Marxist thought

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:49 PM, cyanobacteria said:

i gave you a nuanced answer involving many facets of the word democracy in marxism and modern usage of the term, i dont know how you can make such a statement when it's in fact your statements that are lacking nuance and accuracy

It has a concrete definition. Your philosophizing doesn't change that.

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:31 PM, cyanobacteria said:

definitely not, it's a vague word with many ways of interpreting it.  its meaning has been debated since the ancient greeks

yeah personally i'd describe "democracy" as a methodology for deciding on collective acts, which can vary substantially in form depending on the size of the collective, the culture, the historical era etc.  There could be distinctly non-democratic aspects in a democratic system (ie the public votes that they want something, but a select individual or group ultimately determines how to go about executing the process), and vague democratic aspects in non-democratic systems (an autocrat might still pay attention to the general sentiment of the region he rules over, in order to reduce the possibility of violent revolt). also there is the eternal question of how exactly the individual comes to decide "what they want", to what degree they are influenced by macro level forces like propaganda, the media, or charismatic political figures

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:53 PM, Braintree said:

It has a concrete definition. Your philosophizing doesn't change that.

maybe it would if enough people voted on it

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:53 PM, Cryptowen said:

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:53 PM, Braintree said:

It has a concrete definition. Your philosophizing doesn't change that.

maybe it would if enough people voted on it

It does though. No need for a vote.

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:53 PM, Braintree said:

It has a concrete definition.

Socialism doesn’t have a concrete definition. Every link I’ve shown you describes that. You’ve shown nothing except your opinion, and links that say that democracy is possible, but not a necessary condition. 

  On 5/8/2021 at 11:54 PM, chenGOD said:

Socialism doesn’t have a concrete definition. Every link I’ve shown you describes that. You’ve shown nothing except your opinion, and links that say that democracy is possible, but not a necessary condition. 

your provided links don't provide evidence that there can be a socialism which is not democratic.  being a democratic system is different from adhering to past popular conceptions of democracy, in this case bourgeois electoral representative democracy in most places in the world, or whatever method of democracy the bourgeois allows the proletariat to take part in.

https://endnotes.org.uk/file_hosting/EN5_The_Passion_of_Communism.pdf

Reading some Jacques Camatte exerpts this evening (page 12 in this pdf where it starts). he's good, i dig it - reminds me of Kondylis but much easier to parse the lingo

  On 5/8/2021 at 11:54 PM, chenGOD said:

Socialism doesn’t have a concrete definition. Every link I’ve shown you describes that. You’ve shown nothing except your opinion, and links that say that democracy is possible, but not a necessary condition. 

Okay dude. You are obviously not interested in looking at the material objectively. I have shown sufficient evidence to support my claims. Your statements in this thread have been largely either irrelevant or specious at best. You have continued to try to change the debate to consider philosophical ideas over agreed upon definitions. You are arguing in bad faith and I'm sick of it.

Good luck arguing about whatever the fuck you think is tangentially related to whatever topic rears its stupid head.

/last post

How direct is the democracy in our technocommunist paradise going to be. Will we be voting on the blockchain about every aspect of the means of production of everything a society needs to function?

Or will we be allocating resources to people with expertise in the production of xyz. (Skirting close to representative democracy) And who is framing the questions on which we’re going to vote?

  On 5/9/2021 at 1:57 AM, Braintree said:

You are obviously not interested in looking at the material objectively. I have shown sufficient evidence to support my claims.

I would say exactly the same.  Cheerio. 

  On 5/9/2021 at 1:58 AM, custom knob said:

How direct is the democracy in our technocommunist paradise going to be. Will we be voting on the blockchain about every aspect of the means of production of everything a society needs to function?

Or will we be allocating resources to people with expertise in the production of xyz. (Skirting close to representative democracy) And who is framing the questions on which we’re going to vote?

these are the types of questions that are far, far, far more interesting to me than pseudo-intellectual babble and Marx/etc. references. 

do what works that's the best fit (accomplishes the most good within the framework of where the society is and can support) and let the collegiate types worry about defining it afterwards.

  On 5/9/2021 at 1:58 AM, custom knob said:

How direct is the democracy in our technocommunist paradise going to be. Will we be voting on the blockchain about every aspect of the means of production of everything a society needs to function?

Or will we be allocating resources to people with expertise in the production of xyz. (Skirting close to representative democracy) And who is framing the questions on which we’re going to vote?

 

 

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its not something decided ahead of time, it's something decided when it's being done and based on what has worked and not worked.  it won't even necessarily be the same in every scenario or place. not even marx tried to plan ahead of time

  On 5/9/2021 at 12:00 AM, cyanobacteria said:

your provided links don't provide evidence that there can be a socialism which is not democratic.  being a democratic system is different from adhering to past popular conceptions of democracy, in this case bourgeois electoral representative democracy in most places in the world, or whatever method of democracy the bourgeois allows the proletariat to take part in.

You have repeatedly stated in this thread that the Soviet Union was the most advanced socialist state the world has ever seen. Stalinism was the complete antithesis of democracy. 
You have also claimed China is communist because they say their stated goals are communism. The CCP is a one-party state where no democracy exists. The last link I provided with the fellow from Karl Marx university describes how classical socialist parties attempted to gain power and transform society, and it was not through any form of democracy. 
 

Theory is useless without a means of putting it into practice. So all the theoretical definitions provided in this thread mean very little when in practice, socialist states have been authoritarian regimes that allowed for no pluralism, no democratic control of the means of production, and no dissent against the vanguard party. 

  On 5/9/2021 at 3:09 AM, chenGOD said:

You have repeatedly stated in this thread that the Soviet Union was the most advanced socialist state the world has ever seen. Stalinism was the complete antithesis of democracy. 
You have also claimed China is communist because they say their stated goals are communism. The CCP is a one-party state where no democracy exists. The last link I provided with the fellow from Karl Marx university describes how classical socialist parties attempted to gain power and transform society, and it was not through any form of democracy. 
 

Theory is useless without a means of putting it into practice. So all the theoretical definitions provided in this thread mean very little when in practice, socialist states have been authoritarian regimes that allowed for no pluralism, no democratic control of the means of production, and no dissent against the vanguard party. 

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your conception of the USSR is just wrong. even the CIA admits it was democratic.  as for the CCP, it is also democratic but yet it is a one-party state, there are difference strains of thought in it competing for power, within the single party.  the US and all capitalist  countries are also one-party states.  they just have many branches of the same capitalist party.  gaining power through a vanguard party and bypassing the bourgeois electoral process does not mean anti-democratic.  you are intentionally framing things from a bourgeois perspective.  marxists do not let the bourgeoisie frame the narrative in this way.  multiple capitalist parties is not a democracy

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

^i'm not a doctor but i think the guy in the thumbnail for that video has a bigger problem than porn addiction: he's got a fucking fishing hook in the middle of his brain.

  On 5/9/2021 at 12:52 AM, Cryptowen said:

https://endnotes.org.uk/file_hosting/EN5_The_Passion_of_Communism.pdf

Reading some Jacques Camatte exerpts this evening (page 12 in this pdf where it starts). he's good, i dig it - reminds me of Kondylis but much easier to parse the lingo

i really liked this, for me this is the summary statement of the article:

>All apparent distinction between ideology and the social mode of production is destroyed and, today, value that has achieved autonomy is its own ideology.

capital is the value that has achieved autonomy and imposed its own ideology not just upon the proletariat, but the bourgeoisie as well, given the fungibility of their claims to private ownership over a given segment of capital.  i really like this focus of marxism since for me it feels much more relevant to the bigger battles we face and show the comparative triviality of the class struggle.  not trivial in that it's not a massive obstacle to overcome in abolish the proletariat and bourgeoisie, but rather trivial in comparison to the contradiction of the domination of humanity and the planet by capital.  i view it as something like an autonomous computational process over which we've lost control, similar to questions of superintelligence in AI.  capital is a superintelligence and we've already lost control, in a way the AI control problem has already been lost, and it's now time to figure out how to not put the genie back in the bottle, but chop it into pieces and hope we can use some of its organs for the future, the fruits of proletarian labor, without destroying the environment

  On 5/8/2021 at 9:31 PM, cyanobacteria said:

what godel is talking about is bourgeois electoral representative democracy.

You mean chenGod!

??

  On 5/9/2021 at 11:11 AM, Satans Little Helper said:

You mean chenGod!

 

??

lol ya

kind of the same name they both have god in them and an E

im very dumb

  On 5/9/2021 at 6:36 AM, cyanobacteria said:

i view it as something like an autonomous computational process over which we've lost control, similar to questions of superintelligence in AI.

I like what you said in this post. As mentioned above, these passages remind me a lot of The Political & Man by Panagiotis Kondylis, which can be found here https://www.panagiotiskondylis.com/the-political-and-man.php . It's a pretty dense book & he expects you to be familiar with a lot of 20th century philosophy & sociology concepts going in, but imo it's well worth reading. Basically he puts forward the idea that we tend to still construct theories in a way that's subconsciously informed by the conditions of early bourgeois liberalism, even though the actual movement of capital has gradually mutated every previously existing culture & class stratum. Increasingly, human action is dictated by inpersonal systemic rational, of which the individual is not entirely conscious. Kondylis attempts to make this more explicit by deconstructing the sociological models of the 20th century, demonstrating the sorts of logical/perceptual pre-suppositions they load into any decision making process

  On 5/9/2021 at 3:24 AM, cyanobacteria said:

your conception of the USSR is just wrong. even the CIA admits it was democratic.

Do you think that document supports the claim that the USSR was democratic?

  On 5/9/2021 at 3:24 AM, cyanobacteria said:

as for the CCP, it is also democratic but yet it is a one-party state

I already gave a lengthy (for an internet music forum) rebuttal to this which clearly shows how the CCP is not democratic, and how anti-union (i.e.  how anti-worker democracy) China is. 

  On 5/9/2021 at 3:24 AM, cyanobacteria said:

the US and all capitalist  countries are also one-party states.  they just have many branches of the same capitalist party.  gaining power through a vanguard party and bypassing the bourgeois electoral process does not mean anti-democratic.  you are intentionally framing things from a bourgeois perspective.  marxists do not let the bourgeoisie frame the narrative in this way.  multiple capitalist parties is not a democracy

Even in the US, the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats are quite clear. There are communist parties in countries all over the world that participate in democratic elections. 

Your penultimate sentence is very instructive; it shows how unwilling you are to participate in open dialogue, but would rather stay in an ideological bubble. Unluckily for you, the narrative here is not determined by “Marxist framing of the narrative”. 

  On 5/9/2021 at 4:23 PM, chenGOD said:

Do you think that document supports the claim that the USSR was democratic?

I already gave a lengthy (for an internet music forum) rebuttal to this which clearly shows how the CCP is not democratic, and how anti-union (i.e.  how anti-worker democracy) China is. 

 

Even in the US, the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats are quite clear. There are communist parties in countries all over the world that participate in democratic elections. 

Your penultimate sentence is very instructive; it shows how unwilling you are to participate in open dialogue, but would rather stay in an ideological bubble. Unluckily for you, the narrative here is not determined by “Marxist framing of the narrative”. 

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i think you will find that it's a class struggle, not a battle of wits and ideas as the liberals would have us believe and the bourgeoisie would try to force us to believe

i've yet to see anything even remotely approaching a concentrated critique of marxism, rather some attempted critiques of actually existing socialism.  instead you in particular live in a world where capitalist hegemony and bourgeois electoral representative democracy is not only the norm, but assumed to need to be the norm forever into the future, with no justification provided.  this will not be the case

at this point I'm going to have to assume you know literally nothing about marxism given that every other post on that topic is a misconception that I, a fucking moron, have to correct and try to explain what you are misunderstanding on the topic.  there is in theory room for disagreement on actually existing socialism, and there is room for debate on the topic of marxism, but even the basic concepts of marxism are not only entirely lost, but blatantly misrepresented time and time again, it's embarrassing for you

there is absolutely nothing in this world more pathetic than a proletarian shilling for the political ideology of the bourgeoisie.  like a slave arguing that the living quarters his master provides are better than those of the slaves across the fence.

>no, I don't want partial ownership of my workplace and democratic control over its proceedings, I don't want democratic control over how much housing is built, or my needs prioritized when it comes to building mass transit infrastructure rather than individualist polluting alternatives like cars.  I don't want all of the fruits of my labor, I want a percentage to go to a private owner.  I want all of these things to not be democratically controlled but instead dictatorially controlled by private owners

pathetic lmfao, utter slave mentality, liberals are the worst