We must have either a regular slavery — that is, an undisguised despotism, or real liberty...

>we must have either a regular slavery — that is, an undisguised despotism, or real liberty, and real equality — that is, Communism.
what the fuck
was engels right, Veeky Forums? is despotism good?

any claim of what happens after capitalism collapses (dictatorship of proletariat, dissolution of said dictatorship, end of states, to each according to his need) is pure ideology

its a philosophy of monopolization

>pure ideology
we have had despotism in the past though so it's a real ideology

he wasn't saying that we "must" have it as a normative, ethical statement, or whatever. it wasn't an endorsement. he's saying that determinatively, any system which is not communism is despotic.

>he's saying that determinatively, any system which is not communism is despotic.
>Democracy is, as I take all forms of government to be, a contradiction in itself, an untruth, nothing but hypocrisy (theology, as we Germans call it), at the bottom. Political liberty is sham-liberty, the worst possible slavery; the appearance of liberty, and therefore the reality of servitude. Political equality is the same; therefore democracy, as well as every other form of government, must ultimately break to pieces: hypocrisy cannot subsist, the contradiction hidden in it must come out; we must have either a regular slavery — that is, an undisguised despotism, or real liberty, and real equality — that is, Communism.
well no he's specifically condemming democracy as being bad because it is neither truly despotic or communist; it is hypocritical

i didn't post the whole thing because no one was going to read the OP otherwise

I'm still right. He's arguing that under its superstructural (read: political, ideological, legal) appearances, democracy is despotism—because it is not communism. If there is """praise""" here for despotism as such, it is only insofar as there, the base matches the superstructure. But calling one form of despotism hypocritical and another faithful to itself is still not endorsement of the latter.

>He's arguing that under its superstructural (read: political, ideological, legal) appearances, democracy is despotism—because it is not communism.
he's arguing that it's a form of slavery but that doesn't mean it's despotism
>Political liberty is sham-liberty, the worst possible slavery;
despotism is regular slavery but that does not mean that slavery is despotism, you're conflating the two when they're different

This way of thinking measures the value of things according to pleasure and pain, which is to say according to incidental states and trivialities. A foreground way of thinking and naivety, and nobody who is conscious of both formative powers and an artist’s conscience will fail to regard it with scorn as well as pity.

Pity for you! That is certainly not pity as you understand it: it is not pity for social “distress,” for “society” with its sick and injured, for people depraved and destroyed from the beginning as they lie around us on the ground; even less is it pity for the grumbling, dejected, rebellious slave strata who strive for dominance – they call it “freedom; justice; equality.”

Our pity is a higher, more far-sighted pity: – we see how humanity is becoming smaller, how you are making it smaller! – and there are moments when we look on your pity with indescribable alarm, when we fight this pity –, when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any sort of thoughtlessness. You want, if possible (and no “if possible” is crazier) to abolish suffering. And us? – it looks as though we would prefer it to be heightened and made even worse than it has ever been!

Well-being as you understand it – that is no goal; it looks to us like an end ! – a condition that immediately renders people ridiculous and despicable – that makes their decline into something desirable!

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – don’t you know that this discipline has been the sole cause of every enhancement in humanity so far? The tension that breeds strength into the unhappy soul, its shudder at the sight of great destruction, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, surviving, interpreting, and exploiting unhappiness, and whatever depth, secrecy, whatever masks, spirit, cunning, greatness it has been given: – weren’t these the gifts of suffering, of the disciple of great suffering?

In human beings, creature and creator are combined: in humans there is material, fragments, abundance, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in humans there is also creator, maker, hammer-hardness, spectator-divinity and seventh day: – do you understand this contrast? And that your pity is aimed at the “creature in humans,” at what needs to be molded, broken, forged, torn, burnt, seared and purified, – at what necessarily needs to suffer and should suffer?

And our pity – don’t you realize who our inverted pity is aimed at when it fights against your pity as the worst of all pampering and weaknesses? – Pity against pity, then! – But to say it again: there are problems that are higher than any problems of pleasure, pain, or pity; and any philosophy that stops with these is a piece of naivete.

overall i think it's obvious that he at least doesn't object to despotism

The quote is simple enough. Let me emphasise what the person who posted it clearly skimmed over:
>democracy, as well as every other form of government, must ultimately break to pieces: hypocrisy cannot subsist, the contradiction hidden in it must come out;
Forget "objections", Marx and Engels had to maintain the appearance (ironic, considering the slandering of "mere" appearances we just read) of objectivity, lack of value-judgements, in order to gain immunity from Stirner's critique.
Anyway, let's make sure no one missed it, again:
>>democracy, as well as every other form of government, must ultimately break to pieces: hypocrisy cannot subsist, the contradiction hidden in it must come out;
No value-judgement. He is explicitly saying that the problem with the systems inbetween despotism and communism is that their hypocrisy makes them unstable; the workers will eventually gain consciousness and rise up. This is his "scientific" opinion, he doesn't give a personal opinion even on democracy here, so forget the idea of this passage passing judgement on despotism.

As for the reliability of his theory, I think we can use the rise and success of the USA as a metric:
>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all lifeforms are created unequal, that they have no rights whatsoever apart from those that the ruling caste deems expedient to endow them with at any given time, and that Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are not ideals to be placed over free men but mirages with which to confuse the weak minds of slaves and lead them to their holding cells".
And this hypocrisy is a great thing, read and

Any time someone uses Nietzsche as a conduit to reject an ideology, I laugh.

>Any time someone uses Nietzsche as a conduit to reject an ideology, I laugh.
Who said anything about rejecting an ideology?

But anyway, why does that make you laugh?

>Any time I see penis in ass and cock furiously in the air, I laugh.

Nietzsche wouldn't encourage anyone to reject the teachings of a book, not in the proto-fascist way as indicated in that image.

Even then, Nietzsche definitely disagreed with Marx, but they agreed capitalism was vulgar and reduced people. They also agreed that viewing people in the most naturalistic way possible is best. So they aren't in disagreement except in minor ways.

Basically I'm saying, whenever the reactionary impulse is derived from Nietzsche, it's wrong. Nietzsche is thoroughly anti-reactionary.

modern despotism is pretty well disguised

I am one comfy as fuck slave senpai

Who is this jizz djinn?

Any idiot can laugh.

I see you subscribe to the highly idealised/sanitized/imagined Nietzsche à la Kaufmann.

>Basically I'm saying, whenever the reactionary impulse is derived from Nietzsche, it's wrong. Nietzsche is thoroughly anti-reactionary.

Yes, but that doesn't make the corollary true. He hated almost everything pertaining to liberal democracy and progressive politics/ideals, and definitely hated the ressentiment that Socialism/Communism/etc embody.

>Nietzsche wouldn't encourage anyone to reject the teachings of a book, not in the proto-fascist way as indicated in that image.
That your opinion comes down to reacting to an image.. now I laugh. And what makes you think that "proto-fascist" image isn't just a representation of pic-related?

>Even then, Nietzsche definitely disagreed with Marx, but they agreed capitalism was vulgar and reduced people.
Their respective critiques of capitalism are
>They also agreed that viewing people in the most naturalistic way possible is best.
Again, their conceptions of psychology are incredibly distinct

>So they aren't in disagreement except in minor ways.
Even if this was true, which I doubt, I think the comparison is distasteful. Compare their lives around attending the university of Bonn, one is full of riches completely ripe, the other less so. One has reached canonical fame in general philosophy, the other's associations are mainly political.

That doesn't mean he would support a propaganda poster telling you not to read Marx at all.

>Let me emphasise what the person who posted it clearly skimmed over
quote me next time
>No value-judgement.
only in that sentence

he accepts despotism as being preferable to democracy
>we must have either a regular slavery — that is, an undisguised despotism, or real liberty, and real equality — that is, Communism.
>He is explicitly saying that the problem with the systems inbetween despotism and communism is that their hypocrisy makes them unstable; the workers will eventually gain consciousness and rise up.
he is saying that we must have either despotism or communism; he accepts that democracy exists so obviously your "oh he means that democracies will inevitably collapse" interpretation doesn't work
>so forget the idea of this passage passing judgement on despotism.
stop conflating individual sentences with the whole passage you commie shit

>You can only post memes if the subject of the meme would approve

Marx is absolutely a mainstream philosopher taught to undergrads around the world. Don't meme yourself.

Posting a picture of Hitler holding up a copy of Das Kapital while encouraging Nazis to become Marxists is just as disingenuous as what he did.

>All memes must be literal and honest, devoid of any metaphor/exaggeration/etc

>he thinks Marx is a utopian socialist
>he thinks Nietzsche was talking about anything but utopian socialism

>It's another episode of 'Nietzsche secretly wasn't all that opposed to Socialism/Communism/etc and therefore capable of being utilized by we ressentiment-ridden Leftists'

>That doesn't mean he would support a propaganda poster telling you not to read Marx at all.
Again, I laugh. Why focus on an attached picture? Why assume your imaginative interpretation of it, "telling you not to read Marx at all", is what anyone else is thinking of when they see it?

I didn't quote you because it seemed more likely that the others would benefit from me pointing out the obvious, you already missed it in your own post, and still do.

>he accepts despotism as being preferable to democracy
There's no value-judgement in what you've quoted, retard. "we must either have" follows from the fact that hypocrisy causes democracy to implode (according to Engels). So basically we must have either despotism or communism, because they are more robust and follow the fall of democracy.

>he is saying that we must have either despotism or communism; he accepts that democracy exists so obviously your "oh he means that democracies will inevitably collapse" interpretation doesn't work stop conflating individual sentences with the whole passage you commie shit
Oh, I thought you were the communist here. I guess that partially justifies your obtuseness here:
>he accepts that democracy exists so obviously your "oh he means that democracies will inevitably collapse" interpretation doesn't work
So, if you get more familiarity with Marx/Engels, you'd realise that their characterisation of democracy's instability is dependent on the fact that worker's will gain consciousness and rebel, and they are explicit about the fact that this has not occurred yet, hence why democracy exists.

I'm not sure what your end-game is here, you want to show Engels to be anti-democratic, but what for?

I didn't say otherwise. I just pointed out that he has a stronger association with things like politics, economics, and sociology.

>There's no value-judgement
>So basically we must have either despotism or communism, because they are more robust and follow the fall of democracy.
that is literally a value judgment you spastic you're saying that despotism and communism are more robust and thus better

i'm basically done now since you've shown yourself to be a retard

i swear you're that dumb stirnerist i talked to a few days back anyway

>that is literally a value judgment you spastic
Just to be clear, "value judgment" [sic] in everyday English means judgements which aren't scientific, instead ethical or aesthetic, etc. "more robust" is scientific in the sense of "survival of the fittest", Engels is basically saying that structurally, regardless of how justified it is, democracy is not a long-term option.

>i'm basically done now since you've shown yourself to be a retard
>i swear you're that dumb stirnerist i talked to a few days back anyway
As I said, this whole time I was assuming you were too dumb to comprehend such basic stuff. But since you are the OP I made use of your posts for the benefit of whoever else wants to think about it. I'm not a "stirnerist" btw, in case there's the slightest chance your can be open-minded, learn, and not be blaming everything on how you imagine everyone else to be without any evidence for your stereotyping.

>Just to be clear, "value judgment" [sic] in everyday English means judgements which aren't scientific, instead ethical or aesthetic
>A value judgment is a judgment of the rightness or wrongness of something or someone, or of the usefulness of something or someone, based on a comparison or other relativity.
right off wikipedia

>inb4 weasel words of "everyday Enlgish"

>Nietzsche
>prodigious student
>unprecedented rise to professorship (in a field you were considering dropping for natural science)
>wartime service
>associating with the cultural elite of your day, valued in sophisticated circles
>overcoming physical and philosophical sickness
>become a fit hiker and artistic-philosophical genius who in the future is put on the same level as greats like Plato, have great taste in health and art
>leave life on the high, brain cancer

>Marx/Engels, the dastardly duo
>struggle in school or upset parents
>criminals
>shit taste in culture, denigrate great men
>life's work is scientific ressentiment literature
>die from smoking too much or not getting enough fresh air

Your wikipedia quote doesn't contradict what I said. Individuals' ideas of rightness or usefulness isn't what Engels is getting at. He is saying that democracy would fail even if no one was around to see/judge it ("does a tree fall in the woods?"). Look into the history of their thought, they needed to make the theory scientific for it to be more convincing (some people say Stirner was the impetus).

>Your wikipedia quote doesn't contradict what I said.
that is an obvious lie
> Individuals' ideas of rightness or usefulness isn't what Engels is getting at.
it is what you were getting at when you said engels made no value judgments
>He is saying that democracy would fail even if no one was around to see/judge it
so democracy is inferior to despotism according to engels

Judgment isn't a typo, and saying [sic] on Veeky Forums makes you look like a retard.

>so democracy is inferior to despotism according to engels
structurally, but I bet he would say democracy is morally superior.

Baited.

Was Nietzsche a literal cuck?

>Oh yeah, fuck my (hypothetical lmao) wife. Only through suffering and humiliation can I rise up to greatness.

>I bet he would say democracy is morally superior.
what are you basing this on?
>Baited.
pic related
this is more the level of discussion i expect from Veeky Forums

but yeah pretty much, he idolised napoleon who was, as you say, a literal cuck

Prolly he'd point to the corporation owned media and say 'aristocracy is at least honest'.

If anything I think he was the one trying to cuck the fathers of his students at one point. Nietzsche wouldn't consider a fetish restricted to mediocre nu-males in a comfy privileged society to be exemplary suffering. He criticises religious people for self-destructive suffering/masochism.

Again, he praises Napoleon for how he handed his infidelities, Nietzsche seems to prefer cucking to being cucked. He also liked Dostoevsky's C&P which makes fun of Engels views on marriage.

>what are you basing this on?
That Engels spent his lifetime working on egalitarian garbage.

I don't think so.

>That Engels spent his lifetime working on egalitarian garbage.
*tips*