/lit/ - Literature

>material conflict
>mfw

>>4244674
>>4244694

marxism is just a fancy little club for 'intellectuals' to jerk each other off in.

what are things I should read if I want to understand communism?

>Serious discussion about ideas i like
>ideas i don't like aren't allowed

awesome thread pussy

"Identity politics" and its offspring were born from first-world readers of Marx not wanting to necessarily hate the consumerist lifestyle they live. I understand the ease of using Marx as a format for critical assessments of society and cultural norms, or the modes of society, but the amount of critical theory I've seen cropping up - theory that has little value to anything else but criticism itself - leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

With that said, it's not a distraction from what you think Marxism is. It's an entirely contemporary lineage that has unfortunately made critical theory a legitimate 'school of thought'. Identity politics stems naturally from that. And those under it's umbrella have little regard for materialism and its importance for Marx.

criticisms of "identity politics" are sad attempts to delimit politics back to only straight white males. prove me wrong.

Identity politics vs. class politics is just the spook calling the ghost a spectre.

Identity politics is helpful for identifying the extent of oppressions experienced under capitalism, yet results as ultimately divisive for its diehard fans because it cannot locate commonality in any proposed solution. Identity politics often falls short of common solutions and organization because its focus is on ranking and ordering of privileges and oppressions existing in each individual or group with a specific criteria of those.

>copypasting your OPs
Why?

>>4244715
So if we reject every kind of government action, we must also reject laissez faire capitalism. Great thought experiment, shilly.

>>4244809
>herp how do I logic

>>4244809
the difference of course being you're giving direct power to corruptible people with a state.

whereas companies in a laissez faire system would be at the complete mercy of the consumer without having the state as a griphold for large corporations to protect themselves through legislation.

>>4244849

capitalism depends on the state to reinforce its property rights

>>4244863
and property rights often favour corporations over the consumer

>>4244715

>Implying appeals to human nature as silver bullets against Marxism is serious discussion

intellectual lightweight pls

>>4244747

Liberal feminists who think they're reshaping society can eat shit

>>4244849

>companies
>at the complete mercy of the consumer
>capitalist enterprises not being as coercive as the state

what the fuck am I reading

>>4244900
Feminists are the most disgusting bunch in the "Revolutionary Cool" Movement that's going on this day. maybe even worse than those Anonymous idiots

>>4244747

>Implying liberal identity based politics isn't bourgeois bullshit

>>>/tumblr/
>>>/huffingtonpost/

>>4244674
>Serious discussion
>With a minimum of shitposting
>To get the ball rolling, a question about identity politics!
No. This will fail horribly. Identity politics is the great derailer of Marxism threads—it's pretty much impossible to disagree on it without somebody taking it personally either because the other person must be racist/sexist/homophobic or because the other person is a dirty counterrevolutionary. It inevitably leads to name-calling and people leading each other to /pol/ and tumbrl. I'd be up for a serious, respectful discussion of the topic, but I have yet to see it happen here.

Now that the proletariat has disappeared from Western finance capitalist societies and been relocated to slave labour countries in the third world, and there are only middle class service drones left in the politically conscious/capable areas of the world, what is the true Marxist thing to do? Industrially underdeveloped slave labour classes aren't a true proletariat, so the state isn't ready to be toppled over there. But they are still being exploited. Meanwhile in the West it's just a bunch of Jews teaching upper middle class white people to be upset about "privilege" and listen to dissonant noisecore, the most bourgeois thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.

Where to go if you actually want class revolution?

Identity politics can only be effectively revolutionary if it's within a wider conception of oppression, which is why liberal identity politics, which extracts one fragment of oppression and holds it above all others, especially class, is ultimately unhlepful.

>>4244908
how would a company be coercive in a stateless society?

or are you worried about collusion and price fixing?

>>4244872
thanks to state legislation

>>4244969
The best thing to do is to not forget about the proletariat at your doorstep.
Modern capitalism has made things look like everyone now has his "life project" (because apparently living isn't enough anymore), and menial jobs and factory jobs are just a minority thing, or a temporary step for the individual to get into his career, as everyone is supposedly destined to be a member of the petite bourgeoisie. Thus the faceless mass of the proletariat is relegated to a marginal picture of "people that failed their career" in the greatest hypocrisy, since capitalism absolutely need the existence of the working class.

We have to face that the Grand Soir isn't happening anytime soon and promote syndicalism/unionism. There won't be anything revolutionary happening if everyone is too busy succeeding in his career.

>>4244674
The great genius of identity politics is that it removes what has historically been the most violent anti-capitalist, i.e. the white working class man.

All revolutions, or even disturbances, require his unique position as "oppressed person" and also "person who is prepared to use force against the state"

In removing him the status quo will be more heavily re-inforced, because he will inevitably turn to nationalist movements to vent his rage at his predicament. Here we see either a fascist-corporatist (NF in France, Golden Dawn in Greece) revolt possible or the election of far right libertarian nationalists ( UKIP, Tea Party) which, as I say, reinforces the wealth stratification.

One of the main reasons Occupy failed was the marginalisation of the most motivated, committed, and aggressive section of the whole thing; the white working class male.

Hence identity politics is incredibly dangerous and ultimately reinforces the system it allegedly wants to take down.

I'm going to bed, if anyone has a decent rebuttal to this in the morning I'll respond.

>>4244982

Private policing and defense cartels are the most egregious examples I can think of

The main difference between Ancap and Ancommies is that Ancaps wouldn't mind Ancommies practicing communism on their own land, as long as they aren't aggressing against others. The opposite isn't true.

>>4244993
>the system it allegedly wants to take down.
Does it even pretend to do that?
The most common complaints about identity politics are "there should be the right amount of [insert group] in this social class, and the right amount in that social class".

>>4244993
My basic objection to this is that I don't think that most advocates of identity politics want to remove white men but rather feel that people who aren't white men have been removed. I see no reason why any one demographic should be allowed to monopolize a movement any more than they should be excluded from it.

That said, I'd imagine there are some people who in practice do advocate measures that amount to removing white men from the struggle, but I don't think that the dumber forms of an idea are a reason to give up the idea altogether; if I did, I wouldn't be a socialist to begin with!

>>4245001

That picture better describes AnCaps though, AnCaps thinking leads to non-state coercion as well.

www(dot)womb101(dot)tk/dong/anarcho-capitalists-need-a-check-up-from-the-neck-up/

>>4244982
It's the ol' problem of the origin of property: when you get the final say with what to do with certain sorts of property, this can have a pretty big effect on other people, and in the end comes out pretty unjust when you didn't come by this property justly. Or when the conditions that deprive them of their own equivalent/analogous sorts of property are unjust conditions.

>>4245012
give examples please.

>>4245012
I was just about to say this. I think that most of the problems with anarcho-capitalism stem from a naive and simplistic account of what a state is (or at least of how power, coercion, and the like (normally things that they simply attribute to formal government) function).

>>4245024
The state is a monopoly on the use of force. Ancaps seek to distribute this power to the private sector through competition, and ideally the most competent rights enforcers would prevail.

It's more realistic than anarcho socialism or communism.

>>4245038

Yes, but that implies that private entities cannot be coercive, that the rights enforcers could and would curtail this, and that the rights enforcers wouldn't themselves be coercive, all big ifs.

I dismiss Marxism because I precisely know what historical materialism is. How are you intellectuals above and beyond history if you subscribe to such a philosophy?

>>4245047
>that implies that private entities cannot be coercive
Actually no. All it implies is you have a better fighting chance since it doesn't have a monopoly on the use of force.

>>mfw everyone thinks that lenin naturally lead to stalin
>>mfw people refuse to see that all the organs for genuine socialism are already in place - the american government essentially nationalized/socialized the financial sector in 2008, only it did so in solidarity with the 1%
>>mfw public schools, fire departments, road maintenance, air traffic control is seen as parasitic because it is a way for people to earn a stable wage with reliable job security
>>mfw we resent people living 'middle class lives' but cocksuck the rich motherfuckers - the motherfuckers so rich they can choose to mint people like hannah montana or any 'rich hollywood liberal' to serve as a smokescreen/false idol
>>mfw noone understands how systematically the rich and their megaphones and sycophants have slurred, slandered, and distorted Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky

>>mfw we have to choose between world war three or ecological collapse or neofeudalism or a world revolution

>>4245059
Who are you doublequoting?

>>4245056

But you keep saying the state has a monopoly on force.

So the way to resolve the coercive nature and use of force by private entities is to get rid of the state, which is in place in some respects to reduce this? Seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

>>4245047
What he said is that he wants to see the use of force distributed. There are a couple of problems I see here:

1. Emergence. Certain patterns and behaviors naturally emerge through competition and cooperation and the like, and these can lead to more or less monolithic rules that are more insidious in being unwritten and unofficial and harder to change due to their being dispersed. I trust explicit democracy much more for this kind of thing.

2. These rights and powers are spread out to companies and firms rather than human beings. The result is power still being in the hands of a few, who then use their power to perpetuate their own hold on power, which perpetuates unequal levels of freedom. Sure, you get freedom, but not for everybody. It's "individualistic", but only in a similar sort of sense to monarchy.

>>4245063
trotsky's ghost

"Any serious analysis of oppression and authority must include capitalism, instead, anarcho-capitalists glorify the capitalist system, not just ignoring the problems associated with capitalism but marrying it with and perverting an incompatible school of thought. The state is not the only potentially coercive force extant in society. Let’s remove the oppression of the state but let capitalism run hog wild, y’all! It’s not like the state, one of the few potential buffers we have, does a poor enough job of ameliorating capitalism as is.

If a firm imposes negative externalities and nobody has the ability to complain about it, is anybody harmed?

Monopolies in defense and policing, where the largest private protection business in a given territory would develop a natural monopoly, would essentially transform anarcho-capitalism into a form of ‘minarchism’, ruled by a de-facto state, and a lot of anarcho-capitalism’s tenets would lead to de-facto statism (rights enforcement agencies sound a lot like government to me, but I guess because they’re private it’s cool).

They don’t hate oppression, just rules and reduced profits."

>>4245059
Sorry comrade, I'm gonna have be a bit Zizekian here. 20th century communism didn't work out, and mythologising the big 'if' of Trotsky won't help.

>>4245075
you can't have it both ways.

either the soviet experiment, warts and all, has to honored and accepted as part of the legacy

OR you have to disown communism/socialism

UNLESS you want to be some feuerbachian noodlehead who prefers contemplation.

i once thought as you did; but only lenin and mao pulled off what 1968 et al could not.

>>4245064
>But you keep saying the state has a monopoly on force.
Just for the record I'm not the same guy. But I do subscribe to what he said:

>which is in place in some respects to reduce this?
Let's agree that it's a very secondary thought, shall we? I don't think that, today, without the state armed forces, roaming bands of bandits could freely terrorize the country. Firearms just made civil resistance too efficient.

The way to resolve the coercive nature of force is by checks and balances, just like it's done for political power. The idea being that if a private defense contractor gets frisky, at least you can envision to get help from another one.
But more importantly, the difference would be that such a coercion would not be seen as legitimate, unlike the State coercion, making it unlikely to last.
Legitimacy is central to the existence of states.

>>4245085

but what if you're a libertarian socialist/anarchist who thinks that anything involving the state is wicked?

>>4244674
>anarchists welcome too
That was your first mistake

>>4244930
>implying pretending to be a marxist on the internet is bourgeois bullshit
>>>/pol/

>>4244900
le misogyny face

>>4245089

But what happens when one private defense agency gets bigger than another? Big enough that it can't be competed with? It could do whatever it wanted and all interactions would henceforth be rendered involuntary.

What about financial institutions?

>>4245094

b-but I said no AnCaps (AnCaps are not anarchists)...

>>4245090
last i checked, anarchist segments of spain during the civil war actually enacted conscription - arguably the strongest state power there is - because they understood that birthing a better world was a life or death struggle and knew that if they were victorious they could sort out realizing their ideals.

plus, frankly, in my opinion council communism is deeply anarchist in its implications. anarchists and communists are, to me at least, something like the federalists and anti-federalists, the two broad factions of the founding fathers.

>>4245085
>either the soviet experiment, warts and all, has to honored and accepted as part of the legacy
I didn't say 'write it off'. I just said it didn't go so good. Sure, it's part of the legacy. And the best we can do is learn from its mistakes

>>4245097
We can draw a parallel to countries occupied by a foreign nation.

In a lot of ways, states exist in a state of anarchy with one another.
The United States has a much bigger military power than every other nation, but it doesn't mean they can oppose everyone all the time.

I see it much the same way.

>>4245059
But Stalin was a natural progression from Lenin, probably the only possible successor
I don't want to disregard Trotsky entirely but he was narcissistic, bitter and naive, the main difference between his USSRs ad Stalins would be that it would have collapsed much earlier
Lenin was not a saint and there's no path to "really existing socialism" in his work. The USSR was rotten to its core from day one, untenable from basic Materialist ideology

>>4245097
is it more profitable for a company to finance a war all by itself, keeping in mind it can't steal as much money as it wants through taxes, all while trying to maintain a profit, as opposed to more diplomatic solutions?

the incentive for a private company would be to NOT get into battles with rival firms. As opposed to the state, capable of financing wars free from the necessity of profit and totally unconcerned with its own popularity among the people.

>>4245122
Do you even imperialism? The USA does what it can to discourage monopoly, and what it can do turns out to be a helluva lot.

>>4245131
>But Stalin was a natural progression from Lenin
Protip: the only people who believe that Stalin's ideas were highly compatible with Lenin's are Stalinists and brainwashed neoliberals. Which isn't to say that Leninism is a particularly great system, but it's Stalinism is anything but the natural conclusion.

>>4245133

But isn't AnCap-ism based on the idea of federations? Do you think that every territory would be able to sustain such a model of policing? Certain conditions may be different in different territories.

And who would stop investment banks from predatory lending and irresponsible behaviour?

>>4245131
seriously?
you realize that after Lenin's death there was an epic duel between Stalin and Trotsky - of which Stalin only won because he was far less scrupulous than Trotsky and because he stole alot of ideas from Trotsky.

Stalin also cut deals with bourgeois gov'ts, was an idiot in china, and hardened into a 'socialism in one country' stance; Trotsky was the exact opposite on alot of issues.

in Stalin's defence, to industrialize as fast and as intensively as he did required mass-repression and brute force and stifling of democracy; this is the 'best face' on what he did.

if the ussr was rotten to its core from day one, then so is the united states, which was founded on 'democracy' while also enshrining blacks as 3/5th's of a person for electoral purposes; and only granted freedom to blacks after a civil war, which was then rolled back for nearly another century. and then there's the indian genocide, and the red scare against some of the people (einstein, oppenheimer, etc) who helped the US win the war.

>mfw the AnCaps show up

>>4244674
Trying to re-order this thread:

Marxists, what do you think are concrete avenues of activity that could begin to shift the balance of forces, shift the overton window to the left, etc.

inb4 more philsophy, critical theory, bullshit

>>4245159
More bottom-up labor union activity. You want to get the proletariat riled up and to show them that they have a right to take action, to speak for their own class, and so on. Basically, done right, you get 'em ready for the idea of revolution.

>>4245159

My god, pure ideology!

>Implying you can completely disassociate theory from practice

Unionism, political and community activism and organisation, electoral politics(lol), radical journalism

Trotsky's USSR would've been just as authoritarian, if not moreso, than Stalin's.

>>4245144
I just think that in a stateless society rival companies have more incentives to work together peacefully and come to mutually beneficial solutions as opposed to all out constant battles amongst themselves.

yes naturally different areas would have different results maybe, the quality might be different for instance, but I think on the whole, things would be just as peaceful as they are now relatively speaking.

Without the state banks would not enjoy that ample protections and beneficial legislation they enjoy today. Banking would be way more decentralized, and there would be no central bank. Profit and competition would keep the banks from irresponsible behavior. what do you mean by predatory lending? just give me an example so I know what you mean.

>>4245153
Trotsky is liberal feel-good socialism who gets to always be right for having having been left out of government. To claim Trotsky as Lenin's true successor is to idealize both while dishonestly ignoring the legacy of Stalin

That's not really relevant to what I said but thank you, I have an 8th grade history test coming up and this will help me remember

>>4245186
MY NIGGA

THIS IS WHAT I WISH MORE PEOPLE GOT

MY GOD

>tfw accused of being a Stalinist just because you think the USSR was alright without Glorious Socialist Messiah Trotsky around to lead it

>>4245178

But why? If there was an opportunity for a firm to form a monopoly and/or where cooperation isn't beneficial, surely they would take that opportunity to maximise their profits and fuck competitors over?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_lending

I just think that the profit motive is a lot stronger than any other socially driven motive for private firms, there's no reason for them to play nice unless it's somehow beneficial to their bottom line, especially if it ends up reducing profit.

>>4245193

>USSR
>alright

muh rapid industrialisation and extenuating circumstances

>>4245186
you're right.

because honestly Trotsky didn't have to do anything difficult during the civil war. Not even Kronstadt. he just got to sit in a cabin and write articles about how the perfect revolutionary party should behave in the perfect situation.

there are liberal tendencies in trotsky that I find distasteful. frankly his choice to let lenin's testament go unpublished until too late was his undoing. he held the no. 2 spot, and balked at jumping to no. 1, from an inner liberal tendency.

contrast to stalin who was much shrewder, but solely opportunistic.

go read deutscher's trilogy bio AND his bio on stalin, then start talking about babby's first revolutionary history

So while we're on that Trotsky/Stalin/Lenin topic, what do you fine comrades think of Mao? And what of Luxemburg?

>muh Revolutionary Vanguard Party

>>4245193
>my god
go to bed zizek

>>4244674
>trotsky
>not an opportunist flip-flopper

>>4245210
Zhees is how iddeohlojee fankshuns.

>>4245206

Mao was a reactionary

>>4245167

>implying most people need an ideology any more complicated than the tea party's

these are all elementary; how would we put these into practice in the 4chan era, where /pol/ predominates?

>>4245206
also luxemburg would have changed alot of things if she'd lived.

and mao was the man of the hour; though of course the pre-world war two cadre would have been better if stalin had sold them out to the kmt

>>4245192
predatory lending is such a nebulous and intentionally cloudy term, which makes it an easy out for politicians to make the scapegoat for a lot of problems actually caused by the state. Now, does it make absolutely any sense for a bank to give loans to people incapable of paying them back? of course it doesnt, but with the state backing banks, making lenders give bad loans and backing them, yeah it makes sense to give out as many loans as possible. Remove the state from the equation. Bad loans would be reduced. Only people who could afford to pay loans back would be given them. The bank has to make a profit too you know.

>>4245198
>first attempt at a socialist state ever
>occurred in the wrong country
>invaded and isolated and then invaded again, then spent forty years sustaining an arms race with capitalism's best and brightest practically by itself
>still managed some socialist construction

When it comes to 'extenuating circumstances', there aren't really any more extenuating than those the USSR found itself in.

>>4245206
Living in China today, I can say that it's in sore need of something more leftist. Society here is stale and shallow and the poverty in some places is breathtaking. The economy is an unsustainable mess. I don't know, however, if Maoism would've been better.

>>4245206
Mao is best revolutionary, along with Fidel and Che.

>>4245227
are we going by civilian bodycount as a measure for greatness?

>>4245206
>Mao
I think China is a very far and strange place.
Mao, if looked at in a broad historical sense, was a good thing overall for his country. His ideology was based on Marx but had very different aims in mind. He seems more notable an anti-colonial figure than a socialist one, though he would definitely look down on his country today
I resent him a little for contributing to the marxist image problem, but he was a smart man with a lot of insight once you sift through the bullshit
>Luxemburg
Just give it to Belgium

>>4245223

Banks would still have practiced sub prime lending without the state, all that matters is profit, and banks aren't suddenly going to grow a conscience or develop broad oversight just because the state is rolled back further

>>4245245
how do you make profit off of giving loans to people who can't pay them back?

>>4245241
>I resent him a little for contributing to the marxist image problem
That seems less Mao's doing and more capitalist reactionaries'.

>>4245261
I love how in China even the current Party can't touch Mao.

>>4245252

Because you bundle them with prime loans, and subprime loans have higher premiums anyway, and voila, look at dat rate of return.

About identity politics:

what most marxists from the 1st world fail to realize is that the version of feminism and black studies they're used to see are not connected to a political end because they don't have to deal with class problems that are present on the 3rd world, for example

in Brazil, most of the feminist and black (afro) movement are connected to the left (and both movements are so connected to the point that it's called afrofeminsm here) because the class struggle is a big factor to the maintenance of the machism and racism in our reality, and vice-versa


our marxists, because of that, tend to see that the class struggle can only benefit from feminism and black movement, as both share the same political objective, something that does not happen with the 1st world feminism and black movement, and because of the academic colonialism (something that even marxists do), they're invisibilized

my english is not the best but i think i made myself understood

>Anarcho-Capitalism

>>4244674
Those who practice Identity Politics tend to be Ultraleftist in orientation, lacking "class" and "3rd World" analysis.

However, race is the primary contradiction in the US.
>>4245272
This is good.

>>4245272
>something that does not happen with the 1st world feminism and black movement
and you would know this how?

>>4244993
All one has to do is look at the infighting between postcolonial african identities- all of them given a raw deal, all them at each other's throats fighting for autonomy under colonial terms.

At the same time, these identities don't emerge from nothing. The divergence from marxian conceptions of class consciousness are rooted in legal and economic histories. It doesn't distract from questions of class because class can inform us as to how identities are formed- while not directly connected aren't completely disconnected either.

>>4245006
>smash the patriarchy

>>4245011
Perhaps not removing, but as I said, marginalising them. Occupy WS is an example. White men were put to the back of the microphone queue in order to let minorities and women speak for extended periods. The quota was allocated according to how "oppressed" one was, i.e a black woman goes first and has the most speaking time.

This is not a system based on pragmatism or meritocracy. Surely the most effective orator (of any race or gender) should speak. Instead, people who barely understood the intricacies of loans, let alone collateral debt obligations and fractional reserve banking, were allowed to ramble for hours about percieved slights from passers by and so on.

So it's not about white men monopolising the movement. It's about who is the most effective at combatting the corruption in the system. White men being marginalised will lead to constitutional libertarianism in the US, and to nationalism and even racist movements in Europe. /pol/ is a perfect example. Young, white, angry, usually lower middle or working class... and yet not socialist or vaguely leftist, they blame their ills on blacks and jews. This is because left wing politics no longer wants them, and this is also why left wing politics is a failure.

>>4245669
Class cannot, in this time, inform us as to how women have formed whichever identity they now have. Nor race, I would argue. Why? Because there are bourgeoisie asian women. There are black men who run banks, there are white men living homeless on the street. Generalisations like this are the bane of any concerted effort to right the wrongs of the current crony-capitalist system. Cronyism doesn't discriminate - if you can operate a highly sophisticated mortgage scam for a bank, you're hired. Native american woman or jewish man, it doesn't matter. The thing is white men make up the majority of the educated maths grads,hence why they're represented so heavily.

Anyway back on point, generalising class as a basis for other identities is useless.

>>4246226

The capitalist system further entrenches these divides and they can't truly disappear without the abolition of class divides as well. Which is why a lot of the early gay and black movements were socialist and at their most effective. There is no feminism without socialism and vice versa etc.

I´m not a capitalist, however I really don´t think communism can work, simply because many of the aspects of it are obsolete now that our technology has advanced so much, the same holds true for capitalism, however if communist were to reform their ideology to admit modern technology into the process then that would be just what we need.
Everytime a country tries to be communist it fails, it never gets there but rather it gets stuck in the re-education phase forever, this is because powerfull men don´t want to give up their power, if instead of relying on the opinions of men we decided to fully mechanise the resource distribution sistems then there would be no corruption, there would be no reason.
if anyone is interested in this I recommend to look into the venus project by Jacque Fresco, I promise that at the very least you will find it very interesting.

>>4246236
Completely wrong. Capitalism only entrenches these divides so long as it is useful, that is so long as positions can be filled by people of merit. This is the crux of the capitalist system, anyone can succeed given enough risk and some intelligence. Previously the underclass had been white in European capitalist countries. Then the whites wanted better conditions. Ergo, import some coloured people or export the business to a coloured country.

Rather than entrenching or closing the divides, the capitalist system does not give one single hoot. Why would it matter if the means of production were operated by a white male or a native american lesbian atheist , so long as they can do the job equally well for as little money as possible.

Hence capitalism weathered the race problems of the 60s and 70s and the gender problems of the 10s and 20s with consummate ease. These groups never even posed the slightest threat.

>>4246242
>Everytime a country tries to be communist it fails, it never gets there but rather it gets stuck in the re-education phase forever

Though a nice generalisation, that has little to do with why communism in the Soviet Union etc. collapsed, and doesn't take into account the fact that we've only had states attempting socialism for under a hundred years and under very specific conditions and following very specific models.

I don't understand what's so horrible about acknowledging individuality. This is distinct from individualism and would work both ways against discrimination. You acknowledge that negative discrimination is stupid (blacks can't have this job) while also acknowledging that positive discrimination is stupid (blacks should get this job because they used to not be able to get this job).

There are group tendencies, but they do NOT coincide with race or gender at all. Not even class. It's ridiculous that so much thought is given to this idiotic view of groups of people. Culture affects individuals, not races, genders, or classes.

>>4246251
>create general theory
>surprised when it fails in specific environments

>>4246272
In some places in adapted, in some places it didn't. Mostly, the places where it was under constant imperialist attack.

>>4246299
>create a system to combat capitalism
>ABLOO BLOO capitalism isn't playing fairly!

still waiting for the end of history, marx fags?

not going to happen.

Why is this discussion allowed in here? It is clearly of political nature and should therefore belong on /pol/.

Reported.

>>4246306

What the fuck are you talking about? Marxism is predicated on the idea that there is no end to history. And the phrase end of history is associated with Fukayama and neo liberal consensus.

Read more, faggot.

>>4246271

Liberalism is a mental illness

>>4246308

Marxist theory is literary and is is within the parameters of /lit/ discussion, deal with it.

what the fuck

this isn't /pol/ now go away

>>4246329
The idea of individuality can persist in Marxism, not sure what you're trying to get at champ.

>>4246374

"There are group tendencies, but they do NOT coincide with race or gender at all. Not even class. It's ridiculous that so much thought is given to this idiotic view of groups of people. Culture affects individuals, not races, genders, or classes."

That's what I have issue with

>>4246306
>implying any of us believe Kojeve
>or, heaven forbid, Fukayama
You don't know shit. Kojeve's pretty interesting, though.

>>4246372

>Being this new
>Being this anti-intellectual
>Being this much of a political moderate

>>4246389
>implying any of those things

holy shit you are dense

>>4246271
>There are group tendencies, but they do NOT coincide with race or gender at all. Not even class. It's ridiculous that so much thought is given to this idiotic view of groups of people. Culture affects individuals, not races, genders, or classes.
Lemme put it this way: people born into the same class in the same day and age and the same place are likely going to get a certain set of common experiences that won't be shared (at least not widely) by people from a different class. And our experiences do a lot to shape us. And the same goes for race, gender, and so on. This isn't to say that we aren't all unique and stuff, but rather to acknowledge that there is some meaning to the groups we end up belonging to even if we didn't get to choose them. We share common struggles with other people, have similar experiences, end up forming similar ideas (of our own choice, perhaps, but still...), and so on.

As for what you termed "positive discrimination", all I'm gonna say is that I don't think you actually understand the reasoning behind affirmative action.

>>4246272
Cool story, but the point he was making is that simply generalizing like that fails to notice the specific ways in which these societies failed. Simply saying "well it's a general theory so of course it'll never work in specific situations!" is simplistic as fuck. The whole point of a general theory is that it's supposed to be adaptable to specific situations. Communism is not unique in this regard.

I mean, for argument's sake: democracy is a general theory, right? Locke, Rousseau, and so on? So how is it that representative democracy has ever managed to happen at all?

>>4246398

Only somebody who is new would say that a discussion of political theory and philosophy, or philosophy in general, belongs on /pol/ and not on on /lit/, it's within /lit/'s parameters and there's a historical precedent for it, especially Marxist theory which informs a lot of 20th century thought and writing, to think otherwise suggests you're either new, extremely butthurt or just stupid.

>>4246379
do you believe that someone´s political ideology is programmed into their brain and their education and experiences have nothing to do with behavior? furthermore are you saying that people of different ethnicities have different sets of mentality and political ideology from the moment they are born and can never change when introduced to new information?
let me ask you one thing, do you think that a chinese baby that when born is transported to france and raised there, will speak chinese instead of french?

>>4246436

No, people act as groups though, I don't see what you're trying to say, Marxists say that people's ideas and beliefs aren't inherent.

>2013
>still not being at least a minarchist

>>4245605
let me tell you a story: when the slutwalk was first made in brazil, there was a collective of black women that disagreed with the name, because for the white middle class women, it's easy to call themselves sluts, etc., because they have the material conditions to be independent, now most of the black women in Brazil does not have such things, and worse, they don't even the support of the state's institutions, not even the police, because what happens is: (poor) black woman goes to the slutwalk> her partner gains knowledge of the fact> he beats her, or threatens her with some kind of violence> she can't do shit because she has no money, or state support

and then, when the black women goes and say that the name is innapropiate, the 1st world feminists go and say "lol shut up", and they're not concerned with this because they don't have these struggles

see the work of dworkin, butler, irigaray, rubin and try to see the class struggle there

Isn't all communism anarchist?
All 'communist' societies that weren't anarchic ended up as leftist fascist shitholes like Soviets.

Don't forget that it was the bolsheviks who destroyed anarchist Makhnovia (Free Territory).

>>4246508
minarchism is still statism
look how minarchist USA ended

>>4246508

>Minarchism
>Any fucking year

>>4246518

Thank you based huebro

>>4244930
>>4244900
both of you deserve bans from this site until you can figure out how to not shitpost

>>4244747
because a true emancipatory politics cannot be of the identity, of the private life. It must be public, and based only on the great communist idea of equality. Working for equality in small, private spheres of "gay" "woman" "transperson" "minority" will never bring about an emancipation from the type of society we live in, it can never and will never erase the class of excluded.

We see already today the way these things are going. Radical LGBT advocates co-opted by neoliberals so their agendas of true equality (IE as human beings) is perverted into assimilation. "The gays can be like us!", these neoliberals tell us, "they just want to marry and have kids and settle down and join the army" and they push out of view real people who belong in these groups in order to re-create these groups in their image, one that fits perfectly into neoliberal consumerist worldviews.

We must turn to the public discourse and the universal to obtain true equality.

>>4244674
so, if there is a class struggle, why isn't there a racial struggle too?

>>4246508
Minarchists and anarcho-capitalists are naive would-be anarchists who simply don't understand that the State, coercion, power, and so on are much more complicated than they like to make them out to be. There's more that governs your actions than what is explicitly laid out in formal government.

>>4246518
You ever read Spivak? You seem like you might like her.

>>4244993
>implying
identity politics isn't what removed the white working class man from the left
racism did
the white working class man was told his enemy was not the rich white man, but the poor black man, and he believed it

don't try and pin this shit on identity politics, which just try to unpack the ways in which struggles which supposedly liberate often subjugate at the same time

>>4246699
I agree, but to play devil's advocate:
A lot of white working class men don't like being told that black working-class women (to pick an example) have it harder than they do; it alienates them and makes them feel like they're being told that they have no right to struggle or to care or to complain. Which helps to create racism—either they blame black people for holding them back, or they go lumpenproletariat and learn to identify with the bourgeoise because they think they've been told that they're just as oppressive by virtue of being white.

Identity politics in itself is not only a good thing but in fact necessary—you want to end every single form of oppression that you can—but it can be misused, misunderstood, and so on.

>>4246699
No, this is a misdiagnosis of the chronology. Most working class men where I live (UK) were staunchly labour voters, union men, some were Marxists and SWP and the like all through the Thatcher era. Now the young men, my peers, are mostly a mix of either BNP, EDL (though not a party) or UKIP, or apathetic to politics. This is a very recent phenomena. Everyone has always been slightly racist since the dawn of time from China to Nigeria to Russia to America. What happened was the left abandoned those that it should have been helping, and thus they turned away from it.

>>4246766

Yeah, but at the same time I don't think that we should indulge racist, sexist or homophobic proclivities for the sake of trying to reclaim these people.

>>4246772
No, but not marginalising them like at OWS would definitely stop the rot.

I'm not saying start putting posters up of 1488 race war (ps we're socialists), I'm saying stop demonising every white man as an oppressor when it clearly isn't true. Furthermore recognise that most of the shit you want to happen is more likely to get done by white men than "feminist socialist" posers who are more often than not middle class and in no position whatsoever to talk about oppression to a working class man.

Slavoj Zizek was talking to some Indian guys on the Dalit movement. I thought what he said was very interesting, he said "The danger in identity politics is to make you love the identity built by you being oppressed."

>>4246766
>>4246772
So perhaps the thing to do is to bring in race, sex, and the like while still acknowledging class as an issue as well? Avoid saying that white working-class males should shut up, but don't ignore other forms of discrimination. Make a more inclusive movement. I dunno.

>>4246248
>This is the crux of the capitalist system, anyone can succeed given enough risk and some intelligence.

Which is precisely where the problem lies. Our society is being shaped by a system which actively encourages ruthless opportunism, and replacing morals with the blendwork of image. And since the people who succeed in this system, the ones who get to shape it, are the ones who are selected by the rules of that very system, the effect amplifies itself, generation after generation.

>>4246303
Well, Capitalism is just too powerful a system. What do?

>>4246926

Might as well fight it as best we can, or at least be aware of it, it isn't the end of history m8