carl_marks[use name] @ carl_marks_1312 @lemmy.ml

comrade/them

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2 yr. ago

Say, cooks. They say: “These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads”. Botanists say “These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes”.

Ok I can see where the problem is. You don't know how narrowing and widening works.

Fruit in fruit salads describes the salad. It's the qualifier. The proper application would be:

Botanist says:" These things are fruits. We have tomatoes, etc. I can make fruit salad". Cooks ways:"A fruit salad is a type of salad. I have noodles I can make noodle salad. I use a wider definition of salad which encompasses fruit salads, noodle salads and a bunch of others"

Suppose you and your comrades are are at a party conference in another city, and, in a wild bout of anti-authoritarianism, you’re talking among yourselves which restaurant to go to instead of following party orders. Maybe it’s just an oversight, the responsible buerocrat didn’t do their job. Anyway the obstacle is not insurmountable, the choice is not very contentious, some people have preference, one’s a vegan, but in the end you all agree that Mexican is a perfectly fine choice. Then, out of nowhere, a KGB agent appears saying “Now it would be a shame if someone changed their mind about eating Mexican and would need to be sent to Gulag, would it, after all, we can’t have a decision without subsequent imposition of authority”.

Basically you're arguing against the state, which we sure both want. The abolishion of class society, meaning one class is not subjugating it's will on another, be it capitalist or a socialist state bureaucrats.

I think that without a state you cannot abolish the existing forces that give rise to class society as it's not a even playing field between labour and capital. You need a form of authority to make the reorganization of political economy possible.

The delegate is taken just as serious as the council they represent. They are, after all, the representative of that council. If you ignore what the delegate says, you’re ignoring what the council says. But the authority is that of the council, not of the delegate.

authority is that of the council

authority

How are you not aware of what you're saying? Do you want me to do an anarchist caricature of going to the restaurant like you did in your example? Only the proper application would be of the building the restaurant and how noone likes to do the actual work of building it as everyone is free not to do it. There's no authority. If you tell me that the hunger is the authority im going to laugh

You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?

Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.

One example doesn’t even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.

Then noone is required to take the delegate serious. The delegate enjoys no authority and there's no organization happening as everybody is free to do whatever th fuck they want.

holding up a stone thing”: You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it.

Only when you take it in in bad faith, because we're talking about people and not inanimate objects (stones). The definition of anarchists is just another social construct that basically describes authority..

He's proving the existence of authority (with a definition thats wide/encompasses the libertarian framework).

Are you dense?

The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework.

He's not misunderstanding what constitutes authority. He is giving a broad definition and proves the existence of authority after abolition of capitalism by referring to the organization of labour.

minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?

Because the "obvious points" are made with strawmen (see comments above)

Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise

What no theory does to a mf

That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good.

granted authority

authority

?

This is not a mere “changing of names”, the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn’t have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they’re supposed to do. That’s your brain on hierarchy.

So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know? How is that supposed to work? Who decides the level of authority? Another authority?

a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him

Literally changing the name of "authority" to "granted authority". You only changed the name of things. Engels is making the argument on the materiality of authority. That even if the authority is granted, it's an authority. He is referring to whatever makes the organization happen as authority (even when granted).

And says that without this (authority) organization is impossible. Which makes sense.

b) authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.

pls expand

First time I read it I couldn't believe how short and easy read it is, and what a powerful argument Engels is making

On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois

Are you really saying "Engels was bourgeois, therefore the argument he's making is bourgeois"? lol

“All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.

Tell me how you haven't read it even more. Because he's actually concluding:

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

05:22 Acknowledges that argument that Engels is making is that "anything is authoritarian"

05:28 Acknowledges that Engels has a very broad definition of "authority"

06:20 Builds a strawman by giving a context "Engels existed around the time of the industrial revolution", reading the paragraph about steam boats, etc. and is 0740 using it to suddenly drastically narrows the definition of Engels down to mean "technological development is authoritarian".

10:15 At 10:45 correctly explains the point that Engels is making and copes hard with the fact that Engels indeed questions the entire political theoretical understanding of authority lol

12:00 correctly understands that the point is that "Anti-Authoritarians want to change society" and if Engels can prove that organization without authority is impossible, it will mean that he will be able to show this deep contradiction

13:55 He builds another strawman by claiming that Engel's argument is "Steam is an authority" and not the actual argument that the organization of labour inheretly requires authority and in a society without capitalism the production process would take authorties place (i.e Steam)

14:50 Another strawman where he claims that "hunger would be authority" in an ancient hunting times, instead of the organization of how the hunt would take place

This is so dumb i don't want to continue and its so long wtf Pure ideology, that video was such a waste of time

All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?

Is it possible to have organisation without authority?

On Authority - F. Engels, 1872

1. That number is not adjusted for inflation
2. The Bundesbank says that Germany is already likely in a recession
3. GDP is not the only measure of the economy. In fact it's a really bad one

Ok let me rephrase, it's funny that you recognize that Brandon is not "a good person" but still are willing to look past his flaws, but aren't willing to do so for Stalin?

On a serious note: I hope you and your partner will be fine and I mean it. I just doubt that it will be significantly different under Biden than Trump (see caged children on the Mexican border. Biden continues trump's policy just more "professionally" for a lack of a better word)

There's Marxists today is inside and outside of China recognizing that the US is a threat to China and that the US is supporting a genocide in Palestine. China should just go ahead and nuke the US now, otherwise they are helping the US to commit and support it's atrocities, right?

Funny how you ask for critical support for Brandon, but are unable to do so for Stalin

Stalin was a product of his time, which (similar to today) was full of homophobia.

Armchair general here telling us what should've been done.

He also shouldn’t have outlawed homosexuality in Russia, but I think you and I already agree on that.

Yes I do agree that was indeed a shit move.

With enough time the SU would've eventually gotten there. Here I point to Cuba that similarly had reactionary views on LGBT issues in the past and have the world wide most progressive protections for LGBT people.

Joseph Stalin fought the Nazis on the battlefield, but he was their ally in the cause of bigotry and hate.

Stopping the Holocaust means that Stalin was a bigot and was hateful. Please get a grip.

The Institute of Sex Research was burned down in 1933.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft

That was in Germany. How is Stalin responsible for that?

Had something been done to prevent the rise of the Nazis

Stalin famously siding with the Nazis her and the Soviets not crushing them in WW2

You're comparing apples and oranges

I too like to compare leaders from two different time periods and apply the same standard. When was stonewall? How is the LGBT community treated in the US today? Brandon just watching as chuds agitate against LGBT community and does nothing

No, which is why I have a default position of suspicion towards the words of my own officials. Because they’re people, just like me, no better, no worse. They can make mistakes, exercise poor judgement, change their minds, etc etc.

That is not dialectical thought. While I agree that individual politicians could change their mind, it's not how nation states operate. Nations have interests. The individual decision making of a politician stays in bounds of the interest, otherwise they get replaced. You seem to see history as an aglomeration of decisions of individuals aka great man. I don't subscribe to great man theory/your ideology.

Not just national power, but expanding national power over people who were not part of your nation.

Any state uses it's instruments of power to expand their influence and follow their interests. When they open embassy in another country why are they doing it? When their state media is broadcastingy why are they doing it? When they curb other state media l, why are they doing it? Recognizing another region? It's to expand their interests and influence..

It seem to me that you're a no nations no borders type?