/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2563629
>I'm not sure it is possible for humans to forsake the instincts endowed to us by our ancestors and their ancestors. We've fought and killed each other for millenia as is our nature. It is the height of arrogance to presume we could rise above ourselves.
You are greatly oversimplifying human nature. If our nature was just competition we would have never formed civilization in the first place or even tribes, we would be lone hunters who occasionally meet up to mate like big cat species. How old are you?

>>2563700
The basic argument for instinct comes out to: when you get angry and want to kill someone, do you actually do it? When you see an attractive individual, do you actually rape them? Instinct is instinct, but humans also have self-control.

>>2563629
Lmao “human nature”, is it you’re nature to drive a car? Is it your nature to make post on the internet? What you talking about?

>>2563695
>if they become a bureaucratic bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionary, you're absolutely entitled to overthrow them
So I guess we'll be doing this a lot. Maybe we should put the AI in charge of distributing the food

>>2563696
Well that gets me back to the other question then. Why not just take the throne? If it's just for selfish desires anyway what could be more selfish than becoming the king?

>>2563700
I think if anything you're overcomplicating human nature. Almost everything we do is in some way trying to get other people to do as we see fit. It's practically all competition from top to bottom

>>2563698
>most communist will be vague about what post capitalism means and what the administration of things would look like.
Believe me I've noticed lol

>>2563702
based chad gazing into the light

>>2563703
It's human nature to impose our will onto our environment. Otherwise we'd still be hunting with pointy sticks

>>2563704
Beijing is planning it, i.e, to automate away vast swathes of their bureaucracy.

And it's not actually a bad thing; if current MLs actually deliver the material base (factories, technology, etc) necessary for realizing HLC, but refuse to allow the state to wither away, just be anarchists, get rid of them, and implement actual HLC.

>>2563708
It's not. Some societies are more competitive than others, some are actually communalist.

Consider the Japanese. Cooperation and competition are both human potentials, which can be modified by upbringing and culture.

>>2563717
You know japan has had kings right? In fact don't they still have a monarchy in some form? I also think it's funny you draw a distinction between the social pressure of a collectivist society and the oppressive nature of a monarchy. It's still people getting other people to do what they want. That is human nature. The competition isn't for resources. It's for your mind.

>>2563714
Yeah that’s even everything’s nature. We’re just the current top dog for now. I don’t see a point in burning all our resources away for some pissing match against nature itself. I like this anons post the best >>2563695

People see the writing on the wall and it’s gonna be bad time aheads. Communist, for how annoying they can be are good people in the end and even if the vision is fully complete or articulated. It’s far better than burning everything down so rich Zionist pedos can party while the world burns than retreat to their bunkers.

>>2563720
Consider Bonobos, who are related to Chimpanzees and are arguably humanity 's closest relative. They spend most of their time fucking each other. Chimps spend a lot of their time going to war with each other, and are more warlike than us.

The entire thing is that the very idea of human nature is something you've imbibed, instinct exists, but it's socially mediated. Talking to me on the Internet is not actually part of human nature, you weren't born with the ability to use a keyboard, to read and write, or even speak English.

The biggest problem is that you mistake the specific cultural circumstances of your capitalist society for human nature; the drive to dominate and compete is a human potentiality, but it varies both on material base (what happens if you lose? Do you starve or feel bad?) and cultural superstructure (does society tell you to compete? Or does it tell you to cooperate?).

>>2563722
Communism is the last option given that the alternatives are neo-Nazis and liberal brain wreckers.

If you want to shit on liberals in public, just say you're a Marxist. And it's fun how hypocritical they are when they end up being attacked from the left. Free speech, in liberal thinking, is great until they're losing.

>>2563722
I don't deny that things suck for the average person today. My point is it's in our nature as human beings to tilt the scales in our favor. No matter the societal structure we formulate, there will always exist those who use their positions of power as leverage to get more of what they want. It's a fundamental part of what it means to exist within a group. So in essence hierarchy will always exist and with it inequality and eventually exploitation. Even giving the reigns of power to AI doesn't necessarily ensure equality. Who gets to build the AI? Who's able to possibly influence it to give them more and others less? Humans will always push the envelope. It's our thing

>>2563723
What a convenient notion. Surely our current state of affairs didn't naturally progress from man's inherent nature. No it must have been the aliens that did it.

>>2563701
>when you get angry and want to kill someone, do you actually do it? When you see an attractive individual, do you actually rape them?
Yes lmao people do these constantly. In more developed societies we learn not to because of religious doctrine, social pressure, and laws enforced by violence

>>2563706
Because not everyone can have the throne. And if I'm on the throne a lot of people will want to take me down, either for egalitarian reasons or because they want the throne themselves, so I need to constantly maintain my power and can't rest. So I'd rather live in communism.

To put it another way, Communism is sort of like a tech project, because we have alpha and beta versions, but we don't have the production variant.

If we HAD the production variant, we wouldn't be arguing about this, you'd have real HLC societies you can just point to and remark how everything is better there.

But the nice thing about a tech project is, if you pump in enough R&D dollars into it, it'll work.

The Soviets were the first to create a Marxist-Leninist state, and it actually collapsed because of bureaucratic rot; they had OGAS staring at them and their vanguard revealed themselves as managerial bourgeoisie when they nixed the project to save their jobs.

The Chinese are currently running a beta version, which is a socialist market economy intending to ape the benefits of social democracy, but with a Marxist-Leninist core.

If they survive, and don't crash, they'll probably get to simulated socdem, them they'll move onto actually beginning the transition to HLC.

The importance of simulating socdem is that it's not actually socdem, which we know is unstable, as welfare states get torn apart and raped, between neoliberalism and uncontrolled immigration. Because the actual core is Marxist-Leninism, there is the potential to move beyond the unstable form of social democracy and actually see what HLC might look like, experiment with it, and actually achieve it.

The basic question is, do you want to invest in Crypto, which is a pure tech scam, AI, which is a bubble, or communism, which hasn't been proven to be hopeless?

Consider a Pascal's Wager of Communism.

If you choose not to be a Communist, all the signs are there that things will get much, much worse. In the best case scenario, you'll be a middle-class fascist and the fascist system won't crash before you die. This is all you can hope for.

If you choose to be a Communist, however, there is hope, Gramsci: "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the spirit" that we will be able to transcend many of the social limits of the human condition. You can conduct Praxis, the application, validation, refinement, and sometimes refutation of theory, toward the Communist cause, and that is your investment.

Or, you can hope that when the liberal system crashes, you'll be a comfy fascist and the fascist system won't crash on your head before you die.

>>2563731
Selfish AND lazy. What a combination. Oh I'm only teasing that's a fine way to rationalize your position

>>2563708
This sounds like projection. If most of our nature is just trying to get other people to do as we see fit, why do those other people do as a handful of people see fit? Social constructs have constrained socially disruptive elements of human nature, like excessive competition, for a long time.

>>2563726
Actually, it's crap because from a materialist (historical materialist) angle, it's a combination of human beings and their environment.

The basic argument goes, what is human society if you teleport it to Mars? Asphyxiated, because there is insufficient oxygen on Mars.

What if we didn't have nukes and fossil fuels? Likely, the European Enlightenment would have ended in a Malthusian crash due to insufficient energy inputs for fertilizer.

You're trying to argue that innate essence is what determines humanity, when humans in practice are the combination of their intrinsic biology, their historical development, and their environment.

What we're arguing basically comes out to, that in high-level Communism, human nature will be different precisely because human nature is the result of biology and environment. People will be more cooperative, because there would no longer be a need to compete for material necessities and many social necessities as well.

>>2563735
>Selfish
Everyone who's pragmatic and realistic is self-serving, but I am advocating egalitarianism for self serving reasons, and you are advocating inequality for self serving reasons. Who is the selfish one?
>lazy
Are you saying I should want to work and be stressed all the time? Sounds pretty… contrary to human nature. Why would I want to constantly work to push down members of my own species when our environment is now far different from the one we evolved in, and it's no longer necessary to fight over scraps of food? There are sufficient resources for everyone, and it's merely a matter of distribution - how the hell did you arrive at "not wanting to be king = laziness"?

>>2563726
It progressed from man's inherent nature and the environment, and the sky is blue. 100 or 1000 years ago the current state of affairs was different. This too will pass into a new stage of advancement. Is this a difficult concept to grasp?

I suggest if you're sincerely interested, try Mao's On Contradiction.

On Contradiction, On Praxis, Mao's genius is making it seem like common sense, but you know common sense isn't so common.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

>>2563736
>why do those other people do as a handful of people see fit
Oh I love it when I see people ask the right questions. Power is given my child and thus requires the consent of the influenced. We've developed many ways of manufacturing consent. To tie this to the bonobo thing because I think it's funny, I recall watching a short documentary on bonobos. There was a clip of a female bonobo presenting her ass to a male in an attempt to influence him to give her some of his fruit. She knows simply taking it would likely lead to aggressive behavior and just her simply eyeing the food has made things tense. He accepts of course and fucks her then tosses her some fruit. She returns several times to get fucked and some fruit. She's leveraging her physical attractiveness to attain what she wants. It's in their nature as much as it is in ours. It's a product of evolutionary biology to learn to influence our environments.

>>2563737
>What we're arguing basically comes out to, that in high-level Communism, human nature will be different precisely because human nature is the result of biology and environment. People will be more cooperative, because there would no longer be a need to compete for material necessities and many social necessities as well.
I'm reminded of that line they always repeat in everyone's first economic class. Something about human desires being infinite. In any case what you're proposing seems awfully hypothetical and arguably contrary to what we've seen throughout most of human history

>>2563742
You're framing it as domination, whereas you could also frame it as exchange. Everyone got what they wanted, the male bonobo got a fuck, the female bonobo got food.

Domination and influence is a subclass of exchange. One gets the impression you've never really loved or been loved in your life. Because love is as much a human potentiality as hate.

>>2563408
when we share the toothbrush

Anyway I have to go to bed. I'd like to say this has been illuminating but it's now apparent communists are not a monolith and don't agree on basic concepts regarding the implementation of their own ideas. Despite my lack of more technical knowledge, I knew from the outset the question of communism vs capitalism would ultimately hinge on beliefs on the true nature of humanity. I think you'd be surprised to learn most people likely do not share your views on that topic. Thank you for humoring me and answering some basic questions. I do appreciate it. Feel free to keep posting and if I remember about this thread when I wake up I'll try to reply to some of you

>>2563743
I think a big problem is, you don't realize how socialized you are. You make the assumptions of your dominant society, to behave and think in the mold your society wants you to behave and think.

For instance, what about Buddhists? Reducing desire. Likewise, if you have infinite desire, aren't you infinitely cock blocked? If you are truly infinitely cockblocked, shouldn't you be angry and frustrated all the time?

At any given time, you have finite desires, simply because of your cognitive limits, and limiting your desires is often as effective as satiating them.

In reality, you are told you have infinite desires so that you'll spend more than you need, put yourself into debt, and work jobs you hate to drive labor productivity.

I think the biggest benefit of Marxism to you is probably to realize that you've been lied to all this time (I guess I myself, if you have a fixation on domination and influence, have a fixation on lying as a constant of human interaction), that things don't have to be the way they are now, and that they can be different. Marx called it False Consciousness.

>>2563744
Your mistake is in making a distinction between dominance and exchange. They're both merely an exertion of influence. The female bonobo could have just as easily chosen to fight the male bonobo for that fruit. She didn't because she knows she'd likely lose so she used a system of influence she was more adept in to achieve her aims. Anyway like I said I'm tired. I have to sleep. Goodnight

>>2563742
>my child
alright pseud, how old are you again?
>consent of the influenced
so the majority of the population is "the influenced", which implies the majority of the population is not seeking to dominate others but rather accepting the social order, which implies we can simply change the social order.
>bonobo prostitution
scarcity conditions

>>2563746
Does human nature really exist? Do you have the same human nature as a serial killer? If they don't have the same human nature you do, why should it be that you have the "true" human nature? Consider that most of the people of the world do not live in your society. Why should they have the same human nature as you? If, their observed desires and behaviors are different than yours, do they have the "real" human nature or do you have the real human nature?

Either one, you're a troll acting in bad faith, in which case we're just practicing our argumentation skills, or two, you're a naive kid, in which case I suggest you read more and get around more. Life is really more exciting than post-adolescent angst.

>>2563748
We're basically arguing about categories. What you're revealing is that your assumptions are axiomatic, that is to say, held by faith as preassumptions. Consider the liberal philosopher of science Karl Popper, a totally different system than ours.

According to him, the scientific quality of a proposition is based on its ability to be falsified. So, I guess:

-What evidence would be considered sufficient to suggest that human nature doesn't exist or is highly malleable?
-What evidence would be considered sufficient to suggest that interactions between agents exist beyond influencing others for gain or domination?

It's when a vanguard political party overthrows the government and seizes the means of production and becomes the new government and absolutely nothing changes at all.

>the real movement that abolishes the present state of things
>the conditions of the liberation of the working class
>a mode of production with a "lower" and "higher" phase
>when a Marxist-Leninist party is in power
take your pick

>>2563415
Maybe turn on the news sometime buddy, maybe look at the world a little bit. Many people in this world are fighting grug for food every day

>>2563771
Scam image FAKE picture. There thousands of toothbrushes, each following the timezones in longitudinal laps across the worlds. It was efficient.

>>2563629
Let's start with Marx's text arguing against the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois views that were attempted at the time regarding the Paris Commune, which supposedly represented a conflict between "decentralization" and "centralization" in France:

<The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.

<Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune.
[…]
<The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable.

<The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers.

<In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents.

<The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excresence.
[…]
<The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into the federation of small states, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins,[B] that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have prevented the classical development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of government, and may have allowed, as in England, to complete the great central state organs by corrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, and ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magistrates in the counties.

<The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France.

<Karl Marx: The Civil War in France, The Third Address May, 1871, The Paris Commune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

With the communist revolution overthrowing the bourgeois state and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the local popular workers' councils contact the regional popular councils until they reach the national council to report on the economic planning of the economy. This planning will create and adjust the national economic plan with the local popular councils, without competition but rather through association among themselves. Because there is no longer private property, anarchy of production, nor interest in profiting by selling on the market, having abolished the exploiting classes and having socialized the economy, there is no way to accumulate capital and private property. There will be no stock market or way to speculate on the market because the means of production and distribution, belonging collectively to the whole society, will be used to meet the needs of the population, and the use value of what is produced will be used instead of the exchange value for profit. What do you think the term "soviet" means in the USSR? It means the popular councils I wrote about, but remember that what I'm writing has nothing to do with the fantasy some people have about decentralization, which tends to be something the petty bourgeoisie often romanticizes. However, scientific socialism, since the First International, prioritizes centralism when there is a dilemma between centralization and decentralization, which you can see by reading the texts of Marx and Engels.

Now I'll take two quotes from Marx and Engels talking about the salaries of public employees in electoral programs for use in the bourgeois democracy of the time to give you an idea:

<(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

<(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

<(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.

<Frederick Engels, 1847, The Principles of Communism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

<12. In the remuneration of all civil servants there shall be no difference except that those with a family, i.e. with greater needs, shall also receive a larger salary than the others.
[…]
<16. Establishment of national workshops. The state shall guarantee the livelihood of all workers and provide for those unable to work.

<Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels March, 1848, Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.htm

Now I will leave you with a quote from Marx for those who essentialize human nature, ignoring adaptation to the means of production and social organization of society in the superstructure for the historical economic structure, which will encourage different types of antisocial behaviors, as in the case of a class society like current financialized capitalism:

<Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.

<In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

<Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled:

<1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.
<2. Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

<Karx Marx, 1845, Theses On Feuerbach

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

>>2563420
potato potato

>>2563509
I suggest you stay away from communism since every time it is imposed it goes through a purity crucible where the laws of society work differently than before the imposition. Everything private becomes public and its truly a fever dream of an ideology. It's not a fun experience. The mere presence of communists in power creates counter-revolution, then paranoia, purges, revisionism and eventually everyone gets tired and thinks capitalism is the solution, then they get screwed over in the privatization and we are back at square one just with a crap ton of bodies.

>>2563408
there's a lot of 'definitions' of what 'communism' is as a mode of governance or a state of affairs, but one that I personally find useful is that Communists understand politics as essentially class warfare, as a fundamentally adversarial relationship between 'Capitalists' - those who 'own' the 'means of production', things like factories, housing, equipment, land, resources, but do not need to perform labor to survive - and the 'Proletariat' or 'Workers' - those that do not own property, but must sell their labor to the capitalist class to survive.

the power dynamics at play mean that the Capitalist class will always pay the Proletariat less than the actual value of their labor, keeping the majority of the value that the laborers created for the Capitalist class as Profit. If they did not do this, they would by definition not have any profit whatsoever. but since they do, the capitalist class has more resources with which to control and direct society.

so Communists, using this analytical framework, seek to engage equally in this class warfare on behalf of the Proletariat rather than the Capitalists. Communists seek a 'class dictatorship of the proletariat', or a state of government that serves the needs and interests of the Proletariat rather than those of the Capitalist class. This often looks something like a representative democracy in function, the difference is in the domination of the capitalist class by the proletariat class, rather than vice versa under capitalism. where a capitalist democracy is ruled by those with the most money (and therefore power/influence over media/social life/the material conditions that reproduce society), a proletarian democracy is ruled by a Communist Party which is constituted such as to reduce the influence of the Capitalist class, with strict ideological requirements and vetting of prospective members, and maintaining democratic rather than private control over the means of production.

>>2564309
historically illiterate, ignoring the massive, massive amounts of capitalist repression of emerging socialist governments. your argument is basically 'Well the nazis are so good at fighting i guess its a bad idea to fight them', pure cowardice, self-serving nihilism, imperialist apologia at worst.

>>2564330
I will be honest, I would not fight the nazis if I had no chance of winning. Would I sacrifice myself if life under nazism was dogshit? Maybe. But you cannot ignore that most communist faults are self-inflicted. Infighting and forcing everything to be under one umbrella creates so many unsolvable problems. Imagine trying to regulate every facet of your body, the breathing, the sweating, the digestion, your brain would be exhausted if not dead from overwork. And yet AES countries did exactly that. Notice how the socialist countries that had higher standards of living allowed for more independence.

Ukrtankanon, champsoc, you wanna get in on this? The dog pile looks like the Pentagon's new target and I can't be arsed to config DeepSeek to generate counter Claude content.

>>2563786
Flat out lies, given that the Soviet Union industrialized, that China went from a war torn shithole, to a nuclear power shit hole, then to a technological juggernaut approximating Western demsocs without electoralism.

Honestly, at this point, thank you for convincing me that Trotskyites should succeed somewhere in the West, just to break the Western propaganda line and give strength to socialist movements, as much as the Russian and Chinese revolutions broke the capitalist cordon in semi periphery and periphery countries.