People will seemingly do anything to not engage in analysis of structures of class, labor, and political economy a la basic Marxism.
Paradoxically, some of the most radical-sounding theory ends up being politically inert. If your revolution happens in desire or discourse, then there's no need to organize tenants, unions, or strikes. No need to analyze class composition. It's post-materialist. The ruling class is perfectly happy for people to spend their time deciphering Deleuze or burning effigies of "the State" in their heads rather than challenging property relations.
Since the 1960s, theory has absorbed countercultural and psychoanalytic influences that treat rationalism itself as suspect. Much of this comes from academia. Their material interests don't align with the working class, so abstract theory "feels" radical without risking much. Another part of this is a sort of learned helplessness and nihilism, in that sense modern theory serves the same function as fascism in that is provides an outlet by giving the "aesthetic" of radicalism without the substance.
TLDR:The most "radical" thing you can do today is to simply disregard the vast majority of Western Marxism/Post-Marxism i.e. Freudo-Marxism, Deleuzean neo-Kantianism, Hegelian revivals through Lukács and Adorno, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and any approach that elevates """discourse""" as the primary object of analysis, and instead return to a straightforward, rigorous conjunctural class and geopolitical analysis grounded in orthodox Marxist categories and methodology.
>>2384987>If your revolution happens in desire or discoursebrother read how you write
you are part of the problem
and here is the thing, all those people that seem to live rent free in your head? feel free to ignore them; lenin didn't care about what college professors thought, the few time he engaged with their articles was to make fun of them
the fact that you made an angry thread about this or that you use the word discourse multiple times tells me you are exactly that type of people yourself. focus and grind, or something
>>2385120leftcucks have merely critiqued the political economy in various ways
the point however, is to change it
>>2385744Status of medication: Nowhere to be found.
Focusing strictly on unions and capitalism instead of examining the substrate of revolutionary action to even resist them in the first place: Ignored
Idealism: Back
You are not a materialist I'm afraid.
Main issue with Western Marxism is that it's the domain of University Educated, Middle Income turbo liberals, who's political goal isn't really Marxism or anything to do with the general "working classes" but an implementation of Ultra-liberal social ideals.
A Solarpunk commune filled with arthoes and Tumblr sets all the social values is basically what most Western Leftists want the world to be. It's actually not a negative vision, but it's wholly unrealistic and basically is a rejection of the working classes.
Over the years, something I've really, REALLY come to realize is the vast majority of leftists are incredibly naive and sheltered. They are the children of a ultra-liberal suburban upbringing. I know, this is the case, because I was the same, until my life hit a massive derailing that led me to have to deal with Lumpens for years on end with no safety net. That was where I became street smart and finally saw through and lost a lot of the naive high-trust upbringing I had.
Every time I speak to leftists, even here on leftypol, I cannot help but notice the sheer naivete that most lefties hold. I remember when interacting as a liason between leftist org and XR, lefties I knew IRL would be aghast by the fact I talked about how rampant drug usage was among politicians and they thought I was a conspiracy theorist despite I knew this as fact due to working with people who worked at a particular establishment frequented by politicians and elites. When it comes to discussions about say, Welfare fraud, or ethnic ingroup identity politics, or the fact most Homeless are there by choice, most Leftists refuse to acknowledge this reality despite it being backed up even by data from Left leaning research groups. The amount of times I've been banned from leftypol, for actually CRITIQUING minority idpol backed up with links and studies, is fucking unreal at this point. Even the moderators here have no fucking clue and want to suppress discussion on issues that actually have very real world effects and consequences and are of primary concern to THE WORKING CLASS.
Has any Western leftist even asked a Normie Baz what they want from life? What sort of society they want to live in? What things they enjoy? It doesn't really seem like it.
You can see the middle income aspect of the left, where in every leftist org I was in, football/rugby etc was called "Sportsball" and people looked down on caring about sport… the number 1 past time of the working classes.
The Western left is a fucking joke, they genuinely think that everyone wants to live in pic related. Instead of pragmatism it's LIBERAL idealism and a rejection of the working classes.
>>2385888Yes, a whole fucking swath are there by choice. The state throws absolutely fucktonnes at homeless people, they have top priority in every single respect for support. Most are just personality disordered, drug addicted and chose living a completely degenerate fucked up life than actually even having the stability that welfare gives them. I lived in a city that had an excess of public housing, yet there were crackhead homeless everywhere, despite they all technically had houses they could be at because they prefer a life of being a Lumpen antisocial dickhead.
The vast majority of ACTUAL homeless are invisible homeless, people who cope that they are "Car living!", "mobile living" because they are too ashamed to be seen as homeless, they work normal jobs, they wash at gyms and most of these people are pretty short term homeless with the average only being a few months.
Majority of long term homeless, are homeless by choice. That is the reality.
>>2385890No, it's the fucking reality. Leftists refuse even basic structural fucking reforms to stop Lumpen behaviour or scamming, because they can't possibly accept that most people at the lower end of society live in a dog eat dog/ingroup mindset and have no problem harassing, defrauding and stealing their way to a life. Here in the UK, we are hitting the point where welfare claimants are outstripping people paying into the system, because of how easy welfare is to defraud. Does the left have a problem with fucking Landlords driving around in taxpayer funded luxury cars they get on Welfare? Nope. In fact, investigating fraud is bad and classism! This despite this is going to lead to the entire welfare system collapsing, giving path to Thatcherite style dimantling, but the left is too naive/shitbrained to actually accept you need to enforce standards, because the Western left is a Tumblr, empathy politics brained middle income utopian retardation.
China is my fucking flag on this site, because the CPC does not stand for any of this shit and has cracked down on all this stupid naivete.
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-10-19/full-text-xi-jinpings-speech-on-boosting-common-prosperity-101788302.htmlOf course, a speech like this, if it was from anyone else but Xi, would have 99% of the left crying about how he is a right wing conservative reactionary.
>>2385887you are right
Easy to be all loving and woke when you do not have to deal with the lumpen 24/7. Once you have to, you realise what fucking ghouls they are.
>>2385897Literally had to live in a illegally rented out public house split into multiple occupancy home. Everything in my name had to be registered to extended family address. My landlord literally was earning 2600 from the state every month, had brand new car paid for by the state, most of the day he just raked in cash from me and my roommates, smoked crack and weed and played video games while constantly guilt tripping us to buy him food and stuff because he gave us lower than market rate rent.
I worked full time 11 hours a day 8-7 and only pulled 1800 a month pre tax.
He was just one of many people pulling this scam, and he was one of the least sociopathic ones I met, tonnes of completely unhinghed sociopathic lumpens I met over those years.
Of course, got out eventually, reported them to the Government and… nothing happens, because the Government just does not give a fuck about enforcement at all. The fact these fucks are stealing from funds for severely disabled people doesn't phase them or much of the left at all.
The left doesn't realize that a whole strata of society has no fucking shame. I have one of these lumpen fucks hang out of the front of my apartment building, wearing brand new arcteryx harassing every young woman that walks buy to buy him food, from the supermarket across from me, and the amount of times I've seen in that supermarket, him with $100 in groceries (ice creams, booze, frozen food, showing HE HAS A FUCKING HOUSE WITH A FREEZER), and a distraut 19 year old girl or whatever, is more than I can count on my hands.
>>2385909I think the state should stop funding lazy drug addeled fuckheads and frankly, throw them into reeducation camps like China and the USSR does and did.
Why should working class be funding the lifestyle of antisocial lumpens who make life worse for everyone around them because they don't care about themselves, let alone others? Why should we sacrifice the safety and comfort of the working classes to even go out in their own communities for the privilege of crack and fentheads?
Having a Cluster B disorder is automatic right to a cash handout from the working class to buy drugs and shit on sidewalks it seems.
>>2385947He did the exact opposite btw, he threw all drug addicts and insane people out of the clinics and asylums onto the street. I propose the opposite, they should be forced into reeducation camps, like was the case in the USSR and is the case in China.
>>2385939It's not their fault the system is broken, but I don't think the left should play along and let individuals fuck shit up for everyone else as well. What I want is a structural reform, laojiao everywhere, laojiao as far as the eye can see.
Rajneeshpuram is proof enough that trying to welfare Homeless people into integration even with utopian level benefits and support is a completely lost cause.
>>2385942Not if you game the system, you can easily be earning 40k+ through welfare if you know how to play it which scammers absolutely do. My landlord was getting social housing, bills support, 2600 in bennies on top of that + didn't have to pay insurance and stuff like that, meanwhile I had 1800 before tax from working 11 hours a day. Read r/BenefitsAdviceUK, it's not long until you find posts where the advice is to not get a job or to stop their partner from getting a job, because working anything below like 20 quid an hour is less than what many there get in PIP and JSA.
>>2384987>the superstructure determines the baseTalk about basic Marxism.
In any case, your ilk "attacks" the symptoms of imperial core countries, instead of admitting that Marxism in the West moved to the academia exactly because it had no place among the labor aristocracy.
In other words, you could burn all the spooky Freud and Adorno texts, revolution still won't happen in the imperial core. Meanwhile, in comfy socialist China, Xi is recommending people to read Marcuse! THE HORROR!!!
>>2386304Do we actually have to fight over who is less sheltered and has experienced more adversity? Having bad experiences is a bad thing
Sing along with the common people
Sing along and it might just get you through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along, even though they're laughing at you
And the stupid things that you do
Because you think that poor is cool
>>2387108A huge part of Deleuze and Guattari's work, especially Anti-Oedipus is deeply embedded in the context of the New Left and its reaction to postwar institutions like psychiatry, the nuclear family, etc.
One of the biggest problems of the new left was reorienting the left from class to identity and from materialist analysis to poetic metaphysics. This sort of vitalist mysticism depoliticizes theory and turns it into symbolic disruption and identity performance.
>>2387480nickland
NICKLAND
NICKFUCKINGLAND
>>2384987In practice your proposed solution remains as post-materialist as those losers. You correctly identify the need for trade and tenant unions, for strikes and for general physical action, but your emphatic conclusion is that one needs to change their style of analysis - not their actions, just their analysis.
You will no longer explicitly care about discourse, but discourse remains what you'll do: defend Cuba, Russia, China, etc, on the internet, and spew out class analysis in text form. You will have a slightly more materialist aesthetic, appear to be dealing with concrete rather than philosophical questions, but you will still just be arguing on the internet - as secure in your position that you're the only real revolutionary (supporting AES states and REAL class analysis) as the other side is secure that they're the only real revolutionary (imagining radically different ways of being) while all you're proposing is social democracy with stalin banners.
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