/lit/ - Literature

>>11696747
There are two kinds of idiots in this world: people who think capitalism is a perfect system, and people who think socialism is a good alternative.

>>11696762
There has to be another way

>>11696762
>people who think capitalism is a perfect system
I think a lot of the people that this gets projected onto don't actually believe that.

>>11696762
are you trying to give the op with more examples of middlebrow normie political tweets

>>11696768
Brainlet post.

It's not wrong. Imagine how great.Marx's work could have been if he wasn't under the noxious spell of Hegel.

>>11696793
t. Paul Cockshott

marx was a brain-dead hegelian idealist who, through years of deep reflection and study, transformed into a cryptocapitalist

proletarians RISE UP

>>11696762
>capitalism
>a system
top lel

>tfw the best youll ever get is some welfare shit state for when you fuck up in capitialism so you dont feel as bad about being a failure and rampant complacency and technology mind numbing everywhere.

Why do commies still bother.

>>11696793
absolute brainlet post here folks

>>11696857
It's called delusion and mental illness.

>>11696793
It would not exist. Not that I'd complain.

>>11696768
Socialism simply means public ownership of the means of production. No one is stopping you from forming a collectively owned corporation/commune and living out THE DREAM OF EQUALITY even within the confines of a capitalist society.

Do it, faggot.

>>11696747
This is the most brainlet take you can imagine, anyone who believes this has never read Marx and it should be an instant pseud alert.
Marx's solutions are the logical conclusions to his diagnosis, if you think they are bad then you also think his analysis is bad.

>>11696762
>people who think capitalism is a perfect system
Literally no one aside from anarchocapitalists.

>>11697822
this

>>11697801
Please let this become pasta in ever tankie thread

>>11697801
If its not bait, apply for benefits

>>11696762

>>11696768
>>11696762

>>11696747
>Marx successfully diagnoses the ills of capitalism
No he didn't, because
>he doesn't provide any good solutions
Clearly his diagnosis was fucking garbage if his solutions to diagnosis turned out to be garbage as well. Think of it as math problem. With wrong premises you get wrong conclusion.

>>11698901
t. Hasn’t read Marx

>>11698906
Not an argument.

>>11698901
So only filmmakers can be good film critics?

>>11698906
reading is for fag's

>>11696768
There is, Comrade. Grab my hand, you poor child, let me take you to the Light.

So, according to the post there was something wrong with his diagnosis? What exactly?

>>11699209
That the market serves a purpose. Within certain parameters, it does a better job of distributing resources than the government.

He also seems to confuse the ambitions of the actors within the market with market forces. He doesn't believe markets have ideal states that society must actively maintain.

>>11696768
>hmm our complex civilisations need well thought-out solutions to the economic and social problems facing us, being ideological about government intervention or market liberalism doesn't help anyone, we instead need to think of alternative measures on how to address success by
>I know, let's make it about skin colour!! 14/88 heil hitler!

>>11696768
Daily reminder that Nazism is basically capitalism with big government for white people
t. Otto Strasser

>>11696857
>when you fuck up in capitalism

>>11699820
>white people
for Germans. The poles really didnt have a good time of it

>>11696762
woah...

>>11697801
Co-opts are a thing but communes are usually snuffed out

>>11696762
There's no such thing as a "perfect" system, but capitalism is the best system.

>>11696779
Bingo. Right on the money. Have started to discuss more politics among friends recently. You´d be stunned with the shit they keep telling me.

>>11699170
the person that made this later perished, his life snuffed out by all the layers of irony he was hiding under

>>11700540
No, they just fail from within because of several reasons, among them the fact that refusing to formalize a hierarchy doesn't stop hierarchies from existing.

>>11700550
this is the correct communist position

>>11699170
So in communism will I only have to work like 20 hours a week or will I just be a wageslave but instead of doing it to make a meager living Im just doing it for the "good of humanity" or whatever bs they spew.

>>11699820
>National socialism
>Hurr thats capitalism

>>11702572
That's correct

>>11699170
I AM SILLY!

>>11702578
No it is not. Historically, National Socialism actually grew out of socialism

>>11696747
Am I in /pol/, faggot? I came here to discuss literature, not politics and economics.
Though I will say that (Russian) Communism is actually great. Keep the people hungry and in fear of the government so they don't get dangerous thoughts and ideas. And if I somehow was sent back to 1941 and had to choose between fighting for Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia I'd choose the latter without a second thought.

>>11702636

>>11702636
https://youtu.be/ITBJ0K-9aas

hurr no historically it actually fucking didn't. read Der Nazi-Soci if you want more evidence of the contempt Nazi's had for socialism.

>>11699170
>that picture
Wew lad

>>11702753
>>11702742
Point is, there’s a reason it was called national socialism. There’s a trend on /his/ of not bowing to obvious facts and trying to argue things that are inherently not true just because it feels right. Like shitting on the Quran or denying the Holocaust.

Socialism is inherently a workers class movement and the working class in the early 1930s Germany embraced it in the hopes of a better future.

>>11699209 #
How about the failure or absence of his material contradictions leading to actual crises in industrial societies? How about the transformation problem? How about his cockamamie reformulation of the classical labor theory of value as the value-form?

He had his theories and they were interesting. People haven't moved on because they don't actually care about moving on.

>>11702969
>Socialism is inherently a workers class movement
Funny way of saying secular mostly Jewish intellectuals

>>11702969
>there’s a reason it was called national socialism

>>11698901
>absolute state of /lit/

>>11696747
>>Marx successfully diagnoses the ills of capitalism

He did not.

>>11698924
>>11703316
This is only a valid criticism of his point if you reject Marx as a logician. Somebody else already made this point earlier, but if you accept or reject Marx's premises as empirically founded, then you must also accept or reject his conclusion. Otherwise, you must reject his methodology as ad-hoc. You could also pull an Althusser and fag up any discussion of Marx by obfuscating the structure of his arguments even more.

>>11702969
>there’s a reason it was called national socialism

>>11703297
Funny, that’s Marx’s definition of socialism also. As a matter of fact that’s anyone’s definition of socialism when they’re trying to get people behind their socialist movement.
>>11703352
See
>>11703297

>>11703291
Hah... yeah good thing no one seriously believes that.

>>11703408
>Marx's definition of socialism is that Marxian Socialism isn't Socialism

nobody can possibly be this dumb

>>11703408
>that’s Marx’s definition of socialism also
????????

>>11703448
>>11703437
It’s same old same old. Look into Leninism, Stalinism.

>>11703316
/lit/ is literally incapable of discussing communism because the people here are scared to death of being associated with normies and Bernie has made """socialism""" the new normie political position. Notice how you never have any actual arguments against it, it's just insults coupled with a reddit-tier understanding of what they're reeeeeeee'ing against.

>>11698906
It's 2018 /lit/, no one here has ever read any socialist work, let alone Marx. Doesn't stop them from talking about him.

>>11696762
This. Freedom and capitalism are the best but they're not perfect, because humans are not perfect but decentralizing power is the only proveable way to mitigate fallible humans impact on other humans due to power.

>>11704220
>Freedom
>Capitalism

pick one

>>11704269
Freedom from > Freedom to because Freedom from produces Freedom to. Brainlet.

>>11704269
>thinking government matters that much
I’m sure Tocqueville would tell you it’s the mannerisms and customs of a people that matter the most, not the laws or governmental structure

>>11704304
Here's a quick question, who were more destructive to the thread of history and humanities advancement; French intellectuals or German intellectuals. I'm edging towards German atm by a decent margin.

>>11702589
it's amazing how quickly saying "I AM SILLY" to any comic became a fallacy

>>11704290
What about freedom from property? Didn't think of that didja?

>>11704220
What >>11704269 said

>>11704493
It really fits here

>>11704290
>freedom as a capacity

Aristotle get out reeeee

>>11704502
Property is freedom fortunately. As Marxists would concede, one must own the fruits of their labour. It's fundamental to both human life and society itself. (except ownership can be transferred - didn't thinka that didja?!)

>>11704905
>property is freedom fortunately
But I thought it was just agreed that freedom from must be prioritized over freedom to. Property is inherently the freedom to own things. An abolition of property is necessarily a liberating act as property as an institution serves to place restrictions and boundaries as to what people can and can't do. Indeed, taken to the logical extreme (which we also happen to be living in) where the entire planet is divided among property holders for those without this is taken even further, to not just be a form of borders but a form of bondage. As humans cannot sustain themselves, they need to be nourished by resources from the Earth, and when all those resources are in private hands this creates a dependency on those without property on those who do leading to a situation where a man MUST sell his labour to survive. And a society where a man MUST do anything for another man is not a free society.

In this way the ultimate negative freedom is the freedom from property.

>>11704955
>>11704905
>ignoring the difference between personal property and private property
>rent seeking is my right to parasitically prey on others, reeee gibmedats

>>11704976
>ignoring the difference between personal property and private property
Pro-capitalist people are right, this distinction is arbitrary. Either people have an inalienable right to own things or they don't.

I think the best way to look at it is that property can only "exist" insofar as it can be defended through force of arms so we as a society need to consider what kinds of defence in the name of exclusivity we want to permit. Obviously next to nobody wants to have their home and personal belongings be any man's game. But at the same time it is clear that the private ownership of what are now commercial resources hurts the greatest section of society. A society where "personal property" is protected but "private property" doesn't must acknowledge that there are no inalienable rights to property, your belongings are only guaranteed by the mutual understanding that it's acceptable to defend them by force and not by any kind of natural right.

>>11704955
Precisely. What you are missing is the beginning of the chain of logic. You don't start with freedom to property, because property exists prior to everything else. It is only when property is threatened or disagreed with that freedom from violence, theft, coercion, freedom from state plunder, private plunder and so on comes into effect.

Freedom to property would be marxist bullshit for redistribution, whereas property itself doesn't need this. It exists and freedom from theft comes into it when it's threatened, if it isn't threatened then there's no problem.

>>11704976
The difference is arbitrary and marxists have no proper basis for property theory that can explain the distinction clearly.

Ask 100 marxists and you'll get 100 answers for the distinction, ask 100 marxists what the basis for ownership is as a concept and you might get 2 that have a stab.

>>11705091
Only it does not. Naturally if we go back far enough into anthropological history we'll find a point when humans existed but any concept of property did not. However this is not necessary, as you yourself pointed out property doesn't exist prior to all else - property is preceded by labour.

>As Marxists would concede, one must own the fruits of their labour. It's fundamental to both human life and society itself. (except ownership can be transferred - didn't thinka that didja?!)

If we're to accept the genesis of property is as fruits of labour then we can see that property does not occur of itself. It must be created and from then on may be transferred. So what is the most basic freedom then? Well it must be freedom of creation as it was a creative act that property was conjured from to begin with.The first ever home was built on what was no man's land. And property as an institution hampers such freedom as it limits a man's creative powers only to what is "his property".

>>11705153
> property is preceded by labour.
Except labour is not the sole creator of labour, as conscioussness shows with self-ownership. Unless we're going to call the biological or spiritual process of conscioussness to be akin to labour with the outside world, that's a question for the free will vs determinism philosophers I think.
> The first ever home was built
> property as an institution hampers such freedom as it limits a man's creative powers only to what is "his property"
It's a bit of a chicken and egg issue, property is needed for life, property itself though is exclusive. So this is only a problem again if you consider property the freedom to, rather than the freedom from. Freedom from does not pre-suppose everyone being allowed to interact with everything. Property is exclusive and it is necessary and property rights are the freedom from, I'm okay with this because as Capitalism as proven even when all property on the world is owned, the market provides opportunities because it focuses on the wants and needs of society. If people that makeup society want to eat, or obtain money then the market will provide as best it (it being we) can the opportunities possible.

If you talk to marxists about their distinction between personal property and absentee ownership, one part that it boils down to is the idea that everyone ought to have the freedom to engage in labour to sustain their life as if every person needs the freedom to be a subsistence farmer even though subsistence farming is not possible on all sections of land. Which is why ownership is a concept of freedom from, an individual concept is much more thorough because without this arbitrary distinction, people having control over their property over time whether they are using it or not is still warranted. Yet even though others are being excluded they still have options. I know of no alternative to the exclusiviety of property besides plunder and the tragedy of the commons.

>>11698879
Has nothing to do with being "neutral about the subject", but rather to escape false dialectics. Moron.

>>11705008
>Pro-capitalist people are right
The first sentence and already so incorrect

>>11702969
>Point is, there’s a reason it was called national socialism.
same reason why peoples' democratic republics are called that

>>11705253
It's about the wage relation, mortgages and people owning houses to use as a commodity. If you'd actually read Marx you'd understand very clearly that he demonstrates how these markets and relations are underpinned by landgrabs and dispossession at the start of agrarian/industrial capitalism - the status quo exists due to Bourgoise social violence.

>>11698879
retard

>>11699419

>I know, let's make it about skin colour!! 14/88 heil hitler!

You're American, aren't you?

>>11706156
He conjectures this more than he presents a breadth of anthropological evidence. There's some cursory analogies of the Iroquois picked out by Engels due to contemporary availability, but that's about all.

>>11699419

Lol fucking Hitler shook Jessie Owens' hand at the 36 Olympics and he wasn't allowed to meet the US president because he was Black you fucking retard

>>11706190
>He conjectures this more than he presents a breadth of anthropological evidence
Based brainlet

>>11706244
Lay it on me, anon. What botched factory data and 1860s anthropology do Marx and Engels bring to the table to totally le btfo me?

>>11697801
>Socialism merely means kikes decide what we do with our time and money

>>11699419
>skin color
More nonwhites fought for the SS than fought for the British Empire you clueless fuck. It was about Jews, who are white, and international finance. Jesus Christ dude.

>>11706273
>Jews, who are white

>>11705253
> as conscioussness shows with self-ownership
Only it does not. Self-ownership would imply mastery over oneself when in reality free will does not exist and we're entirely bound to our instincts and desires.

It certainly shows self-autonomy but we do not own ourselves rather we are the possessions of our will.

>the market provides opportunities because it focuses on the wants and needs of society. If people that makeup society want to eat, or obtain money then the market will provide as best it (it being we) can the opportunities possible.
This is precisely why I would say property is anti-life, and indeed anti-individualistic. The end result of a property-based society is a global market based society wherein everyone is subject to the ebbs and flows of the market rather than being empowered to exercise their own will. This is why I call it a kind of bondage, your survival is only sustainable insofar as the market allows it and you must always prioritize market desires over your own if you're to participate in such a society. A market based society is just another form of the tyranny of the many over the individual. I would go as far as to say that any kind of industrialized society is so thoroughly dependent on mass co-operation that it marginalizes individual freedom, even communist ones. Which is why it's necessary to not just reject property and markets but also to reject industrial civilization itself.

>Yet even though others are being excluded they still have options. I know of no alternative to the exclusiviety of property besides plunder and the tragedy of the commons
As I'm saying a concept of a property based society is no kind of individual concept, it is thoroughly dependent on mass-societal co-operation from which you are not permitted to exempt yourself.

But the thing about the so called "tragedy of the commons", I don't think it's a real historical phenomenon. Such a concept only emerged retroactively to describe a hypothetical scenario once the commons had already long since been privatized. In reality the commons had existed in England from the early medieval era into the modern era, for many centuries the rights of the commons were upheld without incident. It was only with the industrialization of English society that they began to be stripped away, and how much this has to do with the empowerment of the bourgeois class versus how well the commoners were maintaining it leaves us in either case to still consider why an industrialized society struggles with such a concept while medieval societies held them as inalienable rights. And the answer is overpopulation, an industrialized society can support unnatural population sizes. Today the whole 50 million population of England probably couldn't survive as farmers even if all the land in England were to be in common and all of England were to be equipped with the skills and resources to cultivate it, there are simply too many people as a result of industrial growth.

>>11706990
>doesn't know about rationality
>calls private property anti life while claiming to want to reject the industrial revolution which would lead to the death of billions
>whines about globalisation which have improved the world immensly
Okay sweetie;)

>>11706324
ASSkhenazim are just muttified eur*poids, no less wh*te than the average *ngloid or burger. they represent the vast majority of """"jews"""" but they arent real jews

only sephardim and beta israelites aka BASED BLACK GUYS are real jews. but for the most part, the average """""jew""""" in the developed world is just a wh*teoid and thus wh*te.

>>11707046
>rationality
>death is anti-life
>globalisation has improved the world immensely

>>11703731
Anyone who's actually read Marx migrated to /leftypol/ years ago.

>>11707046
yikes

>Incorrectly attributes the pareto distribution to capitalism.
>Ruins the lives of 500 million people.
>Uneducated retards fight over imaginary interpretations of his text for the next 10,000 years.

>>11707115
>never forget the 50000000000000000000 gorrillion starvations, goy

>>11707115
>pareto distribution
>muh 500 gorillion
0/10

>>11696762
Socialism and capitalism aren't necessary exclusives.
You must be american.

>>11707176
>Socialism and capitalism aren't necessary exclusives.

I love it when smug yuros say utterly retarded things with total confidence.

>>11707176
What a remarkably simple and stupid way of phrasing your very weak point.

>>11705097
>The difference is arbitrary
Uh, no? The difference is whether the property is or can exploit someone or not. You might not like that argument, but it's not arbitrary. And I'm pretty sure the regular capitalist legal system distinguishes between personal and private property, though I'm no lawyer. You don't sell stock of your TV. Intellectual property "rights" don't have anything to do with your toothbrush. Capital gains tax does not apply to your couch.

Or as I see it, private property is when you have a person working for someone else's benefit/authority while mixing their labor into a property. Personal property is where a person mixes their labor into a property exclusively for themselves.

A car is normally personal property. It, unlike most personal property, can become private property by turning it into a taxi services, i.e. having someone else drive "your" car as a ride service and taking a cut of their incomes (profit) despite no personal labor. Giving out rides to your friends is an example of car as personal property. Even selling rides in your car, I'd say, still counts as personal property, as basically that is worker ownership of the means of production. No one else is mixing their labor into the car for absentee lordship benefit.

>Ask 100 marxists and you'll get 100 answers for the distinction
I don't really think that's true. But it's not like they teach this stuff in schools. And I don't believe the distinction was every formally written upon by a word of god authority like Marx himself. So yeah in sort of environment you're going to tend to get indistinct personal answers. But a lack of a textbook doesn't mean there is no truth.

>>11707176
>Socialism and capitalism aren't necessary exclusives.

>>11707184
Well, those smug yuros have reason to be smug--they may live in capitalist social democratic societies in Europe, like Norway for example.

>>11707212
>social democracy is socialism
>Norway is socialist AND capitalism

L M A O @ this lad

>>11707187
Exploitation is arbitrary in its selection of labor as the originator of value.

>>11706990
This is some disgusting Hegelian-botched reading of Schopenhauer.

>>11707937
Go on and try to explain the origin of economic value without eventually running in to labor. Go on. Try.

It's astounding the lengths society can go to avoid a politically inconvenient and uncomfortable truth. It's like we're living in a world where the anti-Darwinists won and now all naturalist "scientists" have to avoid talking about genes and mutation because to do so would let the Darwinist win something.

>>11697822
This

>>11707985
Labor is no more or less essential to the process of commodity production than the consumer, the materials, time preference, or interest. Its selection as the central facet of value is arbitrary.

>>11708236
And moreover, commodity production is no more or less a fundamental facet of the system called "capitalism" by Marx than any other market or industry.

>>11696747
Well then read Lenin.