/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6768068]

Why are you obsessed with revolutionary rhetoric?

[Anonymous No.6768073]

>>6768068
Personally I'm not, however, there is something appealing and intriguing about revolutionary rhetoric; people don't want to be controlled.

[Anonymous No.6768078]

>>6768068
"revolutionary rhetoric" is something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpTWKKWQ1o

[Anonymous No.6768286]

>>6768068

You're implying that statements that are designed to stimulate people's imagination to consider alternatives to what is currently offered to them (morally and poitically) are not worthy of regard.

You must be completely satsified with absolutely everything in your life. What's your secret?

[Anonymous No.6768300]

>>6768068
>implying
>assumptions
delet this thread
saging reported thread hidden IP filtered
go back to /b/, /tv/, /mu/, /co/, reddit, facebook, tumblr etc etc

[Anonymous No.6768324]

Revolution/Evolution is the language of artistic progression. It's an idea borrowed from the religious tradition. The idea is that by breaking away from the past, we will return to it, accomplishing towards a former greatness.

[Anonymous No.6768328]

>>6768068
Who?

[Anonymous No.6768343]

Whats the difference between the appeal of x rhetoric and the appeal of the corresponding x political ideology that that rhetoric espouses?

[Anonymous No.6768349]

Challenge me; assuming I am currently a left-leaning capitalist, why should I support revolution instead of reform to the system? I understand that early socialist ideas where formed in a time where workers had very few rights, pushing it ideologically to the opposite extreme of capitalism, and this looming threat lead to the creation of the welfare state. To me, this seems like a perfectly good Hegelian synthesis that, in places like the Scandinavian countries, gives the lower classes decent lives and has much less bitching about "muh taxes" from the middle/upper stratum than Burgerstan. Why risk this for a violent revolution that, in practice, has usually lead to the formation of violent authoritarian regimes without any resemblance to actual democratic socialism? What safeguards are there against the vanguard becoming tyrannical like this once power is centralized, and what incentive does the vanguard have to "wither away" into a totally heterarchical society? I haven't heard of it happening, ever. Outside the deadlocked binary politics of the USA (which would be improved by preferential voting), western democracies really don't seem all that futile IMO.

[Anonymous No.6768350]

>>6768343
rhetoric is the same for different ideologies

kennedy "ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country"

hitler "our great welfare system is more than just charity; because we do not say to rich people: please, give something to these poor people! We rather say: German people, help yourself! Everyone should help, no matter how rich or poor he is. Each of us should always think that there is always someone who is in a worse situation than I am, and this one I want to help as my comrade!"

[Anonymous No.6768369]

>>6768068
In b4 OP returns to the thread, ignores all the reasonable objections to his point and accuses everyone in the thread of being reddit-tier, daddy-issue harbouring milquetoasts who don't know anything about the real world.

[Anonymous No.6768373]

>>6768328
A lot of people on this board really hate hegemonormativity

[Anonymous No.6768376]

>>6768324
>art must progress

what a meme

[Anonymous No.6768445]

>>6768369
go the fuck back to reddit faggot

[Anonymous No.6768449]

>>6768349
>left-wing
>capitalist
fuck off liberal

[Anonymous No.6768465]

>>6768449
Yes, that's what I am. Now, can you actually address my points instead of just using liberal as an epithet in the vein of /pol/?

[Anonymous No.6768466]

>>6768449

[Anonymous No.6768507]

>>6768465
Maybe because your ramblings are incoherent?

First of all, why should I try to convince an entrepreneur into communism? The Left doesn't need another bourgeois intellectual. I could explain to you the rudimentary of marxist philosophy (I can give you a list if you want), but you don't want to be convinced of Materialism the philosophy, you want to be convinced of Communism the ideology. If you're truly a capitalist, then any form of argument to convince you to join the radical left would be a moral one; I can't argue that the interests of capital and wage-labour are inherently antagonistic, of which the contradiction is inherent to the social relation of production that defines both classes because that would mean playing against your own self-interests.

Second, you don't jack about dialectics or the marxian conception of society as a mode of production. Dialectics aren't the binary thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis. The idea that welfare states are a 'synthesis' of "socialism" and capitalism is a braindead platitude. What defines capitalism as a system in the most rudimentary, in an abstract sense, is through commodity production, private ownership of the means of production, market economy, capital accumulation, and capital and wage-labour (bourgeois and proletarian); the form of value in capitalist society. All of which welfare states retain. The reason why such a ridiculous idea is peddled so often by stupid liberals is because the "really existing socialisms" were laughable caricatures of socialism. The Cold War is over, and the Eastern Bloc is dead and gone. Assuming the Left will just do the same mistakes is ludicrous because you aren't dealing with the same Left.

Third, the creation of welfare states was a consequence of radical agitation on the hand of the far-left. All great reforms in the history of society had been backed not only by peaceful agitation but through force. For every MLK there is a Malcolm X, for every Ghandi a Bhagat Singh. No Great Deal without the Wobblies and Reds and so on. The idea that liberal democracy is a fair society where everyone has equal say in the political sphere is laughable. We all know that whoever has the most money has the most influence. The ruling class will not grant the People any great concessions unless we aim a gun to their heads and demand capitulation or revolution. Liberals desire a Revolution without a Revolution because they want change without the means to do so.

[Anonymous No.6768511]

Because everyone here is an American undergrad SJW

[Anonymous No.6768512]

>>6768507
Forgot to add, the welfare states of Europe are slowly falling apart because of debt crises, austerity, and rising neo-fascism. Contemporary liberal-democracy is the consequence of a set of historical phenomena that weren't universal, and probably won't be repeated again.

[Anonymous No.6768532]

>>6768068
The world we have lived in is not going to make it much longer. People dream about settling on Mars, creating artificial intelligence, etc, but we don't even know if we are going to survive the 21st century.

Problems like climate change can't be solved by any one disproportionately powerful/wealthy country. It requires better cooperation from states and society, but both almost always act in their immediate self-interest. Add to that things like our nuclear weapons, exploitation via market forces, political disputes, religious/ethnic/national/racial tensions...things aren't looking well.

We have infinite wants in a world with finite resources. This is not sustainable, but surely we knew that would catch up with us sooner or later. Real change, as is implied in revolutionary rhetoric, has to happen if we are to survive and continue as a species. In this sense, revolutionary rhetoric is not just wishful thinking - it is absolutely pragmatic to meet the challenges we will inevitably face.

And maybe we still won't make it, but why just roll over and accept the Earth/the universe killing us off? Why not adapt to our environment? In other words, why not make a conscious effort to evolve - not physically, but mentally.

[Anonymous No.6768537]

Because revolution gives hope to the reactualization of the paradise in illo tempore. From Eliade:

>Yet Marxism preserves a meaning to history. For Marxism, events are not a succession of arbitrary accidents; they exhibit a coherent structure and, above all, they lead to a definite end — final elimination of the terror of history, "salvation." Thus, at the end of the Marxist philosophy of history, lies the age of gold of the archaic eschatologies. In this sense it is correct to say not only that Marx "brought Hegel's philosophy back to earth" but also that he reconfirmed, upon an exclusively human level, the value of the primitive myth of the age of gold, with the difference that he puts the age of gold only at the end of history, instead of putting it at the beginning too. Here, for the militant Marxist, lies the secret of the remedy for the terror of history: just as the contemporaries of a "dark age" consoled themselves for their increasing sufferings by the thought that the aggravation of evil hastens final deliverance, so the militant Marxist of our day reads, in the drama provoked by the pressure of history, a necessary evil, the premonitory symptom of the approaching victory that will put an end forever to all historical "evil."

[Anonymous No.6768561]

>>6768537
Most Communists don't see socialism as a historical stage as an inevitability anymore. Teleological dogmatism mixed with economic determinism, with revolutionaries simply being agent of historical progress. doesn't fit well anymore with Marxists.

[Anonymous No.6768566]

>>6768561
What is the new paradigm?

[Anonymous No.6768580]

>>6768566
The old one, except with a dash of cynicism.

Communists just won't state that they are just agents of an inevitable historical process that culminates in utopia as an excuse to be assholes. It was probably a consequence of people making up ideological excuses for the growing contradictions in the USSR under Stalinism.

[Anonymous No.6768753]

>>6768349
You assume everything you think you know about supposed "authoritarian regimes" formed as a result of socialist revolutions. And then you go on to assume that authoritarianism (in certain circumstances), is undesirable or unnecessary. The thing about being a liberal like yourself is that of course you'll only advocate for reforms. Because reforms are best suited to your own interests and to your own country's interests. There is no revolutionary thought in you because the material conditions of your country and your experience does not warrant a revolutionary necessity. You can go on comfortably with simple reforms and survive just fine. But what of the starving children or the diseased masses of the 3rd world? Should they march and go about with picket signs in hopes that their corrupt governments won't rig another election and let the U.S come in with guns and bombs? Hm...seems to me they'd be better off being violent.

[Anonymous No.6768797]

>>6768580
>The old one, except with a dash of cynicism.
nope, subjectless class struggle based minimalist historical materialism, atleast among educated western marxists, there's stalinist scum looming around still though