Finished watching new Contrapoints video, and I have some thoughts about it, and I would like to hear your thoughts on it as well.
>inb4 Im not watching 3 hour radlib video
Ok, feel free to post in any other thread on this site then.
>inb4 this belongs in /isg/
I want to talk about the actual contend of the video, not internet drama.
First half of is ok-ish, informative for normies I guess but I dont think anyone here is going to hear anything they werent already aware of. The video gets more interesting from part 4: Ritual onward, where it tries to explore psychological roots of conspiratorial mindset. Particularly how it ties to certain victimhood mentality, and dealing with emotions of shame, guilt, humiliation. Reminded me of this article from time of first Trump campaign/presidency, in some newspaper, Washington Post or whatever, describing life of one Trump supporter, how he went from a normal person to mentally ill gun-nut after a medical situation forced him to quit his job, and had to rely on state and his wife for income, which made him retreat to a semi-fantasy world in an effort to make himself feel useful, like he is not a burden to everyone around.
Anyway, there are three objections I have with ideas put forward in the video.
First, I hate when libs make defend Stalin, because I have very little sympathy towards him, I consider him a conservative (or reactionary, whatever word you prefer) compared to many of the bolsheviks he purged, was a chief culprit in insulating communist party from democratic process and turning it into a clique of bureaucrats, but I cannot think of anything that would warrant accusation of nationalism. "Socialism in one country" came to being under circumstances of there literally being one socialist country under siege by rest of the world's Great Powers, like what else do you want people to do, give up? Furthermore, Soviet Union was not a nation, but a supranational state. Stalin pursued neither majority-Russian chauvinism, nor was advocate of national independence, nor believer in some sort of Soviet supremacism over other countries (political control of Moscow over other governments, sure, but that is not supremacism), so in what sense of the word was he a nationalist?
Second, while yeah, understanding marxism in depth is too intellectual for average schmuck, you dont need that to be a communist. Concepts like class antagonism are very easy and intuitive to understand - boss wants to make lots of money, therefore he pays you shit so he can keep more money, and he has to keep more money, because otherwise he gets driven out of market by competition. People get that. We can have further debate about why not just stay at level of social democracy, welfare state, why do we need planned economy, why cant system be reformed, but its not like an average liberal/conservative party voter is versed in neoclasical theory, so clearly they can get on board with a political project without concern for its details. The reason why reactionary ideal are more popular than revolutionary ones isnt in their inherent comparative virality, but simply that the ruling class has a lot more resources at their disposal for propagandizing ideology than your local trotskyist group with their self-published newspaper.
Third, I want to open with saying that I genuinely greatly appreciate Contra including animals into the exploitation pyramid. But to position average person "somewhere in the middle" of it obscures the actual power distance between people on the top and the middle and bottom. Like yeah, by definition most people will be somewhere around median, but this bell curve has a loooooooong tail. The most wretched poor outcast on the fringes of the society has in terms of material interests a lot more in common with a completely average prole, then those have with billionaires and political elite at the top. Hell, they have a lot more in common than with some petite bourgeois hovering around 90 percentile of household income. To claim that relation between the bottom and the middle is the same as between middle and top is pure capitalist propaganda. Just think about it in concrete terms, what policies would benefit a poor person, an average (i.e. median income) person, and a rich one? The Venn diagram is not going to be three equally overlapping circles.
Whether or not I in some way benefit from system of global exploitation does not make me morally culpable to it, because I have no say in the matter. I have control over my own choices, I can choose to not fiance torture of animals with my money, I can choose to give spare change to a homeless guy, I can choose who I vote for and what politics I advocate, but I refuse to be held responsible for things I have no power over. What am I supposed to do, became a martyr? No thank you, I prefer my opposition to do the dying, and however many I could realistically send to hell before following them there is going to be replaced before their bodies grow cold. Consequently, people with power are culpable for what they do with that power. Funnily enough Contrapoints also mentions not having a "martyr impulse", but she says it in context of going vegan. Walking to a different isle in the supermaket to buy bag of lentils is not martyrdom. As it goes with these things, proclaiming culpability of everyone for everything is just a justification washing your own feeling of guilt away. "I am not evil, I am morally average". Which is exactly the same moral framework as "just following orders". Was your average Wehrmacht soldier "morally average" as they committed their atrocities? The answer is, yes. They behaved exactly how most people would in their situation. Do they deserve to be called evil for not shooting their commanding officer and running off into the woods to join partisans? And the answer is, yes, of course, they are Nazis, fuck them! Being the same as others around you is not a moral get-out-of-jail card, it is entirely possible for you all to be evil. I utterly resent this conflation of moral clarity with conspiratorial thinking, or authoritarianism. The ending monologue is really a modern liberal manifesto. "Acknowledge the oppressor in ourselves (dont change it though!)". It is a call for identification with power, that you are the same as the people stomping on your face, in the same video in which she berates right-wingers for foolishly thinking billionaire oligarchs consider them an ingroup. How does she not see it?
141 posts and 9 image replies omitted.>>2203292the dichotomy is like racism
it's not scientifically real, but socially real
>>2203308relax, I just made 7 typos in a row, obviously I meant historical materialism as any true marxism-understander would :)
>>2203315marx debunked philosophy, learn to code
>>2203308theyre the same thing
>>2203346its both
>>2203292they are right about most stemlets being positivists, its exactly what i was going to say. its not all of them but there is an overabundance of midwits in stem that think intelligence is memorizing facts and really smart people just know all the facts. while stem can be systemic, the average undergrad does not understand the system and only knows a collection of disjointed data, they have no ability to innovate and just become a cog in a machine because education under capitalism is also built around this. breaking past this and coming to marxism as your first holistic undertanding of a system can be extremely challenging for someone whos entire ego and life is founded on being rewarded for spouting trivial novelties.
>>2203332>>2203346>>2203360>dialectical *>not a philosophy>same as historical materialismdid you "learn" marxism from twitter and leftypol.org?
you claiming to dismiss philosophy and using the term dialectical materialism at the same time. you have no idea what these words mean nor what the marxist critique of philosophy was, or you wouldn't be using the word dialectical anything
>>2203346that's not what my post
>>2203292 was saying you dishonest piece of shit
>>2203299not even remotely true. the sooner you stop telling yourself that capital is an EZ breezy read for everyone else just because it's (allegedly) EZ for imageboard neets in an echo chamber with infinite free time, the sooner you'll realize exactly how much more organizational work you should be doing.
It took 5 years, 1867-1872 for Capital to sell only 1000 copies in Germany. I stand by my point. It was not voraciously consumed by working class people working 12 hour shifts in industrial factories before going home to their 4 chimney sweep children, it was purchased by political economists and intellectuals of the 1st international in a limited circulation, as well as enemies of Marxism like Bohm-Bawerk. Perhaps later on in the East German Republic it was consumed voraciously by workers because it was prescribed as part of a standard school curriculum, with courses built around it, and lots of pedagogical work being done to make it accessible, but in Marx's life time the book actually received the best sales in Russia. But still, those "best sales" were merely 3000 copies. This was not a widely circulated book outside of explicitly political circles until the 20th century, and it certainly wasn't read widely by non-partisan workers until actually existing socialist states made it part of an educational curriculum.
>>2203458anyone saying capital is an easy read which any literate person can understand has either not read capital or has not understood it
forget the average worker, most university students (even professors) will have trouble.
most of the CPSU and CCP themselves did/do not understand it
>>2203458>it wasn't popular therefore it is hard to understand>>2203497>all the successful communists? brainlets. me? an intellectualit is dense, not hard or complex. marx goes slow and methodically, giving examples and preempting possible misunderstandings, basic counter-arguments and/or malicious misinterpretations
the only legitimate readability complain is that it requires a long attention spam. people read that this is the most important critique of capitalism ever and then they expect hot takes and grandiloquence but the text actually focuses mostly on the rather boring basics and their intricate details, slowly building up to interesting but still relatively humble conclusions
>>2200485
>And more directly, that involves some kid's dad disappearing one day because of his background, and that kid never sees daddy again, and they actually did that to people. That's what we're talking about when it comes to inflicting terror on class enemies. And are you willing to say that you'd do that? And if you are, it's like… who the hell are you, man? Maybe in conditions of extreme civil war or something.I am of course, your enemy, as always. t. Eamovulgaros
One thing to note however is that when eliminating the parents its imperative to eliminate the children (unless they are extremely young, like babies, and can be shipped off anonymously to an orphanage).
This is necessary to guarantee prevention of them from carrying out retaliatory vengeance when they grow up (which makes sense for them to do, from a basic psycho-biological urge point of view).
>>2203634>it wasn't popular therefore it is hard to understandyou've gotta be missing the point on purpose. it was neither popular nor easy to understand. even the people who read it, and assisted in writing it, like Engels, understood it. If Lenin is telling you that you need to read Hegel to understand the first chapter of capital, do you think he's saying that to flex? Or do you think he's dead fucking serious?
>the only legitimate readability complain is that it requires a long attention spanwhich is something people have even less of in 2025 than in 1917. Youtube has metrics on video essays. Every single video essayist says the majority of their audience do not make it through the first half of their videos. And these are the vulgarizers and popularizers. How much worse must it be for actual dense books? Get real.
>>2203581They used to be on libgen until it shut down. Pretty sure they'll be on Anna's Archive.
>>2203718You don't need an infinite amount of free time to study and you don''t need to be a neet. Having children might make it more difficult, but it has been done before. Getting a job that requires little effort or attention - clerk, watchman, etc allows you time to study while getting paid. These days you can feed in books and bibliographies to an AI and have a tutor you can ask questions.
>>2204933There was a time after the first Trump win when every retart lib on the internet would tell you that the concept of a Deep State was a schizo conspiracy theory.
It was not a good time.
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