, which may be available from your local government offices. if you spend more than a given amount you may have to file a lot more paperwork - here I think it's $1000. walking door to door will get you direct facetime and two-way communication. local radio stations will probably have programs you can go on. find the communication channels and people who can set you up, whether they're allies or just nonpartisan gatekeepers. write letters to the editor - a surprising number of people read these. e: pm me if you want more Spime Wrangler has issued a correction as of 21:01 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 18:07
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Sylink posted:Are there any good books on running political campaigns in an example + how-to fashion at a local level ? mb try this book, rec'd to me by someone who runs campaigns (not nichael he can't read): Politics the Wellstone Way although at the end of the day from watching all progressive races unfold, it is 100% about voter contact and making asks that result in more voter contact and -20% being on twitter
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Sep 1, 2020 22:15
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MorrisBae posted:That's another good point - how would the internet be regulated under Communism - would right wing speech be banned/violators sought out and re-educated? That would be a good way to withhold their social credit. what you have suggested is a probation that applies to all of Online instead of just the forums. in positing modding, you also necessitate the existence of the Mods. we have all seen the difficulties inherent in this system.
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Sep 2, 2020 00:27
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hi first time poster long time lurker can I get some definitions on what these mean: tankie praxis like I look them up in google and it says words but often I find those words to be less complete than I’d like for use in these, our dead, gay comedy forums. thanks learning a lot y’all rock
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Sep 2, 2020 00:32
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"Tankie" originally was an insult for pro-Soviet socialists who supported the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 56 and Czechoslovakia in 68; now its just used as an insult against leftists in general, usually people who are revolutionaries or anti-imperialists. (The history of these is complicated but basically the countries had movements that wanted to get out of the Warsaw Pact, so there was a lot of controversy over the class nature of those movements and the need for national self determination) "Praxis" just means "action" or "practice" and is just a way to refer to putting a theory into practice StashAugustine has issued a correction as of 00:53 on Sep 2, 2020 |
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Sep 2, 2020 00:47
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StashAugustine posted:"Tankie" originally was an insult for pro-Soviet socialists who supported the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 56 and Czechoslovakia in 68; now its just used as an insult against Marxists in general thank you
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Sep 2, 2020 00:52
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Praxis doesn't refer to just any practice though, it means putting theory into practice. So it's usually prefaced with an adjective: praxis of what? If someone just shouts "Praxis!" the "of what" part is implicit.
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Sep 2, 2020 04:52
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praxis is also the key energy production facility of the klingon empire
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Sep 2, 2020 04:53
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Sep 3, 2020 02:01
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random question: i've been reading a lotta stuff from Black communists recently, Fanon and Walter Rodney and George Jackson. does anybody know of work engaging with their writing from the perspective of other socialist movements? south american, say, or russian or chinese.
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Sep 5, 2020 19:14
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animist posted:random question: i've been reading a lotta stuff from Black communists recently, Fanon and Walter Rodney and George Jackson. does anybody know of work engaging with their writing from the perspective of other socialist movements? south american, say, or russian or chinese. This is a good question and I would also like to know more about this! Almost all the Black Marxism I've read was written either during or in response to Civil Rights-era organizing and insurrection.
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Sep 5, 2020 20:31
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animist posted:random question: i've been reading a lotta stuff from Black communists recently, Fanon and Walter Rodney and George Jackson. does anybody know of work engaging with their writing from the perspective of other socialist movements? south american, say, or russian or chinese. IIRC, Angela Davis is pretty influential in the Brazilian left in general and has influenced her back in her post-70s sociology. In the same way, Carlos loving Marighella was very well read about the black equality struggle at home and abroad; his works took a while to reach the USA but afaik West Coast panthers loved the hell out of it
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Sep 5, 2020 23:33
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Dan Olson - who also posts here in SA but hasn't in CSPAM afaik - released a pretty good video about reactionary ideological thought and its rhetoric, and the way he demonstrates about it in this is very loving excellent; especially because as he correctly points out, the mistake that a lot of people make (including people in the left who should know better) is to dismiss the early signs of the reactionary rot as not being such (as he puts it, to treat these people as empty vessels with this singular quirky belief). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
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Sep 13, 2020 03:49
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It's a common C-spam refrain that libs will always ally with fasc over the left, can anyone give me some concrete examples of this?
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Sep 25, 2020 02:36
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The 20th century for starters
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Sep 25, 2020 03:22
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Malkina_ posted:The 20th century for starters well I mean the most obvious alliance lines involving libs, commies, and nazis in the 20th century explicitly had a communist-liberal alliance against the nazis I assume you're referring to the cold war instead?
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Sep 25, 2020 03:25
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cheetah7071 posted:well I mean the most obvious alliance lines involving libs, commies, and nazis in the 20th century explicitly had a communist-liberal alliance against the nazis Stalin tried to ally with the UK and France against Hitler in the summer of 39 but they weren't really interested. partly for their own reasons ("I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty," -Chamberlain) and partly because Poland and Romania feared the USSR more than they did Hitler and refused any military cooperation
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Sep 25, 2020 03:37
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perhaps I should clarify that I'm honestly asking for examples; I'm not particularly doubting but I'm interested especially in examples like that one where it's especially clear that it's ideological rather than realpolitik
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Sep 25, 2020 03:40
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cheetah7071 posted:perhaps I should clarify that I'm honestly asking for examples; I'm not particularly doubting but I'm interested especially in examples like that one where it's especially clear that it's ideological rather than realpolitik Russian Civil War was perhaps the first "big" international example. Liberals in Europe and the USA were all in favor of the intervention against the Popular Assembly even before the Bolsheviks were made into the leading force. First they wanted the Tsar, then they defended a strong "provisional" government, then they were fully backing a reactionary military dictatorship by White generals But other examples in no particular order: - Colonial wars of liberation in Africa and Asia: Algiers, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique... Essentially, the defense of far-right authoritarianism by the liberal order was seen as justified as "decolonization" was regarded as an explicitly leftist threat (which ironically helped to legitimize the socialists as leaders of these movements); - Also on that note, Belgian Congo post WW2: Belgian business interests campaigned hard against decolonization - which was one of the most popular positions that left there had at the time - while defending "hard measures" to keep the many peoples of the Congo from "total rebellion"; - Against the socialist land reforms in Mexico, with Mexican liberals being absurdly vilified for seeking American support to fight against Emiliano Zapata; - In the favor of Franco in the Spanish Civil War against a Spanish Republic, motivating many business interests (like Goodyear for example) to help supply the Falangistas at cost or even outright loss; - American liberals supporting Batista in Cuba, even though the situation there was loving dire and they knew it; - Which also brings pretty much almost all Latin America after containment doctrine got going, with local liberals hoping that they could "soften" the dictatorships (they didn't; and only after a fair number of them ate lead that they started to think that maybe this was not a good idea); - oh and of course Suharto in Indonesia, which dear loving lord
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Sep 25, 2020 04:21
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