/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2885500
The First International, in which Marx and Engels participated, disagrees with you. Communists must have a workers' party distinct from the parties of the bourgeoisie so that the proletariat can acquire its political supremacy by propagating its ideas to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and so that there is no co-optation of the masses to serve the bourgeoisie.

<Against the collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes.

<This constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to insure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end – the abolition of classes.

<The combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists.

<The lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economical monopolies and for enslaving labor. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes.

<The International Working Men's Association, 1872, Resolution on the establishment of working-class parties

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1872/hague-conference/parties.htm

Have you forgotten what Marx wrote in the communist manifesto?

<The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

<The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

<The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

Or how communists should act during an election in a bourgeois democracy:

<Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1850, "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League"

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

<The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, far more rapidly than we had a right to hope, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of this party is still confused and highly deficient, that it has set up the banner of Henry George, these are inevitable evils but also only transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement–no matter in what form so long as it is only their own movement–in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting themselves.

<Frederick Engels, “Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1886”, Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge In Hoboken

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_11_29.htm

<Complete abstention from political action is impossible. The abstentionist press participates in politics every day. It is only a question of how one does it, and of what politics one engages in. For the rest, to us abstention is impossible. The working-class party functions as a political party in most countries by now, and it is not for us to ruin it by preaching abstention. Living experience, the political oppression of the existing governments compels the workers to occupy themselves with politics whether they like it or not, be it for political or for social goals. To preach abstention to them is to throw them into the embrace of bourgeois politics. The morning after the Paris Commune, which has made proletarian political action an order of the day, abstention is entirely out of the question.

<We want the abolition of classes. What is the means of achieving it? The only means is political domination of the proletariat. For all this, now that it is acknowledged by one and all, we are told not to meddle with politics. The abstentionists say they are revolutionaries, even revolutionaries par excellence. Yet revolution is a supreme political act and those who want revolution must also want the means of achieving it, that is, political action, which prepares the ground for revolution and provides the workers with the revolutionary training without which they are sure to become the dupes of the Favres and Pyats the morning after the battle. However, our politics must be working-class politics. The workers' party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party; it must be independent and have its goal and its own policy.

<The political freedoms, the right of assembly and association, and the freedom of the press — those are our weapons. Are we to sit back and abstain while somebody tries to rob us of them? It is said that a political act on our part implies that we accept the exiting state of affairs. On the contrary, so long as this state of affairs offers us the means of protesting against it, our use of these means does not signify that we recognise the prevailing order.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Apropos Of Working-Class Political Action".

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/21.htm

>>2885596
Wrong. Lenin's position on forging an alliance between peasants and the proletariat by preparing a sector of agricultural cooperatives to separate poor peasants from the interests of the more prosperous peasants (kulaks) was correct because state capitalism is superior to private capitalism, and small-scale peasant production and state capitalism can be more easily socialized, in addition to preparing these peasants for collective labor.

Marx and Engels supported the idea that a socialist revolution should be carried out as soon as possible without waiting for capitalism to develop "on its own" and destroy the peasantry. Lenin's policy of worker-peasant alliance, developing agricultural cooperatives, and using state capitalism as a transition from semi-feudalism and undeveloped capitalism to socialism is in accordance with Marx and Engels.

<We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labor as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. It will serve us no reason to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its extreme consequences, until the last small craftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production.

<Engels, 1894, The Peasant Question in France and Germany

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/peasant-question/ch02.htm

Lenin reiterates that it is feasable and necessary to implement measures of proletarian state-control, which is not socialism, but a step towards it:

<Under no circumstances can the party of the proletariat set itself the aim of “introducing” socialism in a country of small peasants so long as the overwhelming majority of the population has not come to realise the need for a socialist revolution.

<But only bourgeois sophists, hiding behind “near-Marxist” catchwords, can deduce from this truth a justification of the policy of post poning immediate revolutionary measures, the time for which is fully ripe; measures which have been frequently resorted to during the war by a number of bourgeois states… the nationalisation of the land, of all the banks and capitalist syndicates, or, at least, the immediate establishment of the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, etc., over them… which are only steps towards socialism, and which are perfectly feasible economically.

<Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (1917)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch09.htm

This is what Lenin said in 1923:

<Infinitely stereotyped, for instance, is the argument they learned by rote during the development of West-European Social-Democracy, namely, that we are not yet ripe for socialism, but as certain “learned” gentleman among them put it, the objective economic premises for socialism do not exist in our country… “The development of the productive forces of Russia has not yet attained the level that makes socialism possible.” All the heroes of the Second International, including, of course, Sukhanov, beat the drums about this proposition. They keep harping on this incontrovertible proposition in a thousand different keys, and think that it is decisive criterion of our revolution… You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country by the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving toward socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible?

<Lenin, “Our Revolution” (1923)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm

Lenin also realized that in order to transition to socialism it was necessary to create a collective agriculture sector. He said in 1923, talking about agricultural co-operatives:

<As a matter of fact, the political power of the Soviet over all large-scale means of production, the power in the state in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc, …is not this all that is necessary in order from the co-operatives – from the co-operatives alone, which we formerly treated as huckstering, and which, from a certain aspect, we have the right to treat as such now, under the new economic policy – is not this all that is necessary in order to build a complete socialist society? This is not yet the building of socialist society but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building.

<Lenin, “On Cooperation” (1923)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm

Lenin’s opponents claimed that Lenin was going backwards and betraying socialism by advocating development on state-capitalist lines. Lenin reminded them of what he said already in 1917:

<For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

[…]

<Imperialist war is the eve of socialist revolution. And this not only because the horrors of the war give rise to proletarian revolt—no revolt can bring about socialism unless the economic conditions for socialism are ripe—but because state-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs.

<Lenin, “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat it” (1917)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

>>2887422
>capitalism is better than capitalism
Gee golly
>Lenin's policy of worker-peasant alliance, developing agricultural cooperatives, and using state capitalism as a transition from semi-feudalism and undeveloped capitalism to socialism is in accordance with
No one
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm

>>2887443
Did you forget Engels' quote that says not to wait to take power waiting for the peasants to be proletariated by capitalism because these peasants can be won to side with the proletariat?

<We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labor as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. It will serve us no reason to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its extreme consequences, until the last small craftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production.

<Engels, 1894, The Peasant Question in France and Germany

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/peasant-question/ch02.htm

Have you forgotten that Marx never denied the revolutionary measures in the written section II of the communist manifesto?

<However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”

<Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, June 24, 1872, London, Preface of the Communist Manifesto, The 1872 German Edition

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm

Let's look at this section then:

<The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

<Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

<These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

<Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

<1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
<2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
<3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
<4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
<5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
<6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
<7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
<8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
<9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
<10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

<When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

<In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

As you can see here, everything written refers to the period prior to the socialization of the economy, and Marx never wrote that he opposed what Engels wrote—having read his manuscripts before their publication without expressing any opposition. Furthermore, you can see Marx employing what is characterized as state capitalism years later in this political program for an election within a bourgeois democracy:

<B. Economic Section
[…]
<3. Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food, by a workers' statistical commission;
[…]
<11. Annulment of all the contracts that have alienated public property (banks, railways, mines, etc.), and the exploitation of all state-owned workshops to be entrusted to the workers who work there;

<Karl Marx and Jules Guesde, 1880, The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm

This follows what Engels wrote as a tool to facilitate the socialization of the economy:

<18. What will be the course of this revolution?

<Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

<Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:
[…]
<(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.

<(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

<(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.
[…]
<(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

<It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.

<Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

<Frederick Engels, 1847, The Principles of Communism

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

>>2887111
park chung hee schizo…

>>2885661
do you think someone who likes chomsky is "neo bolshevik"? Oh my . Are you going off of vibes here?

>>2885500
I mean the only reason I cared was because I thought that authoritarians would kill fags. This is completely true but libertarians tend to enjoy social murdering homos as well. So I really don't see a difference between the authoritarians and the libertarians. There's absolutely no difference between the fascists who throw you in prison and the fascists who throw you on the street. This idea that democratic and libertarian methods would be less cruel and despotic is quite absurd. Chomsky is speaking like someone who has never known real oppression and real unfreedom. This idea that the state apparatus is somehow more authoritarian than the church, the community, the family and so on is just bizarre. A cop kicks your teeth in, a community leaves you to freeze to death in the street. My enemy is not some tyrannical dictator, my enemy is my next door neighbor. My neighbors already are secret police of a sort who distrust the transhumanist. This idea that the rubber stamp of the state makes a social relation anymore despotic is silly.

>>2888819
You think too rigidly. Assuming you're vagueposting about some personal circumstances, I sympathise and hope you manage to escape whatever communal hell you've fallen into. But in practical terms you shouldn't underrate what a malicious state can do. If you look over at Britain, for example, you can see the perils of trusting the state. When a community throws you out onto the street, there is at least theoretical scope for you to go and live in the woods. When the state decrees that it's simply intolerable that you live, it's over.

Getting more practical: look at how Britain has deployed its nominally anti-discrimination law, the EA2010, to ban trans people from public life and to effectively repeal freedom of association. It is true that if this law was abolished it would be legal to ban trans people from organisations, but in the absence of any government control trans people could also create their own organisations. There is, at least, a small chance of escape. Instead, the law is deployed to effectively ban this: conservative christians sue the liberal democrats for removing them as a candidate for… not being a liberal and opposing lib-dem policy on gay marriage, and TERFs who were fired from their jobs as Green party spokesmen sue the greens for firing them over… giving voice to their own TERF views instead of Green policy. there is no freedom of association: they have "protected beliefs" which ban you from discriminating against them. on the flip side, it is mandatory that one discriminates against transgender people, even in areas where the law "technically" doesn't say anything, like public bathrooms.
(Public bathrooms in britain operate, in actual law, under freedom of association rules and property rights: if a man goes into the women's bathroom in the supermarket, the supermarket can ignore them, or it can ask them to leave. but a supermarket can also ask a man to leave the men's room, or the aisle! the supermarket owner gets to decide who is allowed in the supermarket, so long as they're not discriminating against a protected group. however the new administrative guidance pushed, without anyone actually changing the law, is that a supermarket is obliged to prevent transgender people using the correct bathroom. this isn't actually in legislation anywhere, but firms can be punished for not following this non-law administrative guidance… the implication of this is, if you run a transgender shop of any kind, you can't apply freedom of association rules. you can't kick out TERFs - discriminatory against their "protected belief" - and you can't let people use whatever bathroom they want, because the state thinks it knows better than you, and in this particular case the state is so deranged that it would actually be better to operate according to pure libertarian rules.)
There's also a whole digression about 200+ year waiting lists on the NHS for basic stuff like HRT, or the NHS being unwilling to collaborate on blood testing or anything if you DIY, not to mention the policy-based-evidence Cass report and other nonsense. Plus, of course, the abysmal treatment of disabled people and cutting of support for them… Don't think the state can't do social murder too!

I have explained this quite badly, but the situation is at once unspeakably complicated and unspeakably simple: the state has set itself the singular goal of fucking over transgender people, ironically by abusing laws set up to protect them. This is a much worse situation than if the public were simply left to their prejudices without state intervention beyond ordinary order-keeping: at least then you could retreat to a little enclave community.

In the final event: a community will generally struggle to stop you sneaking off in the middle of the night, but the state can always take your passport.

>>2885576
Vanguard party bureaucrats represent a new de facto bourgeois through their effective control over the means of productions via the state. The vanguard party extracts surplus value, directs investment, and disciplines labor.
Hand-waving this by claiming "well ackshually the vanguard party represents the proletariat" is idealist nonsense. What materially incentivizes the vanguard party to represent the proletariat when they are a monopoly on the political economy? Nothing, as the vanguard party’s material interests will almost always diverge from the working people’s.
Left-coms and Trotskyites are retarded in their own regard, but they are actually correct in their critique here.

>>2888864
This whole illusion that the state is independent from the people composing it is exactly what I mean. No state can impose such draconian rules without the majority at least tolerating my oppression. State laws don't matter without nosy neighbors calling the cops. Nazi cops exist because Nazi citizens want them to. This idea that the state or capital are alien powers from above is simply commodity fetishism.

>>2889063
On this I basically agree. The state is a mere apparatus, and in a world where the apparatus is controlled by malicious people it is better that it be dismantled and kept out of our lives. Far too many have an odd state fetishism: "if i were in charge, I would like to abuse the law to persecute my enemies, therefore the apparatus must be preserved and defended so that I can play with it in future… Even though those playing with it now are committed to my destruction…"

>>2885583
>words words words
divide a whole into thirds thirds thirds?

I cant believe Chomsky is the only prominent intellectual who repeatedly said this. It should be common knowledge by now

>>2889863
I mean he basically gave you the reason for that, it's because those intellectuals want to be the new ruling class

>>2889863
Chomsky isn’t even good, much less the only one who said this

chomsky was one of the rare intellectuals who had some modicum of self-awareness and integrity, he routinely criticized intellectuals for being out-of-touch morons including himself.

intellectuals are awful people and the biggest problem with western society is that we listen to them too much. we offload our cognition to an elite minority of "smart people" and defer to them and quote them incessantly because we have no faith in our own ability to understand things and express ourselves, we act like parasocial idolators and form personality cults around famous figures like we are children and they are daddy, it's pathetic.

>>2885500
Waste of digits on grandma

>>2895177
Looks like things have gone from Sinbad to Sin-worse!

>>2895015
Extremely based post btw

No u

>>2895301
Extremely cringe post btw

>>2895015
>the biggest problem with western society is that we listen to them too much.
This "problem" made possible that children don't die before 5 years old, women don't die at childbirth and people don't die from colds.

>>2895330
Marxist (pseudo)intellectuals achieved none of this

>>2895291
Good one, sad day on leftypol

>>2895359
>chomsky is an anticommunist
>ignores secondary effects of communism in AES forcing capitalists to compete
Ngmi son.

>>2895330
>This "problem" made possible that children don't die before 5 years old, women don't die at childbirth and people don't die from colds.

poor rural farmers and indigenous tribes figured out all that shit out long ago through generations of experience and trial-and-error and their knowledge was dismissed as folk superstition and heretical witchcraft by the european intellectual elite who believed in crackpot theories about bad blood and miasma. hell, at one point the intellectuals just straight up threw in the towel and declared that human ailments are fundamentally untreatable and medical nihilism became their prevailing ethos. it wasn't until very recently in history that the intellectuals were finally able to figure out what the common folk had already known and put it in their own language that legitimized it and made it marketable. that's all "empirical knowledge" really is, is sellable knowledge, the kind of knowledge that can actually be communicated in a dysfunctional social group of strangers and charlatans who cannot trust one another, that can get a stamp of approval from authority figures who have the final say on what is true and what isn't.

>>2895502
brother do you have any source for what you claim?

>>2895502
>poor rural farmers and indigenous tribes figured out all that shit out long ago through generations of experience and trial-and-error
Yeah, slow trial and error was surpasses by scientific fast trial and error. Also, miss me with that ahistorical analysis of "folk knowledge". And intellectuals aren't a monolith. The scientific revolution was possible due to rejection of religion and folk infallibility. But yeah I bet you think communism is about "muh people".

>>2895545
>But yeah I bet you think communism is about "muh people".

i'm not a communist and i don't give a shit about communism. you're not a communist either, by the way. you're just a former poltard who got bored with cosplaying as a nazi because too many people were doing it and it lost its edge, so now you are cosplaying as a commie. you'll grow out of this performative nonsense eventually and become a typical dullard with mainstream down-the-middle political views just like your parents, this is just a phase for you.

>>2895502
sorry peasantoid it's better to apply a rigorous standard to knowledge and the creation of peer review was a good thing

>>2895502
Insane pol pot tier fantasy. For every folk remedy that worked there were 100 stupid bullshit ideas that at best did no harm and at worst were harmful.

>>2895502
I wish this was true, do you have evidence of this. The only thing that comes off the top of my head is Ignaz Semmelweiss and his general prophylactic techniques. Would be interested in more info on similar cases.

>>2895569
based reply

>>2895593
tbh that "rigorous standard of knowledge" is not that rigorous. Also peer review sucks massive cheeze bawls. Peer reproducibility is much better, but it would destroy the academic industrial complex. Modern academia has very disorganized knowledge and leads to total bullshit being passed peer review.

>>2895611
Yeah, that's my qualm with that statement, I know a lot of folk remedies worked on placebo so to me it's more like for every 1 remedy that was legit, 5 were hocus pocus.

>>2895624
>do you have evidence of this

well there's the fact that the human species didn't go extinct, there's a start. in the old days poor rural people in america relied on local midwives to deliver babies, often black or indigenous women, who were respected professionals who had vastly better success rates compared to the white male doctors that wealthy families hired who were like butchers who knew nothing about infants or female anatomy and often transmitted pathogens to the newborns and twisted and crushed and permanently disfigured them or killed them or made them retarded by trying to pull them out with forceps and shit. american indians invented syringes hundreds of years before europeans did, inoculation was developed by various indigenous people in china and india and africa hundreds or thousands of years before edward jenner was credited for inventing the smallpox vaccine. until well into the 20th century, affluent white people were in the fucking dark ages when it came to medicine and they were too classist or racist or misogynistic or paranoid about witchcraft to pay much attention to the valuable scientific knowledge that the rest of the world had accumulated, not just in medicine but other things as well. europeans couldn't even navigate the oceans until they developed the magnetic compass, meanwhile pacific islanders were doing it in outrigger canoes for thousands of years by attuning their brains to the movements of the waves beneath the boat by some means modern neurology still doesn't understand and communicating the knowledge across generations through folk songs. the ruling class were and still are dismissive of process knowledge, the kind of knowledge that cannot be abstracted away from the human being into a written book or some kind of external mechanical instrument so that they can make use of it without having to suffer the unbearable humiliation of deferring to people they saw as inferior to personally teach it to them and giving them power.

>>2895611
>For every folk remedy that worked there were 100 stupid bullshit ideas that at best did no harm and at worst were harmful.

the same goes for so-called "proper science", it all ultimately comes down to experimentation, trial-and-error, but when some folk methodology happened to work the knowledge of the working method could spread by word-of-mouth to other tribes/villages, whereas in a society where people are highly motivated by personal profit and do not trust one another it was more likely for the knowledge to become a trade secret, wealthy professionals would hoard the knowledge to prevent competitors from forcing them to lower their prices, a practice that continues today in the form of patent law which creates this absurd situation where you have all this state of the art medicine that most of the people in the world do not have access to because it's locked up behind patents and pharma monopolies who charge exorbitant prices that almost nobody can afford.

>>2896074

the term "noble savage" is truly a product of paternalistic liberal thinking if there ever was one, like it's racist and offensive to believe that indigenous people are human beings capable of thought and reason and ingenuity like any other, that they could be anything other than just helpless permanent victims.

>>2896081
My friend you don't seem to actually know what "noble savage" as a term means

>>2896073
Medical licensing in the united states came about because you had charlatans calling themselves doctors and selling snake oil to desperate people. All it takes is one look at youtube or tiktok to see that all the rubes that believe in healing frequencies, crystals, and out and out magic hull your "stuff that works spreads by word of mouth" theory at the waterline.

>>2896074
They were just savages as Marx and Engels wrote (that's why slaughtering them was good). Of course it's ridiculous when these modernists claim hunter-gatherers drop down from pricking their finger because if you actually look at tribal people they do crazy piercings and scarification rituals.

>>2896094
Hell, to this day even in china you can get a diploma in traditional chinese medicine or acupuncture (both are entirely placebos)
What I find impressive is how much details you can elaborate on something totally fake, if anyone here has read about pressure points for exemple, it's insane how much there is to read about it when the conclusion (including chinese scientists too) is that none of it has any basis in reality

>>2896094

there's a reason why you have this modern phenomenon of people rejecting valid medical knowledge from the establishment and throwing the baby out with the bath water when it comes to big pharma and buying into anti-vax conspiracy nonsense and alternative medicine quackery, and it's not because people are stupid. their irrational behavior is rooted in a very rational sense of disillusionment with the system, a very real erosion of credibility and social trust that nobody wants to acknowledge because it is more comforting to believe that people are just intrinsically stupid than to believe that our entire civilization is crumbling under the weight of its own greed and dishonesty. it's a lot easier for common working class people to believe that they can cure their terminal cancer with needles and magic crystals and shit when the actual medicine costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. when you chalk it up to just the stupidity of the unwashed masses you're just internalizing the elitist thinking of the ruling class and their contempt for common humanity, which is what got us into this situation to begin with. also it's worth noting that what is called alternative medicine today is just a commercial appropriation of various elements of folk medicine aggressively marketed by for-profit institutions, it's not really folk wisdom as practiced in decentralized human societies where the practitioners had to actually earn their reputations by personally helping people and saving lives and establishing their own local network of trust one patient at a time, and didn't have powerful institutions and marketing departments and book publishers and celebrity gurus to help them promote their ideas as gospel truth with nothing to actually back up their claims.

>>2896136
>there's a reason why you have this modern phenomenon of people rejecting valid medical knowledge from the establishment and throwing the baby out with the bath water when it comes to big pharma and buying into anti-vax conspiracy nonsense and alternative medicine quackery, and it's not because people are stupid.

That's not the argument you dumb faggot. You made very specific claims here

>>2896073
<the same goes for so-called "proper science", it all ultimately comes down to experimentation, trial-and-error, but when some folk methodology happened to work the knowledge of the working method could spread by word-of-mouth to other tribes/villages, whereas in a society where people are highly motivated by personal profit and do not trust one another it was more likely for the knowledge to become a trade secret, wealthy professionals would hoard the knowledge to prevent competitors from forcing them to lower their prices, a practice that continues today in the form of patent law which creates this absurd situation where you have all this state of the art medicine that most of the people in the world do not have access to because it's locked up behind patents and pharma monopolies who charge exorbitant prices that almost nobody can afford.

And you were given specific examples against that kind of folklore "people will just share what works" idealism.

Get fucked, dipshit.

>>2896091

i know what it means, it's a clumsy failed attempt at criticizing the problems of our westoid imperialist conception of civilization by intellectuals who were still operating in the eurocentric and pseudoscientific framework of biological determinism, dividing the human species into discrete subspecies of "primitive" and "intelligent" people. instead of considering the possibility that we aren't as intelligent as we think we are or that human intelligence is universal and relational and there's really no such thing as stupid or smart people, we come to the conclusion that our advanced intelligence is a curse and the stupidity of the savages makes them more "pure" and "natural" like concept of the "holy fool" from christian ideology.

>>2896137
>That's not the argument you dumb faggot.

it is the argument, if you take a step back and remember what this whole thread is about, the fundamental dispute between elitism and populism, whether common regular people are capable of intelligence and figuring things out for themselves or if they require elite rulers and intellectuals and vanguards and bureaucracies and codified dogma to do all of their thinking for them. in my opinion, the historical record has repeatedly demonstrated that the former is true and that common people, usually driven by poverty and desperation, are capable of incredible feats of intelligence and creativity and self-governance, whereas the elite are quite often very sheltered and stupid and self-absorbed and just take credit for everything and take advantage of their position to be the authors of history, which eventually unravels under future scrutiny. to bring it back around to noam chomsky, he is actually a good example of the limitations of the intellectual elite, despite being somewhat of a maverick in his time and going against the mainstream views of his fellow intellectuals when it came to linguistics and political theory, his social status and internalized elitism made him an incredibly poor judge of human character, giving some billionaire pedophile the benefit of the doubt and being duped by his scams just because he was a fellow landed gentry.

>>2896073
the same does not go for "proper science", proper science inverts the ratio.
when you get a toothache, do you reach for asprin, parcetamol, or ibruprofen? or do you reject his bourgeois superstition and these genericised products of big phrama for the REAL cures: holding some cow-shit against the sore side of your face, or was it a frog? some suggest eating ladybugs, or talking to a pear tree, or putting both your socks on one foot…

>>2887164
>happier countries - and US states - usually have higher suicide rates than unhappy ones
Pretty sure that's just cope from western statisticians.

>>2896151
elites believe in institutions, common people believe in interpersonal ties. institutions win every single time.
you can see this in the macro scale today: do all the elites governing things have problems? yes. there is some kind of competency crisis.
but are these problems multiplied a thousandfold when a Trump figure comes along and starts breaking things at random to appeal to the coalition of morons and shysters he's put together in the name of the common sense of the common people? a thousand times yes. give me a man who can read a chart but judges character poorly over Trump's remarkable interpersonal aura slammed together with trying to tariff uninhabited territories.

the fundamental flaw of vanguardists is that despite being a would-be elite, the institutions they imagine creating are bad at what they set out to do. but institutions themselves are essential if you want to achieve anything.

>>2896212
if western statisticians are flagrant liars, why would they not pretend to have lower suicide rates? (indeed, there are suspicions that Japan does the opposite, pushing up the "suicide" rate to keep the murder rate low…) without putting forward a methodology and a way of verifying it, why is you saying it's cope any better than me saying that you are coping right now?

if anything, it wouldn't be "cope from western statisticians", it would be bad statistical data from poorer countries. (many African countries GDP figures, for example, consist of a handful of guys guesstimating the numbers based on whatever ad-hoc information they can find, which is often little better than "well, my friend got a job in a factory, so manufacturing must be booming". not because they're malicious or incompetent - in domestic terms they're elites! - but because that's the best their institutions can furnish them with.)

>>2896228

elites don't really believe in institutions so much as they begrudgingly depend on them because it's the only way a small group of people can govern a very large group of people over the long term and the trump figure coming along and the institutional decay is not a random stroke of bad luck, it is an inevitability when the elites become increasingly myopic and eventually come to resent the institutions and view them as unnecessary expenses and limitations of their power. we treat the political elite and the business elite and the intellectual elite as different kinds of elite, but they really are not, they're all composed of ambitious opportunistic ladder-climbers who tend to become more irrational and amoral the higher up the ladder they go and the more their position insulates them from reality. today's eisenhower is tomorrow's trump, the good intelligent forward-thinking leader is a product of the same meritocracy as the bad stupid myopic leader. the fundamental flaw of vanguardists is the fundamental flaw of elitism and meritocracy, which is that they are based on the incorrect assumption that human intelligence and morality are intrinsic qualities of the individual human being which can be isolated by a system of social filters that separate the good people from the bad people and appoint them to positions of power. the truth is, intelligence and morality are just statistics, they aren't intrinsic rpg attributes, they are just a scorecard of a person's past behaviors which can only be determined after the fact and just because a person behaved intelligently and morally in the past is no indication that they will continue to do so in the future. in other words, the entire concept of the elite is a lie, there are no good people to select for and the kinds of people to rise to the top of any kind of social hierarchy are just people who are good at gaming the system and doing or saying whatever it takes to help them rise to a position of greater power, usually the ones who had a headstart by being born into a position of great privilege to begin with.

>>2896059
Ok thanks for this. Have a nice Oakeshott for your effortpost.

>>2896370
basically a very good post. I think you underrate how effectively institutions can select for good people to some extent, though in the long run you get an arms race between selection criteria and goodhart's law. (a measure that becomes a target stops being a good measure)

still, I think a degenerated elite institution type model is better than the cult leader or big man model of governance. (though undermining this slightly is, as you note, the problem that many elites don't believe in their own institutions, they just want what they can get..)

>>2896827
>I think a degenerated elite institution type model is better than the cult leader or big man model of governance.

well the problem is the former tends to easily turn into the latter, all it takes is an erosion of public trust in the elites and one charismatic leader to bring down the republic and history has very clearly demonstrated this pattern over and over again.