Hate Your Boss: Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, Anarchy and the Left

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Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Part 1 (skip part 1 if you don't like navel-gazing): Socialism Is Not When the Government Runs All the Factories

So what the gently caress is Socialism? Well, the best way to explain it as a lens for viewing the world. Socialism is a way to understand and explain the things that go on around us, just like Liberalism.

Liberalism explains the world as a bunch of individuals running all over the place acting selfishly upon their logic and reason. For example, let's say that you find a pile of gold. Liberalism declares the the finder will keep all the gold for himself, and trade away some of the rest for goods and services. You are using your logic and reason to better yourself. So, Liberalism focuses on individual liberties and attempts to predict the outcome of events based on reason.

Can you clarify - are you primarily referring to Economic Liberalism as opposed to the broader concept of political/moral Liberalism? Regarding the latter, I would think that certain concepts from Liberalism are possibly shared with socialism? E.g. equality, importance of social contract/consent to be governed... Whereas Economic Liberalism and Socialism are more diametrically opposed?

I think I often don't appreciate how much Liberalism and Economic Liberalism get used interchangeably on this forum, and that a criticism of the latter is not necessarily applicable to the whole of the latter.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Reason is the yardstick by which Liberalism measures the world because a yardstick must be impartial. You can't use a measuring stick if it keeps changing, so you try to explain everything assuming that reason remains impartial. This is called Rationalism, and this is where Liberalism fails. The problem is, humans are not only rational. They are also emotional, delusional, what have you. The greatest proof that we are not all logic beep-borp computers is that we do not all agree on anything. Not even pizza toppings, and especially not our president (Seriously, you cannot explain Trump as a product of rational choices because even racism is irrational).

So, Socialism discards with the metric of reason. If we can't trust our judgements, we need to look at the material conditions to explain the actions of individuals. By examining the world that people inhabit, we can understand why they do the things they do. This is called Materialism

Say there is a riot and we use Materialism to ask "Why is everyone rioting?" Well, we must look to their material conditions: How much food do they have? Are they in danger? Are they sick? We may learn that they are rioting because they are hungry, or scared, or what have you. It's not necessarily a rational conclusion. Scared or hungry people aren't necessarily acting rationally, they are hungry or scared. But we can learn their motivations because we understand the material world and how they interact in it. Material conditions include technology, resources, violence.

And when we use Materialism to analyze Rationalism we find that while Rationalism is sufficient to explain why individual people do what they do, it does a very poor job of explaining the way people interact with each other.

So, to back up a bit, let's remind ourselves of Rationalism and use it to measure a very complicated individual: a Police officer. Rationalism predicts that the Police officer's job is to serve and protect, and he will act rationally towards that goal because it selfishly gets him paid. And if we look at a rich white poor, the officer certainly protects and serves rich white people. Even Materialism would provide that he protects the wealthy. However, what about a poor minority? Does the officer treat a poor Black person the same way he treats a rich white person? Well, Rationalism says that his job is to serve and protect, so therefore he must serve and protect the poor Black person the same way he serves and protects the poor white person. But let's be real: Here on the Prime Material Plane, the police doesn't treat everyone equally (to put it mildly). The officer oppresses and perhaps even kills the poor Black person.

So we see with Materialism, who you are in relation to the officer changes how the officer will treat you. And that is what Materialism is so good at analyzing: the way that humans interact with other humans. And that's what Socialism really is: It's looking at the way people interact with each other by looking at the material conditions surrounding them. The Police officer treats different people differently based on their wealth, skin color, and even gender, all real world realities. These are not theoretical constructs like "pride", "duty", or "logic".

I have a hard time following this, specifically as it relates to reason/logic and Rationalism. I think what you're saying is that Economic Liberalism assumes that individuals act rationally in their own self interest, and that this is a very poor way to analyze behavior at a individual let alone societal scale. Is that correct? If so, agreed.

What I'm a bit worried about is that I think this is a more nuanced and precise argument than saying that "Socialism discards with the metric of reason". If socialism discards with the metric of reason, then there is no ability to analyze societal phenomena under a materialist lens; economic materialism still requires adherence to reason/logic in order to analyze how/why material conditions lead to societal and individual behaviors, no? I.e. rationalism in a more epistemological sense, as opposed to political or economic.

---

I'm curious how Marxist thought has grappled with the rise of the military-industrial complex and what that means for revolution of the working class and ability for capitalism to yield to socialism. With technology advancing so significantly in terms of weapons and surveillance, and becoming so concentrated in the hands of the capitalist ruling class, it seems that the only way to move to socialism let alone communism would necessarily have to be very slow and incremental, because workers would be so outgunned in a violent revolt.

But I also sense that there is very little patience for incrementalism on the left (which I understand and feel myself). Are these reconcilable? Is it less that the left is averse to incremental progress and more that there isn't trust that the Democratic party of 2020 is actually interested in achieving that progress at all?

Thanks for this thread btw, good stuff!

# ¿ Nov 5, 2020 21:29

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 04:11

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Ok, so, you're not going to like what I have to say.

Because Socialist theory uses materialism as a measuring stick, it doesn't consider equality and social contracts to be "real" outside of the way that people relate to each other. For example, let's use the Constitution as our social contract.

A bunch of words written by dead rich white guys 300 years has no power over anyone. It is the people who enforce the social contract that empower it. If they decide to ignore the freedom of speech, they can do a McCarthyism. If they want to treat all Black people as slaves, they can ignore the all-of-it. Because the words aren't real, the actions of the people are, and it is the relationship between those people that transforms the social contract from a theoretical construct into a tangible, material creation. And all of a sudden you have people using the Constitution to justify things which it explicitly outlaws, just like the bible is used to justify literally everything.

Bringing this back from a few pages, thanks for the reply. I don't dislike what you have to say at all! I'm not sure I'm on the same page, but I suspect it might mostly be a semantic issue. I *think* the fundamental premise of the concept of a social contract is that it's dependent on the will/consent of the people to be valid. It's one of the aspects of Liberalism that I think is worth keeping, so to speak, but has been poisoned by other aspects associated with it like individualism, belief in property as a fundamental right...

I don't disagree that a social contract isn't "real", but it feels like this is a difference of being descriptive of how a society operates vs. prescriptive about how it should operate. I would think that in a socialist society, the concept of a social contract is still a valuable goal, insofar as it's a way (in theory, admittedly) to explicitly vest the power of governance in the people as opposed to the state. Or at a broader level, a socialist society still needs some shared values of how things should be, which goes beyond being able to understand how material conditions contribute to how things currently are.

Agreed however that America has never really been a country with a valid social contract, due to slavery and capitalist capture of the state.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

I don't know what you mean by "Economic Liberalism", but I assume it's the idea that freedom justifies capitalism?

Not gonna lie I'm working mostly off wikipedia and my decade+ old memory of undergrad courses as a philosophy major, so definitely not trying to assert myself as an expert in any domain.

quote:

Economic liberalism is a political and economic philosophy based on strong support for a market economy and private property in the means of production. Although economic liberals can also be supportive of government regulation to a certain degree, they tend to oppose government intervention in the free market when it inhibits free trade and open competition. Economic liberalism has been described as representing the economic expression of liberalism.

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

Basically Economic Liberalism is the ancestor of Neoliberalism, and is obviously complete bullshit. But I think the broader concept of Liberalism has some good stuff and a lot of bad stuff, and unfortunately all the bad stuff has really won out over the past few centuries. But when I read the constant attacks on Liberalism here, it makes me wonder how much is really an attack on economic/neo-liberalism. I suspect there's probably some theory on how broad Liberalism necessarily results in economic liberalism, but that link isn't obvious to me and I don't think I've heard that nuance discussed here.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2020 07:41

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

The Oldest Man posted:

It might help if you talked more about what those specific aspects are that you like and feel are "worth saving," since liberal/neoliberalism encompasses a lot of things and in addition to that it's hard to decouple the dead trees philosophy from the observed reality of liberalism in practice where the dead trees philosophy starts to look like a rationalization for a lot of bad faith action on the part of the powerful.

E: like we're talking a lot about Marxism-Leninism and Maoism and vanguard revolutionary thought here but a) that's not the only philosophy of advancement toward socialism and b) participation in bourgeoise liberal democracy has put explicitly Marxist socialist regimes in power more than once. A lot of the anti-liberalism in ML writing is real world and hard learned lessons from dealing with liberal wreckers who talk a good game and then pipe-wrench the revolution as soon as they're in a position to benefit from that.

Thanks, that's fair. Just going by the wikipedia headline blurb that I quoted, I've commented on what I like and don't like below. I realize this is a gross over simplification but hopefully it's still enough to let you know where my head's at. Understood about the observed reality of liberalism being bad and the hard learned lessons.

"Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support:
- free markets [I won't say I'm against the idea of ANY free markets existing, but I think the value/faith placed on free markets in neoliberalism is absurd] (edit: and should add, I don't even know if I believe that free markets exist in any meaningful way, so treating regulation of markets as undesirable is just silly to me)
- free trade [I feel too uninformed to have a good take. I find a lot of anti-free trade rhetoric to be xenophobic/racist, but also not sure how free trade exists outside the context of imperialism and neoliberalism]
- limited government [nah]
- individual rights (including civil rights and human rights) [yes to the idea of individual rights, but I guess the real issue is what those rights are. Civil & human rights, yeah. Right to private property, nah]
- capitalism [nah]
- democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion [yep all around, with the caveat that I interpret internationalism as exposure to and love for other cultures in a way that's rooted in empathy/curiosity vs. more transactional focus of free trade]

Sharks Eat Bear fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Nov 6, 2020

# ¿ Nov 6, 2020 08:20

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

gradenko_2000 posted:

The other example of this is the British parliament extolling the virtues of railroad construction in India as thereby making it impossible for the region to ever experience famines... only to have these railroads be used in practice to shuttle foodstuffs across the subcontinent where they could fetch the highest prices, even as the grain and millet had to be placed under armed guard to prevent starving people from simply taking the harvest by force, out of desperation.

"Free trade" is, in general, a bad idea, because what it essentially means is that countries are not allowed to engage in protectionist behavior.

This means that countries that are not-yet-industrialized, are never going to be able to industrialize, since any domestic production/manufacture will be cannibalized by cheaper imports from already-developed countries, and then the not-yet-industrialized country cannot impose tariffs on those imports, since tariffication is in violation of free trade principles.

The Global South becomes trapped as merely being a consumer of the advanced finished goods produced by the Global North, as well as being a source of raw material, but are never allowed to become producers themselves.

Thanks, that all makes sense to me. I had reflected on this recently and my gut feeling was very similar, so nice to hear some validation. The way I thought about it was that free trade will necessary be exploited by capitalists insofar as they are unconstrained in moving the means of production to wherever labor is cheapest and least protected, which is obviously a wildly asymmetrical advantage because labor is effectively constrained within a small geographic area due the financial and social costs of moving, restrictions on immigration, etc.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2020 15:45

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Cpt_Obvious posted:

If you actually want to apply a materialist lens to the social contract, we must analyze the relationship between human beings as the manifestation of the contract.

Social contract theory doesn't really holds out as a description of government, especially if it assumes consent. Oppressed people don't "consent" to oppression. Slaves do not "consent" to slavery. It is coercion that enforces these contracts, not consent. And calling it consent erases the violence necessary to enforce it.

So, that raises an interesting question, "Why frame the social contract as 'consent' at all?" All the history of the world is one rear end in a top hat punching someone and taking their stuff. A king takes the food from peasant, a boss takes the labor of the worker. Neither the worker nor the peasant 'consent' to this relationship, they'll just die if they don't take part. They are coerced into compliance. So what does painting their compliance as "consent" do? It justifies this oppression as "consent" instead of the violence it obviously is.

And this really portrays the stark contrast between rationalism and materialism: Rationally, no man would ever consent to unfair bargain. Materially, if I have a gun I can make you "consent" to whatever the gently caress I want. So the entire idea of the social contract is fine in theory but completely falls apart in practice.

Thanks again, and I promise I'm not being intentionally dense or contrarian on this topic, fwiw.

I'm still not sure I follow this distinction. I think the concept of the social contract is prescriptive, not descriptive. I.e. a government SHOULD only be legitimate if it has the consent of the governed. As you said, history shows us that in practice most/all liberal societies haven't really operated with a valid social contract; it's been entirely theoretical while reality has been oppression and coercion.

So a materialist analysis (as I understand it) tells us that these societies do not, in fact, have valid social contracts, but it does not tell us that a valid social contract is an unworthy aim for society. This is the same flawed thinking that leads people to e.g. point to failures of socialist states as "proof" that socialism doesn't work or that communism can only operate as it does in the CCP.

I know this probably sounds like babby's first Marxist thought, but isn't it fair to say that both theory and praxis are necessary in order to move from a capitalist society to a socialist or communist society?

# ¿ Nov 6, 2020 19:03

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Not to ignore the current discussion, but I wanted to go back to a post from a few pages ago and follow up with a pointed question:

SurgicalOntologist posted:

Besides philosophy of perception there are other relevant philosophical traditions like the American pragmatists (William James, Dewey, Peirce), who argued that the only way to conceptualize philosophical problems like knowlege, language, beliefs, etc was by looking at the real-world effects of something rather than playing with ideas. For example, truth is not based on logic relationships built upon foundational axioms but rather truth is a functional description of the result of a practical inquiry in the real world.

Basically you can see this kind of debate back to Plato vs Aristotle, often called realism (or materialism) and idealism, most notably to me in philosophy of mind but it permeates everywhere.

Anyways, in the years since my studies I've been exposed to Marxist thought and particular a materialist view of history. And I can't help wondering how my professors who dedicated their life to a materialist philosophy of mind, and connect their work to various philosophical traditions back to Aristotle, never mentioned Marx. And Wikipedia makes no connection between Marx and pragmatism. I assume politics has a lot to do with it, since these are mainly American philosophies.

I don't know where I'm going but I'm wondering if Marx or any of his followers made any connections to philosophy of mind, and if anyone has any specific readings to recommend given my background (I haven't' read most of the foundational works yet).

Well, if you google "marx pragmatism" or 'marx "ecolgoical psychology"', you do get some scattered academic papers mostly behind paywalls. Here's two readings that may be interesting: "Dewey, Hook, and Mao: on some affinities between Marxism and pragmatism", and "The dance of pragmatism and Marxism" from marxists.org. Maybe I should have read those before posting but I'll read them now. I'd be curious what those of you think you may be better versed in Marx than I.

Edit: poo poo, I guess Sidney Hook (who I had never heard of) was a well-known Marxist philosopher who was a student of Dewey's. I guess have some reading to do...
second edit: OK, well, he started out as a Marxist at least...

I've always had a predilection for pragmatism and as I learn more about historical materialism I have the same perspective -- it seems like there is a lot of agreement between the two philosophies/analytical approaches, and I'm eager to learn/read more about how they can hang together, so to speak. And this gets at one of the biggest challenges I've had with the leftist discourse on this forum, specifically about the case against "lesser evil" voting... :can:

I suppose it might be a stretch to apply a materialist analysis to voting choice/strategy, but to me I've never found the arguments against lesser evil voting compelling, because they seem to ignore the material/pragmatic reality that one of two candidates will be elected (obviously focusing on the US here) and that 99% of the time the Democratic candidate will be less harmful than the Republican.

Not to say that the Democrat won't still be harmful, or that voting is the only or most important form of civic/political engagement, or that individuals can't have valid emotional or idealistic reasons against voting for the lesser evil... but I don't think I've heard a strong argument against lesser evilism that's grounded in material conditions as opposed to idealism/emotion, unless the argument is in favor of accelerationism.

Obviously not trying to vote shame or argue about specific candidates, but really just want to clarify what the materialist and/or pragmatic argument is in favor of voting for a 3rd party candidate (or not voting) in a decidedly two-party system. :shobon:

# ¿ Nov 11, 2020 01:11

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

I was chatting with friends today about the sheer amount of bullshit corporate jargon doublespeak that feels like it's become increasingly common and increasingly... unhinged? for lack of a better term.

Made me wonder, was this phenomenon predicted by Marx or Marxists in any analyses of capitalism? I can see how it fits into the fundamental conflicts of capitalism like class struggle and the declining profit rate -- the owners need to use increasingly obfuscating terminology in order to disorient and numb the workers to how bleak the capitalist status quo has become.

It's fascinating at work to see some of my coworkers, who for the most part are just regular, nice people -- total normies, but not like egoistic scions of business or anything -- that seem to enthusiastically latch onto the jargon. I honestly can't tell if they're just playing the game and realize that it's a pointless risk to be the stick in the mud about how we need to build empathy maps to achieve true customer centricity so that we can enable pull solutions for the entire market ecosystem -- :barf:

-- or if they just don't see through the bullshit.

I probably wouldn't have considered my petty, bourgeoisie workplace venting through a (superficial) Marxist lens prior to reading this thread, so thanks for that!

# ¿ Nov 12, 2020 01:26

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Re: the discussion of how to know if capitalism is failing, I have a question for the thread. At what point does capitalism become feudalism with better technology and with global reach? Or is that what it has always been? I think my historical and theoretical chops are lacking such that I can�t really deal with the nuance of this question, but it feels like if capitalism was successful as a project of liberalism, it would be progressing the world away from feudalism towards a brighter future, to use a clich�. But it feels like with every passing year, the gilding strips away a bit more and it becomes more apparent that capitalism effectively has created a global feudalist system, but with computers instead of ploughs or whatever.

I suspect that I�m maybe being too liberal with terminology here (that�s a lil joke) and maybe just stating a tautology in a way that feels profound to me because of my own blind spots, so I�m curious to hear what this thread thinks!

Btw - can�t overstate how much I love this thread, awesome stuff

# ¿ Nov 13, 2020 08:57

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Crumbskull posted:

Which anarchists are you arguing with here please because there several in this thread explicitly telling you they are not arguing this.

Yeah ngl as someone who's mostly spectating/absorbing the discussion it seems like that person just wants to argue about their strawman of anarchism without really addressing what anyone else is saying, over and over...

# ¿ Nov 13, 2020 18:26

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

I have a couple requests for the thread, aimed at finding resources to help educate my leftist-layperson, not-Extremely Online friends. I can google for this of course, but hoping you all can help me with any recommendations, as I suspect there's a lot of shoddy content out there.

Are there any long-form essays on the history and current status of the EZLN that this thread would recommend? I'm thinking along the lines of a New Yorker article stylistically, with the ability to describe complex/nuanced ideas in relatively simplified layperson terms being the most important feature, and a narrative structure being nice to have but not as important.

Are there any streamable video series (Youtube, Netflix, etc.) that provide a good overview of Marxism and the failures of late-stage capitalism? I'm thinking more along the lines of a PBS doc as opposed to an acerbic Youtuber, fwiw.

Unfortunately the first actual PBS doc I found is titled "Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" and features this description, which does not make me optimistic about its slant: "This 3-hour documentary explores one of the most powerful political ideas in history. Socialism spread farther and faster than any religion Then, in almost the blink of an eye, it all collapsed. What happened?" :negative:

gradenko_2000 posted:

A loose distinction that one can make between feudalism and capitalism is that feudalism appropriates surplus value via force/fiat, with the feudal lord essentially being a fusion of the military and economic spheres, while capitalism appropriates surplus value via contracts and legalism - the establishment of the concept of private property and the enclosure of the commons denies most people the ability to provide their own subsistence, which means they need to sell their labor, and the price of labor is controlled by capitalists, etc.

Of course, capitalism still and also relies on brute force to enforce such contracts, such as the police, the general bureaucracy of the state, private security, etc., which I why I said it was merely a "loose" distinction, but I think it should be clear that a proletarian who goes through life "living by the rules" and never runs afoul of the law is still having their surplus value appropriated all of the time merely as a function of capitalist society, without the kind of direct, violent coercion at the point of a feudal lord's sword.

Anyway, capitalism's need to appropriate more and more of the proletariat's surplus value in order to keep propping up the constantly falling rate of profit forms a contradiction with preventing the proletariat from being able to participate in the economy as they're able to afford fewer and fewer goods and services as their wages keep getting progressively smaller. This contradiction will manifest itself in crises and spasms of resistance and even revolutions... but if we get to a state where the capitalists are appropriating so much surplus value from the proletariat that even individual, edge-case proletarians are unable to accumulate capital anymore, and it is only the bayonets pointed at their necks that are keeping the workers in line, then I would argue that we've entered some form of neo-feudalism - the contractual, legalistic obligations of capitalism have failed, and the capitalists enter again into a fusion of the military and economic spheres in order to continue this (by then illusionary) cycle of workers ostensibly working for "wages".

Thanks, this was a super helpful post btw. I bolded the part that more articulately captures what I was thinking. I guess where I'm getting tripped up is that if you replace "ownership of land" with "ownership of capital", there isn't really much effective distinction between feudalism and capitalism... (I think?)

# ¿ Nov 13, 2020 20:08

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

I�ve read EZLN described as libertarian socialist (on Wikipedia fwiw :v:

). Is that an accurate descriptor? It makes me go back to the questions I had at the beginning of the thread around Liberalism and its relationship to socialism (and capitalism). Is libertarian socialism an example of liberalism �done right� (I.e. liberalism doesn�t necessitate capitalism and critiques of the latter aren�t necessarily also wholly applicable to the former)? Or is it just a bad description on Wiki

# ¿ Nov 14, 2020 09:15

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

CYBEReris posted:

praxis is the application of theory in the material world, it's synonymous with practice but is typically used when you want to explicitly communicate that your actions stem from a theoretical basis. theory becomes praxis and the results of this praxis are analyzed and it informs more theory, repeating indefinitely as contradictions are found and resolved.

Is this another description for a materialist dialectic? I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around Hegelian dialectics but this seems much more intuitive to me

# ¿ Nov 19, 2020 20:51

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Crumbskull posted:

Damm, that makes a lot of sense. Whose insight is this?

Yeah wow that�s a great write up, thanks much

Another set of noobie Marxist questions (if this is getting too annoying or not within the purpose of the thread lmk) � is this an accurate albeit oversimplified statement: capitalism leads to class struggle leads to class consciousness/solidarity leads to socialism leads to communism? And if so, what does Marx say about the conditions that allow class struggle to... evolve?... into class consciousness? Is it fair to say that the ML school would say the answer is vanguardism?

And last question for now, are there other schools of thought that (to borrow the awesome dialectic analogy above) advocate for achieving class consciousness through application of Marxist theory to old social practices that were used for population level ideological indoctrination (which obviously has a negative connotation but I mean it in a neutral way), namely church/religion? Or would it be impossible to do that in 2020 because the well has been too poisoned by capitalism for it to be anything but a grift?

# ¿ Nov 20, 2020 08:15

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

This is a dumb question, probably for Crumbskull in particular. I know I could just ~~google~~ duck duck go it but the discussion here is more fun

How do worker coops raise funds for start up costs? Do banks view these as higher risk loans because they won�t be as obsessively focused on profit (and therefore loan repayment) as a private business? Is it harder to secure funding for a worker coop or just a different process?

How would it work in a socialist country? Nationalized banks?

# ¿ Nov 24, 2020 00:03

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Cpt_Obvious posted:

I'm not the expert on anarchist theory, but I know that Marxism generally views religion as a way to control and placate a population. Marx famously called it "The opiate of the masses" in the medical sense, meaning that believing that Jesus loves you makes life under the crushing fist of capitalism a little more bearable.

Did Marx acknowledge the history of religion pre-dating capitalism? I assume he would say that religion has the same ultimate control/placating effect across a spectrum of exploitative socieconomic arrangements, and isn�t unique to capitalism?

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Without shoving words in your mouth, I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you mean that the religion itself isn't an "evil", but it's the way that humans warp it to conserve power. And Marx and others might agree. However, they would point out that at a certain point, what the text says doesn't really matter. It's an old book written by ancient dead people. What actually matters is how current living members of society use those words, and they universally use religion to form oppressive hierarchies.

Isn�t this confusing materialism as a historical dialectic with materialism as a basis for values/ethics? Seems like a classic is-to-ought naturalistic fallacy; historical materialism tells us why things are what they are better than idealism, but it alone doesn�t tell us how things should be.

Where I�m going is that I do believe having some sort of shared faith and rituals is hugely important to solidifying communities, in a way that to me seems integral to the socialist and/or communist project. I suspect there have been tomes written on this by people much smarter than me, so all I�ll say is that in a better society, hard science would be more important as the medium for shared faith and rituals than it would be as the engine of industrial progress.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2020 07:14

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

For the sake of (attempted) brevity I'm just replying to uncop's post, which I think also touches on some of the points made by gradenko_2000, OwlFancier and Space Cadet Omoly.

uncop posted:

Yes. For instance, Marx acknowledged how religion was the main form of ideology in feudal society (back when the Pope was well above kings in stature and power). While the hierarchical command and exploitation aspect of religion only really comes in with class society, the soothing and drugging effect is presumably why people form religions without any (class) coercion as well. Essentially, for the duration that religion has existed, it has done so because it's been socially necessary, and can only be swept away once it has become unnecessary. The war on drugs is a good example of what happens when someone tries to fight against social necessity and win by doing it really hard.

Thanks, this is helpful. To push on this idea of when religion can be swept away once it's become unnecessary -- is there any consideration to the idea that for many people, spiritual needs are inextricable from material needs?

quote:

Dialectical materialism doesn't try to derive "ought" from "is". It treats oughts as a given, something that don't need to be derived because they already are. They're concrete social impulses that can be discovered by studying people's moral demands. So far as people disagree on oughts and struggle over them, they can either come to an agreement and unite, or the strongest team can subordinate the rest. Marx makes moral judgments because he's human and doesn't believe in impartiality as a precondition for making scientific claims, but he doesn't consider his judgments to carry any scientific weight unless others agree and force that morality on society.

I'm not sure how to square your first two sentences -- your second sentence reads to me as a more detailed way of how to derive ought from is. It also sounds like you're suggesting that Marx views moral judgments as a type of scientific claim (even if he doesn't believe his own moral judgments are scientifically special, per se)? Maybe I'm being dense here, is the nuance that Marx is basically unconcerned with the concept of morality insofar as it's fundamentally based in idealism, and that the concept of "ought" is just an imaginary tool for persuading others to unite so you don't get crushed by the guy with the really big stick?

quote:

And Cpt_Obvious is right: religion isn't the words on the pages of the books that religious people read, it's the actual social organisation of religious people, which in turn is the outcome of struggles between religious people. Religions pretend to be unchangeable atemporal truths, but in practice they are anything but. On the other hand, there's a point where religious practice drifts so far from religious writings that a new kind of faith needs to be established. There is also a point when faith and rituals stop being religious at all. All sincerely held morality is a matter of faith, and social practice is the impartial judge of all faiths. Policies either work out or they don't, and who they work out for is critical.

I find this to be a shallow analysis of religion, and a bit of a false dichotomy. Religion is both the words on the pages and the actual social organization of religious people, and these dynamics both depend on and shape each other. Religion can/does entail making up atemporal Truth, but I think it's a inadequate reduction to say that ultimately this is what religion is about, even textually.

I'm not sure how social practice could be seen as impartial; I thought that the partiality of social practice is exactly why nothing humans do is impartial, because everything we do happens in the context of social practice? And like science, when experiments work or don't work, it's not a given that this definitively tells us whether the interventions being studied can actually have an effect or not; experiments are never perfect in a laboratory setting, let alone in the context of real world social practice. If a policy doesn't work out, does that mean it was a bad policy that should be discarded? Or did the experimental design contribute to the failure in a way that could be mitigated the next time you "run the experiment"? Sometimes the answer is the former, sometimes it's the latter, and teasing this out is a key element of the scientific process of discovery.

quote:

For what it's worth, I disagree that faith could ever be subordinated to science. Science is the antithesis of faith, it makes profane evidence into a sword that attempts to savagely execute everything that people find sacred, and break up established communities. When scientific claims enter popular consciousness, they enter the realm of faith. They need to duke it out against established faith-based claims as equals, and victory only integrates them into the dominant faith without making that faith more scientific in principle. I think a directly science-based society requires a radical social dynamism that overcomes the need for the stability that faith-based communities provide, and mass science that most people seriously participate in at some point of their lives.

Agreed, I don't think I'd say that faith should be subordinated to science, but IMO the more I learn about hard science, especially post-relativity particle physics and astrophysics, the more I see it as an incredible vessel in which to place the spiritual impulse that I believe is basically universal in humanity. I don�t really think this would require any particular societal dynamism, it would be more about science being the process by which we commune with nature, both in terms of finding joy & beauty in the mysteries we unravel and infinite wonder in the new mysteries we discover upon that unraveling.

The drug discussion is interesting, cards on the table I read the Michael Pollan book about psychedelics (How to Change Your Mind) a few months ago and I guess where my head�s at is, if I was attempting to design an utopian society it would probably entail some sort of psychedelic-facilitated religion that holds science as the holy method of getting closer to nature and basically nature=god (in addition to some form of leftist governance and economy).

Similar to other posters� experiences, I grew up in a secular household. I went to church once or twice as a kid and only because I slept over at friends� houses on a Saturday night and had to stay with them through Sunday morning. But my wife grew up very religious, and I�ve gone to church with her and her family probably a few dozen times now. There�s a lot I object to (primarily in the text itself) but I find the effect on strengthening a local community to be inspiring. It was something I didn't realize was missing from my life until I was exposed to it (in terms of community & ritual, not in terms of the scripture or dogma).

Part of what draws me into leftism I think is that local organizing, direct action, mutual aid, etc. can have a similar community-strengthening effect as what I've observed from religion, but without the troubling entrenchment of oppressive hierarchies and morality. But deep down in my bones, and going back to the first question I posed in this post, I do believe that spiritual (and moral) needs are material needs. I can understand that economic material needs are more pressing right now, but I think any attempt to change a status quo, especially as it relates to social practice, is much more effective if there's a vision for what comes next, so I guess I'm trying to make the case for some version of religion/faith/morality being included in the socialist vision.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2020 19:51

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Disnesquick posted:

"Science" is simply a way of validating new ideas and makes no distinction between how those ideas were generated. The hierarchy of logic over intuition is nonsense from the quasi-religious side of the Enlightenment and, increasingly, we are relying much more on intuitive thought in our machines themselves, in the form of Artificial Neural Networks, which are a very obvious (and pure) expression of that mode of thought.

Can you expand on this? I'm not sure why Logic > Intuition is nonsense (or how a computer could generate non-logical thought). If intuition is generating illogical ideas, surely that's less a problem insofar as there is a cost to validating ideas and logical ideas will be more likely to be validated, as a generlization? I tend to think of this with a lens of pragmatism vs. the idealism that I suspect was more prevalent from the Enlightenment...

If this is getting too off topic though, happy to take it to PMs.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2020 21:27

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Disnesquick posted:

That's not the argument I've tried to convey though. Let me try and take a different angle. Firstly I am taking a very broad angle on "conflict" than something which might mean "armed struggle". We talk about "internal conflict" or "spiritual/mental conflict" all the time: The essence of the word here is to convey a sense of being at variance with something. I do think this is an essential part of the human condition: If we are not improving ourselves (either in a social or individual context although I'm more referring to the former) then we are in a state of decay. Fascists think that this conflict must be between different groups of people, usually in the form of actual violent action. Whilst I think that we need something to strive for, to be in motion to be fully immersed in the joy of existence, I don't think that needs to be a conflict against our comrades (although games can be fun) but can be much more of a spiritual struggle against the fundamentally stark nature of the universe.

I draw the analogy with the immune system because it reasonably (albeit not fully) accepted that it can't function well when there is nothing to respond to at all. It causes problems in fact. My own observation of the human condition is that we need something to move towards to be truly happy. Whilst an organism could exist that could be happy with stasis, I don't think that's us. It seems to be a rule that empires collapse into decay pretty soon after reaching a state of dominance. If we ever did achieve communism then I think we'd need to find external struggles to prevent that. A quasi-divine mission to bring green to our galaxy seems, to me, the kind of thing that could keep a post-scarcity society invigorated.

FWIW this is how I understood your original post, and I started drafting a few replies to say as much but kept deleting them bc I was getting tripped up.

I can understand the hesitation to under any circumstances "gotta hand it to em" to fascists, which is where I think the pushback against your post largely comes from, but I think it is important to understand the allure of the fascist framing of conflict in order to combat it for the green-galaxy utopia movement. I do worry that it's "easier" to sell people on reactionary conflict than a more positive, "progressive" (for lack of a better term) type of conflict. Therein lies the rub!

# ¿ Dec 1, 2020 01:42

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Cpt_Obvious posted:

But is it "natural" for us to view everything as conflict? Or has our society impressed upon us that conflict is the only relation we have with each other? Does the "natural" state of conflict merely justify our bosses getting wealthier?

Taking the broad view of conflict as discussed by Disnesquick, I would still argue that it's healthy to embrace it in a measured way. Imagining yourself as a better person in the future creates a conflict, but is essential for doing good, for instance; e.g. wanting to be better at cooperating implies an internal conflict. If taken in this context, I don't think conflict and cooperation are necessarily oppositional.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Look at our Darwinian paradigm; strange, isn't it, that our evolutionary competition is framed as a competition among creatures; certainly there is an aspect of that. We can see the fox as in conflict with the sheep, or we can look at the fox requiring the sheep for survival. Just as the sheep requires the grass. And so on. And those needs create conflicts, certainly. However, we tend to ignore how we also cooperate with other species. In each of our cells is housed a mitochondria. They do not have human DNA, they have their own. And no human can live without our mitochondria. So it seems that if the human race were to be defined as "conflicted" that would ignore the cooperative social relationship with other species, and we never really talk about those.

I also would be careful not to minimize the fundamental importance of competition as a driving force of evolution, and as an extremely effective explanatory tool for many (most?) adaptations. And I don't think this hurts the case when bridging it back to social relations/structures. Humans have escaped natural selection due to technology and society, but technology begat industrialization which is going to destroy the world as we know it unless we make some pretty drastic changes. And those changes aren't possible until we shed the "competition above all else" neoliberal ethos & structures and embrace collectivism.

I guess this is what you're getting at with your appeal to rationalists/liberals, but I don't think you have to grant the premise that humans are fundamentally Darwinian creatures. Darwinian evolution has undeniably shaped human ancestry in deep, durable ways, but it's not some intrinsic constraint on what we're capable of accomplishing as a species.

e: agree with the overall take & tenor of your whole post though, just singling out these two points for discussion

# ¿ Dec 1, 2020 07:29

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Ok Comboomer posted:

I know this is purely aesthetic/academic but humans have not �taken themselves out of natural selection� for all that people like to say that, just because we�ve developed technology and medicine and societal behaviors that lead to certain reproductive trends like 2.5 children in US households and so forth.

Tons of people still die of natural, non-senescence causes all of the time. Genetic diseases and disorders still rob plenty of people of the opportunity to procreate and in many cases their genes exit the active population when they die. People get cancer or they suffer injury, either fatal or sterilizing. Sometimes natural disasters kill hundreds or thousands of people and entire lineages are wiped out as a result.

And even if we become ultimate masters of the planet and stave off climate collapse and develop life extending technology ZARDOZ-style who�s to say a meteor or solar flare doesn�t wipe us out and reset the board for another dominant species? Or wipe out all life on the planet altogether?

I don�t think escaping natural selection means immortality. Society and technology just mean that individual fitness isn�t nearly as much of a driver of survival or reproduction, so the forces of evolution that shape life in a hostile world of scarcity don�t necessarily need to apply to humans anymore.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2020 16:27

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Disnesquick posted:

To try and get things back away from biology (sorry, this was mostly my fault). I think this article from Jacobin was pretty good in discussing the extent of neoliberalism and its interactions with neoconservatism and neofascism (and writing that out makes me wonder what else neo is going to get tacked onto). I also thought the points raised about the nihilistic core of the neoliberal project to be interesting. It's a pretty long read and touches on quite a bit of ground (from Hayek through to Q) but worth a read.

Thanks for sharing this btw, time consuming but rewarding read!

One of the author's comments didn't quite make sense to me:

quote:

We might pause, though, and think about whether the anti-statism of the neoliberals is one of those inadvertent inheritances that is also part of what shapes and contours some of the understandings that emerge from these movements. I think the emphasis on mutual aid today that�s coming out of the anarchist wing of a lot of these social movements, the absolute suspicion of state forms of distribution, the way abolitionism has moved across every domain of state power and the suspicion of any possibility of democracy, social justice, or socialism entailing state power or the use of the state � I think we at least have to worry about it.

I raise that because the reality of the Bernie campaign, which I supported from beginning to end, is that it was a campaign mobilizing the people for popular power, for social movements, for popular demands, for all the right things. Education, health care, transformation of the way we understand public goods and public provisioning � all of it, in the end, lands at the feet of the state. Making all of those things work would require not only a tremendous amount of state mechanisms for creating programs, for generating and distributing goods. We know that, and at the same time, all of them also require capitalism. All of them require a mode of financing, which depends on a mode of growth. I�m not saying they require competition in the deregulated form of the neoliberals, but they�re not about a radically new political economy.

They�re about a radically transformed or reregulated and redistributed capitalism, but it can�t be that radical without crumpling.

So there are some things that have been inherited by the Left. And in our visions of a more radical democracy, a more socially just world, a more sustainable one, we still have some of the anti-statism of the neoliberals in them.

Can someone help me parse this? I have a hard time connecting the dots between the anarchism/anti-statism she describes, capitalism, and visions of a better society. My best read on it is that she's voicing a concern that an anti-state position could be an impediment to achieving socialist progress, even if that progress happens under the guise of capitalism?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2020 05:49

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

gradenko_2000 posted:

Having said all that, my read is that this person is worried about the tension between anarchism and the sort of social democrat programme that Sanders's movement wanted, because the latter is contingent upon placing a lot of power into the hands of the state, and people might be suspicious of that.

Cool yeah that seems like a better articulation of what I was getting at, thanks.

I suppose it�s a possible thing to worry about, although I imagine the number of anarchists who are so deeply anti-state that it creates meaningful tension with the Sanders movement is vanishingly small. Seems like a very marginal worry, in the scheme of the rest of the perils & crises of neoliberalism that the interview discusses.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2020 07:36

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

It also seems weird to me to think that any dialectical approach to just about any subject -- social relations, economics, power structures, etc. -- could flat out end. As long as there's poo poo to observe, there will be contradictions to be found, unless you believe humans are capable of obtaining perfect omniscience. Same deal with science, IMO.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2020 18:04

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Here's a little Friday fun for the thread:

NYT DealBook: How to Fix America

quote:

For the last year, we�ve all been inundated with campaign platforms from candidates promising to fix this or to rebuild that. But rarely do we hear from on-the-ground experts about specific ideas to help address our most pressing problems, whether in the economy, health care, education, social justice or climate change.

Every year we bring together exactly those kinds of experts and industry leaders as part of our ongoing DealBook conversations and live events, including our recent online summit.

This year we undertook a special project. We canvassed a cross section of leading thinkers and asked them: If you could do one thing right now to help fix America � no matter how large or small � what would it be?

You can agree or disagree with the ideas that follow but, at a minimum, hopefully they�ll make you � and policymakers and business leaders � think about what is possible.

We�ve also taken this project a step further: We convened a series of conversations with experts on some of the hot-button issues of our time to discuss and debate the best approaches to public policy. The topics range from Covid-19, the climate, policing, economic growth, big tech and more. Over the next two weeks, we�ll be publishing a special series of articles with the results of those discussions. To be alerted to the publication of each article, sign up for the DealBook newsletter, published every weekday morning.

Given how many complex and interconnected problems we�re facing, solutions can seem daunting. Let�s start with these answers to the question: What�s one thing we should do right now?

Each section has a few paragraphs of explanation, so I'm not going to copy/paste all of the sections in full, but here are the different section titles (with my comments in brackets if the title is ambiguous) and I'm happy to post specific ones on request.

Give Americans Cash at Birth So They Can Retire as Millionaires
Persuade Companies to Embrace a 2 Percent Solution [2% charity tax on companies lol]
Listen to the People You Disagree With the Most
Use Remote Work to Revitalize the Cities That Need It Most
Fund Black-Owned Banks That Renew Opportunity
Put an Internet-Enabled Device in the Hands of Every U.S. Child
Require a Background Check on Every Gun Purchase in America
Stop Pushing College
Cut Carbon Emissions Everywhere (Starting With These Four Sectors)
Make Good, at Last, on Our Promises [honoring treaties with Native American tribes]
Improve Access to Technology and Hire More Tutors
Let Mental Health Experts Answer 911 Calls
Think of Education as More Than Just School
Abolish ICE. For a Start.
Slash Regulation. Prioritize Growth.
Create a Paid Internship for Every College Graduate Who Wants One
Ban Share Buttons On Social Media

I think there are some ideas here that I wouldn't necessarily call bad, but it's almost self-parody how unimaginative and tied to the neoliberal status quo they are. Like ok, giving Americans $7K at birth to invest in an index fund that theoretically could compound to $1M at age 65... that's kind of cool sounding, but you can't withdraw the money until then? What if you have an unexpected medical bill that brings you to financial ruin? What if the market tanks and wipes out a chunk of the investment? What if a lifetime of accumulated stress and discrimination results in irreversibly damaged mental health by age 65 such that $1M (which probably would be more like $200-300K if you take inflation into account, I think?) will be a day late and a dollar short, so to speak? Like this is the best we got???

#15 is my favorite, and I suspect will be widely supported by this thread :lol:

Veronique de Rugy | Senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University posted:

�Economic growth isn�t just ethical, it�s sublime,� writes my former colleague Eli Dourado for the Cato Institute. I agree. Here are the top three growth-inducing policies that I would prioritize. What they all have in common is the removal of obstacles to growth. And all are progressive in the sense that the Americans who will benefit the most are those in the bottom half of the income scale.

First, let�s start with an initiative that has supporters across the political spectrum: rolling back zoning and other land-use rules that slow growth by restricting the construction of housing, especially in coastal cities, where housing costs have skyrocketed making it hard for ordinary people to live there. Even modest housing deregulation, such as upzoning to allow taller structures, can substantially increase the supply of housing in the most prosperous areas of the country. This promotes economic migration to these areas, which can reduce poverty and inequality by giving lower-income workers greater access to higher-wage labor markets. As an example, look at how Fairfax County in Virginia successfully upzoned the community of Tysons Corner.

Next, do away with all government-granted privileges, such as tariffs, farm and export subsidies, and most occupational-licensing requirements for fields like natural hair-braiding or interior design. According to the Institute for Justice�s occupational-licensing report, on average the requirements for low- to moderate-income occupations in the U.S. cost around $200 in fees and require nine months of training.

These requirements favor wealthier and politically connected interest groups at the expense of lower-income workers and consumers. And the health care industry should receive no exemption. Get rid of scope-of-practice rules which protect doctors from the competition of nurse practitioners. At the same time, allow doctors to serve patients all over the country and compete for business through telemedicine.

Finally, we must reasonably relax safety rules. Consider the environmental-impact reviews required by the National Environmental Protection Act of 1970. Scholars on both sides of the aisle agree that these reviews are in need of reform. They cause delays and drive up costs in infrastructure projects while rarely delivering on the promise of environmental protection.

Likewise, an overly risk-averse approval process slows down drug development. The higher safety of drugs that are available for use fails to compensate for the lifesaving drugs that aren�t brought to market as a result of costly approvals. The same is true of the safety requirements imposed on the development of new technologies. We all want to be safe, of course, but being too risk-averse kills innovation and restrains growth. We need a balanced approach.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2020 22:42

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

The Oldest Man posted:

The point being made (by Mao, but by me since I'm quoting it) is that liberals, being opposed to ideological struggle, will naturally act to reduce any ideological framing of history to nothing more than a lens from an endless collection of lenses from which the liberal should be free to pick and choose at will - picking ideology up and putting it down as it suits the convenience of their self-interest. So the behavior of treating Marxism as a historiographical lens rather than an imperfect tool of revolutionary struggle that continues to be expanded and refined by successive generations of revolutionaries for their own times and places is a liberal behavior.

What does it mean to be "opposed to ideological struggle" such that it's specific to liberals but apparently not Marxists or leftists?

Do you think Marxism has to be either a historiographical lens or an imperfect tool of revolutionary struggle? I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive

# ¿ Dec 8, 2020 22:09

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

OwlFancier posted:

A common liberal refrain is that they are not ideological, they are pragmatic. Particularly nowadays (or perhaps moreso a decade or so ago) they make a habit of decrying everyone else for being "too ideological" while saying that they are not, their views are always rooted in some material thing, very sensible.

Of course, nearly all political views are rooted in some material thing or at least a real experience of the person holding them, even if it is just who they socialize with. But the accusation is such that the ideologues are just pulling thoughts from the air, they are not realistic, they are not materialistic, and thus should not be listened to. See also their interminable appeals to "moderation" "centrism" "small changes" etc.

They seem genuinely averse to the idea that their ideas are on the same footing as everyone else's, or perhaps the other way around, that other people's ideas emerge from experiences just as real as theirs, which is why they love to characterise leftists as being out of touch with normal people, as if leftists cannot possibly be having normal experiences and responding to them. They are averse to the concept of ideological conflict that they take part in, essentially. Other points of view cannot have any authenticity in their inception.

Whether they are aware of it or not, their attitudes are a reflection of a prevailing ideology, not free from it. And other ideologies are not merely an affectation.

I guess I'm suspicious that this characterization is inherent to liberalism, vs. what happens when you're un/subconsciously in accord with a prevailing ideology, whatever that ideology may be. I'll admit that this is just my gut reaction, maybe there's a reason this is a uniquely liberal behavior that I'm not seeing

Regardless, I still don't see how do you square that with The Oldest Man's argument that historiography is a liberal behavior?

# ¿ Dec 8, 2020 22:59

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

OwlFancier posted:

It might not be unique to liberalism, but I think that it is presently a behaviour displayed predominantly by liberals, possibly because liberalism is the prevailing ideology in most of the world and has been in some form or another for a long time, but that condition of dominance defines what liberalism is at the moment, it exists in that context, so whichever way you slice it I think that the idea holds true at this time.

Fair enough!

uncop posted:

The context of the Mao quote in question is that he's critiquing specifically leftists and marxists. It's about internal ideological struggle, challenging oneself to go to follow one's ideology to its logical conclusion. He's calling out leftists who insist on stopping within their comfort zone, saying they are applying liberal individualism to themselves. Their reasoning to stop short was expressed alternately in terms of rigid marxist dogma (e.g. "The working class is the main force of the revolution", meaning "I don't want to move to the countryside to organize") and in terms of picking and choosing which parts of marxism they support ("I support union struggle, but condemn armed struggle", meaning "I don't want you to make this work more dangerous for me").

How it relates to the discussion is that people who treat marxism as one tool in a toolbox, or split it up like "marxist economics", "marxist historiography", "marxist philosophy" etc. are not doing any better than every liberal who sees some value in marxism can. He's saying to judge people by how they act rather than how they speak, and be suspicious when they talk like leftists to justify acting like any liberal sympathizer could.

The Oldest Man posted:

The audience for that quote was communists; it's an admonition to not let your desire for your own convenience/safety/ease of thinking to push you toward liberal behaviors and thought patterns that cripple what you're trying to achieve. Obviously no one self-identifying as a liberal cares what a Marxist thinks of their commitment to ideological struggle since they typically pat themselves on the back for their own idea of being above such things.

That's not what I said.

Thanks for that additional context. I'll admit I've kind of lost the thread on what's being argued, but nonetheless am enjoying the discussion. Apologies for misstating your argument.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2020 23:17

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Cpt_Obvious posted:

This is 1000x the central tenant of liberalism, at least in its current form.

Perhaps there was a time when liberals believed in something, perhaps around the dawn of capitalism they would argue vehemently in favor of literally anything. Instead, they function at a very Descartes level of activity: Nothing is knowable, nothing is certain, all things are illusions before our very eyes!

It's super duper weird, but it serves the very important function to preserve the status quo. There are children starving in the street? Too bad, so sad. Don't you know that feeding them with rich people's could result in unknown consequences? Sure, children might not starve, but what if society collapsed!? Think about it! Better be safe and bomb some more villages.

I think this is close but not quite right. I think that the kind of radical skepticism you're describing is another ideological guise adopted by (neo)liberals to justify status quo (as you say) especially in the context of large-scale social transformations that require significant state interventions e.g. public healthcare or climate action.

The underlying belief is still there (government=bad) but the extreme skepticism gives an intellectual veneer to the actual anti-state dogma, which is a lot more appealing to people who aren't politically engaged enough to understand their own ideological biases.

But smaller scale/more mundane government action like raising taxes to feed starving children don't require the appeal to skepticism and can instead fall back on more traditional arguments like tax is theft, trickle down economics work, etc. And of course this isn't really doesn't really operate in a discrete binary way in practice, but I do think the skepticism is more of a 'last resort' mode given it's more abstract

Btw this basically describes my dad to a tee, just laying my own biases on the table

# ¿ Dec 8, 2020 23:57

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

The Oldest Man posted:

I know the discussion is moving on from this point, but there's a new quote from Obama's book that illustrates this point so

https://twitter.com/curaffairs/status/1336759614101200899

drat gotta hand it to you, that quote really is like perfectly :discourse:

holy poo poo

# ¿ Dec 10, 2020 06:39

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Baka-nin posted:

The US Socialist party of Eugene Debs was a strange mix of about three or four almost equally powerful tendencies which is a big reason it collapsed under its own weight.

Can you expand on this bit? Collapsing under its own weight seems to suggest a problem of size, but I�m not sure why increasing size would be a problem for a political party. As is probably obvious from the question, I know jack poo poo about the US Socialist party.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2020 06:08

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Purple Prince posted:

I think fundamentally this is the right approach from any materialist perspective as it focuses on the economic distinctions between the two countries rather than appealing to differences in their culture, language, or other idealist factors as an explanation for why they had different outcomes.

Please excuse the naive question, but are things like culture and language really considered to be in the domain of ideas rather than material reality? I would think that language (for sure) and culture (debatably) would fall squarely into a materialist framework rather than idealist.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2020 08:34

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Purple Prince posted:

It�s more about which one comes first (or is ontologically prior to use jargon). A historical idealist like Hegel or Fukuyama holds that economic results are the result of language, culture, and so on - hence why both were committed to seeing economically successful nations of their time as having superior cultures and see the engine of history as ideas; while historical materialism (orthodox Marxism) holds that culture (and to some extent language) emerges from material conditions.

If you hold that culture and language have no impact on reality then historical materialism becomes an absurdity, but this would be a nakedly radical interpretation similar to the idealist right wing argument that poverty comes from having the wrong set of values and that material factors have no effect on the indomitable Will of the Individual.

Cheers, that makes a lot of sense

# ¿ Dec 26, 2020 03:31

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Didn't realize this thread was unstickied, bumping it with a question...

So I saw this tweet thread (I don't know who this journalist is fwiw) and thought it was interesting. I've seen similar arguments here (in D&D, don't recall if they've been made in this thread specifically) regarding whether Trumpists are 'reachable' by leftist policy appealing to improving their material conditions.

https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi/status/1347314574614290435?s=20

I don't think it's a dumb position or anything, but it does seem like it commits a rationalist fallacy of assuming people will act in their own material interests if given the opportunity. (I find the original quoted tweet's argument more compelling -- that the left can only win by fighting the ruling class, not by fighting the right, which seems like a way of framing the concept of class consciousness in the context of modern US politics.)

I'm not sure how much it really matters what % of Trump's Rebellion was comprised of working class vs. petite bourgeoisie vs. elites -- clearly all these classes were represented in the mobs marching on the capitol, and in Trump's base at large. I have zero faith that any of their individual material conditions today will make them more or less amenable to policies that aren't blessed by the Trump appartus.

That's not to say I think a materialist analysis of why they are unreachable (in my view) is invalid, but to me the takeaway is that decades of surround sound propaganda (that I *think* over the years has dialed down the ideological focus and dialed up the pure conspiracist fantasy focus) can override people's ability to prioritize their own material interests. I guess in a sense that the conspiratorial fantasy is a direct rejection of materialism, even if it's not consciously recognized as such by the conspiracist.

At the end of the day I don't really know that this changes anything for what the left should be doing, but just curious to get this thread's thoughts on the argument.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2021 19:05

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

icantfindaname posted:

"Culture" in a neo-Kantian/Weberian sense is quintessential idealism, language is semiotics/post-structuralism and is not quite idealism but certainly not materialism

Mind expanding further? Sounds interesting, albeit not very intuitive for me personally*. I�d research myself but I have a feeling I�d have a whole lot of dialectics to unpack before i started scratching the surface...

*this may be a silly reductionist argument, but isn�t language materialist insofar as you could literally break it down into sound waves? Or is it that �noise� is material but certain groupings of noises having specific meanings is semiotic/post-structural? I have a hard time separating the meaning from the matter, I would think that all meaning is imbued into matter with context and observer biases, but anyway I�ll stop there because I have no idea if this makes sense or if I�m just showing my rear end!

# ¿ Jan 12, 2021 01:33

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Here�s my crack, I�m not at all an expert or well-educated source. Definitely open to hear the thread�s input on what I�m getting wrong too

Marxism is a criticism of capitalism, that hinges on pointing out the fundamentally exploitative relationship between capital and labor. The more labor is devalued and weakened, the more successful and powerful capitalists can be. Even though it is a 19th century theory, a lot of today�s ills are explainable by this dynamic: income/wealth inequality, continued exploitation of colonized nations, union membership eroding, environmental destruction, etc. Marxism says that this makes capitalism unsustainable because labor can�t be indefinitely devalued, and that capitalism should be replaced by an economic model where workers own businesses.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 01:13

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Or to flip it back to the premise of the hypothetical, if the society has truly figured out a way to sustain itself with no coercion, then I don�t see why it wouldn�t be able to solve the widget problem. to me, the hypothetical sort of seems premised on a highly collective voluntarist culture, so an answer of �a collective would voluntarily form to make the widgets� seems sufficient to me, despite not knowing the exact process and mechanism by which the collective would form and operate.

This doesn�t seem like a satisfying answer, but I think the hypothetical might be too utopian and ambiguous to address more precisely. It�s hard to imagine solving that society�s problems when the real problem in front of us that FOS is laying out feels impossible.

Edit: and if the real question wasn�t just how would a non-coercive society solve this problem, but how would an anarchist or communist society solve it, then I think others are better equipped to address than me. Which I guess is me deferring to expertise in the anarchy of posting, the purest anarchy of all

Sharks Eat Bear fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Jan 20, 2021

# ¿ Jan 20, 2021 06:32

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Ruzihm posted:

Thought I'd chime in from a Marxist perspective of the question.

In the period of time Marx called the "lower phase" or "first phase" of communism, he expected some kind of arrangement to provide remuneration "to each according to their contribution". Specifically, labor vouchers, which are a sort of non-circulating redemption system, basically tickets you can redeem for ~~prizes from chuck e cheese~~ products of social labor above what is allocated to common fulfillment of needs or coverage for those who can not work.

In this way, even Marx expected that under communism people who labored under more necessarily "intense" conditions such as work that is necessarily harmful would receive a correspondingly larger share of the social product.

Been a while since last I watched it but I recall the youtube marxist Xexizy did a video on labor vouchers that might be a little more illustrative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMfExwigqNY

Thanks for sharing, I hadn't read about this aspect of lower-phase communism/socialism before. Not gonna lie, my immediate reaction on reading that and watching the youtube is, sounds fine on paper but impossible to implement. To me the sticking point is how value is assigned to the vouchers. The video brings up the idea of two individuals who have the same labor output, but one of them has 4 children so would need to receive more vouchers despite the same labor output, but then the video just kind of dismisses this as a "minor" complication that would sort itself organically. This seems like a massive complication to me, and I have hard time envisioning how this system would be implemented at scale.

That said I know my gut reaction is not very nuanced so I'm curious to hear more about this.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2021 00:37

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

This goes back to one the first posts I made in this thread, but what would that hypothetical revolution even look like in the context of a deeply entrenched, highly technologized Military Industrial Complex? Isn't there a problem with getting closer to theoretically being able to move to FALC while still under the current neoliberal capitalist status quo, i.e. the more automation that can be achieved in a capitalist system, the less power/leverage labor has in terms of strikes?

Agreed re: the perils of the transitional socialist state, but it at least feels plausible to me given how much more ubiquitous and powerful the capitalist system has become in the past 200 years

# ¿ Jan 22, 2021 22:32

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

DrSunshine posted:

Without a quantitative theory of sociology, it might not really be possible to answer some of these questions. It could be that there are certain failure-states that leftist revolutions can find themselves in thanks to the context in which they find themselves. For example, it might turn out (once the necessary mathematical apparatus have been developed) that the existence of competing capitalist states versus a smaller group of embattled communist ones forces the communist societies to adopt a kind of permanent war-socialism just in order to continue existing, which becomes a failure-state under which the revolution cannot continue. The preconditions necessary for a successful communist revolution might be a simultaneous uprising occurring in 50%> of all nation-states.

Interesting way of framing it, and much more nuanced than what I was thinking. Thanks! Any recommendations for more reading along these lines? I'm skeptical that such a quantitative model of sociology is achievable, so I guess in the meantime it's speculation and rationalization :v:

quote:

This could certainly be the case. On the other hand, I've read a good point against this in Inventing the Future, where Srnicek and Williams argue that the fewer people needed through automation, the fewer workers needed to drive a successful strike. To wit: if you have a factory with 100 technicians supervising 10,000 robots, then it only takes 100 people to strike to bring the entire production chain to a halt.

That's a good point. I do wonder whether in such a hypothetical, would these 100 techs fall into the working class, or the PMC? You might have fewer people that need to achieve class consciousness in order to strike, but you might also be eroding the basis for solidarity with the working class. Again, just speculation, and I appreciate you sharing the references and more nuanced thinking!

# ¿ Jan 22, 2021 23:24

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 04:11

Sharks Eat Bear: Dec 25, 2004

Ferrinus posted:

2) Heinrich argues that Marx was never able to successfully prove that profit has an inherent tendency to fall. He lays it out like this:

The rate of profit is simply expressed as s/(c+v), where s is surplus value, c is constant capital, and v is variable capital. If you divide the numerator and denominator by v, then you get (s/v)/((c/v)+1); that is, the numerator is the rate of surplus value, and the denominator is the ratio of constant to variable capital plus one (don't ask me what the "one" is, I don't know myself).

The rate of profit will drop if c/v grows faster than s/v. But, Heinrich says that there's no way to be sure that c/v will always or even mostly grow faster than s/v, since some labor-saving technologies might increase the rate of surplus value a great deal for only a small increase in overhead.

This isn't very convincing to me, because it seems to mean entering the liberal mindset where you're just quietly praying for "innovation" to save us by causing some tech startup somewhere to invent the Star Trek replicator, and that in the long run labor mostly gets saved by increasing capital investment rather than lucky breaks and genius insights. But I may have misunderstood the argument or its implications entirely, so if anyone knows this well I'd love to hear their thoughts.

If I�m understanding*, it doesn�t sound like the argument is intended to be convincing, per se. If it�s at least plausible/possible that s/v could grow faster than c/v, then you would have to accept that the expectation of declining rate of profit can�t be �proven�, in the sense of mathematical/logical formal expression. It can be hypothesized and supported through empirical study (which afaik, seems to be the case), but this is a step shy of being an inevitable logical necessity. This all kind of hinges on the use of the word �proven� in a technical, rather than colloquial sense.

*definitely a big �if�, I�m not very well-read on this so might be missing the mark entirely

# ¿ Apr 3, 2021 21:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Hate Your Boss: Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, Anarchy and the Left

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