QTDDTOTT - Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread Thread

How can you call Bakunin idealist when his notable work is overtly opposed to idealism?

Getting raided, bumping to save..

I don't think you know what idealism is

It's the assertion that consciousness or ideas is what constructs reality. Bakunin strongly rejects this in his work.

How do they deal with people with disabilities in U.S.S.R?

Is Death in June unironically NazBol?

Is it okay for leftists to listen to this band?

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Yes, at least they were though since antifa protests of their shows Doug has claimed to renounce "all types on extremist politics" or something like that. Tony was even in the BNP for awhile but he quit years ago and recently has started playing with Crisis (the pre dij trotskyist punk band) again, which is pretty surreal. It's pretty clear that it's just for the money, of course.
I still listen to DIJ sometimes but some of their more overtly nazbol lyrics piss me off so I skip those songs and generally prefer to listen to less fashy neofolk when i'm in the mood for that vibe. Goth girls (female) that listen to them are qt.

I really like the fundamental idea of Georgism, being that all land is common, but I don't think I'd go so far as to say he was a Socialist. Maybe if you consider Mutualism a type of Socialism, as the two ideologies are very similar.

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I say they're fash as fuck but listen to whatever. I put them in the category of far-right "apoliteic" music which comes from Julius Evola. The idea is that the West has entered an interregnum so politics is pointless and that one should retreat inwards and become an "aristocrat of the soul." It's blackpilled music: all is lost so let's sing sad, wistful songs about the better days of yore as wait for the coming of New Evropa. It sounds spooky and cool so goth chicks dig it but to understand the essentially fascist message requires some study.

But my underlying belief is that fascists, despite the vulgar popular perception of them, are capable of producing great art filled with real human emotions. There's a misconception that fascism is "simply" evil or about destroying things; in fact fascists see destroying things as a means of revitalizing civilization (selectively applied to only certain "civilized" races and such). Now I find the whole project to be fucked up and evil but it's not that simple.

Basically I agree with this article: newhumanist.org.uk/articles/1415/springtime-for-hitler

Anyways I'm more of a Laibach fan personally but I don't think enjoying Death In June's music makes you fascist any more than appreciating paintings produced in the Third Reich by Hans Rossmanit or Erich Mercker makes you a Nazi.

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I'd like some details on 'workers owning the means of production'. Does it mean that workers own the enterprise they work in, or do all workers need to own all enterprises?

Please fuck off immediately

Ah, just as Marx wrote in What Could Go Wrong? - Why the Spontaneous Collapse of Capitalism Needs a Dictatorial Vanguard

Look nigger, the October Revolution had massive popular support. A coup, much like a revolution, is a forceful overthrow of a government, but unlike a revolution, it's generally supported only by a minority and to defend the privileges of a small percentage of the population, not the majority.
Why do you triggered fucks try your hardest to undermine and demonize the few actual attempts and succesess socialism has had? It's like you cocksuckers don't even want socialism. So please, keep masturbating over your "oh but ours is true socialism!!!11" while we defend the socialism that actually happened and existed.

So did Napoleon.

Nice strawman

That's nothing, the real question is is Ace of Base a Nazi band?

noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/rm35nr/ace-of-bases-secret-nazi-past

cracked.com/blog/how-90s-pop-band-secretly-sold-nazism-to-america/

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I would also add that socialists too believe that by destroying things we can create a better civilization. And I'm not implying this is a bad thing, in fact, everyone should know that violence has allowed us to progress.

Pointing out why your justification sucks isn't a strawman.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

It can mean either, it depends on the context. I don't like using the phrase as synonymous with socialism because workers could own the MoP in the form of co-ops and still be a capitalist mode of production because they produced for exchange rather than use value.

Why are the Anarchists post-Leftists and the variety of other lolberg leftists and leftcoms on this board so hostile to the few remaining socialist states in existence (China Vietnam Laos Cuba etc)?

They're not socialist and in the case of China funding the Philippines against Maoist guerillas. The only one left that hasn't acquiesce to capitalism is DPRK, and that's largely because it is unable to given the political and economic isolation.

I wouldn't say "hostile." "Disinterested" sometimes matches well. Most of the hostility is for those who swear we must uncritically support X in the battle against low-level employees/anarchist uprisings/whatever.

Someone the other day posted backing evidence that Best Korea still has actually-socialist ambitions. That was impressive. Ranting about how we must support great leader X, often against something that is actually good, is not; it's pretty god damn close to fascist populism, in fact.

To put things into perspective for you, I don't consider DemSoc to be socialist, because… socialism is not in fact when the state does stuff. I do consider them to be potentially better than most electoral parties. SocDem does not interest me, on the other hand, you can take your totalitarianism-with-welfare-characteristics and, well, shove it; I will get my FreeHealthcare(D) from p2p and DIY, often. MAYBE a mutualist coop if one's around.

…is it getting clearer that this isn't CivNat with Stalinist characteristics yet? If we find a socialist state, we'll overthrow that one too. We just have other crap to overthrow first for now.

In China Vietnam and Laos all Of the means of production is owned by th me socialist goverment
In all of these countries the vast majority of the means of production are run in a means of production which is that the DoP and the workers share power over the MoP
The sector of the economy under the control of capitalist enterprise is not owned by them but simply leased out to them by the DoP

So, not even remotely socialist?
I mean, there's a lot of boomers in the U.S. that think that socialism is when the state does stuff, but it's actually when the common folk do stuff without the state (or other bosses, like a capitalist proprietor).
So, a codetermination economy like Germany?

That could be interesting. Got sources?

So youre telling me the USSR was not socialist?
Socialist Enterprizes in China Laos Vietnam Cuba are Run using a basically identical Model to the USSR

I mean, it's founder called it Capitalist, and the Brezhnev years were the only ones in which it didn't make killing leftists globally its first priority…

Also…

…seriously, got any sources on that codetermination thing? Workers' input and what-not?

What other kinds of communism are there besides marxist communism and anarcho-communism?
If I've understood things correctly, there have been communists before Kropotkin, Marx, or Bakunin were even born. What kind of communists were they?

I guess you could count christian communism as different, but there's not many and most seem to be communists who are christians rather than a unique tendency.
The utopian socialists, those who pushed liberalism to it's conclusions after finding liberalism in practice unsatisfying, and various religious groups.

Learn to argue past "lol but what about this guy xddd!!!11" fags

"They were popular so they weren't authoritarian" doesn't merit an in-depth response. It's ridiculous.

Why are you bringing up authoritarian? We were discussig if the October Revolution was a coup or not, not anything to do with authoritarianism.

...

Corbyn is wrong, what is truly needed for a socialist UK is that chairwoman be added to the titles of queen Elizabeth.

Guess I should have read the reply chain more thoroughly. The guy arguing it was a coup didn't make reference to that in their post that I read. I saw these two.

Calling the ML revolutions coups is absurd and dilutes any genuine criticism of them. I'll read more thoroughly before I chime in next time.

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Please don't

How so?

It doesn't necessarily include torture.

You have to go back.

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What's the difference between idealism and materialism? How do I know whether something is idealist or materialist?

Idealism is the belief that consciousness or ideas are what constructs reality and materialism is the converse of that.
If it considers the base to be the main component in analysis, particularly economic considerations, it's materialist.

Somehow that doesn't follow.
You could consider immaterial ideas to be all you need to analyse even if you think ideas don't exist outside of purely physical brains. Would it be materialist or idealist to emphasize ideas while believing that ideas only exist as patterns of neural signals (or something)?

The base is an idea, it has no material existence. What you are referring to is dualism, the idea that there is one active (in this case, the base) and one passive part of reality.

To expand on this an idealist argument or explanation will look to what people believe as the cause of what happens and materialist arguments/explanations look to the practical contexts in which people live as the cause of what happens.

Just saw a great example of this in the most recent video by this cocksucker (NonCompete on youtube). He was talking about (among other things) "leftists" (read: idpol liberals) criticizing media and being a bunch of hyper-critical buzzkills. His explanation was that people want to conquer the "bad guy" and should instead sympathize with people they want to unite under working class unity. This is idealism. There are far worse things he does in that video (he's admittedly a professional marketer and using pretty obvious slimy manipulation tactics), but they're not relevant to the topic.

Contrast with this explanation by CGP Grey, who doesn't even pretend to be a lefty. He explains how memes and ideas spread and are selected for the most outlandish and controversial (including being viciously critical). The structure of the internet vastly favors messages that provoke emotional responses, so being a provocative shitter is a more successful strategy. This is materialism.
hooktube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Because in reality people make their money through what they publish online, capitalism incentivizes them to be awful shits. Grey doesn't tie this to capitalism even though it's the underlying force that makes the natural selection process matter (and the last minute or so of the video is trying to sell you shit). That's because he's not a lefty. NonCompete doesn't even consider the material implications because he's a liberal pretending to be a commie and not a materialist. Both materialism and anti-capitalism (or at least being open to examining and criticizing capitalism) are necessary components of being a communist.

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Is 'ideology' (as used by Zizek) the same as the 'superstructure'? They both sound to me like 'the thing whose function is to prevent the working class from realizing the material nature of society'.

They're not the same but they're tied together. People believing in ideology is an important part of the superstructure, but government buildings are also superstructure and not ideology. Superstructure refers to everything that exists "on top of" the base of production. A factory is part of the base because it's carrying out the production necessary for capitalism to function. The government is the superstructure because the ruling class sets aside a portion of the surplus value they take to maintain a separate organ that helps them maintain order in capitalism (cops beating up labor protests, military hardware for invading other countries for oil, etc.). Ideology is the belief in the legitimacy of the system, which is a part of the system rather than being synonymous with it. This is the old "what if everybody just stopped paying taxes" kind of thing. Though the state has the power to enforce its rule, it needs a certain amount of compliance to be able to function, and ideology serves the purpose of keeping people compliant.

Ideology is precisely what you are doing in your second sentence; ordering actual things in preconceived categories that are then confused for being the thing itself.

Zizek begins his theoretical project in Sublime Object by taking up Laclau and Mouffe's notion of 'radical democracy'. As he admits in his Acknowledgements there, it is their book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy that first oriented him in the use of the 'Lacanian conceptual apparatus as a tool in the analysis of ideology' (SO, xvi). What is the essential argument of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy? Its fundamental insight, following the linguistics of Saussure, is that there is no necessary relationship between reality and its symbolization (SO, 97). Our descriptions do not naturally and immutably refer to things, but - this is the defining feature of the symbolic order - things in retrospect begin to resemble their description. Thus, in the analysis of ideology, it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the 'facts', with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already - whether we know it or not - made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on. For example, in 1930s Germany the Nazi narrative of social reality won out over the socialist-revolutionary narrative not because it was better able to account for the 'crisis' in liberal-bourgeois ideology, but because it was able to impose the idea that there was a 'crisis' - a 'crisis' of which the socialist-revolutionary narrative was itself a part and which must ultimately be explained because of the 'Jewish conspiracy'

lacan.com/zizek-signifier.htm

Those pigs are so fucking cute

Both articles mention Ulf Ekberg's time with the neonazi band Commit Suiside and what they both leave out is that he was just 13 to 16 years old. I suspect they omitted that on purpose.
From the crackhead cracked article:

Since we are takling abou the CNT-FAI and their fashion. Where does one get their caps? And their scarfs? They would look so comfy to wear when its cold and snowing outside and just relaxing altogether

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His stuff is usually okay for a Fedditor, but man, that was soooooooo pretentious.

The CNT sell them at their distros on may day but the dude in the pic looks like he's wearing a homemade costume. The hats are not very good for winter they're made from thin cloth.

Some swedish friends told me that Ulf was still a militant of Sweden Democrats (extreme right party) but I haven't found anything to substantiate that, don't care enough to go digging. Is cracked a supposed to be doing serious journalism now? I was pleased with the article's interpretation of "All that she wants" because I had arrived to the same conclusion independently.

Link to their distros?

I still don't understand what idealism and materialism are.
There seem to be two somewhat contradictory views you seem to be required to use with orwellian agility. The first is the 'official' definition that's usually given when asked - that reality is ultimately made of ideas/matter - a simple and pretty clear definition. The second one is the one you're actually 'supposed' to use in analysis, but is never expressed clearly; that ideas ultimately don't/do matter and that societal change comes from changing ideas/material conditions. Or something something like that.
Please give definitions for idealism and materialism of this latter kind. Not examples, but definitions.

I don't think they have an online shop, I meant physical distro tables at their events. But I found this: nuestramemorianuestralucha.blogspot.com/2014/09/venta-de-material-libertario-panuelos.html
It's from a few years ago but you could send them an email and see if they're still selling the merch

In an Orwellian twist, there is a secret second meaning that is basically the same as the official one?

They're not the same if 'emphasizing ideas while believing that ideas only exist as patterns of neural signals' is idealism rather than materialism.

There's no such second definition, it's just tankies abusing the term so they can keep ignoring their critics.

Here's Marx:

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Any good books or essays that go into details on how a planned economy could function, either in a state or in a small anarchist commune? I'm convinced that capitalism is not efficient because of waste, planned obsolescence, advertising, luxury etc… but I want to know if someone actually did the maths behind it.

There's Cockshot with TaNS.

In that case, can't 'ideas' be the central object of societal analysis even if they strictly speaking are just patterns of neural activity?

What's the difference between socialism and communism?

It depends on who you're talking to.

Describe some views on this.

How do I get involved in politics in real life? I’m sick of sitting online and talking about this stuff but class conciousness is so low in America it’s disgusting. Even if I can do a little bit to fight the reactionary currents here I’ll be content

Leftcoms think there is no difference, Leninists claim that socialism is the transitional state to communism and is interchangeable with DotP, Anarchists either agree with leftcoms or think socialism requires democratic control over the MoP, liberals think socialism is when the government does stuff and communism is when the government does everything.

Find a dsa chapter and join it. The main organization is socdem faggotry but quite a few radicals joined and linking up with them can be useful. You can also look for parties or anarchist orgs in your area, but that could be harder to find.

Critique of the Gotha program.
Capital.

The former is a mere stage of the latter.

< a social order (usually called socialism, but termed by Marx the first phase of communism)
< in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism)
t. Lenin

Today we usually use the term 'socialism' to refer to the lower phase of communist society which emerges out of our current capitalist societies. It will be organized on the principle that one will get from society exactly what they put it into it. There will be an equal standard for producers thus bourgeois notions of equality will still exist. It still bears many marks of the society it emerges out of. Under communism, which we use today to refer to the higher phase of communism, there will be no state in the present political sense of the word (i.e. it will no longer function as an instrument of a class since classes will not exist) and things such as bourgeois equality will be transcended in favor of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

Marx tended to use the terms interchangeably. I hope I explained it okay

Leftcoms ride the semantics train till it crashes, they agree with Marx on the DotP, first stage communism and second stage communism but don't you dare call anything differently so people can understand it. They do seem to have an idea of a 100% turning point tho, where the DotP turns into "first stage communism", but are unable to describe it sometimes claim that the DotP is a "non-mode of production" which is a claim that is not at all supported by Marx and Engels and a fundamental misunderstanding of material dialectics - basically happening through monistic reductionism of Marxism to social relations only which is unscientific.

No, the Marxist-Leninist view is that the DotP is both a transitional stage to socialism as well as existing throughout socialism, as socialism is historically realized in a single country at first, but maintains the proletarian condition in the international sense while abolishing it domestically. Socialism is here interpreted as the not yet fully fledged out first stage of communism of Marx.

...

Isn't Marx more an analysis of how capitalism functions, than any kind of complete blueprint for how socialism would? Does Marx (or Engels, for that matter) even sketch out a planned economy?

Although a "complete blueprint" is obviously impossible, analysing how capitalism functions and sketching out how communism will are the exact same thing.

< The European Messenger of St. Petersburg in an article dealing exclusively with the method of “Das Kapital” (May number, 1872, pp. 427-436), finds my method of inquiry severely realistic. […] After a quotation from the preface to my “Criticism of Political Economy,” Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:
< “The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life.” […]
< “The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx’s book has.”
< Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?
t. Marx

Is there a convenient place that lists out the nefarious shit Hilary and the centrist/moderate liberal darlings have done throughout their careers? I'm looking for a good critique (from a leftist position of course) that lists specific examples.

I hear a lot of generic criticism thrown at them and while I generally believe them I'd feel better if I knew specifically what people are talking about.

They could be but in practice our ideas are usually rationalizations of what our material conditions make us do. Ideology is designed to work that way. It gives you some answer to explain away why things are bad and false reasons to do things that don't benefit you but do benefit the ruling class. To engage with such ideas is a trap because they have little if any connection to reality. Instead it works better to point out how things work than to engage with a mythological system. Sometimes you have to do that, when it conflicts with the material explanation you give (and western ideology is inundated with this to ward off class consciousness).

to be fair it applies equally to news stories and blog posts which are not memes

The different views on socialism vs communism is basically just definition mongering (lel). Some people say they are the same thing and others say socialism is a transitional period before communism. People who don't distinguish tend to also agree there is a transitional period but call it a transitional period or something to that effect. Those views are different mainly in how they use words. There is also the view of establishing communism without a transitional period (communization) which tends to prefer using communism to describe the mode of production at the small scale. There is also sometimes a distinction made between communists as radicals or revolutionaries in general and socialists as reformists, but that's less to do with theory than with distinguishing leftist groups.

>news stories and blog posts which are not memes
Read Dawkins, please. "Memes" are just a way of thinking about the diffusion and change of ideas, not just a synonym for "catchy chantubes in-joke".

Did you even read my post?

What exactly does it mean when somebody is a Marxist?
Anarchists are often presented as the opposing force to Marxists, but certainly they too can appreciate Marx's critical analysis of capitalism.

You are correct that Marx's work is 90% analysis of capitalism. But this analysis understands capitalism as something that develops, changes, and transforms. So if you understand Marx's analysis you will see what the result will be, i.e. socialism. In Critique of the Gotha Programme he gives brief statements on what socialism will be like. Engels also covers similar ground in Anti-Duehring.

Lower phase of communism - labor certificates, production for use, large-scale planning (no money, markets, commodities, wage-labor)

Higher phase of communism - "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs." no more labor certificates, no division of labor, no "jobs" in the traditional sense, mankind is fully liberated from need & want

I've read The Selfish Gene. He doesn't develop the concept of memes beyond coining the term, which he defines as the smallest unit of self-replication for ideas. A blog post or news story is not a meme, but rather contains multiple memes, making them more accurately meme complexes.

My terminology might be wrong, but besides labour vouchers, when money is abolished, what other means of exchange/ representations of value/ alternatives to money have been proposed? Does anybody suggest that value not be kept track of at all, that wages and costs be abolished too?

None.

Labour vouchers aren't a mean of exchange/ representation of value/ alternative to money.

Yes: Marx.

Not "too": this is the whole point of communism.

To elaborate on abolishing the Law of Value (allocating things according to labor) is when you achieve "from each according to his ability to each according to his need."

This is true but they definitely are these:
They don't circulate so means of exchange is inaccurate. They are granted for labor done, so they're definitely representative of that value, and they are an alternative to money with regard to tracking and allocating value. What they are not is a form of money or an equivalent to money since they do not circulate, being created as a result of labor and destroyed when redeemed for a product.

Thank you for the clarification. I'm now in a better position to phrase my question:
Labour vouchers are a way of representing the value created by labour. Are there others (which wouldn't have the undesirable properties of money)?

Theoretically, sure. Here's an example. Prior to money people kept tabs on how much they'd done for each other in an informal, memory-based debt system (detailed in Debt: The First 5000 Years) which was like labor vouchers except only redeemable with a person to whom you had contributed value, and the process of redeeming wasn't destructive, but additive (the idea of debt was very different, and continuing to trade value/labor in this system doesn't just balance the books but adds to a cumulative amount of mutual exchange between people).

I think the deeper question here is how to design a value allocation system that does what we want it to (in a given context) - what traits do we want it to have? Depending on the model for socialism, different methods would be appropriate. An important consideration is the source of legitimacy of the method as well as what gaps it might leave (the USSR had black markets for instance). Some models could bypass Law of Value entirely, for instance using the energy certificate (webms related).

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en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler
What did they mean by this?
I swear I'm not Zig Forums or a liberal equating commies to nazis, I'm just genuinely surprised by those quotes and want to know what you think they really believed

What exactly is the most important addition of "Marxism-Leninism" in contrast to just calling yourself a Marxist? Is it the notion of the vanguard party? Lenin's analysis of imperialism?

Look at their acts.

Hold on a second: thanks for trying and elaborating on me (I can be rather laconic), but if you're gonna say nonsense like this, you may as well abstain.

That's not the law of value. The law of value is: exchanging things according to the average labour time necessary for their reproduction.
And (this is the important part): it is not compatible with allocating things according to the actual labour done by workers.

As a consequence…
… no it isn't. Abolishing the law of value is when you achieve "to each according to his labour".

Except, as you've just learnt: value isn't "labour done". It is an aspect of a market, aspect that can be expressed as a time proportional to the time socially necessary for the reproduction of a commodity.

There's no "tracking" to do. You don't realise that value isn't a quality of the products; it is a quality of the market.