get a load of these spooks lmao
>>5517this is why we need reeducation camps
>>5517>we only lost because of messagingDNC pls go
>>5517You didn't lose since you were never in the race to begin with. The soviets lost because they allowed the propaganda to infect them (from average person to the elite). To this day there are retards in russia that fantasize about being (in the idealized fairy tale version) in the west. 3rd worlders tend to fall for the "american dream" bullshit
>>5517>I can not see the way out of this brosobviously more propaganda
Nothing says materialist analysis like believing propaganda is the strongest thing there is. Fucking moron.
>>5521>The soviets lost because they allowed the propaganda to infect themAverage ML brilliance in action. It's not that the USSR failed to export the revolution to the rest of the world + got fucked due to the European revolution failing (even Lenin said as much!), it was actually the CIA that brainwashed them with Disney movies or something.
Oh and I just noticed the Chomsy picture. Of fucking course an anarchist would believe this shit.
>>5518>>5520>>5522>>5523>>5525If propaganda isnt the strongest thing there is then where is the revolution? Most people cant imagine a world beyond wage slavery and capitalism. If you compare older generations to younger ones, you will notice young people are more apolitical, and not conscious of their own exploitation, as it is seen as "inevitable". People must free themselves, but they dont know they are slaves.
All of you are probably MLs who believe they will lead the revolution by using the ignorant masses to their favor.
>>5526Huxley sounds utterly autistic there
>>5517>The reason the revolution does not happen is because the masses are severely brainwashed. Most people believe Capitalism is natural and unavoidable. That humans are inherently evil. And thus a better society is impossible. The mother of all self-fullfilling prophecies.
I don't believe most people think that. In my estimation most people don't really know what to believe.
>I can not see the way out of this brosThen look harder
>>5526>If propaganda isnt the strongest thing there is then where is the revolution? It's doomed by lack of organizing much more than it is by lack of propagandizing. People can and do consume a purely aesthetic socialism! Anime Communism! Furry Communism! If Communism was measured by its virility as a propaganda idea, especially in the internet age, it would almost certainly beat capitalism - whose open advocates are comparatively few and uncool. People wear their Che shirts, they do not wear shirts with Milton Friedman's miserable dwarf face.
But alas, revolution takes place through organized action and not through mere aesthetic posturing, and whenever a leftist sets out to organize he invariably falls into the trap of creating his own Pygmy CPSU so that he can play Stalin, draw up "the line" and make "demands" on behalf of the workers - of which 5 have been dumb enough to join his little cult. Normal people, quite correctly, see this as clown behaviour. But to organize on the basis of actually
doing something - worker unionization, tenant unionization, christ, even charity work - would be
boring. And it is entertainment value, not propaganda, that is the big threat. Someone quoting Huxley ought to have noticed this sooner! Writing up deranged statements about culture war issues is
fun, it is
entertainment, while serious organizing is
work. So we amuse ourselves to death.
>>5529Worker unionization runs the risk of becoming an elite itself. Creating unions that do not lose the way, and push into revolution and not only reform is a titanic task in a disorganized society. Anarcho-syndicalism is practially dead. I do not know how Marxists approach organizing the workers.
>>5526Easy, the proletariat isn't the majority.
>All of you are probably MLsLmfao it's always anarchists and MLs who believe culture (this includes propaganda) is super duper important to communism, faggot.
>>5530Sure, not every union is necessarily proletarian in character. There are middle class unions, as well as unions with both proletarian and middle class elements intermixed. But from the standpoint of the proletariat unions are probably the best means to associate with one another, to cohere as a class with common interests against the power of capital by suspending competition amongst proletarians so that they can carry on 'general competition' with the bourgeoisie.
>>5526>If propaganda isnt the strongest thing there is then where is the revolution?The revolution was predicated upon a crisis or crises of Capitalism that meant even the Bourgeois couldn't go on, and that Socialism/Communism would be the only way forward. We've come close, eg WWI or the Great Depression, but so far Capitalism has been able to weather the storm and therefore national revolutions have not translated into world revolution.
Marx merely thought that Communists as the leading forces of the proletariat could help hasten the transition. Just as various Bourgeois revolutionaries had hastened the demise of feudalism.
>Most people cant imagine a world beyond wage slavery and capitalism.Medieval peasants couldn't imagine a world beyond serfdom and feudalism.
Also, that Huxley quote is supremely retarded. You only have to look at the American elite to see they buy their own propaganda even more than the masses.
>>5533>The revolution was predicated upon a crisis or crises of Capitalism that meant even the Bourgeois couldn't go onCapitalism didn't happen due to a crisis of feudalism but because the bourgeois felt feudalism wasn't "free" enough for them and took matters in their own hands. The conditions for communism have been here for pretty much centuries already.
>>5526omg that quote is fucking embarrassing. demonstrates really well that intellectuals are a blight on communism
>>5533>>5535How is that quote retarded or embarassing?
Most people have average intelligence and cant see beyond their nose. Few people have the intellectual capacity, either intelligence or curiosity, to question the status quo.
This is why there is only one Noam Chomsky, one Descartes, one Rousseu
>>5536>can only speak using vague and ill-defined terms like "the masses" or "intellectuals">history doesnt change because le masses are too stoopidyup its anarchoid philosopher time
>>5536>Few people have the intellectual capacity, either intelligence or curiosity, to question the status quo. Reactionary ideation. Fix your thinking. Everyone questions the status quo. Every thing contains its opposite. A fervent believer still doubts.
>>5537>>5538Those "magnificient" masses of yours always fall for fascist rethoric: le jews bad, le immigrants bad.
Happening right now in the educated Europe
>>5517>The reason the revolution does not happen is because the masses are severely brainwashedWhat a fucking retarded statement. The reason that there is no revolution is because there is no material base with revolutionary potential, because we're all petit bourgeois/labor aristocracy in the west
"most people" don't actually care or have thought out opinions about capitalism, they are simply acting in self interest and their self interest tells them a continuation of the status quo is probably more beneficial to them than a violent revolution
>>5541There are many assumptions in your statement. First, that a material base is needed for revolution, that is to say, unless people are eating shit in the imperial core, nothing will change. In the USA only a small portion are wealthy. And the consequence of the statement is that humans are immoral, selfish creatures.
Second, even those at the bottom often try to adapt and strive through the system rather than changing it. Material base exists for the poor, who are the majority.
Your statement is retarded
>>5517<politics is downstream of culture<just make better propaganda Threads like this being allowed are why this site is at such a low quality.
>>5525>Oh and I just noticed the Chomsy picture. Of fucking course an anarchist would believe this shit.Yes bro he must have used a pic because he's an anarchist, not because Manufacturing Consent is probably the most famous English language book about propaganda….
Legitimately as dumb as OP, further proving my point..
>>5525>Oh and I just noticed the Chomsy picture. Of fucking course an anarchist would believe this shit.Yes bro he must have used a pic because he's an anarchist, not because Manufacturing Consent is probably the most famous English language book about propaganda….
Legitimately as dumb as OP, further proving my point..
>>5543>First, that a material base is needed for revolutionIt so unbelievably obviously is, look at every single successful revolution in the history of humanity. Did people just up and decide to do a revolution cuz they thought about it for a while? Or because they were all an masse convinced of communist theory? No, it was the material conditions that materialized the revolutionary potential of the masses, which were then guided into whatever ideological potential by dedicated revolutionaries
>unless people are eating shit in the imperial core, nothing will changeThis is not what material base means
>In the USA only a small portion are wealthyOnly a small portion of the population are insanely uber wealthy dumbass, the majority of people are still reasonably wealthy on a national and certainly on a global level, this is what the labor aristocracy got in exchange for backing capitalism
>And the consequence of the statement is that humans are immoral, selfish creatures.????
why are you moralizing like this????
Humans certainly can be all those things, more often than not. Again, it is our material conditions that shape us into certain forms, it has nothing to do with our "inherent" evil or whatever idiotic essentialism you're trying to push off on me
>Second, even those at the bottom often try to adapt and strive through the system rather than changing it. Material base exists for the poor, who are the majority. ???
How is that not exactly what im stating here?
>"most people" don't actually care or have thought out opinions about capitalism, they are simply acting in self interest and their self interest tells them a continuation of the status quo is probably more beneficial to them than a violent revolution
>Your statement is retardedno u
>>5544I come from a country where the Anarchist movement is non-existent. If it wasnt because of the internet, I woulve died thinking a better society is possible. It is information what shows the path towards a better society.
If the few existing anarchists had created their own propaganda (newspapers, talks, etc.) perhaps I woulve learned about it sooner.
Propaganda matters.
>>5549Yeah but thinking that worse or better propaganda is the reason we're doing "bad" is insane, as if saying the right combination of words will just magically convince the world to lose their chains. If that were the case, then everybody would have been convinced long ago, but it's not that simple
>>5549Okay? I don't care.
If you want conversions fuck off and join he priesthood.
>>5548> it is our material conditions that shape us into certain forms, it has nothing to do with our "inherent" evil or whatever idiotic essentialism you're trying to push off on me If humans react only to material conditions why are so many people from wealthy countries fighting climate change? Or Americans sacrificing their lives for Gaza (Rachel Aliene, Aaron Bushnell)? Why did Kropotkin, a prince, became an anarchist?
"Material conditions" is not a divine argument. Human behavior is more complex than that.
>>5552Cool bro. Go build radical politics one Rachel Corrie and one Aaron Bushnell at a time.
Just do it away from the rest of us.
>>5552>Why do exceptions exist?Yeah idk man, you really got me stumped there
Obviously material conditions are not the only factor, Im not a vulgar materialist
Thanks for contributing nothing to the conversation!
>>5554Those "exceptions" had a deeper understanding of the injustice. Rachel was an activist and Aaron was an anarchist. We can not expect that sacrifice from uninformed wage slaves who hates immigrants
>>5557Woaw, what a sacrifice indeed. Look at all their amazing revolutionary accomplishments:
>get flattened by a bulldozer>burn yourself aliveThe only one who actually did anything of note was Rachel Corrie, because she was active in the material base, by going to Gaza and actively trying to make a material difference and stop the destruction of Palestinian property, not because she got unfortunately killed by israel
Bushnell accomplished fucking nothing, his sacrifice gained absolutely nothing for the palestinian cause and you uplifting him to some paragon of justice for immolating himself instead of actually helping the palestinians is disgusting
Because who caries the real revolutionary potential in this case huh? Two (2) rando white people from america or the millions of palestinians who live under brutal conditions every day?
>>5559I mentioned them to exemplify my past point, not as revolutionary examples. And how will Palestinians do any revolution? The only reason they are still alive is because of social media and modern communication.
The natives in the Americas suffered genocide and accomplished nothing.
>>5560Your point being tha people can have convictions outside of their material circumstances?
Yeah nobody disagrees with you there friend
My point is that Palestinians are infinitely more revolutionarily primed because they actually experience their material conditions under oppression and are thus much more inclided to do something about them, as far as they can
> And how will Palestinians do any revolution?You've never heard of the intifadas?
>The only reason they are still alive is because of social media and modern communicationNot only is this an enormous insult to the countless revolutionary sacrifices that the Palestinians and others have made to prevent their own destruction. You are actually insane if you think this
>The natives in the Americas suffered genocide and accomplished nothing.There were countless material reasons for the successful genocide of native americans, ranging from disease, lock of social and political unity amongst the tribes, technological disadvantage, lack of historical precedent, etc. It certainly wasn't because of their lack of "social media and modern communication"
>>5534>Capitalism didn't happen due to a crisis of feudalismI never said it did.
>but because the bourgeois felt feudalism wasn't "free" enough for them and took matters in their own hands.Which they were able to do because the new Capitalist economic system concentrated wealth in their hands. Any state which cracked down on Capitalists to prop-up feudalism inevitably became backward and couldn't compete with its neighbours.
So far the Capitalists have been able to splinter any attempt to form a global proletariat, and to smash or isolate national proletariats. So the paths forward is either idealist nonsense like the OP where one day all the proles wake up and decide to take over, a crisis of Capitalism which gives vanguard parties a chance, or the hyper-concentration of production into state monopolies which bloodlessly transition to socialism.
>>5559Look at this American cop applying his corporate "force protection" ideology to life.
>>5565>force protectioncomplete non sequitur, I have no idea how what you posted relates to what I said
>>5552>If humans react only to material conditions why are so many people from wealthy countries fighting climate change?Because climate change will have a material impact on their lives, and the lives of their descendants. First worlders can be against climate change for purely selfish and even racist reasons (not wanting "floods of refugees").
>>5564Where is the people involved in the last two paths? Vanguard party or some sort of super state which will transition to socialism because… yes? I cant agree. Change must come from the bottom up
>>5567There is something strange about this "material reality" people here mention every 5 seconds. Capitalism affects our lives qualitatively too. Many people have their needs met but lead empty lives. This purposeless life should also fuel social change.
>>5564Fully half of the SPD's program was meant to teach the newly unbound serf-proletariat how to be a good capitalist working class, while the other half at the same time sought to shape the revolutionary subject to overturn the capitalist order. Unfortunately, the second part got stuck, only the first part really took hold, and now we have people thinking that spewing capitalist economic commentary like a cable news pundit is in some way "advancing socialism".
>>5570>There is something strange about this "material reality" people here mention every 5 secondsNo lie, the French called that approach to economics the "autistic" school.
It is an absolute failure of propaganda to not note how Engels absolutely cucked a proto-fascist. Like, we live in a world where creampieing a bitch that is someone else's is the ultimate form of power over them, and yet we fail to point out this history?
>>5572>we live in a worldYou should probably burn that world right down to the dirt, with all the Protestant values and cultural institutions still inside
>>5574To the contrary. That fire needs to encompass the entire classical tradition, possibly right back to and including the creation of social theory itself.
Lost? What are you talking about? Socialism hasn’t been this strong since the establishment of the Warsaw Pact
>>5575Not possible nor desirable
>>5577>possibleIt's Marx's goal and it can be done.
>desirableYou speak for nobody but yourself. Desire isn't necessary.
>>5576Prove of that statement? Because it looks like the opposite
We're no longer winning because the struggles today are harder than in the past and life for the working class is not as dire as it was once was.
This is no longer about just ensuring people can read, we have some form of public healthcare and retirement, women and minorities are at least considered to be people, and cops won't cave your skull in for joining a union
This is now about restructuring the entire global economy so we can eliminate wage labor, the firm, m-c-m in its entirety
This requires resources, energy, time and expertise beyond what most people can manage.
There's a difference between motivating people to resist an ongoing world war, or at least reducing landlordism to the point where you're not forced to live in a mud hut working 12 to 14 hours a day in a single pair of filthy rags every day of your life while eating not much other than potatoes or rice while your local hereditary landleech (working for a foreign government) absconds with all your income… and asking people to spend their (little) free time struggling for a 15 cent an hour pay rise which doesn't even begin to compensate for the inflation suffered over the years.
Followed by weeks - even months - of sit ins, meetings, activism, only for your spineless peers to vote against (further) strikes and thus accepting the original corporate 'offer'; i.e. an utter fucking waste of your time
There's also the issue of razor thin profit margins offering very little in the way of potential benefits to be offered to the proles of a (newly) unionized workplace.
People that are too afraid to shoplift (except "borrowing" from their workplace) are also not going to be the sort of people bold enough to participate in a "people's war" against the ruling class. The peasants of yesteryear were also able to feed themselves, urban workers can't. And considering how atomized, shattered and non-existent people's social support networks, very few are willing to risk even going on strike.
tl;dr: material conditions
>>5581Thing is the material conditions will never come. By the time global warming creates the "conditions", it will be too late. And a nuclear war would simply destroy everything. We can not wait for the material conditions to be ideal. Its now or never
We need to stop using "material conditions" as cope to our inability to organize and abolish capitalism. Otherwise calamity awaits
>>5581>by the time global warming creates the "conditions", it will be too lateWhat makes it "too late"? Was it "too late" when the savagery of WW1 was killing people in the millions?
>And a nuclear war would simply destroy everything What makes you say that? South America, Africa and Australia would be mostly fine
>We can not wait for the material conditions to be ideal. No one is waiting for conditions to be ideal, people are waiting for conditions to make revolution a possibility at all
>Its now or neverAnd do what? How are you going to start a revolution "now or never"? Are you some sort of retarded idealist who thinks we can just will a revolution into existence through the sheer force of our conviction alone? This is ridiculous
>We need to stop using "material conditions" as cope to our inability to organize and abolish capitalism. Otherwise calamity awaitsIt's called being realistic. The only one coping here is you
>>5526>If propaganda isnt the strongest thing there is then where is the revolution? So you forgot or have not yet heard of the fascist international? ABN? Gladio? Condor? Phoenix? Cyclone? People didn't lose because of ideas they lost because they are dead.
>>5523You understand that propaganda is material too? Right?
Funny thing, I am writing about this, and I cannot write enough words. While propaganda isn't the primary topic, the "culture war" and the appeal to mediation of reality is violently imposed first in the philosophy, granting to language and the forms power they never possessed. This is the bulk of the third book of my series, which describes the concept of the political, and how it was weaponized to invade a purview where it never really should have gone.
Basically, if you're thinking of mass propaganda, you've already fed into a singular and totalizing view of history which inexorably leads to one outcome - the victory of aristocracy, by default because of their hammerlock on all social promotion. The insinuation is not spread by the idea of such, but by praxis - this is where your Marx would be very helpful if you understood where he came from.
It should be noted that "propaganda" did not have any loaded connotation in Lenin's time. It was just publications of an organization which are intended to project its program, which everyone who wanted to get word out did. It only took on its current meaning when states declared a monopoly on propaganda for the first time that it was technologically possible. This is the shift from "thou shalt not" to "thou shalt" and "thou art". When you've been made to fight that war, you've already lost, because you're beholden to a space which is subject to a state's monopoly on violence, and those who enable it and see benefit in supplication to the ruling power. You'll always play a game of whomever holds this monopoly.
The true programming is not accomplished by propaganda. It is accomplished by pedagogy, by fear, by associations who willfully enable the rot around them because they think they'll get ahead somehow. Why they think there will be any social promotion, I have no idea, because that has been closed off - forever - and there will be no going back. If there is any reversal of aristocracy's dominance, it would be by means that are unlike those presently operating, or it would be the aristocracy reconstituting itself by processing new flesh and interbreeding with "lesser stock", then retroactively declaring that they were actually gods. (Yes, they always believe in something like that, and the eugenist aristocracy is no exception, however fake and gay and absurd it is.)
You really have to ask why the left constantly relitigates the past and hasn't had new ideas since around 1950, and the last idea they had was that it was a failure. Everything after that is shameless supplication that was so bad the conservative order looked sane by comparison. That's how bad the ideas espoused by "left theory" became, and you cannot blame the CIA for being so insidious and perverting the One True Religion. There has been no serious theory against aristocracy that has not been fully repudiated, and now violently suppressed if even an iota of opposition to aristocracy is uttered. The left is trained to defeat itself before it even sets to the task of thinking of it being different.
Marxist fear
FAT SUPERSTRUCTURE DICK
>>5590>westerners are knowingly deceiving themselves and have perfect informationThis guy isn't doing much organizing work is he
>>5539yeah maybe because it’s true dumbass
>>5539yeah maybe because it’s true dumbass
>>5517This is a quote from a paper Chomsky wrote about Howard Zinn:
""Howard’s remarkable life and work are summarized best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was “the countless small actions of unknown people” that lie at the roots of “those great moments” that enter the historical record — a record that will be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if it is torn from these roots as it passes through the filters of doctrine and dogma.""
https://chomsky.info/201002__/Maybe you just want the fix faster than it should happen?
Here's another quote from a Bradbury short story that might be applicable to you:
"“Not only the four horsemen of the Apocalypse rode the horizon to fling themselves on our cities but a
fifth horseman, worse than all the rest, rode with them: Despair, wrapped in dark shrouds of defeat,
crying only repetitions of past disasters, present failures, future cowardices.
“Bombarded by dark chaff and no bright seed, what sort of harvest was there for man in the latter part
of the incredible twentieth century?
“Forgotten was the moon, forgotten the red landscapes of Mars, the great eye of Jupiter, the stunning
rings of Saturn. We refused to be comforted. We wept at the grave of our child, and the child was us.”
>>5583>The years will pass, and we'll get to work producing more babies than ever beforeIt's so cool how literally every world leader views their populace as nothing more than cattle
>>5583>Was it "too late" when the savagery of WW1 was killing people in the millions?Yes, unironically. WW1 broke the back of international solidarity and ushered in fascism, and genocided the mobilized working classes, causing leftism to be unprepared to capitalize on the great crisis in capitalism (the depression). we would be travelling to alpha centauri today if WW1 didn't happen with leftist collaboration. all we got was some shitty rump states that later collapsed.
>>5598WW1 revealed to all that none of these people making promises were what they purported to be, and the people were left with no one. That was the purpose of all of this - to destroy any concept of democracy, what little existed, because they hated the people and wanted to subsume them in some cockamamie system or another. It was inmposed by force, by insinuation, and by the vices of the human race, which really were the human spirit. The aspiration for it to be different was always a faint one, made possible because people would for the first time really have any way to speak of the rest of the world. For most of history, people don't move that far from where they are born, and don't have much to do with anyone outside of that world. States are weak and have little interest in the working class, and this was assumed when they were shoved into cities and made to starve by this callosu and Satanic order.
What was carried out privately and at a local arena became the civic cult of modernity, which was made completely alien by insinuation to serve aristocracy - to restore serfdom and the filthiest impulses of Germanic culture and the vices of the human race generally.
Germany wasn't defeated enough, basically. But, it will be defeated utterly, its way of life eliminated and kept in a museum of degenerate art where it belongs. That would then start the process of allowing this society to heal, if its excesses can be described as what they were, and no more excuses regarding this are tolerated. When you go down that rabbit hole, history makes a lot more sense. These stupid people have this completely undeserved reputation and insist that this time their plans will totally work and can't lose. It's the same song and dance since the cope of 1914.
That won't solve our problems, of course. I doubt humans have it in them to want this situation to be different in the public. Too many of them allowed this to go on in ways that were wholly unnecessary and not prompted by anyone, except an impulse of aristocracy that humasn learned by the example - the only example we are allowed to see of what humans can be.
Anywhere there is a hint of sentiment other than the thrill of torture, it is mocked, made unseemly, and declared heretical against the spirit of the human race. The human spirit is a monstrosity and history has judged.
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