Class background of the Police?

[TheBigREDOne]

I know it doesn't really affect them as an institution(seeing as their main purpose is to serve the bourgeoisie), but do the most policemen really come from a petite-bourgouis background?

[Bala Perdida]

I wouldn't say petit-bourgeois, but I wouldn't say proletarian either. I asked this question before. They aren't working class is the answer I got, and there is no point in trying to radicalize them since their existence is solely based on maintaining the dominant order. So anarchists and most communists should naturally be hostile to police organizing. If they decide to join the revolution, they'll simply defect.

[BIXX]

I don't stand with a class so I don't really give a fuck what class they belong to, they can fuck off.

[Creative Destruction]

This won't really get at the core of your question, I don't think, but Jacobin had a good article about the police:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/patrick-lynch-police-brutality/

[Vogel]

The Police, being non-productive, really on the money they get from our taxes. They don't work for capitalists, but the government (I.E their objective is to uphold law and order, not protect the capitalist class). Albeit the federal government of the US is pretty corporatist, so the laws tell them to do that, as seen by the riots against police brutality.
I would say most policemen, however, do come from a working class background.

I don't think the name of their class is as important as understanding their position in society. Keep in mind, just because a security guard works for capitalist, does not mean he is not a member of the working class / proletariat. A secretary is in the same position, non-productive, just a different job.

[tuwix]

The class the most fitting for the policemen is lumpenproletariat. They are wage workers but they are unlikely to achieve class consciousness. Surprisingly, they are lumpenproletarians along with all criminals they are against. :)

[Lily Briscoe]

What difference does it make?

[Palmares]

If one had to frame the answer to the question in terms of class, I would say they are class traitors.

Say... A friend of mine from high school, who grew up on the same street as me even, becomes a cop. When I run into them when I visit my parents house, and I find out their new "profession", I say to them "fuck you, fuck off, fuckin' dog c***!" (Likely... I'd be more diplomatic than that, haha).

Well, I wish I could get away with saying that to a cop anyway. :lol:

They're not on our side, so their "class" is irrelevant.

[Vogel]

If one had to frame the answer to the question in terms of class, I would say they are class traitors.

Say... A friend of mine from high school, who grew up on the same street as me even, becomes a cop. When I run into them when I visit my parents house, and I find out their new "profession", I say to them "fuck you, fuck off, fuckin' dog c***!" (Likely... I'd be more diplomatic than that, haha).

Well, I wish I could get away with saying that to a cop anyway. :lol:

They're not on our side, so their "class" is irrelevant.

I think that is a bit undeserved. What about class consciousnesses? How can they be traitors, and deserve your hate, when they don't even know about the classes we talk of? When they don't realize what kind of system they live in? The police are victims too.

[Bala Perdida]

I think that is a bit undeserved. What about class consciousnesses? How can they be traitors, and deserve your hate, when they don't even know about the classes we talk of? When they don't realize what kind of system they live in? The police are victims too.
They are conscious of their power and conscious of our enslavement. Every cop abuses these in the span of their career. If a cop is made a victim for being a cop then I don't care, besides they pride themselves on taking that risk. It's about time we start cashing it in.

[DOOM]

Their position on the socio-economic class-model is irrelevant, even in classic marxism.
The police is an institution installed to protect and reinforce actively the state and thus capitalism.
The workers do this to some extend too, but they are not actively using force to enforce property-relations, they are simply reproducing the relations by going to work everyday.
Which is a pretty big difference in my opinion.
And as [email protected] said, by joining the revolution the police would cease to exist as the police is a completely alien concept to anti-capitalism.

[TheBigREDOne]

The class the most fitting for the policemen is lumpenproletariat. They are wage workers but they are unlikely to achieve class consciousness. Surprisingly, they are lumpenproletarians along with all criminals they are against. :)

I also never got the idea that criminals(lumpenproletariat) are less likely to reach class consciousness? I mean surely they feel the effects of capitalism more severely?

[Vogel]

Conscious of our enslavement? I doubt you could find a single policeman to say the people, that they come from, are enslaved, in the way you mean. Some will say enslaved by poverty, or poor education, or bad family structures, but not by the bourgeois. They don't consider us enslaved like that. I assume they would be the muscle that enforces our enslavement in your mind?

Example: from 2000 to 2013, the median income of families in the US has dropped by 10%. The median value of wealth per household has dropped from 2003 to 2013 by almost 50%. In the middle, there was the financial collapse of 2007.
For state and local governments, this means a lot fewer taxes, to, for example, adequately fund police departments. This puts strain on the police and the people, creating a concoction that is geared to blow, and has been building for a long time coming.
In the meantime, the people and the police have to struggle to deal with the situation the capitalsim creates because it is ineffective and operates irrationally.
Everyone is a victim of this system.

[Creative Destruction]

I think that is a bit undeserved. What about class consciousnesses? How can they be traitors, and deserve your hate, when they don't even know about the classes we talk of? When they don't realize what kind of system they live in? The police are victims too.

Police are responsible for the maintenance of capitalism and upholding bourgeois property and bourgeois rights. Their jobs are inherently at odds with working class emancipation.

[BIXX]

Conscious of our enslavement? I doubt you could find a single policeman to say the people, that they come from, are enslaved, in the way you mean. Some will say enslaved by poverty, or poor education, or bad family structures, but not by the bourgeois. They don't consider us enslaved like that. I assume they would be the muscle that enforces our enslavement in your mind?

Example: from 2000 to 2013, the median income of families in the US has dropped by 10%. The median value of wealth per household has dropped from 2003 to 2013 by almost 50%. In the middle, there was the financial collapse of 2007.
For state and local governments, this means a lot fewer taxes, to, for example, adequately fund police departments. This puts strain on the police and the people, creating a concoction that is geared to blow, and has been building for a long time coming.
In the meantime, the people and the police have to struggle to deal with the situation the capitalsim creates because it is ineffective and operates irrationally.
Everyone is a victim of this system.
The police departments are getting more than enough funding. For example, in my city they are building a 12 million dollar training facility, with the excesses in their budget.

[BIXX]

I also never got the idea that criminals(lumpenproletariat) are less likely to reach class consciousness? I mean surely they feel the effects of capitalism more severely?

Its basically some elitist shit Marxists or whoever made up, basically lumpens generally are just less likely to rebel in the way Marxists want them too. So obviously they couldnt possibly have class consciousness.

(Class consciousness is pretty stupid IMO).

[consuming negativity]

we just argued about this for pages and pages in that thread about the new york cops

nothing other than what has already been said was ever agreed upon

[BIXX]

we just argued about this for pages and pages in that thread about the new york cops

nothing other than what has already been said was ever agreed upon
Have you never been on revleft? This is where we have the sane thread 50 times in 3 weeks, with everyone acting like the other ones don't exist.

[Vogel]

The police departments are getting more than enough funding. For example, in my city they are building a 12 million dollar training facility, with the excesses in their budget.

I'd hate to rehash arguments that you people already made, but if I can, I would like to say good for your police department, because that isnt happening everywhere. In LA, the police are estimated to be about 100 million dollars underfunded, Detroit is in ruins, the entire state of Kansas is projected to run over 600 million dollars for a deficit, in 2015 I believe. Which for Kansas is huge. These are big problems in the places where these tragic police killings occurred and where protests are happening.

[BIXX]

I'd hate to rehash arguments that you people already made, but if I can, I would like to say good for your police department, because that isnt happening everywhere. In LA, the police are estimated to be about 100 million dollars underfunded, Detroit is in ruins, the entire state of Kansas is projected to run over 600 million dollars for a deficit, in 2015 I believe. Which for Kansas is huge. These are big problems in the places where these tragic deaths occurred.

My city is losing money to everything except police due to that funding. And police departments everywhere are not underfunded- they are being militarized. Cheaply, I might add. So yeah they may be running a deficit but they are doing it without fear of the consequences.

[Creative Destruction]

Its basically some elitist shit Marxists or whoever made up, basically lumpens generally are just less likely to rebel in the way Marxists want them too. So obviously they couldnt possibly have class consciousness.

(Class consciousness is pretty stupid IMO).

You should read Frantz Fanon.

[Creative Destruction]

The police departments are getting more than enough funding. For example, in my city they are building a 12 million dollar training facility, with the excesses in their budget.

Portland really dropped $12 million on a police training facility? Ug. I'm disliking this town more and more every day.

[BIXX]

Portland really dropped $12 million on a police training facility? Ug. I'm disliking this town more and more every day.
Yeah. I read about it when I was part of the student Union. Of course I'm past all that shit now but yeah.

[Bala Perdida]

I'd hate to rehash arguments that you people already made, but if I can, I would like to say good for your police department, because that isnt happening everywhere. In LA, the police are estimated to be about 100 million dollars underfunded, Detroit is in ruins, the entire state of Kansas is projected to run over 600 million dollars for a deficit, in 2015 I believe. Which for Kansas is huge. These are big problems in the places where these tragic police killings occurred and where protests are happening.

Police being underfunded, you say that like it's a bad thing. Lol. Also our enslavement is our susceptibility to the ruling law which we are against. Also wtf is that thing about "big problems... where protests are happening" are you actually defending state repression?

[Vogel]

Police being underfunded, you say that like it's a bad thing. Lol. Also our enslavement is our susceptibility to the ruling law which we are against. Also wtf is that thing about "big problems... where protests are happening" are you actually defending state repression?

No no no, I was trying to say that where these protests were happening might be places with strained departments. I love that they're protesting against police brutality.

Anyways, thank you for helping me learn Doxxer.

[consuming negativity]

wal marts are also habitually understaffed. it's not from lack of people wanting jobs, lack of qualified applicants, or lack of money to pay them. it's that it's cheaper to not pay them. similarly, it's a lot cheaper to keep cops giving out tickets and throwing weed dealers into private prisons rather than actually hunt down murderers and the rest... unless they killed a cop or someone wealthy. when they cut the military's budget the first thing they cut is soldier pay. when they cut the police department's budget, that's not coming out of the guns they're going to use to kill your black friends, that's coming out of the money they were going to spend pretending to investigate the cops who killed your black friends.


Have you never been on revleft? This is where we have the sane thread 50 times in 3 weeks, with everyone acting like the other ones don't exist.


revleft? you mean that silly site with the liberals on it? how on earth did i end up here again?!

[BIXX]

Anyways, thank you for helping me learn Doxxer.

Cough up the rep buddy, I know you've got it.

However it is worth noting that we aren't just against police brutality, but police themselves.

[contracycle]

I also never got the idea that criminals(lumpenproletariat) are less likely to reach class consciousness? I mean surely they feel the effects of capitalism more severely?

Because they've reacted to their oppression by becoming oppressors themselves, albeit on a much smaller scale.

[Sasha]

great article about the role and origins of the police from a class perspective; https://libcom.org/history/origins-police-david-whitehouse

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

It's the same scale. By putting on a uniform the cop literally becomes a component of the state apparatus, to the same extent that a building or a computer is part of it as well. The police have no individual class background, they are the state.

[Comrade #138672]

Its basically some elitist shit Marxists or whoever made up, basically lumpens generally are just less likely to rebel in the way Marxists want them too. So obviously they couldnt possibly have class consciousness.

(Class consciousness is pretty stupid IMO).(1) "I do not stand with a class."
(2) "Class consciousness is pretty stupid."

It seems that you lack class consciousness, comrade.

[Tim Cornelis]

Lumpen-proletariat lacks the preconditions for socialist revolution, essentially as dirty doxxxer says -- he just somehow thinks that assessment is 'elitist'. Police are by no means lumpenproletariat.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=1364&pictureid=11756

Police are pretty straightforwardly working class and proletarian. They don't own means of production and sell their labour-power and lack control or command over capital in some way.

The US government isn't corporatist ( http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/wiki/Corporatism ).

[Rafiq]

There's confusion over what constitutes class in the first place. Class is not a pre-defined archetype which we are forced to mold various sectors of our society into. The class characterizations employed Marx derived solely from a disciplined observation of the various social forces which constituted capitalist society.

Class designates a specific relationship to production, which is why the police compose a distinct class. The difference with the military being that

1. Historically, military service had been fulfilled by people of working-class backgrounds, through either draft or other means. Military service rarely constitutes a permanent profession and does not invalidate or render obsolete pre-existing relations to production. It is for this reason and this reason alone that those of military background historically have been more sympathetic to our cause than police.

2. The sole purpose of the police is the protection ofvproperty and the suppression of mass dissent. In the United States, the police identify more with the interests of the petty bourgeoisie as their localized proximity (against the backdrop of a changing and dynamic world capitalism) pits them against larger, federal agencies in dealing with local matters. One example is how the police tend to display hesitancy toward suppressing reactionary violence, while federal (or more centralized) organs tend to be slightly more consistent in dealing with threats to the state, reaction included. But not by much. Again, we're speaking of general tendencies, as a given. Surely there are exceptions.

Certainly there are differences between city-police and rural police as well. The latter take on a more reactionary character and a closer identification with the petty bourgeoisie, while city police tend to identify more closely and directly with the state, albeit as reactionaries to state-concessions to the masses. In Europe, there rarely tends to be antagonism between the police and the state at all except in the sense already mentioned, making the rural US cops something of an anomaly as far as liberal democracies go. Maybe it's similar in Canada?

All in all, I don't pretend to have a completely cohesive characterization of the police - but we can be certain they are a distinct class. Also completely devoid of any revolutionary character. Completely. Nothing is more pathetic than our comic book leftists trying to identify the police's reactionary sentiments against the state with our movement.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Regardless of whatever flowery language used by marxists, the jist of their criticism towards the lumpen boils down to the belief that they as a class are incapable of forming the Divine Mass Party that will lead us all to liberation. Im assuming this is the elitism that DD is referring to. This kind of criticism of course relies on the assumption that a mass party lead by the working class is still in the cards for us at this point anyhow, or that such a grouping would even be desirable after the last 150 years. We can look at the US for example and see for ourselves that the struggles of prisoners is far more advanced in both terms of demands and tactics than anything that remains of the workers movement in this country is capable of, or you know interested in.

The demands of the criminal; "I want it right now for free" is far more advanced than anything the workers movement has demanded in the last century. It's foolish to dismiss this in my opinion.

[Tim Cornelis]

I ask again, where's the elitism in such an assessment? It assesses which social groups and classes have the capacity to force social revolution. How's there elitism in that? And if it's elitist, is excluding the petty bourgeoisie elitist?

The struggle of prisoners may be more advanced, I don't know. But this is form, not content.

Feudal peasants have often been more militant against the aristocracy than the bourgeoisie was, but that clearly didn't mean they had the collective or social capacity to transform social relations and advance a new mode of production. Also, prisoner does not equal lumpenproletariat in and of itself.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

There's confusion over what constitutes class in the first place. Class is not a pre-defined archetype which we are forced to mold various sectors of our society into. The class characterizations employed Marx derived solely from a disciplined observation of the various social forces which constituted capitalist society.

Class designates a specific relationship to production, which is why the police compose a distinct class.

...



I don't think you can call the police a distinct class. Class isn't some group of people that simply has different relationship to the means of production - were that the case, you would end up having crazy amount of "classes" in society. Class, it seems to me, is defined not solely by its unique relationship to the means of production, but more importantly by its ability to have an independent role in the economy, being able to express its class will independently of other classes. And by "expressing its class will" I don't mean merely struggling for higher pay or what have you, I mean "expressing its class will" independently of other classes, while being in power. Were police, as a "class" in power, it couldn't express its will independently, but only through the interests of bourgeoisie or proletariat. It couldn't merely be a parasite of either one social system or another or would fall back into other classes, be it bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie, proletariat or what have you.

That's why I don't think it is correct to view the police as a class.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Because the opposition to their 'leadership' is normally backed up by a belief that one is either incapable or rather that one ought not to trust a criminal or vagrant because they are incapable of anything but satisfying their own immediate concerns. This belief is obviously tied to a bourgeois mentality that suggests those who don't work or who commit crimes must instead be some sort of degenerate to be shunned if not sent off to die somewhere, be it a prison or a warzone.

You're also confusing my own criticism. I'm not interested in replacing a mass workers party with a mass criminal party, as cool as that sounds. I think increasingly the difference between the two is academic.

[Rafiq]

or that such a grouping would even be desirable after the last 150 years. We can look at the US for example and see for ourselves that the struggles of prisoners is far more advanced in both terms of demands and tactics than anything that remains of the workers movement in this country is capable of, or you know interested in.

The demands of the criminal; "I want it right now for free" is far more advanced than anything the workers movement has demanded in the last century. It's foolish to dismiss this in my opinion.

No, the only thing more advanced is the ability for prisoners in the US, who suffer especially barbarous conditions, to inspire a sense of indignation in you, or those who agree with you as marginalized others. There can be no struggle against the prisons without incorporation into a wider working-class movement, and certainly in your own experience, or at least knowledge of the eclectic and foundationless left which for two decades has fought on a single-issue basis, this is inarguable. I am unsure if this is your position - but it is pretty clear that prisons are compromised of men and women of working-class backgrounds. One thing that is important to understand is that the lumpen-proletariat are designated as those who are incapable of class consciousness. Men and women of working class backgrounds who resort to petty crime - cannot be designated as lumpen in the traditional Marxist sense. Conversely, pimps, drug peddlers, criminals by active profession and so on are lumpen.

The incompetence of the revolutionary intelligentsia to instill working class consciousness is in no way reflective of some kind of lack of emancipatory potential of the working class. You make it as though the left has been predominantly characterized by the mass party while nothing could be further from the truth.

Oh and frankly, absolutely no one cares if this is perceived as elitist. There are no inherent predispositions for people of working-class backgrounds not to possess completely racist or reactionary views - absolutely none. To claim that the revolutionary intelligentsia has no active role in fostering class consciousness is the true ignorant elitism - in that the notion that we cannot teach those who do not have access to the same ideas we do denies the fact while doing precisely that. This radiates a sense of condescending paternalism, as though the uneducated working-class are a bunch of animals, of whom we are inherently superior to, forcing ourselves to regulate our inherent means of expressing our superiority (theory). Which is nonsense.

The revolutionary intelligentsia (which by nature is forced to assume a side in the class conflict, having absolutely none of its own) is, by chance at disposal of that which the working class is not, through luck, or privilege or whatever you want. Someone truly committed to the cause of the revolution does not shy down from using "elitist" terms, from speaking in a serious manner. Innocence does not blush - true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Honestly, what's even more degrading is this faux-cynical nihilism. The point of the Marxists has been to establish the merger of Marxism and the working class movement, meaning the weaponization of Marxist theory and the universalization of its comprehension - equipped by all. Anti-political nihilism, on the other hand, assumes the masses incapable, and too stupid to understand this "academic jibberish" or "elitist theory".

[Rafiq]

I don't think you can call the police a distinct class. Class isn't some group of people that simply has different relationship to the means of production - were that the case, you would end up having crazy amount of "classes" in society. Class, it seems to me, is defined not solely by its unique relationship to the means of production, but more importantly by its ability to have an independent role in the economy, being able to express its class will independently of other classes. And by "expressing its class will" I don't mean merely struggling for higher pay or what have you, I mean "expressing its class will" independently of other classes, while being in power. Were police, as a "class" in power, it couldn't express its will independently, but only through the interests of bourgeoisie or proletariat. It couldn't merely be a parasite of either one social system or another or would fall back into other classes, be it bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie, proletariat or what have you.

That's why I don't think it is correct to view the police as a class.

One problem I find in the notion that class is defined by its ability to retain power is the fact that the petite-bourgeoisie is absolutely incapable of independent political power. In every epoch in which the petite-bourgeoisie possessed power, it did so in an alliance with the bourgeoisie - granted often times they may be able to sustain political rule, but ultimately, that only categorizes them as a demographic political target. Louis Napoleon acted on behalf of the bourgeoisie while basing himself among the lumpen proletariat.

Though, you may have a point in that to designate the police as a distinct class might call into question the class character of other state-based workers. Overall, we might be able to conceive the notion of a larger security class - but no comprehensive or cohesive analysis has been established so far.

[Rafiq]

Because the opposition to their 'leadership' is normally backed up by a belief that one is either incapable or rather that one ought not to trust a criminal or vagrant because they are incapable of anything but satisfying their own immediate concerns. This belief is obviously tied to a bourgeois mentality that suggests those who don't work or who commit crimes must instead be some sort of degenerate to be shunned if not sent off to die somewhere, be it a prison or a warzone.


Actually no one speaks of the inability for any individual of any class to join the revolutionary movement. Revolutionaries have been compromised by individuals of a wide-array of different classes, including the lumpen-proletariat. The difference is that acting on behalf of its interests as a class, the lumpen proletariat is absolutely incapable of revolutionary consciousness. We are talking about a mass demographic, not specific or varied exceptions. As a general tendency.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

One problem I find in the notion that class is defined by its ability to retain power is the fact that the petite-bourgeoisie is absolutely incapable of independent political power. In every epoch in which the petite-bourgeoisie possessed power, it did so in an alliance with the bourgeoisie - granted often times they may be able to sustain political rule, but ultimately, that only categorizes them as a demographic political target. Louis Napoleon acted on behalf of the bourgeoisie while basing himself among the lumpen proletariat.

Though, you may have a point in that to designate the police as a distinct class might call into question the class character of other state-based workers. Overall, we might be able to conceive the notion of a larger security class - but no comprehensive or cohesive analysis has been established so far.

To be precise, I didn't mean that class exists in terms of its ability to "retain power". What I meant was that it exists in its ability to act independently in expressing its class interest. For instance, pretty-bourgeoisie might or might not be able to retain power once it has taken it (although, I can imagine circumstances where they could), but it still can express its class aspirations - fascist movement being an example of that. Police would be incapable of anything like it - it can't have an independent social movement expressing its own interests and it can't even express its own interest independently of other classes.

But I agree that this is rather vague, but then again, as you note, no cohesive analysis has been made on this point or at least I am yet to see one.

[Rafiq]

With the police marches and the sense of grand solidarity between police officers across the United States over the NYPD killings - whose to say that the police are incapable of acting independently in expressing its class interests?

[Kill all the fetuses!]

With the police marches and the sense of grand solidarity between police officers across the United States over the NYPD killings - whose to say that the police are incapable of acting independently in expressing its class interests?

Are they expressing their class interest or merely trying to defend themselves as a group within capitalist society? Teachers go on strikes with massive solidarity among themselves as do many other groups - does it make them distinct classes?

I mentioned in my first reply that I didn't mean that the police isn't capable of expressing its interest in terms of wages or what have you - they obviously are - I just don't think that's enough to designate a group of people as a class.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Rafiq I'm not sure if I've suggested 'anti-political nihilism' as an alternative to anything. You're right that perceived elitism or real elitism for that matter is irrelevant, but the same could be said of individual racism or sexism in my opinion. If you intend to influence people and their opinions, presentation is still important however. Im not personally concerned with how marxists view or describe lupen-proles, I was answering Tim's question.

My overall point is that proletarian and lumpen-proletarian has become something of an artificial designation at this point. To take myself as an example in the course of the last 15 years I have been fully employed, precariously employed, unemployed, 'side' employed or homeless multiple times in no specific order. This experience has been increasingly generalized throughout the population. The idea that if one is a drug dealer or a pimp at one time then they will remain so forever with no possibility of revolutionary or insurrectionary potential, to me, is a moral judgment masquerading as Scientific Political Theory. A judgement that belongs to a specific moral framework that we as communists should turn our noses up at. I'm ok with people making that judgment, but really one should have the courage to announce it openly.

[Rafiq]

Are they expressing their class interest or merely trying to defend themselves as a group within capitalist society? Teachers go on strikes with massive solidarity among themselves as do many other groups - does it make them distinct classes?

I mentioned in my first reply that I didn't mean that the police isn't capable of expressing its interest in terms of wages or what have you - they obviously are - I just don't think that's enough to designate a group of people as a class.

The reason I find the police exceptional in this regard is the fact that while demanding higher wages and partaking in strikes, they do so politically against the interests of the proletarian class. Indeed it is certainly not enough - the ability to organize as a group - to be designated as a class, but police which are tasked solely with defending private property - take on an inarguably distinct role from that of the proletariat despite assuming wage-labor relations. But the whole question is complex to begin with.

I remember in another thread a user mentioned that Marx and Engels referred to the working-classes, and not just the proletariat which directly produces commodities - but the service sector as well. What makes the service sector and the "salaried proletariat" identifiable with the interests of the archetypal proletariat is that politically they posses identical aspirations.

Indeed there may be problems in designating the police as a class, but one thing is certain: They are indeed a unique category within capitalist society, while of course being completely a part of the capitalist totality. Perhaps they cannot be articulated as a class but merely as instruments of state power - the state of whom's class interests we all know. Furthermore, teachers, even fire-fighters, whatever - also may be instruments of state power, but again they are capable of political mobilization.

[Tim Cornelis]

I'm sorry, but you're just making unsubstantiated assumptions to attack my opinion on the matter. You are projecting your own negative connotations to the word lumpen-proletariat on me. To me, it's a neutral term that designates a certain social group or class and use it for that purpose. You assume without evidence that I share your negative interpretation and therefore see them as moral degenerates.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I'm sorry, but you're just making unsubstantiated assumptions to attack my opinion on the matter. You are projecting your own negative connotations to the word lumpen-proletariat on me. To me, it's a neutral term that designates a certain social group or class and use it for that purpose. You assume without evidence that I share your negative interpretation and therefore see them as moral degenerates.

I'm not accusing you or even Rafiq of anything, but I can see why you thought I did so sorry. You asked why it was perceived as elitist and I answered. The fact that rafiq did kind of sneak in a moral judgment about drug dealers and pimps was just a bonus.

[BIXX]

Can you be a bit more concise, rafiq? Its right before work and I'm tired and your text walls are too much right now (really they are always too much, most of what you say can be said in three sentences so it'd be nice if you at least shortened the posts).

That being said, I will address a few points in this thread.


I ask again, where's the elitism in such an assessment? It assesses which social groups and classes have the capacity to force social revolution. How's there elitism in that?
I have never had a Marxist prove that lumpen proles cannot force social revolution. My experience says that lumpens tend to rebel in a far more insurrectionary/individualistic manner. This is why I say fuck marxism- it isn't social revolution I care about. I'm interested in the individualist/insurrectionary/whatever rebellion against, not just the current social order, but all social order.


And if it's elitist, is excluding the petty bourgeoisie elitist?
Excluding groups that would see you enslaved from a liberationist group isn't elitist, its smart.


The struggle of prisoners may be more advanced, I don't know. But this is form, not content.
What do you mean this is form, not content? What is the difference in form/content of workers struggles vs prisoner struggles?


Feudal peasants have often been more militant against the aristocracy than the bourgeoisie was, but that clearly didn't mean they had the collective or social capacity to transform social relations and advance a new mode of production.

Again I've never actually seen a Marxist prove this statement.


No, the only thing more advanced is the ability for prisoners in the US, who suffer especially barbarous conditions, to inspire a sense of indignation in you, or those who agree with you as marginalized others. There can be no struggle against the prisons without incorporation into a wider working-class movement, and certainly in your own experience, or at least knowledge of the eclectic and foundationless left which for two decades has fought on a single-issue basis, this is inarguable. I am unsure if this is your position - but it is pretty clear that prisons are compromised of men and women of working-class backgrounds. One thing that is important to understand is that the lumpen-proletariat are designated as those who are incapable of class consciousness. Men and women of working class backgrounds who resort to petty crime - cannot be designated as lumpen in the traditional Marxist sense. Conversely, pimps, drug peddlers, criminals by active profession and so on are lumpen.
And yet it is in practice people who consistently are forced to resort to small crimes that are considered lumpen by Marxists. I don't give a fuck what your theory says is should be, I care about reality.



Oh and frankly, absolutely no one cares if this is perceived as elitist. There are no inherent predispositions for people of working-class backgrounds not to possess completely racist or reactionary views - absolutely none. To claim that the revolutionary intelligentsia has no active role in fostering class consciousness is the true ignorant elitism - in that the notion that we cannot teach those who do not have access to the same ideas we do denies the fact while doing precisely that. This radiates a sense of condescending paternalism, as though the uneducated working-class are a bunch of animals, of whom we are inherently superior to, forcing ourselves to regulate our inherent means of expressing our superiority (theory). Which is nonsense.
Yeah, you pulled this out of your ass. I reject the notion that they need to be taught. I don't believe they can't be taught.


The revolutionary intelligentsia (which by nature is forced to assume a side in the class conflict, having absolutely none of its own)
Hahahah, do you actually believe this shit?


Someone truly committed to the cause of the revolution does not shy down from using "elitist" terms, from speaking in a serious manner. Innocence does not blush - true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
Oh, pretty words, obviously I'm wrong.

Oh wait no you're a fucking idiot.

What you have posted here means nothing.


Honestly, what's even more degrading is this faux-cynical nihilism... Anti-political nihilism, on the other hand, assumes the masses incapable, and too stupid to understand this "academic jibberish" or "elitist theory".

Uh... You obviously haven't really ever engaged with anti-political nihilism. The way I see it, why should we give a shit about Marxism, when it only promises to continue the logic of work, the breaking of individuals who dare to be uncivilized (in other words, domestication), and in general, continuing a civilized existence?

Fuck you, fuck that, fuck Marx.

[Creative Destruction]

I ask again, where's the elitism in such an assessment? It assesses which social groups and classes have the capacity to force social revolution. How's there elitism in that?

At least in the United States, it has a lot of elitist baggage. Many lumpen-proletariats in this country are black and Latino, who scrape by participating in crime. Many criminal organizations reflect the same structure as legal businesses, and dole out wages in much of the same way, in some cases. They are, most of the time, people who literally have only their labor to sell. And I think the experience of the 60s proved that the lumpen-proletariat class can be a force for revolutionary politics; they were often the ones who were often the ones closest to Marxist theory and having the ability to do anything about revolutionary organizing; the Black Panthers, the Latin Kings & Queens, the Brown Berets, the Black Guerrilla Family, etc.

This is definitely an area that Marx got wrong, or at least it hasn't carried over into modern times. I see more revolutionary potential in the street gangs and criminals who are doing it to get by, than any, mostly, lily-white "revolutionary" socialist organization in this country. Frantz Fanon gave a pretty good rebuttal to the idea as lumpens as "non-revolutionary" in The Wretched of the Earth, which was expanded on by Huey P. Newton.


And if it's elitist, is excluding the petty bourgeoisie elitist?

I think it's elitist if we don't allow petty bourgeois people into the fold if they identify with the politics. That doesn't mean we should change or accommodate politics to bring them into the fold, though.

[Creative Destruction]

I'm sorry, but you're just making unsubstantiated assumptions to attack my opinion on the matter. You are projecting your own negative connotations to the word lumpen-proletariat on me. To me, it's a neutral term that designates a certain social group or class and use it for that purpose. You assume without evidence that I share your negative interpretation and therefore see them as moral degenerates.

Well, to be fair, when "lumpen-proletariat" is raised in conversation by a Marxist, it's going to necessarily have a moralistic tag attached to it, because Marx made some rather nasty and moralistic comments about the lumpen-proletariat. This shouldn't be a surprise when you defend that part of his work.

[Rafiq]

My overall point is that proletarian and lumpen-proletarian has become something of an artificial designation at this point. To take myself as an example in the course of the last 15 years I have been fully employed, precariously employed, unemployed, 'side' employed or homeless multiple times in no specific order. This experience has been increasingly generalized throughout the population. The idea that if one is a drug dealer or a pimp at one time then they will remain so forever with no possibility of revolutionary or insurrectionary potential, to me, is a moral judgment masquerading as Scientific Political Theory. A judgement that belongs to a specific moral framework that we as communists should turn our noses up at. I'm ok with people making that judgment, but really one should have the courage to announce it openly.

Firstly, no one claims you are an anti-political nihilist. I was referring to Doxxer. Now, as previously stated,

Actually no one speaks of the inability for any individual of any class to join the revolutionary movement. Revolutionaries have been compromised by individuals of a wide-array of different classes, including the lumpen-proletariat. The difference is that acting on behalf of its interests as a class, the lumpen proletariat is absolutely incapable of revolutionary consciousness. We are talking about a mass demographic, not specific or varied exceptions. As a general tendency.


Now no one speaks of "moral judgement" at all. We simply speak of the obvious fact that as a general tendency, the lumpen proletariat are not predisposed to revolutionary consciousness. That does not mean that the lumpen proletariat, compromised as individuals, are incapable of it - just that as a political extension of their class will, they are incapable of it.

And hardly anyone refers to the lumpen-proletariat as the precarious proletariat which from time to time may or may not commit crimes. The lumpen proletariat consist of those individuals, the criminal underground today - that perpetuate and reinforce by merit of their active profession such conditions. High-ranking gang members, for example - are playing an entirely different game all together than those of working class backgrounds whom they seek to attract. It would appear that rather than anyone forming moral judgements, you are projecting your own predispositions toward expecting moral judgements (and suppressing them, through superego) onto others. When Marx and Engels specifically referred to the lumpen-proletariat, they did not refer to a group of people they were morally repulsed by. They referred to a group of people which were explicitly incapable as a class of identifying with the interests of the proletariat.

And by the way, no one speaks of pimps or drug dealers because I find them repulsive (I do however find the former incredibly repulsive). I mentioned them because they tend to again perpetuate the conditions of the lumpen by profession, rather than engage in petty crimes as proletarians. Try again.

[Tim Cornelis]

hardtalk posturing

So you actually agree on that the lumpenproletariat is incapable of socialist revolution, you just don't agree with socialist revolution. Fine I guess.


Well, to be fair, when "lumpen-proletariat" is raised in conversation by a Marxist, it's going to necessarily have a moralistic tag attached to it, because Marx made some rather nasty and moralistic comments about the lumpen-proletariat. This shouldn't be a surprise when you defend that part of his work.

I suppose, but I don't think it's really relevant.


At least in the United States, it has a lot of elitist baggage. Many lumpen-proletariats in this country are black and Latino, who scrape by participating in crime. Many criminal organizations reflect the same structure as legal businesses, and dole out wages in much of the same way, in some cases. They are, most of the time, people who literally have only their labor to sell. And I think the experience of the 60s proved that the lumpen-proletariat class can be a force for revolutionary politics; they were often the ones who were often the ones closest to Marxist theory and having the ability to do anything about revolutionary organizing; the Black Panthers, the Latin Kings & Queens, the Brown Berets, the Black Guerrilla Family, etc.

This is definitely an area that Marx got wrong, or at least it hasn't carried over into modern times. I see more revolutionary potential in the street gangs and criminals who are doing it to get by, than any, mostly, lily-white "revolutionary" socialist organization in this country. Frantz Fanon gave a pretty good rebuttal to the idea as lumpens as "non-revolutionary" in The Wretched of the Earth, which was expanded on by Huey P. Newton.

I think it's elitist if we don't allow petty bourgeois people into the fold if they identify with the politics. That doesn't mean we should change or accommodate politics to bring them into the fold, though.

The Black Panthers were black, that doesn't make them lumpen-proletarian, and certainly not Marxists. As for the other organisations, worthless gangs. I don't see how those can be considered to have a revolutionary potential.

[Rafiq]

I have never had a Marxist prove that lumpen proles cannot force social revolution. My experience says that lumpens tend to rebel in a far more insurrectionary/individualistic manner. This is why I say fuck marxism- it isn't social revolution I care about. I'm interested in the individualist/insurrectionary/whatever rebellion against, not just the current social order, but all social order.

Let's be absolutely clear doxxer: Absolutely no one gives a fuck about you. And no one should expect otherwise. The point is that you make claims based on your own individual preferences or things which are comfortable within individual proximity of your life. Needless to say, no one gives a fuck about your life - no one cares about what you prefer. If you want to argue about - for example, the poverty of Marxism, you're going to need to engage in an argument beyond "I care about individualism more" - something vague and worthless by nature. The fact that you oppose "all social order" suggests that you're fundamentally opposed to the power of the proletariat - you are the yin of the present social order's yang. In the present class struggle, no matter how difficult to see - and no matter how insignificant, one is forced to take a side. The question is not whether we are to limit ourselves in the domain of power, but to take a side in a struggle which concerns the fundamental relationship of power.

As far as I'm concerned, it's rather fucking simple. We have a goal - the political emancipation, triumph of the proletarian class. This is a goal you do not share. Instead, you dabble in absolutely worthless, pleasant sounding fantasies which have absolutely no real bearing in reality. Or let me be more concise: It does have a bearing in reality. You project bourgeois-liberal fantasies in a pleasant abstract scenario just as the stoics of Rome did with their fantasies about an egalitarian society - while at the same time representing the practical interests of the ruling class.

What you do is partake in a complex thought, logic experiment wherein you further legitimize ruling ideas by exercising them in edgy abstractions (for example, the emancipation of the "individual", to fight against "all social order" in the name of freedom or whatever). It's cute, but again, worthless.

The fact of the matter is that this fundamentally concerns an identity which parasitically relies on the existing establishment in order to maintain its rebellious and edgy facade. How cretinous of you: "I have to go to work soon and I can't bother with your obnoxious long winded babbling" - oh, doxxer, how prolier than thou you are. The practical, everyday realities of the proletarian have no need, care or time for such "elitist" theoretical quackery! Proud, we are of our chains and of our ignorance! Fuck education, fuck running water, fuck a decent standard of living! These are all aims alien to us as a class!

This then begs the question: Why even take you seriously? Because this is an attitude I happen to take very seriously in that it pervades much of the left today. This edgy nihilism is fraudulent by nature, and entirely superficial. You do care, you simply express your violent defense of existing relations of power through other means. The fact that you so passionately defend the ignorance of the masses means you defend the means by which their oppression is perpetuated. You know very well how impractical, how stupid and how infantile this "individualistic/insurrectionist/cack" nonsense is. You know it has absolutely zero potential for actually threatening the existing order, and that's why you so comfortably identify with it. Don't deny it.

By the way, the fact that I take these matters more seriously, posses more energy or will to argue does by no means alone characterize my positions as superior. I have never claimed this. I absolutely realize that people do not have the time, care or patience for this - I simply claim that even if you try to be as concise as possible, you specifically are absolutely full of shit.


Excluding groups that would see you enslaved from a liberationist group isn't elitist, its smart.


Except, no one is intentionally excluding the lumpen-proletairat on the basis of individual identity. The point is that we do not include their aspirations as a class into the movement - being that the class fucking thrives on conditions of poverty in the first place, in case you didn't understand. Under what political circumstances can the lumpen thrive? Corruption, poverty and oppression.

No one denies the emancipatory potential of ALL the property-less, especially in the 21st century wherein millions upon millions live marginalized. No one's going to whine about insurrectionist lumpen running around breaking property. But no one is going to pretend that this brings us a step closer to universal emancipation or proletarian dictatorship, either.


What do you mean this is form, not content? What is the difference in form/content of workers struggles vs prisoner struggles?


Because prison struggles are single-issue and alone possess absolutely no emancipatory potential. The fact of the matter is that if prisoners are all freed tomorrow, and integrated into society, they will still not be free.



And yet it is in practice people who consistently are forced to resort to small crimes that are considered lumpen by Marxists. I don't give a fuck what your theory says is should be, I care about reality.


First you make a claim about reality - that Marxists consider those who resort to small crimes as lumpens. Then you claim you "don't give a fuck about what your theory says it should be, I care about reality". I mean, can you point out some examples to us here? Or are you just here to say "Fuck you, I'm going to say something I know very well is not true - and I don't care if you say otherwise"?

Let's look at what Marx himself claimed on the subject, to clairfy this entire thing:


On these processions, which the great official Moniteur and the little private Moniteurs of Bonaparte naturally had to celebrate as triumphal processions, he was constantly accompanied by persons affiliated with the Society of December 10. This society dates from the year 1849. On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpen proletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general at the head of the whole. Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni,[105] pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème; from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the core of the Society of December 10. A "benevolent society" - insofar as, like Bonaparte, all its members felt the need of benefiting themselves at the expense of the laboring nation. This Bonaparte, who constitutes himself chief of the lumpenproletariat, who here alone rediscovers in mass form the interests which he personally pursues, who recognizes in this scum, offal, refuse of all classes the only class upon which he can base himself unconditionally, is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte sans phrase. An old, crafty roué, he conceives the historical life of the nations and their performances of state as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade in which the grand costumes, words, and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery.


So the point isn't even that the lumpen are incapable of being mobilized or integrated into the movement. The point is that as a class living between the fringes of all other classes, to base oneself in the lumpen, in full-fulling their interests - could only ever mean to reproduce the interests from which they were formed, that is, bourgeois society. Why is it hilarious that doxxer has more in common with Louis-Napoleon than any anarchist in history? The similarities are staggering. Both seek to base themselves unconditionally in a class "beyond" the class struggle, while at the same time perpetuating the dominance of the ruling capitalist class. Of course, it's easy to be taken and intimidated by Marx's "harsh" phraseology, i.e. calling them scum and so on (not to mention including beggars, and the general marginalized).

What should be noted, however is that firstly - this was many years before the significant emergence of the precariat, and secondly, and most importantly, Marx isn't making moral judgement - or to be more clear, the bulk of his point is not grounded in any moral criticism or judgement, but in the fact that again the lumpen-proletariat as a "class", in exalting their interests, necessarily relies on the conditions of exploitation to exist which is precisely why Louis-Napoleon was able to politically base himself in their rule, in his inability to base himself among other classes directly as they (the lumpen) were demographically significant.

So what does all of this "gibberish" over Louis-Napoleon have to do with the argument at hand? The point is to demonstrate the fundamental point that the lumpen alone are a class incapable of revolutionary consciousness and that any semblance of a possibility of any emancipatory potential is grounded in the substantiation of the "rebellious" sections among the with a wider working class struggle which would allow such progressively turned resistance to be protracted in grounding itself in a long-term struggle.

Now certainly, the argument could be made that the proletariat is just the same - in demanding higher wages and immediate demands, it relies on its own conditions of exploitation. But this misses the point. Even if such immediate demands to not immediately result in the abolition of their class condition, it still presents itself as a fundamental contradiction to the interests of capital.


Yeah, you pulled this out of your ass. I reject the notion that they need to be taught. I don't believe they can't be taught.
[...]
Oh, pretty words, obviously I'm wrong.


No, you're obviously wrong because you're absolutely full of shit. Do you think that your insurrectionist trash has any semblance of an organic place among the non-political proletariat? It's you who arrogantly construes nihilistic rebellion against the state, which can often times be reactionary (I.e. the right to rape, whatever the fuck) as some kind of genuine struggle which concurs with your THEORETICAL predispositions, no matter how bankrupt and worthless they are. You treat them like animals, attributing anthropomorphic qualities towards them.

Don't fucking tell me that you reject the notion that they need to be taught. Things like women-abuse, rape, racism, bigotry and homophobia spontaneously are very, very fucking prevalent in working-class communities. And I'm not talking about your artsy shit hipster hoods. I'm talking about real working-class communities. As a general problem, how the fuck do you seek to combat this? You don't. You seek to sit on your ass and prattle about your edgy garbage, about how you oppose "all social orders" or whatever. It's the ultimate paradox for you "don't talk down to the masses" types. Because while aware of such theory and while suppressing it with some kind of superego, it's precisely YOU who seeks to talk down to the masses, as though your regulated opposition to reaction, if any, is a fucking given. It's not.

Again, it's completely paternalistic of you to assume that working-class people give a fuck about superseding the existing order without any external guidance. And that they're incapable of understanding such "elitist" theory themselves. But I guess self-taught heroes of our movement of working-class backgrounds, like a certain August Bebel was a class traitor in your eyes, correct?

And you need to elaborate. How exactly are the intelligentsia a distinct class with distinct interests? They must take a side - they DON'T have one of their own. When they are predisposed to salaried comfort - guess what, they're taking a side, just as the well-off proletariat might. The same goes for artists. You make it as though this is an utterly ridiculous statement without explaining yourself.

And many of you -and do not think I don't know it, see me as a big asshole, a bully. But the fact of the matter is that such "verbal violence" is sustained by ignorance. I am completely coming forward and claiming I am worthless, that I'm not better than anyone and the fact that my posts are longer reflect my ability to have intuition on the matter. The real verbal violence is the undeclared, unexplained dismissal - this self-righteous ignorance. Because people like doxxer think that in agreeing with me, they are bowing down before me. In case you weren't aware, I didn't form this ideas alone and even if I "win" arguments, it's not me personally that is winning but the collectively refined theory of which I ascribe to. This kind of dismissal is a pathetic last-stand resistance to the illusion online discussion domination. As though your sense of self worth will be compromised by losing a fucking argument, my god.

This isn't about me "winning" anything. I give you arguments, I claim things, and it's up to you to address them. If there's some kind of secret I don't know - about how they're ridiculous but long-winded and not worth being addressed, then you can kindly say nothing at all and keep your reservations to yourself - or, as I previously mentioned, announce them completely.


Uh... You obviously haven't really ever engaged with anti-political nihilism. The way I see it, why should we give a shit about Marxism, when it only promises to continue the logic of work, the breaking of individuals who dare to be uncivilized (in other words, domestication), and in general, continuing a civilized existence?


Frankly doxxer, no one cares about running around in the forest naked. Frankly you speak of "elitism" when in fact, reducing the working class struggle to something as impractical and alien as destroying 'civilization' - in other words, the achievements of history. Nothing is more elitist then subjugating the exploited classes to your petty bourgeois fantasies which have no bearing in any of their realities or their lives whatsoever. The fact of the matter is that this is profoundly reactionary anyway, and not simply because it is anti-technological or whatever. It's tempting to be something of a hobbesean here in that nature is chaotic, but even that's full of shit. The fact of the matter is that nature doesn't give a shit about your fantasies - nature is nature. You are free to live among the other great apes if you want, no one gives a fuck.

Stop pretending that this has any relevance as far as anyone's lives go but yourself, though - or to be more clear, stop acting like it has demographic or historical relevance. It doesn't.

And really, where are the administrators here? Enough with the fucking flaming, honestly. Why is "fuck you" allowed to be passed off as a worthy post - but when I throw in an insult drowned out by long lines of meaningful text, I get penalized?

[Rafiq]

And by the way, Marx's recognition of the lumpen-proletariat's predisposition to counter-revolution or at least nihilism was a modest observation of them in his time, and not a result of some kind of moral aversion. If there are elements among them today which are capable of political consciousness en masse, we can point them out and there's no problem. The overall point is that alone, without integration into a wider working class struggle they are incapable of it.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

As appealing as it might sound, having the small amounts of my personality that have made it onto this board analyzed publicly by Rafiq doesn't sound like something I'm going to do today. I'm going to skip the next 3+ pages of posts containing sentences in all caps, multi colored text and huge fonts instead. Hugs and kisses friends

[Creative Destruction]

The Black Panthers were black, that doesn't make them lumpen-proletarian,

Of course not, but much -- if not most -- of their membership was from the lumpen class. They commented on this quite often.


and certainly not Marxists.

They absolutely were Marxists. What the hell are you even talking about? How much have you actually read about the Panthers?


As for the other organisations, worthless gangs. I don't see how those can be considered to have a revolutionary potential.

Because they were on the forefront of revolutionary thought and movement in the 1960s. Whatever they have degenerated into today (or not... the Brown Berets are still a focal point of revolutionary organizing in the American Latino community) to write them off as "worthless gangs" is petty and ignorant.

Just to be clear: I'm not saying the lumpen-proletariat class itself can solely force a social revolution. However, they have revolutionary potential and should be actively sought in a socialist movement; contra to orthodox thinking that they have absolutely none. And, again, the 1960s showed that it is fertile ground for revolutionary organization.

[Rafiq]

As appealing as it might sound, having the small amounts of my personality that have made it onto this board analyzed publicly by Rafiq doesn't sound like something I'm going to do today. I'm going to skip the next 3+ pages of posts containing sentences in all caps, multi colored text and huge fonts instead. Hugs and kisses friends

No, I am always, always fervently opposed to getting personal online. As a rule. I am absolutely disgusted by the idea that no room should be left for reflection and respectful, meaningful debate.

The fact of the matter is that doxxer confronts me with a dismissive, hostile, and entirely personal attitude. If I must play that game, I will. I, however choose not to.

The fact is that as far as memory permits, you do not have a reputation of conducting yourself in such a matter so I see absolutely no reason why we cannot engage in a respectful discussion on the subject. If you don't have the energy or intuition to partake here (And that's perfeclty reasonable, honestly), that's fine and no one doubts you might have things to say on the matter, or that a refusal to respond designates concession. I certainly don't always respond.

[Creative Destruction]

I suppose, but I don't think it's really relevant.

Sorry. Missed this part.

It's relevant in far as you were complaining that people were attaching moral concerns to the lumpen class. There's a reason for that, and it comes from Marx's rather vivid, and rather unique tbqh, animosity toward them. He doesn't look at them dispassionately as he does other classes, when going over his analysis. You can read a dripping resentment of them from his writings.

You may not -- and as you said, you don't -- feel that way, but that's the kind of baggage that comes from it, unless you were to initially head off that concern. Which you didn't. Just something to keep in mind when you're discussing and defending that part of Marx's ideas.

[BIXX]

Let's be absolutely clear doxxer: Absolutely no one gives a fuck about you.
So, you really do try to keep it impersonal, eh?


And no one should expect otherwise.
I don't know where you get the idea that I expect people to care.


The point is that you make claims based on your own individual preferences or things which are comfortable within individual proximity of your life. Needless to say, no one gives a fuck about your life - no one cares about what you prefer. If you want to argue about - for example, the poverty of Marxism, you're going to need to engage in an argument beyond "I care about individualism more" - something vague and worthless by nature.
Well, I thought I posted an argument further than that in this thread but I may be mistaken. So, seeing as I can't be fucked to go looking, let me say it here, and now: I oppose Marxism (and furthermore, all other socialist tendencies, though some are better than others) because it does not wish to abolish the horrors of civilized existence, but instead try to further entrench us within civilized logic.


The fact that you oppose "all social order" suggests that you're fundamentally opposed to the power of the proletariat - you are the yin of the present social order's yang. In the present class struggle, no matter how difficult to see - and no matter how insignificant, one is forced to take a side.
And I disagree here. One is not forced to take a side. Just like we aren't forced to take a side in a war between two bourgeois nations, one doesn't need to take a side in this class conflict- unless, you wanted it to phrase it as taking the side against civilized existence, which enables class conflict, thus putting folks like me on the side against class conflict itself, if we are to narrow our scope to your level.


The question is not whether we are to limit ourselves in the domain of power, but to take a side in a struggle which concerns the fundamental relationship of power.
I am on the side against power.


As far as I'm concerned, it's rather fucking simple. We have a goal - the political emancipation, triumph of the proletarian class. This is a goal you do not share.
Agreed. However, let it be known that this does not mean I support the continued existence of capitalism as I suspect you are trying to say I am.


Instead, you dabble in absolutely worthless, pleasant sounding fantasies which have absolutely no real bearing in reality. Or let me be more concise: It does have a bearing in reality. You project bourgeois-liberal fantasies in a pleasant abstract scenario just as the stoics of Rome did with their fantasies about an egalitarian society - while at the same time representing the practical interests of the ruling class.
The ruling class is stupid if its interests include the liberation of bodies from civilized existence.


What you do is partake in a complex thought, logic experiment wherein you further legitimize ruling ideas by exercising them in edgy abstractions (for example, the emancipation of the "individual", to fight against "all social order" in the name of freedom or whatever). It's cute, but again, worthless.
Yes, I do want to be free, which necessitates the destruction of social order.

This is where you show in yourself exactly what you always try to show in me, rafiq: edgy bullshit. Prattling on about how "freedom is meaningless/stupid/bourgeois" or whatever it is you're trying to say just shows your reliance on the image of a hardcore uncompromising revolutionary authoritarian. Which brings us to the next bit...


The fact of the matter is that this fundamentally concerns an identity which parasitically relies on the existing establishment in order to maintain its rebellious and edgy facade.
Given what I said above, I'd argue the same about you. However, when I actualize my struggle the facade you speak of is negated. Because more than anything else it is the fight against Leviathan that makes the need for a "facade" (which really, doesn't seem much like a facade when I do everything in my power to back it up with my body and relations) go away.


How cretinous of you: "I have to go to work soon and I can't bother with your obnoxious long winded babbling" - oh, doxxer, how prolier than thou you are.
I wasn't trying to show how prolier than you I am, fuck the proles, fuck the bourgeoisie, fuck all of it.

But also I was just asking you to be a little more concise. Everyone here would appreciate it, and you might benefit from being a little less long-winded (because eventually most people here skim through your posts because it takes you forever to get to the god damn point- if you ever get there at all, unless your post is entirely character assassination, you get on that quick).


The practical, everyday realities of the proletarian have no need, care or time for such "elitist" theoretical quackery!
For the most part, yeah, its boring and it has consistently failed oppressed people.


Proud, we are of our chains and of our ignorance! Fuck education, fuck running water, fuck a decent standard of living! These are all aims alien to us as a class!
Where do you even get this shit? Because I don't think saying that boring leftist shit bores people because it is boring implies that I think people should be proud of ignorance and chains and shit. But whatever.


This then begs the question: Why even take you seriously? Because this is an attitude I happen to take very seriously in that it pervades much of the left today. This edgy nihilism is fraudulent by nature, and entirely superficial. You do care, you simply express your violent defense of existing relations of power through other means.
I know I won't convince a Marxist they're wrong about this because they believe they have a monopoly on truth, but I have no idea where you are getting this shit. I despise existing relations- which is why I oppose civilization.


The fact that you so passionately defend the ignorance of the masses
Again. I know you want to believe everyone has the same paternalistic thoughts about "the masses" that you do, but we don't. I don't defend their ignorance, I just don't think they need to be taught. I think that if they are going to rebel it will be as a result of their lived experiences, not because some intelligentsia tell them to (and if that is the reason they rebel they are probably weak willed and no friend of mine).


means you defend the means by which their oppression is perpetuated. You know very well how impractical, how stupid and how infantile this "individualistic/insurrectionist/cack" nonsense is. You know it has absolutely zero potential for actually threatening the existing order, and that's why you so comfortably identify with it. Don't deny it.
Hahaha. This is the second accusation I've gotten in the past week of being a bourgeois agent.


By the way, the fact that I take these matters more seriously, posses more energy or will to argue does by no means alone characterize my positions as superior. I have never claimed this. I absolutely realize that people do not have the time, care or patience for this - I simply claim that even if you try to be as concise as possible, you specifically are absolutely full of shit.
Ok whatever can you just maybe post a tl;dr or some shit when you have the really long posts? Cause it sure as shit might make debates more easy/less tedious.


Except, no one is intentionally excluding the lumpen-proletairat on the basis of individual identity.
The way whoever I was replying to phrased it implied that they were excluding the lumpen from their movement, not just their "aspirations as a class".


Under what political circumstances can the lumpen thrive? Corruption, poverty and oppression.
Also the destruction of that which criminalizes their existence.


No one denies the emancipatory potential of ALL the property-less, especially in the 21st century wherein millions upon millions live marginalized. No one's going to whine about insurrectionist lumpen running around breaking property.
You'd be surprised. Happens all the time.


Because prison struggles are single-issue and alone possess absolutely no emancipatory potential. The fact of the matter is that if prisoners are all freed tomorrow, and integrated into society, they will still not be free.
This is a good way to sum up why I oppose civilization.



So the point isn't even that the lumpen are incapable of being mobilized or integrated into the movement. The point is that as a class living between the fringes of all other classes, to base oneself in the lumpen,
Hold up. I don't base myself in the lumpen, I was just identifying reasons why Marxists tend to dislike them.

Once again... Fuck all classes. I don't base myself in a class. Given that I think I can go ahead and snip a good section of your post.


No, you're obviously wrong because you're absolutely full of shit. Do you think that your insurrectionist trash has any semblance of an organic place among the non-political proletariat? It's you who arrogantly construes nihilistic rebellion against the state, which can often times be reactionary (I.e. the right to rape, whatever the fuck) as some kind of genuine struggle which concurs with your THEORETICAL predispositions, no matter how bankrupt and worthless they are. You treat them like animals, attributing anthropomorphic qualities towards them.
Again, how far up your ass does one need to reach to find this shit? None of this is substantiated by reality so I feel I can safely ignore it.


Don't fucking tell me that you reject the notion that they need to be taught.
I do though.


Things like women-abuse, rape, racism, bigotry and homophobia spontaneously are very, very fucking prevalent in working-class communities.
And elitists telling then to stop it won't be very convincing. Rather, lived experiences will, if they can be convinced.


And I'm not talking about your artsy shit hipster hoods. I'm talking about real working-class communities.
Yeah, I actually have experience in both kinds of communities. Let me tell you, what I keep saying, about their lived experiences convincing them, is true.


As a general problem, how the fuck do you seek to combat this? You don't. You seek to sit on your ass and prattle about your edgy garbage, about how you oppose "all social orders" or whatever. It's the ultimate paradox for you "don't talk down to the masses" types. Because while aware of such theory and while suppressing it with some kind of superego, it's precisely YOU who seeks to talk down to the masses, as though your regulated opposition to reaction, if any, is a fucking given. It's not.
I don't care about "the masses", why would I engage them, let alone talk down to them?


Again, it's completely paternalistic of you to assume that working-class people give a fuck about superseding the existing order without any external guidance.

This is from Wikipedia.
Paternalism*(or parentalism) is behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person or group's liberty or autonomy for that person's or group's own good.
I suspect you don't know what paternalism is.



And that they're incapable of understanding such "elitist" theory themselves. But I guess self-taught heroes of our movement of working-class backgrounds, like a certain August Bebel was a class traitor in your eyes, correct?
I tell you over and over, its not that I think they are to stupid, I just can't imagine why they'd care.


And you need to elaborate. How exactly are the intelligentsia a distinct class with distinct interests? They must take a side - they DON'T have one of their own. When they are predisposed to salaried comfort - guess what, they're taking a side, just as the well-off proletariat might. The same goes for artists. You make it as though this is an utterly ridiculous statement without explaining yourself.
Sorry, I admit I misunderstood your original statement, I thought you were trying to say that members of the intelligentsia don't belong to a class. That's my bad.


And many of you -and do not think I don't know it, see me as a big asshole, a bully.
We don't think you're a bully, we think you're stupid.


But the fact of the matter is that such "verbal violence" is sustained by ignorance. I am completely coming forward and claiming I am worthless, that I'm not better than anyone and the fact that my posts are longer reflect my ability to have intuition on the matter. The real verbal violence is the undeclared, unexplained dismissal - this self-righteous ignorance. Because people like doxxer think that in agreeing with me, they are bowing down before me. In case you weren't aware, I didn't form this ideas alone and even if I "win" arguments, it's not me personally that is winning but the collectively refined theory of which I ascribe to. This kind of dismissal is a pathetic last-stand resistance to the illusion online discussion domination. As though your sense of self worth will be compromised by losing a fucking argument, my god.
Yeah, I don't think about this shit outside of the internet. I just post my thoughts then people don't like them. I don't know why you think I argue with you because of my ego- I argue with you because I disagree. I don't see it as winning or losing, but learning.


This isn't about me "winning" anything. I give you arguments, I claim things, and it's up to you to address them. If there's some kind of secret I don't know - about how they're ridiculous but long-winded and not worth being addressed, then you can kindly say nothing at all and keep your reservations to yourself - or, as I previously mentioned, announce them completely.
I'm pretty sure I've been fairly honest and open about what I think of your posts.

In case I haven't been clear:
I think your posts are useless, long winded trash that in have little to no substance to them, and that any substance they have is also trash of the civilized sort.


Frankly doxxer, no one cares about running around in the forest naked. Frankly you speak of "elitism" when in fact, reducing the working class struggle to something as impractical and alien as destroying 'civilization'
I don't factor the working class into my anti-civ thoughts.


- in other words, the achievements of history.
Yeah, fuck His-story.


Nothing is more elitist then subjugating the exploited classes to your petty bourgeois fantasies which have no bearing in any of their realities or their lives whatsoever. The fact of the matter is that this is profoundly reactionary anyway, and not simply because it is anti-technological or whatever. It's tempting to be something of a hobbesean here in that nature is chaotic, but even that's full of shit. The fact of the matter is that nature doesn't give a shit about your fantasies - nature is nature. You are free to live among the other great apes if you want, no one gives a fuck.
This is akin to the argument given by capitalists all the time about communists. "Go be a communist somewhere else!" Its stupid and we all know why that won't work.


Stop pretending that this has any relevance as far as anyone's lives go but yourself, though - or to be more clear, stop acting like it has demographic or historical relevance. It doesn't.
There is relevance to anti-civ struggle in a lot of the world. Or rather, was. Now there are a few isolated pockets of anti-civ resistance.


And really, where are the administrators here? Enough with the fucking flaming, honestly. Why is "fuck you" allowed to be passed off as a worthy post - but when I throw in an insult drowned out by long lines of meaningful text, I get penalized?

I think saying fuck you is allowed as long as there are other parts of your post that are substantial.

[TheBigREDOne]

Um, sorry to butt in doxxer, but when you say you're anti-civ do you mean Anarcho-primitivist? Just wondering

[BIXX]

Um, sorry to butt in doxxer, but when you say you're anti-civ do you mean Anarcho-primitivist? Just wondering
naw but i am influenced by some primitivists and their precursors like cammatte and fredy perlman

im a nihilist

i feel like i should just have an info page about my views so i can just refer people to a bunch of really pretty wall of insurrecto/nihilist/whatever poetry when they ask me if im a primitivist.

[Zoroaster]

Um, sorry to butt in doxxer, but when you say you're anti-civ do you mean Anarcho-primitivist? Just wondering

From what I understand, no, he doesn't. Anti-Civilisation is a position which is held from people ranging from nihists to, yes, anarcho-primitivists.

[BIXX]

I want to add that I don't think primitivists should be restricted on this site.

[Ravn]

im a nihilist

So, therefore what?

[Sasha]

So, therefore what?

http://libcom.org/library/nihilist-communism-monsieur-dupont

[Thirsty Crow]

http://libcom.org/library/nihilist-communism-monsieur-dupont
The "nihilism" of that work is significantly different than what can be said of the nihilism of dirty doxxer.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Well, this thread bounced around a bit.

A few quick thoughts:

Class is necessarily a generalization, and in a constant state of motion - not something one can pin down concretely in every individual instance (X person holds Y occupation, and has Z dollars in the bank, and is therefore petit bourgeois). Like, in particular, in the metropole, there is a significant body of people who are today part of the aristocracy of labour, tomorrow an "entrepreneur", and perhaps a year later a full-colours Hell's Angel.
The police, in my mind, fall into this category. I've read an interesting argument that they are essentially lumpen - a violent criminal declassed element that should be looked at as no different from the mafia or any other gang. I don't think I agree, though I think there are some useful strands to be followed there in understanding the peculiar character of police among the labour aristocracy - but ultimately, I think they're part of the labour aristocracy.
A concrete example, for me, is a family member who was a police officer for some 40 years. He came from a working class Acadian family - his parents had minimal education (some elementary school), with his father working as a CN Railway custodian. Unlike his parents, he learned English at a young age, was able to attend a year of college, and find work as a sailor, from where he was recruited to the police. It seems to me that this is the quintessential story of "upward" mobility in first world labour - the poor white man, in adapting appropriately to the rules of the game (e.g. learning English, being patriotic and politically loyal to the ruling class, etc.) ascends to a position of unionized, highly regulated, stability in a relatively sensitive sector of necessary capitalist activity.

On "anti-civ" - I feel like it's something of a confusing signifier, since it's used in some pretty diverse way. Weird French communists like Tiqqun - anti-civ? Maybe. The Californian "Full communism!" types they inspired - anti-civ? Maybe. Do either of these really have much in common with Deep Green Resistance? Thank fuck no.

Meh.

[BIXX]

The "nihilism" of that work is significantly different than what can be said of the nihilism of dirty doxxer.
Though I would say I'm influenced by them. But I would say its kinda a stretch to call what they talk about nihilism.
Also I can't tell if that is supposed to be something negative about MD or me or both but either way have some rep.

[BIXX]

So, therefore what?
I'm not entirely sure what you're actually trying to ask. Should I respond with theory, etc...?

[BIXX]

On "anti-civ" - I feel like it's something of a confusing signifier, since it's used in some pretty diverse way. Weird French communists like Tiqqun - anti-civ? Maybe. The Californian "Full communism!" types they inspired - anti-civ? Maybe. Do either of these really have much in common with Deep Green Resistance? Thank fuck no.

Meh.

For real, fuck dgr.

In my city (and I would guess a lot of cities/areas that have previous Bash Back! And similar affiliations) there is a pretty good amount of crossover between queer and anti-civ theorists. In turn these people tend to be heavily insurrectionary, individualists, etc... A good amount of folks rejecting leftist shit as well.

Then people think dgr and forget all the other anti-civ shit there is and go on about the transphobia I'm anti-civ thought despite the number of anti-civvers who are trans.

[Rafiq]

I don't know where you get the idea that I expect people to care.

Well, I thought I posted an argument further than that in this thread but I may be mistaken. So, seeing as I can't be fucked to go looking, let me say it here, and now: I oppose Marxism (and furthermore, all other socialist tendencies, though some are better than others) because it does not wish to abolish the horrors of civilized existence, but instead try to further entrench us within civilized logic.

And I disagree here. One is not forced to take a side. Just like we aren't forced to take a side in a war between two bourgeois nations, one doesn't need to take a side in this class conflict- unless, you wanted it to phrase it as taking the side against civilized existence, which enables class conflict, thus putting folks like me on the side against class conflict itself, if we are to narrow our scope to your level.

The reason I claim that you care is not because I think this personally bothers you or gets to you. The point - the fact of the matter is that you ground your positions, your truth - based on your own individual preferences, identity, or even experiences. This is the point - if you want to establish a position, absolutely no one gives a fuck about your own particular preferences. Saying that "in my opinion" or "I think this" is absolutely worthless - no one cares about what bizarre conclusions you have drawn based on what you think is more sounding to the ear.

You create false dichotomy - a meta-ideological dichotomy which instead of being a real ideology, is merely a fancified, abstract paradigm grounded in ruling ideology. There is no real struggle or antagonism between civilization and non-civilization and the conditions from which civilization were derived have absolutely nothing to do with our present circumstances. One might be able to deduce, or draw the conclusion that in effect, what hunter-gatherer resistance to the rise of private property constituted as resistance to civilization only from principles deduced to inherently civilized forms of logic. Consequentially and only retrospectively can such struggles be deemed "anti-civilization struggles". Yes, you heard it: Anti-civilization logic is only possible within the frameworks of "civilized logic". What you ignore here, what you crucially ignore here is the fact that in whatever circumstances where we can find people "resisting" the influence of civilization - they do not do so because they care about civilization or anti-civilization, they do so because they are fulfilling, acting upon their real interests or lives. Furthermore, once any dichotomous struggle between indigenous tribes and the "forces of civilization" even comes into existence, the struggle enters the totality of civilization - indigenous tribes lose their innocence and become a part of civilized existence. Which is why in their mature forms, all meaningful examples of anti-imperialism internalized the standards of logic of their own enemies - by adopting radical democracy, anti-colonial rhetoric in the name of self-determination. The fact of the matter is plainly this: People do not fight in the name of pleasant abstractions, real struggles do not occur because people think ideas existing in a vacuum are sound. You cannot be beyond the all-encompassing force of "civilization" once you are approached with it, you become consumed by it - or you become a part of it. Any dolt with a semblance of an understanding of the history of the British in india alone can understand this. When primitive people's are met with a superior form of logic - or let us say, a form of logic which is more sophisticated in understanding the world, which is able to account more for reality - the only resistance they could possibly have to it is perpetuated ignorance.

But alas, this is essentially pointless. It is not difficult to completely demonstrate the inconsistent, ridiculous and infantile nature of such an "anti-civilization" position. This is a basic truism. The crux of the problem does not reside in your false articulation of our present circumstances, but your false articulation of our struggle, the Communist struggle.,


The conclusions drawn here - of creating whatever dichotomies of struggle we want, from Camatte to the Animal right's movement, stems from the utterly impotent nature of Communist ideology. As the forces of capital revolutionized its own means of accumulation and the process of exploitation, the present Communist, or even Marxist conceptualization of our condition become just another abstraction with no bearing in our reality. The Communist struggle no longer derived from circumstances then or now in existence as new conditions of exploitation arose. The left, most especially evident on this forum - is possessed with the underlying notion that the struggle for Communism is merely the fulfillment of a preferable idea - the way in which ideology is articulated in capitalism in general is subservient to the logic of consumerism in general, mere preferences giving way to mutually respected multitudes of opinion and 'points of view', all blindly faithful to the underlying ideological forces which exist "in the gaps", which allow us to perceive not only ourselves but our opponents. A hallmark of what we can call (not to phrase-monger) meta-ideology - perceived, consciously held ideology which forms an identity integral to the existing relations of power.

Now, the point is not that I think that your struggle is inferior to ours, Doxxer, but that your struggle is non-existent, the idea of such a struggle forms in the carcass of our previously existing real struggle. The proletariat is not an instrument to the fulfillment of intellectual ideas, on the contrary, intellectuals are an instrument of proletarian emancipation - equipped with the mechanisms of understanding their place in our social totality. So let's be absolutely clear: You are taking a side in the class struggle, whether you wish to consciously identify with one or not. The difference is that with regard to war or conflict - Communists do take a side, the side of the universal exploited - war is merely an instrument of their perpetual oppression and exploitation. Our struggle is true, only our struggle is able to account for, and make subservient the false struggles, to codify and conceptualize them consistently. You approach the class conflict as merely "just another conflict among many" - the fact of the matter is that this alone is testament to the fact that you are a bourgeois ideologue. The class struggle is the only real, true struggle - it is entirely self-sufficient and serves no other mechanism of power. It is not a "distraction" used by the Reptile overlords to oppress us - the conditions of the class struggle give rise to such notions of power in the first place.

The point is that the conditions of class struggle do not stem from pleasant ideas but from present circumstances involving even the practical desires of people's lives. Communism and the unity of Marxist discipline with this struggle only arises with the maturation of this real-existing struggle. Presently, the Communist movement is absolutely non-existent and our struggle seems to have no bearing in reality - but this is only because the conceptualization of even a potential struggle is an abstraction, grounded in circumstances and conditions which no longer exist. That's why, doxxer, I have more sympathy with Syriza than the self-described ultra-left (a term they are undeserving of) - not because of any underlying illusions about the self-declarations of Syriza but the fact that as a movement, no matter how immature - they have derived from circumstances now in existence. No matter their compromises and ideological weakness, they did.

So even though you admit you do not "share" our goals, the emancipation of the proletariat, you are completely ignorant of what constitutes proletarian emancipation. It is not a nice idea which we want reality to mold itself into, it stems from an actually, real existing struggle today. Unless we want to deny the existence of class all together and instead create the dichotomy of "civilized groups" vs. "anti-civilized groups". We would then have to look into the origins of such a pathology and postulation and ask - were they derived from the conditions of the present, or were they derived from pseudo-philosophical justifications for existing relations of power? We can do this.


I am on the side against power.

Agreed. However, let it be known that this does not mean I support the continued existence of capitalism as I suspect you are trying to say I am.

By claiming that you are on the 'side against power', you engage in groundless phrase-mongering. The fact of the matter is that power exists, and any negation of power requires more power. It cannot be otherwise and any child can deduce this fact. The fact of the matter is that you are veiling your, subconscious or otherwise, grounded defence of political apathy and an acceptance of existing relations of power by opposing all power. You might not identify with supporting the continued existence of capitalism, but we do not judge the positions of others based on what they claim to be, but what relationship they have to reality. Otherwise, we would say that "Anarcho-Capitalists simply want a society free from state tyranny" or "Fascists simply want the maximization of the nation's potential and prerogative". This bankrupt relativism you are employing is already taking a side by assuming fundamental principles, that ideas form solely because they appeal to different individual preferences.

You could say that my position would lead to the continued existence of civilization, but you would have to validly establish the dichotomy between civilization and non-civilization and how this is a real force in our social totality. You have not, and can not, because it is an utterly nonsensical notion. No one cares about your self-declared preferences, but the implications of those abstract preferences. To want something to happen does not mean it can happen, but actively wanting something to happen can have a relationship between what ACTUALLY happens - or moreover, what could otherwise happen but cannot (as a result of such preferences). You know very well, deep down your abstraction is an impossibility and has no feasible bearing in our reality. Absolutely none.

You know very well that such a struggle cannot ground itself into the active lives of seven billion people. You KNOW this, doxxer. You assume this position as a form of cognitive dissonance - between recognizing that there is a problem unarguably, whilst possessing utmost faith in ruling ideology (which does not constitute self-declared positions) manifested in the form of nihilism. It might seem like only a religious fanatic can say that a lack of faith can actually constitute faith - but it is true. A lack of faith in the Communist struggle signifies faith in the ideological mechanisms of suppressing it.



The ruling class is stupid if its interests include the liberation of bodies from civilized existence.


It is not, but ruling class ideas can be manifested into such worthless phrase-mongered abstractions - which would in turn perpetuate the rule of the ruling class. Look at literature or science fiction - barely any of this is actually possible, it is fiction after all - and yet, it is ideological in nature. The implications of "liberation of bodies from civilized existence" mean the perpetuation of ruling class ideas.

And that's exactly why the stoics of Rome were fond of abstract notions of egalitarian societies and so on. Was this reflective of the interests of the patrician class? Absolutely not. But ruling class notions of liberty, against demagoguery, retaining the social order were fundamentally manifested in such abstractions.


This is where you show in yourself exactly what you always try to show in me, rafiq: edgy bullshit. Prattling on about how "freedom is meaningless/stupid/bourgeois" or whatever it is you're trying to say just shows your reliance on the image of a hardcore uncompromising revolutionary authoritarian. Which brings us to the next bit...


No one claims that freedom is meaningless, I simply assert that freedom has different implications to different ideological pathologies. That's the point. You espouse an utterly bourgeois notion of freedom - the freedom of the individual from the corrupting constrains of an established order (A uniquely bourgeois notion). Communists, conversely, recognize freedom only accessible through the supersession of civilization and a greater order - because again, you cannot be "beyond" civilization, you cannot negate civilization. Not only do the social predispositions for the end of civilization do not exist (well, perhaps capitalism's impending barbarism can) - the notion is entirely self-contradictory. Civilization was formed consequentially as a result of the introduction of private property but that does not mean civilization is only possible with the retention of private property. As any good Communist recognizes, we do not seek a return to the conditions of the pre-neolithic revolution, for Communists, this whole charade we call history was a means of 'humanity', or whatever you want, achieving self-consciousness of the social - hunter-gatherer societies were not self-conscious. The mastery of man over nature - this is the lesson of history, actualized by Communist self-consciousness (Soviet biocosmism was no accident).

Of course, this is completely ideological - but it is not bourgeois. Rather, ruling bourgeois ideas preach "hesitance" toward the big metaphysical force we like to call nature, ecological balance, and so on. The notion of anti-civilization is a masterbatory substantiation of already existing ruling class platitudes - that civilization "corrupts" nature, man's nature and so on. The notion of the noble savage is inherently a liberal one.

Freedom for Communists means emancipation - not departure, but emancipation from the conditions of oppression and domination, emancipation from the conditions of constraint on an already existing magnitude of possibility. Real freedom for the individual comes through the spirit of self-sacrifice for a collective, wherein a real individual identity becomes possible. I might possess the facade of an "uncompromising Authoritarian" but the difference is that I do not consciously try and maintain this facade. It is consequential of my posts. Conversely, you do actively try and maintain a rebellious, infantile edgy facade. To be on the edge of something designates that there is a recognizable something which we are on the edge of, but are conscious of a potential medium which we simply avoid.

This is why edginess is worthless.


fuck the proles, fuck the bourgeoisie, fuck all of it.


These nihilist platitudes are not surprising or shocking, doxxer. No one cares that you, either out of disillusion or laziness lacks faith in the cause of emancipation.


But also I was just asking you to be a little more concise. Everyone here would appreciate it, and you might benefit from being a little less long-winded (because eventually most people here skim through your posts because it takes you forever to get to the god damn point-


I cannot be "less long winded" about things which are more complicated than a few lines of garbage. The difference is that i do not care for respecting a multitude of opinion on such subjects. Subconsciously, everyone recognizes that we "all have our positions" but that there is a bigger gaze, a background which can consume us all. I do not believe in a big other. I do not conduct myself by meeting arguments I oppose with equally baseless counter-assertions but with a detailed analysis in the origins, nature of such assertions to begin with.

If this is long winded, I am sorry to say I do not care. I don't care to conform to the reading preferences of anyone. I post what I do, it is up to everyone else to read them. I post because I know they are available, I do not care if no one reads them comprehensively.


For the most part, yeah, its boring and it has consistently failed oppressed people.


Which is why not even a semblance of getting close to emancipation or abolishing the state was done without theoretical sophistication. Keep prattling about the failure of the October revolution - we did achieve state power. The anarcho-infantile articulation of our previous failure has proven itself to be inconsistent and all together worthless.

We have indeed failed oppressed people, but all this reflects is a lack of theoretical sophistication, not "too much theory". Without theory, oppressed people cannot even be articulated as oppressed. The age of direct dominance and directly visible power relations is over. People are unfree - while thinking they are free.


Again. I know you want to believe everyone has the same paternalistic thoughts about "the masses" that you do, but we don't. I don't defend their ignorance, I just don't think they need to be taught. I think that if they are going to rebel it will be as a result of their lived experiences, not because some intelligentsia tell them to

How can collective social groups of people, in any meaningful sense, "act upon their lived experiences" without codifying and theoretically articulating such experiences - as members of a heightened intelligentsia. Social bodies do not work like a single human mind does. No one seeks to teach them, but to instill in them theoretical discipline. That's if we even grant you the notion that through spontaneous organic experience the proletariat will become conscious. This model has failed and contradicts the experiences of the 20th and 21st century. Unless you want to say the intelligentsia HAS GOTTEN IN THE WAY of such spontaneous emancipatory sentiment, which would be ridiculous.

Of course, how convenient for doxxer - let's just wait for the big moment to come when people truly actualize their "lived experiences". As if there is a direct relationship between objective reality and experience wherein consciousness is attained just by looking around with a closer eye. This would be a denial of the existence of ideology.


Ok whatever can you just maybe post a tl;dr or some shit when you have the really long posts? Cause it sure as shit might make debates more easy/less tedious.


I don't want this to be easy for you, truth is by definition one sided. It is not a game wherein we are supposed to care about accommodating to the comfort of players, or being "fair". To conform truth to appeal to the opponent is a hallmark of intellectual dishonesty. I simply want you to be conscious of the fact that you should not be intimidated by long walls of text alone, or make this excuse. What I am saying is that if you do not have the energy to confront my posts, then kindly remain silent. I'm not a child - I do not go on thinking I "win" anything on an internet forum because my opponent refuses to respond. If you have nothing substantial to say, do not say anything. It is simple.


Also the destruction of that which criminalizes their existence.


No, you're confusing the individual well being of those who presently constitute the lumpen class, and the existence of the lumpen as a social group which fulfills its economic interests in some way. Now, if we "destroy" that which criminalizes the existence of the lumpen, then the lumpen by definition no longer exist as such, and the means from which they gain profit, whatever - do not exist and simply become part of the legal order.

What you ignore is that for much of the lumpen, profit is derived by taking advantage of the illegality of things. This may not be true, but none the less just as example - selling drugs while they are illegal can yield more profit than when they are legel as far as price goes. Or the fact that something resides in a criminal underground makes its more profitable simply by merit of possessing a degree of isolation from the legal social order and society. That's what you ignore.


This is a good way to sum up why I oppose civilization.


Stop running in circles. You claimed that prisoners are better subjects of emancipation that proletarians because their condition is easier to see as oppressive. Now, the fact of the matter is that prisoners do not care about opposing civilization, and cannot, they practically care about becoming free. The proletariat, conversely, lives active lives in perpetuated legality of servility and exploitation. This is the difference. The logical extension of the practical demands of the proletariat become a disciplined revolutionary force - while for prisoners, the only possible goal would be... To be released from prison and back into society. What then? Why would they then care about destroying civilization? because they are instilled with nice abstractions "Oh, society is just as bad as it was in prison, guys, you just don't know it".

Yes, good luck getting that one through.



Again, how far up your ass does one need to reach to find this shit? None of this is substantiated by reality so I feel I can safely ignore it.


Well, let me make it clear in case you didn't understand: You are molding the non-political proletariat into a dichotomy which has nothing to do with even their potential of care, conforming their existence in your mind to a struggle which only exists in your mind. Just as someone can give animals anthropomorphic qualities.


I do though.


No you don't. Instead, you justify yourself by claiming that platitudes only accessible by disciplined theory will be spontaneously apparent to them. You want them to be taught, but in a way which doesn't directly involve teachers.


Let me tell you, what I keep saying, about their lived experiences convincing them, is true.


Well since we're on an internet forum, this is absolutely worthless as far as an argument goes. But anyway, let me concede this to you - of course from "lived experiences" things inherently harmful to people's lives, domestic violence and so on - can be learned from in the sense that they are bad. Learned experiences, however, are not going to lead to an end to bigotry when there is no need to within proximity of the practicalities of everyday lives. In other words, I'm sure in multi-ethnic communities anti-racism can be deduced from everyday live, because these are people that live in proximity to each other. But where ignorance can be actively perpetuated and can thrive, which is most of the time - this cannot be the case.

Not to mention the fact that since there is no verifiable lessening of these among the working class, since they are just as prevalent today as ever (Do you even know what's going on in Europe right now?) - this notion fails. If they can learn from lived experiences, why haven't they already? Unless this generation is somehow special? You need to elaborate.


I suspect you don't know what paternalism is.


Yes, you limit their liberty and freedom to be bigots and to oppose all of that political correctness, to engage in women-abuse and so on. Liberty and freedom are vague words - freedom for who, and why is what is important.


I tell you over and over, its not that I think they are to stupid, I just can't imagine why they'd care.

Well as yourself: Why in the past HAVE they cared, doxxer? Why? Because again the class struggle is REAL and not an intellectual imposition. These power relations did not come from our ass - they actually exist and are recognizable.


that any substance they have is also trash of the civilized sort.


How ironic - you do realize that what you claim is also civilized, right? Inherently. Tell me again how indigenous people engage in such cack about anti-civilization theory. Before you talk about the ironies here: Keep in mind the fact that Communists recognize working class anti-capitalism in a dialectical fashion (Hate to use this word, however), the conditions of capitalism's destruction are only possible through the conditions of capitalist relations, as any social epoch. The proletariat supersedes bourgeois society, it does not reduce it to zero level.

So logically, does anti-civilization only become possible through civilization? What's next, we "learned" from our experiences in civilization that it was a mistake and that we should go back? As though civilization was a choice to begin with from anyone's perspective? Civilization was consequential of real social factors, real interests of men and women. It was not willed directly. So why would it be abolished? What social predispositions, besides capital's degeneration and barbarism, will be the end of civilization? People realizing that it's "bad" because it limits their non-existent freedom? Why would anyone care about THIS, doxxer?


Yeah, fuck His-story.


Doxxer does this while typing on a computer, while being alive thanks to advances in medical technology, and so on. Are you going to claim that there were no advances in history owed to civilization? Why would the proletariat, much less anyone else, want to renounce or go back upon these? What interest does the working class have in turning back the alleged wheels of time? My argument isn't that you're hypocritical, or that you take things for granted and that you should be grateful, though. It's that your conclusions are only even able to be formed based on these factors in the first place. Again, identify these social predispositions.


This is akin to the argument given by capitalists all the time about communists. "Go be a communist somewhere else!" Its stupid and we all know why that won't work.


Well, it is honestly said for good reason to Utopian or infantile Communists. Speaking from personal experience myself. The idea that Communism is a preference or a nice idea is literally what leads to this pathology. When in reality, Communism is an ideology formed as a result of real existing struggles inherent to capitalism.


There is relevance to anti-civ struggle in a lot of the world. Or rather, was. Now there are a few isolated pockets of anti-civ resistance.


Again, there has been no anti-civilization struggle in the world, there may have been communities struggling to retain a sense of autonomy, but justifying this is impossible without incorporating logic inherent to "civilization". People do not care about civilization, they care about fulfilling their interests within proximity of their lives. Even if it is construed in the form of retaining tribal customs or some kind of traditional conservatism, this has nothing to do with an anti-civilization struggle.

After all, the neolithic revolution didn't happen because ideas conflicted but because these pre-civilized humans found other means of resource extraction, which in turn, on accident and in consequence, private property and civilization. There is no evidence, nothing at all to suggest that if such people came upon these on their own they would not have done the same. The fact of the matter is that their struggle has nothing to do with your abstract paradigm of struggle, nothing at all. Yours was formed with civilization as a pre-requisite, their struggle derived from the absence of civilization as a pre-requisite.


I think saying fuck you is allowed as long as there are other parts of your post that are substantial.

Okay, which parts of your post were substantial doxxer? They were meaningless counter-assertions and worthless platitudes.

[BIXX]

The reason I claim that you care is not because I think this personally bothers you or gets to you.
you aren't answering what i said


The point - the fact of the matter is that you ground your positions, your truth - based on your own individual preferences, identity, or even experiences. This is the point - if you want to establish a position, absolutely no one gives a fuck about your own particular preferences.
yeah i think i said i never expected anyone to care


Saying that "in my opinion" or "I think this" is absolutely worthless - no one cares about what bizarre conclusions you have drawn based on what you think is more sounding to the ear.
that isnt how i come to my conclusions


You create false dichotomy - a meta-ideological dichotomy which instead of being a real ideology, is merely a fancified, abstract paradigm grounded in ruling ideology. There is no real struggle or antagonism between civilization and non-civilization
you say that but there are various things that show that indeed there is conflict between some peoples existence and civilization such as feral children depression queer people and more


and the conditions from which civilization were derived have absolutely nothing to do with our present circumstances.
youre saying they have nothing to do with our present civilized circumstances

so i guess rigid hierarchies and the subjugation of everything into civilized logic was just a thing that happened before and has nothing to do with how we exist now


One might be able to deduce, or draw the conclusion that in effect, what hunter-gatherer resistance to the rise of private property constituted as resistance to civilization only from principles deduced to inherently civilized forms of logic. Consequentially and only retrospectively can such struggles be deemed "anti-civilization struggles".
are you trolling me

for real this is some stupid shit

of course they can only be labelled anti civ struggles after the fact before that they were just struggles for life dumbass

thats like trying to invalidate anti capitalist struggle by saying it can only occur within the logic of capitalism you moron

of course it has to occur within the context of civilization or else it wouldnt exist thats why it negates itself


What you ignore here, what you crucially ignore here is the fact that in whatever circumstances where we can find people "resisting" the influence of civilization - they do not do so because they care about civilization or anti-civilization, they do so because they are fulfilling, acting upon their real interests or lives.
thats exactly what i argue

my argument has always been that my struggle is for my life and my interests and i imagine that the majority of anti-civ folks are the same.


You cannot be beyond the all-encompassing force of "civilization" once you are approached with it, you become consumed by it - or you become a part of it.
and so the anti-civ struggle is to flee civilization in a sense

in fact you would know this if you ever read any of my posts


But alas, this is essentially pointless. It is not difficult to completely demonstrate the inconsistent, ridiculous and infantile nature of such an "anti-civilization" position. This is a basic truism. The crux of the problem does not reside in your false articulation of our present circumstances, but your false articulation of our struggle, the Communist struggle.,
im not a communist and i dont really articulate the communist struggle here though i do have an articulation that i consider to be true

im tired of responding because your post is very tedious and also i am tired of seeing how long i can go without using punctuation or grammar and stuff so id really like it if you could give me a tldr but if you wont i guess its not a problem because any discourse i have with you reminds me of snot

[Red Eagle]

I'd say the police can come from any background but the majority of the time it's either proletariat or petit-bourgeois. The best you can hope for by police is if they don't follow orders and sympathize with the proletariat when it comes to overthrowing the bourgeois in a revolution. Generally speaking they uphold conservative, and reactionary values. They also are designed to keep the system in place seeing how a state is designed to impose the class rule of the minority over the majority.

[Rafiq]

so i guess rigid hierarchies and the subjugation of everything into civilized logic was just a thing that happened before and has nothing to do with how we exist now


No, it has nothing to do with our present circumstances. We learn from history that we have learned nothing from history. Our conditions may have only been possible because of the neolithic revolution, but the fact of the matter is that our struggles, our living and breathing expression has nothing to do with the conditions of any previous social epoch at all. Again, this kind of phrase-mongering - you're making up words and employing them as you please. What constitutes civilized logic? The fact of the matter is that different civilized societies may have all had something in common, but this is not enough to designate civilization, or the possibility of civilization as inherently "rigidly hierarchical" or whatever. Agriculture has existed for just as long - is class society inherent to complex forms of resource extraction too? Because these have existed with every class society too. You don't understand logic - and yet you have the audacity to even fucking think your garbage can constitute a semblance of an argument? Fuck off doxxer - don't act like you're in a position to actually confront my posts if you deliberately ignore them.

The point is that by grounding the problem in civilization - or anything trans-historical for that matter, you are playing a very stupid game of post modernism. What is hilarious is that the logic you are employing, no matter how edgy, is fundamentally and inherent not only to civilization, but to ruling ideas within present conditions of capitalist production. We do not live in a post-historical epoch. In fact by recognizing our existing social order as legitimately representative of all of civilization or its possibilities, or a universal condition of humanity, you are effectively reproducing it.


you say that but there are various things that show that indeed there is conflict between some peoples existence and civilization such as feral children depression queer people and more


Are you trolling me, doxxer? In no meaningful sense can these problems be grounded in the dichotomy of anti-civilization. Absolutely none. That's the whole point - there is nothing inherent to these problems which is expressed in the form of anti-civilization. Anti-civilization is an impossibility. Why stop at civilization, however? Why not just all-together blame the use of agriculture, or "manipulating mother nature" in general? Your assertion is just as metaphysical, just as abstract, and just as groundless.



of course they can only be labelled anti civ struggles after the fact before that they were just struggles for life dumbass

thats like trying to invalidate anti capitalist struggle by saying it can only occur within the logic of capitalism you moron

of course it has to occur within the context of civilization or else it wouldnt exist thats why it negates itself



Tell me again how indigenous people engage in such cack about anti-civilization theory. Before you talk about the ironies here: Keep in mind the fact that Communists recognize working class anti-capitalism in a dialectical fashion (Hate to use this word, however), the conditions of capitalism's destruction are only possible through the conditions of capitalist relations, as any social epoch. The proletariat supersedes bourgeois society, it does not reduce it to zero level.

So logically, does anti-civilization only become possible through civilization? What's next, we "learned" from our experiences in civilization that it was a mistake and that we should go back? As though civilization was a choice to begin with from anyone's perspective? Civilization was consequential of real social factors, real interests of men and women. It was not willed directly. So why would it be abolished? What social predispositions, besides capital's degeneration and barbarism, will be the end of civilization? People realizing that it's "bad" because it limits their non-existent freedom? Why would anyone care about THIS, doxxer?



I don't want this to be easy for you, truth is by definition one sided. It is not a game wherein we are supposed to care about accommodating to the comfort of players, or being "fair". To conform truth to appeal to the opponent is a hallmark of intellectual dishonesty. I simply want you to be conscious of the fact that you should not be intimidated by long walls of text alone, or make this excuse. What I am saying is that if you do not have the energy to confront my posts, then kindly remain silent. I'm not a child - I do not go on thinking I "win" anything on an internet forum because my opponent refuses to respond. If you have nothing substantial to say, do not say anything. It is simple.


Who the fuck are you to be so dismissive doxxer? How ironic that you claim I'm a 'dumbass' when I literally addressed this in the same post you're pretending to respond to.

[Rafiq]

The fact is that things like depression and queer liberation are not even close to being identifiable in dissonance between our "natural" state of affairs and the conforming logic of civilization. The connotations of homosexuality, for example have changed in different historical epochs. In many patriarchal societies, let us use Athens for example - homosexuality was inherently misogynistic and its prevalence was inversely proportional to the social standing women had in society.

You pre-suppose the existence of a "natural human state" - there is absolutely none. Even if we are not completely biologically predisposed to civilization, and that is quite an assumption, there is no reason to assume that anyone should be bothered to care. Again, you cannot break out of civilization - you cannot turn back the wheels of time and go back. The difference as far as the anti-capitalist struggle goes is that no one denies that Communism derives from conditions unique to capitalism, the difference is that no one seeks a return to feudalism. The predispositions to capitalism's destruction exist within capitalism - the predispositions to non-civilization do not exist in civilization except in the form of potential barbarism. We aren't talking about groups of people who simply agree with each other, but social groups with identifiable relations to production. Never in the history of civilization has there been an actual anti-civilization struggle. Absolutely none. If such dissonance exists as you say - why has it only become possible now to be expressed?

And then you'll talk about encounters with hunter-gatherer's and we'll be running in circles. The point is that, even if we concede these can be construed as actual anti-civilization struggles, rather than struggles which are consequentially opposed to what leads to civilization, the social interests of those who resisted agriculture and the division of labor is completely alien to anything possible within an already civilized existence. Hunter-gatherers didn't oppose civilization, they opposed the rise of the first ruling class. Neither of which exist anymore.

[BIXX]

You pre-suppose the existence of a "natural human state" -

Read my posts before you reply to me again dumbass. God damn.