/lit/ - Literature

I think it was Marx who said "talking about socialism when you don't know shit about it is the opiate of the people."

>"I haven't been entertained by a book since I was a kid"

"there is still ideological room to turn corporations into socialist entities"

Yeah, people who say that are dumbasses. Communism is awful even on paper.

"communism can work in a pre-scarcity society and isn't in any way fundamentally flawed in respect to scarce resources and any critique of communism is inherently invalid because the critic is just ignorant of the inner workings of *communism."

"capitalists are a class of people."

"humanity defines itself solely through their labor."

"value of a good comes from labor."

"property is a problem to be overcome."

"communism in its purest sense will succeed, no existing nation has ever practised true communism."

"individuals are similar enough that even when faced with catastrophe they will remain property-less because communist ideals make everybody better off."

why are there so many threads about marxism lately? what the fuck is going on?

>>4336197
>what the fuck is going on?
reddit thinks /lit/ is their foothold on 4chan.

>>4336148
>not learning from history that communism is utter shit
>b-but tha-that wasn't MUH communism

"race is a social construct"

- An uneducated pleb

>>4336204
fun fact, the USSR never even claimed to be communist

>>4336206
"IQ matters"

-People who are dumb enough to think IQ matters

>>4336208
Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik

Sotsialisticheskikh = Socialiste = Communist

>>4336206
Race is a social construct; it's certainly not biological. It's a matter of accepting that constructs have reality, especially given the deep history of things like race. As with language, race BECOMES real with time.

>>4336214
yeah you dumbass they had a communist party because they were supposed to be working *towards* communism, they never claimed to actually be communist yet

hell, krushchev's slogan was even "communism in 20 years"

>>4336214
Oh my...

>>4336202
Haha, ok.

Marxism is far, far too controversial for reddit.

>>4336206
But it is. "Race" doesn't mean shit outside of a social context. Physical appearances obviously are not social constructs, and being innately suspicious of people who don't look like you is natural. But cultural groups divided based on those traits are absolutely social constructs, and seeing as "race" doesn't exist outside of a social context, race is a social construct.

And racist are uneducated psuedointellectuals.

>>4336221
>>4336215
Is genetics a social construct too?

>>4336204

it was indeed communism, just the bad side of it.

communism just gives more power to the state, it can be used do do good thing or awful things, but since lots of people, especially politicians that just want more power are well, exactly that, power hungry assholes, they use that power for themselves and not the people.

they use it just to get support and power, so it it communism but that doesn't mean that al communism would be the same.

just like capitalism defend the right of free enterprise so theorically anyone could get rich, but in the end only deepens the inequality, etc.

>>4336197
Undergrads are mad that they have to work to sustain themselves, so they dream of communism where they don't have to work and will own mansions and barns full of bitches and gardens of solid gold; then they come here to shit up the board with "communism works u guise" and "post-scarcity can exist even if the means of production are subjected to degradation".

This reminds me, didn't some guy made basically a perfectly functional SIMcity where everything ran in perfect order and was self-sustained?
I remember that, like in the average communist country, the life expectancy was 50 years old.

>>4336227
>it was indeed communism, just the bad side of it.

It wasn't communism, it was state capitalism.

>>4336224
No, but race is.

Keep your shitty /pol/ infographics on /pol/.

>>4336228
Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States.

>>4336221
>Marxism is far, far too controversial for reddit.
>http://www.reddit.com/r/Communism
no kek's here, just belly rolling gafawing also their rules oh my god

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wBqU5frsUaD6YrBSuwFjL-JLxzc3Fb75UvcCx0nsX9E/edit?pli=1

>>4336227
communism is stateless.

>>4336233
>being this mad at facts

>>4336228
simcity is a computer game.

>>4336240
i'm not mad.

>>4336195
>capitalists are a class of people
Is it not valid to say that capitalism is mode of thought and way of interacting with fellow humans? In this way Capitalism is a value system in which people are socialized and educated, creating enclaves of people who subscribe to Capitalist thinking along what at least resemble class lines.

>values of a good comes from labor
What if use value is distinguished from exchange value? Use value relates to the experience of an object or service, which, as an action in time, clearly corresponds to the activity of labor. Value is only distinct from labor where it has been abstracted by representative exchange.

>>4336224
Genetic variation is far more complex than the essentially Procrustean notion of race can explain

>>4336208
Of course they didn't.
They were too busy juggling tags for the same shit that they never had the time to claim that.

>>4336234
>Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States.
top kek

Of course they do, sweetie.
The "expect" to live more than americans, that doesn't mean that they can ignore hunger and not die of starvation.

>>4336224
>Physical appearances obviously are not social constructs, and being innately suspicious of people who don't look like you is natural

Did I fucking say it was? Because I'm pretty sure I wrote the exact opposite. I don't know why this /pol/ bullshit is tolerated as much as it is, you're no better than reddit atheist fags.

>>4336249
>Is it not valid to say that capitalism is mode of thought and way of interacting with fellow humans?
no, it's a method of allocating goods and services and facilitating continued growth in technology, and by extension, the standard of living.

>What if use value is distinguished from exchange value?
it's not, all value IS exchange value. A thing has no value if there is no demand for it. the concept of use value is complete garbage considering that people's lives aren't defined solely by their labor leading "use value" to take a complete SHIT on luxury / hobby goods seeing them as inhuman because luxury and hobby goods are inherently anti-labor, because labor is what life is all about in the communist ideal. almost forgot to mention that "use value" is complete garbage when it comes to art and literature as a further extension of it's inherent dismissal of luxury and hobby goods because art and literature have no use value to labor they therefore have no value in a communist society.

>>4336280
Nevermind, their life expectancy is on par with the United States though:

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/life-expectancy-north-america

Their infant mortality rate is lower though:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

Pretty good considering they can't get any supplies from the big pharmaceutical companies as well as the whole system being free for every citizen.

>>4336290
>/pol/

I wasn't aware /pol/ invented the idea of racial differences

>>4336270
Their claim was that they were working to build communism, as I mentioned above Khrushchev's goal was to have communism by the '80s, and even that was considered a pretty optimistic outlook of the future.

>>4336315
they're the ones who spout this bullshit on other boards though

I like how the other commie thread got too real and the mods deleted it.
fuckin commies

>>4336214
>Sotsialisticheskikh = Socialiste = Communist

>>4336331
I wasn't aware 4chan had no posters with the opinion that races had differences before the establishment of /pol/.

Interesting.

>>4336315

You're making me so mad.

Reddit didn't invent atheism and /pol/ didn't invent racism, but there is a specific kind of obnoxious atheism that comes from reddit just like there's a specific kind of psuedointellectual racist bullshit that comes from /pol/.

If you want to have a discussion about race, sure. I don't hate racists, I don't hate atheists. But I do hate people who spam the shit from their circlejerk communities to feel smart.

>>4336315
They came up with their own version of those shitty reddit infographics. I don't even know what it's called. Factual Falcon or some nonsense.

>>4336334
in their defence marxism threads are getting out of control just like rand threads were a few years ago

>>4336339
/pol/ was created as a containment board for these people with the intent of keeping them off other boards

it was a dumb idea though since all it did was give them a platform to spread their bullshit and now it's infecting every board worse than ever before

/pol/ is a cancer

>>4336346
it was actually a pretty beneficial thread and it was only that one. theres a few other ones still up, but lets kill the only one thats different

>>4336352
>/pol/ was created as a containment board
[citation needed]
Of all the things I read on 4chan regularly, this one is by far the most obviously wrong. Shows utter ignorance for everything moot has ever said in relation to /pol/.

>>4336357
Where has he explained /pol/? I'm genuinely curious not being a dick

>>4336300
>no, it's a method of allocating goods and services and facilitating continued growth in technology, and by extension, the standard of living.
I don't disagree with this. However, this method must be realized by the concentration of power in individuals, referred to as capitalists. You simply leave your definition there, while Marx simply goes on to describe the ethos which is necessarily promoted by unchecked capitalism, that is the exploitation of labor. Marx does not criticize capitalism as an ideal, but by its real material consequences on society. The debate between libertarians and Marxists are largely absurd because this distinction is never made.

>all value is exchange value
This is absurd. Certain objects have only use value and no exchange value. For example, a family heirloom could be worthless on the market but extremely valuable as a representation of the unity of the family or other such sentiments. This is simple case where the value of an object cannot be abstracted and exchanged. Furthermore there is no reason to restrict the concept of value to ignore this kind of value.

>>4336354
but as i was saying in the other thread, true communism isn't forced, its chosen by the people in their everyday's live, like seeing a person in need and go out of your way to help them sort of thing. when everyone starts giving their excesses to the people who can't even begin to have excess and just make it day by day, then true communism will just manifest naturally, where everyone takes care of each other and no one has to suffer

why its never worked in the past before is because it was forced, when you force it on your people and tell them they don't even have a choice, of course it snot gonna work out and usually just leads to mass conflict and death, like stalin's regime or what happens in china.
when its forced it pretty much just pic related, where you have your special elites on top who control society and have most of the money and then you have everyone else on the bottom, the workers who actually build the society.

when its forced its not much different than crony capitalism. two sides of the same coin pretty much.

>>4336357
dude the board is literally called "politically incorrect"

it's a containment board, deal with it

>>4336357
>utter ignorance
>obviously wrong
you sound like heads of the KKK when they explain how much they don't hate black people. go drink batter acid /pol/ fag

>>4336300
It would also imply beautiful things found in nature are worthless beyond the effort required to find them and bring them to a shop yet this is clearly false.

>>4336399
An unfortunate title really because it conflates not supporting political correctness with the extremism shown by users of the board.

>>4336387
>all this idealism

Reminder that shills tried to get /pol/ deleted by spamming /q/ for over a year. moot confirmed this.

Any board that has shills trying to shut it down is good in my books.

>>4336341
calm down, bud

>>4336407
No, it implies that the value of the experience of a beautiful thing in nature corresponds to the value of the labor necessary to give another the same experience.

>>4336202

>marxists think they're losing their foothold on /lit/

FTFY

They've been clamhurt since the right-wing lit threads a month ago.

>>4336383
>referred to as capitalists
No, this is a logical fallacy. A capitalist is anybody who participates in market capitalism via selling their labor. this is why there is no more to the definition because the marxist concept of the "capitalist" is erroneous
>libertarians
I never mentioned my political philosophy, implying that I am detracts from the debate. you're also making the erroneous assumption that selling labor is exploitation and that all cases of labor are exploitive.

>This is absurd...
you made my argument for me. family heirlooms, objects with sentimental value have near infinite demand, therefore value. there are usually very VERY small groups of people or single persons who treasure the objects greatly. while there isn't public demand for the object the exchange value is high because there is very little the object will be given up for and usually when it happens the objects are only exchanged for other things with almost equivalent or exceeding value.

>>4336352
>/pol/ is a cancer

says the cancer.

>>4336440
epic comeback m88

almost as epic as ur mom last night lol

>>4336233

>maybe if I shut my ears and yell louder the universe will stop being unfair

>>4336242
Just like communism.

>>4336445
>the thing I don't like is bad
>you're bad
>EPIC M8 SIMPLY EPIC EPIC FOR THE WIN CALLING IT BAD WOWWWW SO GOOD SUCH A GOOD POST HOLY FUCK M8 GR8 B8 I R8 IT AN 8 AND VARIOUS OTHER CATCHPHRASES REACTION IMAGE

But he did like the exact same thing you did, that was the whole point

Why do some "communists" feel the need to defend the honor of Cuba or USSR? I'm quite left myself but I'd never defend those bastardizations of Marxism.

>>4336401

Mmm, batter acid...

>>4336462

>I'd never defend those bastardizations of Marxism

I'm curious. At what point would you concede that Marxism can never be a fully-realized political system?

Will it ever happen in your lifetime?

Will you die pining for that Marxist utopia just over the horizon?

>>4336462
Because those were glaring failures that followed marxism's prompts to change society.

If they don't outright lie to cover them, they have nothing.

>>4336437
I didn't mean to imply you were a libertarian. I meant to use it as a case example in which inconsistent use of terms creates meaningless debate, which I think we can agree we want to avoid.

Marx's more narrow usage of the term capitalist is valid and is consistent with his definition of capitalism. You're right in insisting that a people can subscribe to capitalist ideology and participate in the system without being an owner of capital themselves, but this alone does not show that Marx's concept is erroneous. Furthermore, Marx's concepts are useful even when not advocating for strict Marxism. For Anti-capitalists who primarily work for the end of labor and resource exploitation and not necessarily the total abolition of private ownership of capital, this language is necessary at least as a starting point.

I'll concede on the use-value argument at least for the time being because I need to learn more about it to make my case without being a total dickhole. At any rate, thanks for having a legitimate discussion with me so I can develop my understanding.

>>4336435
Oooh, is there one for other political ideologies?

Me likey.

>>4336401
>This board is a containment board!
>No, that's incorrect
>"You sound like a KKK member fag"
wow, that is amazing butthurt right there. Congrats on contributing to the thread and being totally capable of ignoring posts that display an opinion which is not your own, gj

>>4336417
>all this idealism
and its alll true, baby.

communism will only be successful when people chose to practice it in their everyday lives
some one needs help, help em, thats true communism at work not having some parental body of crooks telling you what to do when to do it and how to do it. thats socialist fascism and people want to call it communism for some reason when its not.

>>4337107
>trusting people this much
It's not like I don't trust anyone and that I think everyone is out to get me, but framing the functionality of your system on how honest and generous people can be is retarded.

>>4337151
the whole point is that its not supposed to be a system, but a way of life
it can happen, you just have to choose it
theres good in all of us and its our job to make it flourish and grow instead of letting all the love shrivel up and die, like whats currently happening
its not based on how honest and generous others are, but on how honest and generous you can be
if you've helped someone in the past, they're 10 times more likely to help you in your time of need, and if everyone starts helping everyone, not just their select 'worthy' people, then the help will be around for everyone, not just a few people here and there

we have to make the world a better place for everyone, theres nothing left to do thats worth it

>>4336224

I just looked up this study and it says Homo Sapiens should be included in the same species as Chimpanzees. Top fucking kek, that. Nice source.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFcHoP7RgUs

tihs

>>4337208
And what makes you think everyone will choose the same way of life?
What tells you that even if helping and being helped is in the best interest of most people, most won't be interested on being disinterested?

All this sounds just incredibly irresponsible.

>>4337107
People can't practice communism in a capitalist system.

>>4337272
this times million

I have zero patience or tolerance for people who identify as communist like it's a sexual orientation that they can just make up and it becomes true
The same goes for people who identify as nihilists

>>4336148
"ayn rand, nietzsche, stirner"

>>4336235
>/r/Communism Stands in Opposition to Bourgeois notions of Free Speech.
We believe that speech, like everything else, has a class character, and that some speech can be oppressive. This is why speech that is Patriarchal, White Supremacist, Cissupremacist, Homophobic, Ableist, or otherwise oppressive is banned. Posters who use this speech will either be warned and asked to change the wording of their comments, or will be outright banned, depending on context.

>>4337272
its called being a good, helpful member of your community
no you can't have it imposed and forced on you, but you can practice it, especially in america where you're allowed to do that sort of thing
and its not even textbook communism, but the actual kind, people helping people is all it really is, not a select group of special people telling everyone else to do it with threat of physical force for not obeying(i don't even see how people could even want this so much to begin with)but yeah, communism, community, you get it, right?

>>4337302
u mad bourgeois cracker?

>>4336176

thread was over, everyone else was trolled

>>4337302
>he'srightyouknow.jpg

>>4337308
jokes on you i'm a lumpenprole

>>4337325

You and everyone else on /lit/

>>4336212
>IQ doesn't matter
-people buttmad about their IQ scores

>>4337333
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H24WcmM02R4
watch this for like 4 minutes and then tell me that he isn't an idiot and that IQ matters.

>>4337235
See this is why I browse /lit/

>>4337302
>asked to change the wording of their comments
what does the wording of what you say have to do with your ideology?

>>4337344
>what does the wording of what you say have to do with your ideology?
Everything

>he's racist I don't read him
>he used to beat his wife I don't read him

Sorry to see 95% of this thread missed OP's point.
This isn't a marxism thread, dopes. Just scroll down a little further I'm sure you'll find one.

>>4337341

Seems like a bright guy.

Not sure what your point is.

>>4337302
>not even hiding behind some shit like "all speech is OK but you're inciting hate!! fire in a crowded theatre!"
>just openly saying A SMALL CABAL OF PEOPLE DECIDE WHAT IS DOUBLEPLUSGOOD CORRECT DISCOURSE

how many times does mill really need to be cited

the only justification of free thought and discussion applies to ALL thought and discussion by its nature

>>4337352

Only for people who are incapable of separating what is being said from how it is being said.

i.e. gibbering fools and drooling manchildren who can't articulate themselves and can't grasp at actual social problems and so have to try and police the speech of others.

>>4337391
How bourgeois of you. You don't happen to be a whitey that cries about "not being allowed to say le n-word"?

>>4337391
>Only for people who are incapable of separating what is being said from how it is being said.
Changing the words changes the message, silly.

>>4337368

Leftists dismiss Langan for the same reason they dismiss Teddy K. and other highly intelligent free-thinkers: he refuses follow their narrative.

He's anti-PC, elitist, anti-democratic, and so anti-materialistic that his beliefs border on the occult. He believes in God.

He also openly promotes sterilizing the diseased and those with sub-normal IQs.

If he posted on /lit/, tens of leftist anons would scream at him to go back to /pol/.

>>4337400

Oglala Sioux, actually. Pine Ridge, formerly.

The irony in this conversation is pretty palpable, and yet all to commonplace with many people who claim to be adamant against bigoted speech, and yet rely on such bigoted assumptions whenever they're confronted with an opinion in contradistinction with their own.

It's almost cute, if it weren't irredeemably pathetic.

But no, keep fighting the good fight against "bigoted speech" while accusing people who disagree with you of being of a specific race, gender, class, etc. I'll be over here, watching my people languish and suffer on a reservation.

It's fine. Really. You're really hitting the hard issues, I promise. You aren't the result of white-washed suburbia or poorly misrepresented social theories or anything, I swear. Taking stand against people using a specific brand of speech by lashing out at them on the basis of race is really going to make things better.

Really. You're really doing the world a net positive here. Because, you know, giving yourself an excuse to invalidate other people's opinions based on a word choice that you can conveniently proclaim to be "bourgeois" is the kind of thing that really helps your fellow man and improves the world.

Because it's a real social problem, not having a crutch for sophists who can't argue worth shit. It's way more important than gang culture, black on black crime, Amerindian alcohol abuse, the stoning of women in the Near East, etc.

Really. Not being facetious at all. I mean it.

/pol/ is about to raid, just so you goys know.

>>>/pol/23805311

/pol/ is coming guys.

Maybe your next read should be an economic textbook OP.
>Communism: everyone gets paid the same
so what is the incentive to work?
>Only the government can say what is to be produced
So there is no competition among firms

Comunism is also a Jewish ideology so you know it works because it was made by smart people

>>4337470
This.

If only all marxists read at least an introductory babby economics pamphlet there wouldn't be marxists at all.

>>4337450
We have a new copypasta

who /jp/ here

Communism is about as viable as Democracy in the long run: It's not.
>Good on paper
>But I read it on paper so it's real life guys!

>>4336233
>No, but race is.

If race is a social construct, and doesn't really exist, how can someone be racist?

>>4337491

>if God doesn't exist, how can someone be Christian?

>>4337491
Are you suggesting that people couldn't be geocentrist if the solar system is actually heliocentric?

>>4336148
"The USSR wasn't socialist"
"You should read Karl Marx"

>>4337460
>>4337466
They've been here since /pol/ was a thing.

>>4337302

>Free Speech
>bourgeois

Holy shit, these people have gone completely insane.

>>4337492
>>4337497
Racism is discrimination on basis of race.

If race is a social construct, how do racists distinguish between who to discriminate for and against?

>>4337492
>>4337497
Are you suggesting that people couldn't be in denial of human evolutionary groups if biodiversity is actually a staple of all life, even between the same species?

>>4337507
>Anyone implying that race isn't a photological construct at the very least
That's plebbit.

>>4337507

>If God doesn't exist, how do Christians know what rules he wants us to follow?

>>4337507

If democracy is a social construct, how do we know who is President?

It's a mystery to everyone. The world may never know!

>>4337513
I've never seen /pol/io try so hard

"Yeah but without capitalism how wouldwe enjoy McDonalds and Macs and TV? Capitalism is repsponsible for everything in the universe"

Why the fuck is /pol/ here? /lit/ is meant to be leftist, stay in your fucking echo chamber.

>>4337517
>implying your appearance (barring mutilations) isn't indicative of your genetic fitness

Saying stupid things like "race is a social construct" is purposefully vague, and bites you in the ass when genealogists can determine ethnicity through a DNA sample.

No, appealing to 16th century notions of race doesn't dig you out of your own hole, so don't start.

>>4337530
>>4337538
OK then, define the social construct which is "race". I'm tired of people like you being purposefully evasive.

>>4337550
>/lit/ is meant to be leftist
I thought this was a smart board.
Sorry, I'll leave now.

>>4337564
Oh, if only.

>>4337550
>/lit/ is meant to be leftist, stay in your fucking echo chamber.

>"communism looks good on paper, but it doesn't work in the real world"
Lets have a thread for things that people who don't read say.

I do read and I do say that.

>>4337563
Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation. A race is some particular element of a group that is supposed by another group to define it. There is no scientific basis of a race, it's created (constructed) by people (society). The fact of the matter is you can not even produce a list of what "races" there are, never mind create a scientific definition of race.

>>4337563

How are we being evasive?

Of all the criticisms you could make against the proposition that "race is a social construct" you chose literally the stupidest possible one.

>>4337587
>races all have different ambiental specialization and appearance
>social construct

>>4337610
>This is the best you could do.

>>4337616
>implying i made an effort
>implying this took me more than a half minute

>>4337610
Grouping people by race is a social phenomenon loosely based on physical appearance and nationality. This isn't hard to understand.

If you want proof of this, stop by a white nationalist forum and ask them whether Italians are "real" white people.

>>4337446

Langan is also strongly opposed to gun control.

He'd most definitely be told go to back to /pol/.

>>4337587
>There is no scientific basis of a race, it's created (constructed) by people (society). The fact of the matter is you can not even produce a list of what "races" there are, never mind create a scientific definition of race.
Oh, OK. So races are just an idea based upon differences between people. Perceptible differences which are apparent to the vast majority of the population? They're a concept humans use to make order of the world around them?

Well I guess philosophy is all bullshit too.

>by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation
>cultural, geographical, linguistic, social affiliation
No, sorry, not buying it. Calling Islamic people morons for being Islamic is not racist. That's way too inclusive.

>>4337631

Some constructs are useful. Some aren't.

Geography, for instance. Pretty useful. Of course there isn't a nice white line in the ground separating Russia from Georgia, or France from Germany, but the social construct of nations has been pretty useful in the large-scale organization of peoples.

You can argue that the concept of race is useful, but first you need a good definition of what the races actually are -- and good fucking luck on that.

"A state of peaceful coexistence cannot exist among humans. It's human nature to be violent."

"How can we stop our generation from being brainwashed with left-wing bullshit in academia? >gender studies
>queer theory
>deconstruction
>post-colonial studies
Pic related"

>>4336215
>>4336221
I hope you're both trolling.

You can't do dna tests for social constructs you stupid niggers, since you can test for race it obviously exists.

You people are as retarded as creationists.
>evolution stops at the neck hurrrrr
Fuck off and die. Literally worse than commie shits.

>>4337647
>what are phenotypes?
God its like you guys didn't even take freshman biology.

>>4336204
>not learning from present USA that libertarianism is utter shit
>b-but tha-that wasn't MUH libertarianism

>>4337649
What a total load of shit
There is peaceful coexistence everywhere you look in civilised parts of the world.

>>4337587
>There is no scientific basis of a race
There are plenty, but people like you are incapable of using modern search engines to look for data that contradicts your narrow minded world views.

>>4337690
>>4337694

If you want to go down this path, then the social conception of race is extremely naive. There are more haplogroups for peoples within Africa than there are for the rest of the planet. Separating people into blanket groups like "black," "white," and so on isn't useful from a biological standpoint.

>>4337694
Science is a social practice. Its like you're a pre-Popperian positivist

>>4337647
>but first you need a good definition of what the races actually are -- and good fucking luck on that.
Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid and their various ethnic subgroups have been standard for decades. "White" has never been a race, just a grouping of mostly european ethnic caucasian groups. Childish simpletons like yourself try to say 'black' 'korean' etc are races because you're the same type of imbecile that thinks popular opinion defines scientific knowledge.

This is /lit/, perhaps you should read a book on the subject so you aren't so ignorant?

>>4337564
>>4337577
/lit/ is leftist in that /pol/ is anti liberal.

>>4337697
>implying it was any worse than cuba and the urss
If you want to be like that, let's just focus on body counts and see who is worst.

>>4337712

These distinctions are only useful from an anthropological perspective. They have no more genetic meaning than separating people by hair color -- you can do it, but what does that actually say about differences amongst populations?

>b-but muh scientific racism

>>4337703
You're stupid as fuck. I'm too lazy to reply to a dipshit like you. This post by this anon has some good points though. Read that.
>>4337712

>>4337727
>These distinctions are only useful from an anthropological perspective. They have no more genetic meaning than separating people by hair color
Again, read a book. You are wrong.

There are varying degrees of similarity and differences between all of them. Subsaharans groups have more difference between european ones than european groups do between them and asian ones and so on.

Also, australian abos aren't even on the same family tree.

The more you know.

>>4337727
>have no more genetic meaning
prove this claim. oh wait you cant? then fuck off.

>"Brave New World didn't seem that dystopian to me...."
>"Lets[sic] have a thread"

>>4337727
>These distinctions are only useful from an anthropological perspective. They have no more genetic meaning than separating people by hair color -- you can do it, but what does that actually say about differences amongst populations?
>anthropology's studies can't tell anything about social groups
Are you fucking serious?
Like serious serious? Not trolling? You actually believe in this?

Holy shit.

>>4337748
That's what I was thinking when I saw the dumb fuck above who thinks determining race isn't possible through genetics alone. It's like these faggots don't read anything other than what suits their stupidity.

>>4337748

Considering that I've been arguing for the concept of race as an essentially social distinction, maybe you've misunderstood what I'm getting at. When I say such classifications don't give us useful information about differences amongst populations, I mean biological differences. The categorizations are too broad. There's more genetic difference between a "negroid" from Lesotho and a "negroid" from Liberia than there is between a "caucasoid" from Russia and a "mongoloid" from Nepal.

>>4337697
I must have missed the election where the libertarian party won a majority and enacted their policies.

Silly me.

>>4337690
>since you can test for race
>>4337694
>supposedly learned with science what the races were in "freshman biology"
>>4337701
>muh gugle took me to /pol/ infograph such science
>>4337712
>"White" has never been a race
>you're the same type of imbecile that thinks popular opinion defines scientific knowledge.
>>4337732
>I have no idea what else to say, better just call him studid

etc

>>4337759
It's almost like these /pol/rats don't read anything other than what suits their stupidity and doesn't contradict their narrow minded world views.

>>4337719
/pol/ isn't anti-liberal, stop trying to flatter yourself.

We're against people who form their opinions without applying principles founded in logic and ethics.

Modern liberals just happen to fall into that category. It's horrifically plastic, nothing more than an expression of political self-interest.

>>4337787
Really, because /pol/ nazis seem to have read _nothing_ of the texts that /lit/ nazis have.

Face it: /pol/ are illiterate fucks spouting opinions as if their uninformed opinions mattered. /pol/ as liberals.

>>4337759
And there is less genetic distance between Gorilla gorilla and Gorilla beringei then there is between Caucasoids and Negroids, yet we feel the need to break our nomenclatural mold and create the concept of race when, in reality, by what we define animals, we are separate species.

>>4337765
This reaction image cancels out your reaction image.

You now have to post a reaction image in reaction to this one before your opinion is the correct one again.

Wow, arguing using reaction images sure is fulfilling and engaging. I feel as if I've progressed as a person by beating your reaction image with my reaction image.

>>4337791
read
>>4337235

Racists are worse than creationists.

hey guys, why exactly did this devolve into a thread about races again. We've been over this what, a thousand fucking times?

>>4337791
A negroid and a caucasoid can surely produce viable offspring, and do, so we are the same species.

>>4337789
I'm a /pol/ack, but I'm not a National Socialist (as NAZIs are properly known).

Every Marxist I've met hasn't read Marx, usually they've read Chomsky and that's it.

>>4337803
/pol/ will never stop riding dirty and /lit/ is too earnest ("autistic," as the kids say) to not take the bait.

>>4337806
you've obviously not been on /lit/ very long

>>4337803
The following post: >>4336206

>>4337815
I've been here for 5 hours I'll have you know!

>>4337816
Sweet jesus. It wasn't even related to the original thread topic

>>4337804
Wait for the flounce...

>>4337804
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9c_KttvQPU

>>4337690

DNA tests don't have a magical printout that says "he's black!" You find someone's race via DNA by testing for their haplogroup and mapping this to what "race" that haplogroup is generally considered to belong to. So q.v. the point made upthread that social distinctions of race are an extremely naive simplification of DNA haplogroups (which themselves don't offer much useful information outside of an evolutionary/anthropological context).

Add to this that such tests are notoriously inaccurate (DNA testing in general is a lot less ironclad than CSI would have you believe), and don't necessarily correspond to a person's ethnic/racial identity.

>>4337450
Really? I use to live in Rapid and did quite a few habitat builds on the Rosebud reservation for NHS.

>>4337845

I don't know what you're getting at. It's kind of sad if you think what I said was some attempt to rile you. You want to insinuate that races are some type of species- or subspecies-level categorization of Homo sapiens, but that's plain wrong. There's no basis to declare that there are any other species in the Homo genus, or that Homo sapiens have any extant subspecies. From a zoological perspective, we are one species.

>>4337857
I agree with you. I'm pointing out that the moron that thinks black skinned humans and white skinned humans are different species hasn't responded yet. (crickets)

>>4337806

Marx is very difficult to read-- he's more akin to , "A Monetary History of the United States" than "The Road to Serfdom."

His most important work is several thousand, highly dense pages, which one could easily dedicate a lifetime to studying.

His ideas generally resist synopsis, but a synopsis of his work is not useless, and contains arguments whose bones are pretty much damning to capitalism in my opinion.

Also, Chomsky has never written a summary of Marx, is not a Marx scholar and almost never references the man.

The Wealth of Nations, The Road to Serfdom, A Monetary History of the United States, Economic Sophisms, Value and Capital, AND For a New Liberty...

Combined.... present less reading material than Capital alone.

>>4337853
It's a ruse

>>4336206

what you mean to say is that just because it's a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't point to actual differences in biology, and it doesn't somehow make the concept of isolated populations evolving different levels of intelligence invalid.

for example, the average IQ of people who speak swahili is likely lower than the average IQ of people who speak japanese. language is a social construct, but so what?

racial egalitarians like to harp on "social constructs" even though technically everything is a social construct. just ignore them. they're fucking stupid.

>>4337882

Apologies.

>>4337900
It's alright. It was an understandable confusion, and dealing with these kinds is taxing.

>>4337727
>but what does that actually say about differences amongst populations?
oh gee, i don't know, maybe that the people who are "arbitrarily" labeled as "asian" tend to do better academically than people who are labeled as "white"?

>>4337896

Disclaimer: I'm a third party observer on your side.

What do you consider "social construct" to be? It just occurred to me that this is a pretty unwieldy bit of terminology, and that parties arguing on either side of a "is ____ a social construct?" debate suffer for its nebulousness.

>"social construct" is a social construct.

>>4337914

I doubt the Nepalese public education system is better than Germany's. Try again.

>>4337918
education system? who knows. but asians on average out-perform europeans in terms of college enrollment and test scoring, including germany.

not to mention asian-americans having a higher average income and higher rates of college enrollment and graduation than european-americans.

>>4337916

Well, think of it like this. No two people are identical. We can all agree on this much -- there are differences even amongst maternal twins.

But surely as no two people are identical, no two people are wholly different. There are commonalities amongst us all.

There are an infinity of ways to separate people into larger groups on the basis of intra-group commonalities. Race is one such distinction that we as a society have decided to use. There is no concept of "black" or "white" floating in the ether that exists separate from people, that people are born into. We create that distinction by saying 'black people are a groups who share so-and-so traits.' There may be a physical basis for the distinction but the importance we place on the distinction is a construct of society.

0/10 /pol/

You're actually liberals too, considering you believe in idealistic metaphysics.

Oh, and the whole social fact thing about race. Race is a social fact. Race stopped being a science when they realized skull size and temperature of your nationalities homeland doesn't mean shit.

>>4337235

Congeneric refers to genus, not species.

Humans can be divided into groups using genes. Considering there still isn't consensus on what a species is, that means fuck all. The question is similar to whether Pluto is a planet or not. Interesting to lay people, but a mere matter of classification for scientists. Complicated by stupid politics. Even if we knew all the overall differences between human groups, that doesn't solve political or philosophical questions about it.

Genetic engineering makes the issue moot because we'll be able to grow dolphin dicks out our foreheads. Most of you are retards.

>>>>>>furnace

>>4337928

That's actually remarkably helpful. Thank you for an interesting and clear explanation.

Where can I read more about these social constructs?

Marx knew a lot about economics, capital, and labor efficiency, which is why he was such a successful business man!

>>4337935

Chimpanzees surely don't belong to the genus Homo, either. That's only marginally less absurd than saying we're the same species.

>>4337928
>no two people are wholly different. There are commonalities amongst us all.
what are you talking about? are there people out there who argue races are "wholly different" or that there are no "commonalities"?

>but the importance we place on the distinction is a construct of society.
as is the importance we place on any distinctions.

>>4337932
>Race stopped being a science when they realized skull size and temperature of your nationalities homeland doesn't mean shit.
except there is a loose correlation there. not that that's crucial to the argument that the social construct of race points to real-world differences.

>>4337932
>You're actually liberals too, considering you believe in idealistic metaphysics.

Are you seriously unable to definition the meaning of the same word given the context of use? Libertarians aren't making a metaphysical argument when they say they are opposed to liberals, for the same reason that modern American liberals aren't attempting to make a metaphysical argument (at least most of the time).

>Oh, and the whole social fact thing about race. Race is a social fact. Race stopped being a science when they realized skull size and temperature of your nationalities homeland doesn't mean shit.

Race has proven differences in not only physical characteristics but mental as well. Africans score lower on IQ tests than Whites who in turn score lower than Asians. This has been well documented. IQ being heritable is also well documented, with twins separated at birth and raised in different environments having an r2 value of ~.73. All evidence points towards a significant divide in average IQ scores among the different races. There is no way around the case: the races are different.

If only the Nazi's weren't so big on eugenics we could probably be making serious steps today towards controlling our future.

>>4337450
Sherman? on my /lit/?

>>4337937

If one concludes that capitalism is evil, then they're likely to find participation in it to be repugnant, and hence are unlikely to attempt to such participation.

If one has already gained significant personal wealth by participation, and furthermore has dedicated a large portion of their adult life to participation, it is unlikely that they will find capitalism evil.

Your point is weak.

jesus christ OP, I hate communism with all my heart but people who say that just reek of lower intellect.

>>4337960

Wanting to raise IQ rates is different than wanting to eliminate racial IQ differences. You seem to have confounded the two.

Those studies haven't ruled out epigenetic effects or social issues like testing anxiety.

Adoption twin studies have also showed social environment produces a large effect. Vietnamese children raised by whites had higher IQ than whites raised by whites, or Vietnamese raised by Asians.

There's no reason to intervene with reproductive rates, when social changes are easier, less invasive and faster at raising IQ. We may already be doing it. IQ rates for successive generations have been raising. The gap between rural and urban whites' IQ has been eliminated.

IQ isn't even by necessity an adaption to our current environment. It does correlate with financial success, but not as well as other variables.

It's just being good at taking tests. There will be better measures of intelligence in the future. Measuring capacity to innovate is more important to society anyways, and it's by definition hard to test for.

>>4336435
Dugin should be tagged as batshit-crazy.

>>4338053
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study
The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study examined the IQ test scores of 130 black or interracial children adopted by advantaged white families. The aim of the study was to determine the contribution of environmental and genetic factors to the poor performance of black children on IQ tests as compared to white children.

MUH SOCIAL CONSTRUCT!!!!

>>4337450
10/10 posting my feathered friend

"I live a life of fulfillment as a _______ and don't have time for books"

and

"WHATCHA DOIN READIN FAGGOT"

>>4337302
Try saying something to the effect that maybe Stalin made a mistake or two and see how long it will take to get banned. /r/communism is a cult.

>>4337707
It's like you actually believe Popper is relevant to a single person who is doing science in the world today, or even to a single person not affiliated with the esoteric academic discipline of "philosophy of science."

Mentioning Popper is like attaching to yourself a badge that says "I have no relevance or standing in any scientific field."

>>4337406
The medium is the message, read some mcluhan or die

>>4337690
> Still haven't proposed a meaningful definition of race.

This is why plebtards can't into science.

>>4337697
>implying that the US hasn't been dealing with crony capitalism for the past 50 years
>implying that libertarianism supports crony capitalism

>>4338615
>>implying that the USSR hasn't been dealing with crony socialism
>>implying that communism supports crony socialism

>>4337804
>>4337882
Are you retarded? That's how they define species in high school biology, maybe.

Have you ever taken a single college-level biology course? (That's a rhetorical question, because you've already demonstrated that the answer is "no").

>>4338621
>implying its feasible to create a society based on a ideology without diluting that
>implying that the communist utopia is anything more than a pipe dream

>>4338633
that ideology*

i haven't read this thread but i bet it's:

>angry neckbeard ron paultards defending capitalism and saying what the US has is just not TRUE CAPITALISM (just "crony capitalism")
>as if there were a crony-less capitalism, as if crony capitalism were imposed by "socialists" (the furthest left you get in the us is liberal democrat) on the market, as if capitalism didn't penetrate into government to secure itself, as if capitalism weren't inherently monopolistic and the state just a tool of capitalist monopolies, as if any institution under capitalism can somehow fucking withstand the enormous resources of major capitalists "cronies" to stick up for the minor capitalists "happy ron paul-tards"

In the context of capitalism today liberal democrats are basically on the right, if you want to update the left/right paradigm for any sort of ideological relevance, although it is basically a bourgeois concept itself, the left are anti-capitalist and the right are pro-capitalist. Most liberals are not anti-capitalist. They simply want to make capitalism less oppressive with welfare etc.

>>4338603
Indeed, the average scientists does not care what philosophers have to say about what they do.

>>4338625
Yeah at university the answer is 'no definition of a species works for all species'.

>>4338650
and this is why science is indefensible. When you become a science major you realize that science is not a definitive statement of fact, and they will tell you that in every single class (ive taken a lot of them), science cannot prove anything, it can only support hypotheses, yet when you make any arguement against something in the science bible they start screaming you down like a bunch of autists. Science is a philosophy, and it does not have all the answers. It can't even define species, a term that is integral to one of its main tenants, evolution.

>"I don't have time to read"

>>4338667
>species are hard to define therefore science is indefensible

Try not to make huge leaps. Only someone ignorant of biology would make the statement 'can't even define species' as if this was some easy task.

>>4338667
The term "species" is not integral to the theory of evolution you redneck autist. The theory of evolution describes geographically distinct populations of organisms that reproduce with one another but are reproductively isolated from other populations in the same geographic area. It doesn't need a concept of species. Only taxonomists and utopian leftists need simplistic notions like that of a "species."

>When you become a science major you realize that science is not a definitive statement of fact, and they will tell you that in every single class (ive taken a lot of them), science cannot prove anything, it can only support hypotheses, yet when you make any arguement against something in the science bible they start screaming you down like a bunch of autists.

You obviously never bothered to pay attention in class.

>Science... does not have all the answers.

Scientists do not assert otherwise you ridiculous blockhead. Stop setting up straw men.

>Science is a philosophy

No it's not.

>>4337610
But then I don't know what other title he could give to that book report.

>>4338683
Thank you for proving my point.

>>4338688
>hurr durr

>>4338633
>>implying its feasible to create a society based on a ideology without diluting that
>>implying that the free market utopia is anything more than a pipe dream

>>4338678
It is an uneasy task because "species" is a human construct. The point is, science has decided definitively that there ARE groups that they call "species", however they cannot pin down a definitive statement as to what constitutes a species. However, if one to were suggest there were no species, the notion is dismissed as ridiculous and ad hominem ensues, similar to >>4338683. There are some things for science has decided it cannot be wrong, and they are quite hateful indeed when someone challenges them.

>>4338692
Yet again, your brilliant ad hominem and arguing skills exceed me in every way. Congrats good sir, i am indeed a redneck autist for not falling in line with your philosophies. Oh, im sorry, science isn't a philosophy, it is always absolute truth.

>>4338625

It's quite telling that you haven't provided any alternate definitions in this post. You seem aware that the distinction is complex but yourself are not aware of how.

Also, the definition of species as populations of organisms that can produce viable offspring, and do, is the most commonly used rubric.

There's certainly no workable definition of "species" used by any biologist anywhere that would separate Homo sapiens into multiple subspecies, or assert the different races are different species.

>>4338699
>However, if one to were suggest there were no species, the notion is dismissed as ridiculous and ad hominem ensues

But that's fucking wrong you moron. Go talk to any biology prof. during their office hours and explain exactly what you just explained to them. Most likely they will agree with you. However, the fact that species is an artificial construct doesn't change the fact that it is useful to us, which is why we keep it around.

You're just demonstrating how utterly ridiculous you are. I don't believe you're actually a science major, quite frankly.

>>4338701
>Oh, im sorry, science isn't a philosophy, it is always absolute truth.

Yes, because not being philosophy means that it is claiming to be absolute truth (which it is not). Define "philosophy," btw, I think we're working with different definitions.

>>4338694
>not realizing the difference between a communist society and libertarian society is the difference between individual freedom and collectivist slavery
>not realizing that the only thing that needs to exist in a liberatrian society is a single rule: do not coerce other human beings
>not realizing that libertarian ideals are not an attempt at utopia but a prevention of dystopia

>>4338683
>>Science is a philosophy
>No it's not.

You are now aware that the world is run by people who think like this. No wonder everything is so fucked.

>>4338705
>Also, the definition of species as populations of organisms that can produce viable offspring, and do, is the most commonly used rubric.

Ad populum much? Is pop culture your standard of truth?

>It's quite telling that you haven't provided any alternate definitions in this post. You seem aware that the distinction is complex but yourself are not aware of how.

See: (>>4338650)

>There's certainly no workable definition of "species" used by any biologist anywhere that would separate Homo sapiens into multiple subspecies, or assert the different races are different species.

Utterly fucking wrong. Either a phylogenetic or a morphological understanding of species would mark whites and blacks as distinct. That's leaving aside entirely spiritual instead of biological understandings of race (which admitted are not used by biologists).

It's really quite unbelievable that you have the arrogance to declaim so authoritatively on something that you have quite clearly never studied at any higher level. Jesus Christ.

>>4338706
I don't really have a problem with using "species", what I'm getting at is that science is often outwardly abrasive and defensive about things that it "knows", while it is often internally inconsistent, like with the definition of species. If science were the open-minded inquiry that it purports to be, then you wouldn't have scientists yelling down opposing views, they would allow their views to stand on their merits.

Take the teaching of alternative hypotheses to origins in the classroom. The current thought is that nothing but evolution should be taught. However, there are other theories (not just religious) that exist as to our origins. "But those are bunk and stupid, why teach them?" Because the self evidence of evolution should prove itself, and the obvious fallacies of the other theories will only help to prove evolution.

>>4338716
It's not.

Science = the study of observable phenomena. The study of things that may be tested with empirical data.

Philosophy = the study of unobservable phenomena. Things that cannot be tested empirically.

>>4338712
enjoy your individualised slavery then while i plan collectivist freedom
lol - how can you have a society without coercion that is based on fucking private property, inequal distrubiton of wealth, and so many other elements that bring people into conflict and COERCE them into accepting appalling work conditions to get a share of the pie? libertarian ideals are utopian in principle and dystopian in practice, by necessity. they do not eliminate any of the elements that encourage conflict and allow for coercion. in fact they enable all of those elements to the fullest extent. capitalism inevitably leads to monopolies, monsieur, and they themselves solidify their gains through whatever institutions (parliaments, legislatures, governments) that they can. in the united states any attempt to regulate those capitalists is denounced as "socialism."

>228 replies

I only opened this thread to say that you could spend your entire life reading and never come across a specific idea. Over the centuries, a vast literature has been accumulated; it spans many unique periods, genres, and styles. Every one of us that *does* read may have read something that another has not, and that is precisely the thing that lends purpose to places of congregation (such as /lit/ in theory) for the discussion of literature. That purpose in particular is the exchange of individual experience. It is this collective reflection (on /lit/ and other places) that has lead me to read certain works I may not have otherwise stumbled upon and offered me the perspectives of fellow readers on a specific work that I certainly could not have come by in my locale.

For the above, I appreciate you all, so understand when I say I am disappointed in you today that it comes from seeing you at your best. Why are you doing this, /lit/?

>>4338712

>not realizing that libertarianism inherently coerces other human beings through its property rights

read more

>>4338709
from merriam-webster
Philosophy: the study of ideas about knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life

This seems like science to me, and when you claimed science wasn't philosophy I assumed that you meant it transcended mere ideas, and was in fact truth

>>4338718
>Ad populum much? Is pop culture your standard of truth?

It's the most commonly used rubric by people with expertise.

>Utterly fucking wrong. Either a phylogenetic or a morphological understanding of species would mark whites and blacks as distinct.

You use a lot of words you clearly have a limited understanding of, if any.

Just because there is no universal definition doesn't mean you can't lay one on us that would actually apply to separating the races into separate species or subspecies. But you can't, because you don't actually understand the science, and just want to veil your weird racial anxieties in scientific-sounding jargon.

After reading this thread i can only say...

Fuck /pol/ and its pseudointellect cancer

libertarians are either rich, undergrads, or basically anyone who has no contact with the reality of labour conditions in any fucking country on earth. they have no real, direct experience of the oppressive effects of capitalism. enjoy your utopianism.

>>4338705
>>4338726
By that definition robinson crusoe has become a different species because he is geographically
isolated from other species and can no longer successfully mate with them

>>4337804

A tiger and a lion can produce fertile offspring. Does that make them the same species?

>>4338729
left libertarians, however, are usually intelligent people, graduates, and disaffected and oppressed members of the modern precariat. right libertarians/anarcho-capitalists/etc, are 16 year old shut-ins for the most part who like the fact that libertarianism is basically a backdoor for the kinds of sexist, racist shithole societies those shut-ins adore.

>2013
>debating whether black people are equal human beings to white people
This is what happens when people are raised on youtube comments, reddit, and 4chan. I have met these people offline and they are sad friendless retards/arrogant assholes nested in a community of asshole-enabling careerist sociopaths.

>>4338726
>Just because there is no universal definition doesn't mean you can't lay one on us that would actually apply to separating the races into separate species or subspecies. But you can't, because you don't actually understand the science, and just want to veil your weird racial anxieties in scientific-sounding jargon.

Are you serious? You're just going to ignore me, complain about "scientific-sounding jargon" and try to discredit me by assigning ulterior motives? By-the-by, it wouldn't be "jargon" to you if you had ever taken even /freshman/ biology. Idiot.

This is a phylogenetic definition of species: "a discrete lineage, propagated, ancestor to descendent through time, which is recognizably distinct from other such lineages and shares a distinct evolutionary history."

By which measure a European and a sub-Saharan are easily argued to be separate species.


>It's the most commonly used rubric by people with expertise.

How the fuck would you, considering you've never studied biology? And in the field of biology, the "people with expertise" acknowledge this (>>4338650).

>>4337470
> Communism
> Government
aand you blew it

>>4338734

First off, the word you want is "subspecies." And no, because Robinson Crusoe is an individual. The first thing to establish a subspecies is to have a population living in isolation that can, or at one time did, maintain enough breeding pairs for genetic viability.

>>4338729

I can say right now that I have *met* libertarian workers, being a self-described Marxist myself. It isn't helpful to generalize workers under some sort of experiential umbrella. If your logic were really sound, I wouldn't have any need whatsoever try to convince them of the criticisms of capitalism.

I can also say that they seem perfectly sane, and even coherent from the place they come. Discussions with them have proven personally rewarding.

I'd really appreciate it if you not try to reduce the class struggle to such simple terms. Marx didn't.

>>4338725
>the study of ideas

That's the point, dummy. Science doesn't study ideas. It studies empirical data.

>>4338742
>This is a phylogenetic definition of species: "a discrete lineage, propagated, ancestor to descendent through time, which is recognizably distinct from other such lineages and shares a distinct evolutionary history."

This doesn't work to separate humans into distinct species at all. You don't know what you're talking about. The more people point this out, the more you flail and rage. Sad.

>>4337482
> If only all marxists read at least an introductory babby economics pamphlet
Why read introductory pamphlet when you can read Das Kapital?

>>4338745
Of course it was a reductionistic portrait, but that was the point of it. Welcome to 4chan and this thread in particular, which is so stupid one might as well go with the flow as one's tendency allows rather than trying to halt the ceaseless tide of stupidity with a few pert counter-anecdotes and appeals to the tribunal of sophistication while everyone around you is wallowing in digital retardation.

>>4338749
>hurr durr u r dum

Try explaining why instead of just repeating that I'm wrong.

Are people from different social classes different races? I mean, in US rich people tend to be
> Richer
> Have higher IQ
> Commit less crimes
> Have smaller chance of dying to cancer and other diseses
> Better looking

>>4338755
Pretty much. They also have better cardiovascular health and soon with genetic engineering they may become a superior species altogether. ELYSIUM

>>4338752

The lineage of all populations on Earth is far from discrete. There is significant intermixing and interbreeding amongst populations.

>>4338755
Rich people in the US also tend to be:
>White

>>4337656
> US
> Leftism in academia
top fucking laugh

>>4337470

Communism is absent the money-economy. Everyone is not "paid the same" because labor is not wage-labor, but general social labor. A government is also absent, replaced by workers' control of the means of production and universal ownership of those means; that is, the workers that operate a specific industry set their own hours and determine their own policy.

All of this, at least, is the communism referred to by communists up to Lenin. After this comes a confusion in terminology due to Stalinism. Without getting too deeply into the subject, I can say that Russia under Stalin maintained a money-economy and had only some workers' cooperation in factory management (instead of workers' control), yet the Communist Party in Russia decided this constituted "communism."

That being said, for the above mentioned reasons, I won't begrudge your confusion on the issue.

>>4338759
Wow, thank you for stating the painfully obvious. How do you even manage to keep breathing?

>>4338760
In a slave-owning country founded by white European settlers that isn't so surprising. In China they tend to be:
>Chinese
In other colonial countries, like the US, the colonisers also dominate, due to the effects of colonising less advances people, and the advancement of technology is pretty much tied to geography, not any psuedoscientific racialist or phrenological theories.

>>4338769

Then you agree your definition doesn't work to separate humans into different species. Cool.

Can someone explain to me the difference betwen socialism and communism?

>>4338764
>living in the 1950s

If you have access to a time machine I'd love to go back with you when you return :(

>>4338771
>the advancement of technology is pretty much tied to geography
>muh Guns, Germs and Steel!

lol

>>4337960
> This has been well documented
Actually most "global IQ" studies have been very shoddy in their methodology.

>>4338747
again with the name calling. It doesn't help.I won't respond until youre nicer tommy

>>4338751

If we adopt the position that "sophisticated" (I despise that term for its etymology) discourse is impossible with people seemingly caught up in empty diatribe, we have already surrendered the barricade.

Of course there is a a lot of cant and verbal thunder without any sign of lightning, but that hardly is a reason to contribute to the problem when it takes not more effort to try (however hopelessly you might feel it is) to raise the cultural level of a conversation. I say that in the knowledge that it makes me sound like a prick, but eh.

I like to believe that more people glance over this thread looking for quality posts than actually shitpost in it.

>>4338603
If you want to continue on doing empirical experiments and research without wanting to understand your own practiced discipline a little bit better then sure--avoid reading philosophy of science and pronounce it as esoteric bullshit. But when are you planning on entertaining a serious thought for once in your life? Only philosophy and philosophizing does that.

Probably the main reason why physicists dismiss it is because they are afraid of being wrecked by the same people they are dismissing. But why that would be the case? Oh right, because no one teaches the physicist how to think and argue.

Insecure little bitches.

>>4338721
Where did you get those definitions?

>>4338773
In Marxist-Leninist language, socialism is the stage that has to be achieved on the road to Communism. If you go by official rhetoric the Soviet Union was socialist post-Stalin, and the People's Republic of China today is in the "primary stage of socialism", which it defines as modernisation through the use of socialist (Party-controlled) market economics. Communism is what the PRC has - again, by official rhetoric, which is still very Marxist-Leninist - as its end goal: socialism is the road there.

>>4338786

His butt.

>>4338772
Read my lips:

>"a discrete lineage, propagated, ancestor to descendent through time, which is recognizably distinct from other such lineages and shares a distinct evolutionary history."

>shares a distinct evolutionary history
>shares a distinct evolutionary history

But go on, you've almost grasped the concept of speciation!

>>4338760
So?

>>4336148
Who don't read what?

>>4338719
>However, there are other theories (not just religious) that exist as to our origins. "But those are bunk and stupid, why teach them?"

They are taught for like an hour then they get onto actual science supported by facts.

All Im going to say is this. Modern science is the swan song of modernism. Soon post-modernism will take over all of everything and we will have pure meaningless chaos. It is only in this that we will see how flawed man truly is, and that humanity must return to the teachings of Jesus Christ or be lost. The scientific process will eventually be realized to be a wonderful tool that can be used to better know God, not the final solution for absolute truth.

>>4338788

I would like to cite your post to correct my own . . .

>>4338768

In which I (probably) mistakenly asserted that Stalinist Russia claimed to have achieved "communism" as opposed to "socialism."

Thank your for the elucidation.

>>4338791

The evolutionary history of various human populations is far from distinct. And your definition still fails because you've already ceded that human populations don't comprise distinct lineages.

Shout and call me names all you want. You admitted yourself that this definition doesn't work.

>>4338785
> no one teaches the physicist how to think and argue.

It's so sad to watch impotent liberal arts major flail and rage this way... Obviously, the reason no-one wants to engage with you is that they are afraid of how badly you will "wreck" them, right?

Anyway, you enjoy life with that inflated sense of superiority. We're busy putting robots on Mars, and setting satellites into orbit so that the GPS system we designed will make sure you don't get lost on the way to your next rave.

>>4338797
Again with the facts. Youre so cute =]
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/teaching/misconceptions.php#b11
>In science, ideas can never be completely proved or completely disproved. Instead, science accepts or rejects ideas based on supporting and refuting evidence, and may revise those conclusions if warranted by new evidence or perspectives.

>>4338788
So theoretically could we stay in a socialist state without going full communist? I'm having trouble sympathising with communism because of the already widespread idea of capitalism and objectively capitalism works really well in terms of efficiency.

>>4338806
I am failing to see how anything you wrote disagreed with what I said, you are just deliberately typing like an asshole to try and annoy people.

>>4338778
>muh Guns, Germs and Steel!
Nah actually pretty much every modern historian of ideas tends to see at least some level of correlation in that field.

Except Ferguson with his "Europeans became technologically superior because everyone else stopped giving a shit about technology"

>>4338800
>You admitted yourself that this definition doesn't work.

I haven't, but I'm also done arguing with you. This is like trying to have a discussion about Lagrangian mechanics with a five-year-old.

>>4338802
>We're busy putting robots on Mars, and setting satellites into orbit so that the GPS system we designed will make sure you don't get lost on the way to your next rave.
Pragmatic goals are the only things that you are good at and frankly, engineers and laborers are better at it and do all the work for you.

Enjoy parasitizing off the equally-dumb society that worships pragmatic values.

>>4338814
Of course there is correlation in the beginning but that kind of geographical determinism is overcome but how societies construct themselves which could have gone in a lot of ways

>>4338806
Do you believe this is some kind of revelation to anyone...? It's the first thing every high-school science student is taught, and the again the first thing every college freshman is taught.

Do you not, regardless, see how ridiculous it is to say : "we can't completely prove evolution so creationism should be taught in schools"?

>>4338815

You gave a definition of species that requires discrete lineages. I said that human races do not have discrete lineages. You agreed. Please explain how this means your definition -- the definition you yourself supplied and seem to support -- still holds for separating human races into different species.

>>4338807
Going by Marx and Lenin, no, because Communism inevitably follows socialism, as socialism grows from the revolutionary upheaval created by the contradictions of capitalism.

As for your problems with sympathy, the strengths of capitalism can't be denied. It is efficient and versatile, and even Lenin wrote about its progressive attributes in modernising Russia and described it in no ambiguous terms as "a good thing". And the CCP, really the world's last Communist authority (and anyone who says otherwise has never lived here), is of course using capitalism for its own ends because of the very efficiency you're talking about. But this efficiency now is propped up by a system of imperialism and international/environmental exploitation that is in the long term unsustainable. No Communist doubts capitalism's efficiency and strength - it's the price of those things that concerns us.

>>4338807

The "socialist" states of the past and present tend to revert to more normal capital-driven economies, and suffer from the same economic crises immanent to capitalism in any other bourgeois state.

The criticism by Marx of capital is precisely that is has inevitable cycles of crisis, stagnation, boom, and decline forever repeating themselves, rearing their heads in the forms of war in the struggle for markets and control of resources, monetary crises of overproduction coupled with the accumulation of buying power in too few hands to circulate these commodities, and massive unemployment as the development of new industrial methods makes labor (productivity) more efficient and decreases the demand for hands (too quickly for the development of new fields and training to compensate). It is precisely these things and their brutal effects on the class of wage-workers that leads antagonism between that class and capital. It is not so much that capitalism as a process is not sustainable, so much as that sustainability has barbaric implications for the masses as all times and much more so in times of crisis.

>>4338815

>getting so buttwrecked and assmad that you have to run away and hide
>still trying to get the last word in despite being utterly destroyed

kek

>>4338825
Do you realize how ridiculous it is to claim so adamantly that your way if thinking is correct, and not allow it to stand on its own merits? If you want to liberate the human mind you must allow it to reason for itself, not give it a single answer and refuse all other thoughts.

>>4338821
>Pragmatic goals

Yeah, because space travel was so "pragmatic." The LHC is so "pragmatic." lol

>Enjoy parasitizing off the equally-dumb society that worships pragmatic values.

Hilarious. If physicists are parasites then what are liberal arts majors? Parasitizing off a dumb society that is willing to feed its limited resources into "post-colonial gender studies" or whatever ridiculous, masturbatory fad is currently the rage in liberal arts academia. You create less than derivatives traders, and unlike them you have a massively inflated sense of self-worth.

>>4338830
>>4338832

Could that price be controlled though? I don't mean by controlling how everything is produced but achieving a way that we can set boundaries to where the market goes. I mean a state that provides negative liberty for people to work and by working achieve a way of life. This would also require laws that protect workers, guaranteed education, public health insurance etc. What would a state like this be called? Socialist?

>>4338814
>Except Ferguson with his "Europeans became technologically superior because everyone else stopped giving a shit about technology"

He's right to some extent, though. The Chinese were sending out massive exploratory missions around the world hundreds of years before the Europeans, but their response to the world was to become insular and put their "superior" culture in stasis. They really did stop giving a shit about technology. They only wanted to preserve their society as it was. Meanwhile, the European response the outside world was massive expansionism and a intellectual and cultural output, including huge strides in technology.

>>4338712
>>not realizing that the only thing that needs to exist in a liberatrian society is a single rule: do not coerce other human beings
>coercing me not to coerce

wow rude

>>4338850
That can be called socialist, yes. Or social democratic. Marxists oppose such a state because in the Marxist view any capitalist state is inherently a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie": as we're seeing all over Europe now, any socialist concessions won in a capitalist democracy are at the mercy of the governing elite. If their programs are deemed to cost too much or if there's no threat of general upheaval as there was post-World War Two when they had their heydey, democratic socialists are fighting a losing battle against a system that can reverse everything they've achieved with a single electoral victory.

>>4338845
>Has absolute no idea what 'pragmatic' means
>Assuming that I am in any sense affiliated with Liberal Arts through-out the entire conversation

kekiddy kek.. le grandiose skills of deduction of a physics fan-boy

>>4338845
>The LHC is so "pragmatic."

I haven't been following this argument so I'm not sure who's arguing what, but theoretical physics and the construction of things like the LHC are proof positive that science/empiricism is an essentially philosophical endeavor. The LHC isn't going to help us feed ourselves or build any bridges, but it will help us understand the world we inhabit. That's a philosophical concern no matter how you slice it.

>>4338861
I get that, what is your opinion then about what should be done?

>>4338845
As you stand on mars and stare out into the vast infinity you will will realize that "doing" has thrown you millions of miles from home, and you still have not found the reason for your existence, and you will realize the profound anguish of being lost. I will curl up in my hobbit hole, and read those worthless books written by old men long ago, such as plato. I will occasionally tend my garden, because a man's gotta eat. Essentially I will find contentedness and meaning simply from "being".

>>4336195
>pre-scarcity

uh what

pre-scarcity isn't the opposite of post-scarcity, you meant pre-post-scarcity or just scarcity, surely?

>>4338850

In the course of class struggle, the goal of improving conditions for the working class and limiting the exploitation of the workers (and more recently the environment) is at the forefront. That holds true for communists (as political activists). This struggle itself, however, is immanent to capitalism; the very nature of capitalist economy necessitates the labor-movement in opposition to unlimited exploitation which would otherwise (and has historically) and maintains as its more or less conscious goal the maximum exploitation of labor-power.

This struggle is constantly (under conditions of capitalism) in flux. In periods of crisis, the labor-movement is at its strongest simply because it must be; this is the period of a literal death-struggle. In times of boom, reaction is generally the rule of the day. What I think most communists will tell you is that a kinder, gentler capitalism will have the tendency revert to its more animal form. The Keynesians are trotted out when the crisis hits, but "free-trade's bagmen" are right back again once the tough-going gets gone.

It would be tantamount to telling someone to shoot an armed burglar in the leg.

>>4338865
It's a scientific concern, and a scientific endeavour. If calling it "philosophy" gives you some sense of affirmation, or what have you, then feel free, I guess.

This is a fun thread. We have fun.

>>4337491
>and doesn't really exist

Read more.

>>4338870
What a ridiculously melodramatic view of the world.

And who are you to say what the reason for existence is, or how to find meaning?

>>4338872
But how is achieving a communist state is more realistic than holding socialist laws and regulations?

>>4338875

Science rests on a metaphysical framework that says we can access an objective reality outside of human consciousness via empirical methods. Science is the philosophy of empiricism and positivism. Many scientists have written quite eloquently on this.

I'm an engineer and this kind of stuff matters to me. If you're STEM, it should matter to you too. The way we approach the acquisition of scientific knowledge and the reasons we do so matter. Please don't handwave them away because the word "philosophy" scares you.

>>4338867
Honestly? However unlikely it is that it'll happen in my lifetime, I think the most important thing is the reestablishment of genuine Marxist movements in the West and the continued support of Third World Marxist movements, in preparation for the next great capitalist crisis.

>>4338880
Read more what?

Question, how did the philosophy of empiricism become such that its proponents get so all fired butt frustrated when anyone questions them? Clearly it has merits and has helped us to learn, but it is still an imperfect philosophy.

Ad hominem incoming

>>4338881
I never did.

>>4338883
This post makes me happy. I thought sensible people didn't exist anymore.

Can I ask a serious question? I know it'll probably sound insensitive and dense, but I'm being pretty genuine.

Why exactly do we need to liberate the working class from the horrific conditions of the capitalist? I've grown up in poor neighborhoods and worked with bottom 5-10 percent working class people my whole life, and while I guess it's sort of depressing that these people have to lead these lives, why do so many people deem it absolutely NECESSARY to relieve them from suffering?

>>4338883
Boom! /conversation

>>4338882

Whether or not one considers it realistic, it is the only possible total victory by the workers in the course of class struggle. And so, it is the end that must be struggled towards for an end to capitalist cycles of brutality. For the worker, it is simply the logic of his position, as much as (temporary) socialist laws become the logic of the bourgeoisie in times of conflagration, the most intense moments of class struggle, the veritable knife edge. If total defeat is on the door-step, it is better to let in his cousin compromise. That is the communist position, anyway.

>>4337563
if you have a pitt bull and a golden fuck, clearly the puppies aren't either one

I can start calling the puppies "nigger-doges" and make it a new breed by breeding the puppies together

That doesn't make nigger-doges a meaningful indicator of anything.

Another dog-zample for you

breeds (which are meaningfully different from races, but whatever) have changed massively over the years, and continue to change

A bull mastiff from 100 years ago wouldn't be recognized as a bull mastiff by breeders today. Why? Because the features have massively changed due to breeding. Why is this? Because there's no innate features of a bull mastiff, it's entirely convention what features they're bred to have. And if you took ONLY bull mastiffs and just bred the puppies that don't fit Bull Mastiff criteria, in a few dozen years you'd have dogs that would no longer be Bull Mastiffs, despite having only genetic material from Bull Mastiffs.

>>4338891
At the time of Marx, laborers were dying on the job

>>4338883
As I said, I really don't care what you want to call it. A label is just a means of appropriation.

However, slightly tangentially, I'd like to say that I find it funny that you mention "a metaphysical framework." I have been scoffed at in the past as a "metaphysical stooge" for trying to explain what you would call the 'philosophical' backbone of science.

>>4338891
because that is the a-priori point of marxism

>>4338891

Trying to relieve people from suffering is the moral imperative of all.

If you disagree, I dunno, I guess there's a gulf that can't be bridged here. Carry on reading Atlas Shrugged.

>>4338901
Yeah, I know. I'm still not convinced. I've met people who turn to hard drugs or kill themselves because of the job today. Once again, I'd like to stress that I do feel sympathy for people, but I don't see why widespread social reform is necessary in this case, even if workers are dying.

>>4338904
> A label is just a means of appropriation

oh my god did you think that sounded like a smart thing to say? shut the fuck up

>>4338908

You'd be singing a different tune if you were the one affected by it.

>>4338898
I see but I don't hold that view, could you recommend me some authors or books that talks about how socialism can live with capitalism? I doesn't have to be that topic but you get the idea

>>4338908
what other organizational principle for society do you have, then?

>>4338913
I'm pretty sure that guy is literally quoting Zizek

>>4338900
Certain breeds of dogs are massively more intelligent than other breeds. You acknowledge this, yes? And that they were created in just a few hundred years?

So why can you not acknowledge that tens of thousands of years of geographical separation between human "races" has also produced huge differences in intelligence, and other important qualities?

Why do you not agree that, regardless of the "meaningfulness" of the term "race," it is not desirable to preserve the genetic character of the more intelligent "race" (or "breed")?

>>4338906
...uhhh.. I fucking hate Ayn Rand, man.

>Trying to relieve people from suffering is the moral imperative of all.
This is not true. This is a gigantic asspull that can be disproved just by watching the amount of people who walk by the crusty, doped-up homeless people on the side of the streets everyday and don't give a shit. If this was really our intrinsic moral imperative I'm sure I wouldn't see plenty of upper middle class people talk shit about the 20,000 dollar annual salary single moms who work 16 hours a day to feed their kids. Don't pull that "a priori desire to relieve suffering!!" shit; there's a degree to which we care for others, but extending it to the entirety of the working force seems unreasonable.

>>4338904
>As I said, I really don't care what you want to call it.

It's not what I want to call it. It's what it is. Come on, you believe in objective reality -- objectively, science is a philosophy, the philosophy of obtaining empirical data about reality in order to better human understanding of and control over nature.

>>4338901
They still do m8. Stress kills.

>>4338919
*it is desirable to preserve the genetic character

>>4338919
>And that they were created in just a few hundred years?

With enormous external pressures supplied by humans with selective breeding. Selective breeding has not occurred significantly on the scale of human populations.

>>4338908
The general idea is this problem is predominantly systematic, as opposed to the liberal belief that everyone is born in a vacuum and has full control over any given situation.

You can sit back and play the "don't care" card, there is no grand jury in heaven, sure, but what puts us above animals is problem solving.

>>4338920

Just because people don't act morally doesn't make it right.

>>4338912
I have been affected by it, though. And my solution wasn't to reify the entirety of society in order to pursue a total class revolution. My solution didn't rest in any sort of social reform, but rather the pursuit of individual goals (granted, this is considerably harder to achieve for people who work 2 jobs a day and are stuck in slums, but the options are not reducible to work 9-5 and mentally decay or liberate the proletariat).

>>4338911
>Why are you so angry, anon? Come eat some candy with me!

>>4338920
I think that guy is wrong too but even a selfish worker could only lead a better life when there is a movement in group with others, in this case their liberty starts by the liberty of all workers.

>>4338920
That is because human brains are wired for living in groups of up to 150 people and most of us only have mental room for 5 very close friends.

>>4338933
It is about negative and positive liberty, when they tell you to just work harder they are perpetrating the system and do not care if you have the means to work harder or take another job. Having a 9-5 job is a result of worker movements, abolition of child labour is too.

>>4338927
I'd say the hugely different, colder northern climates would exert an enormous selective pressure on organisms migrating from Africa...

>>4338919
Of course I'll acknowledge there's a genetic factor to intelligence. Of course!!!! Yes I do do this!

However, I am also a moral person who sees societal cohesiveness and the dignity of every person as being very important. Thus, I insist that racialist views inherently demean individuals based on things they cannot control, and should be discarded as immoral. Everyone must be respected or abhorred for the person they are, and the things they do.

Moreover, even if, as you /pol/locks love to maintain, people with dark skin ARE dumber on average, you have no way of knowing whether the child of light and dark skinned people is smarter or dumber than the parents. That's simply not how genetics works.

>>4338939
>tfw close to the other 4 members of my nuclear family

Do I get one friend?

>>4338829
Hi guys. I'm an actual biologist, currently biochemist, but I've taught evolutionary biology and biogeography.
The problem with races, separate from species, is that when you try to employ statistical standards and any sort of scientific analysis to the problem, you have the classic splitter versus lumper confusion: you either end up with one race, or with a couple million, none of which correspond to the classical phenotypic or geographic races. They tend to cluster around blood groups and immune characteristics. You can fine tune your standards a little and get it down around a hundred thousand, and ethnographers tend to get it under a thousand but they cheat by using "lumper" races (like american black) in some cases, and "spiltter" races in others.

From a political standpoint it might be more useful to use race as an entirely cultural thing, and leave science out of it. In the nineteenth century they had dozens of races of french and italians, sort of like the africans have thousands now.
trying to lend scientific legitimacy towhat is essentially personal prejudices, cultural indoctrination, or political expedience is a trap. never beleive your own rhetoric; just do what you need to to acheive your ends, even if it makes denzel washington aryan, hitler a jew and all women into monkeys.

>>4338891

This will sound disgusting, but it is true; the West right now is the best place in the world to be poor. It's not nice here; poverty is a nasty state to live in, homelessness actually can threaten you with sickness and death, and every wage-worker is just a few paychecks away from the street. Police brutality in the poorest areas makes it dangerous to leave your house every bit as much as the gang-activity, and that gang-activity is simply the inevitable reproduction of intense poverty, supply and demand regarding drugs and stolen good for a price the community can afford, and unemployment amongst a demographic that has access to no publicly-funded distractions.

These are mere anecdotes in a vast arena of competing miseries and oppression. The struggle against capital is the struggle against that which reproduces in cycles these manifestations.

That's not even the worst of it.

You wear jeans? Fill up a tank of gas? Enjoy a cup of joe? Fancy some chocolate? All of these things, the supply of demand, come by way of a sickening exploitation by Western markets of Third-World labor. Capitalism is international, and the most intense exploitation, the brutality of literally working men, women, and children to death exists in reality in the nations where free-trade truly does run rampant. Western rights and privileges won in the course of struggle by the Western proletariat are merely representative of the worst abuses in Marx's day being transferred to another place. It is the division of labor.

Keep in mind this, however; the present absence of the worst abuses is a temporary one. Every day there is an ongoing struggle to bring back "freedom of labor" in the form unlimited exploitation and the repeal of all labor protections in the West. That is what the workers' struggle here is fighting to prevent, as much as the struggle exists elsewhere to make the gains we have currently.

>>4338937
I don't eat sugar and I am not a pedophile.

>>4338947

Would you please offer you opinion vis-a-vis the idea that there may be different species or subspecies of Homo sapiens?

>>4338945
>you have no way of knowing whether the child of light and dark skinned people is smarter or dumber than the parents. That's simply not how genetics works.

Yes, on an individual level you are correct. However, on average, the mixed race population will be less intelligent than the white-skinned population.

And the superior genetic character of the white-skinned group will be lost forever.

Why is it so terrible to want to preserve that genetic character?

>>4338957
I'm not even for blatant race mixing but our knowledge on genetics and intelligence is all too limited to make absolute statements like this.

>>4338957
> However, on average, the mixed race population will be less intelligent than the white-skinned population.

a ridiculous assertion that you cannot possibly have any evidence to support. You can't know whether that's true because there's no way to test it.

>implying whites are superior to east asians


Because it demeans the individual in the process. I will not subvert a higher moral for a lower worldly aim (some pretend white race that will accomplish what exactly?)

The dignity of the individual comes before such a concern.

>>4338945
Plenty of people think everyone should have legal equal treatment, does not mean they want to suppress facts. Whether its 'immoral' or not if its true and supported by science it should be public knowledge.

>>4338913

Some of Kautsky's later pamphlets and Burnstein's famous "heresies" are some of the earlier manifestations of social-democracy as it exists today. I am not overly familiar with socialist-democratic literature, and I'm sure someone here can make better recommendations that I can. I don't know that Keynes would be considered an advocate of "socialism," however he's an excellent example of the type that would combine the "labor movement" and capitalism, as much of a contradiction is sounds as I type it.

Even if you don't subscribe personally to communism, Das Kapital is always an excellent place to start for anyone with an interest in the economic critique of capitalism.

>>4338965
>a ridiculous assertion that you cannot possibly have any evidence to support. You can't know whether that's true because there's no way to test it.

Utterly untrue. All IQ studies done on samples of mixed-race children find that they have an average IQ intermediate between the average IQs of the white and black populations.

>>implying whites are superior to east asians

Whites are superior to East Asians, however. This is why the slightly higher average East Asian IQ is so controversial amongst people who study intelligence--because most of the great intellectual achievements have been by Europeans, and East Asians have contributed relatively little.

The hypothesis, in fact, is that East Asians are genetically inclined to conformism, which inhibits innovation, despite their higher IQ. And, indeed, we see that East Asian societies are extremely conformist. However, when small groups migrate to individualistic white societies like America, they excel because that inclination to conformism is over-ridden by the influence of the dominant white culture.

>Because it demeans the individual in the process. I will not subvert a higher moral for a lower worldly aim (some pretend white race that will accomplish what exactly?)

>The dignity of the individual comes before such a concern.

I think this is ridiculous Utopianism. It will just result in Europeans being bred out of existence (since there are so few of us compared to them--8% of the global population only), and humanity accomplishing less as a result.

>>4338969
I don't think passing out pamphlets on the white race is "just facts"

all information is biased in some way, don't be coy

>>4338979
>Whites are superior to East Asians, however. This is why the slightly higher average East Asian IQ is so controversial amongst people who study intelligence--because most of the great intellectual achievements have been by Europeans, and East Asians have contributed relatively little.
>The hypothesis, in fact, is that East Asians are genetically inclined to conformism, which inhibits innovation, despite their higher IQ. And, indeed, we see that East Asian societies are extremely conformist. However, when small groups migrate to individualistic white societies like America, they excel because that inclination to conformism is over-ridden by the influence of the dominant white culture.

> humanity accomplishing less as a result.

this conversation is over, you are delusional and not even consistent with yourself

>>4338979
>because most of the great intellectual achievements have been by Europeans, and East Asians have contributed relatively little.

What a load of horseshit.

>The hypothesis, in fact, is that East Asians are genetically inclined to conformism

>what is culture

>>4338982
My point is that if something is true whether it will offend or 'demean' people is irrelevant.

>>4338987
irrelevant to what? Whether or not it's true? Ok

To whether or not we should take action based on it? Not really.

>>4338985
>What a load of horseshit.

Are you serious? This has been quantified. See pic.

>>what is culture

Culture is influenced by genetics. To claim otherwise is ridiculous.

>>4338984
You're not making any sense.

>>4338990
I was not saying action should be taken upon it, people should have equal legal rights. But currently political correctness means many views are shunned regardless of whether they are true.

>>4338948
Well, i think we all hope for the soon arrival of the day when efficient automation makes the 'worker" as obsolete as the peasant farmer is in the west, and all those sweatshops in the thirdworld can close, and the indigenous populations are thrown back on their own resources to create their own industries and products. Also, new devlopments in energy production and efficiencies in utilizing, substituting and reclaiming scarce resources seem to be making headway into the need for exploitation for mineral wealth. Could be in a century we will have hundreds of small, localized socialist communes where we have disfunctional thrid world cleptocracies now. without first world money, the incentive to exploit might decline, and emmigration to the west could take care of the dissidents. I don't think stalin or mao or any communist leader really saw the advantages of a one way emmigration policy. let the only people who stay in your country be the ones that aggree with and support you.

>>4338994

Putting your unsupported claims in the form of a graph doesn't make them any less unsupported.

Again: horseshit.

>>4338994
All that shows is that there was rapid progress in Europe. The majority of academics today do not ascribe this to racial differences, but to the productive quality of instability and conflict. Europe was more balkanized than anywhere else on earth with more distinct cultures and states than anywhere else.

Asia was too massive, the near east not fertile enough, sub-saharan Africa too fertile, America too distant

>>4338999
That graph is taken directly from this book. I did not create it, and the statistical analysis which leads to it is perfectly sound.

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

>>4338994

Do you have a source for this figure? Do you know what statistical methods were employed to determine who and what qualifies as "significant"? Do you know how confounding factors were controlled for? Have these results been published in a peer-reviewed journal? Have the data collected and the analysis methods been made public?

Does this figure even come from a real study? Reverse google search only brings back 4chan.

>>4339011
See (>>4339010).

You can read a fairly thorough review of what he did here:

http://www.techlawjournal.com/series/innovation_03/20031120_murray.asp#B

>>4339010

Wow, who would have thought that when you compile a big list of Europeans and label them the most significant, you find that most significant people come from Europe.

>>4339020
>Murray's methodology is to quantify human accomplishment in many of the sciences, technology, art, and literature over a nearly three millennium period (800 B.C. through 1950) by resorting to what others have written about these fields. He developed a huge database of significant figures (scientists, inventors, artists, writers, and others) and significant events. He did not compile the lists based on his own subjective assessments. Rather, he used a reputational approach. That is, he collected leading encyclopedias, histories and surveys, and looked to see who got mentioned, and by how many sources. He also considered how many pages were devoted to each innovator or creator (he calls them "significant figures") in these sources. Based on this data, he calculated scores, on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the maximum possible.

>>4338722

>>4339021

So in a western culture dominated by Europe, Europe dominates the culture. Very useful result.

I wonder how many Chinese encyclopedias he consulted.

>>4338998

I wouldn't dare claim to know what the future of technology looks like, or what potential revolutions could bring about post-scarcity in the most triumphant way, making capitalist economy impossible. I would, however, ask you to keep in mind that many of the more intense abuses in the world economy are (ironically) direct results of increased efficiency in automation subject to the conditions of capitalism.

The decrease in the demand for workers puts more hands out of work, and without work these men have no money to spend on what they need let alone what they want. Those still in work receive even lower wages than before due to decrease in demand. The commodities produced by the fewer hands are usually produced for the community of those hands, who can no longer afford to purchase them in sufficient quantities. This, in capitalist economy, results in various things, some of them mentioned earlier.

Firstly, the transfer of productive energy to producing the means of destruction; in the presence of over-production, what does the capitalist do? He destroys excess to keep demands up. Does he start with his own? Or would he rather start with some other capitalist's commodities, and thereby take his customers? This is the economic foundation of war; competition for markets.

From this example, I would introduce capitalism as the barrier to the very progress that makes it obsolete, but I am sure you already agree to an extent (without intending to accuse you of being anti-capitalist or a supporter of capitalism).

>>4339027
Maybe you should read the book and find out.

Do you usually dismiss out of hand like this anything that clashes with your worldview?

>>4338742
>/freshman/ biology
We get it, you took biology your freshman year in HS. This makes you an expert in biology.

>>4338739
It's fucking depressing.

>>4339036
Apply yourself.

>>4339034

The great man theory was refuted decades ago. I'm not going to read 600 pages of self-confirming claptrap trying to tank how much more "important" Newton was than Confucius.

>>4339054
>The great man theory was refuted decades ago.

Please. You mean became unpopular. Don't be disingenuous.

Regardless, his analysis deals with cultures as well. Whether or not the great man theory applies is irrelevant to the present discussion, in support of which his book was presented, of whether Europeans are superior.

>>4339054
how exactly has it been refuted?

>>4339054
>I'm not going to read

This is the approach you take to a lot of things in your life, isn't it?

>>4339076

How many 600 page treatises on the meaninglessness of racial distinctions have you read?

>>4338955
nah. we're too close to the edge for that. Homo sapiens hasn't been around long enough as a species to even settle down into homogeneity, we're too young and take too long between reproductive cycles to have speciated. what you're seeing as subspecies or races are basically lumps in the melting pot.

they're merging slowly back into the general pool, and this is very good news for the human race: we have a lot of bottlenecks in our recent evolutionary history, where a lot of genetic diversity was sacrificed. we need all we can salvage. the kind of founder effect pseudo races we were getting due to geographical isolation were exactly the things you get with thoroughbred horses and sharpeis and show roses: freaks with lots of awful genetic baggage that were maladapted except for very specific circumstances, and that had lost tons of other important stuff in order to maintain marginal adaptation to those circumstances. they were 'island populations" with exactly the worng kind of specializations. extinction bound, basically, like most island endemics. if humand had speciated under those conditions we'd have had little chance of survival. good thing theres so much interbreeding going on now, to make up for all that lost time.

>>4338947
>I'm an actual biologist, currently biochemist, but I've taught evolutionary biology and biogeography.

And I'm the Queen of Sheba. Timestamped proof or fuck off.

>>4339090
there's a joke about the brits in here somewhere

>>4338955
>they're merging slowly back into the general pool, and this is very good news for the human race: we have a lot of bottlenecks in our recent evolutionary history, where a lot of genetic diversity was sacrificed. we need all we can salvage. the kind of founder effect pseudo races we were getting due to geographical isolation were exactly the things you get with thoroughbred horses and sharpeis and show roses: freaks with lots of awful genetic baggage that were maladapted except for very specific circumstances, and that had lost tons of other important stuff in order to maintain marginal adaptation to those circumstances. they were 'island populations" with exactly the worng kind of specializations. extinction bound, basically, like most island endemics. if humand had speciated under those conditions we'd have had little chance of survival. good thing theres so much interbreeding going on now, to make up for all that lost time.

I'd love to see some actual evidence for this...

>>4339033
well, the way the world economy works these days, and has for a century at least, products become oversupplied without anybody noticing. and you don't destroy the overcapacity in the capitalist model, you switch it over to something still undersupplied. and the excess labor has to increase as long as there's increased efficiency, but the efficiency eventually wins: things improve for everybody, and dramatically. And yeah, we do get post-capitalistic, pretty soon, which results in a whole nother strata of problems. look at the musicians and writers carreer lately and see what i mean. when everything is free, people only use the very best, which is raw meritocracy and very unkind.

>>4339115
the immune effects alone are evidence. also, i'm surprised youd need evidence that the different gene pools are combining. I mean I realize that custom and prejudice and such are slowing it down a bit, but theres plenty of leaking at the "edges" of the populations. A lot of this is because people have no idea, or a very folkloric idea, of what their founder population is. Two vastly different genetic populations of blacks in America, for example, might consider themselves to be the same "race" (popular useage) even though they might have far more genetically in common with the surrounding caucasian population than with one another, and two widely genetically separated populations of european ancestory might consider themselves "white" and freely intermarry, despite wild differences in population origens. This is happening most in china, where the seven or so distinct populations have a hard time telling each other apart under normal circumstances.

>>4339133

If products became oversupplied without anybody noticing, I shudder to think what Satanic ritual is responsible for that recent scandal of American potato-growing "cooperatives" destroying a portion of their crop each year (to keep prices up by their own admission) and using GoogleEarth to spy on their comrades to be certain of their meeting the mandatory minimum for crop destruction.

I would also be fascinated to discover the alternative and no doubt esoteric reasons for the otherwise inexplicable rise in oil prices in the United States *correlating* with greater control of international oil supplies by American corporations and generally greater access to a larger supply or crude than ever before. Note that this price rise is *not* in proportion to the increased consumer demand.

That fact is that capitalists and capitalist nations *do* compete for resources and markets (even locally), and *will* destroy product (even their own) to keep prices up if they do not expect to be able to turn an average rate of profit on the sale of the excess and in realization that the excess with reduce the average rate of profit for the lot that is not in excess.

If this excess simply went on the market anyway, of course conditions would improve. The process of valorization, however, that is value begetting value which we know as "capital" would be impossible. If production can not be exchanged but is still used, it is simple production for consumption; whereas capitalism is production for profit.

Furthermore, I do not see it as being in any way cruel that objects are judged on their merits, so long as the people that produce objects have access to all of life's necessaries and a portion of the labor involved in the introduction of those necessaries that he might justify his place morally. I see no instance in which this is unkind.

>>4339107
the reason people come to anonymous boards and post is to avoid this sort of thing: you don't have to believe me, a little legwork will satisfy your doubts. and what good would a timestamp do? prove that I have a labcoat and can stand near a spec 2000?

>>4339171
I meant specifically evidence for the claims that:

>we have a lot of bottlenecks in our recent evolutionary history, where a lot of genetic diversity was sacrificed

>the kind of founder effect pseudo races we were getting due to geographical isolation were exactly the things you get with thoroughbred horses and sharpeis and show roses: freaks with lots of awful genetic baggage that were maladapted except for very specific circumstances, and that had lost tons of other important stuff in order to maintain marginal adaptation to those circumstances.

Especially
>freaks with lots of awful genetic baggage that were maladapted except for very specific circumstances, and that had lost tons of other important stuff in order to maintain marginal adaptation to those circumstances.

> they were 'island populations" with exactly the worng kind of specializations. extinction bound

> if humand had speciated under those conditions we'd have had little chance of survival

You realize that you need to provide evidence for all these claims, right? You can't just say "lol I'm a biologist on 4chan accept my authority."

>>4339189
>what good would a timestamp do

A timestamp next to your degree would be plenty. Feel free to black out the name if you want.

>>4339180
the potato thing is pretty funny, i admit. one that a lot of people don't know about though is the cotton producers that were letting a lot of their crop rot deliberatley to both collect insurance and decrease the amount on the market while not giving up their irrigation quotas. these are last-gasp gerrymanderings from failing industries, and are illegal, abberant behaviors. not policies.

>>4339191
none of this is hidden, secret stuff. three hours in a library, or maybe less, and you can verify it all yourself. I'm not going to bother to link a dozen textbooks on evolution and biogeography. just get any current book on human evolutionary gentics, any biogeography text, and any physical anthropology overview and you're good. and no, don't take my word for any of it. This is what i constantly tell my stidents. Check it out for yourselves.

>>4339222
also, none of this stuff is in anyway controversial, or even new.

>>4339222
So you have no sources, just assertions that it's our responsibility to 'look up'.

Yet when stormtards post here and tell people to google their claims, they are met with derision, and this is taken as evidence that they are wrong or lying.

And your claim is met with silence, or this type (>>4339224) of validation.

Oh /lit/. You aren't as smart as you think you are.

>>4339207

An examination, even in brief, of capitalist industry will show that these behaviors (which are not doubt quite despicable) are quite normal. The cotton analogy and the same for tobacco am I familiar with by way of Adam Smith, and the fact that is still happens in modernity should be considered indicative of its status as a trend in capitalism. Interestingly enough, Adam Smith uses such examples as a condemnation of state-sanctioned monopoloy (which was in his day the dominant form, and the modern corporation as we know it did not exist).

The advance of any industry causes it to fail by the very nature of its struggle to produce more at a lower cost for the purposes of competition. Competition, however, ceases to be a problem for monopoly - monopolists being the "winners" in market competition, as their remaining "competition" is to anemic to actually effect anything but local prices on a very small scale even then. This is the state of the oil industry now. Through imperialism, American oil interests now hold an international monopoly, although not under that name and not technically under a single company. However, the largest quite openly cooperate to increase prices in a monopolistic fashion (without appearing to break any laws) and so the price of gasoline at the pump has risen into the cloud of 4 USD or more.

That these behaviors are illegal under various names and considering abhorrent from the perspective of "free-trade" does not seem to prevent them from being typical and veritable the "rules of the game" for the world market.

>>4339231
well, the thing is, this is a casual conversation, not a lesson or a seminar. A lot of us aren't used to being asked for credentials or citations of source when you're stating basic, uncontroversial, well-known stuff. I mean if this were a political forum, maybe argument would be the rule, but it's /lit/. we should be arguing about the best written and most accessible science book, not debating the content.
And as I said, the whole point of discussing things on an anonmous forum is that everyone's statements are equally suspect. I mentioned my field and qualifications so you would know i wasn't one one side or the other, and idn't have any particular axe to grind. And again everything I've said can be easily verified. There are tons of elementary scince books that discuss the problems associted with island populations. I mean, the near and sometimes total extinction of pacific isalnder and amerind populations due to lack of immune resistance shows pretty clearly one obvious danger of genetic isoaltion of populations, as well as genetic diseases show that founder effect population bottlenecks (which are also completely non controversial) can seriously weaken a population's survivability.

>>4339237
the tobacco, potato and cotton examples also illustrate how doomed to failure any kind of artificial scarcity policy is. Taxing and contrabanding are about the only successful ways of keeping a commodity scarce or the prices high once the production kinks have been worked out. keep the price too high too long and your product better be addictive, or people will find a cheaper source, or substitute.

>>4339374

I would call oil socially addictive in the sense that once can not live in modern society without its use, just as no industry can do business without it, and no war can be waged without it. In the same sense, food could be described as addictive because once has no choice but to buy it or starve. Even in case where once can not afford food himself, someone must buy it for him.

If the markets on these things are monopolized or specific objects of the type are monopolized, they I see utterly not reason why they should not maintain a high price. Yes, this high price on good that are socially necessary to a population that can not afford that price will cause crises in the form of market crashes, war, general lack to the point of starvation, and huge spikes in crime. Consider, however, that these things exist in "these, our modern time," I see no reason why you are intent on believing that only "taxes" or "contrabanding" can maintain artificial scarcity and high prices.

Even if we took it as a given that a specific industry could not maintain it for every - that some can not do it all of the time - most assuredly everyone industry will find its moment - all can do it some of the time. The examples cited, for example, have been show to recur (if not remain constant).

>>4338854
>the European response was massive expansionism

Most of this can be attributed to economic pursuit. China didn't go around the world creating colonies because they didn't need to.

Had there been a singular European empire with a largely unified culture and stable economy, you would have ended up with mostly the same situation.

>>4337450