/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

What the fuck are you talking about

>>2404968
I thought I attached the leaflet, strange it didn't post.
It's a follow up of thought on the infamous soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev's method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement. Of course its a simplification to put complex matters into "levels", but at least having a strata presents objectives to drive towards.
Right now we're seeing so many spineless people and organizations that it's interesting to think about what unification with a program would allow, since its the difference that lacks in the present day situation.

>>2404978
As for the Administration of Things, its also another subject that lacks discussion, which is odd considering it is a visionary idea to come after the government of persons is replaced.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm

Maybe its just thrown out there, but I have not encountered any follow-ups in books or even articles describing its way of function other than the text that follows it in the original being just a way of saying that the productive forces will continue to be. It should definitely be that the productive forces continue to develop, it just never has had a concise program attached to it as of yet.

>>2404945
I think that being on the Kardashev scale, at least for humans, probably requires a level of technosocial advancement that is so high that you wouldn't even recognize it as communist anymore. It'd be a postcommunist, posthuman world to start with.
Or to make it more grounded and explicit: I think that communism would be necessary but not sufficient for our (likely posthuman) descendants to end up on the Kardashev scale.

>>2404978
One fault of it is that it never implies if a civilization is mobile or sets at a "core", just describes the utilization of cosmic resources.
If it has a core (or a core planet like Earth) then everything must rely to revolve around it. If it is mobile then it is not confined and resource extraction can only develop "fleets". There is a third thesis of a "mobile core" where the Earth itself can be transformed into a spaceship, but it seems vastly resource insufficient and it will likely not be an option until one of the two prior routes has been taken. The "Gaia hypothesis" for example has the issue of taking "Earth as a spaceship" in itself even without the capacity to act as one, its more of a metaphor than anything and sums up to a banality we all knew from the start - that all must be unified to be sustained.

>>2404994
Would it be far fetched to go back to an exploitative mode of production if our survival as a unified species depends on it? I mean it could not really be defined as "exploitative" if its just utilization of the inanimate resources unless you take a route like OOO (object oriented ontology) which is just as retarded as the "fighting speciesism" reactionary crowd, but what if it comes to other sapient life? I think we should prioritize anthropocentrism or what comes to the successors as self-centered rather than collaboration if collaboration cannot be a sustainable virtue.
It might all end up resembling capital growth and accumulation at the expense of another species if it comes to self-preservation so it will defile communism as a thing of the past, but I think its situational. We're looking at categories of interaction we've literally grown up with rather than creating a new one - symbiosis, parasitism, and predation. We don't even consider class war to be "predation" since its a reaction to the parasitism of the capitalist mode of production and its proponents - the bourgeoisie, but what if it comes to situational flexibility and a way of interaction other than symbiosis is needed? Generally socialism and communism are envisioned to be modeled after symbiosis driven by revolutionary change, but the farther we go the more complex things will get. What if the movement needs to switch because of a threat of unstable social relations driven by a type of scarcity which cannot be managed or mitigated, a barrier that cannot be seen that prevents productive forces from developing due to scarcity unless a purging (predation) or an exploitation from within (parasitism) can occur? It seems that if the communist movement really is against the present state of things it will continue onward in the most pragmatic way possible to continue the development of the productive forces without any waste, stagnation or regress allowed to occur - even if it is damaging to some or something.
Then again I do speculate that a new way of interaction can occur that is neither of the three seen in anthropology, there already is one dubbed commensalism - where one organism benefits while the other is neither significantly harmed nor helped. You might remember it from Darwin's analysis of the disguising barnacles which drove him mad. I wonder what Marx would've written, since the myth goes that he would dedicate a volume of Capital to him.

>>2405013
Again its all pointless speculation for the fun of it, if there is another species it all depends on their reaction if they are sapient, if they are not sapient they will continue to be utilized as long as its necessary. If another sapient species takes notice then decisions can be made, the problem is if the sapient species is more advanced on the Kardashev scale and hostile beyond negotiation, then there really isn't much of a choice.

But this post isn't about that, its about if the Administration of Things can climb up the Kardashev scale or not. Or to even try to describe what the administration of things' social order would resemble as an attempt at socialist futurology and historical materialism as an analysis of societal change.

>>2405013
>that is neither of the three seen in anthropology
Note that we see it all from general zoology, but these behaviors are all plausible to be exhibited within sapient life if it has the capacity to it.

Drivel. The Kardashev scale ends at K3, Aliens don't exist, Communism is not the end of history or the final economic system there will ever be, people don't have a drive towards reactionary behaviour. You will build billions of dyson spheres and you will enjoy it.

>>2405023
>The Kardashev scale ends at K3
What are the limitations?
>Aliens don't exist
Sapient or any organisms? The fact that there are no conclusive studies yet doesn't mean there will never be since that's deterministic. Who are we to say microorganisms don't exist outside of Earth despite the same resources that allow for them to being present outside of Earth? The claim that all other planets which number in the trillions or more are all uninhabited by any living organism is way more wild than the claim that aliens exist.
>Communism is not the end of history or the final economic system there will ever be
The question being how far will the communist movement get and what the administration of things will bring in terms of a social order.
>people don't have a drive towards reactionary behaviour.
That implies reactionaries don't exist at all or that reactionaries aren't people and that all present persons are somehow progressive, because there is no way between regress and progress.
>You will build billions of dyson spheres and you will enjoy it.
I probably won't live to see it.

>>2405013
I don't think it's desirable to regress to an earlier mode of production under any circumstances. I also don't think that it's something that is required by any kind of teleology, including the one that you're positing. Relations of production change because they must in order to accomodate increased forces of production. Just as there is no way that feudalism can be more productive than capitalism, there is no way that capitalism can be more productive than communism. This doesn't mean that the mode of production can't regress, only that it's never something that will be desired by the people living within it.

I think that humans are unlikely to lose their anthropocentrism, at least anytime soon (on a geological time scale), so I wouldn't worry too much about that. We don't socialize with rocks, after all. That said, I think if communism is realized, that its productive forces will inevitable turn to shepherding the natural environment in a planned and deliberate way. This doesn't mean that it will conform to your (or my, or anyone's) particular moral calculus, but I think it does imply that we'll reach a level of local homeostasis with the natural world, which is better than what we've got now.

The far-flung possibility of a future communist or postcommunist society's struggles with the forces of production are, quite literally, not possible to predict. In light of that, I'll say only this: the break between communism and all previous civilization is that, with the abolition of class society, the forces of production will be made to serve society, rather than the other way around (as has been the case with all previous civilization). This opens up genuinely unforeseeable social and historical possibilities. One of them (and I'm speculating here) is the cessation of the drive to mindlessly place production above our conception of the social good.

I want to go a step further in this discussion. I used to be pretty fixated on the idea of the human species' survival. I thought that the only way for humanity to flourish in the very long run was to spread to the stars. And all things considered, I'd rather see that happen than not. (Of course, I wouldn't want to see our society's current form spread over the galaxy, because it's grotesque and suicidal. But I think that the evils of capitalism also hinder the kind of enormous collective effort required to do something like colonize space, so in my opinion that's a moot point.)

Anyway, I fixated on this idea of human survival. But eventually I realized that this was just a distorted form of my anxiety about my own personal, individual death. I had just projected my death to be the death of all humanity, and was looking for a solution that I thought was possible or likely, so that I could unconsciously reassure myself that my own individual death wasn't in vain.

But if we really look at this dialectically, what is the "best-case" scenario for someone with this fixation? (Obviously this is all a meaningless flight of fancy to distrace oneself from reality, but hey, we're both on the Internet, and that's all we're doing right now anyway.) If humanity spreads to the stars and lasts for billions and billions of years, we know that it will change. Being is becoming, and all things are in a process of coming into being or passing away. All things change, either through extinguishment or development. So it's literally inevitable that humanity would, on a stellar timescale, change so much that it is qualitatively no longer recognizable to you and me as human anymore, but whatever standard we choose to use.

This is not functionally different from the extinction of humanity. Just as all things have a beginning, all things have an end. It is better to actually sit with death, and to realize this, and grapple with the question in its true form, instead of this mystified science-fiction fantasy. I'm not saying that it's easy to do, or even that you can resolve it for yourself, but there's honesty and purpose in it.

>>2405028
You should be crowned the new Marx, write a book or something, I would read it.

>>2405028
>but whatever standard we choose to use
Meant "by whatever standard we choose to use."

>>2405031
You're very kind. I'm still just trying to figure out what's going on, like everyone else.