/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Can someone explain why suddenly much of the entire left have suddenly decided that IP/Copyright is sacred and automation is bad?
They do realize that AI is probably the most important technological revolution in bringing about the material conditions for Socialism right? Combine it with cheap 3D printers in 10 years time and entire sectors of the economy are going to have their rate of profit absolutely annihilated. Yes, I will download that car thank you very much.
But suddenly swaths of the left is like "NOOOOOOO MY COPYRIGHT LAWS, MUH HUMAN INPUT OF LABOUR NOOOOOOOOO". The only leftist creators I've seen are pro Copyright are Haz and Peter Coffin, and they're both in this case, 100% correct from a Marxist or actual Socialist position.

The Japanese lower house election is underway, and all early reports indicate an overwhelming majority for the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. I guess just making your platform hating China works, especially if every poll shows youth support for her is in the 90%

Would this have been a valid strategy, chat? Perchance.

It certainly would have not been too short or empty strategy. Oh, no. No, sir. Not a chance.

I keep hearing people criticise Marxists for being "Althusserians" but I don't quite understand what that entails. What about Althusser is so controversial? What book of his should I read first to understand his contribution (or lack of contribution) to Marxism? And also is there a good polemic against him.

Is there an inherent spiritual element to Marxist values? If you look at history you will notice that despite religious restrictions, the most diehard supporters of Marxism were religious at some point or even stayed religious afterwards.

Likewise, many spiritual traditionalist philosophers in today recognize that Marxism has "esoteric" and "spiritual" themes. And that is true even more for the Bolshevik revolution and Bolshevism.

What do you think, why is this?

What is the materialist reason that Christianity supplanted Paganism as the prefered religion. Surely it's not as simple as some Emperor having a 'schizo' vision during a battle

why is there no hype around the winter olympics? Usually it's all one can see/hear when they're on, but this time it's all about ICE agents in Italy, protests against them, stuff like that. There aren't any of the usual "white evropean athletes dominate the asian and slavic mongoloids!" stories either. What did the olympic committee do that displeased the westoid liberals and the media?

Comrade, forgive me, for I have sinned

Today, something happened whilst I was doorknocking that I believe I won't ever be the same after. It was a large apartment building, you'd think it was an Eastern European commie block from the outside, though it's as well maintained as they were before the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Nonetheless, me and a far older comrade (70 years old) went down the stairs to the 5th floor. We rung a first door, waited a couple seconds, nothing. It's fine. We rung the door next to it, and waited again before heading towards the next door, however we immediately tensed up when we heard chains clanging. The first door we had rung was going to be opened. So, we immediately went back towards it, and greeted the man inside. From the looks of it, he was old, not that old, but old nonetheless. 50? 55? Doesn't matter. And we said the usual things we did: "Good afternoon, we have a little flyer, it's about the mayoral elections-", my comrade said, before being interrupted. The man who had answered the door was visibly angry, and told us that he did not care for left, right, center, up, down or anything else, as he had known this city under the left and the right. His father died in 2009, and he had to take care of his handicapped, sick and dying mother. She died in 2017. In 2009, we, the COMMUNISTS, were in power, and he went to town hall and we simply said we couldn't do anything. We *wouldn't* do anything. He worked day and night, incredibly long hours, he worked his ass off, and had to take care of his sick mother. By himself. We lost the city in 2014, and the situation remained exactly the same. My comrade kept trying to convince him, but I remained silent. I just couldn't come to terms with it… we LET his mother die. We KILLED her. WE have blood on our hands. US. Not anybody else, no, WE.

And he works from 12AM to 1AM, he works security. He works day and night, like I said, and now he's going to retire soon, and you know what? He has so little to retire with. We did nothing to help him. We've stood passively by, allying ourselves with the closest bourgeois leftslop party in order to not collapse, and we did nothing to help him. And people like him. I just can't believe it… We're… We're BOURGEOIS. WE are BOURGEOIS. WE are complicit in the murder of hundreds of millions, no, BILLIONS of people. And this isn't the only thing that happened today. I was biking to the apartment building, following the rePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Capitalism has changed a lot since Marx lived. Some people say it has not changed much. But it has. We are now in what many call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Technology moves very fast even if the mode of production itself is still in place. Goods are changing too. Machines and software now do much of the work. Companies do not always sell software as something you buy once and own forever. Instead, they rent it to you. You pay every month. You do not truly own it. It's not like the food you eat. This does not prove Marx was wrong. It can actually support his method, if we see his ideas as a study of real social systems that change over time. The commodity, or good for sale, has not disappeared. It has changed shape. It has become more abstract and varied in its specific forms. When some commodities become a subscription, buying and selling does not end. The purchaser's true ownership ends. Companies learned that in the digital age, control brings more profit than simple ownership. The commodity is no longer just a thing. It is a controlled stream of access. Profit comes again and again over time. This is not a world beyond capitalism. It is capitalism finding new ways to control time and space. Automation also does not destroy capitalism’s basic rules. But it creates problems for them. If human labor creates value, and machines replace workers, then the system weakens its own base. Yet capitalism does not simply fall apart. It adapts. It grows through finance. It strengthens copyright and patents. It creates artificial scarcity, even when goods could be copied easily. It turns genocide into a spectacle for people to watch and get anxious about happening to them. Social media turns daily life into data that can be sold. The factory has not vanished. It has spread into warehouses, data centers, and computer systems that track workers. Wage labor still exists. It is just more divided, watched, and pushed across the globe to find the cheapest workers. This shows a new tension. Technology can now produce goods in great amounts, often at very low cost. But the system of private ownership and profit limits access. Subscription models, digital locks, and cloud systems are legal tools that keep control in private hands. Capitalism is not stuck. It is active and flexible. But it still faces crises. It survives by reorganizing power in more complex ways. It makes production global and social, yet keeps profit private. It also harms the planet. This deepens the Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Modern communists have bought into Marx's propaganda towards the proletariat wholesale, and forget that Marx's designation of the proletariat as revolutionary subject is purely pragmatical.
Communism, for Marx, is the liberation of humanity from the logic of capital and wage labour. He simply agitated the proletariat because it was politically expedient to do so: they are the majority, they are less intelligent on average and thus more receptive to agitation, and so forth. And in his propaganda to that end he romanticized its class characteristics, but never actually believed it himself. Marx understood, like all revolutionaries (and Lenin later made crystal clear), that the real drivers behind all revolutions are an elite cadre of intellectuals influencing the masses towards an aim.
Now, if you don't understand that elites (in some form or the other) are the actual drivers and the masses their tools, you are like a blood-and-soil fascist revolutionary who forgets that, in his agitation of the white working class towards class collaboration and the exclusion of other races, you actually secretly have contempt for the lower class, even those of your own race. This is the 'in the know' secret you must know and embrace inside as a revolutionary of any kind, but never make public to the subject you're trying to agitate. No revolutionary is 'egalitarian'. The egalitarian is naive enough to presuppose that his revolution would never need him. This is why horizontalists must believe themselves and their ideas to be superfluous.
That is not to say that Marx necessarily found the proletariat contemptible or disdainful. But that he knew they needed to be agitated by a well-crafted, easy to digest propaganda. And like all revolutionaries, he genuinely believes in his end goals and their nobility.
So my problem with Stalin or [insert failed revolutionary] would not be that he was a traitor to the cause or some egotist preoccupied with power and control while abandoning the cause of communism. No, he was simply not pragmatic enough.
Everything comes down to pragmatism. We should be communists because we believe it advances humanity in tangible ways, without being so naive as to fall for our own romanticisation of humanity.