/lit/ - Literature

So everyone accuses me of being a retarded for saying socialism is a meaningless word in reference to hayek's road to serfdom, but trash Hegel says the same thing and suddenly it's based? Unbelievable

>>13252415
its not meaningless.
People use "Socialism" as a cover for making people equitable in the sexual marketplace a.k.a. bisexual and moneysexual

>Anyone can post out of context quotes - it's meaningless

But really can you post some context

>>13252549
his basic position is that it's meaningless because any idiot can say the economy should work for the people, Hitler argued the same thing.

>>13252415
His philosophical and theoretical contributions are far more important than his political activism.

Zizek will be (and is being) defamed by the modern left for his dismissal of identity politics, modern leftism, etc. etc. But his work will hopefully start a new era of 21st century philosophical enlightenment.

Zizek is definitly right wing but doesn't want to drop too many redpills

The terms are mostly meaningless. Right, left. Socialism, communism, communalism, fascism, alt-right, political parties all with ideals in their names though they stand for the exact opposite.
Express your goals, worry not one bit what it’s called.

>>13252714
do you have any idea who the fuck zizek is?

>>13252750
Right and left, as well as communist and fascist, etc etc, hold meaning like a sinking ship holds water. The issue is that they don't hold a clerical meaning, in both a bureaucratic and ecclesiastical sense (same difference since 1900), and this makes people anxious on a level they will never be able to handle.

>>13253116
That's to say: one can neither officiate nor sanction, one "cannot anoint."

>>13252750
Fuck off tranny

>>13252714
polfags actually believe this btw

>>13252768
You know it makes sense.

>>13253358
No, I don't know. It makes absolutely no fucking sense you brainless faggot.

>>13252714
Being anti Zionist doesnt mean you're right wing, that brain dead thinking is why /pol/ retards are stupid enough to worship ilhan omar

>>13253377
>t. Projecting brainlet downie retard. Oh sweaty...

>>13253413
id love to see the left take a fucking stance on israel

>>13253316
Good. Let them. They might learn something new along the way

>>13252415
>meaning
When will the kids learn.

>>13252415
Since when do adults care about what cartoon writers think?

>>13252699
is there a philosophical argument yet disproving identity politics as valid, or do we need to develop one ourselves?

>>13253116
a sinking ship holds water really really well though

>>13253316
no we do not

Unironically yes. Zizek is something the left needs right now and is helping to combat liberalism.

>>13253428
Leftists do take a hard stance against Israel though.

>>13253428
Plenty do. They don't just conclude that the problem is that israel is run by jews.

>>13252750
Huh. That was a surprisingly rational thing to come from you, butterfly.

>>13254114

He exists just to antagonize and divide the left. He is a leftist whose career is based on fracturing the left and spouting semi intellectual quips

>>13254119
There is nothing wrong with the actual state, just that Palestinians are being oppressed. They should just like live in peace or something

>>13252646
But surely some public control over the means of production isn't as pointless as having none at all. I still doing really get this statement. Should we privatize health care and education just because "socialism is meaningless"?

>>13252415
Anyone can be a socialist because the entire modern West is socialist. We are all socialists now, or at least all of us whom the establishment considers good, intelligent citizens.

How can you be a socialist in any real sense when it isnt present anywhere? You cant practice being a socialist

>>13252415
In the sense that he calls out social democrats and libs calling themselves socialist, thereby essentially divorcing the word from any meaning it once had? Yeah, glad to finally see someone taking a stand against this postmodern cultural cancer but he's certainly not the first (of actual value so don't post Kermit plz). He's not the future of leftism, if anything he's ironically pretty good at using rhetoric to bring socialism to the masses, but he's not the future of leftist theory.

>>13254791
This. As well as being a Christian

>>13254791
By holding socialist theory, building your belief system off of that and working towards actualising a socialist state.
But yeah, in the strictest sense nobody outside of maybe Cuba can be a socialist.

>>13254799
I know nothing about Cuba, do the workers actually control stuff over there or is it a meme

>>13252447
Are you seriously comparing Hayek to Hegel, Anon?

Serious bros, what ends constitute a future of "political activism", left or right? What fucking difference does it make? America is essentially a one party state.
You're compliant to the serfdom of your moneyed class instituted by the imperial arm of ultimate global hegemony impartial of whatever you have to say about it.
What compels you to fantasize of something better? Nothing changes because no one can change anything.
Why do you invest so much time and energy into informing your ideological position when it's less than worthless?

>>13254795
Social democrats and libs are "moderate" socialists. The only real problem that commies have with them is that they don't go far enough or use different methods to achieve the same ideals. Other than that, they're essentially the same. This is also why, if you were to go back in time a century, the mainstream opinions about economic policy that even many conservatives accept today would only be found promoted by communists and socialists.

An example of an ideology that leftism is actually inherently opposed to would be monarchism. Do leftists consider "social democracy" to be as foreign, evil, and morally incomprehensible as they do hereditary monarchy?

You guys know those BuzzFeed quizzes that determine your house if you lived in GOT?
That's what you faggots sound like discussing ideological schools of thought.

>>13254805
Yeah, there are state owned enterprises, coops and private ones. It's a bit socialist in every sense of the word.
>>13254799
>strictest sense nobody outside of maybe Cuba can be a socialist.
I would call the eastern bloc, China in the past and somewhat today, and even North Korea as socialist, for the most part.

I'm a socialist of the national variety if you know what I'm sayin

>>13254842
No you're not. That's a made up thing.

I'm a socialist but can other people please do the hard work? Thank you! Dont worry Ill vote for the right guy! (Or the less of two evils lmao)

>>13254877
This
Gas huffing flyover retards will work in the factories and asteroid mines, us high IQ city people will be needed for administrative party positions. Sorry, dumbfucks.

>>13254825
>liberals are socialists

>>13254839
China, Vietnam, and Laos remain socialist to this day

>>13254817
the other anon said trash hegel, cos that's a good nickname fore zjizjek

>>13255103
>China
>socialist

>>13255130
>I do not like China because it is not a Luxury Communist Utopia and therefore, it is not socialist because socialism is by definition, Perfect

>>13252415
Zizek is unironically pretty based. He drops some seriously depressing shit very casually in his writing.

>>13253930
yes, until the entire ship (society) goes under entirely. Useful misunderstandings. Their use is a tragedy in waiting

>>13255162
If you listen to Chinese communists they will tell you quite clearly that capitalism is the best route to Communism

>>13255207
Deng betrayed ideology for quick GDP. Pretty shameful when you truly think about it.

>>13252750
what's your goal?
>end capitalism

>>13255207
Chinese communists distinguish between markets and capitalism

>>13255217
He just hotswapped one ideology for the other

>>13255224
Well obviously they are not doing liberal free market Capitalism, but no one is now a days. It's "capitalism with asian values", which basically means authoritarian capitalism.

>>13255217
Surely the standard of living of his citizens is more important than his ideological purity. The country was incredibly fucking poor, it's not great now but there's really no comparison.

>>13255217
Consider the profundity of the things handwaved away as 'quick GDP' that were enabled by the market concessions socialist China has made these last 40 years though

>>13254776
The answer to your question is yes.

>>13255232
Plenty of people are doing free market liberal capitalism these days mate, but you're right, that's certainly not what they're doing. The Chinese have economic planning with the commanding heights under firm state control. 'These sectors include power generation and distribution; oil, coal, petrochemicals, and natural gas; telecommunications; armaments; Aviation and shipping; machinery and automobile production; information technologies; construction; and the production of iron, steel, and nonferrous metals. The railroads, grain distribution, and insurance are also dominated by the state, even if no official edict says so.' No other capitalist country has ever had such a degree of national control over the economy, including the classical social democracies. For what it's worth they also have an endlessly repeated commitment, borne out by real world events, to Marxism-Leninism. They're market socialist. Now if your question was, 'Do you consider that an ideal system?', well no, but it's what exists at the moment, and just because it's not ideal, doesn't mean it's not socialist.

>>13255233
>standard of living
Is this not a liberal-ideological category? The 'cat catching mice' policy is probably the greatest indicator of the new age in which we live. Neo-liberal ideology is diffused to seem completely natural, yet underlies and colonizes everything in its path. Ideology is no longer overt, easily identifiable, but rather is devoid of discernible content. It's invisible and characterless, and demands characterless-ness from its subjects.

Gobbodal so bad id gud

>>13255297
>Ideology is no longer overt, easily identifiable, but rather is devoid of discernible content.
It was literally always this way. Carlyle has a quote about this, that religion is what a man believes without any effort whatsoever and doesn't even think of as a belief.

The agrarian societies that were replaced had their own unseen and unquestioned ideologies as well

>>13255297
Zizekian claptrap aside, trying to improve our lives and the collective life of Society is at the core of basic, fundamental class struggle, which is to say, socialism. To wave that away as a neoliberal category is to ignore the fact that class struggle itself isn't a moral category, but an understanding of the world based off of material interests.

>>13255275
surprised you think it's not ideal, they are by some measurements the strongest economy in the world. by all accounts the future of capitalism is the Chinese model. socialism, in a definitional sense, means ownership of the means of production by the people. state capitalism isn't automatically socialism. who is practicing free market capitalism?

Zizek is one of the least retarded leftists with any notoriety. Because he's actually able to lift his eyes above the morass of identity politics for a momentary glimpse of the big picture.

>>13255336
Standard of living can be used towards disingenuous ends and is entirely a materialist category. It ignores the possibility that people can be happier with less, primarily because it is constructed through the lens of capitalism, where accumulation of things and destruction of limits is supposed to bring about satisfaction or happiness. Perhaps no one would deny that access to basic resources for a wider amount of people is good and included in 'standard of living', but the industrialization of China also included a shift to the sweat shop factories with suicide nets, intense squalor, devastation of natural resources, man-made disasters, and the largest human migrations on Earth all of which are hidden under 'standard of living'.

>>13255357
Firstly, I consider the US, Singapore, etc. to be practicing 'free market capitalism'. That's not too important though, as long as you agree that they're capitalist.
No state of affairs will ever be ideal, just by the nature of how reality is, but no, I think that although the Chinese model was necessary, and has done a lot of good, and is socialist, it faces serious problems it'll have to deal with. I'm thinking mostly of the rapidly increasing inequality, but other stuff as well. Your mistake imo comes in your definition of socialism. It's one I hear a lot, but it's reductive. 'Worker ownership' could mean anything, it's not sufficient alone to define socialism. Socialism is four main criteria, and bear in mind no real world society has ever been 'purely' socialist, so these criteria only have to be economically/diplomatically dominant, not solitary. Social ownership of the means of production, the production of goods according to a common plan on the basis of social need (as opposed to to the production of commodities for a market), the abolition of wage-labour (by which is meant the system in which employees have no democratic stake in the disposal of surplus-value), and the abolition of capital accumualtion as the driving force of the economy, to be replaced by the maximisation of social and material yield through the ongoing optimisation of the plan.

>>13255402
While you're correct to point out that 'standard of living' has its origins in the place you state, and that it can and does perform the role you describe, you're utterly wrong to imply that China's industrialisation has been a net cost to its citizens, despite the problems you point out (some of which are valid, some of which aren't - there's far far less 'intense squalor' now than pre-modernisation for example). You also imply that something being an 'entirely materialist' category is bad, which I don't agree with.

>>13255440
I don't think the US or Singapore is anywhere close to free market capitalism, they both rely on strong state regulation, and that trend is increasing
>rapidly increasing inequality
China has had the biggest middle class growth we have ever seen, don't know where you are getting this from.
As far as your definition of socialism goes, it appears you simply want to equate socialism with a planned economy, but we have seen planned economies in non-socialist countries too (pretty much all economies today are more planned then they were 50 years ago)

>>13255492
Again, it doesn't really matter whether you define Singapore as 'free market' to me, they're capitalist, and by Marx's definition (which I'm inclined to adhere to) that means that it is an economy in which markets are primary, regulated or otherwise. This is not the case in China. As for Chinese inequality, fine, if they don't have rising inequality, as I'd been led to believe (hardly an uncommon/controversial argument), great. Finally, I'd advise reading my definition again, there's more in there than just 'planned economy', though yes, this is absolutely core to the def, and something that is missing from countries like the US and Singapore. Your assertion that the US is 'more planned' than it used to be means nothing, insofar as planned economy does not form the backbone of US capitalism the way it does Chinese socialism. You seem to think any amount of planning existing whatsoever nulls my definition, without taking into account what class is doing it, what state, how much they're doing it, whether it's the decisive factor of the economy, why it's done, etc.

>>13255570
Free market capitalism is specifically about the lack of any planning existing whatsoever. Obviously I think capitalism can be practiced with a form of planning: 1) I think a "free market" is as idealistic as "worker ownership of production" 2) I think China is a state capitalist country, or as it is commonly referred to in political science, "capitalism with asian values". I think your definitions are a little out of wack, political theorists accuse the US of being state capitalist all the time, they are a huge leap from "free market capitalism"

>>13254821
Distraction is the American pastime, we hate reality. Imagined worlds and landscapes of meaning that have no bearing on anything but themselves, you know the gist by the now.
It's much easier to rally against simple, unific problems like labor or ecology, however difficult the actual struggle is, than to create a theory as to why and what is being done, beyond morals. To muster a force against the Empire, against the Order, no less? No, there are neither logistics nor manpower, there's no space for it. It's not our job to be the train, merely to relax! This blessing becomes a curse upon derailment, every paranoid passenger imagines this after a bump, but we board the train all the same. If the train up and kicks itself off the tracks, well, who are we to ordain it not? It's our job to sit politely, not yell, much less flee in panic!

>>13255632
You yourself acknowledge that a 100% free market capitalism is impossible mate. It's an ideological construction, a libertarian purism. My definition of a 'free market economy' isn't '100% "unplanned" [more accurate term would probably be stateless] and anything more means that it's not free market and can never ever be defined as such', because that definition would have no application in the real world. To me, an economy can be described as free market if a *relatively* unregulated market is the dominant feature of the system, and said system is also headed by people who wish to minimise state involvement (as well as meeting Marx's other criteria for a capitalist system). Your definition, backed by 'political theorists' (there's a fairly widespread consensus that the US is a 'free market' country mate so I don't know who you're referencing) or otherwise, is not a good one because to adhere to your definition means that every single country in the world today, and indeed almost every state that has ever existed in our species' history, is 'state capitalist'. It's a weak definition because it's overextended to the point of redundancy. People are certainly free to accuse the US (or China) of being 'state capitalist', they often have all sorts of disingenuous motives for doing so, but I disagree. The US is free market capitalist, China is market socialist. The former especially is not a controversial opinion?

>>13255712
>a *relatively* unregulated market is the dominant feature of the system, and said system is also headed by people who wish to minimise state involvement
None of this applies to the US, look at the fucking trade wars going on right now. Your definition of free market is ad hoc. I have a degree in political theory, the fact that these definitions don't fit real world models doesn't mean you just get to change the definition of the theory to suit your ideological opinions about China and the US.

>>13255729
The trade wars certainly represent a deviation away from laissez-faire I agree. What it doesn't change in my opinion is the longer term trend of US society/politics. I really don't care too much about your personal academic background and your own (naturally) ideological opinions, you didn't give reference to anything to actually back your claim to the authority of nebulous 'theorists', so why should I take it as a fact? Beyond your ability to give me some citations that the US has not, cannot, and should never ever be defined as a free market economy (cmon lol), your 2:1 makes no difference to this conversation. As it stands though, I'm happy to stop using the terminology if you concede that your definition of 'free market' has no applicability in the real world. Otherwise I'm quite happy to claim that the US *does* have a relatively free market and *is* generally headed by a group of people that wish to minimise planning/state involvement (and those two terms might not necessarily describe the same thing either).

>>13255790
>the US has not, cannot, and should never ever be defined as a free market economy
Okay, you've moved on to arguing with total strawmen, have fun with that. Honestly, at this point you should just read the wikipedia articles on these terms anon, it would unironically clear some things up for you.

>>13255707
>tfw simultaneously subject and accomplice of my own misery
Just kidding, I create my own happiness and ignore the world in order to continue to do so.
The deck's stacked, the dice are loaded, the chips are set, but I'm not the house so why do I give a fuck. Play the game and have some fun or bitch that it's unfair and get kicked out.
You were never going to save the world.

>>13255806
>Strawman
'Free market capitalism is specifically about the lack of any planning existing whatsoever'. But suit yourself. I repeat that it's not controversial to call the US a free market economy, despite the fact that it has Keynesian elements (which after all are designed to bolster and maintain the market). Here's an article describing the US as 'free market' I found from the most cursory Google search
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-07-25/states-should-ban-contracts-barring-workers-from-joining-rivals

Try this too mate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

>>13255904
>bloomberg
holy shit did I just get trolled this whole thread?

Zizek is a fascist and proponent of unitary racial chauvinism as a 'counter' to bioleninism

>>13255712
China's not socialist. The workers don't own their own means of production in SOEs, the state does. Nothing stopping the state from keeping the a worker's surplus the same way a capitalist would

>>13254764
>discussion on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
>”yeah bro they should just like live in peace you know?”
You know how naive that sounds, right?