Deified Data posted:

I didn't have an opinion about flavius before and if anything leaned towards his position at least on the retard argument, but yeeting a thread into the sun because the posters there made you feel insecure is loving lame dude. I hope we can have an actual communism thread again

Celot posted:

No, Marxism is invalid. It takes something that should be a contingent truth, an observation, and makes it an assumption instead.

Like we could look at some event or movement and ask, “Is this because of material conditions?” Someone earlier posted about how Iraqis killing US troops can be explained by the material condition of having been bombed for years - a very reasonable approach.

But instead it would have us say, “I will find the material conditions even if I have to invent them.” For example the explanations that religious fundamentalism is a consequence of imperialism. If you do this, then your theory can explain any hypothetical, and it’s useless and invalid.

Celot posted:

And that reason is not material conditions either.

QUEER FRASIER posted:

I was sort of annoyed at this for a bit but it’s actually turned into a great object lesson, for the doubters among us, of why theory really is important

this person charged into the thread to confidently talk poo poo about marxism, a mere 60 posts later it turns out his anaystical framework for viewing the world is “arabs be crazy” lol

Yossarian-22 posted:

this thread is starting to get really dumb

Morbus posted:

Taking it for granted that "some people are just unaccountably mentally defective and that explains why they don't do what you want them to do" is the first and most critical step towards forming plans that do not require the active consent & cooperation of every jackass in the room, and thereby actually getting something done.

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

there is no reason to use the phrase "short bus people" when there are far more descriptive words available, like "anarchist"

Morbus posted:

lol

indigi posted:

didn’t he do that one cool harmonica solo

dead gay comedy forums posted:

hello beautiful people

after five harrowing weeks against quasi-homelessness, hunger, unemployment and plague, thanks to friends and comrades, I got pulled through

still processing this road of damascus moment but had my life turned around by quite a dramatic hands-on practice of shared burdens. it is one thing to know that you have a support network outside your family, through friends, acquaintances, organizations you are a member of; another is to come to them because catastrophe happened and have your rear end stay above water because of that

while I had some bad times before, something like that in a pandemic was an entirely another level of horrible. I have a roof and a bed and far better employed than before because I had means of social support to endure the storm

what does that have to do with marxism? it is one thing to know and observe the threat of the terror we all are under; another is to fall prey to it. theory filled me with white-hot fury because, as you all know, capital can't but attack things that can be socially provided for the means of a dignified living, to induce greater and greater still levels of despair to break the back of everyone so that a little more can be harvested from their labor. It just so happens that, for me, having that awareness again brought that white hot fury, which kept my head high and put me to press on, to not surrender to the terror

so, any actual rich gently caress who thinks a mildly left-wing policy being enacted to help people around entails in "stalinism", lol they deserve it

p.s. also big thanks for the goonbucks people, you all are lovely

ArfJason posted:

Zodium posted:

yr new gurlfrand! posted:

Liberal brained students not understanding the lesson on self-organizing for 15 minutes in a class on protests smdh

splifyphus posted:

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.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

(((Sauron)))

Aeolius posted:

every discussion of game theory has to have an obligatory description of the prisoner's dilemma

i think it points to what we might call a prisoner's dilemma dilemma

tristeham posted:

loving kill him

Homeless Friend posted:

i dont know about this game theory. but
i am formally trained in gamer theory

dead gay comedy forums posted:

hell yea. ty ferrinus

Ferrinus posted:

it actually IS the source of profit and my favorite insight from vol1, although i feel like i rushed through it a bit too much in an effort to cut wordcount. it actually has nothing to do with technological advancement or labor-saving devices that lower the value of commodities created with them, just the basic gameplay loop of, like, being alive

if you're a hunter-gatherer and need to spend 8 hours sleeping/washing/eating etc, and have another 16 hours each day to try to catch or forage up enough food to stay alive the next day, how many of those 16 hours does it take you? if it takes 17 hours, you can't possibly survive. if it takes 16 exactly, you're caught on a hellish treadmill and living paycheck to paycheck. but if it takes only 15 hours of work to assemble the food and shelter required to survive a day, then something amazing is happening: every spending 23 combined hours on work and consumption generates 24 hours of labor-power. if we're not in any kind of advanced, class-based mode of production yet, we're just describing the general phenomena of human beings creating a social surplus, such that they can stockpile resources for luxury, or reproduction, or expansion, or whatever. if labor-power couldn't replace itself AND leave a little extra it'd basically be impossible to have a civilization

now, one important note here is that the amount of stuff required just for daily regeneration of labor-power is politically negotiable and changes both with the local standard of living and how long a timescale you're operating on -- if you want to be able to regenerate your labor-power sustainably for the next thirty years, your "bare minimum" is very different than if you just need it one more time, ever, immediately tomorrow. but unless you're in really dire material circumstances you can generally work for less than a day and end up with enough use-values to survive a whole 'nother day, and the difference between those things is what capitalists capture as profit

Harold Fjord posted:

It seems to me these definitions are tedious and esoteric and this guy can't hang on to them long enough to get through to understanding. Which is completely reasonable. eta good shoot tho

Cuttlefush posted:

there is no transformation problem. you were tricked because you don't read. now take your anti-coat and scram

dead gay comedy forums posted:

ngl the marching hedgehog is 10/10

BillsPhoenix posted:

Or... Marx used use value and exchange value to point out increasing or decreasing a price has no impact on the value of a commodity.