/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Are NEETs revolutionary or just leeches?

Would people here agree that Direct Democracy is the only true form of Democracy? Representative "Democracy" is literally just Oligarchy. For example, public opinion does not reflect public policy. Democracy is necessary sympathetic between them, making all "representatives" non-representative of an electorate. So, all politicians are obstructing to the real ends of politics.

>>2919728 I would argue that representative democracy is a more efficient and "democratic" system than monarchy, dictatorship, and outright oligarchy, but yes. Ultimately representative democracy is not pure, true democracy; it's just as colse an approximation as has been tried by modern states on a national scale.

>>2919741
But isn't the reason we don't have Direct Democracy in most Western states because it would more effectively wage class war against the capitalists?

>>2919728
I don't know how you could have direct democracy in a sprawling industrial society that requires highly specialized knowledge. For example, let's say everyone agrees we want nuclear energy. What kind of design? Where should it be sited? What to do with the waste? These are questions for engineers and thus you now have a "bureaucy." At best, it seems like the engineers could offer different plans to the populace, explain the pros and cons, then have another vote, but I somehow doubt that's gonna happen. And who would vote on it? The people of the state, wait, we got rid of states. Should people in Indonesia get to vote on engineering projects in Argentina?

>>2919745 Yes, mostly. However, it is also more efficient at making larger-scale coordinative decisions. Even the CNT had a representative congress.

>>2919766 All good points, and this is basically my only critique about anarchist-communism (and hence why I don't advocate it as a strategy in the present day USA and Europe). This system works best on local, mostly self-sufficient scales. Even Kropotkin knew this and dedicated a whole chapter of The Conquest of Bread to advocating relative self-sufficiency and local resource security, with trade reserved for non-essential goods. In the societies of even the 1940s and 1950s, already a comfortable living standard for most people, anarchist-communism with a confederatory congress of limited representation and gave optional, voluntary orders to coordinate larger projects would have been possible (though even that wouldn't be 100% democratic). But today, the economy is too complex, and Americans are too treatleritic to ever accept it until climate change brings about material conditions that make this system possible again by scaling back industrial producting to mostly essential goods and saving luxuries for local production.

>>2919766
>I don't know how you could have direct democracy in a sprawling industrial society that requires highly specialized knowledge
This is an argument against democracy in general, not just against direct democracy as opposed to representative democracy (same as picrel, I fucking hate this image). The only requirement for being a professional politician is being of age and getting elected. Might as well have a technocracy if you're concerned about the competence of the people voting for this or that law.

Direct democracy would probably just mean replacing the current parliaments of the world with citizens elected by way of sortition. Of course, we would also want a dictatorship of the proletariat along with that.

>>2919869
This is funny because it's the literal argument for aristocracy from the man himself, the ship of state.

>>2919728
Direct democracy is just like gang rape.
Representarive democracy is just like oligarchy.

Why many leftist don't like Transhumanism?

>>2919869
>The only requirement for being a professional politician is being of age and getting elected. Might as well have a technocracy if you're concerned about the competence of the people voting for this or that law.
Yeah this. Politicians are making decisions about just about any topic.

Is Uranus queer?

>>2920663
Cyborgs are icky.

>>2929515
Yes and no. He complained when anyone accused him of having a worked out "socialist system" and there's everyone's favorite quote about how communism is not an ideal but he also criticized others over pedantic points and would seethe if you suggested socialism would have capitalist things like production for exchange or private property.

>>2929663
Marx and Engels didn't like writing cookbooks for the future but they laid out some features communism should have. I'm not sure if there's a handy article detailing all of them. Quickest way would be to read Principles of Communism and Critique of the Gotha Program but they don't cover everything.

In Gotha Critique, Marx said lower phase communism will have:

• MoP commonly managed by society
  
  
• Labor accounting via labor vouchers (he calls them labor certificates)
  
  
• Products are not exchanged
  
  
• Labor is directly social (under capitalism it's indirectly social)
  
  
• Products do not exist as values
  
  
• Deductions made for infrastructure, insurance, welfare, social programs, etc.
  
  
• Workers receive an equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor. To use an older socialist slogan, "To each according to his contribution." Or as Lenin said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
  
  

Higher stage communism adds:

• No subordination of individuals to the division of labor, no division between manual and mental labor.
  
  
• All-round development of human beings and their abilities.
  
  
• Work has become "life's prime want."
  
  
• An immense increase in production.
  
  
• On the communist banner would be written, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
  
  

In the Manifesto, Marx says communism is a society in which "the free development of each is the precondition for the free development of all."

In Capital Volume 1, Marx says communism is "a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson [Crusoe]’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. […] The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution."

That last part is opposed to relations under capitalism, which in Marx's view is confusing to most people (e.g. commodity fetishism).

At various places Marx and Engels predict transcending private property would have a whole range of effects, like the withering away of prostitution, religion, and the state, or the abolition of the distinction between town and country, but I suppose they're not really "how socialism works" or policies to implement, but perhaps something to keep in mind.

Some people have tried to make more detailed plans. For example, "Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution" which is like 400 pages.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm

I remember hearing that some members of the group disavowed it some years later. Not sure. There's also "Towards a New Socialism by Cockshott", which has its own share of critiques.

Thoughts on world revolution? Is it even possible?
<Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism […] The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

>>2929898
It's possible to happen, cause it happened already. The period of 1870-1920 was a long period of socialist activity in every part of the world where capitalist was established or incumbent. And I define socialist activity as movements to abolish wage labor and commodity production. The thing is that they failed.

>>2929898
I'm kinda wondering why Marx thought that when it has never been the case for other modes of production, unless he means the multiple centuries of transition between them as "at once" and "simultaneously"
>>2929924
It's difficult to imagine there won't be some places that will be more effective at cracking down than the rest and thus result in automatic failure, what's the real limit of organisation and preparation for it then ? If you get in power in one country but not the whole world it counts as a failure or is it just a higher stage of organisation ?

>>2929929
It's because capitalism is uniquely global with the world market.

>>2929713
>>2929713
So many of those points are utopic or fly against the reality of how economy works, I'm a left leaning, but seeing this now I understand how communism won't work in the real world

>>2930834
Does it matter what is or isn't popular around here?

>>2930929
nah

>>2930929
Why would it?

>>2930929
It seems to even out by itself already, so I don't know why you would unless it somehow goes exponentially out of control, the point is to plan out production according to needs, not rationalise all society in a "plan" (made by whom? for what purpose?)

>>2931082
That the problem to me, what if the need really outpace the capacity of the planet to sustain this need? I remembering reading that the ideal population for the planet as to maximize the well being of all without exhausting the planet would bearound 3.5 billions

Thoughts on a 'reactionary' Marx?

Currently reading the Grundrisse and read this passage (1857):
<the foolishness of those socialists (namely the French, who want to depict socialism as the realization of the ideals of bourgeois society articulated by the French revolution)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm
This proves that Marx was not a Liberal (e.g. he did not consider the bourgeois ideals of liberté, egalité and fraternité as his end). Despite this protestation (and in other places, his rejection of Human Rights as defined in the revolutionary constitution), he still saw Communism in its early stage as bringing bourgeois theory into practice (1875):
<bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Nonetheless, it seems clear that Marx rejected the enlightenment. The course of 'freedom' is in essence, the freedom of commerce (1848):
<Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm
More generally (1857):
<the exchange of exchange values is the productive, real basis of all equality and freedom
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm
From this, one may gain a 'reactionary' reading of Marx's writings.

>>2931166
But then on what basis do you determine it's too much, and who is getting affected by your policies first ? Do we target Africa for sterilisation ? Do we force them to live in squalor to protect the environment by forbidding them to industrialize ?

>>2931395
The average consumption footprint of the person, how much they need to have a worthy and good life, you can stipulate something like that, in the end the world in a finite place and the wants of mankind are almost infinite, the two can't go on forever without something breaking on the long run.

There something after a communist society, or communism is "the end of history" for mankind?

>>2932356
Marx writes this contested passage (1844):
<Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
In later writings, Marx sees a link between origins and ends (1881):
<a state of crisis that will end only when the social system is eliminated through the return of modern societies to the ‘archaic’ type of communal property […] the new system’ to which modern society is tending ‘will be a revival, in a superior form, of an archaic social type
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/draft-1.htm
So then, history appears to close itself by a return of man to himself.
The loop of history is a sublation of primitive communism.

>>2931166
A global war for communism would kill billions so that checks out.

Why do so many believe, that communism means globalism? Isn't the goal to have small communes?

>>2934305
that's certain types of anarchism. Global coordination for production and distribution is already a fact and Communism is not interested in turning back the wheel of history.

>>2934307
But isnt globalism the capitalists wet dream too? Anyway thank you. Will look more into the concepts of anarchism.

>>2934308
Read the Communist Manifesto.
Communists are not simply against Capitalism from the perspective of wanting to retvrn to some pre-capitalist state. In fact, Marxists will generally say that it was the emergence of capitalism which made the notion of socialist economy possible, as it made the economy dependent on a class that owns no property. Capitalism creates a contradiction in how property is operated by masses of people without ownership, but still is itself owned by an owner. This creates a basis for socialist organization. So Communists do not seek to undue all capitalist development.
Marxists also believe that the degree of the productive forces of man has great sway over how society will be organized, and that going back to some pre-capitalist society where people rarely leave the small village is something that arose from a certain technological level that is not possible to return to outside of some disaster.

I would like to make this clear, I am uneducated in this department and need a bit of clarity, which is why I ask this question.
I know that this is a question which has probably been asked a million times, but I cannot seem to find a satisfactory answer, so I ask it here.
What is the goal of "Anti-imperialism"? In the times of Lenin, Imperialism actually existed as a very dominant force, with many imperialist powers vying for control over territory and what not. Lenin wrote about Anti-Imperialism because powers like the British Empire and the Belgians actually had a great deal of control over a lot of people, people who resented their control. Lenin says we should support the peoples against the imperialist forces, which makes sense.
Now, we come to the modern context. Take a look at this screenshot from the page "Principles of ProleWiki", which is a ML wiki. Why do they "critically" support them? What does critical support even mean? Wouldn't it make more sense to oppose these nations too, for they are very reactionary and outright oppose communism (e.g. Russian Federation, Islamic Republic of Iran). Modern day imperialism is different from the one Lenin wrote about and the one which existed in that time. Why then do we apply this principle of supporting these bourgeois dictatorships (as even they call it)? They wage wars with NATO, which, while admirable, just benefits NATO and the Military Industrial Complex in the long run. Even though ProleWiki claims they prioritise the interests of the workers in these "anti-imperialist" countries, it hardly feels like that.
So, in short, my question is, why support these countries, why be "anti-imperialist"?
Maybe the whole premise of my question is wrong, in case, please excuse my illiteracy of the subject.

>>2936935
That wiki is libtarded to the gills.

Belarus and Nicaragua are both socialist. Belarus is the only European country where Communists can actively attack liberals in the streets and receive the backing of the security services when doing so. If you read Belarusian opposition media it's very funny when they publish an article whining about the Communists in Belarus beating people up or participating in writing the education curriculum. Nicaragua experimented with social democracy for a bit to try to see if the West would ease up, and then Ortega and the FSLN said "fuck it the Americans hate us anyways", and they took back power and recently banned the bourgeois opposition.

Venezuela under Chavez & Maduro was also arguably moving towards socialism as well.

As for the anti imperialist question that's obvious. It is America and Europe in control of the global financial system, from the IMF to the World Bank. The current capitalist order is based upon American and European financial and military hegemony. That hegemony is a net negative for humanity as their structural adjustment programs and military campaigns constantly destabilize and destroy other countries, retarding economic development and delaying the onset of an active class struggle by forcing entire countries to regress into struggle for subsistence, or turning them into active warzones. When a rich country like Libya or even a moderately prosperous one like Syria gets wiped out, it doesn't just cause waves of immigration and refugees outwards to other countries, it also permanently undercuts the viability and prospect of socialist revolutions in those very areas. Therefore the anti imperialists argue that for socialism to succeed Western unipolarity must first be weakened. After all, competing capitalist powers is what allowed for the first socialist state in Russia to be born, in the aftermath of WW1.

This logic also applies to Ukraine which was badly damaged by an IMF mandated economic program that turned Ukraine into the poorest country in Europe even before Russia invaded. Western hegemony in Ukraine has resulted in harsh austerity, massive poverty and inequality, endless debt, and the banning of all left wing political organizations within Ukraine itself. It is therefore the duty of every socialist to push back against NATO and NATO-aligned states in order to create more breathing room for worker organizations which will eventually lead socialist revolts when they become confident and widespread enough.

>>2936968
>That wiki is libtarded to the gills.
Yes, I can see that.

>Belarus and Nicaragua are both socialist. Belarus is the only European country where Communists can actively attack liberals in the streets and receive the backing of the security services when doing so. If you read Belarusian opposition media it's very funny when they publish an article whining about the Communists in Belarus beating people up or participating in writing the education curriculum.
Doesn't that make the government just sympathetic to communism, no? I understand that Marxism is not a dogma, but this hardly gives the impression of Belarus being a socialist country, unless there are other things which I am unaware about.

>Nicaragua experimented with social democracy for a bit to try to see if the West would ease up, and then Ortega and the FSLN said "fuck it the Americans hate us anyways", and they took back power and recently banned the bourgeois opposition.
This does feel a bit closer to what I had in mind regarding Nicaragua, thank you for clarifying this.

>Venezuela under Chavez & Maduro was also arguably moving towards socialism as well.
I will take your word for it on this one.

>It is America and Europe in control of the global financial system, from the IMF to the World Bank. The current capitalist order is based upon American and European financial and military hegemony. That hegemony is a net negative for humanity as their structural adjustment programs and military campaigns constantly destabilize and destroy other countries, retarding economic development and delaying the onset of an active class struggle by forcing entire countries to regress into struggle for subsistence, or turning them into active warzones.
Yes, exactly. This is what I was asking. Why support any of the side in the war? The lesser of two evils is still evil, after all. The endless wars they wage for profit are a net negative, better to reject them, no?

>Therefore the anti imperialists argue that for socialism to succeed Western unipolarity must first be weakened. After all, competing capitalist powers is what allowed for the first socialist state in Russia to be born, in the aftermath of WW1.
I see, but I think this furthers the question of helping build dual power instead of taking sides in an inter-imperialist conflict, unless we need one of the sides to be brutally defeated like Germany was. Also, the material conditions during WW1 are vastly different from today, can the same principles still be applied?

One question which still wasn't answered, just what does "critical support" mean?

(sorry if I come of as retarded with these questions, I am new to all this stuff)

>>2934346
Thank you very much.

>>2937033 (me)
bumping for an answer/clarification

Were Bundists anti-Zionist?

>>2940350
Yes.

Why Analytical Marxism isn't popular around here?

>>2940822
What even is analytical Marxism?

>>2940822
People are obssessed with "le dialectics" and think they can divine what is the dialectical way of acting

>>2940847
Are you speaking of people here or the analytical marxist?

>>2940822
Wouldn't Cockshott be considered one

>>2940888
As so far I understand, Cockshoot doesn't like mainstream economics, while Analytical Marxist embrace the findings of mainstream economics.