commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them] @ commiewithoutorgans @hexbear.net

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3 yr. ago

"indisputable democratic source of knowledge wikipedia (feel free to edit the page if you it can be improved):"

Fair enough on the framing, just meant that I ignored it for the first half, otherwise the reply was not engaging with you up to that point, but I wrote sloppily.

But you did not originally say "bigger and smaller IMPERIALIST" you said capitalist empire. It's a totally different discussion which is where we started speaking past on another. I still don't think that's correct, because I don't think a new analysis like Lenin made of imperialism would find Russia as materially equivalent in form or content of imperialism at all (maybe requiring a new word for the type of imperialism done by the US/NATO like super-imperialism or so. That's why I still hold the point that it's not just "bigger v smaller" that matters, but the Qualitative difference that then arose from the quantity of Imperialism performed/exported capital and coerced labour. They should be understood as 2 phenomenon at this point, not a big and small

You act as if cybernetics supersedes basic philosophical presuppositions. Of course I support cybernetic sciences like any other scientific study of systems, but if you think you're doing this independent of an undergirding philosophy you're entirely wrong.

The only difference in the first paragraph is understanding not just that these are parts of a system, but that in practice they define one another directly through their internal contradictions (which are related to each other). Again, you're just an anti-hegelian who thinks you're above defining your own metaphysics.

I also am entirely unconvinced you read either of those articles in their entirety

But I'm not going to convince you here, and my replying is only to you at this point, nobody else will read. So hopefully you read those and try to grasp the underlying philosophy, but I'm out

There is an inherent contradiction to defining intellectual either as individual or collective, but you're not a Hegelian or a marxist so that's why Im just done with the Convo, it's not interesting because we're not gonna get past that

Because its not relevant. It HAPPENS to be the case now, but it's in no way a defining feature. Sure, I'm absolutely fine with that detail being described so, because it's true. But you minimized the analysis to that. "Framing" is ambiguous and I'm ignoring that, I guess you could call it framing, but your framing is irrelevant to my analysis

Only replying to the first paragraph: you're doing the exact thing I'm describing by defining "intellectual" in an individualized way (you say our, but you're defining it as each individual, not understanding its basis in the collective).

I'm not gonna talk any more because you're not really saying much interesting. You're just defining everything as opposites and not seeing the dialectic between it, but then we're getting to an ages old argument that just results in me saying 'read Hegel' and that's it

One more point here, made clearly by Marx, is that understanding how systems shape humans both as individuals and as a society is not de-humanising, it's possibly the most humanising something can be. To be human is to be shaped entirely by your environment and your reactions to it simultaneously, and mass psychology is how we come to have anything remotely psychological to be. It's finding how to live as both a human individual and a human who partakes in, creates, or grows away from mass psychologies. This misunderstanding is exactly Nietzsche hate for the masses. He attempted to understand HIMSELF as not human in this way and create a philosophy around it, while he himself was calling back to individual, anti-change philosophies from the Greeks who did the same (Plato as opposed to Aristotle)

No. Both are bourgeois states and yes I prefer the weaker one winning in this case, but the framing of "big vs small" is very ignorant of any reason to support something critically

I'm not sure what your intention is with this comment if I'm being honest but it just seems like a broad defense of Nietzsche based in misunderstanding the claims of Losurdo, honestly. Nietzsches obsession with the individual in that way and unwillingness to accept change outside of growing toward his übermensch are a basis for the most anti-communist philosophy.

If I'm honest, I just doubt you've really read Nietzsche as deeply as Losurdo

I would avoid saying "lesser evil" for critical support cases, because revolutionary defeatism exists for lesser evil situations where nothing is progressing against the primary contradiction. It's more a recognition that a shitty thing can be progressive/forward moving relative to its opposition. Russia winning/getting a peace deal with Donbas and Crimea out of Ukraine gets us much closer to ending global imperialism than Ukraine getting it's land back or worse.

https://redsails.org/kriegsideologie/ https://redsails.org/losurdo-und-telepolis/

I spam redsails but it's such a convenient site. I read The Gay Science as one of my first philosophy books, but I completely turned around because of Losurdo

A few things to keep in mind in addition to our comrade's reply:

1. I've never met or talked online with any tankie who is happy with the fact that the "authoritarian oppression" is necessary. We often just take the position of Marx's quote "we won't make excuses for the terror." You don't have to want it, but because it's necessary according to history and theory, we don't bother with the whole game of waiting for the perfect excuse, because then it's often too late for a movement.
2. The goal of tankies is to also reach that world of no necessary oppression and liberation from it for all through dialectical progression, however long and arduous that task is. We just try to be technical, tactical, and strategic about it. It can seem callous, but it's a mistake to think we can stay on the emotional/values-only plane of thought while attempting large scale socio-economic changes because the enemies of those changes have a system behind them which fulfills all these tasks with low effort.
3. When we say authoritarianism is meaningless, we mean that the dictionary definition you gave is all encompassing at state-level analyses, rendering it meaningless for distinctions. There is no power which doesn't fulfill all of those conditions (even just a low-level manager performs the contents of that definition, despite the form it takes being small scale. Like "reductions of the rule of law" can be as simple as asking you to do tasks on outside of your contract). The only difference is a vibe created in the mind of the user of the term.
4. The end of this authority at societal scale is communism. Countries sometimes called communist are better called socialist countries led by communists or something. The whole discussion is rendered confusing by mistaking a process/movement for some definitional standard. No socialist country is socialist for meeting definitions/conditions; they are socialist because they recognize and continue the process to progression to communism. See point 2 for the strategy which countries led by communists are doing.

Come talk with us, we have interesting ideas and people

You replied to someone from hexbear at the top of this chain. Find them then claim they found you. Be serious or PPB

Left-ish coalition and choosing the right side of the party for leadership is a tradition in Liberalism. He also will do nothing to push for any real changes for the environment globally, just maybe some very Dutch specific regulations that have almost no impact. Not a doom-post, though, because we can work to radicalize more people to the left from ir

Then what are yours? We can work from there if you'd prefer: I'm familiar with lots of philosophers of lots of traditions who've talked about such

Edit to add: something a lot of Marxists understand in relation to 'we have different definitions" as an attempt to avoid the discussion about the real material thing. Even if definitions are different, we both are attempting to articulate about SOMETHING. That thing doesn't change when the word used for it does. I'm describing very real phenomenon, and I'm sure you have a phenomenon in your head too. We can discuss those, and it doesn't matter what they're called. Otherwise, this just ends all discussion with both able to walk away feeling that they're right while there is still likely a huge contradiction between the phenomenon that needs explored

Sorry may seem like I avoided a lot for what you said, but i more just didn't actually disagree and realized our only real disagreement was one of the first things I said days ago lol

Ok so I think we just started at different reasons for beginning the analyses, because I'm not in disagreement with anything you said basically anywhere. My point from the beginning (that China has determined that it must strategically act as it is) begins already at the assumption that our Chinese comrades are making the analyses that are needed to reach that conclusion. This assumption is not based in any sort of unpenetrable philosophical claim, as you pointed out well. But I think there is enough evidence for it to be worth assuming for strategic purposes. Going into a deep discussion about whether they are correct at the most basic level of analysis is maybe too far for me to try at the moment as a learner of mandarin also, but reading works of Chinese comrades, I have trust that their analysis of their own conditions is better than mine. I don't disagree about how we should assess that for our own movements, and honestly think we should be skeptical of the support of Israel for exactly those reasons, I just don't find it fruitful to use it as a "GOTCHA" to China about universal values, because that is most often based in having a distrust which I find as unfounded as blind trust (the distrust that China is off of the socialist path because it trades with reactionaries/settler colonists).

I was speaking muchhhh more colloquially everywhere than I think you realized, which seems to have added to difficulties. Should do better at that

My point at the beginning about the interests being represented is a sort of philosophical underpinning, though, where we might disagree. I do see the trend of interests of proletarians overtime aligning within a set of conditions and aligning towards socialism. When mistakes are made among the masses, we can be critical, but even those mistakes will be overtaken by advances and fixed by the same process as long as the class's interests are represented. Here I am making a more philosophical stake in the ground, and I do think that, if the Chinese proles are wanting to trade with everyone and not go to war with anyone, that it might not be the fastest path to communism but it will eventually reach there faster than doing the bidding of the capitalists. (Here I am making an anti-accelerationist claim for places which have already seen a revolution that's been upheld). Here we may disagree still and I'd enjoy reading your thoughts.

I disagree with this. Not with Engels, but that this is really an answer to the above question. In fact, basically the only mention of anything relevant to this specific question is Engels claiming that they are kinda opposites in that democracy requires the subordination of the minority to the majority in a democratic vote. It is the basis for much understanding of authority in general for Marxists in a tactical sense, but we should legitimately stop using it as the end of all discussion about the concept itself and how it relates to others. Even on hexbear we've got anarchists who disagree despite having read Engels.

To add on here, the fact that liberalism is a bankrupt ideology which is fully represented by the US including its worst aspects can really not be shown in a comment in such a thread. Domenico Losurdo, in one of my favorite books ever, spends hundreds of pages detailing this in "Liberalism: A Counter History."

A much more easily digested but still incomplete essay can be found here: https://redsails.org/between-liberty-and-slavery/