I am undergoing a sort of crisis of political identity. For the longest time, I thought of myself as a capitalist, and I still have a knee-jerk reaction to defend large corporations.
I tried to fit in with the right, but the right generally doesn't want anything to do with me.
When I first heard about the alt-right, it was initially framed as a rejection of the institutional right, so I thought I'd fit in. Only it turned out to be yet another Zig Forums torture chamber, and once I got sick of debating revisionist larpers about Jews, I promptly divorced myself of the notion that I could ever fit in with that crowd.
Around the same time, I found myself realizing the damage that multinational conglomerates are doing to the world. This mostly came about around 2016 while talking to my best friend who is a staunch socialist. As I was trying to defend capitalism and lay out my views, I realized that I was actually against most of what I had been defending.
The only thing that really keeps me from calling myself a socialist is my belief in nationalism and (probably idealistic) belief in a fair market where competition drives up quality.
But in short, I now despise the multinational free trade system of min-maxing the world, robbing nations of their industry to exploit the lack of workers' rights in others only to shower the market in low-quality goods that are so cheap that local businesses can't compete.
Also I'm fed up with Zig Forums, all their various incarnations, and all their limp-wristed strawman arguments, echoes, infographs, and "oy vey da goyim know shut it down!" memes that have gotten so popular with the kids in the past few years.
I am undergoing a sort of crisis of political identity. For the longest time, I thought of myself as a capitalist...
Cool. Call yourself a market socialist for now. Read up on an introduction to Marxist economics (surplus value, use & exchange value, tendency of the rate of profit to fall etc..)
Then after a few weeks realize that economic planning a la Cockshott is superior and join the rest of us.
It's too bad that people tend to shop around for ideologies like they are social clubs.
Try to derive your politics from pure reason, like Thomas Aquinas did with Catholicism.
The nature of capital is to become aconglomerated. Dont make a distinction between warring states and warring companies
But yeah like above user said actually read (crazy i know) and join the comfy shitposting
What feels like pure reason to me, and what really sent me down this path is the epiphany that the market and government collusion with the corporate powers that be are just as authoritarian as any dictatorship. However instead of blunt authoritarianism, it's a tangled mess of money where company executives and bribed politicians are the only ones who have anything to gain.
However as I stated in my OP, I still believe that market competition is viable; only now I realize that the government must be strong enough to say no to corporate lobbyists and preserve the working class - all this at the cost of paying more for things.
What are your all's thoughts on the viability of nations and globalism? The way I see it, globalism just encourages conglomerates and strips citizens of their agency.
This is one of the things I found so maddening when debating Zig Forumsacks. They blame communists and Jews for everything but also decry globalism as a Marxist plot. Of course they call it Social Marxism and use that as a catch-all term for their bogeymen.
I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but Zig Forums is also filled with bloodthirsty authoritarians and conspiracy theorists.
For every borderline intellectual here there are easily a dozen idiots.
define
protip: it will be horseshit
Do you have a sibling?
Sure, why not. Where are the "borderline intellectuals" of Zig Forums, tho?
Even if I find myself disagreeing with you all on a number of things, Zig Forums seems more polite and intelligent from what I've seen.
This.
Nationalism was always an ideology pushed by the rulling classes to pacify the working classes, or redirect their anger towards people of different nationalities.
um.. well, read the literature i guess,
not really sure if you're asking anything.
You should listen to some Richard D Wolff lectures. He explains basic Marxist concepts like surplus value, the Marxist understanding of classes, private property, etc. He's a "market socialist" which is why I think you might find what he has to say interesting.
This is a good one youtu.be
I define nationalism as a nation preserving the interests of the nation and its citizens over the interests of foreign and/or multi-national entities. For example, when a nation encourages domestic industry over cheaper foreign goods.
I'm not for nationalism as an excuse to scapegoat out-groups or promote jingoism. I just interpret nationalism as politics that are focused on helping the people, whether that means socialized programs, isolationism, enforcing more stringent trade barriers to grow domestic industry, or lower taxes to entice business growth if it results in the creation of jobs while on the other hand, increasing taxes if a business is reaping too many of the rewards.
Blatantly false
Watch this cockshott vid on how in-efficient capitalism was/is in Russia/East-Euro Post-91
Aye thanks for the link, user. I had never heard of market socialism before.
4/pol/ has tons of traffic, which is not conducive to quality or content or effort. There may be intelligent people there, but you won't find them being intelligent, because that's not a viable strategy for farming (you)s.
There are intelligent certainly right-wingers among some of the lower traffic boards like /his/ and /sci/ who are likely Zig Forums crossposters.
As for 8/pol/ I have little experience with that board, but it seems to be filled with schizophrenics and a grotesque fusion of nazis and neocons.
I define myselfism as a myself. Your thinking is still warped by pol shit.
Summerfag, plz. Old/pol/ was completely different. People left Zig Forums because it became the hivemind of the establishment right of burgerstan.
Is he, though?
Welcome and congratulations on starting a journey to a correct path!
Only advice would be to start reading leftist literature and embracing leftist media!
youtu.be
I've never heard him call himself that, but he promotes the worker coops=socialism line in every lecture, economic update and interview, so practically speaking, yes he is.
Stop this
ignore the flag
Stop this
...
Here's a thread on marksoc if you're interested 8ch.net
Cockshott Gang socialism is better though.
For youtubers off the top of my head now: FinBol with a pinch of salt for some of his stuff, Tovarishch Endymion, Comrade Hakim, Pierre, Cockshott, Ginjeet and maybe left review. There might be a few more I'm missing.
This. Why can't you just hold political beliefs? Why do you feel you must belong to a special 'ism'.
GANG GANG GANG GANG
lost it
Hm you're not jwoke yet and you're young.
Start with Mearsheimer.
Then move onto E. Michael Jones, Arthur Koestler, Werner Sombart, Kevin MacDonald, Yuri Slezkin, Norman Finkelstein, etc.
Nations basically aren't a thing any more. The "American" Empire is really the Empire of Capitalism; the better-off in the Capitalist Empire can travel freely around most of the world, while the poorfags are trapped in their respective nations. Nations are just the holding pens of the working class. Nationalism is used by the rulers to pit segments of the working class against each other, so that American proles will accept Porky's rule in exchange for gibmedals.
(While I say "Empire of Capitalism", it's a bit more complicated than that, but essentially the Empire is an ideological one, not a geographic one. The true reach of the Empire is not based on which countries are part of an alliance like NATO, but where the Empire hosts military bases (which is a large part of the world); and even ostensibly hostile imperialists like the Chinese Empire still believe in mostly the same things, and the Chinese are thoroughly integrated into the Capitalist economy today.)
While you can say there is no "us" that is the whole of humanity, the dividing lines are not national or ethnic. I don't have any particular concern if someone is American, Mexican, French, Nigerian, Chinese, white, black, Asiatic, whatever. They're just groupings of people who live in the same place, or came from a similar gene pool. Since I don't buy into biological essentialism and see the results of that disgusting ideology every day, I have every reason to reject such groupings as part of my identity.
The problem with "fair" markets is that it is literally impossible. Planned obsolescence, bad product quality, are features of capitalism, not bugs. Further, the drive to expand and rob nations of their industry is what capitalism has to inevitably do. There cannot be a "steady-state" capitalism, the system is inherently unstable and prone to periodic shocks, which take the form of depressions, recessions, and the occasional war. It is always the poor that suffer when the bad times hit, Porkies are insulated from the worst of it unless they really fuck up.
They never really were, but yeah.
old Zig Forums was before my time
I was on other boards before 2015
I'd say that for a brief period nations did matter in a sense, in that the American, German, Russian nations were fighting the first two world wars, and the unit to control in the Cold War was the nation-state (even if most of the nation-states outside of Europe were artificial constructs). After the fall of the USSR, nation-states literally do not matter any more, even in a superficial sense, except as police jurisdiction lines for the proles. With the fall of geographic boundaries as a meaningful barrier due to technological advance, and the fall of meaningful ideological resistance in a geographic area, anything like "national interests" are anachronistic - it isn't just a matter of the rulers wanting to abandon nationalism (they never cared about nations in the first place), but that it has become impossible to speak of "American national interests", "French national interests", or "Russian national interests" in a meaningful sense. Shit is too interconnected, the world is too small, and there isn't a serious challenge to the hegemony of the Capitalist Empire concentrated in a geographic area. Of course the rulers never cared about any of that, it has always been about their power and pleasure.
Who cares. Politics are not about defining your identity. If you're not involved in active politics, shifting political views are hardly something to worry about. Just keep reading more books.