Hating random people with lots of money and reading theory that never sees real world implementation isn't going to make my life less miserable. What's the real solution?
>>6490In all seriousness, what really is the point?
>>6491The point is in the theory you didn’t read
>>6491Use your pent up anger of not being able to have a comfortable life or respect because you werent born a bourgesisie and funneal it into gigachad revolution
>>6492Yeah, but why read theory if you don't carry out its practical implementation?
>>6494>why readIdkno, cause nearly everysingle person who did anything worth while in recent history read books
>>6495Theory is nothing without application. There is hypothesis, and there are results. Where are the real world results that marxism can work? If it can work then why hasn't it won the cold war? The best example we have today is china and they're using a market economy instead of alternative systems. How is it that they've never achieved this level of influence under mao? Do the maoists of /leftypol/ have an answer for this?
>>6498What's the point of the theory itself? Are you guys just using it as a form of endless escapism? I'm not content with that.
>never sees real world implementation
>>6497>>6499>>6500>real world implementation>practical implementation?>application>results>real world results>real world implementationAll wheres, no whys from someone skimping on the theory
>>6500To be quite honest with you, any and all implementations of communist/leftist forms of economics and governance that i've seen has resulted in more suffering. It could be that no matter what system is created, it will have an equal chance of benefiting only those who oversee its fruition. So i can conclude that the socialist aim seems to be senseless.
>>6502source? also you use pop science terms but seem to not quite understand that the scientific method also involves reading lol
>>6501But i'm not seeking answers from within a book. I'm seeking answers from people like you. I'd like to hear YOUR perspective on this matter.
>>6499>What's the point of the theory itself?To expand the mind and push intellectual horizons.To access ideas that, alone, one may not encounter otherwise.
>>6502>To be quite honest with you, any and all implementations of communist/leftist forms of economics and governance that i've seen has resulted in more suffering.Have you read the theory? I'm not talking just the economic manuscripts but the history, the works of culture produced under socialist experiments. The scope of "a socialist society" is broad, it cannot have been only suffering. Even in the suffering, there are lessons learnt.
>>6503>source?You don't have to look far. Simply ask yourself what human incentives keep people from wanting to share resources in a socialist country and why sharing needs to be enforced and who does the enforcing. If there's a need to enforce a rule this strict to begin with, that means there's a power structure being used to foment this goal. How can you be sure that this power structure isn't going to start acting in its own self interest? For example, if i wanted to grow potatoes in my backyard who is to say that i can't and why? What gives anyone else the right to my potatoes?
>>6504>>6502>But i'm not seeking answers from within a bookPart of your problem. Won’t follow recommendations. Can’t even ask the right questions, and insistently so. Lacking in drive. Thought patterns insultingly rigid. Presumptuous without knowledge, the worst quality.
>I'd like to hear YOUR perspective on this matter.My perspective would be wasted on you, stubborn one. You have already decided the conclusion anyways. Forget theory, I doubt you ever picked up a history book.
>>6506not reading allat if you cant even find a source. Ik it all makes sense if your head René but we dont that "I think therefore I am" shit round these parts
>>6510Oh boy, an Uncle Ted stan
>>6506>You don't have to look far. Simply ask yourself what human incentives keep people from wanting to share resources in a socialist country and why sharing needs to be enforced and who does the enforcing.This line of questioning is precisely why you should read the theory.
<"Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. " - Critique of the Gotha Programme It's more than just
sharing, more than
power and enforecement.
>For example, if i wanted to grow potatoes in my backyard who is to say that i can't and why? What gives anyone else the right to my potatoes?Grow what potatoes? Using whose tools? With what water? In whose country? How large is your back yard? Do other people have potatoes? What if you wanted to trick people into thinking your potatoes are parsnips? How is the backyard
yours? These are all questions that fall into place once you parse the
theory. Nothing is independently arising, anon. To see how the 10,000 things relate is the point of theory.
>>6511>>6512Well none of you had anything original to say other than
>lol go reed theoryMust suck to rely so much on a book to form any real convincing evidence.
>>6513>The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and landThat definition is uniquely false. Assuming you mean business owners as "nonworkers", the means of production are in their hands as they have the financial capital to purchase, organize, and put the means of production to use. They are not "nonworkers" as they do work. The nature of their work is simply different from the types of work that others perform. They are the coordination anchor of a business.
Those that you call workers are paid to use the machinery or equipment already provided to them in exchange or a wage that they agreed to receive. However, not every business takes the traditional form. There can be family businesses in which relatives can help run, fund and maintain production operations where profit is split evenly, and there can also be one-man operations where production is either contracted or done entirely by hand by one person. Everyone who participates in the economy is a worker. Work isn't just tied to menial factory or field labor. Work requires real input at all levels of an organization.
>>6513>Grow what potatoes? White potatoes
>Using whose tools?Using my own tools that i made from steel/iron or tools that i bought or traded for something else
>With what water? I'd grow my potatoes with ground water that i pump myself into my localized irrigation system
>In whose country? In the country that i reside in.
>How large is your back yard?40 square feet
>Do other people have potatoes?Not everyone does which is why i'm selling them
>What if you wanted to trick people into thinking your potatoes are parsnips? They'd probably find out. I wouldn't need to lie about them as lying causes unwanted negative attention.
>How is the backyard yours? It's mine because i cultivated it from an unoccupied plot of land.
>>6514Books are where
evidence is
stored. If we bring evidence, argument or any ideas, it is likely to be pulled/parsed/supported from theory. We tell you to read the theory because you will be able to read directly what we are referencing and form your own connections based upon your own life experience. If you have not read the theory then, on a predominantly marxist imageboard, we may as well be speaking two subtly different languages. You have questions but you do not seem to have the language to express them. Thus, we seem to have to start from square one.
That said,
a specific question to answer would likely help things. "What's the solution" is extremely broad.
>>6517This is
exactly the type of language barrier that I am talking about. "Worker" is not just "person who does work". It is a
proletarian, a person with a particular relationship to the productive forces.
>>6520>a person with a particular relationship to the productive forcesYes. Like those who fund, maintain, and architect the production.
>>6523>plays semantics with my semanticsbunker transhumanists gonna bunker transhumanist
>>6522>FundWith funds gathered how? Does funding mean ownership?
>maintain/architectThemselves? Alone? The vast productive forces all with their own hands? With what materials? Education sourced from where?
You're almost entirely missing the point of what I'm saying. The answers are
there in the literature. Even so, what we are talking about is not if capitalists
perform labour but their function/position in a capitalist mode of production. Capitalists own the means of production, proletarians do not. Proletarians must sell their labour power to capitalists to survive. Capitalists purchase that labour power and extract the surplus value produced by that labour power etc.
Capitalists, by themselves or through the organs of the state, may:
Claim ownership over the species of potato.
Sell or deny sale of tools or material.
Claim sections of ground water.
Contaminate water.
Expel you from your residence.
Erode or contaminate your back yard.
Outcompete and bankrupt your potato business.
File food safety concerns about your potatoes.
Reclassify their parsnips under a broader "potato" colloquial. marketing umbrella.
Seize your back yard through eminent domain.
Etc. Etc.
These answers are not the important part, the important part is the framework with which the question/scenario is analysed and parsed. We use a marxist framework here, so we advise you to learn the marxist framework so we can better understand eachother.
>Hating random people with lots of money and reading theory that never sees real world implementation isn't going to make my life less miserable.
Correct.
The answer is to not hate people with money, they are themselves slaves to capital and have long ago lost their minds. Reading theory by itself does nothing at all.
The answer is to take action, even seemingly insignificant action. Agitate, propagandize, engage in self criticism to detect thinking patterns of the liberal status quo and obliterate them and so on. This way the theory you read will become real world implementation and start having real world impact.
You see, capitalism as with anything else that has internal contradictions will always have small almost imperceptible changes and tensions, and these will always explode at one point .Your goal is to make the tension build up quicker and to know what to do once the unavoidable explosion comes.
>>6510>claims attempts at socialism lowered QoL>asked for source>posts unrelated shit lmao what a pseud could you even do better if you tried?
>>6489> What's the real solution?There is nothing more revolutionary than taking care of yourself. If you are miserable you shouldnt focus on theory or being angry on the internet.
>>6489Get a real hobby but embrace superficial leftist aesthetics to signal that you're open minded and pro-social. Unfortunately, communism is cool and all the cool kids are self proclaimed communists, even though when you take a macro view communism is either the purview of the CPC (e.g. nothing to do with you) or of (a) losers who couldn't organise a zine but think they could organise a revolution, (b) losers who can organise a newspaper but are clearly in the cult market rather than politics, and (c) losers running a bourgeois electoral party with a red flag and zero elected officials because they're not good at what they do.
Unfortunately, being self aware will always undermine you a bit. Once you realise it's all just daydreaming and wishcasting it doesn't work anymore.
>>6529 I wouldn't say that it's the most revolutionary thing, but it's incredibly important. A lot of leftists, because, let's be real, most of us are some flavor of mentally ill (as are all people involved in politics), and often times we attatch way too much of ourselves to our greater political project. You have to live your life for you. Politics should never get in the way of you enjoying your life unless you are actively being forced to engage with them (like, say, idk in an actual revolution or political crisis which affects your physical, daily life in some way).
>>6489 The goal of reading theory should always to be to use it as information to guide your actual, real-world actions and activism in some way. Unless you're just reading it for pleasure, which is cool too. The real solution has a lot to deal with your mental health, and that's above my paygrade, but I will say that using political discourse as a form of escapism is never a good idea, especially in times like these.
What's with the influx of clueless liberals on the board recently?
>>6533imageboards are now somewhat of a distant memory of a bygone era, just as 'the internet' of 'ye olde days' (whatever that even means) is.
even the first iterations of social media are now a distant memory, the algorithmically curated panopticon was perfected to a point that there is basically no 'organic' crossover between echo chambers.
all that remains is not even memories for most of these peoples but myths. myths of better times, when epic trolls fought glorious battles for unforgetable lulz.
basically, retards are larping as trolls. its outright pathetic
>>6534But I feel like they're coming in from /pol/ or sharty or wherever. They seem to know how to post and don't seem confused by the site, they're just libbed up/nazis
>>6489>Hating random people with lots of money code red
code purple
code gray
>>6489>the point of communism is to passively hate the rich, read books, and never do anythingmaybe for some
https://www.blackagendareport.com/western-marxism-loves-purity-and-martyrdom-not-real-revolution >>6537specifically…
<Together, the three elements that I just described create a kind of narcissistic orgasm of defeat and purity. The subject takes pride in not having any relationship with the entire historic concrete movement of the working class socialist and liberation revolutions. They take pride in not having any theoretical or political connection to the revolutions in China, Russia, Viet Nam, Algeria, Mozambique and Angola. They are, instead, proud of the supposed purity that their theory is not contaminated by the hardship of exercising power, by the contradictions of historical processes. Being pure is what provokes this narcissistic orgasm. This purity is what makes them feel superior. It makes them feel that they have a privileged moral and ethical standpoint compared to the other leftists who, for example, recognize the Chinese Revolution or the Cuban revolution and, therefore, accept authoritarianism and accept an economy that is not based on the total realization of self-management. This kind of Marxism has no critical power. It can produce and does produce a lot of good analysis of reality but it is incapable of producing a movement that is strategic and revolutionary that aims to take political power. Therefore, the process of rebuilding a revolutionary Marxism in the West has to recognize these symbolic elements, which have become ingrained in Western Marxism, that were smuggled in as contraband from Christianity. These elements have to be submitted to radical criticism and surpassed. >>6535ofc this is the case, but also they are not 'oldfags', do not command the slightest bit of creativity and are actually stupid. which is why we get bombarded regularly by these not even low effort shit baits. they do put in effort. it is just plain shit.
>>6539I mean how do you know it's not just a bunch of LLMs or paid trolls
>>6539I mean probably, I just feel like there's been somewhat of an influx of these people recently. I wonder if the site has been advertised or talked about somewhere these libs congregate. I don't mean that article either, that was too recent.
>>6540>LLMsMaybe, but they don't give off bot vibes persay, they're just retarded
>paid trollsWhere can I get paid to troll on leftypol??? Pls I need to know!
>>6541Rightoids periodically try to astroturf and troll the site because they’re out of touch morons who drank their own kool aid when it came to the “memes won 2016” narrative
>>6530>doesn't mention organized labor only ML larpers >>6541In a different thread my hunch for the influx of /pol/yps is that the smarter ones are tired of talking to LLMs and posters who might as well be an LLM over on halfchan and sharty and would rather talk to a real person even if we hate eachother. As for the dunning krueger freshman philosophy major libs we've been getting like OP recently, I think they might be twitter users getting exposed to the leftypol twitter account. At the very least they have that same signature combination of ignorance and arrogance typical of twitter users.
>>6506You are assuming that capitalism is the natural state of the world rather than a system that is enforced with tremendous violence. Read some texts on what we Marxists call primitive accumulation. Its dealt with in Das Kapital volume 1 part 8, but I am sure you can find easier sources to read.
Basically, during primitive accumulation capitalists forced peasants "who grew potatoes in their backyard" into densely populated cities where they could be exploited more effectively in coal powered textile mills and factories. The high population density in the cities made workers easier to exploit, which gave rise to capitalism.
>Why bother?
This is actually a good question.
I think people here underestimate how easy it is to get burned out by socialist theory. Communists and anarchists have an elaborate lore most often involving a teleology in the form of an ultimate worker's revolution happening suddenly all around the world and destroying capitalism to give rise to a new societal form of organization.
But it's not even just that, it's never solely about production. Many communists (for rather good reasons) blame various societal ills on capitalist organization: sexism, racism, mental illnesses, why social media is shit in 2026, etc.
So basically you have all this theory telling you everything will be alright once we are done with capitalism, and we will have an epic revolution that will be hard to endure, but worth it, and it gives a sense of purpose to an individual, a sense of belonging to a group too.
But the revolution never arrives. America currently has the most retarded president of the history of liberal democracies, and what you see as a pushback are people dancing in fur suits in front of ICE, or no pushback at all. Say what you want about boomers, but in the 1960s they actually knew how to protest. And I shall remind you Marx thought the revolution would come in the most advanced capitalist economy, and that's in part why he moved to London.
The problem of most communists and anarchists is that they take the lore too seriously, while not understanding that, Marx in the early 1850s thought the revolution would happen in 3 or 4 years tops. Bakunin got banned from virtually every Western European country except Switzerland, because he truly believed he could agitate and kickstart the revolutionary process effectively one more time. Engels thought the revolution would come like 10 years or so after his death (and in a sense he was right).
You have to realize most of the 19th-century theorists saw the 1848 revolutions in front of their very eyes, all over Europe, and thought this was going to happen again. The archetype of the Marxist and anarchist revolution is based on 1848.
Then Leninists are basically doomers: Germany didn't become socialist in 1919, so the USSR was doomed to fail and succumb to revisionism, if it is "socialism or barbarism", then we must live in barbarism.
It's very easy to develop a depressive view of history and the future when the optimism regarding the historical necessity of a worldwide revolution is gone, and sooner or latter every communist is confronted to this moment of doubt. I'm not sure a 1848-style wave of revolutions can still happen nowadays exactly like predicted.
So, to go back to the original question: What's the point? Why bother?
Well you can have complicated debates about value theory, but one thing is sure: as long as capitalism is the dominant mode of production, M-C-M' must exists. The necessity of M-C-M' (i.e. investing money into the production and distribution of commodities to resell them and gain more money, infinitely) implies a whole set of behaviors in economic agents, that can go awry. It implies for example infinite economic growth in a finite world.
The point isn't necessarily to believe in the inevitability of a spontaneous worldwide epic revolution like a believer of Christ believes in the resurrection, but to use the theory to analyze the world as it currently stands and diagnose where it is going wrong.
We don't live in the 1990s where the Western liberal democracies triumphantly won, and it's "the end of history". As Zizek says, no even Fukuyama is a Fukuyamaist anymore.
Even liberal newspapers like The Economist and FT knows very well there is something wrong with capitalism as it's going on today, because of climate change, socioeconomic inequality, trade wars, and so on.
Socialist theory will always be there to provide a counterpoint to the failures of capitalism.
The most important insight to gain from Marx et al. is that, just like feudalism was not eternal, capitalism isn't eternal. It's not "human nature". It's a form of societal organization that was historically constructed and can be eventually dismantled later in history, and probably will due to systemic problems.
I also don't like the false dilemma between reform and revolution. It's not 1918 anymore. Socialist theory gives us justifications for both reforms that can make our lives better as a whole right now, during our limited time on this earth, and a reason to revolt if reforms are impossible due to circumstances.
Sorry for the long-winded answer, but for me, this is the reason to care. Think less about the epic hypothetical conclusion, and more about the process and what is unfolding in front of our eyes.
If you read Marx a bit seriously, whenever you are a rich capitalist or a simple ordinary worker, you should be able to see where your interests stand according to your socioeconomic class.
And even if you are a fascist who believes race and warrior culture or some bullshit is more important than socioeconomic class, then you at the very least need to formulate a counterpoint to answer why your bullshit is more important, if you want to be taken seriously.
The analysis of Marx will remain relevant as long as capitalism exists, just like Aristotle was relevant in the study of nature until the scientific revolution of the 16th century.
>What's the real solution?
That's what we need to find out. I don't believe in teleology and grand narratives. The past socialist theorists showed us a way, according to their historical circumstances and their personal ideas, but it's only us living now who can shape the future, not the dead.
>>6545Good post. I read the whole thing. I agree with you about teleology and Marx's understanding of revolutions. I have had similar thoughts as well. I think Marx's analysis of the working of capitalism is good, but the whole way that modes of production change from one to another and revolutions happen needs to be reworked.
We have a good theory of how capitalism works but not a good theory about how the systems actually change from one to another and that lack of understanding makes revolutions harder. After taking power, most communist parties in the 20th century were left wondering what to do next because there is no explanation of how modes of production change from one another.
There also seem to be gaps in our knowledge of other modes of production besides capitalism. How did class societies develop before the industrial revolution? What are the different types of feudalism? How did they develop from one to another? Basically Marx was a theorist of capitalism. Everything else is up for grabs.
I am not a professional working in any kind of social society. I don't have any answers only a bit of curiosity.
>>6545the post so good it should have been its own thread instead of a reply to garbage
>>6546 This is the most based post that I've seen on this subject so far. Bravo. We need to actually innovate on the base that we have instead of clinging to the words of dead men letter by letter and insisting that the gaps in their work must never be filled in, lest we become revisionists.
>>6489hey fellow leftists, communism is all about hating people with money. also, we are all miserable right? also, communism has never worked fellow leftists.
>>6510conservatives really haven't changed a single bit in the last century. its almost impressive how you guys still blame all your problems on liberals and women.
Unique IPs: 23