/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>Marxism, OTOH, is scientific. We understand that political power is necessary to reshape society.

That's not what Marx meant when he said that Marxism is "scientific", he was making a comparison to utopian socialism and other ideogies which he considered "unscientific" because they focused on the morality capitalism rather than the logistics of it, i.e. other theories were saying "capitalism must end because it is evil" whilst Marxism said "capitalism *will* end because it is unsustainable."

1. Anarchism, in the course of the 35 to 40 years (Bakunin and the International, 1866–) of its existence (and with Stirner included, in the course of many more years) has produced nothing but general platitudes against exploitation.

These phrases have been current for more than 2,000 years. What is missing is (alpha) an understanding of the causes of exploitation; (beta) an understanding of the development of society, which leads to socialism; (gamma) an understanding of the class struggle as the creative force for the realisation of socialism.

2. An understanding of the causes of exploitation. Private property as the basis of commodity economy. Social property in the means of production. In anarchism–nil.

Anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse. Individualism as the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook.

{
Defence of petty property and petty economy on the land. Keine Majorität.[1]

Negation of the unifying and organising power of the authority.
}

3. Failure to understand the development of society–the role of large-scale production–the development of capitalism into socialism.

(Anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and not of the proletarian.)

4. Failure to understand the class struggle of the proletariat.

Absurd negation of politics in bourgeois society.

Failure to understand the role of the organisation and the education of the workers.

Panaceas consisting of one-sided, disconnected means.

5. What has anarchism, at one time dominant in the Romance countries, contributed in recent European history?

– No doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory.

– Fragmentation of the working-class movement.

– Complete fiasco in the experiments of the revolutionary movement (Proudhonism, 1871; Bakuninism, 1873).

– Subordination of the working class to bourgeois politics in the guise of negation of politics.

>>2516671
Marx meant scientific in the same sense of physics and chemistry. This is a direct consequence of dialectical materialism.

>>2516676

In the 1800s, the word "science" did not have the same meaning as it does today. Before the 20th century, "science" had a broader meaning and was essentially a synonym for "knowledge" or "study", people would say things like "the science of grammar" or "the science of human misconduct." The scientific method had not yet been formalized or entered popular usage. The word "scientist" had only recently been coined in the 1830s and was sort of trendy new fad at the time; before that scientists referred to themselves as "natural philosophers".

The German word Wissenschaft, as used by Marx, is the equivalent of the English word "science" as it was used pre-20th century, i.e. a synonym for "knowledge" or "study" or "philosophy". It doesn't translate to "science" in the way that we use the word today.

>>2516761
That's a very idealised view of the practice of science

>>2516844

Well, the point is, when Marx was talking about "wissenschaft" he wasn't talking about our modern definition of "science", i.e. the rigorous formalized system of observation/testing/theory. Furthermore, Marxism cannot be a science by the modern definition of the word because it does not make falsifiable predictions. You can't empirically prove that Marxism is correct or incorrect, so it's not science. It's ideology at best, pseudoscience at worst.

>>2516876
The rate of profit keeps falling for some reason, that's a century lon confirmation

>>2516884
When it comes to human affairs there’s no way to accurately predict almost anything. It’s based mainly on reasonable observations, history, anthropology, etc.

>>2516896
Yeah that's the point, compared to most social science Marxism is extremely rigorous

>>2516896
>When it comes to human affairs there’s no way to accurately predict almost anything

Things like attractiveness and Intelligence Quotient are very testable and you can make solid predictions with the

>>2516674
what retard wrote this?

>>2493213
Anarchists aren’t against hierarchies of competence you dork, this is just semantics

/thread

>>2515782
Not what I said. What I said is most ML arguments against anarchism boil down to 'muh human nature'. Which is boomer tier logic.

>>2515845
Nice of you to prove his point

>>2517080
Nobody cares about your made up nonsense bro

>>2516896


You can make perfectly accurate predictions about chaotic emergent systems with fundamentally indeterminate properties, so long as you don't forget to treat them as emergent systems. For example, radioactive half-life - we can't predict when or even if an individual isotope will decay, but we can predict with perfect accuracy how long it takes for half of a macroscopic quantity of isotopes to decay. Marxism is a reductionist interpretation of emergent human behavior.

>>2517012
it looks like a slopbot

I will say I don't think Marxism is completely wrong or ill-conceived, I think it is just an incomplete theory, Marx was a pioneer and his work was a very early and bold attempt at understanding complex emergent human systems through the lens of reductionist, deterministic pre-20th century science, the only tools that were available at the time. But it's been over a hundred years since Marx died and all kinds of major scientific discoveries have been made since the 19th century and it's important to keep that context in mind when reading and studying Marx.

>>2516676
>Marx meant scientific in the same sense of physics and chemistry.
This is definitely wrong. The most obvious comparison in the sense he used it would be the of the theory of evolution.

>>2516876
>Furthermore, Marxism cannot be a science by the modern definition of the word because it does not make falsifiable predictions.
falsification is not universally accepted and was in fact invented with motivated reasoning to exclude marxism
>You can't empirically prove that Marxism is correct or incorrect, so it's not science. It's ideology at best, pseudoscience at worst.
Marxism includes a critique of empiricism, which is metaphysically idealist. Dialectical methods overcome the incompleteness inherent in empiricism alone. Its not that Wissenschaft is archaic and outdated compared to "modern" science its the other way around, modern science is incredibly ideological and blind to it in the same way status quo capitalist liberals pretend to be non-ideological.

Marxism openly situates its scientific study within a defined philosophy. It is a mistake to think that modern science has superseded philosophy when it is itself based in philosophy and has in fact only ignored it, remaining at the level of ahistorical appearance taking observation as given without accounting for why things appear they do, as mediated through social relations and human practice, putting up an illusion of neutrality and objectivity that it does not live up to.

This is not to say that Marxism is a replacement for science, but rather that you actually do need to ground your empirical study in a greater epistemic and ontological framework to be truly objective, and the vast majority of scientists aren't even capable of explaining their ideology because they dont even know they have one, or worse they hold multiple mutually exclusive ones at the same time. Most are completely unaware that they subscribe to some form of naive realism, either unjustified positivism or some kind of naturalism, and a lot of Marxists critique is aimed at this kind of reductive physicalism or vulgar materialism.

>>2516898
>Yeah that's the point, compared to most social science Marxism is extremely rigorous
yes

>>2517185
>I think it is just an incomplete theory
why
>it's been over a hundred years since Marx died and all kinds of major scientific discoveries have been made since the 19th century and it's important to keep that context in mind when reading and studying Marx.
its not really relevant because dialectical materialism is more akin to the scientific method itself than it is a specific scientific theory. you aren't going to be able to "prove" an entire framework of knowledge generation to be wrong by discovering some particular fact.

>>2515778
>yes I did
so then we agree?
>Simply put there is no transitional period or the return to a state.
right i just dont see how this is more justified than marxism instead of a preference, since BOTH revolutions have returned to capitalism in all the historic cases.
>Platformism as way to organize the revolutionary workers, revolutionary syndicalism. An military with elective commanders to help defend the revolution. Keeping it gone is simply achieving the final stage of communism where work is not done for exchange value but rather for use value.
right but like, how? what is the material procedure for ensuring this happens. marx and especially lenin provide an explanation for how state directed economic planning under the dictatorship of the proletariat provides the material basis for actually achieving the final stage of communism where work is not done for exchange value but rather for use value by explaining the relation between population, use, need and productive capacity. does anarchism say we dont need productive capacity to meet needs, does it think we already have it? what about underdeveloped countries? is it supposed to be universal and cover the whole world? are people just supposed to have less and share because it would be nice?

im sympathetic to the idea i just dont understand the mechanism for how its actually achieved, like even if we have this worker cooperative syndicate dont they also have to increase productive forces to have the capacity to meet peoples needs? that sounds like a transition state to me

>>2518026
>falsification is not universally accepted and was in fact invented with motivated reasoning to exclude marxism
>modern science is incredibly ideological and blind to it in the same way status quo capitalist liberals pretend to be non-ideological.

scientific method bad

>dialectical materialism is more akin to the scientific method itself than it is a specific scientific theory

now scientific method good

>>2518103
>scientific method bad
did i say that?
>>falsification is not universally accepted
>>modern science
is "modern science" the same as the scientific method to you?

popper was an anticommunist and his shortcomings are now widely accepted just like the logical positivists who preceded him. scientists generally come to a dialectical view eventually if they are honest, but they are very slow to and dont even recognize it when they do because of the exact reasons i described. engels wrote quite a bit about this

>>2518125

I don't want to discuss theology anymore.

>>2493213
You're extremely confused and I'm telling you this as an anti-anarchist person who is a MARXIST. Reductively naturalistic, immutable hierarchies are directly incompatible with the Hegelian framework Marx adopted and reformulated. The only essence of human nature Marx believed to be immutable was sociality, because social form overdetermined the other attributes you're referring to, rather than reifying them as fixed, hypostatic entities. This type of retardation you're espousing is only possible if your (mis)reading of Marx originated on account of you never having parsed Hegel. The type of Hierarchy advocated for in the context of the soviet union, for example, i.e. Lenin's criticism of equality, was meant in reference to emergent differences, and dynamic structural tensions (i.e. organizational hierarchies), not this eugenicist framework you have in mind.

>>2518103
Yes, but unironically you fucking negroid retard. Why are you on even on this board if you believe in Popper's positivism? Scientism has no relationship to Marxism at all, you don't even understand the etymological history of the concept of science, let alone any of the philosophical baggage attached to the epistemological debates surrounding it. God, the midwit left is so philosophically clueless that on some tragically sadistic level I almost can't help but delight in their impotent downfall; you fuckwits dug your own graves.

It's not theology you fucking hollow skulled retard.
Hang yourself and embrace oblivion.

>>2518348
Its worth asking anyone studying Marx to understand the word science. Hegel after all described his entire philosophy as an attempt to attain science, and called it his system of science. Marx was reading that stuff, not biology papers from Harvard.

>>2518345
Nothing OP said was eugenicist. They were simply saying hierarchies of intellect and such will exist in any society.

>>2518352
Sure but he also did studied Darwin, Boole and the other scientific greats of his era

His work is far more along those lines than those of Hegel

>>2517014
You replied to Posadanon who had said:
>The argument really does hinge on idealism vs materialism. Convince them of this and their ideology falls apart, but that may take some effort
With the quote implying he's saying
>anarchism can't work because muh human nature
>=
>communism can't work because muh human nature

So he's right that that is actually exactly what you said. Are you retarded?

>>2518365
What’s wrong with him?

>>2518348

You're just strawmanning and raging like an embarrassing giant baby now. I never even mentioned Popper or positivism. I just said Marxism doesn't make falsifiable claims and is therefore not science in the modern definition of the word, which is true. And what claims Marxism did make that were empirically falsifiable, e.g. "developed industrial societies will be the first to transition to socialism", have been empirically falsified by the historical record, so *fart noise*

>>2518848
Oh boy just wait till you find out what's going on in Machine Learning and Physics right now

Actually don't; you'd probably have a stroke with that attitude

>>2518848
> I never even mentioned Popper or positivism. I just said Marxism doesn't make falsifiable
and who came up with falsifiability as a standard?
>is therefore not science in the modern definition
wrong
>>>2518348
>you don't even understand the etymological history of the concept of science, let alone any of the philosophical baggage attached to the epistemological debates surrounding it
>the midwit left is so philosophically clueless
💯

the number of anarchists in the world numbers in the thousands. why the fuck do you caaaaaare? why waste time on this?????

a tendency for the value rate of profit to decline during long wave periods of expansion [a "novel fact" according to Lakatosian criteria in that the phenomenon was not explained by previous theories; also, this tendency is not predicted by neoclassical economics]

the relative immiseration of the proletariat, i.e., an increase in the rate of surplus-value, as a secular trend [not predicted by neoclassical theory]

an inherent tendency toward technological change, as a secular trend [a "novel fact" according to Lakatosian criteria in that the phenomenon was not explained by previous theories; also not predicted by neoclassical theory]

an increase in the physical ratio of machinery (and raw materials) to current labor, as a secular trend [not predicted by neoclassical theory – indeed, neoclassical theory cannot even provide an ex-post explanation of the causes of the observed increase in this ratio, because it cannot discriminate empirically between supply causes and demand causes]

a secular tendency for technological change to substitute machinery for labor even in capitalist economies which are "labor-abundant" or "capital scarce" [neoclassical theory, by contrast, seems to predict that labor abundant economies should be characterized by the widespread replacement of machinery with labor, both by "substitution" and perhaps by an induced "labor-saving" bias in technological change; however, the history of developing countries supports Marx's prediction and contradicts neoclassical theory]

an inherent conflict between workers and capitalists over the length of the working day [a "novel fact" according to Lakatosian criteria in that the phenomenon was not explained by previous theories; also not predicted by neoclassical theory – indeed, the empirical evidence also contradicts the neoclassical theory of labor supply, according to which the working day is determined by the preferences of workers, because competition among firms forces them to accommodate workers' preferences (according to this theory, there should be no conflict between firms and workers over the length of the working day, but competition has the opposite effect, forcing firms to resist attempts by workers to reduce the working day because such a reduction will reduce profit in the short run)]

class conflict over the pace and intensity of labor effort [a "novel fact" according to Lakatosian criteria in that the phenomenon was not explained by previous theories; also not predicted by neoclassical theory]

periodically recurrent recessions and unemployment [a novel fact]

a secular tendency for capital to concentrate [a novel fact not predicted by the neoclassical theory of the firm]

a secular tendency for capital to centralize

a secular decline in the percentage of self-employed producers and an increase in the percentage of the labor force who are employees [a prediction concerning the evolution of the class structure in capitalist societies is not derivable from any other economic theory]

>>2518037
>right i just dont see how this is more justified than marxism instead of a preference, since BOTH revolutions have returned to capitalism in all the historic cases.

Well Leninism and 'authoritarian' communism. Party politics in general tend to focus on loyalty to the party above all else. Like in the case of the bolsheviks they forcefully took over and subverted the power of the soviets. essentially acting like counter revolutionaries.

>>2520845 (me)
>right but like, how?
Through delegation and federation linked in the video above. And a military force like that of makhnovia and anarchist spain. In a way anarchism and marxism are very similar just that anarchist disregard party politics and use organizations outside of the party. How is this different then a party? Well unlike with parties these organizations are either small, hold very little actual power or temporary. There will local workplace, town and city organizations and moving up to larger ones that meet only on temporary with delegates who are rotated through and are entirely elected by the people. And these organizations can have larger ones moving from region to country to world wide.

The internet also provides a means to organize and automate the economy without the need of a central authority. The ordering and shipping of goods is already done through websites like ebay, amazon, mcmaster cart, ect.

For a revolution to be successful its needs to protect itself and spread and that depends on the strength of the revolutionaries but on its enemies. The Bolsheviks were able to do it because they seized key factories, railroad lines, telegraphs and electricity and were able to coerce tsarists officers to join them. And the rest of the world was fighting WW1 or just coming out of it exhausted. Even so they almost lost the war on multiple occasions. The CNT-FAI did the same thing during the Spanish revolution, but they failed to completely crush the republicans and prevent the establishment of their control. And there enemies were heavily supplied by the Germans, Italians and Soviets. So for any revolution to be successful a key element is luck.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rudolf-rocker-anarchosyndicalism#toc5

>>2518830
hes a liar and manipulator in order to pull a false right wing narrative

>>2520851
lol

>>2515760
>unironically simping for le barracks communism larping man
either literally insane or glowie af

>>2520847
>Through delegation and federation
so delegation and federation bring about the material conditions and will create a structure that socially reproduces a society based on need? i hope you can see how this isn't really an answer to what i asked. its just a description of an ideal not a process for material change. or do you deny that the economic base determines the social superstructure? if so, then what determines what and how does delegation and federation change that? if the material base does determine the superstructure then merely abolishing the state without a foundation for post scarcity recreates the conditions the necessitate a state-like structure for the administration and distribution of finite resources. if you cant materially meet peoples needs then you dont have the preconditions for anarchism/communism, unless you think the its consciousness of humanity that determines their existence, and not their social existence that determines their consciousness.

>>2520877
nechayev is cute
>>2515760
>Lenin stated that Nechaev was a "Titan of the revolution" and that all of the communist revolutionaries must "read Nechayev".
this is rather debatable, only mention of lenin saying something like this was second hand from vladimir bonch-bruyevich (lenin's personal secretary that published quite some memoirs of him)
some people (revisionists) believe the quote is entirely fake and modern russian reactionaries (lev gumilyov fans) believe nechayev is basically the entire foundation of lenin's worldview, as they despise both nechayev and lenin
>"They completely forget," Lenin said, "that Nechayev possessed a special talent for organization, an ability to establish conspiratorial skills everywhere, and was able to express his thoughts in such stunning formulations that they remained memorable for a lifetime. It's enough to recall his response in one leaflet, when, to the question, 'Who from the Royal House must be exterminated?', Nechayev gave the precise answer: 'The entire Great Litany.'"
<https://ru.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%93%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%9D%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2
<Бонч-Бруевич В.Д. В.И. Ленин о художественной литературе // Тридцать дней. 1934. № 1. С. 18. Стр. 371.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bonch-Bruyevich
bonch-bruyevich works archive https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%87-%D0%91%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87%2C+%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80+%D0%94%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87+%281873-1955%29%22

>>2521407
>process for material change
Revolution caused by the collapse of capitalist society. People have historically formed spontaneous workers councils when the state collapses. Marx was completely vague about the material processes, Lenin believed in the vanguard party and anarchists used anarcho syndicalism as a way to achieve their goals.

>>2493241
Based anarkiddie

>>2493254
I guess another reason for an anarchist to look up.to ISIS is that they're also funded & supported by the CIA

>>2522118
of course you'd rather the CIA fund your larp party

>>2521468
some more stuff i've found
>The last ten years of Nechaev’s life were spent in solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul fortress, from which he had falsely claimed to have escaped in 1869. His behaviour in prison, as Max Nomad has said, was “one of the great episodes of revolutionary history”.
>When General Potapov of the secret police visited his cell and offered him leniency if he would serve as a spy, Nechaev struck him across the face, drawing blood. For the next two years his hands and feet remained in chains until the flesh began to rot.

>In addition, such contemporary groups as the Black Panthers, the Black September, the Weathermen, the Red Army Fraction! and the Symbionese Liberation Army have employed the methods of Nechaev—including indiscriminate terror and the subordination of means to ends—in the name of the revolutionary cause. The Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver tells us in Soul on Ice that he “fell in love” with The Catechism of the Revolutionary and took it as a revolutionary bible, incorporating its principles into his everyday life by employing “tactics of ruthlessness in my dealings with everyone with whom I came into contact”.
>(The Catechism was published as a pamphlet in 1969 by the Black Panthers of Berkeley with an introduction by Cleaver.)
>Even the murder of Ivanov, strangely enough, has had its modem counterparts in the slaying of an alleged informer by the Black Panther group in New Haven in 1969, and in the massacre of 1972 by the leader of the United Red Army in Japan of no less than fourteen members of his group for violations of “revolutionary discipline”.

>The identical criticism was later levelled against the Bolsheviks by Peter Kropotkin, on whose lips, said Maria Goldsmith, “the word ‘Nechaevism’ [nechayevshina] was always a strong rebuke”. As a member of the Chaikovsky Circle, Kropotkin decried all self-contained associations of “professional revolutionaries”, with their clandestine schemes, ruling committees, iron discipline, and subordination of means to ends. He insisted that “a morally developed individuality must be the foundation of every organization”.

<Paul Avrich, Bakunin and Nechaev (pamphlet), London, Freedom Press, 1974, 32 pp.
<https://archive.org/details/BakuninAndNechaevByPaulAvrich