Juice @ Juice @midwest.social

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623

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1 yr. ago

Exactly the point I was trying to make

Healthcare please

I didn't mean any disrespect. Just trying to provide some context to the "everyone who disagrees with me is a Russian bot" crowd. In my experience most people who subscribe to radical politics are younger, since I'm twice the age as probably half of the people I organize with, but I do have a few comrades and fellow travellers in the 50+ demo. However I usually don't use the term "kid", preferring the less dismissive " young person" but I guess old habits die hard. I'll go back and make an edit

Did you check their post history beforehand? If not you may want to reassess your own perspective. Even if you are correct, there is nothing wrong with what I said except the bit about being a kid young person. The user is def putting work in, but there are people who are upset at the Democrats, and voice those negative opinions more. You probably don't have many IRL political discussions if you don't think real people can over emphasize and fixate on certain political forces regardless of what is actually going on. There is a severe lack of political education, and this is one of the side effects; but it doesn't occur to you to educate.

If the Democrats fuck this up and lose to Trump, as much as certain people will want to blame it on Russian bots, no small part of that outcome will be a consequence of running a severely impaired incumbent against the existential danger of a second Trump term. And if that happens, the Democrats are done. And as much as I'd like to see the progressive wing of the Democrats form a legitimate worker's party that could mobilize many disaffected and alienated voters, it won't be worth it if they all end up getting jailed or murdered by the MAGA neo-freicorps.

Regardless, the war on information is going to end up hurting working people. People are tired of getting vote shamed 24/7, and being brow-beaten to ignore their apprehension. If liberals engaged with criticism and educated voters instead of shutting down all dissent with paranoid conspiracy theories (even if they are partly true), then people wouldn't be driven to the kind of echo chambers where these opinions thrive.

More victims of wokeness, smh /s

Hey friend, in case you haven't figured it out yet, the Democrat's whole "war on disinformation" thing that is really just a way to suppress views they don't like, including left/progressive views, is going to backfire in a major way. If you actually care about your political project you may want to find a way to defend it that doesn't involve calling everyone you disagree with a "bot".

If you really believe that the person you are responding to is a bot, they are probably just a young person who subscribes to left wing meme pages that make these kind of jokes all the time. Dehumanizing your political enemies is a tendency of the worst political movements, not the most just. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if some of the hundreds of millions of campaign dollars being spent to reelect Biden were being spent on "social media consultants" who go in progressive liberal spaces such as Lemmy, calling people with left-critical views "bots"; not saying it is definitely happening, but there is a ton of precedent.

Yeah I read WL&C after a failed attempt at reading Capital (I had never read much Marx other than the manifesto at that point) and realized I needed to understand his economics first, as I felt completely out of my depth. Turns out reading Capital v1, the first few chapters are just like that! But I'm glad I read WL&C, like you said its short and gave me something to chew on for a year or so before diving back into the big book.

I edited my comment above about CotGP. All solid recommendations, for exactly the reasons you state.

People should read Value Price and Profit because Marx proved that inflation is just companies raising prices, thoroughly debunks all the lies about causes of inflation that economists have been using to protect profits since before even his time.

All solid suggestions.

Wrt critique of the Gotha programme, it's interesting to me that Marx was such a critic of Lassalle, so much so that Engels actually apologized for Marx's harsh criticisms of the social democrat. Marx had called Lassalle a would be petty dictator or something like that. Except he was right, Lassalle was secretly plotting with von Bismarck on a plan to unify Germany under a bourgeois led social democracy, which von Bismarck could later seize absolute control over. Marx didn't know about this conspiracy, he just reasoned it out.

I'm not a fan of Stalin, but his interview with H.G. Wells is hilarious.

What have you read of Engels? Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is one of my favorites. Other than some of his letters, forewords, and some essays, I've been really wanting to read The Conditions of the Working Class in England, since it's referenced in Capital; and I think I have something else saved by him on my Kobo, can't think of it ATM. I think Engels is really easy to grasp; Marx is a phenomenal writer but unless you're in the mood to read about 1. Economics 2. Dense academic history or 3. A blistering criticism of some "Young Hegelian" scholar like Feuerbach or Bruno Bauer its hard to find something of his to just easy-read. The Manifesto is pretty accessible but it was mostly written by Engels, the two men were really one author most of the time, and I've read the manifesto several times and while its good its not my favorite work.

Sorry for coming off confrontational, but you picked two very good and influential thinkers to target. You could have said "don't just read Malcolm Gladwell and Sam Harris" or "Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro," who are all hacks, but very popular authors; whereas Marx and Engels have fallen out of fashion. It's conspicuous, is all.

Geez the downvote brigade is out in full force

How does one make a point using an example they know nothing about? To be clear, I agree with you, but as someone who has read a fair amount of M&E and know a ton of people who have read M&E, they are among the top 1% of readers in terms of sheer volume, but also curiosity and intellectual honesty.

Combined with the fact that the vast majority of Marx and Engels was social science, not ideological polemic, I get the impression that you are giving advice that you haven't actually taken. Which would be fine, we are all contradictory beings to some extent. But it does beg the question.

And if you had read them, then I would want to know your insights on what you had read

Have you read Marx or Engels? What have you read?

Why are we assuming we don't have free will? We do. Its not total freedom, our freedom is contingent on existing circumstances, but hard determinism is easily disprovable.

The idea that there is no free will is a mind fuck that keeps you from questioning your reality. You might as well ask, "assuming the earth is flat, why does the stick disappear on the horizon?"

Sorry to be a soulsborne weeb but I have something like 1500 hours in bloodborne and I still pick it up from time to time

The commons

I see. Well, i hope we never meet in person cuz this is just the way I tell jokes, and I'm always half joking. Watching you get irritated would probably only encourage me to keep doing it too

Is this an actual question or are you being indignant? If you have actual questions can you please try to articulate them? If I try and answer you without knowing what questions you are asking, we are more likely to get frustrated.

Hopefully you aren't just being indignant.

They're...from Europe.