Any lefties/Marxists on here?
I don't want to start a discussion thread with right-wingers, just one where we share our favourite left wing political or historical texts. I want to find more, based on recommendations.
I'll go first:
>William Appleman Williams - Empire as a way of life
>Wendy Brown - Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution
>Jack Snyder - Myths of Empire
>Greg Grandin - Empire's Workshop
>Herbert Marcuse - One Dimensional Man
Other urls found in this thread:
I'm reading Bukharin right now
>be btfo in real life every time
>retreat to your theory and masturbate about it
Marxists and communists are the same as feminists and multiculturalists and ancaps, always hiding in their safe space
I don't consider myself to be a right-winger by any means. But liberalism/marxism/socialism is an effort to remove the human experience from society and from humanity itself.
Lads, go back to your containment board.
Thanks for proving my point.
>be btfo in real life
>don't engage or defend your position and retreat to your safe space
This is why no one takes you seriously.
What do you make of him?
I'm more of a Trot myself, so I didn't bother to read him. Would be interested to see what you think.
Go away
Are you offended? Much of Veeky Forums is politically incorrect. B-b-b-ut muh /pol/ boogey man.
Pol and /r/thedonald are your safe-spaces, moron.
Funny how you can't let people discuss things without jumping in with your pure ideology. You're not going to convert one person, so I don't know why you bother.
The reason I'm not critically engaging with you is that I know I won't be able to convert you, so why bother.
>I came her to discuss leftist philology, if you disagree with me, go somewhere else
Look, I can't stand /pol/, I voted against Trump and I'm a registered republican who voted for Obama twice. I'm not a right-winger, but I oppose the leftism and marxism as it attempts to whittle down the human experience to data points without recognizing man's eternal will to break these constraints as if to impose their own will on their own fate even if it works against their best interests for the simple sake of proving one still has that power, their free will.
Why do you even care if someone has a politically incorrect opinion, do you assume he's serious?
kys
Marxists aren't worried about what is or isn't politically incorrect, moron. You're confusing us with easily offended liberals.
> I'm a registered republican who voted for Obama twice.
Wow, so you're a liberal who voted for another liberal. Republicans are, by and large, liberals.
> I oppose the leftism and marxism as it attempts to whittle down the human experience to data points without recognizing man's eternal will to break these constraints
So you got your knowledge of Marx and Socialism from Reagan, and have yet to give it up?
Marxism is about ending the exploitation of workers. You obviously have learned to love your own exploitation.
Nice projection, I visit neither of those cesspits. This thread however is a blatant example of a safe space. If you can't "convert" someone into buying your bullshit that means your verbal IQ is low or they smell the bullshit.
Why do you care that someone has a different political opinion to you?
Also, see here:
>Marxists aren't worried about what is or isn't politically incorrect, moron. You're confusing us with easily offended liberals.
>Marxists aren't worried about what is or isn't politically incorrect, moron. You're confusing us with easily offended liberals.
I didn't assume you were anything, thanks for calling me a moron.
>If you can't "convert" someone into buying your bullshit that means your verbal IQ is low or they smell the bullshit.
Ha. Then convert me if you're so good at it.
>This thread however is a blatant example of a safe space.
No, it's just fruitless when you twats hijack the thread to make the same old points. I actually want to discuss things.
>thanks for calling me a moron.
Did I hurt your feelings?
>Tells me to go away
>Gets upset when I call him a moron
Your safe space is over at /pol/
>left and right wing politics
Really? Still playing such an idiot's game?
Please tell me this post is satire.
If you're dumb enough to argue semantics, then just leave.
You don't want a discussion, you want a safe space for circlejerking.
Engage with my original post, forget the whole "converting" nonsense. How is your behaviour any different from feminists, ancaps, or race activists who hide on their subreddits and ban or ignore anyone who disagrees?
What a great post, and great thread I might add.
>Your safe space is over at /pol/
No. Sorry for being drunk.
dem quads tho
>You don't want a discussion, you want a safe space for circlejerking.
Ha, says the twat with forums and websites devoted to circlejerking.
You're right, I don't want a discussion with you as I know it will lead to nothing. If you now feel validated, can you go away? Can't you just accept some people will never see eye-to-eye. I have discussions with people all the time, but I wanted just a few recommendations for books in areas I like without getting sidetracked on arguments I've had a thousand times. I'm 30 and I've been on the internet for 15 years and I've had every argument. Some have been illuminating, others not -- I have websites I discuss things on, but for now I wanted a few books recommended to me so I could understand things more. Now, either recommend books to me -- even on your own side -- or just go away. I don't want to waste my time chatting on these boards -- I will read something by a published writer, even if it's on the other side. Arguing with 4channers is not a subsitute.
>forget the whole "converting" nonsense.
Can't convert me? Nothing to back up your big boasts, I see.
>Engage with my original post
Says the guy who has hijacked my thread for his own satisfaction
>How is your behaviour any different from feminists, ancaps, or race activists who hide on their subreddits and ban or ignore anyone who disagrees?
I cannot ban you.
>Marxism is about ending the exploitation of workers
This is a nice thought, but there will always be an exploitation of the people and of the workers whether it is buy their fellow citizens, businesses, or government.
>I'm 30 and I've been on the internet for 15 years
Holy shit, thanks for proving my point. Nice cognitive dissonance, I'm sure while you were writing out that embarrassing ramble it dawned on you that you are no different from the liberals you despise.
Stop talking about other people wanting safe spaces when you want one of your own.
Not if one owns the means of production through co-operatives etc.
Regardless, if you can lessen the exploitation of others, would this not be an improvement? Taking what you say to be true, how is this an invalidation of Marx? It's like saying we shouldn't try to stop pollution in the West because China will keep polluting.
Thanks for proving my point about you not actually living up to your own bullshit credo.
>No critical engagement at all. Uses memes instead of actually talking.
>Failed to even try to convert me after boasting about it.
See your own cognitive dissonance here? I suppose it's easier to tell others how to act than actually follow your own supposed scruples.
>Didn't even recommend a book you like, probably because you can't think of one.
You are completely delusional. I doubt that burning down those strawman eased your cognitive dissonance.
Nice right-wing circlejerk. Is this what you guys spend your time doing online?
>not if one owns the means of production through co-operatives
Than the leaders of the co-operative will own the means of production (and will use their position to gain power and money). You have to appoint the person responsible for, say, a factory either way. And if you pay this person as much as you pay the workers on this factory, he'll either say "fuck it" or start to exploit the power given. This is what Hayek knew back in the 1940s would happen, and this is what actually happened (in the Soviet Union, for example).
>Value judgements everywhere
Keep trotting out your buzzwords to make yourself feel like you won. You've shown yourself up to be a bullshitter.
I have yet to see these powers of persuasion you boasted about. Is you low verbal IQ holding you back?
It is basic human nature to break through the constraints of what is seen as profitable. Co-operative ownership will never succeed because there will always be one, if not more, that attempts to exploit others for their own benefit.
The problem isn't attempting to lessen the exploitation of others, and it's not that I don't agree with you on some of this, it's that Marx and Nietzsche and other socialists have completely missed the mark on the human experience and attempting to continue their philosophy by forcing it on society as a means to validate their beliefs without admitting that they, and their movement, has been wrong.
First, one must love other humans and humanity itself for both its good and its bad, and we must accept that suffering is eternal and all living things will suffer and that suffering is not inherently bad. But there will never be a way to rid humanity of the exploitation of their fellow man.
Are insults and jabs always your go-to in an argument, or just when you've got nothing else?
You ok hun?
Thanks for proving my point.
Thanks for not actually making one good point in this thread.
Anyway, now that I've supposedly proved your point, you can go away, like the smug liberal you are.
Fucking arseblasted.
>Co-operative ownership will never succeed
It has succeed quite well in many places. I'm not sure what you are talking about.
>you can go away
It's hilarious how both the left and the right will attack each other over their opponent's desire to create a safe space while actively attempting to forge one of their own.
Shhhh, stop referring to real life examples that refute his pure ideology.
The fact that you think marxism and liberalism are the same or even similar things and not opposite ends of the spectrum only serves to show you don't know what marxism is trying to do (and I highly doubt you can give any account of what is "human experience" anyway, though I doubt what capitalism is doing has any sort of bios in mind)
He didn't refer to any real life examples
There are thousands of co-operatively run businesses all over the world.
Please, list all successful and still thriving Marxist nations.
That are run together by workers?
Hasn't been one, yet. If you think this invalidates it, well by that logic the theories of democracy were invalidated when thought up as there was no such thing as a democratic state.
The thought/theory precedes the reality. Marxism has yet to be tried out, properly.
>Marxism has yet to be tried out, properly.
BINGO
>Marxism has yet to be tried out, properly.
That is because it is an impossibility. There are always going to be people who actively work to throw a wrench in the system because they care more about their own self-interest than they do for the good of man-kind. It's also going to take everyone agreeing on the same course of action as beneficial.
Yes. All workers have an equal stake in the company. It's not like you have 300 people on a board of directors, or something. Workers vote on courses of action.
This is not a weird system. Even in Germany, workers have their union leader on the board of directors of big companies like Volkswagen, for instance. It's a watered-down version of the co-operative system, but it is a similar method.
>Marxist
>Nation
no such thing
>There are always going to be people who actively work to throw a wrench in the system because they care more about their own self-interest than they do for the good of man-kind.
This is weak.
It's like giving up on banning drink-driving because there's always going to be people that drink and drive.
In a truly Marxist society it would be an impossibility for one person to exploit another as the workers would recognise their own exploitation and band together to cease it.
I'm really tired of arguing Marxism with people who've never read Marx. It's so arrogant to argue against something you don't even understand fully.
LET'S TRY TO SALVAGE THIS THREAD
OP, if you haven't tried the situationists yet, I've been rereading Society of the Spectacle and it's great, if you wanna get into it, I can give you a introductory list, namely:
On the Poverty of the Student Life
Report on the Construction of Situations
and the no1. of the Internationale Situationniste newspaper, all availabe at notbored.org or libcom.org
>implying you understand Marxism fully
How arrogant.
VW is a terrible example. A group in leadership made a detrimental decision for all other people when they decided to place the company and their employees in the firing line when they actively worked to cover up their automobile's true emissions. They did this for profitability, they put profitability over their reputation which in turn hurts all those employed by VW.
Thanks Man. I love Guy Debord and the rest of the Situationists. I also like Raoul Vaneigem a lot.
Any more writers you could recommend would be great.
>and this is what actually happened (in the Soviet Union, for example).
They never implemented such a system and their organizational structure was similar to private business. Source for that claim? Reasons and Rationalizations by Chris Argyris 31-33 (bookzz.org
No, it's about understand man kind and the reality of the human condition before trying to proceed forward rather than forcing a flawed philosophy.
Nietzsche and other socialists have completely missed the mark on the human experience and attempting to continue their philosophy by forcing it on society as a means to validate their beliefs without admitting that they, and their movement, has been wrong
wtf lol
Shhhh, this means he can't be smug any more.
B O R D I G A
quads of truth
You've reified certain aspects of the supposed human condition to confirm your own biases.
Moreover, you act like we can't do anything to fight certain negative human instincts.
The entirety of classical liberal conservatism is based on protecting man from himself, for fuck's sake. Just read anything by Edmund Burke, who influenced American conservatism.
Capitalism and democracy, in all of it's flaws, is the real representation and almost a mirror image of humanity itself.
Capitalism has caused more deaths than Communism and Socialism combined. This is a fucking fact.
This.
>Moreover, you act like we can't do anything to fight certain negative human instincts.
You act like you can change human nature, or that man even wants you to. There is nothing more contrived and flawed than this.
Well done kowtowing to your masters.
Fuck off field nigger
I love Vaneigem as well, even though people shit on him quite often.
Well, the guys who are working with this right now are mostly the italian autonomists, people like Antonio Negri, Bifo Berardi and Mario Perniolla (my favourite), as well as Agamben, of course, though he's not often associated with these other thinkers.
I've been meaning to read Millibank x Zizek's debate, is it easy for someone with little to no background in theology?
It's not about liking, or disliking it, it's about accepting the reality of it all.
Prove to me, that there is anything more representative of the very essence of humanity, which is by nature irrational, than capitalism or democracy.
Mankind has always actively worked hard at breaking the barriers and constraints. Knowing this, why would you ever assume that man will always want what is best for him and why would you assume that Marxism would ever be effective or remain pure and true on a large scale? Do you deny your own instincts? One can be aware of rational thought while still making irrational decisions, just for the sake of choosing to do so.
You mitigate human nature, for fuck's sake. Of course you can't change it. Burke et al. argue that you structure society in order to mitigate man's flawed nature.
You're just being obtuse. If you can't understand this, you don't understand the first thing about politics and society.
Prisons, for instance, are seen as a deterrent to crime by the majority of people. See how this mitigates man's flawed nature??
>communism can't work because some pople are weiners lol xD works great on paper
Why do we follow the social contract and behave, more or less, morally? Because we recognize that it is in our collective best interest to do so. The same thing couldn't possibly apply to a communist society?
There's a question of the stability of the system. All kinds of things can and will go wrong. But the changes that get in the positive feedback loop are the ones that break the system. That's why drunk drivers aren't a problem while corruption is, because the latter tends to grow bigger if not prevented somehow.
>the workers would recognise their own exploitation and band together to cease it
This is the key point of the whole Marxism thing. Does it get described with enough details somewhere? What exactly workers should believe and know to be able to effectively govern themselves? How will they know that they are exploited? And so on.
>Alt right can't help alt righting
You act like your idea of human nature is something truly universal and not something deeply related to post-absolutism philosophy
You are the one that brought up "converting", not me. I just brought up the fact that you behave like a feminist on Reddit, clamouring for a safe space. You are dodging and playing with language and it's painfully obvious. Of course, it's only natural for Marxists to play with words instead of form coherent arguments. See my original post; start arguing any time.
That's not even alt-right slang. It's black slang.
>This entire thread
Don't you know that Veeky Forums is a fascist board? Our favourite poet is Pound, our favourite authors include Mishima/Spengler/etc.
Just git out.
>Prisons, for instance, are seen as a deterrent to crime by the majority of people
And yet crime is still rampant.
I completely understand politics. The state of politics is a clear mirrored image of those who elected such politicians, both the left and the right. Democracy looks exactly like the people it represents.
So you want to protect humanity from itself? By denying it its own humanity? Whom do you entrust to protect humanity from itself? A collective? No, that won't work. A totalitarian government? Perhaps, but even so it will always end with an exploitation of the people.
your retarted lol
Thanks for that! Great stuff in there.
>is it easy for someone with little to no background in theology?
It's hard to tell. I grew up in a deeply Catholic society from which I'm still reeling -- even after stopping believing nearly two decades ago, I still have some of the neuroticism of catholic guilt.
You are in denial
>this is my safe space
>leaveeeee reeeeeeeeee
>much freedom of speech btw fuck sjws
:)
>this is my safe space
>leaveeeee reeeeeeeeee
>muh we can be angry online to btw fuck /pol/
:)
>And yet crime is still rampant.
So you're arguing for the closing of prisons?
>I completely understand politics.
Bold claim.
>The state of politics is a clear mirrored image of those who elected such politicians, both the left and the right.
Very, very naive. You don't think people can be coerced or manipulated into voting a certain way? Wow. This is pure utopianism.
>So you want to protect humanity from itself? By denying it its own humanity? Whom do you entrust to protect humanity from itself? A collective? No, that won't work. A totalitarian government?
We all have an idea of a few universal immoralities, mate. It's fairly simple. You're taking the whole liberty thing to it's absurd extreme, like all libertarians.
Does anyone over the age of 14 find Sam Hyde funny?
Edgy.
u never read Marx and are deploying vague high school tier proverbs about communism in the place of arguments lol
>So you're arguing for the closing of prisons?
No, not at all
>This is pure utopianism.
No, it's just merely an understanding of human nature from an outside perspective with all emotional ties severed.
>We all have an idea of a few universal immoralities, mate. It's fairly simple. You're taking the whole liberty thing to it's absurd extreme, like all libertarians.
No, again, not at all. I'm not talking about how things should be, I'm talking about how things are from a realist's perspective.
I would absolutely embrace a political/economic system that worked for the betterment of all as long as it was founded on a real understanding of human nature, not a perception of what human nature should be.
You're adding absolutely nothing.
Why is the Marxist/communist aesthetic so cringy?
so are you because your argument contradicts itself.
>man acts in his own interest
>marxism posits that communism is in his best interest
>therefore man will pursue communism as he has pursued liberal government in the past in spite of people making these sorts of shallow arguments for the past 2000 years
You're confusing self-interest with profitable self-interest.
cont'd
if you just give vague statements about human nature you don't prove anything. if human nature is selfish and irrational, then why doesn't that necessitate an all powerful sovereign or philosopher kings instead of liberalism? what you're saying is contrary to your own point desu
>I would absolutely embrace a political/economic system that worked for the betterment of all as long as it was founded on a real understanding of human nature, not a perception of what human nature should be.
Well you clearly haven't read Marx, Luxemburg or other post-Marxists who address certain aspects of human nature.
Just because a person in a collective wants to exploit others, does not mean it will happen, or that the others will allow themselves to be exploited. Can you not grasp this?
Capitalism, Marx argued, exploited humanity's Gattungswesen (species essence) -- essentially, or desire to work together cooperatively. We want to work together as people and to not be alienated by creating surplus value for a Capital-owning lord. When people realise they can avoid exploitation and alienation they will not stand for any exploitation. You seem to think Marxism is a hippy commune experiment with no order to it. It's not.
Actually, you answered your own question.
It's nowhere near as cringey as the alt right.