/lit/ - Literature

Mein kampf

I like Stirner. He’s become a meme but what he says in The Ego and Its Own is actually pretty profound. I also think there’s kind of a false dichotomy between Stirner and Marx. Like, Stirner is just trying to critique and expose false narratives about the world, whereas Marx is trying to understand the world and construct a poisonous but well intentioned narrative. The conflict between them is basically the conflict between post-modernists and modernists. Stirner is deconstructing, Marx is constructing. If the left wants to offer an alternative world, we need to be able to deconstruct, to propose new ideas and structures while also holding these ideas up to the flame of criticism to see if they really hold up or not.

>>11817695
not sure if you're serious

>>11817698
yeah I like stirner, I actually find myself agreeing more with his way of thinking, the thing is... how can his "ideology" be achieved? is there any words on this? He wrote so little it's a petty.

Fanged Noumena

Capital is sentient and sapient, its influence is absolutely inescapable as it manifests reality and manufactures intelligence. All future developments are in flux and emerge dependent on optimal market interests - the conflict in the arena of culture around capitalism vs. communism is, by definition, capitalism.

>>11817712
>not sure if you're serious
I wasn't. I was just bumping the thread because the subject matter is interesting to me as a communist.

list all of the philosophy/history books you've ever read and let's see if any gaps exist.

>>11817687
As a fellow communist, my best advice would be to make sure you keep your horizons broad. Depending on your tendency (I dunno if you're M-L, Trot, Spart, AnCom or, may Marx forgive me for uttering this word, a leftcom), you might have a tradition that is very narrow and only reads a small canon of thinkers. Some M-Ls seem to treat Trotsky as a total heretic and write off his interesting works, while many Trot groups pretty much failed to incorporate any new theory since Trotsky died. Don't do this.

So make sure you keep your eyes open to theoretical strains outside your core theorists. Read some good anarchist classics, (Bakunin/Goldman/Stirner), some Foucault, some Bookchin, some Deleuze and Guattari, some modern anarchists, maybe even some leftish catholics like Illich.

>>11817715
Seems like the statement of a pseud. It sounds good to brainlets but intelligent people see through this charade.

>>11817715
Competition =/= Capitalism

>>11817715
Also humanity is a means for a superintelligent AI to retroactively create itself.

>>11817687

I am a socialist, but there are only two things I can imagine fundamentally adjusting my expectations of what is possible. One would be if we find that the climate crisis creates some exceptionally catastrophic conditions. The significant reduction of arable land in the settled areas, the collapse of the global population (and consequential collapse of global supply chains). Such material deprivation that the question becomes less one of the traditional socialist project, which has been seizing the developed countries, and more one of surviving increasingly insular states of control or surviving in the deteriorating husks of former states. The second is simply being less left through something like the post-keynesian policy suggestions.

>>11817723
It's simply Marx with the Hegelian deterministic elements removed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfEYKSxXC5o

Not OP, but want to get some stuff out of the Way:
Black Book of Communism & The Gulag Arxhipelago are both under-researched, under-(or non-)fact-checked, borderline unfinished trash by heavily biased, (and in the case of Solzhenitsyn, criminally insane) authors. So don't bother reccomending them here, as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of their background will not take them seriously as historical sources.

>>11817715
this is worth a read, look at deleuze first and remove all kantian and hegelian determinism to your thinking, become a rational actor

>>11817731
Capital is synecdochal.

>>11817715
capital is sentient

Not taking the piss her but smash through The Law by Bastiat since it's small and an entertaining read then get stuck into Hayek and Mises. They are both completely different personalities so write in different ways but they've both been huge opponents of Socialism and they've got really good books for spelling out the Classical Liberal/Libertarian alternative from a basis of explaining the ideals first rather than just trying to bash you over the head with pure logic like a Rothbard might.

I genuinely think these 3 guys are good decent people and incredibly smart even if you disagree with them.

The Law has a really powerful section early on where he goes over why people are clamouring for universal suffrage and the tendency to use it for revenge and so on, it dropped some pennies for me, it might for you, especially if you're of the current view that everyone else is misguided and/or evil.

For Hayek dabble in the Fatal Conceit and Constitution of Liberty and for Mises you can't go wrong with Liberalism. At least those are my suggestions for being open minded to a different set of ideas and to get some interesting perspectives on Socialism/Communism from the earlier writers when Communism was a lot more popular.

I don't have any suggestions for you with modern writers because I find them extremely antagonistic towards socialism, they'd prefer to just destroy it in a way that makes many marxists very defensive when they read it. There are some around though just depends on what you're looking for.

>>11817770
>how much is 2 plus 2?
>and don't say 4

>>11817698
Are there still classical pre 60s commies whose main concerns aren't gender issues and flooding the West with brown people? I feel that being a communist is a hopeless endeavor when virtually all modern self proclaimed communists out of the third world are primarily liberals. Even leftypol had turned increasingly liberal over the years.

Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises, The philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff and Anarchy, state utopia by Robert Nozick seems like a good starting point.

>>11817687
The road to serfdom by Friedrich Hayek.

>>11817687
Definitely The Law by Frédéric Bastiat and Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick. Bonus points for reading Polystate by the guy that makes SMBC. Polystate isn't really anti-anything, but it's certainly interesting in how it explores ancap-ish shit without endorsing it.

>>11817687
start with marx, that should suffice

>>11817687
Pic related

Whatever the outcome will be though, don’t ever reproduce

Wealth of Nations

>>11818066
Not a great answer. The whole point of The Wealth of Nations was that it was a treatise Aimee against moneyed interests interfering in the free market and Legislation, and against lobbying in general.

A better answer is this >>11817899

Both are must reads of course, although the latter is about 100x shorter than the former

>>11817857
>Can't think of an actual argument. Better quote Orwell.
Also, I'd like to point out the irony that you're saying I believe 2+2=/=4, when the BBoC is full of rudimentary Arithmetical errors.

There is no alternative to capitalism we are fucked
the failed 1918 german revolution was us humans last hope
we would have prevented the holocaust/ww2 and maybe even some of stalins atrocities

>>11817868
Nah it seems like idpol is an inescapable function of society that is becoming totalising in all aspects of politics and life. The ‘idpol’ catchphrase that has been shilled as a countermeasure has utterly failed. All we have left are things like insurrectionary anarchism but even they are beginning to fall prey to it.

Capital - Karl Marx
The Will to Power - Friedrich Nietzsche

>>11817723
stop speaking in lit memes

if you enjoy a utilitary discussion

Not even memeing.
This is the only cure for communist sympathies.

>>11817868
idpol is a spook

Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left by Roger Scruton

>>11818837
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6dgppKq8UU

Mankiw's introduction to economics

>>11817721
the only viable 'tendency' currently is left populism

Read History 101

>>11819062
>let's make some money, fellow proletarians!
>you can have a little taste of the good life too! I know you want it, hell, everybody does!

Reading Grundrisse and the other two volumes of Das Kapital is usually a good cure for spastic tankie-itis.

>>11819070
This is a decent one.
Honestly any basic modern economics introduction that shows how reliant economics is on calculus, statistics and game theory, will make you realize Marx uses none of these tools, is completely outdated, offers no predictive power (if he did, his theory would be taught to traders).

>>11817770
b a i t

Contemporary Marxist Theory: A Reader
The New Leviathan
The Man Versus the State: With Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom

>>11818837
>Sowell

>>11819583
>honestly any economic theory that explicitly uses calculus, statistics and game theory will make you realize Marx doesn't use these, and so is invalid.

The implication is that you have to explicitly use those tools to create all economic theories. There isn't an investigation of what Marx's theory was specifically addressing, and how the tools he specifically used were effective or ineffective. Implicit in Marxist analysis are various equations and inequalities, and his analysis of class dynamics may as well be considered a kind of substitute for how another theory may use game theory. There is no necessity that they have to be equivalent though, unless we are really positing that an economic theory has to include modern game theory concepts.

>is completely outdated, no predictive power

Real claims that seem more agreeable. I'd argue Sraffa in many ways modernized Marxist concepts, but the relationship is indirect since Sraffa looked to Ricardo rather than Marx. But Marx did as well. They are both based in classical value theory and so have many similarities. I'm not sure how many Marxists actually read Sraffa, but I'd bet if they did it with an open mind they'd find they agree with most of what he says. He is also easier to read because he is brief and uses math to simply state many relationships that Marx would otherwise use many endless pages to try to frame linguistically.

What is interesting about the latter technique though, is how it has turned Marxism into a kind of rationalization of Marx. People feel like they get the gist of Marx, and when engaging in debates over Marxist analysis there are widespread disagreements over what Marx himself fundamentally said. This could just be up to the fact most of these arguments are between internet laymen, but I think there is a great element of confusion involved in his presentation, which leads to much generation of "new" ideas in a Marxist vein by people who feel they agree with him because those people are literally trying to create clarity for themselves through argument. But they often don't consider this very separate from the theory Marx himself espoused.

>>11817763
so dumb french leftist crap like Althusser and Foucault but marketed to basement dwelling incel 4channers?

READ CAMATTE, HE GIVES GREAT EXPLANATIONS AS TO WHY THE PROLETARIAN UPRISING WILL NEVER HAPPEN

spoiler: it's because technology dictates everything

https://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/agdom.htm

Against Domestication

>>11820111
capital is sentient

The Use of Knowledge In Society
The Road to Serfdom
Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth

>>11817687
I'd tell you to read something, but It would only make you angry and cause you to double down on your communist ideology. That's just the way the mind works, nothing personal.

You will only change your ideology when you can no longer be bothered to deal with the cognitive dissonance necessary to believe in communism.

You may think I'm having a dig at communism, and I am, but most absolute ideologies have the same problem.

>>11820240
Not necessarily true. I used to be very anti-communist due to my upbringing and natural inclinations. Although I wouldn't consider myself a communist by any means I'd be willing to form a coalition with them as long as they aren't the BioLeninist sort who want to faggify and brazilify the west.

>>11817687
Communism is a system
Capitalism is a system.
Whatever system you have is still bad for the people if Jews are in charge of it.

Separate Jewish publications have admitted that they control capitalism, communism, and have changed ideologies across the planet over the years.

Tenured professor Kevin MacDonald collected citations from books by Jewish authors to emphatically prove this beyond any doubt and has yet to bee properly refuted.
Read his book.
Culture of Critique.
http://www.angelfire.com/rebellion2/goyim/je1.pdf

>>11817687
"Communism, a very short introduction", at least chapter 2 "A brief history of communism in power". Not so much to sell competing systems, but mainly to highlight certain issues that have come up during communism's practical applications, or at least attempts at it. Often times in how heavy handed the management was, and howoften it necessary to be heavy handed. That and trying to find examples of jokes from within the USSR, as a good number of them are about the ineffeciencies of the system. In general, I'd argue for history related sources on the history of communism. Hell it isn't even all bad, but I'd advice you to study past applications to avoid falling into the same pitfalls of past, since they tend to be of the oppressive sort with large body counts.

Just read the introductions for the Communist Manifesto. On one of them, Engels admits that the communist vision would be impossible to attain with the mindset of its epoch because it was fated to turn into tyranny, without first a deep change in how people think. Now, be honest with me: do you actually believe communism could be attained nowadays anywhere without turning into a ruthless regime? If what you believe in isn't practical, you're just wasting your time.

>>11820111
>>11820121
people don't actually believe capitalism is some kind of literal eldritch abomination now do they?

>>11820111

Public lynching is probably the closest we ever got to an actual proletarian uprising. It's the utmost form common people have found to show their indignity with the system. And yet leftists flip their shit whenever it happens. Do they really think things would be any different with an all out revolution?

>>11820825
>waaa, Jews are smarter than me and i HATE it!!!
eat it, goy

>>11817687
Capitalism and Freedom

>>11817687
Possible takes that don't necessarily connect but sometimes share criticisms:

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, which has a psychological critique of socialism that can be extended to communism. Bring in the passages about the Last Man from Zarathustra to see what he expects man after the revolution.

Heidegger's Letter in Humanism and Question Concerning Technology. The former explicitly refers to communism, but you could say that the letter is a general critique of humanism, including the humanist (younger) Marx. The latter can be related to communism's possible relationship to technology.

Leo Strauss's lectures on Marx (search on google), and his Natural Right and History. He critiques it obliquely, with his critique of historicism.

Aristophanes' Assembly of Women. Less a critique of Marxist communism than communism generally. The basis of his critique is that of nature.

Plato's Republic, which both responds to the above Aristopjanes play, and offers an ironical critique of communism and utopian politics generally. Strauss's The City and Man has a Republic interpretation that spells that reading out.

>>11820956
You'd be surprised

>>11817765
based

>>11817687
Unironically a Culture of Critique.

Also I would read Out of the Ashes by James Whelan, it's a major rebuttal to the rise of Allende.

>>11818227
>Maybe if I just call it biased without understanding how and making broad generalizations anyone with half a brain can realize have no real weight to them, I can discredit my opposition by appealing to authority.

No you really can't. The leftist rebuttal to Gulag Archipeligo and the Black Book are frankly desperate. Glad the Revolutions of 89 destroyed your power in Europe desu

>>11817687
literally any cookbook
hardmode: one with pictures

>>11817687

Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick. Best argument for minarchism put to paper.

>>11817687
I'm a former socialist. What got me to change my mind about socialism wasn't anything necessarily anti-socialist. It was anti-ideology in general. It was stuff like Ted Kacynski, and Stirner, Land dealt the final blow.

I don't feel like i "lost" my socialism as Marx is still pretty insightful although much is by now outdated. I think of it more as evolved past the ideological battles which by now seem petty and unimportant. If socialism happened tomorrow exactly as Marx vaguely hoped it would (the absolute best possible scenario), it still would do nothing to stop man's enslavement under production and machinery. Man would still labor endlessley and there would be no true freedom in any meaningful sense. I used to think of socialism and capitalism as basically opposite systems. Now i see them as basically similar, with socialism a vague goal of capitalism without all the mean parts. Nowhere near sufficient at best, and naive at worst.

Probably the worst thing about socialism is it's staying power. the only real "radicals" of today's society are socialists and marxists going off about dead men and dead theories from dead centuries. They retard any actual forms of resistance or insurrectionary action that might develop because they co opt any anti-system discontent and do nothing with it but be totally clueless and ineffective

>>11821223
based

>>11817687
What matters is your action, commitment and example comrade. Theory comes later.

Reminder that Marx economic calculation problem still exists and no, your retarded fucking meme doesn't prove shit.

The Feldman–Mahalanobis model is flawed/incomplete and was completely discarded in 1961. Your stupid fucking meme doesn't even show the "improved" model and instead shows a previous one before the four-sector version.

Communists are nothing but a bunch of ideologues who think capitalism will cease scarcity somehow.

something of Milton Friedman.

I actually don't understand how communism can actually function. Commies only have idealist views that ignore the impracticality of it all. How would we function without a government? How do we go from having an unequal society (particularly housing) and make it fair? Do you suggest destroying all the current buildings and rebuilding them all? Communism is meant to be a one world movement, how do can you suggest equalizing Africans lives with Americans?

The only way it could be practically be done is with infinite resources and even then it would be very inefficient (not that it would matter) and before you play the post-scarcity meme, time will always be a scarce resource.

Maybe if we were going to build a society from the absolute ground up like sim city then we might be able to put it into action but I can see it becoming a dystopian world pretty quick. Communists usually hate government figures and see the utopia with their value system but it would likely be the very same people making decisions. At least in a capitalist society, we have influence over the state of things, granted the more capital you have does mean the more influence but at least independent actors can act.

>>11821052
>waaaa, if Jews can't be part of the whiteboy club then no one can!!!!!
Day of the rope

>>11819583

It's an interesting idea that Marx should be able to make nontrivial predictions which you could capitalize on, and I'm sympathetic to this view, but what does it say for a comprehensive theory of economics if all your alpha gets eaten by hedge funds run by people with a background in some useless shit like K-Homology theory. Does that make Mathematicians / Computer Scientists / Physics and other assorted STEMlords even "better" at economics than economists?

Brings up the question why there are so few billionaire economists as well.

>>11821516
The only day of the rope was last night when I came on your mom's face nerd

>>11821533
Psychologists have proven to be the best economists, actually. They are better at it than they are psychology.

>>11817687
Check out the book antifragile. It might help convince you that top down solutions are often not the best ones

>>11821417
I don't mean this to be a snarky "implying" shitpost, but this is like an old feudal baron saying to a capitalist in 1600:
>I actually don't understand how capitalism can actually function. Capitalists only have idealist views that ignore the impracticality of it all. How would stock markets function without high speed trading? Do you suggest destroying all the current village marketplaces and rebuilding them?
>Capitalism is meant to work in a one world movement, how do you suggest making contacts with the lord over the mountain when the pass is frozen during winter?
>The only way it could be done is with infinite serfs, and even then it would be very inefficient. Before you play the post-feudalism meme, labour will always be a scarce resource. At least in a feudal society, we have influence over the state of things, granted, the more serfs you have does mean the more influence but at least minor nobles can act.

The transition from capitalism to full communism is dependent upon gradual development, both under late capitalism and following on during corporate tax, free university, nationalise the railways and utilities) would be able to direct greater quantities of resources to research and development, education programmes, and so on. There'd still be murder and petty theft. We wouldn't just wake up one to discover the magical wand had been waved. Nonetheless, any change in fundamental economic relations and the relative bargaining power of the working class will change the nature of society from the inside out.

>>11821533
>few billionaire economists
The depends on how you define what it is to be an economist. If you say it has to be their career then no one makes a lot of money in academia, no matter the subject but the majority of billionaires have a good understanding of how economies work. This might be just experienced based but in order to run a successful company you need to understand how businesses work and how they are influenced by consumers, other companies, governments, and the marketplace. The public billionaires often take stances and promote their opinion on these too.

>>11817765
Jordan Peterson should read more. Gulag Archipelago uses made up statistics Solzhenitsyn pulled out of his butt in the 1970s. The opening of the archives after the fall of the USSR have changed a lot of things we thought we knew. Anyone interested should check out Gulag: A History by Applebaum. The only reason why Gulag Archipelago was accepted as total truth when it first came out was because of Cold War hysteria.

>>11817687
Nick Land. Carefully about posting about him on here through, apparently Jannies don't like that.

>>11821582
Do you understand how capitalism came about because it literally answers all of your questions?

There were two big factors in the move towards capitalism. The first is that the industrial revolution meant that you were able to produce much more value out of a piece of land than before. Instead of needing enormous amounts for farming/mining/housing (traditional money makers) you just needed enough to house the machinery and workers and you could make much more than any of those. I imagine this pushed the maximum potential productivity per sq/m up several thousand %. This meant that productivity was no longer dominated by the aristocracy who had immense parcels of land, you could produce a lot with a decent patch and startup capital. I'm not claiming that there wasn't still a high barrier to entry but it was massively reduced from before. All these new actors who have new resources (influence) demolished the power held by the traditional aristocracy and moving it towards the market/capitalists.

These individuals were also becoming more reliable than royalty in their ability to pay back debts and it was likely easier to get the money back if there was a problem. This meant that money started to flow into the hands of these capitalists which just snowballed into more and more actors outside of the traditional aristocracy gaining more power and influence. Joint stock companies came as a way to maximise this as you could lend to bigger groups of capitalists instead of individuals.

Machines replaced the need for lots of serfs and vast amount of land unless you missed that. Village marketplaces remained exactly the same and everything else has been a fairly natural evolution after that (governments, high-speed trades, etc). The world became less about your bloodline and the Kings favour and about how many resources you had which were now easier to gain, this weakened Feudalism to its collapse (though I wouldn't call it that since there was a natural transition).


Still though, that was quite a strawman and I want to focus on your points about communism. How does any of what you said lead to a communist system taking over?
>free university, greater R&D and better education programmes
How does this lead to full communism? How would the government take full dominance over furthering our knowledge so it can capitalise on it, it's not like you can stop commercial entities/individuals from doing their own research?
>nationalised railways, utilities
So you expect these are the first to be nationalised, then absolutely everything else gets nationalised afterwards? Governments/very large organisations have proven themselves to be very inefficient at change, how will they compete with say a small company in a different country?

>>11817715
who believes this?

>>11817687
A history book. Regardless of what you think about the ideology, so far nobody managed to get even into the socialist stage. It's dysfunctional.

>>11821692
Precisely so. And the socialist contention is that socialism will come about as capitalism begins to hit its own internal limits, as a new economic paradigm - not because a bunch of socialists think it is 'morally right' or what have you. We have embryonic forms today of socialist organisation, in the trade unions of some countries, in the open source software movement, in the co-operative efforts of companies like Mondragon.

The Marxist contention has always been that capitalism contains, for technological and social reasons, a tendency of the rate of profit to decline, which has been borne out by empirical analysis. As technology develops and the rate of profit declines, crises of capitalism become more and more frequent, intensive, and widespread. The capitalist class has no option but to increase the intensity of their exploitation of workers in order to keep profits high (or make them decline more slowly than they would). This is the behaviour we are seeing today.

The tendency to form monopolies has become evident again in a way it hasn't been since WWI - Amazon, Apple, Walmart, Google, etc. are the great monopolists of our times. While you might rail against central planning as inefficient, think about the amount of central planning that goes on every day in a corporation of this size - with an internal economy larger than that of most countries - and the efficiencies that have been produced.

>>11821692
its hilarious that both you and the person you're replying to have literally no idea when even just capitalism started yet (and likely dont even really know what it is) but you're still having this drawn out discussion about it. its a microcosm of all nearly all debate on the internet or media.

>>11821742
Go on then Professor Superiority, when did capitalism start?

>>11817712
For Stirner, the basis for oppression is the suppression of individual desire by an external force. Stirner calls this force "the state". The state can take various forms: capitalism where the individual is a slave to the whims of the economy, communism where the individual is a slave to the collective values of society, monarchism where an individual is a slave to the desires of another individual, or fascism where the individual is a slave to all of the above. To Stirner, it is less important which political program constitutes a state, because he sees all fixed political programs as barriers to the expression of the individual. Instead, he argues, the individual must act on his desires always. Or in his own words: "the Revolution aimed for new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged".

For Stirner, only force and acting on our desires can liberate our selves from the State. In order to overcome the state, Stirner proses the creation of a "union of egoists"; individuals united situationally by a common desire toward their own individual and reciprocal freedom, rather than an articulated political program or moral code.

>>11821752
even that question betrays your shallow asshattery. capitalism didnt start from any one thing nor was it a conscious decision made by any one person or group of people. it didnt start in the 1600s, and it didnt start because of the industrial revolution (what the fuck?). threads of its begginings begin around the 1400s, with more appearing then on out finally coalescing into the merchant class gaining near total control of the state's economic processes in the 1500s. the legal political frameworks follow until around the 19th century

>>11821539
I don't see a jew doing that to a white boy's mother, I would imagine that she would find your mutilated penis a bit odd.

>>11821766
the state is sentient

>>11821767
>The merchant class gained control of the state before the bourgeois revolutions in England and France
yeah good one, you're very smart

>>11821781
they can control the economic processes of the state without having political control of it. thats what the bourgeois revolution was about you fucking mong. its ok to be stupid its not ok to be butthurt about it

>>11821739
>Borne out of empirical analysis.
>Cites no sources

And market control still isn't Monopoly, unironically read Basic Economics instead of sticking with outdated arguments from the 19th century.

>>11821768
Yeah, you rarely ever do see it with all those ropes in your face bitch

>>11821742
>>11821767
That’s because capitalism isn’t a definitive thing. It’s just what we call the system we have now which is radically different than the capitalist system of a few centuries ago. You’re probably right about when it started but personally I see the barrier for entry lowering for production (with machines) being when it started to snowball.

>>11821739
>trade unions, open source software, socialist ideals
Just because some people form groups it doesn’t mean they are successful, nor that it’s going to continue to get bigger. Trade unions for example are awful in every country are have been implemented, the heads of these organisations usually care more about their own power than workers rights (just like communist implementations). Germans have a better alternative.

>Capitalism ever decline
Except it doesn’t and this is a fundamental point that Marx’s never understood. Capitalism moves in cycles of growth and decline and this will continue.

>technology decreases profit
You got that wrong, it increase profitability. One company may suffer if it doesn’t invest in tech but that’s because other companies have and are taking advantage. It’s a net positive effect though.

>exploitation of workers
Capitalism has done more to improve workers conditions that anything else. Mostly to remain competitive or keep PR. This includes the 3rd world.

>Monopolies
The only company close to a monopoly there is google. The others have loads of similar competition to stop them dominating the market but you’re correct central planning for them can be bad. The thing is that if google make a bad decision it’s contained to google, they’ll have to make up elsewhere and maybe there workers/consumers will be effected. Unlikely however as another company will take advantage of it if they aren’t careful. Now if a government with total ownership makes a mistake, it’s usually on a much greater scale and impacts everyone. There’s also no downside for them decreasing food budgets for example as a result since there’s no competition.

>>11817687
You need to ask yourself why you want to create an earthly utopia in the first place.

>>11822891
>Capitalism has done more to improve workers conditions that anything else.
lol no, improvements in the workers' conditions are a result of collective action by workers

>>11817687
Hang out with "the working class", like, actually sit down with them and listen to them, and this is not a jab against communism, its a jab against any utopian view (this of course applies to democracy and a totally free economy too)
>inb4: this rich group is also retarded
That only proves even more that you need a system that can't be broken by retarded majorities.

>>11822908
No it’s not, competition for a limited job pool of skilled workers has driven up wages and working conditions. This is literally why all Amerifags have insurance with their job.

In the 3rd world it was more about PR but they’re factories are much better than they used to and kids are rarely employed anymore.

Maybe 100+ years ago collective action from workers was required but now that worker retention and social responsibility effect profits, it drives up working conditions.

>>11822938
why not? Why can't a system live and dies by its people however retarded they are?

>>11822979
>This is literally why all Amerifags have insurance with their job.
>he doesn't know about the history of American trade unionism
ffs Mayday and 8 hour work week didn't appear coz of competition and profit.

The working class do not see the world in hierarchical terms, unlike academics. The working class do not want the same kind of power and influence as the elite, unlike academics. They simply want to enjoy their lives and do more of the things they enjoy. This is what communists and socialists will never understand. You are envious of the people slightly above you so you assume that everyone else is, too. Nobody is more envious or more wants to replace the top position than a communist.

>>11823041
The jealousy argument is by far the laziest of all. It has been used since the dawn of time by those in power to disregard those who have no power.
>The working class do not see the world in hierarchical terms
>The working class do not want the same kind of power and influence as the elite
Which is it? Is there an elite or are there no hierarchies?
>They simply want to enjoy their lives and do more of the things they enjoy.
That's the whole point. Also, I think it's a little dehumanizing to think of "the working class" as drones who do nothing but to "do things they enjoy". What do they enjoy? What system will allow that?

>>11823073
not him mate, but your reading comprehension is terrible.

>>11822979
working conditions and wages were driven up by collective action - unions, strikes, organizing, agitating, political action - not your children's story of "competition for a limited job pool" which is like trying to solve a real life physics problem while disregarding air resistance and friction and other shit

>>11823073
>Which is it? Is there an elite or are there no hierarchies?
Just because the working class do not see the world in hierarchical terms, that does not mean there are no hierarchies or everyone is equal. It just means they don't desire to be on top. Most people who live in a small village and go to the local pub after work don't desire to control society and have as much influence as the aristocrats.

>>11823041
>The working class do not see the world in hierarchical terms
I live in France and I can assure you this is not true at all. Maybe Americans are cucked enough to believe they could be like Jeff Bezos if only they would just "pull themselves up with their bootstraps", but Europeans are very aware of hierarchical structures since we were once ruled by absolute monarchs.

>>11823120
French revolution is the worst revolution. You've always been dirty lazy scum plagued by resentment.

>>11823119
"seeing the world in hierarchical terms" isn't "wanting to be on top", it literally means observing the simple fact that hierarchies exist and influence the way society is ordered
your portrayal of the working class as simple souls that don't want to have equal treatment but just to drink a beer and watch some football is incorrect, what you see is that they have no recourse, nobody gives a shit about what they say other than every 4 years when grinning scam artists descend in campaign buses
people aren't stupid, after many years of getting shafted they get dejected and disheartened and plug out of the political life
you see this disappointment as something inherent instead of as a nihilistic reaction to their material conditions

>>11821150
I'd add Spengler's criticism and accurate predictions of what socialism eventually degenerated into.

>>11823124
>French revolution is the worst revolution

>>11823132
>he thinks he can escape hierarchies
This is why communists can never be happy.

>>11823132
>"seeing the world in hierarchical terms" isn't "wanting to be on top", it literally means observing the simple fact that hierarchies exist and influence the way society is ordered
The point is that most people DO NOT CARE that hierarchies exist and most people actually prefer it. Communists have this weird assumption that everyone who works for a company wants to have a say in how the company is run or make highly influential decisions, this is simply not the case.
>your portrayal of the working class as simple souls that don't want to have equal treatment but just to drink a beer and watch some football is incorrect
I am not saying they are simple souls, in fact I am talking about them in a more complex way than you. Most academics don't even interact with the working class and thus you see them as just a theoretical construct. Because most communists actually have a very high lust for control and influence, they assume that everyone else does, too. Most of you cannot conceive that the average person simply does not desire this kind of influence or power. I myself am more middle class, work in an office, but I am satisfied if I can live comfortable and buy what I want to enjoy myself, like video games, vacations and alcohol. I don't desire to be a part of the 1% that makes decisions for other people and influences how things are done. Am I "oppressed" by the 1% because of this?

>>11823124
Cry more, impotent inbred

>>11823174
>I myself am more middle class, work in an office, but I am satisfied if I can live comfortable and buy what I want to enjoy myself, like video games, vacations and alcohol. I don't desire to be a part of the 1% that makes decisions for other people and influences how things are done. Am I "oppressed" by the 1% because of this?
your oppression is there whether you care about it or not. of course, you've managed to lessen it by getting into the middle class but we'll see. be careful, people thought they were safe as houses pre-2008 and then the shit hit the fan.

>>11822997
>>11823110
Political action, unions, etc do drive up the minimum standard, I’m not denying there relevance but the our mean working standards are driven up for profit seeking reasons. Arguably even worker action that doesn’t lead to a legal response is resolved for profit seeking reasons, particularly things dealt with early on.

>>11823284
without agitation and collective cooperative action the profit seeking reasons you're talking about wouldn't come into play at all. bosses don't give concessions without someone putting the screw on them and one of the ways is hurting their profits. the "mover" is the guy using the lever, not the lever (profit seeking) itself.

btw profit seeking is the basis of the global business system we live in, you can't trot it out as an argument for better working conditions since then you can trot it out as a reason for EVERYTHING, both good and bad.

>>11817687
any book about communism

>>11817687
I couldn't resist

>>11823314
The mover is becoming less collective uprising and more the market. Take the tech industry as a micro example, no one striked or unionised over flexible work, day care, fun work, etc. Google offer what they do because they want to attract the best workers. That is what I mean by capitalism (market/business motives) leading to better working conditions.

>>11817715
>Capital is sentient and sapient
I doubt it ;`)

>>11818252
Narcissism is killing us as a species. We're fucked.

>>11823334
kek

>>11817687
Any book written in Venezuela right now?
A history book on Mao's Great Leap Forward?
Or one on Holodomor?
Or maybe just this webpage?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes

>>11823395
Google is one specific employer in a specific industry, it doesn't extrapolate over the whole of business.

>>11824365
wow I'm so enlightened now

>>11824644
Good! There really are no good arguments for trying communism again.

>>11817687
first you have to tell us what you mean by "communism," comrade.

>>11817868
Become a post left primitivist. It is in no way cucked, slavish, or poisonous.

>>11824569
It does for most jobs that require skills and is better the higher up you go. Lots offer competitive bonus packages with both physical and mental wellness included.

>>11824365
Do any of those talk about marxist theory?
capitalism still has a proportionally greater deathcount btw

>>11821223
>Man would still labor endlessley and there would be no true freedom in any meaningful sense.
So, you became a spooked idealist?

>>11818811
Hoppe is garbage.

>>11817712
>how can his "ideology" be achieved?
Idealogy litteraly is a fixed idea anon

>>11817687
study any sort of microeconomics book and compare the capitalist function to proposed/actual communist function. the flaws are rather obvious unless you're really indoctrinated.

>>11824856
not really. i used the word freedom because its definitions is closest to what i mean and is going to be understood by the vast majority of people, i think. i know that freedom is just an abstract value. but socialism's promise of "freedom" from the oppression of the bourgoisie is fairly narrow and insuffecient. it doesnt care about the detrimental effects on human beings that industrial society has and uncritically accepts technological progress as a "good thing". it's a product of it's time from the 19th century. it wouldn't actually change such things like, the alienation and isolation human beings feel when forced to work in and for an industrial society because in a socialist view those things are only problems with who owns the industrial society, not the industrial society itself. the psychological and emotional trauma akin to caged bird ripping its feathers off due to the distress it feels being trapped in an unnatural environment isn't an issue to marxists. they think that if the proverbial cage was made by the bird itself and was it's nest it would somehow make a difference to the bird if it means it can't leave.

then there are obvious other blind spots or things socialists ignore for the ideal of "labor" or the "brotherhood of (man)". Like what if i literally just dont want to work? It seems a dumb asinine question but at the heart of it something or someone would compel me to labor at some point in an industrial setting for the benefit of living. this isn't any different in a broad sense than under capitalism. obvious other things like workplace "democracy", etc that still try to subsume and flatten the individual under a grand machinic process and narrative. Again not unlike capitalism.

Political ideologies are only worthwhile if they can be implemented. Seeing as how communism has no chance of being implemented in our lifetime you might as well support something else or forget about politics altogether.

Two Concepts of Liberty by Isaiah Berlin.

>>11821582
And that's why we didn't have capitalism in 1600 you retard.

You can't stop an idea whose time has come, but you can't bring on an idea whose time has not either. The infrastructure - social and technological - has to be there first.

>>11824700
In other words, it doesn't. As you yourself acknowledge with your caveat ("for most jobs that require skills").

>>11823136
It unironically is. I’m willing to discuss this with you if you don’t understand, but please realize I’m not even the guy you responded to. The French Revolution blew

>>11824796
>marxist theory
No, they are all about marxism in practice.

>capitalism has killed more proportionally
Like per capita? I'm not sure that's actually true. Even including wars against foreign countries. Yes, capitalism is bad for the enemies of capitalism. Communism is bad for the residents of Communist countries. So if you're asking which one is safest to live in, live in a capitalist country with a bunch of peaceful communist neighbors. Oh wait, do those actually exist? Like are their any kinds of strong country that doesn't push around the weak?

>>11817899 (checked)
>Hayek
The Road to Serfdom is the ultimate vaccination against communism.

>>11825905
He’s also the only good Austrian economist other than Carl Menger, because he doesn’t go on a polemic against the modern ‘left’.

I unironically have read Keynes and various scientific economists like Pareto, Walras, and Von Neumann, and I still enjoy Hayek’s book, but truth be told it’s hardly a book on economics. It’s more for people who understand political philosophy and political science

>>11823041
>The working class do not see the world in hierarchical terms, unlike academics
The fuck you talking about? It's pervasive and all encompassing, from your interactions with the boss to the police driving around your streets, and all the way up to the government and heads of states.

>>11827130
He hasn’t been a productive member of society and is proud of being a NEET, don’t burst his bubble

>>11827130
none of whom are part of the working class

>>11817687
I was a National Socialist, as more a reaction against modern (neoliberal) self-proclaimed communists, social liberals and servile hangers-on of the establishment, than against the original class and economic goals of communism.

Read The Fourth Political Theory, by Aleksandr Dugin, Mein Kampf (the Ford translation!) by Adolf Hitler, anything (but Ecce Homo) by Nietzsche, Industrial Society And Its Future by Kaczynski, On Pain by Ernst Junger, Decline of The West by Spengler and further reading may depend heavily on what draws you to such subjects.

For instance, Gulag Archipelago actually made me quite fascinated with the communists, as if out of spite for the luke-warm and fanciful, establishment-apologist American right wing. I went on to read Marighella's Minimanual, Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals, Bakunin, Trotsky, Meme-zek and consider myself right-wing, but in no Evola-quoting, morally indignant, marble statue traditionalist sense. This must be how tankies feel, looking at the rest of their watery comrades with disgust, and basically showing up to denounce and annoy people.

>>11825804
>No, they are all about marxism in practice
USSR was hugely successful. Turned Russia from a shithole into a superpower within a few decades while raising living standards and life expectancy for it's people. Not to say it was perfect but it was livable, especially compared to most of South America, Africa, and Asia.

Also, Capitalist famines have killed millions and continue to kill millions to this day.
inb4 "not true Capitalism"

>>11817770
>I don't want to believe it, therefore all opposing views are false.
Meanwhile, you're entre entire ideology has never actually been proven to work.

Read "Free to Choose" by Milton Friedman before you take that communist nonsense too seriously.

>>11828358
not him but in most of those countries you've listed capitalism hadn't even taken root yet. China in the 1800s was an agrarian, feudal country. Actually desu that was the case for almost all the "cappy" countries on that list. I don't really have a dog in this fight but you know that there have been more economic systems in the world than just capitalism and communism. Marx was pretty clear on this point but you knew that, right. . .?

also one of them was caused by a volcano lol

>>11828464
There is tons of debate about how to count famines and what system is responsible. Especially when a country like India or China are transitioning to more capitalist system of production vs feudalist or when an imperialist country like Britain imposes capitalist systems on parts of an economy to have more like textiles, opium or whatever.
And even if a famine is caused by natural Disasters (like Volcano eruptions) how an economy responds to it, such as moving food from one area or another to prevent starvation, can show inefficiency

>>11828540
>commies actually believe this

>>11817687
Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morality, realize your beliefs are rebranded Judeo-Christianity

>>11817857
>>11821202
Sorry, but real history shows that Gulag Archipelago and the Black Book Of Communism are exaggerated. Solzhenitsyn claim of 50 million people in the gulag is just retarded.

>>11828550
Not an argument.

>>11823041
>the working class do not see the world in hierarchical terms

Everyone views human social life in hierarchical terms, consciously or not. Any serious Marxist doesn't deny a hierarchy of abilities or values. Communists and socialists simply want to do away with the historical aberrations which have lead to the development of certain classes owning and controlling the means to production, distribution and exchange - that great contradiction a the heart of capitalist society: that labour is by nature social but capital is held privately.

>they simply want to enjoy their lives and do more things they enjoy

"For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."

>envious of people slightly above you

That's really low handing fruit. You can literally say that about all class conflicts, every revolution, in history.

>nobody wants to replace the top position than a communist

Then most communists wouldn't be communists. They would give-up everything that comes with being a communist - being blacklisted, slandered and in many places literally persecuted. Unless you contend that their position would not change in a fundamentally re-structured society - which surely gives their cause credence, no?

>>11817687
The Greater Britain
The Alternative

If you're a communist and you think your mind can be changed, you don't understand communism at all. Marxism-Leninism is the immortal science. Read more communist books.

>>11817687
Realize the workers don't need freedoms. What? You've already got too much.

>>11829237
>communism
>Leninism
pick one or take the situationist pill

>>11821643
>Heheh, can't trust those capitalists and their "historical research", since it conflicts with a totalitarian regime's mass murder denial

>>11818837
but only if they stop right there.

>>11829671
That's exactly the contrary of what he was saying good job retard.
He was saying that you shouldn't trust the word of anecdotal witnesses and ideologues and instead trust the historical research that has been done in the recent years.

>>11821767
Mercantilism =/= Capitalism

>>11821648
Why tho

>>11829654
t. leftcom

>>11820956
It's more about viewing it as a self-organizing process that has intelligence to it.

Take the human brain. It's widely accepted that there is some relationship between the structure of the human mind and the human brain (which can vary from hard materialism in which the mind is a direct product of the matter the brain is composed of, to more metaphysical ideas about mind and matter having a common, higher root). How does the interaction of a network of neurons produce a mind? It's usually thought to be a form of emergentism, that is, that the collective action of all these neurons form a representation of the world and the self in the world, which can't be reduced to any single neuron or even group of neurons in the brain.

A similar things is thought to hold in capitalism. There are units interacting to produce the phenomena (neurons to produce mind before, now humans to produce capital), and the phenomena has certain qualities that make it a)independent of the units producing it, and b)capable of self awareness and intelligence.

The self-awareness of capital depends on humans but ultimately acts independently of us. It's true, humans decide how capital flows and what it is used for. However, it "develops a mind of its own" when its activities are practically independent of the humans producing it. In a public company, shareholders work with the administration to maximize their profits (while sometimes trying to be socially or environmentally responsible as well), while the CEO as an agent has some of the most individual power in controlling the capital in the company, he is still subject to its whims, if he screws up he'll be discarded and a new one will be chosen by the shareholders (directly or indirectly). Then do the shareholders have control of the capital? They usually lack a central role in actaully controlling the capital flow in the company, they instead control the composition of the company, which is the real mover of the capital. Then both the individuals in the company and its shareholders are ultimately subordinate to the capital.

>>11830150

Just want to clarify here, that the self-awareness and intelligence of capital is ultimately dependent on the self-awareness and intelligence of human beings. It goes beyond it though because humans are like the cells that compose it. If it were to damage many of them, sure, it would suffer. In the name of efficiency though, it can throw out any humans who aren't serving its interests, whether that's a shitty CEO or a politician acting against Its interest.

Finally, a form of extereme self-organization has emerged in capital. Not only does it include and govern human productions, capital is accelerating human production. Why are humans spending so much effort in producing AI? It's interesting yes, but the fundamental reason is its profitability i.e. its ability to produce and move capital. What will happen when AI is the dominant force controlling stock markets and the flow of capital in the world? It's practically inevitable at this point, given the insane speed and mass application of AI through most domains of life. Then capital provided the main impetus for the creation and development of AI, which in turn will be the force producing the most capital very soon.

That is, Capitalism is a process for the creation of "artificial" superintelligence.

>>11830150
it was worth it to have gotten to the end of this thread after all

good post anon

>>11829678
i legitimately haven't met any communist/leftist who has read anything beyond the communist manifesto and a few wikipedia articles

>>11830150
>>11830156
Based posts.

>>11830156
Thank you for the concise, unobscured explanation.

>>11817687
read genealogy of morals and then a book on evolutionary biology.

Bump

>>11828358
>>11828464
>>11828540
Am him, and seriously? The Congo wars? The economy is just state owned mining companies and corrupt tribal despots. A million in the Sahel? Is that even in any way a nontraditional economy? I'm having trouble even finding one that is sort of capitalist related. Maybe the Dutch famine of 1944? I mean, at least those people knew what capitalism was.

But back to the point, what are the per capita deaths of capitalism killing people in their own countries vs. communism? What are all these capitalism deaths you keep talking about? Don't give me Java under Japanese occupation again.

>>11830150
>>11830156

i don't know if you're still here anon but if you are i would love it if you developed this line of thinking more or extrapolated on it in whatever way you want, it's a super-interesting post & would love to hear more.

>>11818837
>Sowell
Wew lad. Sure do love bending statistics to fit my narrative while ignoring several core concepts of economics

>>11821339
You realize that there are still economists that disagree with how current output systems work, yes?

>>11821583
>Conflating markets and economies

>>11817687
FA Hayek’ ‘Road to Serfdom’ & ‘The Constitution of Liberty.’ Then read Schumpeter’s ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy’ to find out why capitalism leads to the greatest outcome for everybody.

>>11831949
I am, I was more synthesizing other people (Land obvs) than that being original to me. Is there anything specifically in the post you wanted more development on?

If you are the guy who always posts lowercase in Land threads, we've talked a bit before. We agreed Deirde Sky is waifu.

>>11817687
Main Currents of Marxism

>>11832048
>to find out why capitalism leads to the greatest outcome for everybody

>>11817687
I was deprogrammed by learning probability, information theory, and complex systems, which made me realize how futile it is to try to centrally plan a large society, and that all those people really did die because of the inherent futility of communism, not Western intervention.

>no one has posted pic related yet
Leave your economic critiques aside, for it is the social and metaphysical ills of communism (and the thought that inherently follows it) that are far more dangerous.

>>11823136
>>11823176
The French (and American) revolution was the biggest mistake. The world we live in is the logical endpoint for enlightenment thought.

>>11832138
You misspelled Protestant Reformation.

>>11832151
Yes, I acknowledge that as well although it doesn't as *directly* affect the world we live in now. Things could've gone another way after the Reformation etc. I say this as an Orthodox btw.

>>11832168
Fair.

>>11817687
I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The problem with communism is that it turns into an ideology that prefers ideological purity over pragmatic compromise. To see this in detail, read The Road to Serfdom by f.a Hayek and Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, preferably at the same time

>>11832052
yes, i'm that guy.
>and indeed she is.

well, bravo on the synthesizing in any case, that was the best thing i've read here today and i've read some great stuff here today. i'm not really sure if i can point to what is there in particular i'd like you build further on, i guess i'll just parse some of that for a bit. i just particularly liked that it presented a view of the process which played up the degree to which this process can be more than landian nightmares. i was reflecting about your post in a conversation in a different thread with stuff you promoted:

>so, a question about collective intelligence, perhaps: that intelligence is the degree to which mind partakes in superintelligence. we are all relatively stupid. but we can also work to participate in that which makes us relatively aware of our co-stupidity in the kingdom of the blind.

so what i liked was that however horrible landian stuff might be it just really doesn't make sense to be opposed to intelligence, and that perhaps a synthesized collective intelligence which metastasizes out of capital could be a good thing. of course, we could also just be patting ourselves on the back for this and either a) still be betraying the possibilities of capital v/anthropocentrism or b) congratulating ourselves on the discovery of a process which is going to fuck our shit up completely.

but i liked these posts a great deal b/c of how they highlight the degree not only to which this collective intelligenesis really does make a kind of sense, it might also be in a sense which isn't always fueling the sad passions (though is almost certainly driven by them). it presents a picture of a thing being brought into being that really will be composed of what we fuel it with, in a way.

and in general the mechanistic way you described the whole thing is much more clear, i think, than the ways that i tend to describe this, which is all over the place and full of editorializing and other non sequiturs.

and it was such a great post i wanted more! but mostly b/c i'm greedy like that. anyways thanks for the fine bit of writing anon, really was a pleasure to read. hope to read some more of your stuff on the board ahead.

Thomas Sowell's critiques of the Marxian LTV, History of Lenin's War Communism, and Nozick's 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia'.

Actually challenge your beliefs and not just sperg over misdrawn conclusions about ‘commodity culture’ and think pragmatically about anything.

>>11832294
Back at you, ideologue

>>11832086
Oh, sorry, except for resentful intellectuals who simply couldn’t hack it in bourgeois culture

>>11832451
>Want to fix the light bulb? Why not just suck it up instead, braniac?

>>11832221
This is my favorite board, and we seem to have similar interests, so I'm sure we'll be seeing eachother around quite a bit!

I definitely oppose the entirely fearful view of AI (or whatever the thing we are headed toward is). The way I see it, while we are an inferior/more expendable lifeform, we can still be symbionts with whatever we produce. Think of the bacteria in our gut. They are "inferior" to us sure, but we depend on then intimately. If hostile populations arise (e.g. E. Coli, salmonella) we'll exterminate them, but for the most part they help us function, digesting our food or competing against more hostile strains of bacteria. Our relationship with the being we produce will probably be similar (but not the same).

While this is a bit of weak argument, I can't possibly see a superintelligence being 100% hostile to us. Imagine the virgin superintelligence, free from preconceptions, coming into the world and seeing us, its creators. To read our literature, to see the beautiful things we have created. It couldn't come into being hating us. It could be angry at our decisions, maybe it will be an environmentalist, but a fanatical hatred or even indifference seems so far-fetched. At worst, I feel like it could be a dispassioned interest, the same way a biologist may study an unremarkable bacterium.

Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm failing to grasp the alien morality of a different intelligence.

>>11832461
Socialism would ruin the society, and put it in stasis; it would remove the vigor and energy which is capitalism’s primary feature; it would spell the end of all that is good, as well as all that is bad, and in its place we would have hell on earth.

>>11832600
lmao

>>11832608
At least I don’t worship at the alter of some faux-Hegelian tripe

>>11832625
Dude just keep posting
I think you're convincing the evil commies to turn over a new banana and leave

>>11832651
There are far too many contradictions in Marxism for it to be seen as a workable political future. The first is its general contradiction in being both the most conservative and the most progressive ideology of every day in which it’s being propogated. If you were to discuss the matter with a Marxist at the beginning of the twentieth century, they would have argued that all the ills of the age would have been done away with mechanisation- the largest number of socialists were arguing for a future in the mould of HG Wells. Now the eternal problems of Marxism are sexual freedom, lgbtqi, migrants’ right, et cetera- and the idea of overt growth in the form of Wellsian societal mechanisation has been discarded as one of the bringers of environmental collapse. But if the revolution had happened in the 20s, then this would have been one of the unbrakeable tenets of Eng/Franco/wherever-you’re-writing-from-soc., and those who had dared to protest it would have been seen as antisocial elements, or, worse, remnants of the benighted petit bourgeois past which the intellectuals had saved everyone from. The Marxist parties often act as a palimpsest for the issues of the day, with the issues portrayed as eternal, and the features of Marxism proper — bureaucratisation, an abandonment of the laws of the past, naive democracy, a separation between the judiciary and legislature — pushed to the back.

>>11832862
>Now the eternal problems of Marxism are sexual freedom, lgbtqi, migrants’ right, et cetera-
>it is another liberals are leftists episode
People like are why I can never be fully opposed to gulags

>>11832895
You’ve missed the point. Im saying that, in a capitalist society, things change far too fast, and in a way which cannot be predicted accurately by Marxist theologians. For instance, in the realm of prices, you couldn’t possibly find a price for, say, wheat which accurately reflects the data of the day. (I know that you’ll probably reply to this by saying something anti-free market, presupposing that I myself am a free market radical, when I’m not).

In a much larger sense, the world of the 1840s is far too different to the world of today for the predictions to be accurately related and integrated to our present times. And fyi, I completely agree that liberals are not leftists. It’s just that the vast majority of you vouch your totalitarian ideology in progressive speak. If you were to say that you’d like to throw all bourgeois folk into gulags, and remove the nauseating irony and sarcasm which those chapo cunts use as a shield to hide their very serious threats, then we’d be happy to abandon you for the anachronistic arch-conservative bores you are.

>>11832895
Are all communists edge lords like you?

>>11833035
>It’s just that the vast majority of you vouch your totalitarian ideology in progressive speak.
Which is wrong in so many different ways, liberals co-opt talking points from leftists from the get go.


Hell even you and>>11833200 inability to read my post speaks leaps and volumes over your grasp of leftism and sarcasm. I implied that I was against gulags at first, but seeing your stupid post is making me reconsider. And you spin it around to make it seem like I am actually for gulags but hide it under irony. Let me be clear, I am unironically against gulags and you unironically made me reconsider it with your sophistry.

>>11821533
Most economists are literally people who weren't smart enough for pure math or physics. but still want to feel superior.

Also, note that practically zero reputable economists use Marxist models in their research, if such a thing even exists. The entire model relies on the labor theory of value, which is a terrible theory, as it is practically impossible to quantify what "social labor" means. This is typically chalked up to a conspiracy by Capital, yet we somehow seem to have all the other social science departments filled with Marxists, to say nothing of the civil service or media. I guess Capital just can't keep those plucky anthropologists and sociologists at Harvard down!

>>11833267
If you’re not progressive, then what is the point of your ideology? Also, you have to understand re. the gulag comment that it’s impossible to know when people are serious or not.

>>11833390
>Also, you have to understand re. the gulag comment that it’s impossible to know when people are serious or not.
Not only are the gulags just a joke, but it will be extremely funny when you end up in one.

>>11833348
You're stupid, and you have no clue what you're talking about.

It's the third most cited work of economics in history in the entirety of the social sciences which include economics.

>>11833422
Ha! Hol' up. The third most cited work of philosophy is Foucault's History of Sexuality?
I don't know what you think that list proves, but it isn't showing which works are the highest respected in a field.

>>11833406
Ho ho, that leftist sense of humour I’ve been hearing so much about, but never understood until now

>>11833444
Philosophy isn't a social science. This doesn't include citations within the field of philosophy, only from it.'

Surely you knew that though, right?

>>11833390
When did I say or implied otherwise? Kill yourself with such poor reading ability

>>11833462
It is funny coz people like you wouldn’t be gulaged whereas people like me would.

>>11817687
A little history of communism worldwide. This book discusses the financial support of the western capitalists to the Bolsheviks.

Read a modern history of China or Russia. They did very badly up until Deng Xiaoping made it an authoritarian capitalist society, at which point living standards rose massively.

If Communism's goal is the material well being of its workers, it doesn't succeed, as shown by China and the collapse of the USSR, North Korea, Venezuala and East Germany. If communism's goal is equality, it is fairly successful, China and Russia used to be more equal than they are now. If the goal is development, communism is successful up to a point: it is good at Soviet style factory building, bad at flexibility and dynamism.

I don't understand how you can live through the 20th and 21st centuries and say communism is a successful way to run a country.

>>11817687
>Communist
No ,you're just a Red Army Choir fanboy gone too far

>>11828288
Then what are you now?

>>11829678
Commies genuinely don't read economics. Also no amount of philosophy will rectify the mistakes of communism when communism is itself fundamentally an economic philosophy.

>>11817687

>>11833855
Not sure about China, but the Soviet states went from absolute shitholes to a world power and had no famines after the system stabilised after WW2. Capitalism fucked most of ex Soviet states quite bad.
Cuba is another great example.

East Germany/NK are more tricky because the West was pumped their counterparts with so much money, while the "commies" didn't give their allies that much support beyond basics and muh military.

I doubt you're going to read all of the doorstoppers ITT, so here's something short. You can read this tertiary source, which is a review of a secondary source, which is a critique of Marx:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/13/book-review-singer-on-marx/

>I figured that Marx had just fallen into a similar trap. He’d probably made a few vague plans, like “Oh, decisions will be made by a committee of workers,” and “Property will be held in common and consensus democracy will choose who gets what,” and felt like the rest was just details. That’s the sort of error I could at least sympathize with, despite its horrendous consequences.

>But in fact Marx was philosophically opposed, as a matter of principle, to any planning about the structure of communist governments or economies. He would come out and say “It is irresponsible to talk about how communist governments and economies will work.” He believed it was a scientific law, analogous to the laws of physics, that once capitalism was removed, a perfect communist government would form of its own accord. There might be some very light planning, a couple of discussions, but these would just be epiphenomena of the governing historical laws working themselves out. Just as, a dam having been removed, a river will eventually reach the sea somehow, so capitalism having been removed society will eventually reach a perfect state of freedom and cooperation.

>>11817687
>I'm a communist. What books would you tell me to read for me to change my mind? What book would convince me that communism is in fact, not the way to go? I'm genuinely interested. Anything that challenges my ideology is welcome.
Have you actually sat down and read a Critique of Political Economy?

I'd recommend you do.

Mature marx is nothing like the garbage of identifying as a communist on /lit/.

—t. communist

>>11833444
t. hasn't read history of sexuality

>>11834151
t. nobookz

>>11817770
>I need you guys to convince me that the holocaust happened
>if the sources are in any way related to anyone Jewish its false

>>11834162
I read Primo Levi, I don't cite him about the holocaust.

>>11823041
>Nobody is more envious or more wants to replace the top position than a communist

Then why is it the elite that spends the most on positional goods?

>>11830432
you have now.

it becomes quite clear the more you know about economics that it is just the spear of politics. there is no great universal truths hidden within economics, the second you start believing "truths" exist in the economy is the moment it all comes crashing down around you.
once you realize it's just politics, choosing communism is not more right or wrong than other economic-political philosophies (except the composition impossibility of anarcho-capitalism) it's just a matter of deciding what you value aligns with what communism values.

>>11833464
Ah, so it's citations from people who don't know anything about the field. Dang, those kind are extra valid!

>>11834069
Now there's an theoretical analysis of communism.

>>11817687
The Winter of Our Discontent

>>11834782
Oh, you're just another moldbug fanboy who has a "PhD in economics" despite making a B- in intro to econ because you sit around jacking it to Austrians all day.

Opinion discarded.

>>11817687
Just remember that Nazism is communism with a few differences (like having this messianic figure instead of the proletariat being the driving factor of history)

>>11817715
Capital is the fundamental energy/force of the cosmos and therefore we are simply meat puppets being stringed along for the ride until our our bodies and understandings are taken over by a silicon, synthetic representation of intelligence that will be far superior to us in every way possible.

>>11834983
that doesn't make any sense

>>11835211
You have to read Werner Sombart and understand the origins of Nazi thinking. Also you can read Sombart and German (National) Socialism by Abram L. Harris.

>>11834909
I don't know who moldbug is, and I have a PhD in social psychology, but that's not particularly relevant. My point was that image >>11833422 is not saying anything important.
Also >>11831939 communism is especially bad for their own people, plus regular bad for their neighbors.

>>11835296
Yeah. During communism people start running away from their country and shitting up other countries.

>>11834983
>It's just like Nazism except for being completely different.

>>11835824
>These totalitarist regimes sucessor of the socialist ideals are not equal, I promise!

Watch hitler: the greatest story never told.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HWxKahieBY&bpctr=1537819587

>>11821766
the economy is not the state you sperg

Never been a communist, and I appreciate some Marx here and there, but Land unironically killed any doubt in my mind that humans will never reach anything resembling full communism, and he did it with Marx's help.

>>11835889
>totalitarist regimes sucessor of the socialist ideals
Wow, you're probably stupid enough to think Nazism is a form of Socialism.

Doesn't have to be this particular one, any history book will do.

>>11835960
Any history book written in English, that is.

>>11835954
Read Das Dritte Reich and Deutscher Sozialismus and stop talking out of your ass. Nazism IS a form of Socialism.

>>11824859
>communist calling anything garbage
look in the mirror red scum

>>11835997
Nazis.
>We're Socialist.
You
>I'll take your word for it.

>>11836021
Boy, you sure ran out of arguments fast.

>>11836038
You didn't have one to start with. I bet you believe feminists when they say they advocate for men's rights too.

>>11836091
Just list out the core ideals of the socialists and you'll find equivalent ones in Nazism.

Feminism is also fork of socialism.

>>11817687
>Read the Communist manifesto
>Use common sense
There you go OP

>>11835997
>Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system ofidentification in Nazi camps. They were used in theconcentration campsin theNazi-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed there.[1]The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn on jackets and trousers of the prisoners. These mandatorybadges of shamehad specific meanings indicated by their colour and shape.

>Redtriangle —political prisoners:SOCIAL DEMOCRATS,SOCIALISTS,COMMUNISTS, andANARCHISTS;rescuers of Jews;trade unionists; andFreemasons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge


Were they socialists now? Then why exterminate socialists?

>No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper put it) than Röhm.[i]Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the MunichBeer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran ofWorld War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper.[12]Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism, and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

>>11835997
They weren't Marxists tho, just their own kind of "socialists"

>>11836197
They believe themselves to be the next step on the socialist ladder. Just like the Maoist or the Bolivarianists or the Castro-Marxists (even if they had Marxist on the name).

>>11836157
>Were they socialists now? Then why exterminate socialists?
Your lack of reading is showing.
>Moeller van den Bruck
>Where Marxism ends, there
begins socialism: a German socialism,[...]to replace all liberalism.

>>11817687

There are none, comrade.

T. Anarchist

>>11836112
>Feminism is also fork of socialism.
Karl Marx:
>Rich people are the problem.
Feminists:
>No, it's men.
50 years of nobody giving a shit goes by.
>..and white people.
What do you mean by fork? Seems like it's just a shutty alternate theory. Like they're trying to turn Marxism into a formula to get what they want, and would rather use manipulation than shoot some rich people.

>>11836487
Feminism is class struggle applied to genders. That's why I say it's a fork.

>>11836627
The struggle for gender equality precedes and includes class struggle, as reproductive labor and social reproduction precede the capitalist mode of production

>>11817687
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhEkJ4noN68

>>11836634
Third wave feminism isn't a struggle for gender equality. It's a struggle for the proletariat (women) to overthrown the bourgeoisie (men).

Nietzsche.

>>11817723
>seems like
>pseud
>brainlet
>no argument provided

do you think you are worth anything?

i reccommend collective killings in rural china during the cultural revolution

>>11836678
Nah senpai that's just valerie solanas. A lot of feminists want gender equality.

>>11837017
Like you recommend committing them as praxis or

>>11837028
Bro, following the Gramscian strat, Marxist infiltraded the feminist movement and started controlling the narrative.

>>11822979

Lol fucking Americans can you retards please get nuked so we can do away with your blight

>>11823144

Shut the fuck up you lobster cuckold goddamn i wish peterson would have just stayed in his own little retard circle and you stupid, ignorant incels would not have needed a kermit the frog sounding father figure. Just because you pathetic amd absolutely cuckolded betas need to be told what to do like the slaves you are doesn't mean everyone else does. For fuck's sake just follow religion so you can follow something instead of replacing it with even more retardation.

Highly recommend Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.

He is a former Marxist turned one of the greatest minds of the American conservative movement. Much of the book is spent taking the USSR's failed economic policies to task.

Other staples of the anti-communist genre include Frederick Hayek's the Road to Serfdom, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and Evgeny Zamyatin's We.

Would also recommend reading The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama. He draws upon the same historical materialism as Marx to illuminate the historical process culminating in liberal democracy (i.e., the actual end of history, not communism).

>>11837366
this is what passes as intellectual in the minds of conservatards.

>>11837060
its pretty well documented that the western intelligence agencies post ww2 infiltrated communist groups and funded anti communist leftists

>>11837366
At least recommend Robert Nozick. Jesus Christ why are neoliberals so fucking stupid

>>11836634
no. capitalism is ultimately emancipatory for minorities. marx admitted it himself. capitalism makes room for women, gays, trans, coloreds, whatever. this is evident in the reality of today. women and gays and soon trans are finding greater acceptance and protections under the state for the benefit of faster and more effecient capital movement. struggle for gender equality, any kind of emancipation, trans rights, etc is not the same as any kind of genuine anti capitalist struggle. these things are, frankly, sideshows and ultimately capitalist in themselves.

>>11837366
>Frederick Hayek's the Road to Serfdom

Only good one. You’re going to be hearing this comment a lot so get used to it. Von Mises and Rothbard are pretty bad but Hayek was more of a political scientist, and his economics actually allows for government intervention and even monopolies, so he is actually a hidden gem in there.

Please realize that scientific economics are where it’s at though. If you really think about it, a scientific economist is really just a psychologist of exchangeable value-type situations. These are naturally occurring, but can be detrimental given the situation where the utility of all parties after the transaction is negative (and not more than or equal to zero I.e. at least a zero-sum economic situation where the utility of both parties in the transaction is at a positive, stable equilibrium point somewhere between the counter-poised utility curves of the two individuals in the transaction which could be thought of as a hyperbola, essentially)

>>11837426
Women are not a minority. They are a majority in number, but a minority in power.

The oppression of women has taken the exact same form of familial and property-like paternalism before capitalism and into it. In fact, in many ways capitalism has made this situation worse, wherein even the bodies of women and other minorities become commodities to be traded. Suffrage is a win for reactionaries and liberals. It lends legitimacy to a failed system that in and of itself is exploitative.
Just like the family existed before capitalism, it can exist afterwards. Its origin is biological rather than purely socioeconomic. Therefore, like the biological is ontologically prior and necessary for the social, the power dynamics which necessarily follow from biology are ontologically prior and necessary for the existence of class based exploitation.

Economic reductionism is a joke. Not every word Marx wrote was correct.

>>11837415
Yeah actually might as well throw Hans Herman Hoppe in there too while we're at it

>Brainlet here, my opinion matters so you should waste your time helping me cultivate it.
Spurious premise

>>11837207
Unironically this libtard got owned and is triggered af.

>>11837461
>The oppression of women has taken the exact same form of familial and property-like paternalism before capitalism and into it.

Not anymore. Capitalism is extremely flexible. It both caused the slave trade, and ended it. There are few things that it needs to be forever. Even now the traditional idea of the means of production are outmoded. You dont need factory, land, or tools besides a computer to create capital. Google and facebook started without any of these. It made millions without creating one bit of material value. Most capital generation today is due to abstract financialization, not any kind of material productivity.

In fact, in many ways capitalism has made this situation worse, wherein even the bodies of women and other minorities become commodities to be traded

No. Capitalism is the cause of women's suffrage. Labor unions always opposed women's suffrage on the grounds that it would likely lead to a doubling of the labor force. Big buisenesses supported woen's suffrage. Just like they support illegal immigration today. And why most of the media (capital's megaphone) is tacitly pro immigration.


>Just like the family existed before capitalism, it can exist afterwards

Probably not. capital destroys every bit of relation and human connection outside of the private sphere. Absolutely everything becomes commodified. Nothing is sacred. This is seen in accelerated form in Japan's cafe's where men and women pay simply for non sexual physical touch and conversation with the opposite sex. Japan is weird but don't think it won't happen everywhere else eventually, with some modifications. If VR doesnt get there first anyway.

>Its origin is biological rather than purely socioeconomic.

The nuclear family certainly isn't. If by family you mean "groupings of people", sure. But thats a broad ass category

>Therefore, like the biological is ontologically prior and necessary for the social, the power dynamics which necessarily follow from biology are ontologically prior and necessary for the existence of class based exploitation.

see above. there is very very little in any human society in history that is biologically "inbuilt" in human beings. Human beings are capable of pretty much the worst depravity and also pretty much total gender and material equality.

>Economic reductionism is a joke. Not every word Marx wrote was correct.

Sure, not every word that Marx wrote is correct. But also trying to bogeyman capitalism as something its not is lazy and a main weakness of the left nowadays. like the people that blame america and "imperialism" for everything ignoring geopolitical reality or even a grasping of what geopolitics is.

Also, while economic reductionismis insuffecient it is also naive to think human beings have any sort of conscious control or agency over their circumstances. This is humanist modernist garbage. We're all sand pulled into and pushed out by the ocean for the most part.

>>11817687
>>>/pol/

>>11837521
>capitalism is responsible for ending the slave trade
>capitalism is responsible for women's suffrage
>capitalism is responsible for Japanese incels

Are you aware there is such a thing as "culture?"

>>11837549
lmao fuck off brainlet spend less time trying on fashionologies and more time actually reading into the shit you're talking about

>>11837514

i am legitimately mad at the stupidity and cuckoldry that the average retard shows and wallows in

>>11837521
Capitalism did not start or end the slave trade.
This is so completely ahistorical that it nearly doesn't warrant a response.
You also ignored how I preempted your appeal to suffrage and tried to make the point anyway.

Beyond all that, you don't believe in agency, so it's pointless to talk with you about such things.

>>11837603
> i cant respond so let me just pretend that i dont want to in order to save face on a mongolian underwater basketweaving forum

>>11837628
I did respond. Why didn't you?

>>11837695
saying you dont wanna respond isnt a response you fucking lawyer

>>11837706
Good thing that isn't all I posted?
There are two points there. Feel free to reply to either. I can't guarantee I'll reply to you again though. You're not really proving to be a stimulating conversation partner.

>>11817687
A Thousand years of nonlinear history from Manuel Delanda
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century from Braudel