/lit/ - Literature

>>3321756
>are hypercapitalism and bourgeoisie somehow anti-intellectual?

Hm, let me think about this for a second.

There should be a book about a guy named Steve, who sits around the house eating cheetos and farting

>>3321790
I honestly believe that something great could be made out of such a pathetic subject issue.

>>3321756
>Why is so much of history's greatest literature anti-bourgeois, or at least pro-proletariat?
why does so much of it have strong pro-socialist themes?

Marxists tend to care deeply about "history" and teleos, even social democrats (non-Marxist), anarchists (non-Marxist), and labourites care about the past and the role of the proletariat in it.

The bourgeoisie can't buy enough right wing fucks to care seriously about history as a life project. Social and cultural history are, effectively, dominated by the proletarian project _because_ the bourgeoisie is a vacuous class.

>are hypercapitalism and the bourgeoisie somehow anti-intellectual?

Paging Marcuse and Zizek. Please come to aisle one for the realisation of ideology in capitalism?

>i'm starting to have trouble empathizing [sic] with railroad [sic] workers or camp prisoners for the nth time

Try some Bill Lomax on Hungary 1956—the class in triumph is just as interesting. Or read some instrumentalist operational accounts of war. They're always fun for light historical reading.

>i'm a jaded amoral lifeless detached bourgeois
Highly unlikely that you subsist off profit, mate. Highly unlikely. You're at best PMC, and probably just labour aristocracy.

>yearning for culture and an empathic connection of any kind

History is the story of man's inhumanity to man, magnified by man's capacity to build tools. History is the account of the continual rape of women, and the continual destruction of collective subjectivities. And from that, we arise again, harder and stronger. We are alienated from ourselves in a way that you can only dream of—our alienation is our liberation.

For the young bourgeois experience, I suggest whoring your way through the developing world—it is the 19th century grand tour.

>isn't there any literature that panders to this demographic

In history? There's American instrumental apologism, try Wheatcroft on the Soviet Union.

>>3321807
Go to bed, Tao.

A lot of classical litterature is actually pretty pro-aristocratic. "Proletarian" literature, so to speak, is rather modern. As for pro-bourgeois litterature, I don't know. Probably something written in the late 19th early 20th century.

>>3321807
>talking shit about my life

But seriously... Tao Lin.

>>3321817
>the bourgeoisie is a vacuous class.

lel, such Trotskyism

>>3321821
Is Lin that bad? I've never read any of his work

>>3321756
>are hypercapitalism and bourgeoisie somehow anti-intellectual?

It's not that they're anti-intellectual (historically), just that they're evil. In OUR era, however, the bourgeoisie are both evil and anti-intellectual.

>>3321842
>Trotskyism
Hello chum, enjoying your New Labour with a Lib Dem face?

>>3321756
>Why is so much of history's greatest literature anti-bourgeois, or at least pro-proletariat?
Wrong board to ask this.
/lit/ is addled with would-be-Marxists who are too busy posturing to realize how the very same capitalism they hate enabled all the art they enjoy.

>>3321858
>how the very same capitalism they hate enabled all the art they enjoy.
Blake and Zola want a word with you for starters.

>>3321870
So would plenty of other hacks who were too invested in their own work to see the truth through all their personal heuristics.

>>3321878
Attempting to totalise human liberation beneath a bourgeois yoke? Next tell me about how progressive the US revolution was.

>>3321885
>human liberation
Funny guy.

Fuck this shit, just read some science fiction.

>>3321888
Sweat sucker, blood sipper.

>>3321894

>scifi

Pedophile detected.

>>>/tv/

>>3321756
If we assume Marx's point of view, nothing and no one can be at once an intellectual and a bourgeois. Whereas communism is the realm of reality, where man is completely conscious of the economic processes that guide his life, Capitalism is the realm of fantasy, a world shrouded by the lies of ideology.

Les Rallizes Dénudés
Coil
Brainbombs

>>3321959
The belief that the bourgeoisie itself can constitute a culture is ideology at its purest. The bourgeois cannot engage with the remnants of feudalistic thought, let alone penetrate the contradictions of the ideology of those that operate parliament in their interests. Like with all things, the bourgeois hires an expert to conduct the business for them. They merely sit back and watch the halting process of circulation and reproduction proceed in their interest and in the misery and blood and guts and phlegm and lymph and snot and sexual moistness and so on and so on of the proletariat and its foremen.

>>3321961

>literature
>spending the rest of your life trapped in North Korea because of your retarded ideology

I might be too pleb to comprehend /lit/ but from the time I've spent lurking, it's filled with would-be-Marxists spouting vapid shit about the bourgeoisie.
I'm just too pleb. Marxism is the end result of education, right?

>>3321959
*slow clap*

Most artists worth their salt aren't writing for the kind of person you are

>>3321959
>>3321968
what a broletariat

>>3322518
>broletariat

stealing

>>3321756
Proust
Huysmans
Mann
Musil

But the truth is that a lot of art is anti-bourgeois for two reasons:

1) Bourgeois didn't like people having sex, drinking and doing drugs because they were moral fags.
2) They didn't like their children becoming writers because it never made money and money is all the bourgeois cares about. So it's obvious that writers and intellectuals feel alienated from them.

>>3321756
People got tired of Henry James

The working class use to be pretty literate and intellectual, and writers who gain traction appeals to an enormous sense of injustice which would appeal to most people.

Romanticist writers wrote about sympathy for the working class but suggested nothing to solve their problems because it was beautiful sympathize.

Other writers later on, HG Wells and Tolstoy et al. were actually dedicated people who went along with the general political awakening following the romanticist era.

>>3321858
I only read premodern literature.
Feudalism produced the literature I enjoy.

>>3321968
Kinda interesting because the Marxists eventually did become an elitist "intellectual" class. The intellectual class who Lenin was the embodiment of was condemned by Bakunin and the anarchists because they believed revolution had to follow the "scientific" progression of the dialectic and attacked peasant/worker uprisings.

Hey look, it's a bunch of literature people who think the incorrect body of ideas disseminated from a failed social scientist - now taken seriously by masturbatory academics, North Koreans, a smattering of incompetent bookish types and no one else - give them a valid opinion on a society they probably know very little about.

Just a friendly reminder the Marxism has been a joke to most intelligent people for at least a few decades.

>>3322589
Looking at Lenin and the Populists (not bakunin, he was dead way before Lenin) arguing you won't get much because both of them argue depending whatever is the most convenient for them.

>>3321991
lawl at the irony of being too "pleb" to understand Marxism

I guess what I would say to your question is that many great writers see it as part of their duty to inspire empathy and illuminate the human condition. Probably the most prevalent and consistently glossed-over and prettied-up atrocities across human history is the struggle of the poor and their oppression via the ruling class. Hell, the existence of social classes (outside of maybe like a pure meritocracy) is pretty damn atrocious when you think about it. Most intellectuals have one to this realization, and want to explore and investigate further.

That being said, plenty of literature explores middle- and upper-class banalities. Infinite Jest comes to mind.

>>3322589
You might want to work on your expression, you have Lenin being a class and Bakunin condemning Lenin.

Bakunin's critique of Marx's suggestion that the vanguard of the proletariat—ie, the most self-aware workers composed collectively and democratically—isn't valid when attacking Lenin's conception of a "vanguard" bourgeois party composed entirely of non-workers. In fact, you might want to avoid conflating Marxism with Lenin's batshit insane ravings in "What is to be done?" which Lenin even attempted to recant in the late teens within the RSDLP(b). Mainly because I can point at Otto Rühle and the KAPD / AAUD / AAUE and demonstrate the recurrence of democratic proletarian subjectivity within the social democratic workers movement.

>>3322606
Actually Marx was a very good social scientist.
His science was top notch for the times and he had a very good understanding of Ricardo and Adam Smith. You don't go around saying that they are failed scientist.

Despite not being a marxist, it makes me angry to see close minded people like you trying to pass ideology as an intelligent judgment.

>>3322606
>[Marxism] taken seriously by North Koreans
Oh lawd, you've read nothing about Juche thought, have you?

>>3322606
>thinking Marx has been "disproved" by a handful of misguided, corrupt and/or batshit political experiments
>not recognizing Marx is primarily a social and economic theorist
>2013

Also, I think it's possible to be a Marxist without necessarily buying into his concept of violent revolution as the only way to achieve socialism. I'd say I'm a Marxist but also more of a social democrat/reformist.

>>3322629
He was a failed social scientist in that his work was wrong. Most of the important verifiable claims you could make from his theory were basically proven incorrect by history. Social scientists who make theories that don't predict things or describe them in a way that's actually useful have failed at their task.

BTW I'm not claiming he's a failed political philosopher, but that's something different.

>>3322642

Everything that was ever inspired by Marx has been a colossal failure

>>3322648

So?

>>3322642
>thinking Marx has been "disproved" by a handful of misguided, corrupt and/or batshit political experiments
Wrong. It's impossible to know a little history and still think what all dem socialists governments did actually amounted to a good application.

>>3322633
Just be happy I didn't say Chinese instead of North Koreans (you're taking it too seriously, dumbfuck).

>>3322661
> It's impossible to know a little history and still think what all dem socialists governments did actually amounted to a good application.

Only if you studied history at the Mises University.

>>3322647
[citation needed]

>>3322648
Nazism was virulently anti-Communist. Marx was a fucking Jew for Pete's sake. (St. Peter = also a Jew)
As for the other two, they had an essential flaw in their socio-political source code. They were leftist in ideology but fascist in practice. Trying to defend far-left ideals with far-right tactics is obviously a recipe for dysfunction, hypocrisy, corruption, and catastrophe.

>>3322648

I wonder why no one counts the people that are still dying because of our economic choices...

>>3322648

What does this have to do with Obama?

>>3322647
>He was a failed social scientist in that his work was wrong.
No, that's the point of social science.

>in that his work was wrong.
…
>Most of the important verifiable claims you could make from his theory were basically proven incorrect by history.

Brb, I'll just check that claim with Thompson, Hill and Hobsbawm…nope, you're wrong. The historians all agree with the continued strength of the research project.

>>3322687
None of the countries are/were even socialist nations.

It's dumbass Republican propaganda.

>>3322678
THIS. Capitalism is the impetus for massive exploitation, degradation, and needless death. Just because it doesn't affect you and your cushy first-world reality in that way doesn't mean these atrocities don't exist, you small minded pricknozzle.

also
>Nazism
>inspired by Marx
>what the fuck am I reading dot jpeg

>>3322694
>socialism
>not Marxist

>>3322689
>Thompson, Hill and Hobsbawm
>The historians all agree with the continued strength of the research
Lol, the proportion of marixist historians to all other historians makes this matter pretty clear. Actually, the only you're really likely to run into a large group of Marxists in the social sciences of a good university is in ... hmm, maybe cultural anthropology, and those guys are nearly humanities people. While it doesn't necessarily make your view less true, you're arguing from a tiny fringe.

>>3322670
>they had an essential flaw in their socio-political source code.

No they didn't. They were anti-Western, anti-imperialist revolutions, just like every other revolution in the 20th century. The 'communism' thing was just a convenient smokescreen to justify the virulent anti-Western stance.

>>3322699
It isn't. Socialism existed before Marx. Nazism was anti-Capitalist (at least in theory) but it was not related to Marx's "scientific socialism" a.k.a. Communism

>>3322699
>uses the swastika
>not hinduism

>>3322687
i assume it's a joke

>>3322793

I seriously doubt it. Go take a trip over to /pol/ and start a thread about Obama

>>3322703
The tiny fringe of the majority of historians is a "tiny fringe" I'm happy with.

>>3322648
Really, mods? Really?

>>3322795
>/pol/

*shudder*

How does a place like that exist...

>i'm a jaded, amoral lifeless, detached bourgeois

kill yourself. you're the worst kind.

>>3321959
>If we assume Marx's point of view
And why would we?

>>3321959
>nothing and no one can be at once an intellectual and a bourgeois.


Why? The bourgeoise has much more potential for cultural and intellectual activity than any other class.

>Whereas communism is the realm of reality, where man is completely conscious of the economic processes that guide his life

So reality simply just = being conscious of the economic processes in your life?

Which not only is the most ridiculous definition of 'reality' I've ever heard, but even in a Marxist society people wouldn't be fully aware of the economic processes that guide their life.

Nor do they have any need to.

>>3321968
>Like with all things, the bourgeois hires an expert to conduct the business for them.

And as with all things, how is this in any way wrong?

Really, all the anti-bourgoise conjecture here so far is just clumsy half-baked dorm room quoting of Marxist trash

>>3322606
>Just a friendly reminder the Marxism has been a joke to most intelligent people for at least a few decades.


this x 1000

>>3323270

So what are you? Some political nihilist? A social democrat? Fascist?

>>3322694
>Capitalism is the impetus for massive exploitation, degradation, and needless death.

l
m
a
o

i really wonder why people are so vocal about things they don't have the slightest clue about

this feels like the middle school a/v club trying to discuss ethics and politics

>>3323275
Care to elaborate on why he's wrong?

>>3323256
It is a matter of whether you believe value can be objectively measure or not. If you don't, you will probably wander through the path of neo orthodoxy.

If you do, you simply can't ignore Marx and Marx essentially arrives at the conclusion that everything about a society ruled by capitalism is vague, fluid and untrue: all that is solid melts into air. "Alienation", "ideology", "surplus value", all the concepts Marx brings forth denote the roundabout methods, the subterranean manner by which the bourgeoisie dominates others and itself.

They are incapable of truth, of looking at things straight, because doing so would dispel the illusion of everything that keeps their society together.

>>3323273
>political nihilist? A social democrat? Fascist?

lol this board is so cute

it's as if people really think we're picking sides or rooting for a soccer team

i won't actually have a discussion with you because just reading through this thread makes me embarassed, but i can tell you a few things:

-stop salivating over useless marxist and trotskyist trash
-stop being a premodern romanticizing neckbeard
-go take some basic macro econ and econ ethics classes
-go read some durkheim, malinowski, spencer and radcliffe-browne

>>3323287
>They are incapable of truth, of looking at things straight, because doing so would dispel the illusion of everything that keeps their society together.

i wonder how people actually reads this with a straight face

>>3323288
>durkheim, malinowski, spencer and radcliffe-browne
It's impossible to consider Marx outdated and consider these four relevant at the same time. Durkheim, specially, is at the verge of prehistory in sociology.

>>3323300
>It's impossible to consider Marx outdated

I don't consider Marx 'outdated'

He is flat out trash

There is nothing of value to be taken from him

>Durkheim, specially, is at the verge of prehistory in sociology.

I'm suggesting you some starting literature, which I'm assuming you direly need

Work your way up from there

>>3323288
>implying implications
>highly relevant trip-moniker

If you think broad studies like "macroeconomics" somehow discredit Marx, you're an arrogant fool. Should a serious student of economics build on Marxism with some more modern schools of thought? Absolutely. Do any of these schools of thought "disprove" Marx. Not to my knowledge, especially where his economic theories of labor and capital are concerned.

>>3323306
>There is nothing of value to be taken from him
Now you just went full retard.

>>3323313
>discredit Marx

it's funny

you think he had any credit to him in the first place

>>3323315
>you think he had any credit to him in the first place

Sure, Dialectical materialism was actually quite a good theory.

>>3323288
I'm inclined to take you far less seriously than anyone else ITT, since you just seem to be throwing around insults with a condescending attitude. I admit to being almost entirely ignorant on the subject of this thread, but I've been lurking with interest. Would it trouble you much to post some short rebuttals?

>>3323324
>Would it trouble you much to post some short rebuttals?


yea

if you're as ignorant on the subject as you claim to be i'll put it in baby terms

it takes a very special kind of person to adhere to marxist thought in any way in the year 2013

that person is either very ignorant or just plain stubborn

nothing i can say will that person's mind
it's funny but also very painful and sad

>>3321756
This is not the case, you just have this misguided notion because your professors only assign you books with a leftist slant.

>>3323328
>it takes a very special kind of person to adhere to marxist thought in any way in the year 2013

Or perhaps that someone could see how Milton Friedman/Hayeks capitalist libertarianism wass naive and flawed, decided to read Wealth of nations by the great Adam Smith, only to find that, he too, demonstrates how the capitalist model doesn't work outside of perfect conditions, ultimately creating one of the greatest rich/poor divides of any economic system. Perhaps that someone could see how no system can surely be flourishing, when the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Perhaps that kind of person understands why the marxist influenced socialism of western dictators didn't work. Maybe he knows why the arguments against Stalinism/Leninism/Nazism/Mussolini-ism, and the current systems of many Asian countries are crippled with flawed rhetoric that fails to take fascism/emerging economics/and the continuation of neo-classicalism into account.

Maybe he applies a marxist critique to capitalism and finds a brand of economics that, provided it was applied to a democratic society, would provide greater economic reward and the lowest restriction of civil liberties than any model previously in place.

Perhaps that 'very special kind of person' is just more intelligent than you.

>>3323372
>Perhaps that 'very special kind of person' is just more intelligent than you

>(...)are crippled with flawed rhetoric


>not this entire post

>>3323372
>>3323372
>Milton Friedman/Hayeks capitalist libertarianism wass naive and flawed

But the countries with societies closest to that ideal are currently the richest, best educated, and have some of the highest living standards in the world. It really does work, unless your ideology has completely blinded you to simple empirical facts.

>rich/poor divides

Cry me a river you jealous little faggot. You want to steal when everyone else wants to grow the pie. This is really what your ideology comes down to: everyone (and particularly people in the future) should be poorer so that we can be more equal. As if that is a noble goal.

>>3323388
can't believe i forgot my cheese mouse picture

that ought to equal my shitpost's level with yours

>>3323389
>But the countries with societies closest to that ideal are currently the richest, best educated, and have some of the highest living standards in the world. It really does work, unless your ideology has completely blinded you to simple empirical facts.
We have had two decades of Washington Consensus. The only third world economies that improved since adopted a mix between liberalism and keynesian policies.

Before you start screaming "Chile", know that the State there still owns some of the largest companies of the country. Besides, Pinochet's retarded liberalization has had a fatal consequence in some of Chile's most important resources, such as water.

There is only one kind of person who benefit from senseless deregulation: the greedy, unscrupulous kind.

I've just one question. What service does the bourgeois provide that the proletariat can't do without and can't replicate?

>>3323414

the awnser is that you should read some basic contemporary social theory because the 'bourgeois' and the 'proletariat' don't exist in the way you seem to believe they do

>>3323389
>But the countries with societies closest[...]
You mean the countries with the highest national debts? Sure, they seem more affluent than the countries they exploit. This shouldn't be surprising.

>Cry me a river you jealous little faggot.
Of what am I jealous? I'm not poor.

>You want to steal when everyone else wants to grow the pie
I didn't advocate socialism, fool, but you seem to be blind to the advantages of providing the poor with a meritocracy. The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations; they are kept in a perpetual state by the economic restrictions of the market, with almost no viable way out. You seem to be viewing any change as an impingement to our current system; one where the rich are robbed, instead of being able to view the system in place.

You also seem to be unable to grasp the idea of a 'Marxist critique of capitalism,' not Marxism, Socialism or Capitalism.

>>3323418
You're the one person in this thread whose opinion I'm uninterested in.

>>3323414
>What service does the bourgeois provide that the proletariat can't do without and can't replicate?

Game shows filmed in front of a live studio audience and broadcasted nationally.

>>3323413
>But the countries with societies closest to that ideal are currently the richest, best educated, and have some of the highest living standards in the world. It really does work, unless your ideology has completely blinded you to simple empirical facts.
>We have had two decades of Washington Consensus. The only third world economies that improved since adopted a mix between liberalism and keynesian policies.
You could not be more wrong. Look at Latin America. They followed the Washington Consensus, free-market model to a T and have been developing at an embarrassingly slow rate.

>>3323431

so you formulate a question in the most biased way possible and the only opinion you don't want is from the person who doesn't support what your question is pandering to


lol this thread becomes more of a joke by the post

>i'm a jaded, amoral lifeless, detached bourgeois yearning for culture and an empathic connection of any kind

um, did nobody recommend Great Gatsby yet?

>>3323441
Edit - responding to the first post, not the second. The second one (We have had two decades...) I agree with.

>>3323429
>but you seem to be blind to the advantages of providing the poor with a meritocracy


it's funny

you think marxist diatribe is in any way meritocratic

>>3323444
No, the question was, mostly to those against Marx, why exactly the proletariat needs the bourgeois. What the latter does that makes their existence in any way beneficial to anyone but themselves. A very simple question, and aside from being a tripfag you also didn't understand such a simple question, and thus what you have to say is completely uninteresting, and would have been even if you had given an actual answer.
>>3323435
Good answer.

>>3323466
>A very simple question

again

this is the problem

the answer is not 'simple'

not only are you unable to contextualize the concepts of 'proletariat' and 'bourgois', but you seem to think they're somehow inherently independent systems with just some lines of exchange uniting them

your question and follow up posts just display a boggling misunderstanding of basic social theory

>>3323441
You don't know much about latin american politics, do you?

Take the brazilian case as an example. The first large movement towards liberalization was the Collor government, which would have been a huge joke, were it not for the extremely serious damages it infliction on both society and the economy. Then a sociologist of leftist inclination, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, took his place. He started a second wave of more conscious liberalization which stabilized inflation but increased the internal debt. Finally, Lula was elect and he was so far to the left in the ideological spectrum that there was widespread panic within the right. He toned down the liberalization process even further and established a series of policies of social assistance which, despite all the "don't give fish, tech how to fish" speech, considerably lessened the suffering of the poorest and led to an unprecedented expansion of the middle class. It was not liberalism that helped Brazil, it was a pragmatic mix between it and keynisian ideas.

>>3323286

Only 10% of people on this board actually elaborate when they disagree. It's sad.

>>3323466
>No, the question was, mostly to those against Marx
No shit? Do you know what 'bias' means?

'what you have to say is completely uninteresting, and would have been even if you had given an actual answer.'

Now this is shitposting like a pro.

It's easy to be pro-bourgeois but in what way, do you mean?

'Cause I read a manga that essentially has the message of "Do what you want to be more interesting, not just salaryman jobs," which is pretty much a bourgeois message and not a proletariat message.

>>3323508
Stop being an idiot. I asked anyone who wanted to answer, but the question was more relevant for one against Marxism. Is that your definition of bias, fishing for an answer from one side more than another? And yes, what he said was completely uninteresting, what he said after that was also completely uninteresting. Irrelevant. Meaningless. Totally unrelated to the question. It's sort of like if I'd ask about, uh... Does the Italian mafia fulfill a necessary function, and he'd answers that I need to understand Italian history and economy to understand the answer and that because I don't care about Italian history's supposed role in answering the question, I don't understand anything at all. When, in fact, it has nothing at all to do with it.
>now this is shitposting like a pro
Oh, you admit it, I guess I didn't have to answer after all.

>>3323528
>And yes, what he said was completely uninteresting, what he said after that was also completely uninteresting. Irrelevant. Meaningless


'childish question about 'proletariat' and 'bourgeois'


'l-l-l-learn about them???? read???? BAAAAAAAAAAAAW FUCK OFF'

>>3323540
I was asking about organization and implementation of services, not how the system works or how the two are currently involved with one another. "If we cut away one of them, in this case those not of the proletariat, will some sort of problem arise from this that cannot be addressed in a satisfying way by the proletariat?" Or maybe "is one of them, in this case the bourgeois, necessary for the good of society and if so, why and how?" Or else, you could explain why these questions cannot be answered? Because if you cannot, you may see yourself out.

>>3323564
>will some sort of problem arise from this that cannot be addressed in a satisfying way by the proletariat?


yes
this question shouldn't even ever have to be asked

but your likening of the 'bourgeois' to the mafia already said everything about your world view

>>3323572
I gave an example of a question structured the same way, you silly goose. "Does X do something Y cannot do without." See yourself out.

>>3323528
>>3323564
I'm just going to assume you're this guy:
>>3323324
Because you're thick as a brick.

>>3323589
I'm not, and if you can't answer, shut up. It was a question posed to those who'd answer it. If you have nothing to say... Say nothing.

>>3323598
>If you have nothing to say
The question has been answered a million times, you're just waiting for the answer you want to hear.
The truth is that both systems are interdependent and the fact you even ask this question shows unfathomable ignorance on the subject matter.

C.S. Lewis's theology books.

Because in order to write great literature one needs to be empathetic or at least acknowledge the plight and suffering of other peoples. These things are totally incompatible with capitalism.

>>3323610
>The truth is that both systems are interdependent
How can a man be this fucking stupid... Yes, I know they currently are. I am asking if the group of people who right now makes up the proletariat would somehow lose out on something beneficial by breaking this superintendency and changing its ways. Something which it couldn't make up for somehow. I am talking about the organizational abilities of the two classes and if the bourgeois contributes with something which cannot be done without even through other methods. I am obviously asking those who think that capitalism and the existence of...
Actually, fuck it. If you haven't gotten it yet, you won't just because I make another post.

>>3323644
>superintendency
Fucking what, that's not what I told autocorr. Oh well. I tried to type "interdependent".

>>3323644
>How can a man be this fucking stupid

>I am asking if the group of people who right now makes up the proletariat would somehow lose out on something beneficial by breaking this superintendency and changing its ways

eheheehe

>>3323490
Brazil is an exception, I'd say. They're grouped with China and India as fast-developing countries. But even you conceded, they did use some form of Keynesian economics. Austrians and neoliberals argue that a free market with little to no government intervention is the way to go, but clearly that is not the case.

>>3323678
Uh... I guess there was some sort of misunderstanding between us. I was advocating for and not against the mix.

>>3323644
How do you propose 'breaking up of the system' and what is going to replace it? As it stands, yes, the 'proles' would lose out.

The 'proletariat' are generally of inferior education than the 'bourgeois.' The rich can afford better schooling etc.., If there was a radical change in system, the people now ex-proles are still of inferior education, and in a weaker position for a new place in a reformed system.

The 'bourgeois' are the ones in charge of the factories and production and have got there within a capitalist system. The Proles are currently able to apply for business loans/secure investment/ expand their cottage company and secure a market stake, but generally don't.

Of course, most of this is a gross generalization, but generally speaking, despite their resentment, the proles currently rely on the more educated bourgeois to create job opportunities for them. A radical overthrow would be to the proles detriment.

>>3323790
I don't propose anything at all. That's the thing. The struggle, the history, all of that was irrelevant to my question. Your answer was pretty good. I'd like to follow up by asking if you think those current benefits of the system could be offset by improvements done by Proles for Proles.

>>3323810
>[...]could be offset by improvements done by Proles for Proles.

Only education.

An individual Prole can break the shackles of low wages and become a member of the Bourgeois; this actually happens quite a lot. But within the current system it would just be more harmful to happen collectively. If the Proles all gain PHDs, you are still in the same system. The same people are competing for social status, only the employment criteria is raised.

A higher number will try to be 'bourgeois' and they will create viable products to compete in a more ruthless marketplace. Output and innovation will increase. Science and technology will progress faster. You will have a slightly higher number of businesses, but there isn't room in capitalism for enough stable businesses for the majority to own - as they are all competing. So we would see a higher number of companies, but far more going bankrupt; the PHDs would end up working McJobs and production lines.

A mass Prole 'enlightenment' would be beneficial to a few, but detrimental to a greater number of people who are presently content to work a low wage job and sit in front of a television to forget that fact.

>oppressed standing up to the oppressor

it's no coincidence that rich people in atlas shrugged are painted as heroes unjustly oppressed by evil bureaucrats

>>3323810
>That's the thing
The thing is that you're an illiterate, ignorant, passive agressive shitposter. Die.

>>3324341
Stay mad for two more hours, little boy. It might do someone good.

>>3324349
Don't you have some more shitposting to do? Some more 'questions' to pose? Embarassing yourself a bit more?
What a hick. Go back to /v/.

>>3322694
>>what the fuck am I reading dot jpeg
An american who probably owns many bumperstickers trying to roll his many enemies into one eminently hateable ball of evil. The devil and papist slaves are probably involved somehow.

>>3321756
If you think Fight Club isn't anti-bourgeois, you're kidding yourself.

Also, no, there is no great literature that supports the bourgeoisie because great literature comes from worldly experiences and suffering.

>>3323887
So it's better for proles to remain proles, because if everyone was educated enough to form and run companies, capitalism would collapse?

What would happen in that situation then? The economy couldn't switch to socialism/communism by itself?

>>3324416
>What would happen in that situation then?
Capitalism wouldn't collapse. There would just be a much higher number of unsuccessful entrepreneurs. There is only a finite number of companies that can compete in any one industry, as capitalism encourages competition and will inevitably overpower inefficient or inferior companies.

If everyone was able to be at the top of the economic food chain, more people would try, more people would fail, and we would have more disgruntled intellectuals in low wage jobs.

>>3321756
Because the doctrine of egalitarianism has been gaining ground for the last 250 years or so, and its has subtly altered even apolitical people's perceptions. Writerly types don't recognise that their sensitivity is not normal - and that not being normal is not bad.
Individualism is mostly focussed on denying existing standards of behaviour and saying you can do whatever you like. But because it denies authority, it also denies the basis for authority - inherent differences from person to person. If someone claims to have abnormal perceptivity, they will get dogpiled by indignant people who describe themselves as 'average.'
Refined styles that cater to those with extra perceptivity and longer attention spans are generally considered elitist, because the doctrine of equality rejects inherent differences, and the average prole can only assume the high art is posturing and pretentiousness on part of the artists and their audience. He doesn't understand, or refuses to understand, the difference between human types, because he is afraid he will be judged and found wanting.

Egalitarianism and individualism play right into the hand of the business classes, because without aristocracy, money rules, and they can claim to be where they are because of dedication and good choices rather than inherent skills and thus pretend to be on the side of the mass, giving their labourers false hope. Individualism creates niche markets, and niche markets are easier to monopolize and charge more in.

cont.

>>3324481
Back to artists themselves. The decline of aristocratic patronage (e.g. homeric rhapsodes, medieval troubadours, minnesingers and bards, renaissance painters, the early classical composers) has forced artists to pander to the less perceptive middle and lower classes; artists no longer feel as singled out for admiration despite their class as they used to, and they no longer recognise their gifts as inborn. They are compelled by economics and ideology to sympathise with the common man, and they tend to assume that because they are not as well read (= because they have not sought to read) and because their worldview is somewhat narrow (= because their mind cannot wander as far as their own does) that someone must be responsible for this dreadful seeming-repression. As a result of the doctrine of equality, they blame capitalism for making the lower classes crude, completely oblivious to their arrogance in demanding that everyone be like them.

>>3324467
>>3324467
I mean isn't that essentially what has happened over the past 50 years or so? Even though it seems to me that pattern may be reversing itself

>>3324486
>>3324481
I'm confused by these posts. On the one hand, you point out how the cult of individualist achievement plays into the interests of the monied class by creating mass false hope. (Remember the Republicans saying that they only see "the haves and the soon-to-haves"?) But then you seem to imply that the lower classes are in their position do to inherent inferiorities. If you reject the myth of egalitarianism then why do you blame the lower classes for their own plight? Certainly you concede that being brought up in the projects or a trailer park is generally less conducive to intellectual discourse than being born to a wealthy family that has attended college for multiple generations?

>>3324467
>capitalism encourages competition and will inevitably overpower inefficient or inferior companies.
Capitalism encourages competition period, not fair competition. An inefficient company can completely dominate a certain market share through underhanded methods such as cartels, price fixing, etc.

>>3324486
>decline of aristocratic patronage
Artists receive more economic funding now than ever before. You think those post-post-post-modernist works of art are supported by the common public? If anything the common public is the one that ridicules this kind of art.

Are the rich people just after money and most aren't even cultured? It's hard to relate to 1% percent of the population when you relate so much easier to the rest of the population.

>>3324524
We have quite different points of view here. Your concept of 'the myth of egalitarianism' seems to be based on the idea that existing wealth trumps all. Mine is that some have varying degrees of the inborn skill required for making money through commerce, and some don't. It is one among many prestigious skills; these other skills are best suited to an aristocratic environment where they can grow unimpeded by economic considerations with each generation, or be singled out for patronage when they anomalously arise in the lower classes. The lower classes generally lack most of these skills, or have a negligible degree of a few. If you want me to produce persuasive numbers, don't ask. This analysis is based on logical understanding of evolution as applying even to god's own chosen species, and my intuitive understanding derived from personal experience (all evidence is derived from personal experience. I'm disinclined to treat any as absolute, but I'll gamble on some, including my own.)

Trailerdwellers are forced to go to school with everyone else. They are much less likely to produced interesting people, but on the offchance they do, he has a chance to become aware of wider culture in school. He will most likely turn into an insufferably thrifty and moralising petit-bourgeois and hobbyist.

>>3324568
Aristocrats didn't patronise out of tokenism or a vague sense that art is prestigious and thus ought to be bowed to, and halfheartedly treated as something unequivocally good. They are the reason it is prestigious. They had an entire lifetime of discernment and discrimination and extreme choosiness, and they judged artists and gave money to those that they liked. Though not as abnormally sensitive as artists themselves, they had a better appreciation of subtleties than those who 'make do' and think that shiny red apples, glowing red sunsets and dewy red roses are just super.
Purely state-sponsored, academic art also harms the artist's sense of individuality. In a way he remains a schoolboy messing with papier-mache.

I'm sure the common public also thinks that all Bach sounds the same.

>>3324661
Nope, you don't get conspicuous display in feudalism at all.

Take your pseudo-history elsewhere.

>>3324631
Public schools are marvelous places. In fact, I should say that there is no cultural environment better than "tha hood" for a child to develop his intellectual abilities.

Also, it's amazing how rich people can be competent even though they often are incompetent. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to remain rich, right? Look at Paris Hilton, what a shinning example of a successful businesswoman.

>>3324679
I didn't say they didn't compete, just that they were choosy. I could see a minor noble making do with a fairly ordinary sounding composer just so that he could say he has one, but he would be the most palatable of those available to him.

>>3324700
Sarcasm doesn't strengthen an argument. It just makes you sound defensive and affronted.
I'm sure they force a little Shakepeare down the throats of Rayshawn and Carlos in the inner city. It would be enough of a hint to the existence of higher culture if they had the attention span to get past the use of words like 'thou' and all that wack ass shit.

Women generally don't partake in business and are not inclined to it. Creating human beings tends to preoccupy them - if you think this is a worthless and degrading activity, talk to your mother about it.
The skills involved in the rather vulgar affair of wringing profit out of a growing series of exchanges tend to be hereditary. But heredity is not absolute, just fairly consistent.

>>3324738

these are the words of a very, very fat poster

>>3324707
The thing is, that the aristocrat has no understanding of the foundation of music just like the bourgeois. Neither is _encultured_ themselves.

See baroque and rococo. The aristocrat can patronise, but they have no way of differentiating quality except, like the bourgeoisie, to commission an understander of quality.

Louis XIV's "acting" skills are an excellent example of this process. Ostentation—the only problem with the bourgeoisie is that they circulate capital back into making capital, rather than into display to cement power relations.

>>3324743
>The aristocrat can patronise, but they have no way of differentiating quality except, like the bourgeoisie, to commission an understander of quality


this is honestly the most fundamentally flawed rhetoric i have ever read

this is on the same level as much illiterate hate speech

i think the problem is that some of these autists seriously think they're living in pre-modern russia
'baw rich dumb baw'

>>3324753

honestly

congratulations

you have made someone on 4chan upset


but it honestly turns my stomach that someone functional enough to read, write and use the internet could have such underdeveloped logic skills and fall for such basic hate speech

this is


beyond disgusting

>Why is so much of history's greatest literature anti-bourgeois, or at least pro-proletariat?
why does so much of it have strong pro-socialist themes?

because one important function of art is liberation.

>>3324753
How many people do you know today who subsist by extracting corvee labour and tax directly from controlled peasants?

There are a few in Burma, and a few in Thailand, maybe a couple in central America.

Outside of that, aristocrats don't exist; merely bourgeois.

The simple case is that workers produce cultures directly, the bourgeoisie do not. Even their parlour culture of the 19th century (ably exposed in Zola) is not sufficient to sustain a method of moving beyond ideology and into an understanding of the real determinants of their life.

The working class has such a power because alienated wage labour strips away ideology like a combination of steel wool and lye.

It isn't because they're "rich." The ruling classes of slave societies often demonstrated cohesive and penetrating cultures, seek the Greeks for example. The Aristocracy, on the other hand, contracted that work out to monasteries and sages.

>>3324761
>How many people do you know today who subsist by extracting corvee labour and tax directly from controlled peasants?


Can you maintain a train of thought?
Are you seriously unable to hold a conversation without deflecting every single irrelevant tidbit whenever your hate and ignorance fueled rhetoric is called out for what it is?

>The simple case is that workers produce cultures directly, the bourgeoisie do not

Again
This whole absolute of a rhetoric is based in the childish assumption of 'BOURGEOISE DON'T PRODUCE THEY'RE INHERENTLY UNCULTURED'

>Even their parlour culture of the 19th century

You

Are

Not

In

The

19th Century

You never lived through it

And your knowledge of it passes as little more than clumsy pseudo-history

>ably exposed in Zola

Honestly

HONESTLY

Can't you maintain a train of thought for yourself without namedropping irrelevant authors?


> like a combination of steel wool and lye

this just gets more cringeworthy by the post

i am not even eloquent enough to describe how ridiculous your toiling prole affectation sounds by now

this whole conversation is beyond frustrating

i've never had the displeasure of talking to someone so basic minded, so childish, so hate filled and so ignorant yet so sure of his convictions

you are


neckbeard patient zero

>>3324743
It was pretty de rigeuer for aristocrats to take lessons on, for a example, a harpsichord. They may not have become fully fledged musicians or composer in most cases, but to say they had less understanding than the bourgeois is ridiculous. Most bourgeois are preoccupied with management; aristocrats lived in leisure and could hardly help becoming more familiar and more discerning towards the arts.

The reason why aristocrats becoming artists is so often obscene and embarrassing is because they were of higher rank than professional artists. If they revealed themselves to be even an average artist, they degrade themselves. This applies to professions in general as well as rank. Nietzsche's attempts at composition are embarrassing; if he were a nobody, they would just be awkward and forgettable. I recall a Thomas Mann story in which a policeman (or was it a soldier?) reads a poem of his out at a refined dinner party. The guests mask their cringing with politeness and the meal continues awkwardly, and the viewpoint character thinks something like this: "He was a perfectly good policeman till he became a bad poet."

and this also goes for whoever wrote these pearls

>>3324738
>if they had the attention span to get past the use of words like 'thou' and all that wack ass shit.

>Women generally don't partake in business and are not inclined to it. Creating human beings tends to preoccupy them

i

i

i

i

i am literally at a loss of words for the pathetic turn this topic has taken

this is some serious /pol/ level ignorance and shitposting

the problem is that here i'm inclined to believe people actually believe the drivel they're writing

>>3324756
>Somewhat unrelated
Is your trip a play on words referring to being merry?
or are you stating you're a homosexual

>>3324779
Same fag some more and ignore class theory mate.

>>3324794
well i'm pansexual, but honestly, neither
it was just a ridiculous moniker which i hoped would set the tongue in cheek tone for most of my posting

it mostly just weeds out a lot of shitposters and hate filled ignorants which is useful i guess

>>3324797
>Same fag some more

Where did I ever samefag?

>ignore class theory

Is this a joke? Are you a fucking comedian?
How about YOU go study some class theory?

Because all this trash has been regarded as such ages ago

>>3324803
ahh, that explains it.
Still seems a little weird, but whatever.
carry on

>>3324806
>Because all this trash has been regarded as such ages ago


Hell, I'll sum up this trainwreck of a topic

'B-B-B-B-B-B-UT MEANS OF PRODUCTION IN THE ROMANTIC ERA'
B-B-B-B-B-UT IF YOU LISTEN TO WHAT MARX SAID'

I can't believe I'm still posting here

>>3324806

See

>>324756

Where you congratulate yourself.

>>3324816
>Where you congratulate yourself.


holy christ you are dull beyond all my wildest expectations

>>3324761
The Greeks had the eupatrids, and Romans had the patricians. Just because they were more urban and had less (surviving) regalia, and some of their terminology has been misappropriated by those the equivalent of their slaves and plebeians, doesn't make them less aristocratic than those lines that were founded during and after the fall of the empire.

>>3321846
It's really atrocious. The man has no imagination at all.

>>3324789
Have I said something false or just something offensive? For the record I don't give a shit about sexuality or religion.

>>3324821
I notice you deleted your post. Well done, never mind that /lit/ is fully archived.

>>3324969
>I notice you deleted your post

You are obscenely dumb

not only did you manage to misread the post, you managed to misquote it AND believe the post is deleted

post you're trying to quote is still here, moron

>>3324756


how does it feel to be LITERALLY retarded?

>>3324816
>>3324969
You do know that you're honestly looking like an idiot, right?

Before the yuppies and pinkoes derailed this thread with their mini class war the OP actually asked a question.
>isn't there any literature that panders to this demographic that is not clumsy and shallow

Pretty much most things written nowadays as 'literature' is about white 30 somethings bourgeoise feeling dissatisfied. Try the corrections by the Franzen which is amazing, the rest of his stuff is surprisingly shit-tier.

has anyone ever met a "bourgeois"?

we all speak of them as if they're some kind of evil presence just around the corner but they're people too

y do we hav to put labelz on thingz guys : (

>>3325153

We're all petite bourgeois.

>>3322648
>implying there is a similarity between any of those things
>NSDAP is the same as the Communist Party
>Obama even remotely similar

I demand moderation!

>>3323491
>10% actually elaborate

How generous.

>>3325153
>>3325158
AFAIK bourgeois means an employer who does little to no manual labour, and petit bourgeois means a small business owner with few to no employees, like the village butcher.

>>3325158
Fuck off Poulantzas.

>>3325180
>AFAIK bourgeois means an employer who does little to no manual labour
There are bourgeoisie who do do manual activities, but do so purely for pleasure, not out of compulsion (see the chapter on the wage).

>>3325191
Yeah. I'm aware of that. Manual activity for pleasure is called 'play' or 'fun.'