/fa/ - Fashion

[Anonymous No.9026017]

Why do leftists dress like that? Are they trying to be edgy? Isn't leftism and marxism about the working class? Why do they separate themselves from the working class by looking like that?

[Anonymous No.9026019]

oh shut up

[Anonymous No.9026026]

Apart from the weirdo with the beard, why do they all look like low test betas? Yes, the one on the right is actually a guy.

[Anonymous No.9026030]

Marx himself was a rich kid who never worked a day in his life who felt that he knew what the average worker wanted vs. what they actually wanted. Most working-class people don't want to own the means of production because that's too much work that's too complicated for them. They're perfectly content with whatever regime is in power as long as they receive the benefits they feel entitled to (a wage, healthcare, shelter, and whatever luxuries they can afford).
They're simply out of touch with reality and how the world works. They have good intentions, but the people they supposedly advocate for simply despise them, and they can't understand that.

[Anonymous No.9026034]

>>9026026
dude on the right could most likely model

[Anonymous No.9026044]

what's funny is that the working class would be the first ones to hang all these idiots the second a revolution started

[Anonymous No.9026052]

>>9026026
w2c jacket on right

[Anonymous No.9026104]

Whats the difference between Socialism and Communism? Isn't Communism just as bad as fascism, that regime killed just as much

[Anonymous No.9026106]

>>9026044
wow never heard th@ 1 before man you are the king librariantarian

[Anonymous No.9026111]

>>9026026
because leftism appeals to low test betas

[Anonymous No.9026114]

>>9026106
>skinny twink leftist detected

[Anonymous No.9026122]

>>9026017
Why do leftists dress like... every other random urbanite from their class background, except one guy has a keffiyah and another has a tee with the logo of his organization and a beret?

From a ton of experience there's ways I can sometimes pick out a left activist type from their dress, but literally none of them have any of it except graphic tee + beret guy, who is just a particular instance of the guy who likes to literalize his interests into clothes.

>>9026030
Also no. Engels was the trust fund kid, and that's okay.

>but the people they supposedly advocate for simply despise them, and they can't understand that.

This isn't 1970, and you give no one any credit by making leftists or the working class out to be monoliths.

Nearly all the people I've met through left wing politics are actual proletarians or lumpenproletarians, the exceptions mostly being freelancers, which if you're doing Marxism-qua-what-some-old-guy-wrote-in-the-19th-century are technically petit-bourgeois.

As far as the main point, the main thing that drives people away from owning the means of production or political activities towards that end isn't that it's "complicated." It's all the clusterfucky MEETINGS that are supposed to last two hours and run on to six without getting anything done because of dipshits derailing them.

[Anonymous No.9026126]

daily reminder that fashion is capitalistic and leftism is NOT /fa/

[Anonymous No.9026132]

>>9026126
This human exists/existed on this world.

[Anonymous No.9026133]

>>9026122
>owning the means of production
you can do this under capitalism

>what is starting your own business

[Anonymous No.9026172]

>>9026104
Socialism is state ownership of the means of production.

Communism is a little more multivalent.

http://books.google.com/books?id=GYhajCQU8XIC&q=i+will+define+communism#v=snippet&q=i%20will%20define%20communism&f=false

Check that. It can be used to describe a particular form of relationship, like Graeber is talking about, a form of society without a class structure, or a strain of ideology concerned with the abolition of class divisions.

When you hear "communism," you're actually thinking of a range of states practicing some flavor of state socialism influenced by Marx and Vladmir Lenin, a leader of the Russian Revolution who founded an extremely influential interpretive school of Marx called, naturally, Marxism-Leninism. They were usually ruled by a single party called something-something Communist Party, because the line was always that communism was the goal, and we build it through socialism.

They actually killed way more people than fascist states, chiefly because there were more of them and they lasted a whole lot longer, from 1917 or 1945 until ~1990 in most places. It continues today in some places, though in most instances it's morphed into this weird and ghastly hybrid that combines the worst of the old system with the worst of capitalism. China is the most obvious example.

Most of the Left realizes now that they were deeply fucked up.

Despite all that, if you run up the death totals, even per year, on the number of people whose deaths can be ascribed to these abstract systems, capitalism kills more. Count everyone who starves to death, all the people killed in wars of imperialism, etc. etc.

[Anonymous No.9026183]

>>9026132
Yes, let us celebrate.

>>9026133
>implying this is possible for the vast majority of people, or that capitalism would function/exist if scads of people started their own businesses

Please stop trying to argue this shit divorced of any context. You're as bad as your opposite number, the guy who thinks all we need to do is kill all the cops and capitalists and then love each other.

[Anonymous No.9026253]

>>9026133
I hope this is bait
if everyone starts their fucking business, who will work for you? Capitalism only works if there's a select amount of owners and a vast majority of workers

[Anonymous No.9026284]

>>9026172
>Count everyone who starves to death, all the people killed in wars of imperialism, etc. etc.
lol

[Anonymous No.9026303]

>>9026253
Sorry for my ignorance, but theoretically, what would happen if everybody started their own business?

[Anonymous No.9026320]

>>9026172
>Socialism is state ownership of the means of production

Doesnt this only work in theory? Theres always going to be someone in charge

[Anonymous No.9026324]

>>9026026
The guy on the right is handsome as fuck.

[Anonymous No.9026327]

>>9026303
No one could work for other businesses or at most could work minimally at other businesses, capacity of production of one business with one worker is too low for the majority of businesses to exist.

[Anonymous No.9026331]

>>9026327
I can see how that would make sense. Every business would be very small.

But for example, let's say we have a village. Some families farm fruit, some farm vegetables, some make clothes etc. They all meet at the market to trade their goods. Would this work?

[Anonymous No.9026334]

>>9026253
yes but people have the freedom to start their business in capitalism

if you really wanted to produce what you own you can

>>9026324
you're projecting your ideals for female beauty onto men. Literally 0/10 would have sex with that "man"

[Anonymous No.9026335]

>>9026331
Those aren't really businesses though, they are people who are communally sharing goods without the intention of profit.

[Anonymous No.9026337]

>>9026320
>Doesnt this only work in theory?
it doesn't work in theory or practice
>>9026331
yes but we don't live in subsistence based villages

[Anonymous No.9026339]

>>9026334
I'm a woman you moron.

[Anonymous No.9026348]

>>9026331
Perhaps in a pre-industrial society, it is common for tribes in papua new guinea to collectively stimulate their local economy, they understand how to farm/cultivate etc. There is no reason for them to want to acquire significantly more than their neighbour.

[Anonymous No.9026375]

>>9026339
then you must have really high testosterone

you're practically a man

[Anonymous No.9026384]

>>9026335
>>9026337
>>9026348
Thank you for the clarification. So from what I understand, it wouldn't work in our society, since there would be people who would want to earn more than everyone else.

If a farmer has twice as many chickens as everyone else though, he can afford to buy more, but everyone else can still run their own little businesses. What happens in the long run?

[Anonymous No.9026390]

>>9026375
Whatever you say buddy. Go back to /pol/.

[Anonymous No.9026406]

>>9026390
go back to /lgbt/ since you're clearly a lesbian

[Anonymous No.9026436]

>>9026320
Well, I should've said "collective ownership," not state ownership. The state - the entity with a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory," for the textbook/Max Weber definition - is the form that usually takes in contemporary societies, so yeah, someone's in charge most of the time.

When it's not? Well, look at capitalist business partnerships. You talk it out and figure out what you want to do. The difficulty of non-state socialism on a large scale is entirely of communication and coordination, not anything inherent to humans.

There's loads of ideas about how to deal with that difficulty, too many to even begin to cover here. I'll note it's an easier problem to get your head around if you start thinking in particular instances instead of insisting on One Single Ordering Principle For Every Material Relationship In Every Society That Will Work Every Time, which is where these kind of abstract arguments splat against most of the time.

Again, see the Google Books link I dropped here: >>9026172

>>9026331
If we had a village, maybe, but we don't. We have an interconnected global industrial and post-industrial economy. And even villages never really worked that way.

https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf

This is the book I linkcited earlier. I strongly recommend it to everyone if you want to read more about this stuff.

One small caveat: the the PDF is from the first edition, which was just about the worst copyedited professionally published text I've ever read, shot through with typos and embarrassing factual errors, though none of them actually effect the arguments it makes. The most lulziest and most notorious example is this:

>Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages.

[Anonymous No.9026476]

>>9026114
resorting to ad hominem because muh intellekt

[Anonymous No.9026490]

>>9026476
Not him but I'm guessing the ad hominem there was just for the giggles since your argument was so fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.9026496]

>>9026436
>>9026384
You can have people accumulating more than others in a barter economy, too, but that's not the real problem with his line of thinking. The problem is it doesn't have anything to do with economic relationships now or ever.

A big chunk of Debt (the Graeber book I keep referencing) is about how this kind of "okay, you have a village, and they barter" stuff, pervasive though it is, has no empirical or social basis and is useless for thinking through things. Chapter 2 is "The Myth of Barter."

Also, since I'm referring back to Graeber more and posted the PDF, reference page 94 for communism and keep reading to 113 for the broader point. But read the whole book! I don't know anything as smart, accessible, and useful for clearing up the confusions we pick up about the economy.

[Anonymous No.9026504]

>>9026017
>wear clothes and shoes made in third world countries for a weekly pay that is 1/100 of what a person in that picture makes an hour
>preach socialism

this is why i am indifferent.

[Anonymous No.9026520]

>>9026496
Yep, I will definitely start reading the book. The whole premise of how our economy works and how we got here is very interesting to me.

[Anonymous No.9026563]

>>9026504
The dilemma is more that everything is made in China besides niche retailers that tend to be pricier (and even then you might be paying for a marketing gimmick more than actual quality).

>tfw it's all fucked

[Anonymous No.9026568]

>>9026490
not him I just noticed his stupid rebuttal to a stupid argument

[Anonymous No.9026583]

>>9026496
>"okay, you have a village, and they barter"
>ignoring the entire middle east

[Anonymous No.9026585]

>>9026504
>>9026563
>tfw it's all fucked

Yep, and any leftist with half a brain will be able to tell you that. That's not to say buying fast fashion is a good idea, but your consumption decisions have negligible personal impact and the satisfactions of better clothes are just yours.

>>9026520
Enjoy. If you're copping a physical book, the paperback edition and I think new hardcovers have all the errors fixed.

[Anonymous No.9026601]

>>9026585
the problem is that the west is only propped up by the fact that they are consumers. this inherently includes exploiting others, in so that there may be a group of people to create the product to consume.

the product of growing up in the 21st century is that after a period of your life you'll probably awaken to the fact that your entire happiness is bought off the indirect suffering of millions of lives, just throughout your lifetime alone, let alone through historical acknowledgement.

we're doomed to repeat our mistakes, though. it's why i can only give an bemused smile when i see youth preaching socialism.

[Anonymous No.9026607]

>>9026585
>leftist with half a brain

[Anonymous No.9026615]

>>9026585
>leftists with half a brain
>implying there are leftists with even a quarter of a functioning brain

[Anonymous No.9026628]

>>9026583
You're looking at the Kaaba and the world's third tallest building. The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, is in Dubai. Barter didn't build any of these.

>>9026601
>the problem is that the west is only propped up by the fact that they are consumers. this inherently includes exploiting others, in so that there may be a group of people to create the product to consume.

>the product of growing up in the 21st century is that after a period of your life you'll probably awaken to the fact that your entire happiness is bought off the indirect suffering of millions of lives, just throughout your lifetime alone, let alone through historical acknowledgement.

What in any of that is incompatible with trying to build some kind of socialism?

[Anonymous No.9026663]

>>9026628
social context and inevitable realization that all, and i mean all forms of government and or economy structure involve a hierarchy of exploitation, and with rising globalization it'll only get far more worse.

i am speaking from an ethical humanist point, however. i don't even consider the point that these youths might have some cognitive understanding of their place in the world when they hold signs up advocating for some abstract entity called 'socialism'. it's the equivalent of holding up a sign at a concert.

[Anonymous No.9026673]

Socialism has always been a rich man's movement. All of the major socialist movements (*National* Socialist movements aside) have been headed by members of the so-called bourgeoisie, or upper class, or whatever the latest buzzword for folks better-off than the debtor Middle Class are called in the place in question.

It's funny. Think back to the Bush years, when we saw a marked increase in the whole "pay a premium to look like you're blue collar" thing. It's a fucking joke, just like their movement.

[Anonymous No.9026676]

>>9026673
I meant to clarify that by "all" I'm referring specifically to those in Europe and the United States - I don't know enough about Asian socialist movements (with the exception of China's) to comment on them.

[Anonymous No.9026707]

>>9026663
Speaking only for myself, I'm okay with doing harm. Human suffering, or exploitation, or whatever, is not what I care or think about. It's positive human potential that I think, feel, dream about, never for a world that's "more fair" or even "happier," but a world of unbound humans free to do, create, achieve, discover, and above all: to experience. To see and feel, more and more variously, but especially those feelings like joy, excitement, love, and even and maybe especially those rawer and drier satisfactions that are only possible when those things collide with the world, like in the streets today, sometimes.

I also don't know what exactly we're building, other than that what we're building is diverse, experimental, and necessary. The entire current world system only has a few decades left in it, even given the most optimistic projections for the biosphere. The alternatives to something like what the Left project is after are even worse than what we have now, and I don't care to fix on the odds on what'll come. I'm too busy chasing better potentials.

>i don't even consider the point that these youths might have some cognitive understanding of their place in the world when they hold signs up advocating for some abstract entity called 'socialism'. it's the equivalent of holding up a sign at a concert.

You should. Why wouldn't they? It's 2014 and they're young and in a political milieu; I promise you they spend more time thinking and talking about their place in the world than marching, or much else.

And what could possibly be said against holding up signs at a concert, anyways?

[Anonymous No.9026726]

>>9026707
>The entire current world system only has a few decades left in it

What makes you think so?

[Anonymous No.9026746]

>>9026017
Like what? Like kinda awkward college kids? Probably because most of them are...

The only ones wearing anything distinct are the two on the right, and that's because they're basically wearing political symbols. The rest of them just look like your average students.

[Anonymous No.9026756]

>>9026726
Chiefly, climate change. But also broader resource problems (that are usually related back in some way to climate change) and the growing dysfunction you see in political and economic systems worldwide.

[Anonymous No.9028701]

bump