/lit/ - Literature

Are you kidding? That'd require them to actually do work.

inb4 "vanguard" apologists

>>4032485
Class consciousness arises through class struggle. There is currently no/very little struggle.

>>4032485
But doing research in a Swiss university in the alps actually benefits the working class. How can you not see that?

To what degree are these postmodernist fops even Marxist anymore?

I know their schtick is all about being critical of power structures and hegemonies and binaries and whatever the fuck. But to what extend do any of these people write even semi-traditionally on anything resembling labour issues? Is there a massive divide between """"MARXIST INTELLECTUALS"""""" in the Frankfurt sense and "socialists" who are actually sort of applying Marx's ideas of raising class consciousness?

>>4032485
because without them, all the work already done on the issue would be forgotten, and the leadership of the proletariat would have to start from square one in formulating class.

obviously though, we have to progress beyond this, to proletarian leaders espousing Marxism, but the hegemony isn't weak enough yet

the last few centuries have sort of shown that the capitalist machine is much more resilient than was originally thought, so we need every advantage we've got

>>4032520
So we need more Marxist theorists rather than Marxist lawyers?

one of my profs wrote a book about the precariate class. I felt that was very useful to the working class to show them how work and labour are changing in latecapitalism and how they are being screwed by the management class in new ways. i dont think workers would have had time to compile something like this, and maybe workers cannot see the big picture of how their lives relate to class without books like this. seems useful for class struggle

>>4032521
i was more answering the first half of your post than the second. also, we have enough lawyers as it is.

>>4032529
We have enough lawyers working for Monsanto and Nestle. We do not have enough lawyers working for the middle class.

>>4032540
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/job_market_for_would-be_lawyers_is_bleaker_than_it_looks_analysis_says/

it's not like you just decide to be a middle-class advocacy lawyer, people need money, the market is oversaturated

the reason monsanto and nestle have mad lawyers is because they have mad money, not because of a paucity of marxist lawyers

because communism is a crock of shit and you should read up on some revisionist class theory like Thorsten Veblen

>>4032485
Does anything he says actually make any sense

>>4032550

Yes.

>>4032551
seriously, its just a bunch of stuff thrown together. He's, like, talking about 5 things at once

>>4032485
Some intellectuals are employed by the bourgeoisie as workers to promulgate bourgeois ideology including Marxism as a bourgeois ideology. For them it is "just a job."

We don't need bourgeois intellectuals for class consciousness.

>>4032492
There's plenty of class struggle. Perhaps if you'd read the organic intellectuals of Italian workerism you might know that.

>mfw Sartre, Foucault, Deleuze, Virilio, Guattari, Badiou, and Lyotard were all active participants in activist groups and street demonstrations

>mfw Foucault actively threw shit at police while screaming insults like a madman and got his head bashed in, resulting in a scar that was visible for the rest of his life

>mfw Virilio was an active key player in the taking of the Odeon theater during May '68 and spend about a month in hiding from the police

>mfw the entire first generation of the so-called "bourgeous postmodern Marxist fops" clique were active participants in May '68

>mfw Baudrillard and Guattari were part of the same Maoist radical group

>mfw Guy Debord in general

>mfw they all failed because the French consumer class didn't give a fuck and the Police just flat-out beat them

>mfw Zizek actually ran for President of Slovenia to the point of making it to the televised debates (no really, look up the footage, it's in the documentary on the guy)

>mfw Negri was in fucking exile because he got accused of leading the Red goddamn Brigades, because that's how much his writing managed to piss off the closet leftover fascists in Italy

>mfw they get called bourgeois academic Marxist fops who don't really give a fuck and never did anything to actually try and help the people who needed them by edgy undergrad posters who don't know their history and just can't get over the fact that we leftists just flat-out lost, deal with it kiddos

Proles are too busy contemplating their shitty life to actually do anything about it. The smart thing is to do anything you can to get out of there yourself and distance yourself from everybody that will just hold you back

>>4032513
Labour historians are in the middle. They do research for the bourgeoisie using working class techniques, but their research is aimed at organic working class intellectuals.

Also "raising class consciousness" isn't a propaganda exercise, but an act of labour at the point of production.

>>4032520
>because without them, all the work already done on the issue would be forgotten, and the leadership of the proletariat would have to start from square one in formulating class.
Bullshit. Institutions survive and worker culture survives. I learnt how to [XXX] off my grandmother who learnt it off her grand father who learnt it in the 1890s in direct class war.

>>4032521
We need more organic intellectuals of the class who struggle within the class.

>>4032526
Precariousness is just a return to early Fordism.

>>4032549
So why did Veblen advocate for revolutionary workers councils in the teens?

Stupid Communists, Fascism is the way to go.

>>4032571

Except Fascism was faithfully realized, and it turned out to be a total clusterfuck.

So yeah,

>>>/pol/

>>4032571
Is it possible to build a Facist society off of something other than blind idealism and racism?

>>4032566
All of their ideological work was non-organic and disconnected from proletarian struggle.

And their relationship with the University was not that of a proletarian.

They had no excuse.

While Negri was shit fucking the movement, Tronti and Bologna were in factory meetings and Dalla Costa was in social factory meetings, and you can tell from their writings.

Fuck off substitutionalist: by our hand alone or by none.

>>4032574
>What is communism

>>4032571

Fucking gommies.
If the anarchists couldn't pull it off what made them think their pussy ass movements were going to accomplish.
The Bolsheviks got them all pumped up but they didn't have the minerals to pull the trigger.

>>4032580
>All of their ideological work was non-organic and disconnected from proletarian struggle.And their relationship with the University was not that of a proletarian.

>being this narrow-mindedly dogmatic

>ignoring half the shit I said

>implying the proletarian struggle can't benefit from a little erudition so that it can know what the fuck it's doing

yeahnahyou'reacunt.jpg

>>4032583
I am a fascist but I am not a huge /pol/ neo-nazi type. I just believe in the need to preserve a country's culture and traditions. I believe that a country should be highly militarized.

>>4032581

>What is Marxism-Leninism


Jesus fuck people, do half of you even read the shit you critique, or do you just wallow in half-assed strawmen that fit your own ideological agenda?

Fuck, it's like I'm on /pol./ I'm out.

>>4032589
militarized against what?

>>4032589
>I just believe in the need to preserve a country's culture and traditions. I believe that a country should be highly militarized.

>Implying that won't just reinforce everything that's godawful about homo sapiens

lrn2 human nature bro. All of you - yes, even those of you whose politics I agree with - are gonna fail. Why? Because the solutions and political ends you're pursuing - a just, fair society, a free society, a properly organized society, etc etc etc whatever - guess what? No matter who elastic our subjectivities might be, it's still run by that angry little monkey that Darwinian evolution never quite managed to fully get rid of. For all our culture, politics, technology, we're still all tribalistic apes, and to those of you who embrace that because it's what's "natural" or "human" *glares very hard at the fascist in the thread*, guess what? You're just making the problem even worse by fetishizing it

The fact of the matter is, history pretty much tells us that, when gathered into collectives, we're just not smart enough, not kind enough, not empathetic enough, and not shrewd enough to find a good solution. Oh, we'll get close - but at the end of the say, someone, somewhere gets scapegoated, ostracized, wronged, or whatever, and it's back to our bone clubs and shit-flinging. Don't believe me? Open a damn history textbook.

>inb4 muh historical teleology

lol no, now you're just projecting belief in the sacred.

>>4032587
Only organic knowledge is useful. Bourgeois ideology and bourgeois marxism can fuck off.

I seriously hope you aren't involved in praxical work.

>>4032596

>organic knowledge

>ONLY MY BELIEFS ARE VALID

I seriously hope *you* aren't. Ideologically inflexible assholes like you are one of the many reasons Marxism failed. Or why congress sucks today. Or why pretty much every ideological movement failed when put into practice.

Have fun having your beliefs made archaic by an accelerating history you can't even hope to comprehend, with your fossilized so-called political "truths."

yes I mad

>>4032596

One more thing.

I do find it amusing how Marxists will talk about how ideological false consciousness can never quite grasp the real, dynamic nature of historical movement, when the most dogmatic among them still seem to think it's 1917.

>>4032600
>ideological movement put into practice

You still don't understand. Read Gramsci until you get it.

You're the one imposing ideology on the class from outside. You're the one holding up Negri or Debord as examples of thought, when neither worked a day in their lives.

You haven't read Marx either. For Marx the only true comprehension of capitalism arises praxically from the reflection on the point of production by the alienated proletariat itself.

There is no "knowledge" produced outside of the point of production, about the point of production.

>>4032610
I'm not the person straw manning bolshevism here.

>>4032485
The Bourgeois have a priveleged access to study and know the realities that surround them, while a proletarian hasn't got any time to do anything other than work and survive (The Proletarian owns nothing more than their Labour Strength). The Proletarian hasn't got access to education, to the influence of knowledgable people or people that will challenge their ideas in general, they don't know anything about the world because they don't have the means to know it, most don't read because they simply weren't taught how to do it, and the ones who do employ it to tasks that will allow them the escape the terrible lives they live, were they are basically enslaved, as they have no other option but to work the lowest wage for a multi-million company.
That is why Marx thought the Revolution would start in the developed world, where the bourgeois would be able to influence the workers, who altogether had better conditions than the workers on other countries, and would overthrow the reactionary regimes of europe, and later the under-industrialized world.
He was proved wrong when the Russian Revolution happened, and he was subsequently proven even further wrong with the victories in Latin America and if you want to consider Maoism part of the Marxist Movement, China. While Europe and America remained in the hands of Fascist Dictatorship's and Conservative Parties (Many countries had extremely strong Communist Parties nonetheless, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany (before WWII) and especially Italy).
The People do rise up, and have the capacity to grow from exploited uneducated pieces of meat to fully functional, capable, knowledgeable individuals. However, most of the times, the bourgeois, the ones who already had access to most things in their life, are the ones who set the path for the others to walk on. Lenin was not poor. Kropotkin wasn't either. Engels owned factories. Castro had several plantations. Che was a doctor from a good family. They raised class-counciosness while being brought up in conditions the ones they supported had never even imagined.
The Revolutionary Bourgeois are fundamental to class-conciousness and to the Revolutionary Process.

>>4032610
Nice Strawman.

>>4032615
yeah, this is a good post

>>4032615
>The Bourgeois have a priveleged access to study and

Nope. Mass secondary and Tertiary education.

>know the realities that surround them,

Not at all. The bourgeois only learns ideology, not social reality.

>while a proletarian hasn't got any time to do anything other than work and survive (The Proletarian owns nothing more than their Labour Strength).

Mass and universal secondary and tertiary education, to produce specific kinds of labour power.

>The Proletarian hasn't got access to education,

Bullshit. Bismark universalised schooling in the 19th century to improve capitalist circulation.

>to the influence of knowledgable people or people that will challenge their ideas in general, they don't know anything about the world because they don't have the means to know it,

The proletarian has access to the point of production, the chief means of knowing the reality of the world.

>most don't read because they simply weren't taught how to do it, and the ones who do employ it to tasks that will allow them the escape the terrible lives they live, were they are basically enslaved, as they have no other option but to work the lowest wage for a multi-million company.

The 1820s called. And even then proletarians used Sunday Schools to educate themselves.

>That is why Marx thought the Revolution would start in the developed world, where the bourgeois would be able to influence the workers, who altogether had better conditions than the workers on other countries, and would overthrow the reactionary regimes of europe,

No. Marx thought the revolution would happen in the developed countries due to the intensity of capitalism itself, and its fullest generation of its own grave digger in the most advanced sense. Marx idolised the Chartists as an example of this very process.

> and later the under-industrialized world.
>He was proved wrong when the Russian Revolution happened,

Stats on industrialisation to 1913.

>>4032615

>and he was subsequently proven even further wrong with the victories in Latin America and if you want to consider Maoism part of the Marxist Movement, China. While Europe and America remained in the hands of Fascist Dictatorship's and Conservative Parties (Many countries had extremely strong Communist Parties nonetheless, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany (before WWII) and especially Italy).

Value form continued to circulate. Russia was capitalist. See Fitzpatrick, Pirani, Andrle.

>The People do rise up, and have the capacity to grow from exploited uneducated pieces of meat to fully functional, capable, knowledgeable individuals. However, most of the times, the bourgeois, the ones who already had access to most things in their life, are the ones who set the path for the others to walk on.

Bullshit. Ideology, ideology.

>Lenin was not poor. Kropotkin wasn't either. Engels owned factories. Castro had several plantations. Che was a doctor from a good family. They raised class-counciosness while being brought up in conditions the ones they supported had never even imagined.

All were bourgeois, who fought bourgeois coup d'etats. Compare to Big Bill.

>The Revolutionary Bourgeois are fundamental to class-conciousness and to the Revolutionary Process.

Fuck off Lenin. You were proved wrong by 1907.

>>4032615
A+ Please keep posting

>"From each according to his ability..."
>From each
>according to
>his
>ability

>>4032620
>The proletarian has access to the point of production, the chief means of knowing the reality of the world.
The world is more than theory.

>Sunday Schools
This is just laughable. There are countries where not even 25% of the people know how to read nowadays, how can you say that the Proletarians have access to education??

>Mass and universal secondary and tertiary education
Being this simple-minded is just disgusting. Not taking into account the conditions of the poor during the mandatory studies that almost only exist in the developed world, and the easiness of finishing those grades without really learning anything.

The rest is more of the same

>>4032641
>>The proletarian has access to the point of production, the chief means of knowing the reality of the world.
>The world is more than theory.

This is precisely the point. If you can't tell historical materialism when we're talking about the point of production then you really are mired in bourgeois ideology. And from the looks of it, that bourgeois ideology is unreconstructed Red Brigades Maoism.

For an example in praxis, look how the UWM's experience of early Taylorism produced the IWW.

>This is just laughable. There are countries where not even 25% of the people know how to read nowadays, how can you say that the Proletarians have access to education??
Australia, literacy 99%
Tertiary (Higher + Further) 50%

>Being this simple-minded is just disgusting. Not taking into account the conditions of the poor during the mandatory studies that almost only exist in the developed world, and the easiness of finishing those grades without really learning anything.

What was that Marx said about the developed countries going first?

Where was it in China that proletarian revolution happened? It wasn't Yan'an, it was Shanghai. Why did Vietnam have a revolution throughout the countryside whereas Laos didn't? Why it would be the fish salt tax and the transformation of Vietnamese peasants into rural workers in the 1930s.

>The rest is more of the same

I agree, the rest is an indictment of your third worldist ignorance of external reality.

Solidarity (UK)'s As we see it / As we don't see it is worth it merely for the attack on third worldism in this context.

>>4032613
>You haven't read Marx either. For Marx the only true comprehension of capitalism arises praxically from the reflection on the point of production by the alienated proletariat itself.

Oh, no, I understand that. I just think the human race is too stupid to take the right steps in that direction. Call my pessimism bourgeois if you like, when you tar simple misanthropy, something that's been pretty much self-generating in every class and in every set of class-relations, you've turned it into a meaningless buzzword.

>You're the one holding up Negri or Debord as examples of thought, when neither worked a day in their lives.

I'm actually not all that fond of Negri. I'm just saying. And I think Debord was naïve to think that simple drifting could change anything. I just think that it's useful to stay out of an ideological straightjacket. Marx himself drew on the work of bourgeois economists for his research.


>There is no "knowledge" produced outside of the point of production, about the point of production.

I agree with you on that. I just don't think it will make any kind of teleological difference. Why? Because the past gives me zero reason to assume otherwise.

>>4032627
>grading ideas

kill yourself.

>>4032613

Actually, let me just break it down simply, to avoid any further misunderstanding.

I don't trust rigid belief, nor do I trust the collective political judgment of a species whose brains have not significantly evolved since the savagery of Roman imperialism.

>>4032567
No, they are too busy eking out a meager existence to contemplate. If they contemplated, or even were exposed to the contemplation of these academics in an accessible, compelling fashion, things would start changing. Instead, the working class and the poor have been brainwashed into either zealously embracing the very ideologies which enslaves them or into believing it is hopeless to struggle so they should simply act in "rational self-interest," as you seem to have been. It might also be interesting to note that the second ideological apparatus is simply a more subtly-dressed iteration of the first.

Revolution is never futile, comrade. If the foundation weakens, the whole house eventually collapses. There is no respite to be found in the ideal of individual success when faced with the threat of systemic failure.

>>4032649
Australia has a population of 22.3 and a literacy rate of 99%.
Afghanistan has a population of 35.3 and a literacy rate of 28%.

One of this countries is developed and the other one isn't. Guess which one.

>>4032660
You might want to read more about revolutions that have involved direct autogestation. Steve Wright's account of Storming Heaven will give you more to feel about than you have felt before.

The working class constantly returns to negate its alienation, through sports clubs, and thinking circles, and knitting groups, and trade unions, and political parties, and distributors coops, and workers coops, and and and.

The spontaneous capacity of the class vastly exceeds the pathetic history of the Bolshevik style bourgeois dominated "Marxist" parties.

It is heartening in the class.

>Marx himself drew on the work of bourgeois economists in his research.
He did, but he also never worked a day in his life except in journalism, and sporadically. Better that we find a valid reason for workers to read bourgeois ideology in addition to their interrogation of the point of production; while demanding the presence of organic intellectuals. The easiest way forward is with gramsci: Organic intellectuals can read and reinterpret bourgeois ideology through acts of collective praxis that find the hidden content in the ideology.

>I just don't think it will make any kind of teleological difference.

I think you've given into pessimism of the intellect. You need some optimism of the heart. A couple of good blow jobs while watching dialectics break bricks and reading about spontaneous class actions (Lomax on 1956 is fun).

The number of times we've come close in the last hundred years: 1916 NSW, 1917, 18, 19 Russia and Ukraine, 1926 UK & Urban China, 1936 Spain, 1948 Yugoslavia, 1956 Hungary, 1968 Czechoslovakia, 1970s Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece.

We are winning. It took the bourgeoisie 800 years. We can do it faster.

Your Laconian reference brings me some delight, though the full point of his work alludes me, as it has been some 2-3 years since I got it.

When I was on the phone with a Filipino woman, she kepts saying, yup, uh huh, okay, good good question, and at first I thought she was putting me on, playing me for a fool with her sarcasm, her better hold on this phone call than I, she having total access to my satellite radio account, while I'm there, with the phone, trying to get my car radio going at it's most upgraded capacity. It was like she wasn't listening to me at all, rather, that she was just simply working to get me under her spell, or within her control, like, "Hey, please, um, so, I'm going to do this my way, and you're going to cooporate, even though you're the customer, you're the one paying the company, it's me, I'm the one here, at the console, spending my life to get your problem solved,"

Then, afterwards, it all fit together. She'd been reading from a script, that'd been put together by her people, her mgmt, Etc., and she was actually putting me on the edge of my seat so that if I had so unfortunate the opportunity to have to do it myself, some day, say, the following day, I'd be able to. In other words, she was spreading class-consciousness. As in, this is how we talk. As in, it's not about you and me or you or me, it's about us. Our radio.

I bought the Howard Stern channel just to be able to say I have it.

Marx was writing, so I'd learned, when Germany'd been the most technologically adv'n'c'd country in the world. Why, exactly he remains to be tought as the premier communist thinker, I don't know, except that he was historically, which, if communism was real, would not be the case. For, if a global communism had taken effect, we would not need to learn about it, for we would be able to make up history as we see fit, through some trial-by-lightning process, where we say, capitalism was taught by Adam Smith for example, or that Lacan only exists as a figure in schools of Literary Criticism so that he can serve as a conservative figure, to usurp the fresh ideas of students, a sort of thinking or being first.

I don't know, but consciousness is something thinkers struggle to define. You might want to look there. A lot of people are sick and tired.

Lenon argued for the need for a class of intellectuals, the vanguard, at a time when Russia was not so technologically advanced, at least not most of the rural parts of that country. You could say that the United States is not so advanced, technologically or intellectually, in some parts, at least.

Class is like caste in many ways, where sons of lawyers become lawyers, sons of guns also join the militaru, etc. You've got Catholicism, which is consumed by the idea of the body of Christ, and which serves some of the same communal purposes as a state-sanctioned communism might.

In the name of Pittsburgh, PA, Philly, and NYC.

Let's go to the casino and play blackjack.

i'm in the mood for some lefty shit but it's all so bad

>>4032666 (nice trips, cunt)

No, you apparently trust the action of isolated individual minds with no stable epistemology capable of producing knowledge.

Sweet irony cuntface.

>>4032669
>Revolution is never futile, comrade. If the foundation weakens, the whole house eventually collapses. There is no respite to be found in the ideal of individual success when faced with the threat of systemic failure.

Not the guy you're responding to, but Christ do I wish I had your optimism. I really do. I'd certainly be a lot happier when thinking about politics.

>>4032669
>have been brainwashed into either zealously embracing the very ideologies which enslaves
Go talk to some right wing workers. They have their _own_ versions of the ideologies the bourgeoisie try to force upon them.

(Seriously, this fucking distanced from the class? Where did all the industrial sociologists of yesteryear go?)

Your account of class agency is pretty fucking substitutionalist. I bet you like Lenin.

>>4032681
Guess which one has the value form circulating in expanded reproduction and a proletariat that is 95% of the population?

Guess which one still has feudal relations of production in rural areas?

>>4032685
>Better that we find a valid reason for workers to read bourgeois ideology in addition to their interrogation of the point of production; while demanding the presence of organic intellectuals. The easiest way forward is with gramsci: Organic intellectuals can read and reinterpret bourgeois ideology through acts of collective praxis that find the hidden content in the ideology.

True, we can at least agree on that.

>I think you've given into pessimism of the intellect.

Holy god damn, you have no idea. I think I'm, slowly turning into Emil Cioran like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

>You need some optimism of the heart.

I've honestly tried. Feels bad man.

>A couple of good blow jobs while watching dialectics break bricks

Were the fuck did I put my bucket list

>We are winning. It took the bourgeoisie 800 years. We can do it faster

I hope so...

>>4032669
the reason no one's optimistic about revolution is because none of these braniacs has been able to come up with any plan that will be better than capitalism, communisms been bogus since Lenin brought in the NEPmen and anarchism is for teens. Show us something that has a chance of actually working and we'll talk.

>>4032701

I do trust research, yes. After all, it did give me the distilled whiskey I need to not say "Fuck it" and run off naked into the woods masturbating.

>>4032701
>Sweet irony cuntface.

Stop making fun of my deformity

>>4032709
Read Lomax's sourcebook on the 1956 workers councils.

The working class collectively produced a system of economic governance involving interfirm competition without capitalism; and with vigorous democracy.

I trust in my class, it knows more than I ever could.

>>4032709
>because none of these braniacs has been able to come up with any plan that will be better than capitalism

better than the rest != good

Enjoy your widening gulf between rich and poor bro

> Show us something that has a chance of actually working and we'll talk.

>Implying capitalism is still working well

>>4032720
there has always been a huge gap between elites and non-elites since the dawn of agriculture, nothing is going to change that.

>>4032724
nope.

Primitive communism held in early agriculture.

>>4032724
Elites in Hydraulic societies were large, and closely related to surrounding populations.

>>4032724
As were Patricians close and open to the majority of Plebeians and Slaves in Slave societies.

>>4032720
the point is why risk your life for revolution when you'll probably just end up with a pol pot or a stalin, a castro if you're lucky...do you think the working class is stupid? they know that's not a good gamble.

"nothing else works"

what? take a fucking anthropology course buddy

>>4032731
>When you'll probably just end up with a pol pot
Pol Pot was brought to power by a coup d'etat by a bourgeois political party
>or a Stalin
Stalin was brought to power by infighting in a bourgeois political party that had violently liquidated proletarian controlled organisations and movements, and so badly mismanaged an economy (using bourgeois techniques) that the workers surrendered the factories (Pirani).

So nice examples of the bourgeoisie once again fucking the workers.

Check Hungary 1956, or Czechoslovakia 1968, or Spain 1936, or Chiapas for counter examples.

>>4032730
want me to go in photoshop and make one of your dorky triangles for capitalism?

>>4032730
I should probably modify the size of the elite and intermediate layer there.

>>4032736
Prefiguation of capitalism (1600s / 1700s)

>>4032735
>So nice examples of the bourgeoisie once again fucking the workers.
but that's the point fuckwit, the workers risk their life for revolution just so you can screw them over again, they don't want to be pawns in your quest for power, nerd

>>4032739
I'm a worker mate. And as I pointed out (36, 56, 68) we do win out against the local bosses regularly.

"Mature" capitalism circa 1995.

>>4032745
Stalinism circa 1940

>>4032749
Real socialism ala Hungary 1956

>>4032750
"FULL" Communism

>>4032703
Your tone is quite endearing. Was Karl Marx a poor man?

It seems you have taken the philosophical claim that knowledge only comes from experience, how do you justify this claim? Is it impossible for you to know the distance from earth to Jupiter, or how many limbs a double-amputee has that you have never met, seen, or communicated with? Further, is it impossible to understand the plight of a social inequality without being the object of the injustice?

But seeing how cordial you have been, perhaps I should drop out of university and work in a factory?

I don't need any thinkers like Lenin, I believe I have an expert right here I can talk to. Would you be so kind as to teach me?

>>4032662
>grading ideas

I was grading the post. You get an F. Please stop posting.

>>4032763
well see if you did have some "lived experience" regarding the working class you would realize they don't care about revolution

>>4032773
most workers don't even like unions...

>>4032773
But what is this? A friendly game these silky foreigners play on holidays?
http://vimeo.com/m/64950275

>>4032763
>Your tone is quite endearing. Was Karl Marx a poor man?

Karl was very poor for the professional petits-bourgeois of his era. He was extraordinarily well off compared to skilled workers in his era.

>It seems you have taken the philosophical claim that knowledge only comes from experience, how do you justify this claim?
You believe that GOD implants knowledge directly into your brain?

I specified more closely: only through praxical experience of the point of production can workers and workers alone produce knowledge. All else is ideology. Praxis involves a self-reflecting practice/theory action.

How do I justify this claim? Empirically from revolutionary examples, and through Marx's critique of bourgeois knowledge (German ideology might help you).

> Is it impossible for you to know the distance from earth to Jupiter, or how many limbs a double-amputee has that you have never met, seen, or communicated with?
Proletarian Astronomy (more likely than you think given the degradation of scientists) does produce exactly this kind of knowledge. It also produces ideology. Universities are strange places where the form of knowledge is contested as a material class struggle over production.

> Further, is it impossible to understand the plight of a social inequality without being the object of the injustice?
Alienation isn't injustice. It is a material relationship of ownership and control over the means and tools of production. While workers are forced into knowing the technical relations of production in order to produce, the capitalist attempts to withhold control over the relations of production through an attempted (but always failed) monopoly on the social relations of production.

>But seeing how cordial you have been, perhaps I should drop out of university and work in a factory?

Given that you're highly literate, I'd suggest that "Secondary Education" "Nursing" or "Accounting" would be suitable factories for you. Possibly "Social Work" "Employed law" (solicitor / constantly retained corporate barrister) or "Engineering"

It is a bit late for you to drop out and get a trade.

>I believe I have an expert right here I can talk to. Would you be so kind as to teach me?

I hang around 4chan a lot. You can get about half an hour to an hour out of me now.

"The Factory" is more than just blue collar manufacturing. It is _anywhere_ where the value form is reproduced in an expanded form, or where circulation and distribution occur through alienated wage labour.

>>4032782
those are middle class kids who had their bourgeois dreams cut short by the financial crises...not working class. trust me man, OWS was all bourgeois college kids. this is where lived experience vs. some shit you saw on Vice comes in...

>>4032791
Yeah, I'm rather proud that I democratically got a picket off a line when we faced five times our number of cops. We lost one head to a cracked skull which required hospitalisation, and no other bones broken.

Workers with a fair experience of strikes or direct actions know when to run. Let the children of the bourgeoisie show their "unjust" wounds to police; get fellow workers out.

Also the London Riots have some information here regarding how not to get kettled: burn shit everywhere.

>>4032731

I'm not disagreeing with you on that.

>>4032797
also i'm lollin on that Vice video since the second half is all about Golden Dawn! lmao

>>4032791

It must be awesome having such a simplistic view of politics.

wait, where does our belief that inequality in unjust come from?

>>4032786
>I specified more closely: only through praxical experience of the point of production can workers and workers alone produce knowledge. All else is ideology.
>Proletarian Astronomy (more likely than you think given the degradation of scientists) does produce exactly this kind of knowledge. It also produces ideology.

So, let me try and see if I understand this. All theory is ultimately ideology? Is this where Derrida got his famous idea that 'everything is political' or something along those lines? I really don't know, so maybe you could help me.

Either way, I find that kind of thinking (if I'm right in my understanding of what you are claiming) to be very backwards, much in the same way the empiricists were backwards. And also, forgive me for saying, it sounds almost like the ravings of the worst kind of conspiracy theorist. How can one disregard sciences such as mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics? Those are not things which are necessarily 'experienced' but which developed through abstract pondering, and which have allowed us to do great things. How can you hold such knowledge in such low regard?

>>4032814
That's fucking irrelevant to Marxism. Marxism isn't a moralism. It describes the actual functioning of existing societies; it doesn't build castles in the sky based on morality.

Socialism is coming whether we like it or not. Marxism says nothing about whether we ought to like it.

I think the reason America is so reactionary is because there's too much opportunity, workers feel guilty demanding stuff when they know they could have gone to university and made a better life but chose to browse 4chan instead. This is why peasants are actually more revolutionary than workers, peasants have no chance to not be peasants, all workers have to do is start a business or go to school.

>>4032829
basically being working class is a lifestyle choice and therefor in the American mind is not a "protected class" like being black or gay or whatever.

>>4032786
So if Marx was an academic describing the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of capitalism, socialism, and communism, then from whence comes his privilege that the other, modern or not, academics lack involving the description of late-capitalism and the rise of socialism?

I think I must have said poorly. How do you know a triangle has 3 sides? Or that all bachelor's are unmarried? Are you claiming that all knowledge is a posteriori?

So it is the astronomy that produces the knowledge, and not the math applied to the astronomical observations?

If alienation isn't injustice, then why do I hate my toaster? Why does my Mom remain complicit in the brutal enslavement and genocide of cute little forest creatures for luxury foods?

I don't like those jobs, can you teach me what I need to do to start a union?

So if I've ever worked at Pizza Hut, I've worked in a factory?

>>4032822
>So, let me try and see if I understand this. All theory is ultimately ideology? Is this where Derrida got his famous idea that 'everything is political' or something along those lines? I really don't know, so maybe you could help me.

All theory, which hasn't been derived by workers themselves in struggle, is ideology. This is why Zizek is so interested in ideology, and why the Frankfurters want to change bourgeois ideology. Gramsci's account of this is that there is a bourgeois ideological hegemony, which faces off against a proletarian counter-hegemony formed from praxical understandings of reality (ie: non-ideological knowledge).

> How can one disregard sciences such as mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics?
You might like to do some research into the history of Science. All those sciences were reconstructed in the late 19th and early 20th century along factory lines of production.

Much like, for example, bourgeois Marxism is the best ideology for explaining social relations; but pales in comparison to working class knowledge... so too is bourgeois controlled Physics a pale echo of Physics if it were controlled by Physicists.

Look into the National Science grants scheme in the US for further example of how science is made to serve bourgeois ends, rather than its own ends. Also scientists _can_ be workers, and these days usually are in the West.

>but which developed through abstract pondering
How is abstract pondering not work? My mate who is a philosopher and ponders abstractly for 36 hours a week for median wage in her society is a worker conducting work.

The point of production isn't _material_ in the sense of "this chair." It is material in Marx's sense, of the point at which ownership and control become embodied in human activity. She is as alienated from her work by the conditions of her grant funding as I am from my administrative work by my supervisor, as my wife is from her physical widgets by her foreman.

My wife's widgets are perfectly good, except they're shit because they're produced on the cheap to the (employee) Engineer's shit specifications which were produced on the cheap to the (employer) CEO's profit demands. My mate's ponderings are good, except they're shit because they're produced on the cheap to the Grant Body's specifications.

>>4032835
Marx is exactly the same as Zizek; except his ideas are more internally coherent.

Both pale in comparison to the declarations of the Central Workers Council of Greater Budapest and its constituent Union of Writers and Union of Lawyers.

I'm claiming that all knowledge of society (of human history) including the social aspects of for example mathematics (who gets hired, etc) is aposteriori. Some knowledge about the external world is aposteriori, but verifiable within systems of social knowledge that are not highly dependent on class knowledge. The ideology of astrophysics provides as far better account of the world than the ideology of astrology.

Some apriori knowledge (pure maths) is produced in social circumstances where the _claims_ of maths become ideological. Look at the use of apriori econometrics knowledge to force social change: the model does not correspond to reality, even though the model is "provably true" internally.

>If alienation isn't injustice...
Injustice sits along side it usually, but injustice isn't an inherent quality of alienation. You can hate alienation for its own characteristics (most people do) and then also hate the fact that alienation is used for force female philosophers to make tenure later.

>if I've ever worked at Pizza Hut, I've worked in a factory

Yes. You took part in expanding value. You've got unique knowledge from that experience of production, that you need to think about in a group of people to uncover the organic proletarian knowledge of that situation.

>>4032849
the problem with people who have never had to work for a living is they put the proletariat on a pedastal as if they are all geniuses and heros being thwarted by some bourgeois evil-doer in a tophat. if you ever did actually work at a fast food joint you'd know half the workers gonna come in late or stoned, taking 10 minute phonecalls, spitting in the food whenever the boss aint' looking and just generally fucking the place up. workers are immature rascals, if they weren't they wouldnt be working shit jobs.

>>4032841
Then can you clarify two other things for me? What exactly is ideology in your terms? Be as indulgent in your answer as you want. It can be dozens of paragraphs if you need. I ask this because it is one of those terms that seems to mean a million things.

Secondly, I want to ask you about socialism (specifically Marxism) and the individual. I ask because it has always been a concern of mine, and no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot come to a conclusion. I believe that individual humans, in their limitless potential, should be respected and allowed the freedom of travel, expression, and difference of opinion. I find that capitalism stifles opinion and the individual, and I originally clung to socialism as the way of freeing individuals so that they could improve one another's lives in peaceful co-existence and brotherhood. Any yet after reading Marx's writings and after studying many so-called socialist writings, I instead see a society in which human beings are subservient to one another as opposed to helping one another; a world in which opinions cease existing and humans exist as empty husks, carried by the sway of the masses.

As an artist, I also wonder if the arts would be rendered useless in a pure socialist state; will they be under mob control; or will I and others who wish to express themselves in art be allowed to freely, so long as it contributes to the betterment of all, or so long as we also work a day job of sorts? I know that we can never truly know what a socialist world would look like, but in your mind, with your knowledge, what would you say?

Sorry for all the text.

>>4032861
Mate. I work for a living. And I do not put the proletariat on a pedestal. I am knee deep in proletarian action right now.

Bitch I have proletariats wiping their organic experience all over me, and I have never been class traitor to one of them.

(And I bet you don't know which porn _those_ lines are out of).

> if you ever did actually work at a fast food joint you'd know half the workers gonna come in late or stoned, taking 10 minute phonecalls, spitting in the food whenever the boss aint' looking and just generally fucking the place up. workers are immature rascals, if they weren't they wouldnt be working shit jobs.

Yes, "slack" was heavily analysed in the 1990s as a form of workplace resistance.

>>4032867
>As an artist, I also wonder if the arts would be rendered useless in a pure socialist state; will they be under mob control; or will I and others who wish to express themselves in art be allowed to freely

heh heh, ever seen the kind of art the working class likes?

>>4032867
Ideology is the form of bourgeois knowledge. It is produced in individual consciousnesses through the reflective act on external experience or valid apriori reason; ideally.

However, often it is sloppy shit done poorly.

Ideology is the systematising knowing of the world through personally produced knowledge, disconnected from praxis.

Praxis is the concrete practice/knowledge produced by workers as a group at the point of production.

Therefore ideology is:
*All bourgeois knowledge
*All bourgeois knowledge produced by workers:
**Not at the point of production
**Lacking in practice
**Lacking in theory
**Lacking in collectivity

Fred thinking about his job is ideology
Fred thinking about his job on the job is ideology
Fred thinking on the job with Jane is ideology
Only Fred and Jane together thinking on the job is praxical.

I don't have time to write a book, and my work is primarily about workers on the job thinking together about being on the job. So I rarely do a "full overhaul" of my tools, ie a full critique of ideology.

Watch some Zizek, one of the few things he is good at is "what is ideology."

Next post, next answer.

>>4032861
So is it okay to treat them as slaves because they deserve it?

>>4032849
If Marx had never written a word in his life, would any Worker's Council have made declarations in the same way?

If Zizek had done the same, what would change?

If all knowledge of society is a posteriori, then how do we know how to understand languages which haven't been spoken or used in thousands of years? In fact, where does language come from at all?

In situations where the claims are not ideological, such as geometry, is this a priori knowledge "untrue" or does it fail to "correspond to reality?"

What is just?

So this type of knowledge can only come from like-minded people socializing?

>>4032883
Could you be so kind as to give me a tl;dr of Gramsci? Assuming you're the guy who mentioned him earlier.

>>4032888
>So is it okay to treat them as slaves because they deserve it?

actually what i'm saying is "after the revolution" you're still going to needed "bosses" to keep the lazy fuckwits in line but at least now a more motivated worker can open their own mcdonalds and become the boss instead in a socialist utopia kids from elite educational institutions will be the bosses and workers will be stuck working with no hope

>>4032867
>Socialism, Marxism and the Individual
>I believe in... [human liberation]

Read something on real socialist practice, such as the Hungarian workers councils or Chiapas. Actual working class revolutionaries, and working class revolutionary movements, and very much pro-human and for liberty. It is bourgeois "socialists" like Lenin you need to watch out for. Workers know that "force" doesn't work, from their experience of having "force" applied to them at work.

Imre Nagy talks about this (in very Stalinist terms, yes I know, using Stalinism for human liberation, but in 1953 in Hungary that was all that was legal). So does Sartre (if ineffectively). I personally like Castoriadis' account of human liberatory practices.

>As an artist
Art would necessarily be universalised. My community in the 1980s and 1990s the artists lived on unemployment benefits and most homes had at least one "freebie" or "beer case payment" art work from an unemployed artist. Given my community was a heavy industrial highly unionised community, I think this is a reasonable estimate of the role of the artist in socialism: Doing a lot of art, possibly working part time day jobs as well.

Such would need to be negotiated in a community. But given that currently 50% or more of work is unnecessary, and unemployment rates (where I live) are about 50%, we only need 25% of the community in productive goods and service work to survive. Actually less because I forgot children and the elderly.

>>4032900
>Doing a lot of art, possibly working part time day jobs as well.

but what if a really really good artist comes a long, a michaelangelo, a warhol, a koonz and starts selling a ton of paintings and accumulating more money than everyone else? then how will he choose to distribute the paintings since he can only make so many in a day? raise the price? give them only to council leaders or theorists? hire assistants so he can make more? hmm, seems like art is pretty fucking reactionary to me!

Over the next 10 to 30 years, what will be the effect of ubiquitous access to information and free education? With only a decade things have changed drastically in this regard and I find the consequences are quite underestimated. The rising standard of living and automatization of production will probably quicken emancipation of the masses. People will have more time for themselves, well, many already do, but that doesn't necessarily make them read Hegel. All of upper middle class, as the working class seem content playing their own little games.

>>4032883
>>4032900
Thank you for your time. I really do appreciate it.

>>4032907
That reminds me of this piece I read in The New Yorker the other day:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/08/the-life-of-the-artist-a-mimodrama-in-two-parts.html

>>4032888
>If Marx had never written a word in his life, would any Worker's Council have made declarations in the same way?
See Chartism. "BY OUR HAND ALONE OR BY NONE." "BY REASON IF WE MAY, BY FORCE IF WE MUST."

Chartism predates Marx. Physical force Chartism was developed by the working class itself. Or read EP Thompson on the Making of the English Working Class.

If Zizek hadn't produced any works, I would have to redevelop the irony in Kristeva by hand to talk about anime girls fucking each other with mustard bottles. What a loss to cultural analysis.

>how do we know how to understand languages which haven't been used in thousands of years
See the Rosetta stone.
>where does language come from at all?
Fucked if I know. As a linguist. I know I can't answer this question. I asked an analytical philosopher mate and he was big up Chomsky on this. I wouldn't touch Chomsky's political work with your cock mate; but I trust me mate on his linguistics.

>In situations where claims are not ideological, such as geometry, is this apriori knowledge "untrue" or does it fail to "correspond to reality"
It doesn't correspond to social reality, even though it _very closely_ approximates reality viewed through the current social lens.

Why does Monsanto make poisonous GM crops? Why is geometry used for the social analysis of working class revolt to target police actions? This knowledge fails to correspond to reality only at the social level.

>What is just?
Fuck me mate, I'm a Marxist not a moralist. I deal in how to organise organically controlled workers paramilitary in order to defend temporarily liberated zones; not if there was any justice in detonating a claymore into a convoy of middle managers. See Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle for justice.

>So this type of knowledge can only come from like-minded people socializing?
Don't have to be "like minded," does need to arise socially, does need to arise socially _while engaged in alienated production in capitalism_ or in _post-alienated anti-capitalist production_. Production is the key. Remember that looking after kids or doing house work is productive at the moment. (See Dalla Costa and James)

>>4032909
this is the other myth of the proletariat bourgeois kids have, that working class people are intellectually curious and value learning...wrong. if they were they would go to university and become bourgeois. leftists will never understand why their harebrained schemes always fail until they realize being working class is a lifestyle choice. workers aren't waiting for some white knight with a stack of french texts to come riding out of the lecturehall and rescue them.

>>4032891
>PUNCH THE KEYS FOR GODSSAKE
>YOU'RE THE MAN NOW DOG

Gramsci was disappointed at the failure of the Italian revolution. He asked why?

Capital organises a culture of repression "Hegemony". Hegemony seeks to draw workers to believe in capitalism through religion, ideology, etc.

For Gramsci, without hegemony, workers' constant experience of work would produce class consciousness.

Class consciousness is still produced, but organised as a "counter hegemony." Organic intellectuals, intellectuals from within the working class, are vitally important for this.

Gramsci perceives two kinds of work: manual and mental. (Silly gramsci, he was wrong, they're actually controlling, and being controlled). Manual and mental work for gramsci both produce knowledge. But a mental worker doing accounting for the boss isn't producing proletarian knowledge any more than a manual widget maker is producing proletarian widgets. Both are controlled by the boss.

Thus when an academic like me produces a paper for the boss, that paper isn't proletarian knowledge. But when me and a bunch of people co-write a pamphlet about our life as academics, that is real knowledge.

Gramsci was rediscovered in the 1970s and used to try to make Leninism more libertarian. It kinda worked. Most contemporary Leninists are really just classical Marxists with a hard on for Russia.

>>4032689
nigger you just wrote 800 words about how satellite radio help desks and communism

>>4032927
unemployed philosophy MA no doubt

>>4032917
>>What is just?
>Fuck me mate, I'm a Marxist not a moralist. I deal in how to organise organically controlled workers paramilitary in order to defend temporarily liberated zones; not if there was any justice in detonating a claymore into a convoy of middle managers. See Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle for justice.

I'm confused now. Earlier you said:
>Injustice sits along side it usually, but injustice isn't an inherent quality of alienation. You can hate alienation for its own characteristics (most people do) and then also hate the fact that alienation is used for force female philosophers to make tenure later.

And even earlier...
>Alienation isn't injustice.

If we can't know justice, how can we say what injustice is?

If we can't know what injustice is, how can you make the assertion that something is or isn't unjust?

>>4032926
Hey, thanks a lot, man. I hope you stick around.

>>4032907
>Selling
>[in socialism]

You missed a big point here mate:

NO WAGES.

>hire assistants so he can make more

Usually good workers attract other people who want to learn off them. It would launch a school of art.

Also you've forgotten about art in the age of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin).

I don't want to own a Malevich. I want to own a print.

daily reminder that self-identification as a marxist amounts to forfeiture of any possibility of political influence in english speaking countries

keep up the pseudointellectual semantic games instead of working in your community

>>4032909
>Over the next 10 to 30 years, what will be the effect of ubiquitous access to information and free education? With only a decade things have changed drastically in this regard and I find the consequences are quite underestimated.

With education you pay for face-to-face contact and marking; not the information.

The value in a book is zero + binding costs (OCC, Capital volume I); which means that the value in a digital work is zero.

Piracy will become wide spread.

>The rising standard of living and automation of production will probably quicken emancipation of the masses.

It didn't in the 1950s. And in the 1970s it resulted in mass unemployment.

Only class war will emancipate the working class.

> People will have more time for themselves, well, many already do, but that doesn't necessarily make them read Hegel. All of upper middle class, as the working class seem content playing their own little games.
Why do working class kids do BAs? To read Hegel.

>>4032936
>no wages
ok so instead of money he accumulates huge bags of rice or packs of cigarettes or whatever

so how come some people get to teach at art school and some people have to work for a living? how is that different from ... now?

>tfw capitalist mythology and the unproblematic schizophrenia of consumer culture has successfully pacified the proletariat

>>4032940
So very true.

>>4032922
>if they were they would go to university and become bourgeois
30% of Australias population goes through the University.

30%.

Australia is 95% proletarian.

You do the maths cunt.

>>4032945
>>4032909
you do realize there have been free libraries available to the working class since the 1800s when capitalist evil guy Andrew Carnegie built them all over the fucking place...if the working class didn't want to read then they're not going to read now either.

>>4032934
"Justice" is a normative moral category.

Normative means "arbitrarily produced."

I lack the training in advanced moral philosophy or ethics to give you accurate answers in terms of up to date bourgeois ideology about moralism and ethics.

I'm using "injustice" in the every day sense, "Things that workers think are shit."

>>4032946
Why the fuck would you want to be the person with the most cigarettes. This isn't prison. They go stale.

>so how come some people get to teach at art school and some people have to work for a living?

Go ask the Hungarians. (Their Stalinist union of artists was on the basis of invitation on the basis of quality; so a worker controlled invitation to the works collective of teaching artists would be likely).

>and some people work for a living
If I didn't have to be an academic I would much rather be working a four hour day in a three day week doing administration. Being an academic is shit. Back when I was a low level administrator it was awesome.

>>4032948
meanwhile us hardcore marxists are here on the internets most notorious viral marketing outlet fighting for social justice right after we read that new tao lin book that got spammed on here by a social marketing firm 300 times...yeah, stick it to the man dudes! we're smart not like those dumbass pacified workers! mmm yeah i'm getting that warm lefty smug feeling!

>>4032940
>keep up the pseudointellectual semantic games instead of working in your community
That's strange, because I'm on the national council of my trade union which has decisive interventions into bourgeois politics.

I'm also active in other workplace organising far more radical than that of my trade union.

>>4032958
so what if workers think communism is shit? because they do.

>>4032955
The working class watches a shit load more anime than they did in the 19th century.

You're privileging a particular kind of bourgeois knowledge.

I don't need to: if workers _read their job_ together that's what they need to uncover knowledge.

And as I said, 30% of the Australian working class goes through university. 20% goes through trade schools or apprenticeships.

And the target number is 50% universities, 30%+ trade schools.

The working class is being educated against its will, and you accuse them of illiteracy? My old supervisor could run the national economy based on her degree.

>>4032963
>If I didn't have to be an academic
well luckily this isn't stalinism, you're free to quit and head to the local pizza hut! god bleesss america!

>>4032967
>viral marketing
I got one customer

>>4032969
In 1956 the Hungarian working class thought communism was shit.

Guess what they implemented after 10 days including weekends: real communism.

>>4032974
>well luckily this isn't stalinism, you're free to quit and head to the local pizza hut! god bleesss america!
Seppo cunts, intellectual runts.

Which change will ultimately precede a revolution (in the true marxist sense of the word)?

A change of the individual's inner reality, their psychology and subjectivity? (Like how the surrealists mandated a "revolution of consciousness")

Or

A change in the external conditions, the material and social "reality" that prescribes the behaviour of those within its power (who are ordered by it and who adopt its symbolic language)? (like one branch of the Situationists International wanted to do, create a utopian city which would incite a psychological change in the occupants of said city)

>>4032968
>i'm going to overthrow power hierarchy via the national plumber's council

>>4032981
the revolution will be an internal one where individuals spend their time developing skills useful to their communities and interacting with their friends and neighbors instead of thinking about how to implement communism via edgy academic jokes like psychogeography

>>4032971
>The working class watches a shit load more anime than they did in the 19th century.
Feels good to know that I'm in-tune with the working class.

Seriously, when the revolution happens (if it happens in my lifetime) I'll really miss my Chinese cartoons.

>>4032991

It will never happen

>>4032983
Do you even struggle in solidarity? I am organising where I'm at. I'm not wanking over a Leninist 4.4352rd Internationale.

>>4032991
>>4032993
The revolution will mean more chinese cartoons, not fewer.

>>4032992
Yo dawg, I heard you like Situationalism.

So I put the London Psychogeographical society in the back of your 1982 Honda Civic.

So you can derive while you drive.

>>4032981
Normally it is when sit down strikes turn into factory occupations which turn into production under workers control and the bourgeois state collapses; and then the council of councils declares that councils are in charge.

>>4032992
psychogeography isn't a joke!

>>4032992
the best way to inspire a spirit of freedom and equality among people is not to have them develop their ability to interface with the world and forge real relationships with the people around them but instead to build a magic city that uses psychology to turn poors into enlightened communist warrior poets
this is a good idea

>>4033002
>psychogeography isn't a joke!
Somebody isn't in on the joke.

Seriously, getting drunk and walking around at night is just proletarian flaneurism.

>>4033000
>The revolution will mean more chinese cartoons, not fewer.
>mfw that actually legitimately makes me want a communist revolution.
Praise Marx.

>>4032485
I am convinced philosophy has become a satire of itself. Modern philosophers don't actually do anything. It is highly unlikely that a hypothetical Marxist revolution would give any credit to these people in any way besides the fact they they said Marxism was good so they will then say Zizek said Marxism was good and so on and so on.

>Everyone is making fun of the situationists again

Just leave them alone already! What did they do to you?

>>4033010
even before i got to the so on and so on part i was thinking that this was something zizek could have said

Let's say there's a real opportunity for revolution.

Why wouldn't the capitalist just hire a bourgeois Marxist intellectual to confuse us?

>>4033007
Think about all the cartoons that doijnishi artists would be making if they didn't have to work day jobs as unnecessary document pushers. Think about the Touhous that would be made if many people could Zun if they wanted to.

THE EASTERN WONDERLAND IS RED

>>4033021
>Let's say there's a real opportunity for revolution.
>Why wouldn't the capitalist just hire a bourgeois Marxist intellectual to confuse us?

What is "post-structuralism," Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Gutterati, Zizek?

NOW YOU UNDERSTAND.

>>4033027
But weren't they protesting in May 68?

>>4033024
My paranoid mind tells me that you are just trying to get me on your side, but my heart tells me that you speak the truth.

>>4033031
And? So?

Wasn't Lenin protesting during October 1917? Who shot the Makhnovists? Who shot the Krondstadt workers collective? Who took political power from the factory councils?

Bourgeois "protesting" means sweet fuck all for the working class

>>4033035
Let me go one further. NEET / Hikki is a collective refusal of labour by the young working class.

A generation is on continuous strike. And they are striking for Marisa/Alice lesbian romance porn and more fumo.

* * *

You know, and Bangladeshi child wage slaves are being burnt alive by bosses along side their mothers. And African rural workers are being starved to death. And Indian metalworkers are being electrocuted and dying of falls on unsafe construction sites. And Phillippine workers are getting acoustic shock. And Western academics never know if they'll have a dollar when grinding in the casualised higher education sector.

But at least I can pirate lesbian scanlations.

>>4033027
Identity Politics, i mean the ruling class couldn't' have come up with a better scheme to divide the working class than that bullshit, also i want to believe who ever coined the term "white privilege" was a government spook but it was probably just some rich white kid

>>4033037
the krondstadt workers collective was reactionary though they had it coming

>>4032958
Oh I must have communicated poorly again. I didn't change my usage of the word "just." In all three cases I was trying to understand why you say alienation isn't injustice, but you then eventually said that you don't know what is just.

Are you saying that "Things that workers think are shit" is a less normative claim? Are you asserting this is a positive claim? Are you saying that the truth of normative moral assertions such as those of injustice AND "Things that workers think are shit" cannot be determined? Surely one such as yourself can explain this "'inustice' in the every day sense," since you use it every day.

>>4033044
Rich white kids are government spooks.

And yes, Identity politics came out of the section of Marxism most associated with the Universities of the rich, and least associated with on the job organising.

Compare Identity Politics to Wages for Housework. Wages for Housework was real, connected to productive work, and was for overthrowing the boss class. Identity politics is a way for intersectionally oppressed bourgeois to obliterate working women's experiences.

>>4033046
Might want to read some of the primary source documents on Kronstadt. The Bolshevik Party Centre were the reactionaries. Simon Pirani is good for the later, Voline for the former.

>>4033050
I'm not a moral philosopher. I don't have ideological knowledge of it; and my praxical knowledge of injustice relates to immediate experiences likely to dox me.

>>4033041
>Let me go one further. NEET / Hikki is a collective refusal of labour by the young working class.
Great. Now I see NHK as a Marxist tale. What a thing to happen.

>You know, and Bangladeshi child wage slaves are being burnt alive by bosses along side their mothers. And African rural workers are being starved to death. And Indian metalworkers are being electrocuted and dying of falls on unsafe construction sites. And Phillippine workers are getting acoustic shock. And Western academics never know if they'll have a dollar when grinding in the casualised higher education sector.
>But at least I can pirate lesbian scanlations.

Great, now I'll feel like even more shit when I pirate my shows/doujin. Thank you.

>>4033052
I know, I'm just playing Trotsky's advocate...

What's so bad with totalitarianism tho? I'd dig a socialist-totalitarian state.

>>4033057
>totalitarianism
I'm not the main guy in this thread, and even I know that isn't socialism. I'm not even invoking the no-true-scotsman here. Totalitarianism is when a supposedly higher authority controls the daily lives of the working class. It's the opposite of socialism, and the fact that the Soviet Union continued to claim to be socialist after enacting such policies is as ridiculous as a country claiming to value freedom while keeping slavery legal.

>>4033053
>I'm not a moral philosopher. I don't have ideological knowledge of it; and my praxical knowledge of injustice relates to immediate experiences likely to dox me.

Yes, of course we want to avoid anything like that. If you were outed you would not be able to continue to teach me. Then let me further this notion, with the idea that my coworker may have an intimate, praxical knowledge of injustice which is inclusive of alienation, however you have stated that yours is exclusive of alienation.

How do we resolve the two without violating the law of identity?

>>4033054
Every time you pirate you are attacking capital and advancing the cause of labour.

AS LONG AS YOU SEED FUCKER.

>>4033041
as Bangledeshi garment workers are some of the most exploited on Earth...I wonder...if I buy $600 Gucci jeans made in Italy by a skilled tradesman am I a consumerist dickhead? or did I just support living wages? I mean leftists love to bitch how places like Walmart flood the country with crappy sweatshop commodities but if you actually buy clothes made by workers paid a living wage everyone says you're a superficial asshole, sorry but maybe buying Gucci is actually NOT superficial but an act of solidarity.

>>4033027
Controlled opposition? /pol/ was right all along!

>>4033055
One day soon, young trots won't even both lying about Kronstadt, and they'll go "We're trotskyists critical of trotsky."

Also die linke in germany looks fucking fantastic.

>>4033060
Socialist distribution of the means of production and property. A totalitarian body that governs and controls it to ensure that it adheres to its ideology.

We already have a deeply ambivalent/schizophrenic political system, so I don't see why this can't work

>>4033063
>even questioning rather or not I seed.
Have a little more faith in me man. I'm not some animal.

>>4033061
Workers can have knowledge of injustice through work. But alienation itself doesn't require injustice for it to exist. Lets say someone does their dream job all day long for a boss. They enjoy every minute of it. Their boss, however, still controls the factory.

Lets say that you're a super dooper fucking slut, all the cocks, all the time.

Lets say you work at a brothel.

Your boss still controls your labour power and service provision, even though you like all kinds of cocks on all kinds of men.

You're still alienated, even in your dream job.
Even if your pay is "fair" for a "fair days work" you're still a "wage worker."

Let not our banner read "A fair day's wage for a fair days work" but rather "The abolition of the wage system."

That's what I mean about alienation not _requiring_ injustice.

>>4033065
I buy Bangladeshi slave pants because I can't afford morality.

>>4033073
I don't seed my vidya, am I a bad person?
It's just that I forget to leave the program running.

>>4033072
Okay I think we are getting somewhere now.
Can you provide me with an instance of alienation in which injustice is not taking place?

>>4033073
>>4033077
Even if you don't seed, you're directly attacking NHK / TimeWarner / Sony / etc.

But if you seed you're double attacking them.

>>4033065

>italian fashion houses paying living wages

Unless Gucci has gone out of their way rectify it I was under the impression that they ran their business like everyone else.
Subcontracting to the lowest bidder in the Naples area.

>>4033077
You are making it harder for others to beat the system, so yes. But we'll forgive you.

For now.

>>4033078
Let us assume that the bourgeois courts embody justice. (Wrong, but let us assume).

Let us assume that wage setting in Australia between 1905 and 1983 was conducted by courts.

Let us assume that workers, employers and the government all gave true evidence to the courts on the wage requirements; that the method of determining wages was itself just; and that no justice was corrupt in determination.

Those wages would necessarily be just?

But by a wage _existing_ alienation exists.

Another example would be a Living Wage in a Mondragon Cooperative, where you still work for yourself (in a group) as a boss. You're alienating yourself. But it is "just" according to most people due to the living wage and democratic boss.

>>4033085
who knows, they're probably contracting half the shit to hong kong now, but the point still stands, people love to buy cheap shit even if that means screwing over their fellow worker

>>4033089
If we won tarriffs on wages & conditions of foreign labour off the state, then employing first world labour to make clothes would be "cost effective" again.

Triple bottom line stuff in green economics works on this basis:
financial
ecological
humane

>>4033089

Yeah but expensive shit doesn't automatically mean the worker who produced it was earning a living wage.
Especially not in the fashion industry.

>>4033092
but whenever people defend illegal immigrants they say "they just do jobs americans don't want" which is to say jobs below the living wage, so why should it be any different if the factory is in china instead of texas? the chinese are just doing jobs americans don't want.

>>4033094
yeah, a lot of high end fashion shit is more capital intensive than labor intensive.

>>4033088
>that the method of determining wages was itself just
>Those wages would necessarily be just?

Yes, when you define your conclusion in your argument, anything follows.
This is the principle of explosion, yes? Perhaps that was just a bad example?

>But it is "just" according to most people due to the living wage and democratic boss.

What is popular and what is true are not the same. Can we really define the truth of normative claims like justice based on a poll?

>>4033082
what if they're just pacifiying you with entertainment? i mean if some proleterian sites at home and watches anime all night on cartoon channel you'll say he's a brainwashed pleb but since you torrented your shit that makes you somehow different? what if the piratebay is actually a government front to keep unemployed people docile.

>>4033097
People living in the United States can burn shit in the United States.

People living in China cannot burn shit in the United States.

Developed governments are way more vulnerable to proletarian action than developing governments.

It is easier to win living wages for jobs in first world countries, than in China.

And sometimes entire capitalist nations (Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland) are so threatened by their local working class, that the government buys the entire working class out with living wages for everybody (except in massive depressions).

I don't see how buying boutique-brand, high end fashion goods would be an act of solidarity with the workers... If anything it would seem to be an endorsement and encouragement of the pursuit of profit margins and the creation of "value" in exploitative transactions. Fashion goods can have up to 1000% markups (over the cost of labour, materials, overhead), whereas the cheap shit from bigger companies usually has a smaller margin.

Then again, when you buy the cheap shit you are directly availing of the unfair labour that went into their production, as the person getting paid a slave-wage is bearing the cost both of their unfortunate conditions and your own unwillingness to support a fair wage.

>>4033101
Can we define the truth of normative claims at all?

No, that's why they're normative.

Normative claims are in the end backed through social violence.

>>4033113
>Developed governments are way more vulnerable to proletarian action than developing governments.
>It is easier to win living wages for jobs in first world countries, than in China.

i call heavy shenanigans on this...wages in china have been rising for at least the last decade while wages in america have stagnated or dropped for close to 30 years

>>4033104
When I produce research papers, or teach lectures; you'll say that I'm brain washing plebs. But since I'm an active trade unionist and do bad work for bad pay, and actually choose to teach students the good ideological shit instead of the bad ideological shit that somehow makes the shit I work somehow different?

Workers have made landmines for years. Strikes in munitions plants are still fucking strikes.

Also anime fandom and socialist production of cartoons through dojinshi / dojinsoft / etc.

>>4033114
what if a fashion collective in brooklyn comes out with a line of $500 shirts? wouldn't it be counter revolutionary NOT to buy them? shit come to think of it that's what American Apparel does: "Made sweatshop free in LA" right haha lefty guilt could be an untapped source of profits

>>4033118
In the last 30 years the US has had to defeat using its armed forces a central transport trade union. (Air traffic control strike).

The US has waged war on its own population with an imprisonment rate higher than China.

There is good evidence the CIA was involved in starting the crack epidemic, and very good evidence that the CIA was involved in generalising gun violence in african american communities.

The US state has to do a lot more than the Chinese state does to hold its population down.

China rents twitter followers to spam social networks. The US has spent billions on echelon, 5 eyes, etc. to know the interior experience of the working class.

It takes trillions of dollars to hold a nation back.

* * *

Also China has to increase the "real" wage or 1989 will happen again.

>>4033114
what about buying "fair trade" coffee for $7 in a hip Brooklyn boutique instead of imperial war coffee for $2 at Donkin Donuts

>>4033126
Does it ever bother you that, given your political associations and professional situation everything you do/say is doubtlessly being monitored by the government?

>>4033125

Hey at least that kike Dov is looking out for illegals and convicts by employing them in droves at his warehouse.

>>4033116
So you are saying that no normative claim is true?

So, "The unprovoked murder of workers by Coca-Cola is just because they were defending their capital interests" is just as valid as "It is wrong to steal a stranger's child and put it in a blender for no comprehensible reason?"

>>4033126
i don't think you realize how despised unions are in america...no one likes unions because they're just a bunch of "privileged white guys" trying to charge you too much to fix your toilet.

>>4033136
in a way you could say union labor is the labor equivalent of "boutique fashion", why pay a big bill to some union guy when a mexican dude will do it for a third of the cost

>>4033131
>Does it ever bother you that, given your political associations and professional situation everything you do/say is doubtlessly being monitored by the government?

They're too busy monitoring people who pray five times a day and wear beards as a religious instead of a work uniform.

Also I've seen the records my government keeps on academics.

Also, the competence level of [Government Agency] isn't that high. And all they'll get is strange posts on the 4chan about the toehoes and union email about very boring industrial disputes and bourgeois marxist ideology.

I get to talk about real revolutionary politics around twice a year, and only do it with a small number of people. I doubt that [Government Agency] has even bothered to plant a mole.

>>4033136

Nope, it's mostly public sector unions and non-union employees that are constantly being attacked by fiscal conservatives.
Although I have noticed a lot of hate for the Teamsters and Longshoreman for other reasons.

>>4033135
>So you are saying that no normative claim is true?

As far as I am aware. As I repeatedly say, I am not a moral philosopher.

>So, "The unprovoked murder of workers by Coca-Cola is just because they were defending their capital interests" is just as valid as "It is wrong to steal a stranger's child and put it in a blender for no comprehensible reason?"

I prefer the example that if we blend undesirable chickens and feed it back to undesirable chickens, why shouldn't we eat both menses and abortions.

Also as my pants demonstrate, I am forced to be happy with living in a society built on human suffering. I don't want to live in such a society, but moral arguments don't dictate the course of social change even if they're useful propaganda.

I won't stop wearing Bangladeshi child slave pants unless a tarriff gets introduced. Because $2 pants are $2 pants. And I don't earn nearly enough to splurge on $200 pants.

>>4033136
>>4033139
>i don't think you realize how despised unions are in america

Oh no. I do. I remember when trade unionists were regularly shot to death by government and corporation controlled death gangs. (Most recently, IIRC, 1930s).

>>4033148
also the left tends to say unions are just a bunch of white guys...when an american leftist has a choice between supporting a white guy in a union or a non-white guy they will automatically support the non-white guy.

>>4033146
>As far as I am aware. As I repeatedly say, I am not a moral philosopher.

Do you have to be a moral philosopher to understand something as simple as "'inustice' in the every day sense?" If so, then how do you make out that alienation is not included in the definition of injustice? Is that really for a moral philosopher to make out? Regardless of your status as a moral philosopher, your expertise on Marxism should give you a very good understanding of alienation, yes? Is it simply that the concept of justice eludes you? I would very much like to learn this from you, and I'm confident in your ability to teach me.

>>4033158
but why is economic inequality injustice? why shouldn't some people have more stuff than other people?

i think zizek having hotter girlfriends than me is injustice and i intend to protest this bullshit if he ever comes to my city

>>4033154
It isn't really a left is it?
It is a bunch of bourgeois and management "intellectuals" trying to force an ideology of "individual" freedom through bourgeois identities.

The US left is in a couple of the less fucktarded Leninist parties, the IWW, NEFAC, some union branches, etc.

And a fair amount of the class. Much of whom don't trust the "political left" because Lenin looks exactly like Napoleon III in a cloth cap.

It isn't Chomsky, Zizek, or the latest young white University educated woman to make a name out of repressing working class women.

>>4033163
There are a few arguments for this.

I would recommend reading "A Theory of Justice" for starters.

Basically, Rawls assertion is that if you were in a state devoid of any characteristics beyond reason, no gender, race, social class, etc., you would agree with all the other people in the same state that there should be as little economic inequality as possible, because it's less risk, and if you end up on the losing side, you wouldn't lose as badly.

Another way to think of it is like this:
You don't have any money on you and you are kind of hungry, and someone comes up to you and offers you your choice of one: an extremely low-odds lottery ticket with a 1 million dollar payout or 100 dollars cash. Which do you choose?

>>4033173
but this is one of those awful "Homo Economicus" arguments that plague bourgeois economic theory...people don't make rational choices like that, there are always going to be ambitious people who think they will do better than everyone else.

>>4033158
Alienation is easy. It is lack of control over production, as experienced by the wage labourer, who becomes an aspect of production while working.

That's a non-normative definition.

"Is it bad to eat puppies"

Fuck me that's hard. In my own life, "Yes if I'm in New Zealand. No if I'm in Vietnam"

"Is it bad to eat veal?"

Not really, but I'm not going to order rare veal in front of my vegan mate.

"Is it bad to kill someone?"

Depends.

"Is it bad to enjoy diaper sex?"

Depends.

etc.

My moral world will differ from yours. Failing to cite references correctly is grounds for having your feet beaten with rubber hoses full of ball bearings around me. Most people don't give a fuck. Plagiarism is a waterboarding. etc.

>>4033173
ok let's ask the academic who dreamed up this theory if he would take this version of his plan: instead of a couple students getting A's and a couple getting F's everyone in the class can get B- to C+...think an ambitious academic is going to go for that ? of course not.

>>4033187
Rawls' thought experiment is meant to be just that. It wasn't advocacy for social reality.

>>4033183
Yes, but we aren't working our definitions out based on the choices that people actually make. We are elucidating the necessity of social justice based on the fact that they _would_ choose it if they were actually choosing what was in their best interest.

Simply because one person thinks that blacks should be poorer than whites doesn't mean that it should be so, and if a lot of them did (hint: they wouldn't), many of them would end up black and would be singing a different tune.

>>4033192
well then why should "justice" exist in social reality?

>>4033189
This is the difference between bourgeois social science and marxist social science; even when both are ideologies.

The bourgeois reasons from a perfect world and what ought to be. The marxist reasons from what is and can be caused to be.

>>4033189
but this is just identity politics...

>>4033185
>Alienation is easy. It is lack of control over production, as experienced by the wage labourer, who becomes an aspect of production while working.

>That's a non-normative definition.
Yes that's a positive assertion.

So are you saying justice is relative? Right and wrong depends on what culture you're in?

So in a capitalist culture, exploitation of the worker is morally sound, just, and even necessity?

>>4033194
Don't ask me, I'm a Marxist. I believe in the power of my class to inflict its vision of society on the bourgeoisie through physical force; and my own self-interest in the same.

>>4033197
Of course it is identity politics, Rawls is a bourgeois philosopher.

>>4033199
>So are you saying justice is relative? Right and wrong depends on what culture you're in?
>So in a capitalist culture, exploitation of the worker is morally sound, just, and even necessity?
Marx claims that the "cultural and political superstructure" is entirely dependent on the "economic and productive base" for its form and content. Ie: justice is different in Feudalism and Capitalism. EP Thompson finds this in empirical evidence.

For Marxists, such as Lukacs, right and wrong (as morality) is entirely socially determined.

>in a capitalist culture, exploitation of the worker is morally sound, just, and even necessity?
Except of course for some workers who perceive it as injustice, because they're struggling for socialism or survival.

>>4033192
Did you even read the book? The thought experiment is entirely used to substantiate the moral value of social justice. How exactly do you arrive at the desire for social justice? Or do you think there should be none?

>>4033194
see above

>>4033195
Rawls is far from utopian, but you know that already, right? I mean I'm sure as well-read as you are you are more than familiar with him?

>>4033197
It has nothing to do with identity politics, it's social contract theory, actually.

>>4033204
Yes, the "cultural and political superstructure" now determines right and wrong?

That appears to be what you are claiming.

But then you go on to state:
>Except of course for some workers who perceive it as injustice, because they're struggling for socialism or survival.

Which isn't the "cultural and political superstructure."

So which are you saying? Is justice or, even further, morality determined by culture? Or at an individual level? Is the worker always right? I don't really understand what you are saying.

>>4033209
so if someone makes a lot of money and works really hard their child should be raised in the same conditions as someone who blows all their cash on crack? this is justice? not sold.

>>4033209
>It has nothing to do with identity politics, it's social contract theory, actually.
then why does he have to resort to black guys vs. white guys to browbeat people into agreeing?

>>4033209
>It has nothing to do with identity politics, it's social contract theory, actually.

he's framed it in a sneaky way that if you don't agree then you are RACIST which is classic identity politics bro get a clue

why is everyone so hung up on economic outcomes? what about guys who get way more pussy than other guys? isn't this injustice? shouldn't all guy get the same amount of pussy?

>>4033222
Some people are able to work harder than others for a variety of reasons. Is this not the case?

So if you are born a crack baby, you should just be written off as a born failure? If your Dad is a rich white man who traces lineage back to The Redeemers you should simply not have to work a day in your life?

>>4033230
see your argument only works if you bring race into it, yet i thought this was a magical hypothetical world?

Why is the left so dead if there are so many marxists/left wing people running around? Take immigration for example. Instead of attacking the military or economic imperialism that causes people to leave their nation (which is why you have so many islamic immigrates) they simply wax on about the glories of multiculturalism and do little to actually help the immigrates out.

>>4033224
>>4033226
It's not about race, though you seem to be fascinated with that aspect.

The reason to use blacks vs. whites is because there is systemic, statistical wealth inequality there. You can also use women, janitors, mentally handicapped, whatever you like, if those are your details of choice. Might I recommend the mentally handicapped iteration?

>>4033231
Well, perhaps in a socialist state, the societal incentives not to just up and fuck at random will disappear, allowing random people to just up and fuck when they otherwise wouldn't. In fact, I wonder how the population would be affected by socialism. Maybe free birth control and a general consensus on when the population is too high will keep things at a normal level.

>>4033234
haha yes this is my favorite leftist magical thinking, that immigrants are this revolutionaryu force...people come to america to "make it" not to protest and have socialism, they could do that at home.

>>4033235
well i'm just fascinated that all your examples seem to revolve around race...i didn't put race into it, you did buddy

>>4033246
Yeah I did, and all one of my examples did, because it is easy to demonstrate that as being one of the worst areas of wealth inequality.

You just got hung up on it, but I don't blame you. It was all for the greater good, right?

>>4033235
well women are only earn slightly less than men and through marriage and family have over all equal wealth with men so no problem there...mentally retarded people are given an assortment of handouts and healthcare so no problem there....no one is born a janitor, that's a lifestyle choice so that was bogus. hmm, according to your theory there's nothing wrong with capitalism we just need to increase affirmative action, cool identity politics bro

>>4033209
>it's social contract theory, actually.
And the end point of which is the upholding of individual identities as subjectivities before the state as law?

>Did I read Rawls
No. I read political economy, double history, bits of literature, a shit load of materialist social theory, and a lot of empirical methodology.

Rawls is over the great divide of apriori reasoning. Also, the day I see an analytical manage to coherently argue that their model accords with reality such that their such that's meaningfully represent the state of the world; then we'll know that day that society can be moved by the pure power of thought.

Until then there's learning how not to be kettled, or weld things so that a semi can't break a picket line.

>>4033218
Workers oppose the superstructure of capitalism, because they desire socialism. Workers hold a prefiguration of a socialist superstructure within their own culture.

Workers are within _and_ against capitalism.

>>4033255
but i thought this was supposed to be in some magical hypothetical thought experiment world? a world you decided should have high racial inequality? lol ok bro

>>4033268
>Workers oppose the superstructure of capitalism, because they desire socialism. Workers hold a prefiguration of a socialist superstructure within their own culture.
>Workers are within _and_ against capitalism.

and this is where marxists break with reality and get all religious. there's just no evidence workers want socialism. it would make sense if they did but for whatever reason they pretty much don't.

>>4033282
>and this is where marxists break with reality and get all religious. there's just no evidence workers want socialism. it would make sense if they did but for whatever reason they pretty much don't.

Come with me down to any factory of your choosing, and with my superior bourgeois marxism I will point out all the ways workers in that factory want socialism through their resistance to the value form in the point of production.

Chiefly by being slack cunts, turning up late, calling in sick, doing shoddy work, doing good work for people they like, etc.

What they don't want is Russian beards and governments.

>>4033274
>but i thought
I'm sorry guy. Do you want me to type it all again? Or can you scroll back up and read it again slowly? Anything I can do to help.

>>4033266
Not all women marry.
Yes, people can be born a janitor. Have you ever been in a society with a rigid class structure?
>mentally retarded people are given an assortment of handouts and healthcare so no problem there
I'm surprised you would call all mentally handicapped people retarded, and refer to their social support as a handout! Why would you do such a thing? Do you hate people with disabilities?

>>4033268
Unfortunately, it's not the analytical school that has the problem with coherency I think. Would you like me to send you a copy of Wittgenstein? We can compare it to Derrida, or any continental you like, if that's what it takes to get you over the "great divide of apriori reasoning." It's only right that I accommodate my teacher after all.

>Workers oppose the superstructure of capitalism, because they desire socialism. Workers hold a prefiguration of a socialist superstructure within their own culture.

>Workers are within _and_ against capitalism.

Yes, but you just restated yourself, you didn't explain how you derive your conception of justice or even morality to me. Is the worker the epitome of morality in the universe? Or is it rather determined by the state? Or is it an individual thing?

>>4033301
>Chiefly by being slack cunts, turning up late, calling in sick, doing shoddy work, doing good work for people they like, etc.

so then if they keep working in this manner after the revolution are we to assume they want capitalism?

I don't know, OP, but Zizek is a windbag.

>>4033310
is working to take care of someone else's "mentally handicapped child" instead of your own justice? who should do this work? white guys?

>>4033319
to paraphrase margeret thatcher: the problem with identity politics is eventually you run out of white guys

>>4033319
No you work for both. It isn't mutually exclusive. Unless you want to live in a world where it is?
Don't you think most people would find that type of world unappealing though?
>>4033321
It looks like we still have a bunch of them left to me. I mean, I'm talking to one right now. Why aren't you working, white man?

>>4033310
but rawls argument still doens't work because if you take out all the identity politics then it comes down to ambition and self-confidence, you still haven't really given a reason why economic inequality is injustice?

>>4033310
Well, given that I'm never reading Derrida except via a full text search to ridicule him; whereas I have read bits of Wittgenstein, I'm okay with this.

And my claim is that analytical thought only decoheres when it is brought into contact with getting things done socially.

I have no fucking time at all for continentals after structuralism. And very little time for structuralists.

>Justice
I'm not sure the number of times that I have to restate that I'm incapable of this. I have a hard time even seeing justice fitting in to Marxism because of the corner of Marxism I work in, where Justice means nothing because the enforcement of law or class violence is everything.

>Is the worker the epitome of morality
I like to think so, but I know that that is faulty reasoning.

>Or is [the epitome of morality] determined by the state?
The state would like to thing so, but its imposition is limited by its capacity for violence and propaganda.

>Or is [the epitome of justice] an individual thing
How then could justice be a meaningful social category?

>>4033311
>so then if they keep working in this manner after the revolution are we to assume they want capitalism?
Of course not, because being slack in their own interests is a key example of their own power over their work. Rather than being oppositional to the value form (as in the Soviet Union, where people slacked to fuck with the boss), slacking in a society with no bosses is simply LEISURE.

>>4033327
No it doesn't. You include things like intelligence and physical ability, including handicaps and deformities. You would want high equality across the board, because, when you are born, you don't get to choose.

>>4033325
so you're saying a world in which handicapped people recieve social services is unappealing?

>>4033329
but what if they work in the only baby food factory and their slacking off is causing malnutrition to other people's babies?

>>4033331
I thought we were getting somewhere too.

>>4033330
so then why should high ability people bother to work if they'e only going to make the same money as a moron?

>>4033339
Because if they aren't working for anything besides money, they are a moron.

>>4033342
well pussy is nice but you can sit on your butt and get pussy

>>4033333 (quints, delicious)
See up thread, less than 25% of the work done now is necessary. There are about 8 people for every necessary job.

And productivity is still improving.

I for one would volunteer for necessary work. We only need a solidarity rate in the population at (or above) that needed to run the factories at the socially accepted standard of living.

Because most smart Marxists realize the proletariat is retarded. However, that doesn't mean we don't think they deserve better lives, or that the richest of society need to have so much better lives than everyone else, or that our lives should be soulless and without purpose in the middle-class.

>>4033356
>substitutionalism
>middle-class
You've not read any Marx at all, have you?

What's the basic reproduction schema for expanded reproduction of capital? What is suggested by the central term's relationship to the surrounding terms? What makes the central term different in terms of value from all other terms?

I think worker's don't care about revolution because they can still get pussy. I mean have you seen some of the sexy sluts in working class neighborhoods? As long as you can make enough for a Honda with a loud muffler at your wage job that's all you need.

>>4033368
Most sluts don't care about money, but poorer men generally tend to be more masculine and therefore more attractive.

>>4033368
and nerdy gamestop workers are too busy wackin' it to hentai to worry about revolution, there's no need to overthrow the alpha class as long as everybody's getting their nuts off.

>>4033372
I'm pretty sure Gamestop workers are too busy hating their jobs.

>>4033371
well isn't this injustice to non-masculine men?

>>4033373
if they don't like working there they should have done their homework instead of playing call of duty

>>4033374

>non-masculine men

don't you mean non-masculine males?

trigger warning here

>>4033376
so are you saying a non-masculine male can't be a man? this is injustice!

>>4033374
Sure, but the world isn't going to change to bring justice back to them until patriarchy is re-established, feminism de-established, and parents raise their boys as the men they should be and their girls as the women they should be.

>>4033371
that's what poor guys like to tell themselves heh heh

>>4033378
well we need to make this part of our social justice program

>>4033379
What, that women are attracted to masculinity or that men are more often going to be masculine in poorer communities. Because both are true. I've been in ghettos before and due to the lack of parents caring about them, more influence from other boys than "mediating" influences, and clearer demands from girls (they generally say what they mean instead of trying to seem nice) even the betas of a ghetto resemble more of the old-fashioned beta and not the "I'm completely incapable of even talking to girls" beta of the now.

Though to be fair most poor communities are latino or black so those cultural influences bias the results towards the poor.

>>4033387
so you think all rich guys are feminine betas who can't talk to women?

>>4033390
Not all, but I'm saying that the way you're raised is more likely to be masculine if you live in a poor community. This is why I've used terms like generally because I'm not making blanket statements.

>>4033387
if by masculine you mean blatant sexual harassment then yeah i guess so, i mean some surgeons ivy league kid probably isn't going to drive down the street shouting at girls asses

>>4033393
i don't know, for me masculine and macho-douche aren't the same really

>>4033377

A non-masculine man is allowed (just in hypothetical i don't mean to oppress peoples personal decisions in reality through promoting the idea that one needs to have their decision accepted by others) if he identifies with the gender by the gender is characterized by the social construct of what we define as 'masculinity'.

DONT TALK ABOUT INJUSTICE TO ME YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BAD MY LIFE IS RIGHT NOW #HASHTAG

It's funny how all the >>>/pol/ proles flocked to this thread. It's like they knew they were being talked about.

>>4033401
Do not pity them, for they are the future. Each one of them has probably stolen more than $40000 of data.

>>4033401
yeah because anyone who doesn't agree with you is obviously some evil other from /pol/

>>4033403
It's hard to agree with someone who hasn't posted itt except to remark on how it started out with /lit/ marxism and the >>>/pol/etariat arrived toward the end.

>>4033408
it's not /pol/ shit to point out that even after the glorious revolution some dudes are still going to be more popular than others, get more pussy than others and just be more well loved than others.

it's like that old saying about sex in college: "if you weren't getting any in high school you're not gonna get any in college either" well it's also so that "if you couldn't get laid before the revolution you won't get laid after either" and as such many dudes are still going to be jealous about "injustice"

>>4033410
No, it is a rule 3 and rule 6 violation.

>>4033418
talking about sexuality is against the rules? shit i guess Freud is off limits then

>>4033328
I was simply having trouble grasping why you would make a claim about something being just or unjust and then claim not to be able to make judgment on those types of issues.

In my reading of Marx, I understood what he was writing as a descriptive enterprise, describing something inevitable and the reasons for its inevitability, rather than a prescriptive one. Is this somehow mistaken? Even further, if Marx was correct in the process of transition through socialism, claims of whether socialism is something that is good or bad, just or unjust, would then be metanarrative. However, as a Marxist, if you advocate socialism, there must be a normative reason for doing so, right? Otherwise you are just advocating what you have come to understand will come to take place. If Marx was mistaken, would you change your stance to advocating whatever other economic structure springs up?

In the same vein, after the fall of capitalism, assuming Marx's theory is correct, wouldn't it be necessary for the worker to have a background in moral (and to a larger extent complete) education, much in the way that in a democracy efficient government depends on educated citizens? Therefore is it not of vital importance for a Marxist to also not only have the notion of justice, but also to recognize moral truths?

>>4033421
>>4033421
>3. Do not post the following outside of /b/: off-topic replies

>>4033425
it's not off-topic it's a matter of social justice, even there is a wonderful revolution the working class seizes power Trotsky still might fuck your wife and that just ain't right my man

>>4033422
>Otherwise you are just advocating what you have come to understand will come to take place.

That and self-interest, as I'm a beneficiary of socialism. To claim that self-interest is normative is interesting. But normative claims don't need to be just now do they?

>In the same vein, after the fall of capitalism, assuming Marx's theory is correct, wouldn't it be necessary for the worker to have a background in moral (and to a larger extent complete) education, much in the way that in a democracy efficient government depends on educated citizens?

Such would be a requirement as it is now. I leave things out of my expertise to experts.

> Therefore is it not of vital importance for a Marxist to also not only have the notion of justice, but also to recognize moral truths?
Not to advocate the inevitable. Why wouldn't I let moral philosophers philosophise, and teachers teach, and nurses nurse? Is there a particular Marxist theory of nursing other than to observe that social constructions based on economic relations prescribe all cultural relations?

>>4033429

but i love trotsky and his permanent revolution.

srs

>>4033429
Read Kollontai's _Red Love_. ITS AWWWWWRITE BABY.

Notice how people from /lit/ are citing texts to back their claims or otherwise directly discussing texts?

Notice how the discussion of the attack on bourgeois intelligentsia directly relates to the topic, whereas discussion of getting pussy doesn't?

Why not read something like The Game and then start a thread on that work?

>>4033431
I guess that brings us all back home. So you know agree, by virtue of their specialization, that academic philosophers have a place in Marxist discourse?

>>4033431
I guess that brings us all back home. So you now agree, by virtue of their specialization, that academic philosophers have a place in Marxist discourse?

>>4033436
Yes! But they teach ideology in capitalism! And as we found midway through, postmodernism was cultivated by the bourgeoisie to disorganise the working class.

question: after the revolution isn't there danger that a new ruling class of hot chicks and homothugs might seize power as they would be able to make more money through sex work than bad looking individuals and eventually amass enough wealth to destabilize the system? should pretty children be disfigured at birth to maintain equality? should brothels just pool all their cash and split it? isn't this unfair to the hottest chicks who will be doing the most work?

>>4033434
If you like permanent revolution then just read Mao, he did it better and doesn't completely fucking suck like Trotsky does.

>>4033442
However, if we consider that they are expanding wealth by the value of their surplus labor, here as churning out academic writing and teaching, they too are in factories, yes?

They are being exploited?

So they have the praxical knowledge required?

>>4033435
well zizek gets hotter chicks than me and as a worker i don't like it and i want him overthrown and his girlfriend redistributed to me

>>4033446
Money isn't necessary in a socialist system.

Money is quickly becoming unnecessary even in the modern mixed economy.

>>4033450
>highest stage of financial capitalism
>money unnecessary

yeah ok

>>4033431
>Such would be a requirement as it is now. I leave things out of my expertise to experts.

I, too, hail the contemporary revisionist People's Republic of China as the highest form of socialism.

>>4033448
Academics are in factories in the advanced West, yes. They are being exploited. But their production of knowledge for the employer, isn't the production of praxical knowledge.

Academics aren't very organised as workers except in the UK, Au and NZ. And even there they keep trying to make intellectual arguments to bosses instead of power/knowledge acts (like striking, or work to rule, etc).

>>4033454
You do realise that value circulates in China?

1/10, "Hurr I was being stupid on purpose"

>>4033450
>>4033453

Do you mean payment is becoming unnecessary ?

could you extrapolate

>>4033455
http://www.berkeley.edu/about/hist/activism.shtml

http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/15/uc-berkeley-strike-and-day-of-action-swells-to-more-than-a-thousand/

http://www.aaup.org/

Are these sufficient counterexamples? At least in the American University System?

>>4033458
he means from his mom's basement he can pirate any anime ever produced for free and therefor has no need for money nor a job

>>4033455

>tfw tertiary education is one of the biggest industries in australia

>>4033461

Zizek is not even mildly respected in his own country aside from people who are part of the "former" communists (Slovenia never actually got rid) or directly involved in leeching for promoting their status quo agenda. To make it in Slovenia you only need to know the right people and suck up their post-communist ass, the country is full of useless parasites, those not aligned either suffer in their useless mundane lives with shitty jobs and shitty parasitical bosses or in the event that they possess any useful skill move out at the first opportunity. Thankfully the country is very close to self-imploding, and hopefully status quo red parasites like Zizek are finally thrown into the garbage bin of history. Not to mention Zizek is still "employed" by the university reeling in 4k EUR a month, doing nobody knows what since he's never actually there (http://www.finance.si/332044/Kaj-Slavoj-%C5%BDi%C5%BEek-svetovna-zvezda-dela-na-filozofski-fakulteti)), a sort of microcosm for everything that's wrong in the country.

>>4033448
Writing books doesn't create wealth. It's what Marx calls non-productive labor. Most of the first world population engages in non-productive labor. Without the mostly industrial labor of the productive sector, the non-productive sector cannot exist, and thus does not create wealth.(Wealth is material; non-productive labor can certainly multiply capital, but its not the source)

Exploitation in Marxist terminology is a technical term, the rate of exploitation in the first world varies a little across sectors but is generally just slightly above, at, or sometimes even below their wages, as it would most certainly be with a petty bourgeois academic. Non labor aristocratic proletarians, mostly stationed in the global periphery, are super-exploited to compensate for the lack of exploitation in the first world.

>>4033460
They're local compared to NTEU (Australia) which runs 50+ sites and has 20 years of systematic enterprise bargaining locking down wages and conditions.

And Australia's academics aren't nearly militant enough.

>>4033462
2nd or 3rd biggest export industry.

>>4033458
My meaning is this. The financialization of the American economy means that most of the new wealth generated in the US is from buying and selling the wealth itself, as signified by money, but usually not paper money.

We are approaching a point where we can signify wealth completely electronically, you already see this in the fact that most money spent, especially in the largest expenditures and financial deals, isn't in direct paper money. The banks and financial institutions merely pass it back and forth. This isn't necessary for this type of economic activity. A state could easily assign values without having a currency, and data mine ever single transaction made. It would be more efficient, and would make black market dealing within the country much more difficult.

>>4033465
yeah seriously, what ever "tradition" zizek is supposed to be part of...has run out of steam and needs to be left in the history books. so sick of "philosophy stars", of course this thread is probably viral marketing from one of his publishers hence the flattering photo at the top and the social media intern making sure everyone "stays on topic" and talks about zizeks books

>>4033466

Completely fucking wrong:

>Writing books doesn't create wealth. It's what Marx calls non-productive labor. Most of the first world population engages in non-productive labor. Without the mostly industrial labor of the productive sector, the non-productive sector cannot exist, and thus does not create wealth.(Wealth is material; non-productive labor can certainly multiply capital, but its not the source)
>Exploitation in Marxist terminology is a technical term, the rate of exploitation in the first world varies a little across sectors but is generally just slightly above, at, or sometimes even below their wages, as it would most certainly be with a petty bourgeois academic. Non labor aristocratic proletarians, mostly stationed in the global periphery, are super-exploited to compensate for the lack of exploitation in the first world.

1) Any act of labour is productive or non productive based solely on if it reproduces capital. Writing may or may not be productive. Journalists, for example, by expanding capital, are productive.

Most of the first world are still productive labourers. I suggest you reread Volume 1 on what productive labour is.

>mostly industrial
You mistyped service

>Wealth is material
No it isn't. Value is _embodied_ materially but value itself is the circuit (See Volume II).

>3rd worldism
a shit

The rate of profit at my employer is 25%. And I work in a service industry.

>>4033470
>flattering photo

his haircut and outfit look like they were picked out by a white mom dressing up her 13 year old son

>>4033466
Yes, but nearly all academic philosophers also teach.

Is teaching creating wealth?
To address your first point, how is writing books non-productive? Much of the cultural capital in the world comes from books, in many cases solely from books, either in their traditional or digitized forms.

Is cultural capital excluded here? Is the knowledge in books such as "how-to books" worthless in industry?

What about the manual to a factory machine?

>>4033474
>hipster v-neck
>well groomed beard
>carefully combed hair sparkling in the lights

wow you really are a zizek marketing goon aren;t you

>>4033476
Productive means "reproducing capital for sale." It is a technical term from Marx. An accountant isn't productive if they work in a financial service industry because they're not producing a commodity. An accountant in a steel mill is productive because they're an essential part of the labour process of producing steel.

>>4033473
Rate of profit isn't rate of exploitation, first worldist scum

>>4033482
My Industry's OCC, check it.

>>4033467
http://www.aaup.org/about/mission-description

Actually this one is pretty big, a lot bigger than that Australian one by some metrics. Academics are perhaps less bourgeois than is assumed?

>>4033486
>http://www.aaup.org/about/mission-description
Doesn't have a national bargaining standard, or take pattern based industrial action.

I'm not disputing that US academics are proletarian. I'm disputing that they're militant and effective class warriors.

>>4033489
academics in america think they are fighting for their class if they speak out against some war or oppose racism or whatever....basically they're stuck in the 60s, hell have the republicans oppose wars and racism these days, it's not radical

>>4033491
Exactly. Radical is shutting down a massive research/teaching money earner. A money earner that turns labour hours into profit directly due to its low OCC, meaning that profit is directly indicative of rate of exploitation.

>>4033494
Also for that thirdworldist scum: 60 hour weeks, only 35 of those paid, no overtime.

>>4033491
>>4033491
It might be worth noting that Noam Chomsky, Cornell West, and depending on your definition of "American academic," Peter Singer are all American academics.

>>4033498
and they have done what to advance working class interests exactly? i know chomsky has done a lot to promote khmer rouge and palestinian interests and cornell west promotes black interests and peter singer promotes bovine interests but none of this is related to class, sorry buddy

>>4033501
>>4033502
Chomsky was hired in the 1960s.

Well before US academia was proletarianised in the late 1990s.

>>4033502
http://www.chicagodsa.org/CornelWest.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=cornel+west+protest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RtcNUrnQOuPs2wWN04HQDQ&ved=0CFoQsAQ&biw=1026&bih=758

Chomsky lived socialism, which is probably more than most of us can claim. Perhaps, that doesn't qualify him enough? How about his constant publishing of anti-capitalist works outside his academic career?

All three also use a bully pulpit. People listen when they speak, people with influence, and that's a big deal, isn't it?

>>4033510
>All three also use a bully pulpit. People listen when they speak, people with influence, and that's a big deal, isn't it?

It doesn't hurt that Chomsky's politics support the validity of the state and disorganise US workers does it?

Ask the IWW about Chomsky.

>>4033510
i've seen cornel west speak, he's very charismatic with his big afro and 1800s get-up complete with cane...and he has the black preacher act down for sure, compelling speaker, i just don't know that he really says much...he's an "academic superstar" like zizek, more personality than ideas

>>4033510
how did Chomsky "live" socialism? by being a tenured professor at MIT his whole life? yeah, if only we could all be tenured MIT professors it would be utopia all around.

>>4033517
I think that comparison is a little unfair. West actually does have some good work, is commonly cited by other philosophers, and has garnered respect and status within his discipline, and Zizek, while perhaps having more popularity, is not even respected in his field at all.

>>4033519
By living here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

>>4033516
It isn't all or nothing. Sure, Chomsky isn't a Marxist, but he is certainly united with them against a common enemy on many issues.

>>4033529
The IWW are a non-party union who claim universal coverage. The issue was Chomskys inability to meet the minimal meeting attendance requirements to maintain membership.

>>4033536
That's strange, all the google results and even pages on the IWW website tout Chomsky interviews and things that he has written or done for them.

Merely failing to retain membership undoes the work that he did? Could you be so kind as to link me to what you are referencing?

>>4033545
My reference is priv. corr. And while I think he's a cunt I'm not suggesting he's any more, or less, than Zizek: a bourgeois supporter. See above, extensively, for why I feel this way. Chomskys dilettantism, in relation to the union, is problematic. Unlike parties unions take decades to build.

>>4033536
This is the most recent thing I can find with all my google-fu:
http://www.iww.org/history/library/Chomsky/MayDay2012

This states that Chomsky is a dues-paying member of the IWW. Is there something more recent I failed to find?

dear namefag academic
top thread
thank you
please stick around; come back regularly
polite sage

>>4033655
No worries cussie bro you sweet cubt

>>4033552
Didn't know this will mention to local secty/tres next time I pay dues