[Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

(Thread IKs: dead gay comedy forums)

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

man gently caress you mods i made a post and it was good and now it's rotting away in fyad.

quote:

in the simplest possible terms - we're including the subjective perspective on the objective in our assessment of the objective, and we're trying to do this without becoming idealists for whom everything is a subjective projection.

in more Hegely terms, the relationship between essence and appearance AND the appearance itself are both a part of the essence and must be including in the trajectory of the analysis. similarly with form and content.

re: the ship of theseus - the only place the ship really 'exists' as a whole is as the concept in the minds of the people who built and use it. objectively it's a haphazard pile of dead treeparts, indifferent to their momentary arrangement. subjectively it's a concept realized via labor. dialectically it's a feedback loop between both.

the ship is the entire process including the people who conceived, built, and use it, so there never was an 'original' ship to begin with. the ship's identity includes its own capacity for self-transformation.

There were probably other posts in there too, lost! like tears in rain

# ¿ May 16, 2021 15:52

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 12:42

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

i get that I'm an insufferable theory nerd, but this is the insufferable theory nerd thread and I'm making posts about theory instead of posts about how loving atrocious the modding is?

protip el moddo: the thread will return to its stated purpose when you stop taking poo poo personally and antagonizing everyone with your probe button

# ¿ May 16, 2021 23:41

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

so like, ya'll mods do realize that this is the marx thread, for posting marx theory, right?

i posted a dialectical materialist explication of the ship of theseus. this account will differ significantly from, say, what a loving superhero television show has to say about it. you're perfectly free to disagree with this account, but you could also actually stand with the courage of your convictions and post the disagreement in the thread.

the only explanation i can think of for probing someone with a link to show for babbies in lieue of posting a principled argument is that you're not just idiot retards, you're also snivelling cowards.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ May 17, 2021 06:36

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

lumpentroll posted:

you were probed by a fyad ik

i don't know what that is but it sounds retarded

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ May 17, 2021 22:43

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Finicums Wake posted:

"Why don't you use your dialectical reasoning to figure out why some people might be sensitive to being called a pedophile, you dumb gently caress"

lmao

rofl

# ¿ May 18, 2021 08:02

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Good Soldier Svejk posted:

I'm with Bakhtin in thinking that life is a dialogue and you learn more about the world and yourself by engaging with it and the people in it.

Treating Marx/theory as a touchstone is a monologic way of interacting with the world that ignores that 200 years of poo poo has happened since that may better inform ways of engaging with other humans in building a better world for our common happiness.

There is no outside of theory. your mind and the minds of others are constructs of all the theory gone before. every thought you have ever had was invented by some rear end in a top hat theorist with a pen hundreds of years ago

# ¿ May 18, 2021 21:53

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Flavius Aetass posted:

straight up cretins itt

you laugh about the idea that someone who was sexually abused wouldn't want to be called a pedophile and then you act all mad that i completely write off your complaints

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

quoting this to point out that you probed yourself and took a breather and now the thread has completely recovered. multiple people told you to do this, including me, an actual straight up cretin irl.

here's the lesson: the entire reason that the forums are fun is because nothing on them matters. it's easy to forget this when you get a fancy mod account with a star and buttons and poo poo, but none of that matters either. as soon as the internet starts mattering too much, it's time to turn your monitor off.

# ¿ May 19, 2021 03:33

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

tokin opposition posted:

poster treat thy self

# ¿ May 19, 2021 04:45

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

that sure is a lot of words to say 'if you ain't marx'n you aint got bupkiss'

# ¿ May 19, 2021 08:09

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

tokin opposition posted:

1. there's literally long block quotes of marx here that are difficult to disinguish between her (judith butler) and him.

2. i am through the first post and immediately regretted pledging to read the whole thing

3. marx was very smart

oh that's who it is was wondering. the lingo is post structuralist but it's not french. my experience reading her is largely using a hundred sentences when one would do, but that's academia usually.

Marx was indeed super smart it's loving crazy that in tyool 2021 you can't adequately conceptualize the mass extinction event without him

# ¿ May 19, 2021 17:34

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Raskolnikov38 posted:

have breathing exercises/thoughtfulness ever helped anyone ever? none of that poo poo has ever reduced my anxiety a single iota

glen wallis posted:

Who can blame people for wanting to create some ease and peace for themselves? Not me! I can say two things about the issue you raise. One has to do with the difference between *mindfulness* and *Mindfulness*. The other has to do with the intended audience for the SNB critique of the latter, *Mindfulness*.

I am not critical of *mindfulness*, with lower case *m*. I am critical of *Mindfulness*, with upper case *M*. What’s the difference? I understand *mindfulness* to index a simple (if not necessarily *easy*) cognitive function. At the risk of wading into a conceptual mire here, I will say that this function involves a kind of self-aware meta-cognition: I can *reflect* *on* my subjective experience; I can *attend to* thinking, feeling, etc. states or processes. If the development of *this* ability is what helped you, then we are in complete accord. In fact, I would even want this to be an element in the practice that I mentioned to AbbeyStrict above. But I would want to extend it to the social sphere? Why? Because placed in a materialist framework, *mindfulness* ultimately enhances awareness not merely of “subjective experience” but of “social experience.” That is, what this framework wants to clarify is that my “own” experience is but the existential vortex where the social meets me, my body, my awareness, etc. Taking this approach, how can you be sure that your anxiety wasn’t a ping of wisdom? (The truth often hurts, right? How might we view “anxiety” in light of that fact?) This is sounding much more teachy than I intend it to be. What I want to say is that *mindfulness* is a useful cognitive function in that it allows us to gain a vantage point on experience, and so enables *reflection*. How can that not be a good thing? Here’s how—

When *mindfulness* becomes the motherlode in an ideology that serves the neoliberal corporatocracy of Western capitalism. The name of this ideology is *Mindfulness*. It is, of course, too much to run through my argument here. I treat it in the first chapter of my new book under the subheading “Neoliberal subjects are us, wise and well.” It is not an idiosyncratic theory. Plenty of other people are making the case these days as well. If you look into the matter, I am confident that you will discover significant evidence of an apparently unintended confluence between our reigning economic-political system and the ideology that is Mindfulness. If you think that consumer capitalism is the way for humanity to go, then you will not, of course, see this confluence as a problem. If you believe that capitalism lies at the heart of our unending catastrophe, you will. The fact that Mindfulness shields its covert ideological force behind the language of, as you put it, the “therapeutic tool,” is deeply problematic, to say the least. But the real danger lies in the precise features of its ideology. Whatever else it might be, at its heart it is an ideology of individualized self-soothing. I quoted Simon Critchley in my answer to another question. It applies here as well. Critchley terms what I am calling Mindfulness (the ideology) “passive nihilism.” He writes: “In the face of the increasing brutality of reality, the passive nihilist tries to achieve a mystical stillness, calm contemplation: ‘European Buddhism.’ In a world that is all too rapidly blowing itself to pieces, the passive nihilist closes his eyes and makes himself into an island.” One way to see ideological machinations explicitly at work in *Mindfulness*, the ideology, is to ask why *mindfulness*, the simple cognitive operation, is not put in the service of a robust and courageous social engagement. Why does *Mindfulness* encode *mindfulness* with the particular values that it does, and not others? Why does is present the particular inventory that it does of permissible/impermissible emotions, proper/improper ways of speaking, rules of decorum and comportment, and so on? The answer seems clear to me: because *Mindfulness* is an ideological, subject-forming framing of *mindfulness*. And it happens to be one that thrills the likes of the right-wing libertarian Koch brothers, the corporate-capitalist Davos crowd, and every CHO (Chief Happiness Officer) from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Finally, my critique is not intended for people who want to develop mindfulness. It is intended for the gatekeepers of the Ideological Mindfulness Apparatus. Not that these “thought-leaders” read anything I write, or, if they do, ever admit it or actually engage with me. But maybe people who are about to enter into the Apparatus will benefit from considering my critique. Think of a critique of big pharma. On an individual level, maybe antidepressants can alleviate some pain. Maybe. I don’t know. The research is all over the place. But let’s say they can. Is it not still valuable to critique the Ideological Therapy Apparatus, the elements within our culture that serve up antidepressants as a remedy *not* for the rampant capitalist Golem that arguably creates the conditions for depression, but for the depressed individual? Whatever else we see in therapy and antidepressants, such a critique would also reveal the ways in which they interact with and serve the dominant structures of the control society. Similar arguments can be made for mass consumption (we have to buy poo poo, but…), the auto industry (we have to drive cars, but…), the culture industry (watch Netflix for fun, but…) education, and so much more. So, my critique of Mindfulness goes beyond individual application and looks at the broader social ramifications.

# ¿ May 19, 2021 17:40

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

"mindfulness" is just some poo poo white people made up. yeah I do mindfulness all the time, it's called CONCENTRATING

pretty much. the practice is abstracting concentration away from anything external so you can just concentrate on concentrating, more or less.

# ¿ May 19, 2021 17:44

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:

some people are irredeemably loving stupid and a great proportion of the arguments that dominate debate within the left involve how much decision-making power a system should grant to the irredeemably loving stupid

stupid smart dumb - all these categories are irredeemably essentialist.

There's a little lenin inside everyone.

# ¿ May 20, 2021 04:37

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

popper is a loving idiot and his epistemology is the height of abstract idealist bullshit. empiricism proceeds by both verification and falsification, and there's an entire mathematical/conceptual/historical aspect that popper, in his lust to turn marx and freud into cranks, totally obscures. it's not like P went and studied actual lab practices or anything, he just decreed 'science should work this way!'

but it doesn't. and if only 'falsifiable' theories count then the sciences actually end up crippled in their scope. like, so much for just about all of contemporary theoretical physics, that poo poo ain't never gonna be falsifiable under capital.

and anyways historical materialism has a method, it's called revolutionary praxis, and the theories this practice generates can be falsified in practice. when your theories get falsified you lose. each revolutionary wave got a little bit farther than the previous wave by learning from previously falsified theories. it's messy as hell, but science always is.

# ¿ May 20, 2021 07:09

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

there's a fuckload of hippies bro

# ¿ May 30, 2021 01:35

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Yossarian-22 posted:

Didn't Timothy Leary work with the CIA at one point? That was a big eye opener for me

yeah he ratted to get a reduced sentence iirc.

hippies suck and psychedelics ripped the '68 movement apart. even if the NuAge hadn't been totally commodified, utopianism, aesthetic fetishism and hedonism do not a politics make.

# ¿ May 30, 2021 08:04

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

The Voice of Labor posted:

john lennon felled by an assassin's bullet. judi bari, attempted assassination. I'm sure there are a bunch of other earth first and wto protestors who got suicided. all hippies and anarchists. this thread, allowed to live.

spooks don't give a gently caress about idealogies beyond knowing that they don't like it. I would also suggest that what determines a threat is how broad it's reach is.

food not bombs is allowed to exist because no one wants to eat beans. riot ribs is immediately cointelpro'ed because if you're giving out ribs and hamburgers and other desirable food stuffs, that represents a threat.

so yeah, this lovely thread is allowed to live because any hint of inquiry into a better world or how to go about realizing it is dogpiled for two pages

This lovely thread is allowed to live because it has exactly zero political power or influence and is largely just a bunch of history nerds shooting the poo poo.

# ¿ May 31, 2021 21:47

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

tokin opposition posted:

We all die as humans, not lacunian postmodern anarchists.

to die for the revolution is to die a hero.

# ¿ May 31, 2021 22:28

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

The Voice of Labor posted:

hippy drugs of choice are psychedelics and weed which are extra powermoderator dumb things to be down on. like, "what's the biggest obstacle in the way of creating and maintaining a socialist state? drugs that radically increase people's sense of empathy!"

that's not what psychedelics do tho - the 'mystical' states they generate are radically subjectivist and antisocial, and when pursued as an end in themselves result in a kind of infantile narcissism that is utterly incapable of the kind of intersubjective commitment necessary for effective political activity.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2021 00:16

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

ram dass in hell posted:

sorry you had a bad trip lmao

nice username/post combo.

but seriously tho psychedelics as a political supplement has been tried - by the cia, and their acid supply helped destroy the solidarity and momentum of the '68 movement. psychedelics do not produce politically effective or active subjects or even necessarily somehow more 'empathic' people, they produce hippies. and charles manson.

----------------
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2021 13:40

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

indigi posted:

oh well that’s the final word on that then

they used it because it's an effective weapon against solidarity.

Southpaugh posted:

Hippies were always bougie dilettantes. srsly lol @ ur opinions

i try not to have opinions. there's a great book on this subject: Acid Dreams.

Centrist Committee posted:

they also produced steve jobs

who was an idiot hippie.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2021 22:59

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

tokin opposition posted:

explains a lot unfortunately

opinions are a bourgeois affectation, comrade. we should deal in truths, facts, and the ruthless critique of every existing thing including hippies.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2021 07:03

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Moon Shrimp posted:

Ok I see now, you guys are talking about there being fewer opportunities to reinvest profits.

ya basically it's that the mass of profit (the ratio of production cost to market price) of your detergent isn't the rate of profit of the industry. the mass of profit as be quite high even while the rate of profit is totally stagnant. in fact, i think the mass of profit is so high likely because the rate of profit is so low.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2021 22:01

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Centrist Committee posted:

is this a breakdown in the M-C phase or the C-M phase, or is that the wrong way to think about it?

it’s cool to think of capital as a stagnant, accumulating mass and profit as energetic capital in motion

hrmmm ya kind of. so the rate of profit is the ratio of the total surplus value to the capital invested at the macro level. what moon shrimp is observing is the ratio of the cost of production to final market price. they're related but fundamentally different measurements taken at different moments of the whole cycle. the former determines the latter, not the other way around.

i think, at least. it's been a while.

e: so you can't extrapolate the RoP from your daily purchases, and it's perfectly possible to have a very low rate of profit that nonetheless generates a big ol mass of profit in absolute terms.

emTme3 has issued a correction as of 00:11 on Jun 12, 2021

# ¿ Jun 11, 2021 23:54

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Yossarian-22 posted:

Zizek

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 08:28

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

tokin opposition posted:

What if there was an app that took in your hourly wage and replaced all monetary values in your browser with hours of labor to purchase

you laff but blockchain + labor time accounting hasn't been tried, could be a decent socialism

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 08:32

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

weast posted:

what does the blockchain add exactly

i have no idea, i just have a hunch that shorn of its libertarian coin scheme origins and wielded in a communist context, it might prove to be useful.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 11:48

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 11:48

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

weast posted:

as far as i am aware blockchain is just like having an excel spreadsheet but worse in every possible way

isn't the difference that the excel spreadsheet can be hidden and monopolized, but the blockchain is open and distributed?

it obviously has zero use case under current conditions but in the context of different social relations, maybe it could be worth something.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 22:21

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

comedyblissoption posted:

git (source control system) is an example of applied cryptographic hashes to dissuade tampering of the data while keeping data distributed and open

these merkle trees are an applied concept that predates bitcoin by decades

the only thing bitcoin adds is proof of work which is unnecessary if you have a functioning society. and if you don't have a functioning society the possible benefits of a distributed computer currency are going to be moot

obv we don't have a functioning society so the point is moot, but wouldn't proof of work be useful if we had smashed exchange value and replaced it with labour time accounting?

# ¿ Jun 14, 2021 07:15

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Anime Bernie Bro posted:

every corporation is gay now

bet the class reductionists are seething

so are the rear end reductionists

# ¿ Jun 17, 2021 08:24

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

R. Mute posted:

see, I can't buy this. either this boils down to 'it's communism as long as the government is communist' which is a child's understanding of marxism, or it supposes that the ccp will just turn the communism-capitalism knob back to communism in 2050 which just flies in the face of any experience we've had with capitalism so far. if they do manage to make the switch, it'd be through basically a second revolution and the cost would be heavy. the idea that because the state is supposedly communist everyone in power would be keen on making those necessary sacrifices is laughable. I'll gladly eat my words if i turn out to be wrong, but i just can't see it happening

it's not that 'it's communist as long as the government is communist' it's that a burgeoning superpower run by a party whose mass base and ultimate telos is communist and who has a structurally integral role in the world system is far, far better than many if not all possible alternatives.

obviously an economy of digital direct allocation would be way better, but we honestly don't know if a single nation state can do that without crippling its position relative to the world system. ya it probably won't happen in the current configuration of interests and forces and relations and whatnot - but we are supposed to be materialists. no current configuration lasts forever.

in the meantime, it's a massive superpower where the communist horizon is still like, visible, and they build all kinds of sick rear end poo poo like fast trains and automated docks. it's not falgsc by a long shot but it ain't the bupkis fuckall we've got over here in liberal hellworld.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2021 08:59

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

indigi posted:

I think the appraisal of China by multiple posters In Here as being in a Keynesian honeymoon comparable to postwar Western socdem governments is accurate, I just struggle to see them taking a different path when the easy money dries up given how many relatively-recently bourgeois are in the positions of power within and influence of the party. sure they’ll knock off or discipline a billionaire every now and then which owns, I just don’t see that as indicative of anything strategically substantial. seems like a real balanced on the edge of a knife situation and I hope they can pull it off

there's still a line struggle within the party and everything depends on the outcome of that struggle.

right now the ccp line is and kinda has to be the dengist path. but if the balance of power significantly changes in china's favor, they're going to end up in an absolutely unique position in world history - a communist party at the top of the world system. the ussr was never in an even remotely comparable position. from there, there are a ton of new live options that could play out assuming the left wing of the party wins out. a global hegemon and world system lynchpin transitioning to high tech direct allocation would have enormous rolling effects around the globe.

it could also take something comparable to another revolution for there to be sufficiently transformative options on the table. but expecting the worst possible outcome and having no hope is insufficiently materialist. there are always reasons to hope, and a country of billions where mao's face is everywhere a beacon can't not be one of those reasons, especially in times of darkness and reaction.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2021 08:40

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

'moderately prosperous in all respects' gently caress ya aim high in creation

# ¿ Jul 1, 2021 02:28

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Raine posted:

caste mode of production maybe?

Capitalist mode of production. I have private acronyms for this poo poo apparently.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2021 18:52

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

The Voice of Labor posted:

this downplays the emergent fasc. writing them off as proto/crypto whatever ignores the fact that the only difference between a fascist proper and a cryptofascist is that the cypto hasn't yet had two of his fasc friends say "hey, you know, tonight we're going to burn down that apartment building on the other side of town and maybe stomp on a homeless person or two on the way back. it's gonna be a blast, you coming?"

there's no innocent, clownyness there, they may just be edgy libs but they're also an opportunistic death squad that are missing only their activation codes and marching orders. in 'merica they're already armed.

you're right, but my point was they don't get their activation codes and marching orders unless they have an organized red tide to mobilize against. they're clowns because we are, at the current historical juncture, also clowns. if we stop being clowns, they get their marching orders. randomly stomping on the houseless makes them bullies and thugs, but it doesn't make them a seriously organized political force.

there's a whole spectrum of fascist thought that's just kind of inert before it gets politicized. Like, there's a ton of people who relate to their ethnic heritage in the same univocal, essentialist way that fascists do, but they don't go out of their way to act on it or build a political programme out of it. are they fascists? they could be, if the conditions pushed them in that direction. they could also be peacefully convinced that relating to a universalist horizon of human emancipation is a better way to live - and then when the conditions come acalling they'd activate towards us.

quote:

the outsider/foreign/undesirable thing is also problematic. the identity of the outsider is purely one of opportunism and convenience. the proudboys will gladly take on token minorities because it "proves they aren't racist". modern fascism has no problem with gays because the machismo ideology unsurprisingly is also deeply homoerotic. they have no problem with south/central american immigrants of legal status because they a:prove the system works, b: tend towards conservative beliefs and c: work as a wedge against others immigrating over . I mean, if you want say the outsider is always organized labor, maybe

the outsider is The Jew, 9 times out of 10. you're right, it's totally opportunistic, but there are structural reasons for social antagonism to appear primarily The Figure Of The Jew to fascists.

admitting contradictions within the social body is tantamount to admitting the possibility of contradictions within the presumed natural whole of their racial identity. to do this would be for the basis of their perspective and analysis to fall apart. it can't be structural antagonisms because all white people share the same harmonious interests and identity, so then it has to be these external forces, and the top of that list is gonna be The Jew. their will be other poo poo too, but it has to be stuff that is a priori excluded from their own holistic identity, and it can't be social antagonisms, only static transhistorical essences.

Then they go and fight the proactive revolutionary orgs and interpret it as fighting a vast jewy conspiracy against whiteness or whatever.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2021 22:06

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It's unscientific to redefine fascism as being merely any kind of vulgar bourgeois dictatorship, which is part of how it devolved into being something that baby leftists use to describe anything they don't like. We should allow fascism to be defined in the terms of its own ideology, and view it as a genuine third position of 20th century politics. The fact that this third position plays into the hands of bourgeois interests only proves its conceptual and ideological failure, it doesn't mean that it was some kind of bourgeois conspiracy. The intellectual roots of fascism reach down to "socialism" and syndicalism as much as it does anything else.

ya I'm definitely arguing that there's a qualitative distinction to be made between most bourgeois governments and fascism proper. it doesn't have to be a boog conspiracy either and I don't think it ever was - fascism is just the hammer that's there when the hammer is reached for.

I'm also arguing that there is a qualitative distinction between modes of analysis that treat their concepts as atomized univocal essences, and modes of analysis that attempt to grapple with interdependent ensembles of conceptual relations that can include relations internal to the concepts themselves. the former will inevitably lean right, and the latter leads towards historical materialism.

There's plenty of leftist analysis that's just as essentialist and univocal as fascist analysis is, but even the smartest fascists are still self-consciously battling histmat's diagnoses of antagonisms internal to the body socius. these splits cut across the cultural/racial/national identities reified by fascists and used in their analysis, which is why histmat is so traumatizing and disturbing.

emTme3 has issued a correction as of 22:26 on Jul 10, 2021

# ¿ Jul 10, 2021 22:22

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

The Voice of Labor posted:

yet we have the problem that for historical analysis or reasoning we're left with actual material things to look at, violence, treatment of labor, movement of wealth, things that have observable nonsubjective effects. so if the essence of fascism is some shift in attitude among the citizenship that removes any kind of evidence for it that can be pointed at and makes room for no true fascman fallacies where the evidence is purely speculation and conjecture. if it walks like a fasc and quacks like a fasc it's a fasc. if fascism has to be one of those words that's retroactively applied after it's meaning has been established, so be it.

The whole drat point is that fascism isn't just 'a pile of bad things', it's that historical materialism is uniquely capable of defining and making sense of fascism.

Fascism is a qualitative shift in the class relations and state structure of a capitalist society. Finance and industrial capital temporarily relinquish power to state goals, which will inevitably be re-structured towards some form of ethnic identity project. This move has only happened historically as a result of a workers movement being crushed and absorbed by counter-revolution. Fascism is inherently less capitalist than bourgeois democracies.

So, no the USA isn't fascist, even though it was kinda established by a counter-revolution - because it is the quintessential example of the unrestrained rule of capital. Maybe it was fascist during WW2 kinda? For it to be fascist we would need to see a mobilized national/ethnic project overturning/mediating the rule of capital and that's never happened. There's also never been a real communist presence in NA. A histmat analysis suggests these two things are connected.

I do think fascism is purely reactionary. because I think fascism is stupid and incapable of being the project it wants to be. I also think we're going to get a lot more of it, but it's gonna be eco-reaction instead of revolution-reaction.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2021 02:01

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

oscarthewilde posted:

this is the only revolutionary music ever made and if you like jazz you’re a dirty reactionary

https://youtu.be/JEY9lmCZbIc

schoenberg/serialism has been called the logic of stalinism applied to music. it's certainly an egalitarianism of tonality, but it's also kind of rhythmically autistic.

jazz ain't reactionary bro. groove music in general is the music that expresses the experience of life under commodified time - which is why it only emerged on the 20c after the triumph of the commodified work day, and why it has totally eclipsed all other kinds of music since. groove music is defined by a reversal of aristocratic/bourgeois metric hierarchies - the underlying impulse of groove is revolutionary as heck. jazz musicians made the revolution that they couldn’t make in society in music instead - and that revolution has continued through rock, hiphop, metal, edm, etc.

mark abel has an excellent histmat book on the subject, one of my favorite books of music theory ever.

for me metal is the music that has the most potential for revolutionary horizons today, but you can hear the experience of the global proletariat in anything that grooves really. such a beautifully human thing to do - to take the structure of one's subjugation and make it danceable.

emTme3 has issued a correction as of 22:07 on Aug 5, 2021

# ¿ Aug 5, 2021 21:43

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 12:42

emTme3: Nov 7, 2012; by Hand Knit

bitch there's utility in mao's work for everyone

# ¿ Oct 10, 2021 00:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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