Marxist thought

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:13 PM, cyanobacteria said:

the typical chinese person doesnt give a shit about whether they can go to bandcamp, they want food water shelter and education. they cant even read english.  yes,  china is not a paradise for westerners

You're still not explaining why government censorship is some how more free speech than western free access.

  On 5/3/2021 at 10:52 PM, prdctvsm said:

The Mirror of Production (French: Le Miroir de la production) is a 1973 book by Jean Baudrillard. It is a systematic critique of Marxism. Baudrillard's thesis is that Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism is too rooted in assumptions and values of political economy to provide a framework for radical action. The fault of Marxism is in prioritizing the very concepts that founded capital, e.g. necessity, value, and labor. 

For Baudrillard, Marx did not transcend political economy but merely saw its reverse or its “mirror” side. Marxism merely strengthens political economy’s basic propositions, in particular the idea that self-creation is performed through productive, non-alienated labor. In Baudrillard’s words, “[Marxism] convinces men that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power.” Baudrillard proposes to liberate workers from their "labor value" and think in terms other than production.

jean baudrillard - 'the mirror of production' 1973.pdf

 

Expand  

Thanks for linking that. Baudrillard is one I always mean to read more of.

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:16 PM, zkom said:

You're still not explaining why government censorship is some how more free speech than western free access.

your conception of free speech is westernized, china's is oriented towards maintaining its state, the state which ostensibly is a dictatorship of the proletariat aiming to meet the needs of the vast majority of the population who doesn't care about the types of speech being restricted by the firewall, and achieve socialism then communism.  they do not want a USSR v2

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:18 PM, cyanobacteria said:

your conception of free speech is westernized, china's is oriented towards maintaining its state, the state which ostensibly is a dictatorship of the proletariat aiming to meet the needs of the vast majority of the population who doesn't care about the types of speech being restricted by the firewall.  they do not want a USSR v2

So free speech as in you're free to say what you want and criticize government is just a western way of thinking about free speech and government censorship is the real way. Ok. I can see how the socialist states turn into authoritarian hellholes with people rationalizing things like this. War is peace, censorship is free speech and all the other newspeak.

By the way Chinese Wikipedia has more than 1 million articles, but I guess the dumb Chinese proletariat is too stupid and too busy surviving to ever want to access that information.

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:26 PM, zkom said:

So free speech as in you're free to say what you want and criticize government is just a western way of thinking about free speech and government censorship is the real way. Ok. I can see how the socialist states turn into authoritarian hellholes with people rationalizing things like this. War is peace, censorship is free speech and all the other newspeak.

By the way Chinese Wikipedia has more than 1 million articles, but I guess the dumb Chinese proletariat is too stupid and too busy surviving to ever want to access that information.

their have their own wikipedia equivalent, why would they want ours? ours is garbage if you havent noticed

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:18 PM, cyanobacteria said:

the state which ostensibly is a dictatorship of the proletariat aiming to meet the needs of the vast majority of the population who doesn't care about the types of speech being restricted by the firewall

Cut & dried then. They’re just being good patriots. They must be happy to have you as a spokesperson.

Possibly the most absurd post itt so far. And from a Stasi angle

Humanityhood!

  On 5/3/2021 at 10:52 PM, prdctvsm said:

The Mirror of Production (French: Le Miroir de la production) is a 1973 book by Jean Baudrillard. It is a systematic critique of Marxism. Baudrillard's thesis is that Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism is too rooted in assumptions and values of political economy to provide a framework for radical action. The fault of Marxism is in prioritizing the very concepts that founded capital, e.g. necessity, value, and labor. 

For Baudrillard, Marx did not transcend political economy but merely saw its reverse or its “mirror” side. Marxism merely strengthens political economy’s basic propositions, in particular the idea that self-creation is performed through productive, non-alienated labor. In Baudrillard’s words, “[Marxism] convinces men that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power.” Baudrillard proposes to liberate workers from their "labor value" and think in terms other than production.

jean baudrillard - 'the mirror of production' 1973.pdf

 

Expand  

i have not read the whole thing, it sounds interesting i cant help but feel that it is idealist and exiting the material reality of the proletariat.  the majority of commodity production is so simple and understandable in both its necessity to life itself and the act of production that this recharacterization of captal as what i read to be capital's harnessing of the semiotic nature of production and its relation to daily life seems to apply moreso to highly advanced societies bordering into decadent technological consumer behavior moreso than the majority of people in the world.  the hijacking of the semiotic value of commodities and commodity production however does seem like a very useful way of framing the struggle inherent to exiting capitalism and creating dual power in the form of off-grid modes of living and off-grid support networks for the sidestepping of the dominant society and outgrowth of a new one which people can migrate to.  though i have once again not read the whole thing

i kinda like the idea of a state maintaining firm clamps on the media & potential agitators if life within that state is generally good

  On 5/4/2021 at 1:20 AM, Cryptowen said:

i kinda like the idea of a state maintaining firm clamps on the media & potential agitators if life within that state is generally good

  Reveal hidden contents

that last part is the kicker tho

 

Expand  

id clarify to say "better than before" and add "increasing at a rate faster than what would be expected under other systems" and "approaching communism".  good is relative.

  On 5/4/2021 at 1:30 AM, cyanobacteria said:

good is relative.

Yeah I also recognize that there's this imulsive tendency to frame these things in terms of a western pluralistic worldview. ie, to say "well people need to be able to voice their opinions in order to be happy". But really that's not true. It's just part of our particular ideology here in the west.

Now of course the obvious pushback to this is that freedom of the press is supposed to be about more than just voicing opinions. It's supposed to be about highlighting corruption, bringing attention to human rights violations etc etc. On the one hand those all sounds like good things to have. On the other hand the press, like any other human institution, can itself become corrupt//no longer maintain the stated function of looking out for "objective" public interest. still don't have firm conclusions on this

  On 5/3/2021 at 10:52 PM, prdctvsm said:

The Mirror of Production (French: Le Miroir de la production) is a 1973 book by Jean Baudrillard. It is a systematic critique of Marxism. Baudrillard's thesis is that Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism is too rooted in assumptions and values of political economy to provide a framework for radical action. The fault of Marxism is in prioritizing the very concepts that founded capital, e.g. necessity, value, and labor. 

For Baudrillard, Marx did not transcend political economy but merely saw its reverse or its “mirror” side. Marxism merely strengthens political economy’s basic propositions, in particular the idea that self-creation is performed through productive, non-alienated labor. In Baudrillard’s words, “[Marxism] convinces men that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power.” Baudrillard proposes to liberate workers from their "labor value" and think in terms other than production.

jean baudrillard - 'the mirror of production' 1973.pdf

 

Expand  

i've been giving this some more shower thought had a chain of thoughts of sorts based on my skimming of this earlier in the day.  indeed the hijacking of the semiotic structure of the greater reality is itself one component of capitalist hegemony independent entirely from pedagogical indoctrination of theoretical capitalist ideology.  it is soaked in naturally the same way language is soaked in from the ambient environment.  the subconscious signalling mechanisms of the greater semiotic framework of human organization themselves render the workers, the drivers of all of history and all advancement, and performers of all labor, to themselves be the reproducers of capitalism.  just as the wizard of oz wishes nobody to peek behind the curtain, the proportion difference between proletarians and bourgeoisie and the semiotic nouveau magic which upon us the bourgeoisie lays their framework represents something akin to the creation of a self reproducing pattern found in the study of cellular automatons or other pseudo-biological computational processes, one great example being the semiotic mechanism of the eusociality of ant colonies, i.e. their ground based persistent pheremone communication system known as stigmergy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy] the raw computational nature of which is exposed by "ant mills" or "death spirals" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill].  similarly we find ourselves in patterns of self reproducing behavior generated, maintained, and modulated by the semiotic structure of the society in which we find ourselves.  in the stairwells of grand cathedrals you often find raw cement steps and half painted walls.  similarly in the metaphorical back rooms of capitalism you find unlabelled, semiotically outcast regions of physical space, those claimed by the Maoists, and potentially ideological and social space. if those could be harnessed through alternative semiotic signalling mechanisms to assist in the redefining of the very words essential to the reproduction of capitalism, it could aid in the creation of socialism.  a cybernetic signalling mechanism that workers can use to guide themselves like a pheremone trail out of capitalism and into a dual power structure.  i will stop here

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:28 PM, cyanobacteria said:

their have their own wikipedia equivalent, why would they want ours? ours is garbage if you havent noticed

  On 5/4/2021 at 7:06 AM, cyanobacteria said:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy] the raw computational nature of which is exposed by "ant mills" or "death spirals" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill]. 

Excuse me but are you perhaps linking to garbage where the proletariat shouldn't have an access into, comrade?

  On 5/3/2021 at 11:31 PM, cwmbrancity said:

Cut & dried then. They’re just being good patriots. They must be happy to have you as a spokesperson.

Yeah, he really is the biggest ass licker of dictators and oppressive authoritarian regimes in this forum. Doing his work straight from the comforts of his own western home with the western privileges like free speech while denying the same from the people who actually live under these regimes.

  On 5/4/2021 at 8:10 AM, zkom said:

Yeah, he really is the biggest ass licker of dictators and oppressive authoritarian regimes in this forum. Doing his work straight from the comforts of his own western home with the western privileges like free speech while denying the same from the people who actually live under these regimes.

yes western comforts such as free speech.  free speech so deep you can't even call your boss a dumbass without becoming homeless

  On 5/4/2021 at 8:50 AM, cyanobacteria said:

yes western comforts such as free speech.  free speech so deep you can't even call your boss a dumbass without becoming homeless

Are you saying nothing bad would happen in China if you call your boss dumbass?

I actually argue with the company CEO and CTO all the time without problems. Last week, on May Day eve by chance, I witnessed a worker calling one of her company's stock owners the worst human she's met without repercussions. But that's because we actually have worker's rights where I live and you can't fire or punish people for voicing opinions, unlike say in US or China. Funny how that is still possible with one of the highest freedom of speech indices while having a democratic and capitalist society.

  On 5/4/2021 at 9:07 AM, zkom said:

Are you saying nothing bad would happen in China if you call your boss dumbass?

I actually argue with the company CEO and CTO all the time without problems. Last week, on May Day eve by chance, I witnessed a worker calling one of her company's stock owners the worst human she's met without repercussions. But that's because we actually have worker's rights where I live and you can't fire or punish people for voicing opinions, unlike say in US or China. Funny how that is still possible with one of the highest freedom of speech indices while having a democratic and capitalist society.

let's see what would happen to whatever capitalist country you live in if the US or whatever colonial empire you're nearest to balkanized

  On 5/4/2021 at 9:08 AM, cyanobacteria said:

let's see what would happen to whatever capitalist country you live in if the US or whatever colonial empire you're nearest to balkanized

You mean like the former Soviet Union and current Russia Federation that has 30 times the population and with who we have a 1340km long border? The Soviet Union that fell a part late last century?

  On 5/4/2021 at 9:22 AM, zkom said:

You mean like the former Soviet Union and current Russia Federation that has 30 times the population and with who we have a 1340km long border? The Soviet Union that fell a part late last century?

not sure how you think I know how you live.  after all, you claim to be nomadic on your ava.  and what matters is economic ties moreso than geographic proximity. if you live in a former soviet state then most likely the quality of life decreased significantly after the USSR was illegal dismantled through a capitalist coup

  On 5/4/2021 at 9:33 AM, cyanobacteria said:

not sure how you think I know how you live.  after all, you claim to be nomadic on your ava.  and what matters is economic ties moreso than geographic proximity. if you live in a former soviet state then most likely the quality of life decreased significantly after the USSR was illegal dismantled through a capitalist coup

Luckily I don't live in a former Soviet Union state. We had two wars about that and remained independent with much better quality of life than across the border in Soviet Union.

  On 5/4/2021 at 9:36 AM, zkom said:

Luckily I don't live in a former Soviet Union state. We had two wars about that and remained independent with much better quality of life than across the border in Soviet Union.

then my point stands.  let's see how your quality of life would be affected if all colonial resource extraction was immediately stopped by your most closely economically tied ally

  On 5/4/2021 at 9:39 AM, cyanobacteria said:

then my point stands.  let's see how your quality of life would be affected if all colonial resource extraction was immediately stopped by your most closely economically tied ally

I'll be holding my breath and waiting here.

So let's stick together! Let's not let the elites divide us on the basis of race or gender or religion or nationality. We're all working stiffs, so let's work together to improve our horrible conditions!

Working-class solidarity! No borders! No nations! One big happy family of workers!

And yes, I understand that this is probably a hopelessly idealistic view. Maybe Marx was right when he said that the "working class is revolutionary or it is nothing." Maybe he was right about all that "proletarian socialism" stuff. So maybe we should just forget this whole idea of working-class unity and go join one of those Maoist uprisings in Nepal or something like that?
 

a society where everyone acts like they are posting on watmm would truly be an ideal society

*stoner in a hemp sweater on a beat up old couch in a garage playing wario ware on his gameboy advance sp in 2004 voice* man, what if, like, they did authoritarianism but instead of bein dicks they just, like, told everybody to fuckin chill?