/lit/ - Literature

Marxism is the opium of braindead people this day and age

>>20206593
Elaborate how you came arrived at this conclusion

>>20206593
You're gay. Blanket dismissal of what is a very tame subject on a board ostensibly about literature betrays your unfamiliarity with it. It's not rocket science and it's not a tool of ZOG. Pick up a book and figure that out for yourself.

>>20206593
And I should add that my preliminary understanding of the book and Vivek's position is that it is basically a reskinned, Liberalized Marxism whose logical conclusion is not the overthrow of the capitalist system but the expansion of the welfare state. It is at its core a pamphlet advocating for more labor unions.

Nice, a new book on Marxism. It's a pretty dead subject and there aren't many works written on the subject, so it's nice to see something new.

How convenient for him
>the revolution just needs better academics, like myself!

>>20206562
I will read the parts about the new left, thanks

>>20206705
There’s nothing new to be said after Marx and Gramsci

Just Zero-books logorhea

>>20206562
Marxism is just one of the retarded bits of pseudo-religious gibberish kikes invented to fool the dumber goyim into willingly being slaves. "Just let us be the vanguard who rules over you with a tyrannical fist; this is totally going to lead to a "classless, stateless society" one day, just uh, not yet". Genuinely hilarious that people fall for this

>>20206562
Oddly enough, I listened to the debate a few days ago. In case anyone is wondering, Zizek agrees with Chibber, it's not really a debate. But it's worth listening to.
>>20206851
It's not academics, he's talking about all bougie leftists. He's basically calling them out for being preoccupied with id-pol instead of real class warfare.

Most likely this will end with Chibber being called a racist in the NYT and never getting published again.

>>20206894
>>20206705
The position is very clearly worded and simple. It engages almost strictly with only Marx, which makes it very easy to understand. The position is also unique. If you don't wanna read it, watch the video or read my summarization and reply to it.

>>20206915
Anarchist detected

>>20206562
I should say that I mischaracterized the notion of relegating the revolutionary role to the academic. That is part of it (ie in the form of a program), but he also takes a practical approach and states political or social action must occur to reduce the barriers to labor organization. I commend him for his practicality (in keeping in line with that tradition) but I don't think a fundamentally nonviolent and legal labor movement in this day and age would ever culminate into some sort of revolution or rejection of capitalism rather than a simple expansion of the welfare state. If the telos of the activist framework is to extirpate the alienation and exploitation of a capitalist division of labor that are apparently contradictory to that division, this does not seem like an alternative at all without resorting back to the deterministic explanation (though it obviously has tangible benefits for workers today).

Everyone should read Djilas' The New Class. An excellent critique of Marxism, which inevitably becomes a bureaucratic two-class state.

Zizek has no credibility since he thinks pharma pandemic profiteering is good.

Marxism has the problem of being fundamentally a cult of technology worship and ALWAYS degenerates into a technocratic state where the proles are ruled over by a more affluent bureaucratic class.

The Marxist insistence on it being the only *real* path to socialism has the result of being an attack dog for capitalism. All other anti-capitalist forms of resistance must be removed to make way for the spoiled Marxist theory that yet openly admits you can't live a socialist life today because there's still not enough tech made. The result is omnipotent neo-liberal capitalism and a fake left Marxist pseudo-resistance.

>>20206562
>Zizek agrees with almost everything
>begs Chibber to meet him when he's next in New York

Is this guy going to be the next meme leftie?

Marxism will never save the proletarians. They actually despise them.

>>20206917
What'd you think of his argument
>>20207248
Makes me curious. Care to sketch a quick synopsis?
>>20207300
Why is that the case?

>>20208116
>Care to sketch a quick synopsis?
not him but djilas describes how soviet communism didn't actually overcome class structures, just shifted their terms around to create what piccone and others have called derisively "red capitalism" and related terms going back to bakunin's warnings about "red bureaucracy"

basically bakunin wanted a dissolution not of particular states, but of the whole "state form," so that a new era of spontaneous and organic association would dawn, and marx likewise sublated this anarchist and "utopian socialist" vision into marxism but made it the endpoint (and thus the litmus test) of any complete communist revolution. so for either an anarchist or marx, the proof is always in the pudding: did this so-called revolution actually create a classless society? if so, it was THE communist revolution, that is supposedly coming. if not, no matter how much it wears a neon sign that says "COMMUNIST" on its head, it's not THE communist revolution.

djilas is just describing from the inside how class warfare re-manifested, arguably in an even worse way than it had in bourgeois society, in the soi disant communist states. it's vital reading for any marxist.

of course most marxists today are not marxists, they are red fascists jerking off to mythology like videos of T-34, which is thoroughly, almost unimaginably bourgeois and utopian.

damn, niggas still to this day are writing entire cope books supporting Marxism while still not solving the inherent problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat lmao. even if people did become class conscious and successfully sought revolution along Marxist lines it wouldn't usher in communism. this is all just pointless cope trying to redirect away from the fact that communism is inherently broken

>>20206562
>Marx was incorrect in his determinism: the division of labor in capitalism is fundamentally stable. The contradiction evinced by the exploitation and alienation of the worker does not compel him to form with his class and seek revolution.
that's plainly wrong. the workers are constantly organizing and fighting on class basis all around the world and they'll be continually compelled to do so for as long as the proletariat exists. the fact that they're presently overpowered as a result of the counter-revolution doesn't prove that this is something that will remain constant. only two kinds of people can think that: 1) coping believers in bourgeois society, 2) retarded leftoid academics who want to exploit Marxism in order to sell you books that otherwise would've been pointless because in that case Marxism wouldn't need any "updating".
>It is not the case that the worker is simply incapable of realizing his material interests, and this seems like a point that Vivek attaches great emphasis to
wow, how fantastic it is that we have some moron waste paper to repeat obvious shit stated by Marx 180 years ago. what would we have done without him?
>In believing this to be the case, the cultural theorists are guilty of a sort of bourgeois contempt for the working class, Vivek argues, that is pervasive in the intelligentsia of today
it's not contempt, it's the same thing he's doing: brainstorming how to put the proletariat to work for petty-bourgeois aims.
>The worker is not retarded, he is disheartened.
no, that's a simplistic non-answer that disregards different particular reasons. some workers have been granted a petty-bourgeois social position due to the privileged status of their countries in the global division of labour (e.g. Sweden). some workers haven't been forced by decreasing real wages into even basic wage struggles, since their countries have been experiencing rapid economic growth in recent decades for various reasons (e.g. Poland). some workers believe the new populist parties will solve their issues, since they're yet to see for themselves that reforms will not help them. and so on. reducing various stuff like this to "the worker is disheartened" is kindergarden tier analysis.

>>20208142
soviet communism was defeated by the counter-revolution which resulted in a bourgeois state that kept the facade of a proletarian dictatorship for the purposes of its capitalist development (keeping the internal proletariat subservient and influencing other states from the inside with the use of their proletarian movements). this is all perfectly in line with Marxism. it was even predicted by Engels in 1853 lol:
>we shall find ourselves compelled to make communist experiments and leaps which no-one knows better than ourselves to be untimely. One then proceeds to lose one’s head — only physique parlant I hope — , a reaction sets in...

>>20208518
>>20206562
>the program provided by his supposed allies in the intelligentsia is very clearly not in his best interest
again repeating the most obvious things already stated by Marx and Engels
>Neither the Zukunft nor the Neue Gesellschaft has contributed anything that might have advanced the movement by a single step. Here we find a complete lack of genuinely educative matter, either factual or theoretical. In place of it, attempts to reconcile superficially assimilated socialist ideas with the most diverse theoretical viewpoints which these gentlemen have introduced from the university or elsewhere, and of which each is more muddled than the last thanks to the process of decay taking place in what remains of German philosophy today....
>When people of this kind, from different classes, join the proletarian movement, the first requirement is that they should not bring with them the least remnant of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices, but should unreservedly adopt the proletarian outlook. These gentlemen, however, as already shown, are chock-full of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas.

>To the extent that they are not poisoned by their own ideology (in the loose sense) of social justice, they are themselves part of the elite and not interested in potentially threatening that status
wow, the petty bourgeoisie isn't interested in overthrowing bourgeois society. who the fuck would've guessed.
also this has little to do with the <current trendy thing> ("social justice"), but I guess books sell better to the stupidpol redditor types if you shove that shit in.
>Basically the motto is "do better academia." He relegates the revolutionary role to academics
haha. so the guy bemoaning the intelligentsia's contempt for the proletariat proclaims that the proles can't emancipate themselves and instead need to be enlightened by the employees of bourgeois ideological institutions.
>specifically to create a platform that is palatable to the workers
that's just a retarded euphemism for a communist party. the absolute necessity of one has been known by communists since 1840s. and what's also been known for a long time is that it has to be an independent class organ, not one created by bourgeois ideologues.

>At the founding of the International we expressly formulated the battle-cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. Hence we cannot cooperate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves, and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes.

>>20206984
>political or social action must occur to reduce the barriers to labor organization
another brilliant insight. in order to progress, the proletarian movement must act to reduce the barriers to the progression of the proletarian movement! spoken like a true sociology professor.

Marxist-Zizekianism is clearly being promoted by neo-liberalism.

>>20208518
>If you believe the apriori premises of my religion, my religion is true

We know. Glad to see you back, greentext discord tranny. Another full workday about to be well-spent bitterly replying to everybody in the first Marx related thread you can find, I see.

>>20208545
kek I wrote this post before I even saw >>20208538

I feel bad for whoever you rope into endless reply chains again. Home posting on social media on a Monday afternoon :workers" of the world, unite!

>>20208548
I would feel bad for you that you're in such a pathetic state that you become obsessed with obscure anonymous posters, but I figure you probably deserved it

>>20208573
Hard to miss you doing this for 14 hours at a time multiple days a week

>>20208579
I searched my browser history and I think I made 1.5 posts over the week that ended yesterday. even with the generous assumption that it took a whole hour, you still need at least 41 hours of posting to account for
being obsessed is one thing, but delusions are pretty serious bro. I might start feeling bad for you after all

>>20208518
>that's plainly wrong. the workers are constantly organizing and fighting on class basis all around the world and they'll be continually compelled to do so for as long as the proletariat exists. the fact that they're presently overpowered as a result of the counter-revolution doesn't prove that this is something that will remain constant. only two kinds of people can think that: 1) coping believers in bourgeois society, 2) retarded leftoid academics who want to exploit Marxism in order to sell you books that otherwise would've been pointless because in that case Marxism wouldn't need any "updating".
That seems to me to be a fair argument at its core; there are certainly reasons to believe that the advanced Western democracies are not as stable as they seem in light of the global trend. The decline in population growth, the slowing of production growth (and technological innovation), and the rapid industrialization and integration (and subsequent exhaustion of cheap labor) in developing countries all appear to have profound consequences for the stability of the division of labor. Is that the line you would go down?

Also, moving away from the US (and the argument above) into Western Europe, do the accommodations you see (ie the Welfare State) for labor strike you as something that will stabilize and nullify the revolutionary impulse?

>no, that's a simplistic non-answer that disregards different particular reasons. some workers have been granted a petty-bourgeois social position due to the privileged status of their countries in the global division of labour (e.g. Sweden). some workers haven't been forced by decreasing real wages into even basic wage struggles, since their countries have been experiencing rapid economic growth in recent decades for various reasons (e.g. Poland). some workers believe the new populist parties will solve their issues, since they're yet to see for themselves that reforms will not help them. and so on. reducing various stuff like this to "the worker is disheartened" is kindergarden tier analysis.
Vivek seems to expand the bourgeois class to include what would is colloquially called the professional-managerial class. This doesn't strike me as what you describe as a petty-bourgeois social position due to the privileged status of their countries in the global division of labor, but is that to what you are referring?

And drop the attitude nigger, it's hardly worth such a purile attitude to defend orthodox Marxism.

Marxist theory is a machine for producing books of this kind. That is its only purpose at present. The discursive and rhetorical maneuvers you describe at the exact same one finds in all Marxist theory of the past 80 years. It is rote, insular, and worthless.

>>20208543

Only if the lesson you learn from it is that you need to sit back and shill for the EU/Berniebros.

Anon here has a point >>20208538 , all of this bemoaning is a euphemism for a lack of party oragnization, the bread and butter of workers organizing. Democratic instutions are being hollowed out because there is virtually no opposition or repressentation, workers were duped for the milionth time by refformists instead of following the Leninist line of active resistance. When chad Lenin saw the bourgeois democratic process had reached its end limit and declared them null. We have a clear cut historical example from recent times with bankrupt Greece in 2015, with its back against the wall, it cucked out against the EU, because the party itself was made up of refformists and cucks instead of taking things to the end limit and exposing the inherent contradictions of the financialy collapsed european banks.

>>20208721
I don't think that your analysis is correct in light of this text strictly because the text takes (allegedly) such a fundamental break from traditional Marxist theory.

>>20208874
>the text takes (allegedly) such a fundamental break from traditional Marxist theory.
This alleged "break" is the animating principle behind all but the most orthodox Marxist theory since the 1920s, including post-Marxists, postcolonial and feminist Marxists, poststructuralists, and the Frankfurt school. You will find this "break," announced as more or less "radical," in all of them. It is a feature of Marxist theory.

>>20208769
>instead of following the Leninist line of active resistance.

You're a moron.

>>20208899
The cultural turn, which describes what you're talking about, is different from what this book advances. They are both reactions to the apparent contradictory stability of capitalism. But the cultural turn writers place responsibility for this with ideology, culture, and the superstructure; they do not take the position that the division of labor, in spite of the contradiction, is fundamentally stable. This is the position the writer takes.

>>20208956
I am not concerned with the supposed content and motivation of the "break," because this discursive maneuver, in general, is the primary motivation of Marxist theory: shifting pieces around on the same board, no matter what pieces and in which direction, to the overall furtherance of the same discourse.

>>20206562
I hate "multiracial populism" so mvch.

>>20208721
the machine is academia and leftist political tendencies, representing the interest of the bourgeoisie and of the petty bourgeosie.
the only way you can use Marxist theory for doing it is by first rejecting what it says and saying it needs to be changed and cured with your snake oil. so, as long as it remains itself, it's not only not a machine for producing those books, but not even a simple tool: it's utterly useless for the purpose.
>>20208714
>Is that the line you would go down?
no, this one: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
>do the accommodations you see (ie the Welfare State) for labor strike you as something that will stabilize and nullify the revolutionary impulse?
no, the welfare state is based on profits and capital undermines its own profitability. a stable welfare state in Western Europe would require a stable rate of profit and a stable hierarchy between states regarding which direction the surplus value flows and how much of it, both of which are impossible due to the shocks that capital creates though its own normal functioning.
>Vivek seems to expand the bourgeois class to include what would is colloquially called the professional-managerial class.
that's the basic modus operandi of all pb and bourgeois when they want to use the proletariat for their internal struggles: paint some of their factions as the root of all evil and try to get the proletariat to help them fight against those factions instead of fighting against private property. "fight the 1%!", "fight the rent-seekers!", "fight the financial capital", "fight the Russian state!", "fight the Jews!".
>This doesn't strike me as what you describe as a petty-bourgeois social position due to the privileged status of their countries in the global division of labor, but is that to what you are referring?
no, I was referring to people with proletarian jobs. many professionals and managers will retain a petty-bourgeois position up to the day of the revolution (those who are absolutely crucial to the functioning of bourgeois economy and state). same with university professors (the bolder the proletariat is, the louder the leftist loudspeakers dedicated to redirecting it away from revolutionary struggle need to be).
>And drop the attitude nigger, it's hardly worth such a purile attitude to defend orthodox Marxism.
lol shut the fuck up snowflake. I'm practically being a paragon of virtue over here, if you measure it relatively to the utter retardation, vacuousness and anti-communism people like that guy represent. the only thing they deserve is a priority ticket to the gulag, so you can't even imagine how gracious I'm being right now by making serious comments about what they're saying.
>>20208899
>the break from Marxism is the real Marxism because... it came after it chronologically or something, and because bourgeois institutions say so

>>20209012
can you be less shrill

>>20208996
I don't think attempting to contribute to the tradition is so bad; the notion that I am getting from you and the other poster that Marxism was sort of completed with Marx or with Marx through Lenin including X, Y, Z or whatever (I don't know your position) seems to me to be nuts and bordering on religious (not to paint you as zealots; it's only my first impression or reaction). But that is probably because my interest in Marxism is as a historical intellectual tradition, not as a revolutionary vehicle for the overthrow of the existing order.

>>20209012
Thanks, I'm going to read the Capital chapter and the rest of your post in a sec and get back to you. Ur gay, but you're right that a lot of the clowns in this thread are fuckin smoothbrains.

>>20206562
>He relegates the revolutionary role to academics, specifically to create a platform that is palatable to the workers.
I don't know if Chibbner is a Leninist but I think that was the basic idea of a vanguard party; i.e. a group of intellectuals who are experts in revolution which seems to at least tie in to something I heard him say in that interview, in that workers know what's going on in their workplace but can't know *everything* there is to know about running an economy or building a new state, because nobody does. That takes committees and bureaucracies and experts who study that stuff. It just so happens that the experts we have are not interested in any kind of revolutionary politics.

>It is not immediately obvious to me that the workers in his conception of the solution would want to do anything like ditch the capitalist division of labor.
I dunno. But it helps to read about what the Bolsheviks actually said to people in the lead-up to the 1917 revolution. There's a common idea today, promoted by both MLs and Trotskyists, that the Bolsheviks showed up one day and were like "hey gang we're hardcore socialists and that's why we should take power." But that's not really the image they tried to portray at the time.

Their argument instead went like this: we all know the government is a bunch of crooks and idiots. We also know what everyone agrees has to be done -- we need to keep the factories running and make sure food systems work and get rid of these idiotic generals who keep sending you into losing battles. The other parties all agree with us that we need to get more factories built and better technology on the farms, and all the progressive parties know that this will require that we fight for socialism. We all agree on that. So why can't we get things working? Because there's no legitimate people's government. You can't expect the crooks to run things, right? Because they're crooks. The so-called "provisional government" is a joke. But look at the soviets, in some places they are helping a bit and they have real connections to a lot of people. Everyone agrees we need an effective people's government, and all the socialists say we need socialism, so why don't we let the soviets take the lead, it can't get worse than this...

Which is interesting because it combines an underlying Marxist explanation of Russia's crisis (which was emphasized after they took power) with a very pragmatic suggestion that soviet government has to be better than no government.

Anyways, my thinking is that just talking about abstract revolution might just lead to people thinking you're crazy or irrelevant, and that it might be alright being a propagandist when large numbers of people aren't expecting you to actually solve their daily problems now. But more people are having problems, so...

>>20206679
>It is at its core a pamphlet advocating for more labor unions.
That's not a bad idea but the strategy has to just be reconfigured (I think it is).

>>20206593
>Because Ben Shapiro told me so!

>>20206562
>Vivek takes the position in his work that the cultural turn of Marxism that emerged following the failure of the revolutionary class to initiate revolution missed the mark;
Well obviously that's not real marxism
>The cultural treatments of Marxism and ideology in the works of Gramsci and Adorno and Marcuse are mostly (but not totally, as you will see) dismissed.
I don't have to write a whole book to tell you that they should be.
Here's a simple rule of thumb: if it isn't about the means, mode, factors, or relations of production it's not marxism.

>>20209196
>But that is probably because my interest in Marxism is as a historical intellectual tradition, not as a revolutionary vehicle for the overthrow of the existing order.
That's cool but at some point it's supposed to be a philosophy of praxis. That's where its theory of truth derives.

So one problem today is that capital is globalized which killed the old-style industries in the U.S. and some other countries. Labor costs too high? Workers go on strike? Shut down the factory and ship it overseas. The spigot of easy financial credit that's available today is also a tool companies can draw from to offset losses from strikes. So companies have more leverage than they used to have over workers. Automation has reduced the number of workers in traditional industries, etc.

There are more Arby's workers in the United States than coal miners nowadays. You see what I mean?

It's mostly a service-based economy. Now, a lot of those workers are still poor. Services industries have a lot of "churn." Short-run employment is expected so workers burn out, quit, then move on to another terrible job. This makes organizing difficult. Labor organizers typically try to gather enough union signatures to trigger an NLRB-recognized election (that's the National Labor Relations Board) before the bosses can find out and send in the union busters (and firing the leaders, which is illegal, but rarely anything comes of it and it's really just a factored-in cost of doing business nowadays). Workers also don't have much experience with unions as many are young and don't know about them, and so the inherent secrecy of trying to start one can make unions seem suspicious.

So yeah. There are still ways to do it, though. Like you see with the Amazon and Starbucks thing. See, what makes these service retail jobs open to this (and also warehouses if you include that in retail) is that they're not gonna outsource an Amazon warehouse or close it down and move it to another state or country because Amazon is supposed to be... everywhere. That's how their business model works. So it's almost like a "guerrilla" or asymmetrical strategy where the labor organizers are hitting them all over the place, and while Amazon can probably crush many attempts, you only have to get lucky once while they have to get lucky every time, and you're basically organizing the retail proles while tactically retreating from the core industries like Mao going to organize the peasants after they got shellacked by trying to follow the Orthodox Soviet policy in the cities (they got massacred trying that in 1927), but you build up your forces and gain experience that way.

>>20206938
Communism is inherently anarchistc. Damn, if only the supposed Burgeois would've banned Marx and saved us from your circus shows.

>>20209196
I also can't really argue with Chibber's roasting of bourgie leftists enthralled by identity politics. But there's an important consideration here that these low-paid service jobs have a workforce that is quite different from the 1930s. Women in these jobs outnumber men 2:1. In the U.S., it's disproportionately not white if you compare this workforce (which is a lot of people) with the population as a whole. The explosion of wealth for financial capital has also -- no surprise -- benefited people who work in financial services and large banks and the demographics accordingly.

So the Patrick Batemans of America have done well, and racial inequality has actually intensified in the U.S. over the past 40 years -- but a lot of whites took a blow when their mortgages blew up in the financial crisis which didn't recover. And then tell that to a white guy working at Amazon with the rest of the proles. He doesn't feel privileged and I think that's where the left-wing intellectuals do a lot of damage. Chibber's argument seems to be that what constitutes wokeness for the professional types is basically a bourgeois thing where you open up Harvard admittances without talking about making community college tuition free. But that also seems like an unsustainable contradiction when the rulers are swearing up and down about how inclusive they are while the majority of people they're claiming to include are locked in as retail and warehouse drones for the rest of their life. People instinctively know that's a sham.

And then both the bosses and the left-wing intelligentsia types repeat this defeatist mantra -- the former perhaps much more intentionally -- that diverse workplaces won't unionize. The left-wing types say it's because of racism. Okay, racism is insidious but don't be a defeatist about this. Amazon also said this according to their whiz computers that became a meme. Ah, so, that means it's pointless... we should just give up and accept our fate. But that's not true. The whole "internal study" that Amazon did which was "leaked" to the press could've easily been some psyop because, surprise, bosses lie a lot. If someone is reading this and believes that leftists spend too much time enthralled by identity politics and should focus on the real class enemy, I accept that, but don't just up and believe whatever the class enemy says is true... because if you're in a class war they're going to use misinformation or psychological warfare to try and confuse or demoralize you.

>>20209012
>no, this one: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Marx is a very compelling writer. To summarize at the risk of oversimplification or misinterpretation his point and your position, inherent in capitalism is the tendency towards monopoly. This inevitable process of monopolization and centralization necessarily leads to concomitant worker cooperation and organization, which will at some point inevitably realize the incompatibility (or contradiction?) of the capitalism and overthrow it. In other words, to greatly oversimplify, it is only a matter of time.

I do have a question. Do no subsequent developments in your view change the tenability of this? For example, it seems to me that a recent development that may spread, the uprooting of the worker from his place of work to the home (remote work) has potential to spread significantly. Obviously it is only in its rudimentary form today, and its adaptability is certainly not universal (a great many industries will never be able to adapt this model, and it is not even close to an infancy [or even possibility] in most non-Western economies due to their more direct physically productive role) but it seems to me in Marx that part of the centralization that gives rise to the ability to organize in greater numbers is the mere physical proximity of workers with each other. Is this incorrect, is the physical proximity aspect not as important as I think, is it not as adaptable as I think, or something else?

Additionally, do you not believe that some sort of police, social, or even psychological form of domination might prevent the revolution from ever occurring, with regards to potential technological and scientific advances in psychology, weaponry, or propaganda?

Thanks for engaging, best conversation I've had on /lit/ in an unfortunately long time

>>20208142
Halting problem

>>20209500
>Additionally, do you not believe that some sort of police, social, or even psychological form of domination might prevent the revolution from ever occurring, with regards to potential technological and scientific advances in psychology, weaponry, or propaganda?
No, the truth is that revolutions are just a recycling of elites and Marx was wrong about pretty much everything. The state will never go away and communism will never happen no matter how often you say "just two more weeks" or how much you trust the plan I'm afraid.

>>20209196
>the notion that I am getting from you and the other poster that Marxism was sort of completed with Marx or with Marx through Lenin including X, Y, Z or whatever (I don't know your position) seems to me to be nuts and bordering on religious
you're free to say what's incomplete about it. or maybe not, since later on you imply you haven't even read the first volume of Capital, which would, hypothetically, put you in no position whatsoever to make any judgments on completeness of Marxism (we can even say making such judgments from that position would be nuts).
>>20209316
>but I think that was the basic idea of a vanguard party
no, it wasn't. the vanguard is simply the conscious section of the class. it doesn't have to come from a specific stratum, and it definitely won't be formed by people whose entire careers are in bourgeois ideology factories and in selling books and lectures to young middle class leftists.
>That takes committees and bureaucracies and experts who study that stuff.
it takes a communist party
>It just so happens that the experts we have are not interested in any kind of revolutionary politics.
they don't need to be. Engels:
>Admittedly we are still short of technicians, agronomists, engineers, chemists, architects, etc., but if the worst comes to the worst we can buy them, just as the capitalists do, and if a stern example is made of a traitor or two — of whom there will assuredly be some in such company — they will find it in their interest to cease robbing us. But apart from specialists like these, among whom I also count school-teachers, we shall manage very well without the rest of the “educated” men; e.g. the present heavy influx of literati and students into the party will be attended by all manner of mischief unless those gentry are kept within bounds.

>But that's not really the image they tried to portray at the time.
because they didn't represent just the communist revolution. since Russia was still half-feudal and its bourgeoisie wasn't strong enough to carry out its task, the bolsheviks represented both the bourgeois revolution and the communist revolution.
>Anyways, my thinking is that just talking about abstract revolution might just lead to people thinking you're crazy or irrelevant
obviously. but that's not what communists do, just leftist morons in academic ivory towers and pb kids on twitter. what communists are concerned with is forming, strengthening and expanding an independent proletarian class movement. this starts with local wage struggles. and speaking in terms of logical succession it starts earlier yet, with dissuading the workers from lending support for initiatives of other classes.
>>20209457
capitalism is inherently anarchistic because it's premised on individual production and exchange. communism is its negation.
>The essence of bourgeois society consists precisely in this, that a priori there is no conscious social regulation of production.

>>20209529
>capitalism is inherently anarchistic because it's premised on individual production and exchange. communism is its negation.
No, because capitalism doesn't exist. It's a made up term for communists to describe their supposed antithesis. Stop pretending economics will ever be a hard science. Communism is anarchistic because it presupposes the individual as being prior to the state and it's possible demise like liberalism, they are both progressive so it's really no surprise.

>>20209500
>This inevitable process of monopolization and centralization necessarily leads to concomitant worker cooperation and organization, which will at some point inevitably realize the incompatibility (or contradiction?) of the capitalism and overthrow it.
I think Marx also saw the "socialization" of labor that occurs in capitalism happening at the same time as capitalism -- as it goes global -- polarizes the world so the difference between owner and worker is going to grow to unbelievable proportions which makes the contradiction truly excruciating, and I think that has been borne out in many ways. But if you can find this in Plato too who said that democracy emerges from an oligarchy (which grows smaller in proportion).

>it seems to me in Marx that part of the centralization that gives rise to the ability to organize in greater numbers is the mere physical proximity of workers with each other. Is this incorrect, is the physical proximity aspect not as important as I think, is it not as adaptable as I think, or something else?
Not that anon, and I'm not sure, but I think for Marx, the proletariat was significant because it had the power to withdraw its labor in such a way that society would just stop functioning. They're necessary in other words, and you could probably call the proletariat the "producers" or something instead of a French word and it would go over the same.

>Additionally, do you not believe that some sort of police, social, or even psychological form of domination might prevent the revolution from ever occurring, with regards to potential technological and scientific advances in psychology, weaponry, or propaganda?
I think you should be careful about predicting the future either way. Like "it's gonna happen" (immature utopian idealism) or "it's never gonna happen" (cynical nihilism). Marxism might be better thought of as a serene way to understand change when it happens and how it comes about. You might have some success rebranding Marxism as like "complexity theory" or something like that.

>>20209576
>it's never gonna happen" (cynical nihilism)
Why is it nihilism? It sounds more like realism

>>20209529
>you're free to say what's incomplete about it. or maybe not, since later on you imply you haven't even read the first volume of Capital, which would, hypothetically, put you in no position whatsoever to make any judgments on completeness of Marxism (we can even say making such judgments from that position would be nuts).
Obviously I don't have as complete a grasp on orthodox Marxism as I could, but my reaction is more coming from what I see as the apparent total acceptance of the completeness of the thought of Marx, a single man (or a small number of Marxist thinkers). It's just very rare for me to come across that level of certainty, in anything (except in religion, hence the reference).

>>20209583
History? When Lenin was sitting around with his buds in Zimmerwald in 1915, they weren't saying "Comrades, in two years, we will make revolution in St. Petersburg." They had no idea it was going to happen.

But I think doomerism is the dialectical twin to reckless zero-to-hero optimism where by faith and will-to-power alone you can overcome any challenge. You see how people flip between that and doomerism when the former doesn't work out.

>>20209500
>Do no subsequent developments in your view change the tenability of this?
no
>the uprooting of the worker from his place of work to the home (remote work) has potential to spread significantly
middle class jobs like teaching at a university or doing lectures with the words "Marxism" and "revolutionary" in the title for bored leftists. not proletarian jobs though
>Is this incorrect, is the physical proximity aspect not as important as I think
the really important part is proximity in terms of communication and direct interest (being in the same position with regards to the same employer, the same interconnected industry, and so on). and this only grows larger, examples being (obviously) the Internet, companies such as Amazon employing people all over the world, factories on one side of the planet depending for their life on other factories on the other side of the planet and on logistics between them. also the economies being overall more interconnected and, for example, workers in Poland experiencing drastic rise in the cost of living at the same time as workers in Peru and Sri Lanka (all happening right now). those sorts of things.
>do you not believe that some sort of police, social, or even psychological form of domination might prevent the revolution from ever occurring, with regards to potential technological and scientific advances in psychology, weaponry, or propaganda?
I can't exclude science fiction scenarios, but if we're talking strictly about things that can be reasonably predicted, then I don't see how the class that couldn't even deal with a glorified flu without immense chaos could ever achieve anything similar. even China, supposedly the ultimate totalitarian state, is apparently currently having zombie apocalypse like scenes happening because of the dumb virus. lol.
>>20209559
>Communism is anarchistic because it presupposes the individual as being prior to the state
no, according to Marxism the bourgeois individual is constituted by the bourgeois state through it's laws (esp. guarantee of private property)
>>20209596
>my reaction is more coming from what I see as the apparent total acceptance of the completeness of the thought of Marx, a single man
the completeness regards just a few basic facts from which all relevant general facts follow. but you make it seem like people claim Marx knows if you should text that one girl you just met immediately or wait two days, and you only need to read Capital to learn the answer.
>It's just very rare for me to come across that level of certainty, in anything (except in religion, hence the reference)
it's certainty in just a few very fundamental facts, and consequently a certainty that a whole bunch of shit that goes against those facts is wrong. I get how that could give a wrong impression from the outside, but it isn't really anything special
and isn't it true that Einstein got the fundamental facts of relativity pretty much right? we have at least one non-religion in that case

>>20209632
>no, according to Marxism the bourgeois individual is constituted by the bourgeois state through it's laws (esp. guarantee of private property)
That's because Marx's conception of the state is retarded and self fulfilling. The state never poofed into existence you lib. It has always been here as that social relationship between master and servant. And it will never go away. There is no society without the state.

>>20209500
>This inevitable process of monopolization and centralization necessarily leads to concomitant worker cooperation
This really isn't true whatsoever. Marxists don't understand what are monopolies. They think Google and Amazon are monopolies even though they are competitors. They also don't make any sense - monopolies fail all the time, that's why US Steel and Atari are not around anymore. Competition literally killed these companies. The fucking Soviet Union was evidence that "monopolies" can not be perfect because people will always find someone to compete or improvise. And no, capitalism does not inevitability lead to worker co-operation. If that was the case, unionization would not fell so significantly. Its really retarded to argue economic interests are only drive of worker action, and its extremely contradictory for the same people to argue for a vanguard party when believe such action is inevitable without your input. Clearly, this isn't the case if Marxists have to constantly shill, and lie, yourself to push this narrative. And I don't even understand why you retards constantly push this non-sense, and forgo the historical evidence of communism being a failure. You people never actually use physical or case studies, to back up your arguments. The fucking idea of communism was mocked by Plato in the Republic and Greek comedians - even they were smart enough to discard such stupid thinking thousands of years ago, why do you sophists have to waste our time with it?

>>20209529
>capitalism is inherently anarchistic because it's premised on individual production and exchange. communism is its negation.
Communism is the negation of food. You can't really have an economy if your workers starve to death.

>>20209756
You misunderstand Marxism

>>20206562
Cultural Marxism is a right-wing conspiracy theory.

>>20209657
you're too retarded to be taken seriously. did the social relationship between master and servant start with the big bang?
>>20209756
>They think Google and Amazon are monopolies even though they are competitors
so what?
>They also don't make any sense - monopolies fail all the time
no shit. Marx wrote "Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly" and "monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition".
>The fucking Soviet Union was evidence that "monopolies" can not be perfect because people will always find someone to compete or improvise.
it was as much evidence of this as any other capitalist state. you're commenting on some imaginary Marxist in your retarded head who seeks perfecting monopoly, while actual Marxists like Karl Marx seek abolition of monopoly:
>by changing the basis upon which the present economic relations rest, by abolishing the present mode of production, you abolish not only competition, monopoly and their antagonism, but also their unity, their synthesis, the movement whereby a true balance is maintained between competition and monopoly.

>And no, capitalism does not inevitability lead to worker co-operation. If that was the case, unionization would not fell so significantly.
you're wilfully misinterpreting a claim about the general trend as a claim about local trends. Marxism doesn't say that the development of the proletarian movement will follow a straight upwards trajectory. it couldn't possibly say that because Marx and Engels personally witnessed a great setback in the movement following the 1848 happenings.
>Its really retarded to argue economic interests are only drive of worker action
nobody said that. you're experiencing psychosis rn
>its extremely contradictory for the same people to argue for a vanguard party when believe such action is inevitable without your input
you sound like someone who'd be stumped by Zeno's paradox. the inevitability isn't without input. on the contrary, it's premised on it. the condition of the liberation of the proletariat is the formation of its class party, and the formation of the party is inevitable because people are inevitably pushed to form it by the development of class struggle.
>Clearly, this isn't the case if Marxists have to constantly shill, and lie, yourself to push this narrative
meanwhile your retarded argument is premised on forgetting that people have reasons for their actions which come from the outside world. but maybe you aren't lying to yourself and you're just this stupid.
>And I don't even understand why you retards constantly push this non-sense, and forgo the historical evidence of communism being a failure.
you can consider this as historical evidence that communism will revive every time it suffers a temporary setback, until it finishes its job.
>You people never actually use physical or case studies, to back up your arguments.
lmao try reading Capital for starters

>>20209885
Why is the idea that there is a culture around Marxism a conspiracy theory? Doesn't make any sense. Of course it's real.

>>20209904
>so what?
So reality, empirical evidence refutes your own argument.
>no shit. Marx wrote "Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly" and "monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition".
So mention monopolies you fucking retard when its clear they're not pemerneant, and be naturally solved through competition? Why make such a stupid argument i.g. in search of a problem that does not exist. Already, you've made two points that can be easily refuted. This is a not a good start for you.
>it was as much evidence of this as any other capitalist state.
Okay, you're just going to do a no true scotsman fallacy like every Marxist does when you don't want actually address the reality of the situation?
>you're wilfully misinterpreting a claim about the general trend as a claim about local trends
No, actually, I'm just showing the evidence that exists. The misunderstanding from your lack of critical thinking skills. These aren't local trends - these are global ones. Global competition and automation have lowered the needs for unions. Unions were only ever popular fields with high automation potential, and when those types jobs like (manufacturing,transportation) had a need for less people due to robots, outsourcing those jobs declined substantially.
>nobody said that.
Actually, you need. You said capitalism causes pushes the need for worker co-operation, as if its inevtiable. That's just now how the world works. You retards inssit that class is the only drive for action. Its simply not true. Religion, culture, language, location, personal experience, e.t. may also influence what a worker does. I swear, you Marxists are so fucking dumb you don't even seem to realize behavioral psychology and genetics exist. You still regurgitate a shitty theory from 200 years ago instead of looking at modern developments in science and technology. You really are just a stupid person.
>on forgetting that people have reasons for their actions
Yeah, so you agree your whole premise for revolution isn't inevitable, and it was retarded for you to even suggest it. Thank you for agreeing with me that you are retarded faggot. We already knew this; we did not need the confirmation from you.
>you can consider this as historical evidence that communism will revive every time i
This is so fucking cringe. Please, have your workers revolution already instead of larping on the internet. I'd be hilarious to you get slaughtered in the streets for being a terrorist. Nobody is going to waste time arguing with a retard like you. I've already wasted enough time on a moron like yourself.
>lmao try reading Capital for starters
Try reading something the last 10 or so years that's actually relevant than some dead, schizo Jew that's ridiculed and not taken seriously by most people who aren't pseudo-intellectual undergraduate humanities majors like yourself.

>Marx was incorrect in his determinism: the division of labor in capitalism is fundamentally stable. The contradiction evinced by the exploitation and alienation of the worker does not compel him to form with his class and seek revolution.
This is, in my opinion, due to the historical political/economic events of the last 40 years, the addition of several hundred million people to the western market with the fall of the USSR, and the billion in China with "reform and opening up" have reinvigorated capitalism and allowed for many many years relative economic prosperity and cheap goods for the working class in the first world. This is coming to an end as the former USSR and China are becoming more bold imperialistic powers and want to redivide the world among their respective spheres of influence, which could lead to the reassertion of marxism as a bigger (however likely to be still small) political movement, and this opens up many possibilities depending on how the future goes.
Not only this, but the destruction of much of the working class power in many first world countries such as the breaking of unions, many workers parties (think labour in the uk) becoming totally subservient to liberal economics, and much of the current "left" merely being socdems or the most milquetoast of progressives, has also clearly damaged the power that the working class once had. despite this, the class conflict still occurs even in these advanced prosperous first world nations, Unions are still formed routinely and struggles for greater wages and standards of living are endless.
I'm drunk so i might have i've bungled the part about the addition to the global market of russia and china but if this thread is still up tomorrow i might try and expand upon it in a more lucid way. or maybe i haven't and its made sense

>>20209940
That's not what cultural Marxism is. It's a theory that a group of people(who happen to be mostly Jewish) have decided that straight up communism is no longer a viable strategy so they are trying to use "progressive" issues like race, gender, sexuality and so on instead. The end goal remaining the same: subjugation of western nations, tyranny, potentially genocide, etc. Some people view it through a religious lens.

Funnily enough in academia this constellation of thought is referred to as "Post-Marxism" sometimes. So they're very much aware of the phenomenon but they dont see it as some kind of nefarious conspiracy and prefer to emphasize that these people are breaking from orthodox Marxism by looking at these other issues rather than prioritizing the economic.

>>20208935
nice argument faggot

>>20210024
Holy shit.

>>20210064
That's a great point relating to the addition into the market of the Soviet bloc, as well as the integration of China into the global market of the 1970s.

>>20210024
If you attribute the weakness of the labor movements during the past few decades to better conditions for workers, why have all measures of conditions for workers basically stagnated or have become worse? Standard economic metrics, production, life span, self-reported quality of life, increasing mental illness, etc?

Please try to respond in a coherent manner cuz you failed too a few times in your last post.

>>20206593
>one day i'll own this boot

>>20210097
The right's Cultural Marxism and Neo-Marxism/Post-Marxism and "Marxism as a lens to study a text equivalent to colonial or feminist criticism" are the same thing. The issue is that the left has had such overwhelming cultural success that the culture war has become a sovereign activity for them.
The vanilla Cultural Marxist theory was based on Gramsci and The Long March and the assumption that Cultural Marxism was but a preparatory step for a physical, real Communist revolution. Obviously that revolution never came and it shows no indications of materializing at all. Perhaps that's because the subversive revolutionaries were themselves subverted! A neat compenetrative process, maybe dialectical even.
I remember reading the forewords to the various editions of Wilhelm Reich's Sexual Revolution. In the 30s he was explicitly saying that sexual subversion was part of a real unfolding revolution. By the 40s he was remarking on the remarkably progressive attitudes held by upper-class Americans regarding sex. Uh-oh! Maybe the chuds/lumpenproles don't deserve deliverance after all?
Personally, I'd say that Leftoids were mindfucked by liberal individualusm, that is, the revolutionary act of emancipating Human Beings (emphasis added) from arbitrary constraints, constructs, custom, the accident of birth and so on and so forth. All Leftoid energy has been made to serve this liberal goal which oh so coincidentally dovetails with The Market's globalization and extrication from national (racist) and communal (that ugly place I have to live before going to Uni) controls. This explains the paradoxical record of the Left, you are in a cultural sense everywhere apparent and everywhere triumphant, so where is the revolution? Cultural Marxism definitively failed, I, Rightoid and former believer in the theory, admit that. Leftoids were subsumed under liberal Leviathan, just as so many of mein bruders were entranced by the idea of maintaining natural hierarchy and morality through the market (big yikes here)

>>20210546
The cultural marxists have massively altered the market though. That's what the civil rights act and subsequent legislation are.

Really though the market was already raped by the creation of the federal reserve, the abandonment of tariffs and institution of income tax, etc. The immense fuckery of Wall street...

The cultural marxist theory is not about communism you have to understand. Communism is just a tool among many. It's about the total subjugation of Europeans by, well, you can guess Im sure.

>>20206917
yeah, it’s pretty clear that something like this is happening in the academic ‘leftist’ world. If academics were really pushing class warfare, they would no longer be invited to conferences, would no longer receive funding, etc. A huge portion of the role of the contemporary intellectual is determined by the structure of the university, as an institution that is in no way, shape, or form detached from capital and the state. I think most ‘Marxists’ are aware of this to some extent, but it’s very hard to imagine an intellectual formation that avoids this kind of capture while retaining any sort of influence. maybe social media and internet celebrities have done this, but desu all the ones I know of are a bunch of larping faggots

>>20206562
That's whole a lot of reading just to get fucked in the ass by the bureaucratic "elite" in the end.

>>20210024
>So reality, empirical evidence refutes your own argument.
what evidence refutes which argument?
>So mention monopolies you fucking retard when its clear they're not pemerneant, and be naturally solved through competition?
they aren't naturally solved by competition, because competition creates monopolies back again:
>Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations.

>Okay, you're just going to do a no true scotsman fallacy like every Marxist does when you don't want actually address the reality of the situation?
if you have a point then make it. if you don't then shut up instead of being the redditor who just shouts "fallacy!"
>These aren't local trends - these are global ones.
no, they were local in time. proletarians are again being pushed towards class struggle. read the news
>Global competition and automation have lowered the needs for unions.
no, they helped capital squash proletarian organization for a limited period. believing this is forever is "we've solved crisis" and "there will be no more world wars" levels of liberal naivety.
>You said capitalism causes pushes the need for worker co-operation, as if its inevtiable.
yes, I have. which is a different thing from what you characterized me as saying
>Religion, culture, language, location, personal experience, e.t. may also influence what a worker does.
you sound like you have the IQ level of a retarded toddler so I'll make it a poo-poo analogy.
being in the middle of a theatre performance will greatly influence whether I take a shit in the given moment, but I can be sure that biological forces will make me do it eventually, even if the performance never ends.
language may influence some things a worker does, but no matter how many verb cases it has, it won't prevent workers taking to the streets when they can't afford basic necessities.
>I swear, you Marxists are so fucking dumb you don't even seem to realize behavioral psychology and genetics exist.
what about them?
>You still regurgitate a shitty theory from 200 years ago instead of looking at modern developments in science and technology.
the theory is compatible with modern developments. after all, its basic premise is that capitalism continually revolutionizes itself
>Yeah, so you agree your whole premise for revolution isn't inevitable
no, I'm saying the reverse, i.e. that people's action is dictated by the world and the world behaves according to objective laws.
>Nobody is going to waste time arguing with a retard like you.
so don't lol
>who aren't pseudo-intellectual undergraduate humanities majors like yourself.
I'm a graduate STEM major though. you're confusing me with your imaginary leftist again

>>20210064
>the addition of several hundred million people to the western market with the fall of the USSR, and the billion in China with "reform and opening up" have reinvigorated capitalism
that's true and a related effect is best observed in post-Soviet countries in Central Europe. those countries were starved for capital for long decades because of Russia's domination, and when the Western capital was finally let in, they experienced about 20 years of great growth. but that impulse has already started to run out in the last few years. it's similar for China, except China still has some internal development potential left to ride on for a decade or two.

>>20210097
I think it's kinda funny that right-wing types view this as a serious threat to the West or something while leftists tend to think it's kinda useless to be a professor because that's just not political power. This guy is a communist professor and he says Western leftists don't have the right to judge anyone in the world because they don't have any power, so build that first:

https://youtu.be/vd8w3ONjv6Y?t=563

>>20208538
workers want to be united to be borgeois in the end. the class consciousness is just a means to be, finally, a bourgeois. workers end following bourgeois idologues because they are themselves one of them. its inevitable.
everybody want to be comfy.

>>20211647
Universities are the brains of a regime and dictate the assembly line of ideas. And power is allways about loyalty. They have more power than fucking Bezos lol. Anyone you trust to inform you is someone you trust to control you

>>20211350
>its basic premise is that capitalism continually revolutionizes itself
In other words, it has no coherent theory of what capitalism except that it is not communism, whatever that is. It doesn't exist.

>>20210407
You are obsessed with being dominated.

>>20209904
>did the social relationship between master and servant start with the big bang?
Did the state start when someone just said "I own this?" Are you a liberal or something?
The point is that we live in an uninterrupted state of nature. It's not hard to understand.

>>20209601
you have various people in this thread saying lenin did not do communist revolution. history is the bitch of everybody. you can do whatever you want with it.

>>20206562
So basically this comic lmao

>>20206562
>Žižek
>Vivek
who writes this shit?

Who is this random fucking anon who wont shut up about chibber the chud here as well as on leftypol? nobody cares about your retarded brahmin academic, stop shitting up my catalogs

>>20211697
no, they initially want that, but then they experience on their own skin that capital isn't capable of guaranteeing them even middle class existence because it doesn't exist in order to feed them, but they exist in order to feed it. only then are they class conscious and strive to unify as a class to fight back.
>>20211721
no, you're absolutely wrong. it has a coherent theory of capitalism. capitalism is a mode of production which rests on private producers hiring wage labour in order to produce commodities and receive surplus value from selling them.
>>20211733
>Did the state start when someone just said "I own this?
no, it started when the original community split in competing classes due to the eroding development of private property and needed posit a regulating power above itself in order to not disintegrate.
>The point is that we live in an uninterrupted state of nature.
we don't, we live within historically produced social structures

>>20211882
>no, they initially want that, but then they experience on their own skin that capital isn't capable of guaranteeing them even middle class existence because it doesn't exist in order to feed them, but they exist in order to feed it. only then are they class conscious and strive to unify as a class to fight back.
you forget the "everybody wants to be comfy" part. not everybody its incredibly ambitious. people can accept be the 2599th in a competition of 3000th.
>no, they initially want that
no, its the intiial and its the end. if they are "upset" about the impossibility of being bourgois is precisely because they still want to be bourgois. in fact they only are communist because communism promise them the bourgoise lifestyle even if they promise them with a trick of "classless" society as if they dont see basically a borgoise lifestyle in it.

>>20211709
All schools have ended up this way; they use the carrot and the stick training for programming their subject about what's "true" and what's "false".
The school system is totally controlled by gaberments mind you (even "private" schools have to exactly follow gaberment regulations) - and Marxists thrive in sociology departments because they are not a threat for the establishment in the slightest.
Btw, early medieval universities could be organized in an exact opposite manner - the _students_ were hiring the teachers and they could fire them if they were not satisfied with their services; but then the rulers took over the education and turned it into indoctrination.

why do all marxists become that way after university?
what a funny thing

>>20211647
They don't view universities as the seat of power. They think it's a criminal mafia whose major legal tool is central banks. University profs are just low level servants to this mafia in this view

>>20211904
>you forget the "everybody wants to be comfy" part
not at all, you're the one who's forgetting it. what do you think I mean by "even a middle class existence" if not "being comfy"? it's not about ambition but about defending basic standards of living that are under attack from capital. in the end the proletariat will abolish capitalism because they'll learn though their struggles that capitalism is not able to provide basic material necessities without constant crises and wars.
>no, its the intiial and its the end. if they are "upset" about the impossibility of being bourgois is precisely because they still want to be bourgois.
except they don't want to be bourgeois for the sake of being bourgeois. they want it in the sense that they want to be able to afford food and school for their children without constantly having to fight capital and its state over trivial shit like keeping wage growth on par with inflation. and it happens to be the case that the real way of achieving that is not everyone becoming bourgeois but everyone abolishing the bourgeoisie. and this is what workers naturally realize throughout the struggles against the bourgeoisie.
>in fact they only are communist because communism promise them the bourgoise lifestyle
so are we agreeing or what? people want to live comfortably and in the current society that sort a comfortable life is indeed represented by the upper classes. but that doesn't matter, since throughout the struggle for comfortable life those classes will be abolished, and a life in which one's basic needs are reliably fulfilled will no longer correspond to bourgeois life but to the life of a regular member of society.

>>20212057
>except they don't want to be bourgeois for the sake of being bourgeois
yes they want. you only are explaining how they will do it.
my point is that working class are bourgoise at heart and soul. so they dont have a real "loyalty" to working class except some fanatics. so you probably dont ever have a classless society because they dont want a classless society for classless society's sake. they just want to be comfy.
my original post was to say that is absurd to expect a total faith and loyalty from people with that mundane final end in it. the moment a worker become just a little bourgoise or even middle-low class is the moment his dreams are fulfilled. you need a literal almost slave creator factorys in order to communism to rise. and when communism rise it will eventually go down because the only end is just to be borgouise.

>>20212101
>yes they want.
no they wantn't
> you only are explaining how they will do it.
I'm explaining how they will abolish the bourgeoisie, not how they will become bourgeois
>my point is that working class are bourgoise at heart and soul. so they dont have a real "loyalty" to working class except some fanatics.
at heart and soul they're just people who want to work like human beings and live normal lives, instead of being treated like a living deduction from profit that is to be minimized. they only have "loyalty" to the working class in so far as the working class represents all the people with this common interest who are being pushed to come together to fight for it.
>so you probably dont ever have a classless society because they dont want a classless society for classless society's sake. they just want to be comfy.
I think I've explained that they don't want classless society for its own sake, but that they'll arrive at a classless society while fighting against the ruling class in order to being able to live normal comfy lives.
>my original post was to say that is absurd to expect a total faith and loyalty from people with that mundane final end in it.
analogy: someone who's starving will be infinitely loyal to the cause of getting food, even if just eating food is the most mundane thing ever.
your logic simply doesn't work out.
>the moment a worker become just a little bourgoise or even middle-low class is the moment his dreams are fulfilled.
and in capitalism this can't last, since even the middle class must be sustained by an army of exploited proletarians. and to make things worse for capital, the expected standard of living for the lower middle class rises constantly.
>you need a literal almost slave creator factorys in order to communism to rise.
no, the benchmark is constantly rising. if today's workers were to be transported into the conditions that 1870s English workers had to live and work in, they would revolt day one. that's because people defend the level of living that they've attained, not some bare trans-historical minimum.
>and when communism rise it will eventually go down because the only end is just to be borgouise.
no, the end is to have one's basic needs fulfilled. and it's a very modest one given the level of development of humanity's productive forces. that's why a communist society will survive without much problem and develop peacefully from there.

>>20212205
>to live normal comfy lives
which is?. look, im not gonna make this autistic responses quote by quote that only make everything more confusing and plotless.
the aim of the working class is not "not starving", that is a lie you say to yourself. the ultimate goal is to live like bourgeois lifes and even get to the point to see life as a bourgeois. you dont see how marx imagine how it will be a ultimate communist society where you end making artistic works and have a contemplative life?. there is nothing more bourgeois than that. at least if you see it in a hollywood movie.
in general communism and marxism is something to people because the grandiosity and bigger than life appeal that it have. so you say this things just because grandiosity and bigger than life-save-humanity stupidness not because its a thing.
once you have a worker with a lowmid class salary you have a traitor of class, and that is why you cant have a communism stability. because at his heart, communism just give the promise of bourgeois life. its self-failed. so you end with a bunch of desensitized bourgoeus non-bourgeois class that end making a communism non-communism that is basically capitalism, just because their end and their drive is the stupid same end as capitalism.
living your fucking comfy life.

>>20212380
>which is?
depends on time and place. if you want specifics you can go ask people protesting right now in Peru or Sri Lanka, for example.
>the aim of the working class is not "not starving"
I haven't said that. I even explicitly labelled the point about starving as an analogy, because I know how bad people are at detecting those. but that still wasn't enough it seems.
>the ultimate goal is to live like bourgeois lifes
no, the goal is to live comfy lives and to not have to continuously fight to defend your living conditions against a powerful class enemy.
>you dont see how marx imagine how it will be a ultimate communist society where you end making artistic works and have a contemplative life?
no. Marx:
>In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
I think you might be getting your ideas about communism from some petty-bourgeois twitter morons who think communism is when you can be a local tarot reader or a local NEET and society just supports your parasitic existence.

>in general communism and marxism is something to people because the grandiosity and bigger than life appeal that it have.
maybe to some existentially bored petty bourgeois people who are looking for a radical idea to get stimulated by. but those people don't actually care about the real communism. the real communism appeals to the proletarian and it appeals to him because it correctly leads him in the struggle of his class to live a normal human lives.
>once you have a worker with a lowmid class salary you have a traitor of class, and that is why you cant have a communism stability.
and the basic effect of the normal functioning of capital is proletarianization of people in the lower middle class through depriving them of economic reserve for the sake of defending capital's profitability. that's why you can't have a capitalism stability.
>just because their end and their drive is the stupid same end as capitalism.
no, their end is to live normal lives without being constantly pushed into reservelessness and without having to fight tooth and nail in defense of the attained standard of life. whereas the end of capital is to undercut this standard of life, in the name of increased profitability, to the bare minimum at which capitalism can still function. those aren't the same but opposite ends.

>>20212512
you say three times just in this post
>live normal lives
at the same time you start the post with
>depends on time and place.
which is absolutely non-sensical and inconsequential. and you do it just so you dont have to say that "normal life" is bourgoise standard of living life.
also, what im trying to say is that the end goal of communism is the bourgoise way of seeing life, that is the end, the motor, the drive, the utopic final space if you want, but even if you think is just air, is the vision why everything make sense. if that fall apart, everything fall apart with it. so you have to maintain the dream alive.

what im trying to say is that the enemy of communism is inside the idea of communism, the bourgoeis is inside of communism drive and final end and they are unconscious about it so they reject it or be prude in a stupid and unconscious way precisely because of that. what im trying to say is the reason why you cant have a communist society, because its not like magically one day you wake up and you have a classless perfectly atuned working class consciousness working together. to get there you need people that is only in that project because a mundane and comfy having "normal life". i mean, in the work to make a classless society you end up making new classes that rebrand what is comfy and what is not and where everyone start to look for it not for, even if you deny it, the grandiosity and bigger tham life communist approach to social life but because of comfyness. so you end up in the middle of the project with that people, sooner or later, directing all the plan and you end with not totally communism in practically every place communism is trying to be implemented. is that, or you basically kill all those people.
anyway, who cares?, you are a political junkie, so if you see a sri lanka strike you probably think that is a new hope star wars for communism and reall happiness of the planet earth. or something like that.

>>20212618
>and you do it just so you dont have to say that "normal life" is bourgoise standard of living life.
you just can't read. I already said that it corresponds to bourgeois standard of life in so far that bourgeois people don't have to strike every now and then to be able to pay rent and don't have to rely on welfare when they're fired from their jobs every economic downturn.
>what im trying to say is that the end goal of communism is the bourgoise way of seeing life
but that's wrong. the bourgeois way of seeing life is maximizing profit for the sake of profit, it's the exaltation of private property and private production. whereas in communist society the outlook will be the abolition of profit, private property and private production, for the end of satisfying the needs of the species.
>what im trying to say is that the enemy of communism is inside the idea of communism
it's not an idea, it's a real movement together with the understanding of the only possible conclusion of that movement.
>what im trying to say is the reason why you cant have a communist society, because its not like magically one day you wake up and you have a classless perfectly atuned working class consciousness working together.
you're barely even making sense at this point. I didn't bring up anything that would require magic. and there's no working class consciousness in a classless society.
>i mean, in the work to make a classless society you end up making new classes
no, in the work to make a classless society you abolish the premise of the existence of classes, private property, which makes the emergence of new classes impossible.
>so you end up in the middle of the project with that people, sooner or later, directing all the plan and you end with not totally communism in practically every place communism is trying to be implemented.
no, you either end up with a communist society or with a counter-revolution and a capitalist society. there's no place in the middle to end up in.
>anyway, who cares?
you, apparently
>you are a political junkie, so if you see a sri lanka strike you probably think that is a new hope star wars for communism and reall happiness of the planet earth. or something like that.
you're projecting and also a retard. you haven't made a single coherent point in several comments. capitalism still can't reliably feed people in year 2022 and copers like you talk about stable middle class existence for all the proletarians. you're the ones believing in magic here

>>20206562
So basically just a shittier version of Haz from infrared?

FUCK MODS AND FUCK CHIBBERS

>>20206593
>he thinks liberals are marxists

many such cases, unfortunately

>>20212940
>capitalism still can't reliably feed people in year 2022
Why make such stupid claims, and think people are ever going to take you seriously? You've nothing but wrong the entire thread, and multiple anons have shat on your stupidity. None of your takes are based in reality. You are a dumbass kid. Do ever wonder why your views are in the minority? Do you ever wonder why people reject your retardation so resoundingly?

>>20214763
>the theory is compatible with modern developments.
Its really not. You haven't demonstrated that all in any of your arguments or posts. What you do is religiously repeat Marxist dogma, and you insist people swallow it. I'm sorry, but not many of us as stupid as you. You've been getting clowned this entire time here I don't even know why you bother to post? Who's gonna give a fuck about you what you say here? We're just milking you because you're a political lolcow

pdf link

>>20212940
>capitalism still can't reliably feed people in year 2022

Poor people are so fat that it is creating a massive public health crisis.

>>20208518
>soviet communism was defeated by the counter-revolution which resulted in a bourgeois state that kept the facade of a proletarian dictatorship for the purposes of its capitalist development (keeping the internal proletariat subservient and influencing other states from the inside with the use of their proletarian movements). this is all perfectly in line with Marxism.
Any text or book where I can read on this?

>>20214776
Nigger nobody cares what have to say. We have dozens of books on Soviet and Chinese Communist history - we know what socialism is, communism is and that it can not work. We know Marxist sociology is bullshit; the Bell Shape Curve, a book that is much more recent and much more factual than the crap spewed by Marxists. A book I know would never read, or have never read, because it shatter your quasi-religious world view of Marxism. Marxism is the ideology of violent revolution driven by loser resentment for biological limitations. This is fact, and the sooner you come to realize your limitations as a human being - the sooner you'll be to being a better person life instead of a insufferable degenerate. You'll never be a woman, and you'll never live to see socialism. And stop samefagging the thread, faggot, literally everyone here is against you and nobody here will ever agree with you.

>>20206562
Does he ever engage with Althusser?

>>20206593
Freidrich List > Karl Marx

Whatever, full three generations are not enough to reach communism and during this "transitory period" workers have worse material conditions than before. No one will willingly sacrifice his life for your pie in the sky, communism is dead.

>>20216005
this pretty much, though economists like DeLeon and Cole are must haves in my worldview

>>20215745
I tried reading Althusser once and he likes to ramble incoherently so I stopped

Marxist threads are always so dreary

>>20206562
Sounds pretty interesting!
Is this a totally new take or is he representing a well established minority viewpoint among Marxists?

>they are themselves part of the elite and not interested in potentially threatening that status, they do not engage in organizing the proletariat
This feels very real. So many academics seem to talk about revolution and uprising and then become so soft and submissive when the university starts cutting jobs.

>>20208518
Your revolution is over. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose.

>>20216017
I think ill trust a literal economic genius like marx over some idiotic 4chan incel who never read theory. its literally inevitable, you cant stop it. learn to dialectical materialism. this stuff is so far above your head you arent even close to understanding it.

>>20206562
Watched the zizek discussion and while I admire his overall evaluation and criticism of the ‘apathetic’ left, he still makes the fundamental error that all Marxoids make; wherein their correct analysis of the negative material relationship within society they arrogantly assume the answer can be solved with some other material relationship.

>>20216480
But you say that he didn't even invent the LTV but took it from Ricardo, kek genius - he contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever to our understanding of economics.
Also, gommunism will not be the end stage - after its inevitable collapse we'll have capitalism again. That's empirical science versus religious prophecies.

>>20206562

>The contradiction evinced by the exploitation and alienation of the worker does not compel him to form with his class and seek revolution.

Or maybe it's because the only alternatives that Communism promises are a mass bureaucracy run by sadists or utopian AnCom dreams. If it's a choice between those and capitalism, I think I'd rather choose capitalism.

>>20216539
I can't watch Zizek, misophonia

also, >>20216480
the fact of the matter is that its wrong because historical materialism denies a prime mover

also, whats the general consensus on military urbanism?

>>20216005
Is this Angela Nagle? I found you bitch, do an AMA now

>>20214799
https://hungermap.wfp.org/
>0.88B -- Total number of people with insufficient food consumption
>>20214839
the gist:
http://www.sinistra.net/lib/pro/whyrusnsoc.html
more in-depth:
https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/Russia/67RevRev.htm#part1
https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/46CominTact.htm
most in-depth:
http://www.sinistra.net/lib/bas/progra/stru/index.html
>>20216017
>and during this "transitory period" workers have worse material conditions than before
that's right, that's why they're going to push through with the revolution until "transitory period" is over and a communist society is established.
>No one will willingly sacrifice his life for your pie in the sky, communism is dead.
how do you retards always manage to refute your own points? you just said yourself that it will be for improving their basic conditions of life which will deteriorate in the lead up to the revolutionary crisis and during the revolutionary war itself. so people will be fighting for the exact opposite of a pie in the sky. they'll be fighting to put an end to the circumstances that don't let them live a normal life.

>>20216698
>the revolutionary crisis and during the revolutionary war itself.
70 years long revolutionary crisis? The delusion is strong in this one

>>20206562
GOOD MORNING SIR

I gave up reading marxist texts, the communist project is dead. What's left of it is just power play within capitalism.

>>20216899
who said it will last 70 years? the illiteracy is strong in this one. or psychosis
>>20216961
there's no "communist project". the communist movement is alive and it will necessarily stay alive until capitalism is done away with. but it's a good thing that worthless petty bourgeois leftoids who would treat it as a "project" get discouraged once they see it has nothing to offer them and fuck off.

"It'lL wOrK tHiS tImE!"
Fuck off retard

>>20216698
"improving basic conditions"
>be USSR
>300 million people working at literal gunpoint in a natural resource-rich empire 9 million square miles in size and a dozen countries in scope
>4% owned a car and they had to take a train to access it
2% had a color TV and there were three channels
>A third of the animal protein of a western diet, diet was composed of 44% carbohydrates and starch (gruel)
>life expectancy trended downwards from the 60s to the 80s from poor healthcare
>entire extended families lived in tiny, rapidly deteriorating single room apartments with paper thin walls
>receive a 25% pay cut for six months for being 20 minutes late to work more than once
>paid in rations, coupons and "rubles" that functioned more like Chuck-E-Cheese tokens than a currency
>could not choose your job
>could not change your job easily
>could not be legally unemployed
Please spare us the meaningless pedantry pilpul you fucking nerd control freak kike.

>>20217032
>if your poor backwater nations can't rival the entirety of the developed world which conspire against you, it's proof of ideological weakness
Reminder these countries are still worse off under capitalism
>inb4 "they're only worse off because they used to be communist"
then they were only worse off under communism because they used to be tsarist :^)

>>20216973
Stop playing stupid for a change.
The decades long "transition period" happened _after_ the revolution and was your excuse why people don't live in a promised commie paradise yet kek. You've invented this (another) idiocy yourself.

>>20217032
>be USSR
USSR was capitalist. appreciate your reply but I'm not gonna read it
>>20217111
I'm not playing stupid, I was clearly talking about the future revolution, not about the past one that was defeated. but in the 1917-1927 revolution there wasn't a decades long transition period either. the only transition period that lasted decades was the transition from undeveloped capitalism to developed capitalism that followed the counter-revolution in Russia.

>>20217152
>USSR was capitalist
The USSR was capitalist, the USA was capitalist - your theory is a pile of crap if it doesn't make a difference between these two completely different systems.

>>20217152
>it wasn't real communism, lets do it again
lmfao. Holy fuck, you people just vindicate my turn towards fascism now. You people have no reason to live.

>>20216698
>Left communism
Lmao, Bordiga? The fucking retard who argued Stalin wasn't authoritarian enough? The guy who said he was only mad at the Stalin not because he killed so many people, but because he wasn't an intransigent follower of Marx? The guy would have been even worst fucking Stalin he had power. And fuck off, you faggot. You guys Bordigsts are just Trotskyists in denial

u know communists are worthless because instead of inventing something, some kind of technology that could help people solve their problems, or create an organization that could help people - they sit their ass arguing with people online all day

>>20217229
>wahh wahh, that argument isn't fair because I've heard it too many times!!
Fuck off and be a fascist. You're so retarded that any ideology is destined to suffer by being connected to you.

>>20217222
>lions are feilnes, tigers are felines - your theory is a pile of crap if it doesn't make a difference between these two completely different animals
>>20217229
>my turn towards fascism
lol thanks for coming out as a retard larping child. frees me from the labour of having to show why you're wrong myself
>>20217237
why would you assume I give a shit about your leftist hysterics? if you think historical course of revolution and counter-revolution is a matter of the personality in power and you have no intention of unretarding yourself, then you should go watch CNN instead of coming anywhere near communist material.
>>20217245
the technology is there, the problem is the social structure that makes its proper use for the needs of the species impossible, because that structure is premised on using the technology for accumulation of value.

>>20217086
>MUH USSR WAS STRANGLED IN ITS 9 MILLION SQUARE MILE, INFINITE RESOURCE, 300 MILLION POPULATION, 41% OF CAPTURED GERMANY'S WAR-TIME PRODUCTION AND 20,000+ GERMAN SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS CRIB AND ONLY FAILED BECAUSE THE U.S. STOPPED THEM FROM MILITARILY OCCUPYING [insert otherwise irrelevant south american country here]!11

This non-argument is literally the equivalent of the "my meds only work if you take them too" joke except you're stupid enough to be 100% serious. Maybe try coming up with an original thought for once instead of just repeating what sheltered pedants say over and over again.

>>20217274
honest question:
how is your life?. you sound like an outdated rigid militant. like that japanese guy who think the second world war is still goind and he was just living alone in the woods. i mean, what is your vision of life outside politics?.

>>20217274
>if you think historical course of revolution and counter-revolution
And you have the nerve to call people larpers

>>20206917
Good, fuck Pajeets.

>>20217274
>anywhere near communist material.
I don't want to be anywhere near communist material because I don't want to cut my dick off or be a child groomer. That's what communist material encourages.

Lenin said the US Postal Service was an example of socialism. Like, who could anyone take socialism seriously when they say stupid shit like that?

>>20217262
>You're so retarded that any ideology is destined to suffer by being connected to you.

>>20216480
Cope

>>20216480
>I'll appeal to Marxism as a religion, as an authority, because I can't accept criticism of his beliefs
That's how you know Marxism is a cult

>>20216480
This just the lefty version of two more weeks?

>>20206705
…is it realy? it might just be my feild being history, But it doesnt seem like a dead subject in the least to me.
>>20210843
>>20206917
I think its almost an endemic problem within marxism as a process. it by its very nature kind of draws one towards or becomes interesting to bougie types and sensibilities.
>>20209316
good point on procedurality.
>>20209529
> what communists are concerned with is forming, strengthening and expanding an independent proletarian class movement
you see, that kind of fundementally falls into the catagory of abstractness that a normal person probably finds kind of detached. seeing classes as firm things rather a number of indivuguals with occastionally interweaving interests.

>>20217428
Lauren Boebert's husband flashed his penis at several underage girls at a bowling alley while Lauren was present and did jail time for it.

>>20217590
seems like a power move more then anything. Did he go and groom them over a time or just wave his wingle in front of them and his waif.

>>20217417
my vision of life is that in order to even begin to live it like a human being one needs stability in food, housing, schooling for your children, healthcare that it is focused on keeping you actually healthy and not just not so sick that you can't be exploited until retirement age, and so on. and that capitalism isn't and never will be able to provide that. which is why the communist movement will live on until capitalism is abolished and why it's not "outdated" and why communists aren't comparable to a solider fighting a war that has long ended. in fact, the next Japanese soldier will be some supporter of the restoration of capitalism at a time when society will have already long moved on to communism.
>>20217424
I'm a larper because I register the fact that human history has included revolutions and counter-revolutions? okay
>>20217434
kys and go back to r3ddit, in that order
>>20217428
go ahead and link that
>>20217566
>you see, that kind of fundementally falls into the catagory of abstractness that a normal person probably finds kind of detached.
by normal person you of course mean a confused postmodern petty bourgeois, because that's what you and all of your friends are. but for people who are forced to go months without pay to strike just to be able to afford life necessities, the fact that they have a common class interest (and not just occasionally, but continually for as long as they remain workers) is obvious and not at all an abstraction.

>>20217640
but for people who are forced to go months without pay to strike just to be able to afford life necessities
thats an industry interest though. also I get your point, but going on strike to afford life necessities is a weird way to put something unless the result of that strike makes up for their time striking. which if someone in such dire straights where that low down with immediate necessities seems odd. I would put it more for long term interests. Besides worker itelf is an abstract term. I work to be a bureaucrat. doesnt matter if you bend steal if your steel doesnt get there on time. IDK if you work in an industry, but people bitch just the same about unions just as they do higher management, because both can impede shit depending on context.

>>20216992
explain why pic related is wrong

>>20217434
>>20217640
sorry, I take that back, that's the wrong order. you should first go to r3ddit/discord and tell to your "comrades" that they should kts, and only then you should kys. sorry again for the mix-up
>>20217678
it's not an industry interest though, because the ultimate reason why they can't simply be paid enough consistently and without having waste health fighting for it goes well beyond individual industries and is shared by proletarians in all industries and of all nations.
>but going on strike to afford life necessities is a weird way to put something... I would put it more for long term interests.
it might be weird if you interpret it as "they'll literally starve in 2 months if they don't get a raise", but it can be broader than that. if they have a strong enough organization, people will be willing to fight for things like being able to send their kid to college in 5 years or something. in advanced societies people experience as life necessities much more things than they would if they were 10th century peasants.
>Besides worker itelf is an abstract term.
it can be abstract depending on who uses it to mean what. but I'm speaking in terms of Marxist, so I mean it concretely to refer to the proletariat, i.e. people who must sell their labour in order to live and who are without reserves and with little perspectives for escaping that situation into middle class existence.
>IDK if you work in an industry, but people bitch just the same about unions just as they do higher management, because both can impede shit depending on context.
sure, regime unions are bourgeois institutions. their goal is to guarantee harmony between workers and capital so that accumulation proceeds smoothly.
that's why I expressly characterized communism as concerned with the INDEPENDENT CLASS movement of the proletariat. in regime unions that only exists as far as the rank-and-file can occasionally manage to break with the leadership and act not in bourgeois class interest of harmonious functioning of industry and flow of profits but in proletarian class interest of strengthening independent proletarian organization.

>>20209457
>Communism is inherently anarchistc

How does these people keep finding their way to /lit/?

>>20214763
>retard thinks hunger has been solved
You are the dumbest faggot in this thread because you are objectively and observably wrong in a non-philosophical sense.

>>20217640
>what is your vision of life outside of politics
inmediately start a pamphlet about the importance of communism.
you have to be one of those self-righteous retards who thinks "everything is political" the same way he can say "everything is mathematics" "everything is psychological" or "everything is art".
calm down little retard, your mission in life is not proselitize your fucking cause. or is it?.

>>20217752
>people who must sell their labour in order to live and who are without reserves and with little perspectives for escaping that situation into middle class existence.
workers are only the ones who can barely buy his food?. this is why communism roots are obviously christianity.

>>20217696
1. My labor is far more valuable than yours, why should I accept a time stamp payment in exchange for whatever the totalitarian super state deigns as "necessities" exclusively when I'm getting done more and better work than you are? What part of
>worse diet
>worse housing
>worse healthcare
>less choice in employment
>less freedom
Than even the lowest drug-addled classes in the US don't you understand?

Oh wait, any country that says it's communist and fails spectacularly over and over again isn't really communist but when a country like China succeeds on the back of a huge and oftentimes brutal private industry that's been in place for the past 40 years it's proof that communism works.

2. Marx didn't understand how services worked for one thing; the idea of an entire economy with hundreds of millions of participants centered around services rendered such as art, entertainment or transportation and logistics, would be completely alien to him, just like work and entrepreneurship in general was.

>"Uhm...like, the Factories, bro. That's where the stuff people buy comes out and like, one evil guy makes a lot of money and everyone else doesn't make as much. Doesn't that piss you off bro!?"

>>20218548
Hunger was ostensibly solved worldwide by American scientist Norman Borlaug, yes. The only places where hunger persists are literal third world communist smell holes where the average IQ is in the high 80s that have bred out of all control. The USSR couldn't feed itself under its own system without stealing Borlaug's research and claiming credit for it, yet you think they would do a better job feeding Ethiopians than the world does today? lmao

>unlike workers who have a material interest in ditching non-sensical notions, intellectuals do not

>>20218948
>Hunger was ostensibly solved worldwide by American scientist Norman Borlaug, yes.
Prove it. He saved people from starvation, but he did not cure it.
>The only places where hunger persists are literal third world communist smell holes where the average IQ is in the high 80s that have bred out of all control.
They're all capitalists. There's four third world communist smell holes left and they're China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba.
>>20218971
>>20218980
>not_real_communism.png
Funny how the commies used to do this and now it's the other way around.

The far right unironically has more anti-capitalist potential in it than the far left in modern-day America, and for that reason I'm out. It's easier to talk to righists about reasonable economic policy than it is to talk to leftists about reasonable social/cultural policy.

>>20218794
>inmediately start a pamphlet about the importance of communism. you have to be one of those self-righteous retards who thinks "everything is political"
lol it's not my fault that the for proletarians a premise for even being able to live a life is class struggle. it must be nice being a petty bourgeois insect who doesn't have to care about any class movement because his dad is paying for everything.
and it's hilarious that you're the one accusing me of projecting communism onto everything, when it was you who asked for MY vision of life and then got mad that my personal answer didn't reflect YOUR personal position, i.e. being able to treat "politics" as an irrelevant hobby because of your social standing.
>>20218819
no, people have more basic expenses than just food, especially in most advanced societies. but as to the general point, proletariat is the revolutionary class, and people who have something to defend in this society aren't the ones who are going to smash it.
>>20218948
>My labor is far more valuable than yours, why should I accept
because otherwise you'll starve lmao
>but when a country like China succeeds on the back of a huge and oftentimes brutal private industry that's been in place for the past 40 years it's proof that communism works.
no, China was never communist
>Marx didn't understand how services worked
proof?
>>20219037
nobody cares, you don't even know what capitalism is

>>20219120
>you can't simultaneously know what you're talking about and disagree with me
tell me more about how surgical castration will change the mode of production

>>20219141
>you can't simultaneously know what you're talking about and disagree with me
no, the point is you can't possibly think that far right has a minimum amount of anti-capitalist potential unless you think capitalism is when Jews, finance capital and international corporations

>>20219147
>you can't think X because I say so!
Retarded. The left is infected with the equivalent of a mind virus that has them actively upholding and strengthening capitalism. Questioning these social and cultural orthodoxies is verboten. The far right's skepticism of finance capitalism is leagues closer to right than intersectional feminist trans gobbidy guck that's inescapable on the left.

>>20219120
>when it was you who asked for MY vision of life
vision of life outside politics. the fact that you cant even comprehend it and you remove outside politics from the question tell me everything i need to know. i mean, you have the introspection of an ant.
you just want glory and fireworks.

>>20219184
>you can't think X because I say so!
I'm not saying it's because I say so but because it's wrong
>The left is infected with the equivalent of a mind virus that has them actively upholding and strengthening capitalism.
true, the virus is called bourgeois ideology and they have it because they're petty bourgeois and smooth functioning of capitalism is in their interest
>The far right's skepticism of finance capitalism is leagues closer to right than intersectional feminist trans gobbidy guck that's inescapable on the left.
maybe, but that's like saying London is closer to Beijing than Paris. and it's not like a fascist state could exist without finance capital or without doing business with international corporations. the only thing it could rid of is the Jews, but then that would be as anti-capitalist as intersectional feminism.
>>20219210
I already explained why my life can't exist in abstraction from class struggle and communism. your question is a retarded one to ask, unless you're from an alien civilization and on an assignment to research homo sapiens through 4chan. because, do you really need to see platitudes about family, friends, doing enjoyable things and creating stuff? it's clear that you don't actually give shit and you just wanted to prepare ground for your stupid point about "everything is politics" (and you didn't fail to immediately undermine it on your own, because after all it itself rests on "everyone is petty-bourgeois"). so I responded to the spirit of your question, not the literal text. the fact that you can't even comprehend this tells me everything I need to know.

>>20219184
>>20219295
>London is tens of kilometers closer to Beijing than Paris is

>>20219120
>because otherwise you'll starve lmao
"I'm absolutely determined to put you and perhaps hundreds of millions of others into an objectively worse material position than they were before by force of arms and if you don't go along with it we'll deliberately starve you to death-but also we're the good guys and we're here to save you from starvation lol"
There's no way for you to reconcile the contradictions of your failure of a system except through vague, impotent threats I see. Good luck, you'll definitely need it tranny.

>China was never communist
"All of these people saying they were implementing communism from Stalin to Mao were wrong but also we should all read everything they wrote about communism and try and do everything they did."
I see this kind of doublethink from social media commies all the time; legitimate mental illness if we're not assuming outright malevolence.

Reminder that Lenin died in the process of making a near decade long "strategic retreat" from Communism called the New Economic Policy and that even more Russians starved as "agrarian Communism" was reimplemented just a few years later.

>>20219120
>proof?
He doesn't write about them at an appreciable length and neither do any of his beard lickers. They quite literally don't understand how business works beyond the surface level, just like they don't understand the difference between net or gross profit/revenue or how the stock market works.

>>20219295
>>20219298
The left is just a non-starter, it's completely fucked. Anybody who professes to be anti-capitalist outside of the modern left is closer to actually being anti-capitalist than the modern left because the modern left is decidedly pro-capitalist. In fact I'd say the left is even more dangerously pro-capitalist than people who explicitly support capitalism in the sense that the left presents itself as a sort of insidious false opposition. The far right has a fairly diverse range of thought, whereas the far left is strangled by a spiraling ideological conformity. Baghdad might not be close to Beijing but it's much closer than London is.

>>20219295
>and you just wanted to prepare ground for your stupid point about "everything is politics"
no, it was an honest question, but too naive from my part, now i understand. im just honestly curious about how a rigid militant old school marxist using non-ironically concepts like lumpen proletariat can live and how is his life. now i know even if you can response, you are not gonna do it in a thread in 4chan where you are fiercely fighting for your cause like it was godsending and you dont seem like the kind of person that after that start to talk about your (probably) shitty non-sensical and frustrated life (like almosst everyone if you are honest...)
so im gonna asume maybe you are just this entangled in your theories and defensive to lay down and talk like a fucking human. its that or you are, like i said before, a fucking fanatic ant. everything is possible. by your responses you are living in marxist theory like it was alice in wonderland.

>>20219341
>I'm absolutely determined to put you and perhaps hundreds of millions of others into an objectively worse material position than they were before by force of arms
no, you'll be put there by another capitalist crisis and another capitalist war. or if you'll manage to somehow stay afloat by finding a way to plug into the shrinking profits from the exploitation of those who will go under, then don't be surprised that they'll resist and have you lie in the bed you made for them.
>There's no way for you to reconcile the contradictions of your failure of a system
world wars and violent agricultural reforms following bourgeois revolution aren't facets of "my system" but of capitalism
>"All of these people saying they were implementing communism from Stalin to Mao were wrong but also we should all read everything they wrote about communism and try and do everything they did."
they weren't implementing communism and nobody who doesn't want damage to their brain should read them (you're free to do that, however, because it's too late for you)
>Reminder that Lenin died in the process of making a near decade long "strategic retreat" from Communism called the New Economic Policy
you don't need to remind me that Lenin was neither an idiot nor a counter-revolutionary and that he was aware that you can't have socialism in an isolated Russia; and that consequently the correct thing to do was to wait it out without giving much ground, while at the same time actively pursuing revolution in Western Europe through the International
>even more Russians starved as "agrarian Communism" was reimplemented just a few years later
bourgeois agrarian reform doesn't suddenly become communist when it's a little more violent than other historical examples
>>20219376
what doesn't he understand about them?
>>20219427
>The left is just a non-starter
true!
>>20219450
>no, it was an honest question
the question wasn't honest because the actual thing you disapprove of or are curious about is why I'm serious about communism. yet you specifically asked a question which excluded that. this already assumes that I'm serious about communism not for actual reasons that have to do with communism, but because I'm miserable or something (nice projection btw)
>so im gonna asume maybe you are just this entangled in your theories and defensive to lay down and talk like a fucking human
I talk life with people I care about and trust, not with some random on an anime forum in an unrelated thread
>by your responses you are living in marxist theory like it was alice in wonderland.
you're just silly if you GENUINELY think that it's weird if someone goes into a thread about electric trains to talk about electric trains and refuses to entertain some moron who feels he's entitled to having people talk about other stuff with him. my responses are normal and to the point responses on the subject this thread is about, roughly. I don't think you do genuinely think that though

>>20206562
This is just more face-saving, which is all Marxist theory has been for the past 80 years. The thing is a zombie, just let it die a proper death already.
>Has…Marxism ever predicted a stunning novel fact successfully? Never! It has some famous unsuccessful predictions. It predicted the absolute impoverishment of the working class. It predicted that the first socialist revolution would take place in the industrially most developed society. It predicted that socialist societies would be free of revolutions. It predicted that there will be no conflict of interests between socialist countries. Thus the early predictions of Marxism were bold and stunning but they failed. Marxists explained all their failures: they explained the rising living standards of the working class by devising a theory of imperialism; they even explained why the first socialist revolution occurred in industrially backward Russia. They “explained” Berlin 1953, Budapest 1956, Prague 1968. They “explained” the Russian-Chinese conflict. But their auxiliary hypotheses were all cooked up after the event to protect Marxian theory from the facts. The Newtonian programme led to novel facts; the Marxian lagged behind the facts and has been running fast to catch up with them

>ITT: Marxists criticize Marxists with the same criticisms that the far has been saying for the past decade but since Marxists are saying it it's ok

>>20206562
>Marx was incorrect in his determinism: the division of labor in capitalism is fundamentally stable. The contradiction evinced by the exploitation and alienation of the worker does not compel him to form with his class and seek revolution.

Can you elaborate on this? Does he reject Marx's entire view of history to come to this conclusion? I've been thinking lately about how Marx was right about a lot but the world still seems to be barreling unstoppably toward some inhuman end-historical capitalist nightmare.

>>20219184
This is what blows my mind about the American left today. It's insane that the populist right has taken over as the dominant voice of opposition to Davos and the associated network of the global capital. There is a nascent class consciousness in America, and it's expressed in the symbolic language of folklore about a pedophilic elite conducting demonic sacrifices. The right plays ball with this shit, and the left won't. We just antagonize these people for not trusting the science until they come to see us as an enemy and decide to go with nationalism and anti-Semitism instead. Tucker Carlson talks about class more often than the most prominent voices on the left ffs.

I know people who will go to the mat for the USSR and PRC but the second you bring up real shit they freak out. Sadly most people who identify as far left in America have totally internalized liberalism's ideological presuppositions.

OP here. I haven't been in here for a while but thanks for the continued good discussion in this thread guys, one of the best discussions I've been able to find in a long time on /lit/.
>>20220816
Yeah, the determinism in Marx is the part where the contradictions of capitalism necessarily lead to its demise. As another anon linked me, that argument comes from, among other places, here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

The author in the OP argues that Marx was fundamentally wrong about this: the contradictions of capitalism are not enough to determine its demise. As that anon showed me, that is a much larger claim about the tradition than it might appear at first, and that is probably why other Marxists (Frankfurt School, etc) have so entirely invested themselves into the examination of the superstructure.

>>20219925
>the question wasn't honest because the actual thing you disapprove of or are curious about is why I'm serious about communism. yet you specifically asked a question which excluded that. this already assumes that I'm serious about communism not for actual reasons that have to do with communism, but because I'm miserable or something (nice projection btw)
i assume now that you are not gonna trust and be open in some random anime forum, that was what im tried to say before about my naivety. i understand it.
but you are wrong. i think your vision of communism is absolute shit and completely rigid and machinistic garbage that probably comes from a machinistic and rigid person (and proud of it!!!). but no, i was not curious about why you are serious about communism but about how it was your life, in a way i suppose you see everything in the world tremendously incorrect and decadent. its impossible for you to understand this kind of curiosity about someone you see pretty eccentric?. its more about how you are socially not because i think if you are a social pariah i can have an argument to imply you are wrong with communism.
i really only see this old school marxism in old people. i somehow assume you are somewhat young, maybe im wrong, if you are post 50 (rare here but possible) your eccentricity is less interesting. (in that case you are a product of your time, or a kind of subproduct) anyway. just that. i guess its superficial in a way, so go on with your rants and forget what im saying.

>>20220894
Thanks anon. Yeah, I get Marx’s determinism and I know it’s a big deal, which is why I wonder about it. I think Marx’s framework has a lot of explanatory power but is also tied up in this historical materialism which doesn’t seem to be panning out and has even really struggled to explain things that have happened historically. I’m wondering how Marxian thinkers get around this, which is why I ask. I’ve read a lot of Marx and sociologists commenting on his work but never any of the subsequent ideologists like Gramsci or those dudes.

>>20217472
It pretty much is. Kind of like how Capitalist Realism was a whole load of copeasaurus

>>20220872
The American left has been controlled opposition since the 60s when the feds pumped money into the New Left to keep leftists from becoming something that could plausibly align with the USSR. The closest it got to being anywhere close to right was the 90s/early 00s and all of that progress went down the drain once 2008 saw woke shit get turned up to 11. The far right always had fed infiltrators but that's mostly because until very recently nobody with an IQ over 90 wanted anything to do with them so they were easy to honeypot into stupid plots. Nowadays though you've got plenty of young professionals who have latched onto it and because irl is not really feasible for far right politics it's morphed into a very decentralized, grass roots sort of thing. This is compared to the left, where you go join something like the DSA or your local Antifa group and you're taking marching orders in the form of intel tips from NGOs who are coordinating your group with a bunch of others, and of course all of these NGOs are funded by bourgeoisie foundation money. I guess the real problem is that left wing infrastructure exists and is widespread, and if you don't go along with the crazy shit they're spewing they kick you out and there's nowhere left to go. The far right has nothing so it's just a wild west of spergs exchanging ideas hoping to slip into some kind of state election.

>>20221025
>the crazy shit they're spewing

They don’t spew crazy shit is the thing. For whatever radical posturing they use, groups like DSA or antifa are at core ideologically indistinguishable from neoliberal mind control like John Oliver or James Corden. Stuff like intersectionality is legit and was created to disrupt bourgeois whitoid control of feminist etc discourse, but is now oftentimes used as a tool for bourgeois concern trolling to shut down conversations about class. Hence why it was so rapidly assimilated by globohomo. My local DSA does based shit like supporting labor strikes but I wish the movement wasn’t totally myopic and would start thinking clearly about its economic program and how to achieve it.

>>20206562
Sorel's "Reflections on Violence" was the last time anyone had anything even remotely insightful or new to say about Marxism. Why can't you fags just accept it's a zombie ideology and move on with your lives. Stop worshiping a dead god.

>>20219969
>It predicted the absolute impoverishment of the working class.
it predicted relative impoverishment of the working class, which was true
>It predicted that the first socialist revolution would take place in the industrially most developed society.
it predicted that Russia could give revolutionary signal to the West, but that there's no socialist revolution there without one in the West. which was proven true by Russia suffering counter-revolution within a decade for that very reason
>It predicted that there will be no conflict of interests between socialist countries
and that was never proven false
the rest of the quote crumbles with those premises being false
>>20220937
>i think your vision of communism is absolute shit and completely rigid and machinistic garbage
it's not my vision of communism. it's the vision of communism that resulted from scientific investigation of history. and your opinion is worthless until you can provide justification for it. but you can't do that, because you're just another cretin who hasn't even read the minimum amount of material on the subject like 99% of people here. but you're the first one to give your opinions on things you know nothing about, including people's private lives.
>but no, i was not curious about why you are serious about communism but about how it was your life
that's just another way of referring to a thing someone's very serious about. thanks for proving my point.
>in a way i suppose you see everything in the world tremendously incorrect and decadent
capitalism is a historical transition period to communist society, so you might just as well suppose the opposite

bump