Communism: What Would the Utopia Look Like?

[The_Marxie_Physicist]

Hi guys!

So I'm actually pretty new to this site (I can't believe I didn't think to look online for some good ol commie discussion, but I just wanted to know many peoples' perception of what Communism strives for in relation to the global society.

So I'd like a couple answers to the following questions:

Would the 'end goal' communist society have any capital in it whatsoever? (as in, would people still want to be economically compensated for their work instead of, say, just walking to a store and grabbing what you need/want on some form of communal system?)

Would the society have ANY form of centralized regulation? (and no, police and social justice could still be run by the people.)


Lastly, do you believe people should receive wages predicated on labor input? I supposed an even better question would be should be have a higher standard of living for working more assiduously, or should there be TOTAL equality irregardless of an individual's actions?


I am VERY interested in hearing the answers, but I'd like to preface this by asking for ethical, historical, and intellectual justification.

Thanks comrades!!

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Hi guys!

So I'm actually pretty new to this site (I can't believe I didn't think to look online for some good ol commie discussion, but I just wanted to know many peoples' perception of what Communism strives for in relation to the global society.

Hello and welcome to the site. Please mind the reformists, they bite.

One thing that I would like to note before we begin is that some members will try to disparage the idea behind the questions you are (quite correctly, in my view posing). They take a generally agnostic or apathetic approach to the socialist society. My advice is to consider the politics of these members carefully. In most cases, they use "socialism" as an empty phrase to make bland liberal politics seem more appealing. It makes no sense to call yourself a socialist unless you hold that socialism is a real possibility, and a real possibility can't be reduced to an empty abstract negation.


So I'd like a couple answers to the following questions:

Would the 'end goal' communist society have any capital in it whatsoever? (as in, would people still want to be economically compensated for their work instead of, say, just walking to a store and grabbing what you need/want on some form of communal system?)

Socialism means the abolition of commodity production, so, no, there would be no capital and no money in general, and as such there would be no wages or other forms of "compensation". At worst (and while some people have an outright labour-credit fetish, it is the worst situation possible), during the early years of socialist society some products might have to be rationed, and that rationing might occur on the basis of contribution. This was Marx's assessment... in the nineteenth century. Much has changed since then.

So, no, barring some truly exceptional circumstances, if you want a banana in the socialist society, you simply go to the place where we store bananas and take one. If you find yourself paying for a banana, your socialism experience might not be genuine.


Would the society have ANY form of centralized regulation? (and no, police and social justice could still be run by the people.)

Engels formulated it in the following manner: in the socialist society, there is no government over men, only the administration of things and the direction of processes of production. Thus there are no regulations that pertain to how people conduct their lives, whether centralised or not. And there is neither the police nor justice in socialism. Neither the global society nor local groups can prescribe what you can wear, what you can eat, what language you can speak, who you can fuck etc.

What remains is the scientific planning of production in order to satisfy human need. That is, given specific human needs, food, water, shelter, sex, cultural life etc., how can we employ our plantations, our furnaces, factories and so on, to satisfy those needs? And both needs and the processes necessary to produce items to satisfy then are global. Just take a look at your kitchen; I would imagine many items come from areas far from where you live. My kitchen seems to have a large amount of items from China or Bangladesh, and I don't live in either area. I don't think that's a bad thing, either. It's good that the world is increasingly interconnected; it saves us from local cretinism is nothing else. Inputs and outputs of certain production processes are even more interconnected, aluminum manufacture for example. But that means production needs to be planned at the level of the entire global society - the central level that takes whatever subdivisions people have set up into account.

Some people resist this conclusion because bourgeois ideology places such a premium on decentralisation (often lazily equating decentralisation and freedom as if someone oppressed by one of Nigeria's many federal states is freer than someone oppressed by the centralised Iranian state). But to tell the truth, most proposals for "decentralised planning" are either openly market proposals where one region haggles with other regions, or they are, in a word, monstrous (and also market in nature), ParEcon for example. Yet often the most hilariously unworkable proposals are the most popular. Why someone would willingly subject themselves to calculating indicative prices for the rest of their life is beyond me, but in the immortal words of Tommy Wisseau, people are very strange these days.


Lastly, do you believe people should receive wages predicated on labor input? I supposed an even better question would be should be have a higher standard of living for working more assiduously, or should there be TOTAL equality irregardless of an individual's actions?

Socialism is, as per the previous discussion, also the abolition of wage labour. But the abolition of wage labour doesn't mean equality, as in everyone receiving equal wages, it means no wages and no rationing at all, each member of the socialist society being free to take for individual or group consumption whatever they please of the aggregate social product. And this is not tied to their performance in the tasks they have chosen to do that day, if any (as socialism also means the end of jobs, instead being a society where, to plagiarise Marx, anyone can fish or hunt or criticise without becoming a fisherman or huntsman or critic, i.e. doing these things for the rest of their lives out of social compulsion). Why would people even want anything else? It would all become one giant rat race again, and it would hit many vulnerable groups fairly hard.

[Patchd]

Hi guys!
Would the 'end goal' communist society have any capital in it whatsoever? (as in, would people still want to be economically compensated for their work instead of, say, just walking to a store and grabbing what you need/want on some form of communal system?)

When we reach a point where the chances for success are more likely, we will be in a position where capital is by and large *irrelevant*, and therefore the restriction on the distribution of goods and services will be, by virtue, irrelevant also.

We've already reached a stage where the contradictions of capitalism have become, and are getting more apparent (whether we reach the stage in our own lifetimes where it becomes so apparent and conditions become so dire that the choice is made to collectively abolish capitalism because it no longer provides most of us with a comfortable enough lifestyle is another question).

We could already abolish a lot of human labour as it stands, whether that was through further mechanisation of the workplace, stabilisation of production (overproduction to a grand scale is natural to a capitalist mode of production - I am also not arguing in favour of a planned economy) or just through the redundancy of certain jobs in a communist society (eg. recruitment, finance sectors). Capitalism itself fundamentally cannot cater for a situation where we could abolish all mandatory human labour though, it requires the working class in order to earn wages so as to regulate the distribution of goods produced and services provided. What will the means to buy back products from the capitalist class if there is no need for, or there just isn't a human working class to earn a wage ... Capitalism simply cannot cater for this eventuality, and it is an eventuality.

In the likelihood that an attempt at a socialised economy takes place during a period of regeneration or before our ability to abolish all mandatory human labour from production and service provision, then people will still be economically compensated for their work (just not compensated through monetary means). Furthermore, if work is voluntary then there is a greater social factor to human labour; that it's an act to partake in largely as a result of boredom and ingenuity. I'm not of the impression that given a situation where we could opt to work or not, the human race would collectively choose to end its own existence through laziness.


Would the society have ANY form of centralized regulation? (and no, police and social justice could still be run by the people.)

I assume so, if we're say talking about engineering projects that require legitimacy and a large degree of labour power and co-ordination, then that will have to be centralised to an extent. This does not require the functions of a state, and could still be conducted in a democratic fashion (potentially even near-consensus) and the authority for the co-ordination of such projects be deferred to those with relevant expertise and skill.

Still, we can't really say how exactly that will pan out. None of us are in a position to say what communism will be like, given the context will be completely alien to what we've become conditioned to be accustomed to. We'll encounter problems along the way which we may not have even conceived of, and different sections of humanity, even if we all operated on a communist model, may develop in cosmetically different trajectories. Colonisation of space may be a factor that renders such disputes redundant.

I have no idea how social justice will end up. There may even still exist forms of incarceration or isolation, but how that happens or on whose authority that is carried out in a society where state authority is redundant is a question I don't have an answer to. Or we may have a completely different means to tackle issues where the continued co-existence with certain individuals in their current state is such a major inconvenience to others (eg. serial killers). We'll come to these questions when we experience these conditions based on the contexts of our time.


Lastly, do you believe people should receive wages predicated on labor input? I supposed an even better question would be should be have a higher standard of living for working more assiduously, or should there be TOTAL equality irregardless of an individual's actions?

What exactly do you mean by "total equality"? Also, wages by their nature are part and parcel of the social relationship that is capitalism. Capitalism functions on the basis of the relationship between wage labour - and - capital accumulation. That this is the basis for our present day class society that differentiates humans based on their primary means of survival being either based on their ability to sell their labour power in exchange for wages, or on their continued extraction of capital from the labour power of others (and in turn, the distribution of produce is based on this relationship).

There was a time when capitalism was historically progressive, but we just happen to live in a period where its outlived its utility and now acts as a social parasite on the human race.

[The_Marxie_Physicist]

Hmm, do you think it's possible to achieve Communism democratically? (I basically want to know if communists should vote for Bernie Sanders or not, as it could be an important step to achieve a 'socialist' state in the near future. I know he is not a legit socialist, but could the lesser of all evils argument come into play here when considering voting in the US?

[Observational Change]

Scientifically? There would be a classless, stateless social commune of ecological sustainability with the free development of each being the free development of all. Utopia? Doing this without a long educational process of advanced scientific-technical knowledge and constant maintenance.

[Comrade Jacob]

Rainbows bending upwards, horses eating each other, the rivers will dry up, the mountains will blow in the wind, the sun will obit the Earth, Marx will rise from the grave and Lenin's statues will come alive...it's already begun.

[Patchd]

Hmm, do you think it's possible to achieve Communism democratically? (I basically want to know if communists should vote for Bernie Sanders or not, as it could be an important step to achieve a 'socialist' state in the near future. I know he is not a legit socialist, but could the lesser of all evils argument come into play here when considering voting in the US?

Well, yes and no. By democratically you mean through the use of whatever various capitalist democratic systems exist around the world I presume. Whilst people will always continue to opt for this route as it's seen as a seemingly less risky venture, I don't think it's a successful route ... on both a theoretical, and historical level. But yes because proletarian insurrection has by its nature, and historically been shown to be democratic in nature as the only viable option for the collective self-management by our class.

Theoretically speaking there are a few points to consider;


The role of the state as a phenomenon which ensures order and a continued lineage for whatever class society it is defending. The argument is made that the state is integral to the continued existence of a class society, and so its being can't be utilised for the destruction of class society entirely. The state simply does not exist to fulfill this function.
... In the context of our class society (capitalism), the state is there not necessarily to protect the capitalist class as individuals, but to maintain capitalism as a social relationship (which admittedly does usually amount to protecting the capitalist class, as in, the people).
There are usually stipulations in law where certain acts are not permitted as they break the code of rights as guaranteed by specific states to maintain. Or if they were to happen, then there are preconditions which are cemented to laying down capitalism as the accepted social relationship, this is not to be changed (otherwise you get charges of unconstitutionality). Despite slight changes to the management of capitalism (nationalisation, or decentralisation of state control of production), capitalism remains the basis.
The right to property is a key one that's been a hindrance even to pro-capitalist "socialists", historically, where socialist reformers have come to power through the democratic capitalist method, they have done so on the legitimacy of capitalism; ex-property owners where their property had become nationalised or requisitioned for the management by the state, tend to get compensated. This was true under the Paris Commune of 1871, and true under the post-war Labour government. Even where compensation is provided, the loyalty of sections of the state cannot be guaranteed to defend the democratic decision, this was the case during Allende's presidency in Chile where in August 1973 the Senate declared his government to be acting "unlawfully" in its expropriation of private property.





Revolutionary strategy is often described as being tragic, but necessary for a fundamental change in the basis of our interaction with one another as a human society. But this comes through a materialist analysis of the model of capitalism as it stands, not through our idealist desires to see revolution, or to simply fetishise revolutionary activity as the act (I'm talking about the romanticism connected to the idea of revolution, which leads many into bastardising what revolutionary periods are and equate them with artificially created, or prolonged armed struggle ~ which is what revolutionary periods can end up becoming).

Proletarian revolutionary periods have historically been spontaneous in nature, and the result of conditions of extreme hardships which the working class would otherwise not be used to, or conditions which decrease the level of comfortability enough for masses within the working class to see no viable option for the comfortable sustainability of their lives (which capitalism generally provides) to continue under a capitalist system ~ for example, the revolutionary wave across Europe following WW1. The challenges to our conditions by ourselves are usually met with opposition from the state, because our struggle unlike previous class struggles is inherently anti-class. The logical conclusion of communism is the abolition of class society among humans, entirely. In this sense, we can't use an institution which is inherently pro-class, to abolish itself.

[Rafiq]

It makes no sense to call yourself a socialist unless you hold that socialism is a real possibility, and a real possibility can't be reduced to an empty abstract negation.

And the point that you're missing is that what distinguishes Communism from merely being an abstract negation, has absolutely nothing to do with believing the viability of this or that is possible (Which, ironically, could only ever be abstract, considering that there is no organic predispositions to this utopia embedded in any real moving force - the party - in the 21st century) rather the point is that Communism is an affirmative force precisely because it derives from the present state of things, each reform, each concession, and each particular struggle of Communism has absolutely nothing to do with bringing society closer to this ridiculous dream-world you have posited, rather it pertains and concerns the conquest of political power first and foremost. That is to say, the "maximal" program is not the "latter phrase of Communist society", but the proletarian dictatorship. The prorletarian dictatorship and the FORCE of Communism, as it encapsulates struggles and antagonsims that exist in the HERE AND THE NOW are not a means to an ends, they are the ends-in-themsleves, in them are embedded the possibility of a different future.

Communism is not some kind of magical force which utilizes individuals to realize itself - we only place "value", conceive, and think of a stateless, classless society because of the direct pertinence this has on the social antagonism as it manifests in the society before us. Xhar-Xhar has insinuated there ot be some kind of "human nature" that socialism will objectively fulfill in a better way, and while he does not want to identify with this nasty term - it is patently obvious that this is what he implies - that human wants and needs are somehow trans-historic, somehow not relegated back to how they REPRODUCE conditions of PRODUCTION, which truly exists in and for itself. This is the lesson of Marx - production does not exist to satisfy "Human needs and wants" (which on an "evolutionary" level amount to NOTHING more than subsistence), production exists for its own sake.

Socialism that you present before us is not a real possibility. Not because it cannot "work", but because EVEN BY ITS OWN MERITS it is a fantasy - even if, coincidentally, it "could" function perfectly and exist somehow, this would not change its pathological character - that is to say, there is no actual essential concern for its 'realness' embedded in your description of it. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is "workable" or not, but the IDEOLOGICAL character of the fantasy - the hedonist paradise you describe sais nothing about whether it could exist, as it does about the social character of the ideologue giving it to us (Take the stoics of Rome, with their utopias - perfectly classless societies - but they served only as mere abstractions that which the values, morals and politics of the patrician class were actualized - much like so-called stateless capitalism today, or better yet, why not the Republic as produced by Plato, which did not have any room for the actual classes that existed at the time?). And alas, it is nothing more than a perversion of the ethics of de-industrialized capitalist society, of our faux-hedonist society that actually exist. In the cultural centers of world capitalism, in the ideological powerhouses of world capitalism, precisely living to "satisfy your wants and desires" is taken as its own ethical axiom, something sufficient unto-itself. But Communism is not hedonism. Communists recognize that fulfilling one's wants and pleasures relegate back not to human nature, but to how these wants and pleasures reproduce wider conditions of power and production. We see the damned sham in liberal-hedonist society and the reaction that it produces.


during the early years of socialist society some products might have to be rationed, and that rationing might occur on the basis of contribution. This was Marx's assessment... in the nineteenth century. Much has changed since then.

This is not a "What if". Rationing will undoubtedly, inarguably have to persist until the technical level of society reaches a point wherein this would no longer be necessary - a level we are not presently at. Your consumerist paradise fails to take into account the basic fact that widespread coordination and regulation of people's lives and levels of "consumption" (which would cease to exist) would be necessary for wider, societal concerns. Take for example ecology - people are not magically embedded with being able to see the bigger picture when they desire iPhones and whatever, some kind of means to regulate this - to make sure it does not interject or violate the common social space will be necessary. The society you describe is literally consumerist capitalist society without the prerequisites to consumerist capitalist production - all the store shelves, shopping centers remain, except everything is free.

The society you propose is an all-you-can-eat consumerist buffet, not a post-capitalist one. The idea that people can tomorrow just arbitrarily take whatever the fuck they want and production will continue radiates a stunning lack of understanding of the complexity of capitalist society and the process of production. Then again, I would actually be shocked if you really believe that what you're saying has any basis in reality, because as it happens - you know damned well nothing you say is viable. It is a mental exercise to express the infantile petty-bourgeois hedonist values that you derive from present conditions and nothing more. Except of course, I suspect such hedonism itself is faulty - it is a form of pseudo-rebellion against the philistine conservative values that probably surround you. Don't forget, Xhar-Xhar, there is a Yang to this Yin.


So, no, barring some truly exceptional circumstances, if you want a banana in the socialist society, you simply go to the place where we store bananas and take one

Yes, with an infinite supply of bananas no doubt just "being there". Again, PEOPLE'S WANTS and DESIRES are NOT sufficient unto-themselves. We are not consumerist ideologues. There is nothing sacred about them. There is nothing sacred about the fact that people want to buy a new fucking iphone every year, there is no reason to think that socialist production will simply take-over or resume this process. A great deal of people's wants are artificial, a great deal of what people desire only exists to reproduce the conditions of capitalist society, and likewise - these will change with the necessity of reproducing Communist society. This has nothing to do with keeping "human nature" in check, but everything to do with the fact that freedom is not free - people are not magically embedded with an ability to act holistically, and the dissonance between local and central, between this city and that city, between this region and that, and so on will have to be regulated with some kind of centralized, trans-geographic force. The values, morality and ethics of a Communist society are not embedded in the spontaneous outbursts of "human nature", dictated solely by chance and proximity, but must and will be CONDITIONED. There is nothing special about what people are "born" as, it is random, meaningless and thoroughly not 'natural' upon inception. It's like how philistines accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks, for one non-related example, of interjecting upon societys' "natural course" of development. Nonsense! To not "interject" is to leave the people to OTHER dogs, there will be no "natural" slate either way. If you think that this doesn't permeate into the patterns of what people want, you're dead wrong.


Engels formulated it in the following manner: in the socialist society, there is no government over men, only the administration of things and the direction of processes of production.

The administration of things and the direction of processes of production DIRECTLY pertains to the administration and direction of the actions and behavior of men. What you fail to understand is that there is no government "over" men, ONLY means that there is no state that is built with the direct aim of REPRESSING the grand majority of the population FOR production, but there will certainly be a government OF men, there will certainly be the regulation of people's behaviors on a collective level, collective discipline, the spirit of self-sacrifice, social cohesion - a Communist society will be closer to a Sparta than the Disneyland you're giving us. Of course, society is not one big "barrack", but I merely illustrate how far gone you are from actually understanding what it takes to maintain freedom.

Of course pleasures and luxury will still exist. But they will be entirely different, so much so that they would be unrecognizable to us. It doesn't mean everyone will get Ferraris - it means there will be new, different means of pleasure and want that will spring directly from one's non-alienated relationship to production and life. All we can speculate is how luxuries will be dealt with in a proletarian dictatorship, which itself would entail mass mobilization, huge explosive revolutionary energies aimed at social transformation - we'll probably see mass rituals entailing the destruction of Ferraris (NO MATTER how "inefficient" - a revolution is not some laboratory) before we see them "distributed" or see people taking turns driving them.

In capitalist society, people's pleasures directly "violate" capitalist morality (LENIN observed this:), but this is a sham - nothing is being violated because there is no yin without the yang. There is no catholic priest without the pedophile priest. There is no sexual conservative without the conservative sex-scandal. In the society you speak of, the spontaneous pleasures inherent to capitalist society are merely realized WITHOUT the conservative yang - but this is impossible! Rather, in a post-capitalist society, people's pleasures would be INEVITABLY linked up with social considerations in a way that is not alienated - that is to say, there is no reason why luxury and work should be separated, no reason why pleasure and duty should be separated, no reason that MORALITY and the ecstasy of joy, should exist in spite of each other. Not the self-aggrandizing, egoist pleasure (i.e. "treating oneself") but one that is a particular expression of the universal Communist love. But the hedonism of capitalist society gives us not a hedonism in spite of capitalist morality - but the HEDONISTIC DUTY that exists in spite of nothing. Pleasures are no longer repressive, but transgressive, they are heavily coordinated and regulated by bourgeois ideology. Communism will smash such rituals to bits, and all that will emerge will be answerable to the revolution.


Neither the global society nor local groups can prescribe what you can wear, what you can eat, what language you can speak, who you can fuck etc.

Behold, Communist society as the logical extension of the ideological messages of Starbucks advertisements. Frankly, whether some areas are more slow to receive it or not, this kind of morality is already inscribed in ruling bourgeois liberal ideology, and the oppositions to it are nothing more than REACTION. Here in the states, hegemonic ideology are not our clownish conservative politicians, but precisely bourgeois-liberalism, postmodern bourgeois-liberalism which, at face value gives us PRECISELY this message.

What you say is absolutely ridiculous, however. Communist society will not "prescribe" what you can fuck? Pathologies like pedophilia will probably largely disappear, but sexual disorders will persist. In Xhar-Xhar's mind, pedophilia will be the acceptable in a post-capitalist society. Nonsense! Because there is no human nature, then yes, indirectly or directly, peoples' preferences WILL have to be limited and regulated, of course this would be in a matter entirely different from today's society - i.e. what is more likely is the kind of collective shaming during the cultural revolution than the judiciary, but none the less - even if no one has to "directly prescribe" these things, people would have NO REASON to buy into his bullshit - "be yourself" garbage. What people wear, eat, and their sexual preferences would probably not be that varied, but one shouldn't even need to deal with this at face value - it's the pathology that should interest us.

That is to say, none of what you claim is some kind of "principle". The notion that none of these would be answerable to a higher collective is false - because whether it is directly enforced or not, they STILL would be constitutive of new relations of production and life, still be the result of a new society, not the sacred "human wants" that are oh-so "infringed" upon by capitalist society. Communism "frees" the consumer of capitalist society of all his restrictions, in Xhar-Xhar's mind. Nothing is farther from the truth - there is nothing to "free", for the desires themselves are CONSTITUTIVE, inevitably linked to their repression, the WANT is embedded in its OWN LIMITATION.

EVERYTHING relegates back to the class war. There is no in-between. We only protest the repression of the bourgeois state, whether for sexual, national or sexual questions because of how this relegates back to the class war. Without this, there is nothing. What that means is no - there is no "human wants" that are stamped upon by "bourgeois society" that we are going to free. The supersession of bourgeois society is by and of the proletariat, which struggles to abolish itself.


Socialism is, as per the previous discussion, also the abolition of wage labour. But the abolition of wage labour doesn't mean equality, as in everyone receiving equal wages, it means no wages and no rationing at all, each member of the socialist society being free to take for individual or group consumption whatever they please of the aggregate social product.

Nonsense! The abolition of wage labor has NOTHING to do with abolishing labor that is constitutive of own's own consumption, it has everything to do with precisely what it sais it is - the abolition of wage labor. That sais nothing about the persistence of different kinds of rationing, and so on. The 'aggregate social product' - now, what does this even mean? The idea that X town located in the Amazon with necessary resources is going to spontaneously fulfill the "wants" of the town in Mongolia is beyond stupid. Sure you can work out a relationship between the two, if world-totality was reducible to two towns, but we're talking about an immensely complex WEB, the entanglement of needs and so on (57 towns needing resources from 3, and 3 needing from 4 of those, and so on and so on and so on) . You cannot have centralization of people's "wants" are assumed to be spontaneously centralized not only on a local level, but on an individual level.


And this is not tied to their performance in the tasks they have chosen to do that day, if any (as socialism also means the end of jobs, instead being a society where, to plagiarise Marx, anyone can fish or hunt or criticise without becoming a fisherman or huntsman or critic, i.e. doing these things for the rest of their lives out of social compulsion).

And you mistaken Marx. The point of Marx is NOT that social obligation itself would be abolished, or that people would perform tasks that are simply the result of their spontaneous whims, but that all individuals would be self-conscious, like Renaissance men capable of performing tasks demanded by SOCIETY in a way that is irreducible to a single profession. The point of significance is NOT the whims of people, or what people spontaneously "WANT" to do, but the specific fixation of social activity by society as DEFINITIVE of one's life being. It may very well be possible that an individual will have to perform this specific task indefinitely, hte point is that one would be unbound by it - one would only do so insofar as they are embedded with the capability of performing a number of other tasks, if need be, and so on. When Marx sais this is - because society regulates general production, there is no DISSONANCE between general production and the labor people are producing - there is no separate "general production" that will exist independently of what we "choose" to do. Each person takes "what they please" he sais, as though "what they please" relegates back to... To what, free will? Human nature? Can we not ask: WHY do they please this?

I mean, what a gross perversion of Marx - his bastardization to conform to the ethics of consumerism. No, Marx's point was very simply that the fixation of social activity will cease to exist, one can become LEARNED in any profession they want and do this. And guess what - his point was that the predispositions to this were ALREADY in capitalism. One can, formally, already choose any profession they want, the problem is that - again - private property. For example, in Asiatic societies, or in Feudalism, on has a specific caste, a specific role, and that's all they're capable of doing - they're not even allowed to learn to do another profession. Marx's point is that in a Communist society, the next step to the dissolution of this, a supersession of capitalist property relations, would be the end of professions as such - wherein in capitalism one can "choose" their profession, in Communism there will be no professions as such.

His point was more to illustrate the nature of CAPITALIST relations and the moving prerogatives of Communists vis a vis their opposition to private property, than some kind of in-depth postulation about what a Communist society will actually look like. If you actually paid attention to the paragraph wherein this quote was derived, you would know that he is dealing ONLY with this.


Why would people even want anything else? It would all become one giant rat race again, and it would hit many vulnerable groups fairly hard.

It doesn't matter what we "want", Xhar-Xhar, and mind you, what "vulnerable" groups are you referring to? Are groups vulnerable by genetics in your mind? "It would all become a giant rat race again" - thank you for actually illustrating the point that you really think any functioning society would have to inevitably become capitalism again. This is the trick with this kind of infantile utopian Leftism - what they do is make IMPOSSIBLE demands, to illustrate a faux-grounded opposition to this or that (let's say "Rat races"), and link problems unique to capitalism as problems that are generally inevitably problems of life itself. You simply have no notion of Communism, there is nothing more to it. This way, you can say you're an anti-capitalist without having the responsibility of answering to its abolition... The tasks people preform would not be "chosen" by them, for people do not arbitrarily "choose" things that somehow is embedded with MEANING. People's choices are random and meaningless.

*Nods head, winks* "Why would you 'want' this? Aren't we all on the same page that Communism is just an ideal that society adjusts to, to our whimsical desires for what should be?" - I mean, let's be quite honest, the society presented here IS purely negation, it is the person without any life-being, without any vitality, it is the yin of the capitalist yang...

[ckaihatsu]

When Marx sais this is - because society regulates general production, there is no DISSONANCE between general production and the labor people are producing - there is no separate "general production" that will exist independently of what we "choose" to do. Each person takes "what they please" he sais, as though "what they please" relegates back to... To what, free will? Human nature? Can we not ask: WHY do they please this?


I understand that you're drawing a tighter dynamic link between the individual, their 'wants', their relationship to the larger society, the larger society's general production, and the individual's own consumption (as though all of these different threads would tend to converge towards one unitary sameness), but I think, with this topic, we have to recognize that there isn't any equivalence between what a task *is* (in the laboring of it) and what a task *produces*.

I mean to say that if an individual is liberated from an obligatory forced lifelong identity tied to a single profession, and is instead free to choose according to one's own inclination -- within the larger social context of a world mass-liberated to tend only to *socially necessary* tasks -- that's not necessarily a guarantee that *that kind* of labor that they're chosen will actually *be* 'socially necessary'.

Certainly you invoke the social 'peer pressure' of that stage of human social production, to say that no one will be *arbitrarily* choosing their work out of a void and/or for a contrived principle of sheer 'individualism' -- which is fair -- but, again, what I think is missing from this conventional treatment of the topic is the possible *mismatch* between individual 'self-determination', and societal 'social need'.

In other words, the 'rock star' problematic would apply here, where everyone is freed to be their own individual performing artist, because there's no guarantee that what the *overall* society would objectively / collectively need is a greater variety of rock stars to choose from.

The *inverse* of this would, of course, be the dreaded 'groupthink', or 'authoritarian' social order, where 'general production' *does* proactively trump individual self-determination, in the name of production that 'is good for all'. In *this* situation the socially necessary social production would be handed down from above, by whatever method, and it would be up to individuals to conform to whatever tasks are objectively required to make that 'general good' happen, albeit for the general good.





[I]n Asiatic societies, or in Feudalism, on has a specific caste, a specific role, and that's all they're capable of doing - they're not even allowed to learn to do another profession. Marx's point is that in a Communist society, the next step to the dissolution of this, a supersession of capitalist property relations, would be the end of professions as such - wherein in capitalism one can "choose" their profession, in Communism there will be no professions as such.


On this overall topic I'm most interested in how this 'individual-to-society' dynamic can be *resolved*, while maintaining the seemingly incompatible guarantees of 'individual self-determination' and 'generalized social production'.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Hmm, do you think it's possible to achieve Communism democratically? (I basically want to know if communists should vote for Bernie Sanders or not, as it could be an important step to achieve a 'socialist' state in the near future. I know he is not a legit socialist, but could the lesser of all evils argument come into play here when considering voting in the US?

You can vote for whoever you please. What you shouldn't do is fool yourself Sanders, an "anti-corporate" populist that would have been considered a centrist a few decades ago, is the lesser evil or could do anything to help bring about communism, and especially you shouldn't mislead the workers into thinking the same. He is a bourgeois politician running to be the jailer in chief of bloody US imperialist capitalism. The only way for communism to be realised is for the proletariat to smash the bourgeois state, no matter how democratic, and that is something people like Sanders work actively against.

[ckaihatsu]

On this overall topic I'm most interested in how this 'individual-to-society' dynamic can be *resolved*, while maintaining the seemingly incompatible guarantees of 'individual self-determination' and 'generalized social production'.


Fortunately -- (as if I somehow *forgot*) -- this thing has already been done, by me. I developed a model framework that keeps the 'socio-political' sphere *separate* from the 'economic' sphere -- in accordance with the definition of communism, nothing can be commodified, and, with this model, there is *no* exchangeability between labor-efforts (measured by the labor-hour) and any goods / resources / materials, or productive assets.

So, at the *individual* scale, one's own participation in (socio-political) society is proportional to the fact that one is an individual person, 'quantity: one', in the world, while *economically* one's needs and abilities will vary -- possibly significantly -- compared to the next person. Economically, a post-capitalist society can differentiate on the basis of labor *hours* that are contributed by a person, to whatever tasks are socio-politically considered to be 'socially necessary'.

The labor credits 'framework' makes accommodations for the fact that *work roles* will themselves *vary*, according to degrees of 'difficulty' and 'hazard', and so there is a labor-hour *multiplier*, for difficulty/hazard, on (liberated) labor hours -- liberated-labor efforts would be formally recognized with the transfer of labor credits going-forward, based on rates of labor credits per hour of work for any given work role.


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174


Here's an introduction:





A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits

To clarify and simplify, the labor credits system is like a cash-only economy that only works for *services* (labor), while the world of material implements, resources, and products is open-access and non-abstractable. (No financial valuations.) Given the world's current capacity for an abundance of productivity for the most essential items, there should be no doubt about producing a ready surplus of anything that's important, to satisfy every single person's basic humane needs.




[I] have developed a model that [...] uses a system of *circulating* labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for material items of any kind. In accordance with communism being synonymous with 'free-access', all material implements, resources, and products would be freely available and *not* quantifiable according to any abstract valuations. The labor credits would represent past labor hours completed, multiplied by the difficulty or hazard of the work role performed. The difficulty/hazard multiplier would be determined by a mass survey of all work roles, compiled into an index.

In this way all concerns for labor, large and small, could be reduced to the ready transfer of labor-hour credits. The fulfillment of work roles would bring labor credits into the liberated-laborer's possession, and would empower them with a labor-organizing and labor-utilizing ability directly proportionate to the labor credits from past work completed.




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673


And here's an illustration:


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

http://s6.postimg.org/jjc7b5nch/150221_labor_credits_framework_for_communist_su.jp g (http://postimg.org/image/p7ii21rot/full/)

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

i'd totally live in a weird 3d render graph, anything is better than this.

[ckaihatsu]

i'd totally live in a weird 3d render graph, anything is better than this.


Hmmmm, maybe we need a *movie* treatment, now...(!) Everyone get out your green-screens!


= D

[RedWorker]

I request that 870 ("Xhar-Xhar Binks") replies to Rafiq's post, or that others discuss the conflict between the views of 870 and Rafiq here - in my opinion these are very serious and real issues that have to be discussed.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I will reply, to be honest not because of any requests to that effect, but because I would hate people new to socialism to think Rafiq's overwrought Duehringism has anything to do with Marxism, but what I refuse to do is get involved in another "discussion" where Rafiq just posts snippets of his previous, ah, work, growing increasingly unhinged with the tacit approval of his friends in the BA. If I had a thing for abuse, I would probably hire one of my cousin's friends. It's how she pays her bills after all.


And the point that you're missing is that what distinguishes Communism from merely being an abstract negation, has absolutely nothing to do with believing the viability of this or that is possible

And so begins the latest post by one Rafiq, occasional victim of possession. And one is immediately struck by the complete disconnect between my post and the supposed response. Once again, I said:

"It makes no sense to call yourself a socialist unless you hold that socialism is a real possibility"

To which Rafiq replies:

"[W]hat distinguishes Communism from merely being an abstract negation, has absolutely nothing to do with believing the viability of this or that is possible"

And this is far from the only time Rafiq's replies consists of irrelevant banalities. If I listed them all, I would be here all day, something I really haven't the slightest inclination for. But it is important to establish the sort of intellectual level we are dealing with.


The prorletarian dictatorship and the FORCE of Communism, as it encapsulates struggles and antagonsims that exist in the HERE AND THE NOW are not a means to an ends, they are the ends-in-themsleves, in them are embedded the possibility of a different future.

Someone should have told Marx this great truth of Rafiqism. If this had been done he might not have written in the "Class Struggles in France" things like:

"While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another – the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui. This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations."

For Marx, as well as for Engels, Lenin etc., the end goal was socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat a transit point, the period of transformation. You are of course free to believe as you please, but then don't try to pass off this nonsense as Marxism.


Xhar-Xhar has insinuated there ot be some kind of "human nature" that socialism will objectively fulfill in a better way, and while he does not want to identify with this nasty term - it is patently obvious that this is what he implies - that human wants and needs are somehow trans-historic, somehow not relegated back to how they REPRODUCE conditions of PRODUCTION, which truly exists in and for itself. This is the lesson of Marx - production does not exist to satisfy "Human needs and wants" (which on an "evolutionary" level amount to NOTHING more than subsistence), production exists for its own sake.

And now Rafiq, because he can't actually address anything I wrote, has to invent positions for me. No, Rafiq mon amour, I never insinuated there to be any kind of human nature and at this point, I don't even think you are deluding yourself into thinking I have, I think you're lying. The rest of the paragraph just shows how sadly out of depth you are. First of all, what does this even mean:

"[W]hich on an 'evolutionary' level amount to NOTHING more than subsistence"?

It's completely bizarre - we are talking about the needs of human beings living in human society. Saying that needs on an "evolutionary level" amount to subsistence is completely baffling as evolution does not deal with needs. The idea here is to reduce the Marxist notion of human need to the principle of the poorhouse, the bare reproduction of labour-power, and to dress it up as "science" by the use of the buzzword "evolutionary". How very un-Marxist Marx was being when talking about tobacco and dance halls. Or was it that he was un-Rafiqist?

The "evolutionary" nonsense is the lead-up to the real corker here - the notion that production "exists for its own sake". First of all this is terrible nonsense even if we ignore for now the discrepancy between this sort of "producerism" and Marxism, as unless we accept the existence of the lord God, nothing exists for a reason unless consciously made by intelligent beings, or at any rate by humans. And while humans consciously undertake certain tasks, make certain objects etc., the entire process of production and the manner in which it is organised is not the conscious creation of men - in fact raising it to the level of the conscious creation of man is pretty much the point of revolutionary socialism.

And again, this "production existing for its own sake" has nothing to do with Marxism. Marxism posits that the development of human society is determined by the way in which the production of the necessities of human life (not just the means of subsistence) is organised. Rafiq strips this thought of everything but production, as if we can discuss production without discussing the life of the human species, and as if history were driven by statistics about the production of pig iron.


Socialism that you present before us is not a real possibility. Not because it cannot "work", but because EVEN BY ITS OWN MERITS it is a fantasy - even if, coincidentally, it "could" function perfectly and exist somehow, this would not change its pathological character - that is to say, there is no actual essential concern for its 'realness' embedded in your description of it.

There is no actual essential concern for making sense embedded in your prose. It's not just unreadable, it's meaningless because you string words together without regard for anything other than sounding impressive to the critical theory crowd.


This is not a "What if". Rationing will undoubtedly, inarguably have to persist until the technical level of society reaches a point wherein this would no longer be necessary - a level we are not presently at.

The technical level of society is already such that the production of goods needed to satisfy many basic needs exceeds the aggregate need for them, e.g. the production of food as measured in kcal per person.


Your consumerist paradise fails to take into account the basic fact that widespread coordination and regulation of people's lives and levels of "consumption" (which would cease to exist) would be necessary for wider, societal concerns. Take for example ecology - people are not magically embedded with being able to see the bigger picture when they desire iPhones and whatever, some kind of means to regulate this - to make sure it does not interject or violate the common social space will be necessary. The society you describe is literally consumerist capitalist society without the prerequisites to consumerist capitalist production - all the store shelves, shopping centers remain, except everything is free.

It amuses me that anyone on the left uses terms like "consumerism" with a straight face, but there you have it. What is consumerism? It's the "bad" capitalism of conservative nightmare, where people may buy porn and perhaps someone can live comfortably without their ancestors living in poverty for at least three generations as per the Protestant work ethic. But squabbles between the factions of the bourgeoisie don't interest us.

And again, saying "people are not magically embedded with being able to see the bigger picture when they desire iPhones and whatever" doesn't mean anything. Some people try to appear oh-so-smart by using synonyms until it's not immediately clear what is being meant, saying "we utilised a linear distance analyser" instead of "we used a ruler", but you seem to do that then randomly replace words with entirely unrelated words. "Embedded with being able to see"? Oh dear.

But the intention is clear - people are stupid and moreover evil and need caesar Rafiq (or at least Rafiq, praetorian prefect) and his ilk to tell them what to do lest they ruin everything. And, again, this has nothing to do with Marxist socialism, which assumes anyone with basic numeracy and the ability to write can participate in the administration of the socialist society, although it has a lot with Duehring's "socialitarianism". But then have the resolve to state so.

It also clashes, not just with Marxist assumptions, but with empirical data, as Mandel (for example) discusses with the example of food in his reply to Alec Nove:

"Not only does elasticity of demand tend towards zero and into the negative from the top of the priority list downwards, item per item, with each successive stage of economic growth. It also tends to do so by major categories of needs. Per capita consumption of staple foods (bread, potatoes, rice and so on) in the richest industrialized countries is today definitely dropping both in absolute physical quantities and in percentage of national expenditure in monetary terms. So is consumption of native fruit and vegetables and, at least in money values, of basic underwear and socks, as well as elementary items of furniture. Statistics also show that, in spite of growing differentiation of tastes and goods (many varieties of bread and cake, a much greater range of food and clothing generally), the overall consumption of food and clothing and footwear tends to become saturated and even starts to decline, measured in terms of calorie-intakes, square metres of cloth and pairs of shoes. These realities completely refute the bourgeois and Stalinist belief in a limitless growth of the needs of ordinary people. Nothing is further from the truth, as measurable by actual consumer behaviour. Saturation of basic needs is a verifiable trend in the West, not only because of a decline in their intensity once a certain threshold is passed, but also because of a change in motivation. Rational consumption patterns tend to replace supposedly instinctive desires to consume more and more

Here what is ‘rational’ does not need to be ‘dictated’ (should not be dictated) either by market forces or by bureaucratic planners or know-all experts. It emerges from growing consumers’ maturity itself, as people’s priorities shift and their self-interest becomes more self-aware.

Food consumption provides a telling example of this process. Since time immemorial, humanity has hovered on the brink of famine and starvation. Even in our own century, this has been the plight of the great majority of the population of the planet. Under these conditions, it is only natural that human beings should be obsessed with eating. Five years of acute food shortages in continental Europe during World War II were enough to set off a veritable explosion of gluttony once something like ‘unlimited food consumption’ became possible again after 1945 (in some European countries much later). But how long did this spree last? Less than twenty years after food had once again become relatively plentiful (just one generation!), priorities started to shift dramatically. Eating less became the rule, not eating more. Health became more important than satiety. This change was not due to the ‘imposition’ of new consumption patterns by doctors or the health industry. It was the instinct of self-preservation that prompted it. Long before the health industry had emerged, similar alterations of outlook were discernible among the rich ‘who had realized socialism for themselves’."


The society you propose is an all-you-can-eat consumerist buffet, not a post-capitalist one. The idea that people can tomorrow just arbitrarily take whatever the fuck they want and production will continue radiates a stunning lack of understanding of the complexity of capitalist society and the process of production. Then again, I would actually be shocked if you really believe that what you're saying has any basis in reality, because as it happens - you know damned well nothing you say is viable. It is a mental exercise to express the infantile petty-bourgeois hedonist values that you derive from present conditions and nothing more. Except of course, I suspect such hedonism itself is faulty - it is a form of pseudo-rebellion against the philistine conservative values that probably surround you. Don't forget, Xhar-Xhar, there is a Yang to this Yin.

And here we have another favourite tactic of Rafiq's: as he can't reply to the arguments people make, he settles for idle psychological speculation. Don't quit your day job.


Yes, with an infinite supply of bananas no doubt just "being there".

It's amazing that you've used this "argument" in thread after thread, and the same thing is pointed to you every time: production is planned in order to satisfy human need. This is inconceivable to you because your "socialism" is essentially a market one.


Again, PEOPLE'S WANTS and DESIRES are NOT sufficient unto-themselves. We are not consumerist ideologues. There is nothing sacred about them. There is nothing sacred about the fact that people want to buy a new fucking iphone every year, there is no reason to think that socialist production will simply take-over or resume this process. A great deal of people's wants are artificial, a great deal of what people desire only exists to reproduce the conditions of capitalist society, and likewise - these will change with the necessity of reproducing Communist society. This has nothing to do with keeping "human nature" in check, but everything to do with the fact that freedom is not free - people are not magically embedded with an ability to act holistically, and the dissonance between local and central, between this city and that city, between this region and that, and so on will have to be regulated with some kind of centralized, trans-geographic force. The values, morality and ethics of a Communist society are not embedded in the spontaneous outbursts of "human nature", dictated solely by chance and proximity, but must and will be CONDITIONED. There is nothing special about what people are "born" as, it is random, meaningless and thoroughly not 'natural' upon inception. It's like how philistines accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks, for one non-related example, of interjecting upon societys' "natural course" of development. Nonsense! To not "interject" is to leave the people to OTHER dogs, there will be no "natural" slate either way. If you think that this doesn't permeate into the patterns of what people want, you're dead wrong.

And again, Rafiq spends a confusing paragraph - again full of "embedding" - fighting the figments of his imagination, alternately accusing other people of talking about human nature and talking about "artificial" needs. This just showcases your utter confusion. Obviously needs are articulated socially. But they are slow to change at best, unlike targets for production, the allocation of machines etc. Again, consider the example of food, from Mandel's text. If Our Committee ordains that people do not need more food than some ration, the need for "extra" food does not disappear; it is repressed. This fantasy of matching need to production instead of the other way around is ludicrous - and if it worked and constituted socialism, the "war socialism" of the German empire in WWI would be bona fide socialism.


The administration of things and the direction of processes of production DIRECTLY pertains to the administration and direction of the actions and behavior of men. What you fail to understand is that there is no government "over" men, ONLY means that there is no state that is built with the direct aim of REPRESSING the grand majority of the population FOR production, but there will certainly be a government OF men, there will certainly be the regulation of people's behaviors on a collective level, collective discipline, the spirit of self-sacrifice, social cohesion - a Communist society will be closer to a Sparta than the Disneyland you're giving us. Of course, society is not one big "barrack", but I merely illustrate how far gone you are from actually understanding what it takes to maintain freedom.

And here we have the "socialism" of our Kautskys - the Spartan garrison-state. Barely anything else needs to be said. Except to note that it is precisely against this sort of barracks-"socialism" that Engels directed his scorn. To quote extensively from Antiduehring:

"The Philosophie gives detailed prescriptions for the organisation of the state of the future. Here Rousseau, although “the sole important forerunner” {D. Ph. 264} of Herr Dühring, nevertheless did not lay the foundations deep enough; his more profound successor puts this right by completely watering down Rousseau and mixing in remnants of the Hegelian philosophy of right, also reduced to a watery mess. “The sovereignty of the individual” {268} forms the basis of the Dühringian state of the future; it is not to be suppressed by the rule of the majority, but to find its real culmination in it. How does this work? Very simply.

“If one presupposes agreements between each individual and every other individual in all directions, and if the object of these agreements is mutual aid against unjust offences — then the power required for the maintenance of right is only strengthened, and right is not deduced from the more superior strength of the many against the individual or of the majority against the minority” {268}.


Such is the ease with which the living force of the hocus-pocus of the philosophy of reality surmounts the most impassable obstacles; and if the reader thinks that after that he is no wiser than he was before, Herr Dühring replies that he really must not think it is such a simple matter, for
“the slightest error in the conception of the role of the collective will would destroy the sovereignty of the individual, and this sovereignty is the only thing” (!) “conducive to the deduction of real rights” {268}.


Herr Dühring treats his public as it deserves, when he makes game of it. He could have laid it on much thicker; the students of the philosophy of reality would not have noticed it anyhow.


Now the sovereignty of the individual consists essentially in that
“the individual is subject to absolute compulsion by the state”; this compulsion, however, can only be justified in so far as it “really serves natural justice” {271}. With this end in view there will be “legislative and judicial authority”, which, however, “must remain in the hands of the community” {272}; and there will also be an alliance for defence, which will find expression in “joint action in the army or in an executive section for the maintenance of internal security” {273},


that is to say, there will also be army, police, gendarmerie. Herr Dühring has many times already shown that he is a good Prussian; here he proves himself a peer of that model Prussian, who, as the late Minister von Rochow put it, “carries his gendarme in his breast”. This gendarmerie of the future, however, will not be so dangerous as the police thugs of the present day. Whatever the sovereign individual may suffer at their hands, he will always have one consolation:


“the right or wrong which, according to the circumstances, may then be dealt to him by free society can never be any worse than that which the state of nature would have brought with it” {D. Ph. 274}!


And then, after Herr Dühring has once more tripped us up on those authors’ rights of his which are always getting in the way, he assures us that in his world of the future there will be, “of course, an absolutely free Bar available to all” {279}.



“The free society, as it is conceived today” {304}, gets steadily more and more mixed. Architects, porters, professional writers, gendarmes, and now also barristers! This “world of sober and critical thought” {D. C. 556-57} and the various heavenly kingdoms of the different religions, in which the believer always finds in transfigured form the things which have sweetened his earthly existence, are as like as two peas. And Herr Dühring is a citizen of the state where “everyone can be happy in his own way”. What more do we want?



But it does not matter what we want. What matters is what Herr Dühring wants. And he differs from Frederick II in this, that in the Dühringian future state certainly not everyone will be able to be happy in his own way."


In capitalist society, people's pleasures directly "violate" capitalist morality (LENIN observed this:), but this is a sham - nothing is being violated because there is no yin without the yang. There is no catholic priest without the pedophile priest. There is no sexual conservative without the conservative sex-scandal. In the society you speak of, the spontaneous pleasures inherent to capitalist society are merely realized WITHOUT the conservative yang - but this is impossible! Rather, in a post-capitalist society, people's pleasures would be INEVITABLY linked up with social considerations in a way that is not alienated - that is to say, there is no reason why luxury and work should be separated, no reason why pleasure and duty should be separated, no reason that MORALITY and the ecstasy of joy, should exist in spite of each other. Not the self-aggrandizing, egoist pleasure (i.e. "treating oneself") but one that is a particular expression of the universal Communist love. But the hedonism of capitalist society gives us not a hedonism in spite of capitalist morality - but the HEDONISTIC DUTY that exists in spite of nothing. Pleasures are no longer repressive, but transgressive, they are heavily coordinated and regulated by bourgeois ideology. Communism will smash such rituals to bits, and all that will emerge will be answerable to the revolution.

Keep your universal Communist love in your pants, love. This entire paragraph, with Rafiq doing his best imitation of Deepdreck Chopra, is just the cutest exercise in dishonesty. Sex scandals are impossible without sexual conservatism, but people don't want sex scandals, they want to fuck, and it was clear to all Marxists as early as Engels's time ("Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state?") that the socialist society would not regulate this but deal with the rational organisation and planning of production.


Behold, Communist society as the logical extension of the ideological messages of Starbucks advertisements. Frankly, whether some areas are more slow to receive it or not, this kind of morality is already inscribed in ruling bourgeois liberal ideology, and the oppositions to it are nothing more than REACTION. Here in the states, hegemonic ideology are not our clownish conservative politicians, but precisely bourgeois-liberalism, postmodern bourgeois-liberalism which, at face value gives us PRECISELY this message.

And again Marxist analysis has been replaced by discourse criticism.


Nonsense! The abolition of wage labor has NOTHING to do with abolishing labor that is constitutive of own's own consumption, it has everything to do with precisely what it sais it is - the abolition of wage labor. That sais nothing about the persistence of different kinds of rationing, and so on.

What a fool Marx was to not know this tenet of Rafiqism and write about the communist society, after the hypothetical period where rationing will be necessary as a "birthmark", governed by the exchange of equal values as a bourgeois principle, distribution is according to need, and not according to how caesar Rafiq deems your labour.


The 'aggregate social product' - now, what does this even mean? The idea that X town located in the Amazon with necessary resources is going to spontaneously fulfill the "wants" of the town in Mongolia is beyond stupid. Sure you can work out a relationship between the two, if world-totality was reducible to two towns, but we're talking about an immensely complex WEB, the entanglement of needs and so on (57 towns needing resources from 3, and 3 needing from 4 of those, and so on and so on and so on) . You cannot have centralization of people's "wants" are assumed to be spontaneously centralized not only on a local level, but on an individual level.

Another jumble of words from which we can only conclude that, one, you ignore the objective socialisation and global reach of modern production, where there are no isolated towns, but nearly each production process requires inputs from across the globe and provides outputs distributed across the same globe, and two, you imagine essentially market relations between towns (towns!) instead of human society, Social Man, organising the global flow of goods, allocation of resources etc.


And you mistaken Marx. The point of Marx is NOT that social obligation itself would be abolished, or that people would perform tasks that are simply the result of their spontaneous whims, but that all individuals would be self-conscious, like Renaissance men capable of performing tasks demanded by SOCIETY in a way that is irreducible to a single profession. The point of significance is NOT the whims of people, or what people spontaneously "WANT" to do, but the specific fixation of social activity by society as DEFINITIVE of one's life being. It may very well be possible that an individual will have to perform this specific task indefinitely, hte point is that one would be unbound by it - one would only do so insofar as they are embedded with the capability of performing a number of other tasks, if need be, and so on. When Marx sais this is - because society regulates general production, there is no DISSONANCE between general production and the labor people are producing - there is no separate "general production" that will exist independently of what we "choose" to do. Each person takes "what they please" he sais, as though "what they please" relegates back to... To what, free will? Human nature? Can we not ask: WHY do they please this?

I mean, what a gross perversion of Marx - his bastardization to conform to the ethics of consumerism. No, Marx's point was very simply that the fixation of social activity will cease to exist, one can become LEARNED in any profession they want and do this. And guess what - his point was that the predispositions to this were ALREADY in capitalism. One can, formally, already choose any profession they want, the problem is that - again - private property. For example, in Asiatic societies, or in Feudalism, on has a specific caste, a specific role, and that's all they're capable of doing - they're not even allowed to learn to do another profession. Marx's point is that in a Communist society, the next step to the dissolution of this, a supersession of capitalist property relations, would be the end of professions as such - wherein in capitalism one can "choose" their profession, in Communism there will be no professions as such.

His point was more to illustrate the nature of CAPITALIST relations and the moving prerogatives of Communists vis a vis their opposition to private property, than some kind of in-depth postulation about what a Communist society will actually look like. If you actually paid attention to the paragraph wherein this quote was derived, you would know that he is dealing ONLY with this.

Rafiq, did you even read the text in question? Does this ring a bell to you at all:

"Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest,” but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. "?

In class society "activity is not voluntary", but an alien power seeming to stand over man, in class society "each man has a... sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape", unlike in communism, there is no "fixation of social activity" in communism and so on - all of this is in direct opposition to your nonsense about Our Committee ordering people to do this and that, undoubtedly lead by Rafiq himself.

I think this is more than enough. Rafiq's Duehringism is not Marxism but a petty power fantasy.

[ckaihatsu]

[T]here will certainly be a government OF men, there will certainly be the regulation of people's behaviors on a collective level, collective discipline, the spirit of self-sacrifice, social cohesion - a Communist society will be closer to a Sparta than [a] Disneyland [...]. Of course, society is not one big "barrack", but I merely illustrate [...] what it takes to maintain freedom.





Marxism posits that the development of human society is determined by the way in which the production of the necessities of human life (not just the means of subsistence) is organised.


The shortcoming of purely 'philosophical' approaches -- even including any 'utopia' imaginings -- is that it becomes difficult to *situate* them into any real-world context, since we *don't know* what that real-world context of the future might really *be*.

Certainly we can *estimate* and *extrapolate*, but what if we're too *optimistic* about the world's abilities and capacities for a socialist future, especially after the period of a necessary (and arguably inevitable) world conflict with the forces of capital -- ?

Or, on the flipside, what if we're too *pessimistic* about our presentation of socialism's potentials, making it sound *worse* even than what capitalism enables today -- ?

Too positive and it sounds unrealistic, like everyone's unmitigated individual volitions would just perfectly fit-together socially, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And, too negative, and it begins to feel nightmarish, like an emergent mass mind would be paramount globally, reducing all individuality to the functioning of neurons in a brain, at best.





Would the 'end goal' communist society have any capital in it whatsoever? (as in, would people still want to be economically compensated for their work instead of, say, just walking to a store and grabbing what you need/want on some form of communal system?)


There *couldn't* be *capital* in a communist society, in the sense of fixed valuations for productive assets, like factories -- by definition communism is about handling production *socially*, which would mean a fully egalitarian, *collective* control over the means of mass production, particularly on the part of those who are doing the actual work of it.

On the issue of people wanting to be *compensated* somehow for their work, that's a different matter, and I happen to have arrived at the conclusion that, yes, some kind of formal societal material consideration would be necessary, depending, because not all tasks can be considered to be equivalent -- just as people's *needs* vary, so do the empirical *tasks* of producing whatever.

Fortunately this objective fact doesn't mean that all *goods* must therefore be valuated abstractly, as we're used to dealing with in today's capitalist exchange-values world. People (consumers) *could* just walk into a store and grab whatever they need or want, based on communal production that enjoys sufficient objective-productivity to *enable* such. (Common food items, no prob -- but if someone is expecting every store to have truffles and cruise ship tickets, then 'productivity' for such 'luxury items' becomes more complex and complicated, and will have to be dealt with more specially -- see my 'labor credits' treatment at post #11.)





Would the society have ANY form of centralized regulation? (and no, police and social justice could still be run by the people.)


You're answering your own question here.





Lastly, do you believe people should receive wages predicated on labor input? I supposed an even better question would be should be have a higher standard of living for working more assiduously, or should there be TOTAL equality irregardless of an individual's actions?


By definition communism *cannot* be predicated on rewards-for-labor, because that kind of correlation automatically implies *commodification* (of labor). (Those who show themselves to be more productive would be more sought-out for this-or-that group, or commune -- necessarily circumscribed by location or physical / geographical space -- and so society would tend to become *stratified* on the basis of communes' varying productivities, by underlying laboring abilities, which would be different from the premise of 'communism'.)

So, instead, what *should* happen is that all social production is *collectivized*, and distributed according to actual individual *need* and want.

The responding argument here, of course, is that everyone would just want to *receive* from social production, and not contribute labor in any way, since no one would be under any *obligation* to do so, and so total social production would be minimal and even potentially *insufficient* for basic human needs.

In such a situation my 'labor credits' system would be relevant, since anything that came to be in significant demand without being materially supplied, would be de-facto 'luxury goods', and the objective conditions for the following dynamic would be present, and the dynamic would empirically initiate:





[If] simple basics like ham and yogurt couldn't be readily produced by the communistic gift economy, and were 'scarce' in relation to actual mass demand, they *would* be considered 'luxury goods' in economic terms, and would be *discretionary* in terms of public consumption.

Such a situation would *encourage* liberated-labor -- such as it would be -- to 'step up' to supply its labor for the production of ham and yogurt, because the scarcity and mass demand would encourage others to put in their own labor to earn labor credits, to provide increasing rates of labor credits to those who would be able to produce the much-demanded ham and yogurt. (Note that the ham and yogurt goods themselves would never be 'bought' or 'sold', because the labor credits are only used in regard to labor-*hours* worked, and *not* for exchangeability with any goods, because that would be commodity production.)

This kind of liberated-production assumes that the means of production have been *liberated* and collectivized, so there wouldn't be any need for any kind of finance or capital-based 'ownership' there.


Also:





[L]et's say that 'work-from-home mattress testing' is the *easiest* work role ever known, and so the multiplier for it is a '1' -- one hour of liberated-labor yields 1 labor credit.

'Spreading manure on a field' happens to be a '4' according to the mass work-role exit survey, but, as things turn out, people have *not* yet automated this kind of farmwork, yet *many* people are demanding beer, which requires this role, and other kinds of farmwork, for its production.

While engineering students and a worldwide legion of hobbyists unobtrusively work in the background on automating this task once-and-for-all, some others note the disparity between supply and demand and opportunistically announce that *they* will do this kind of work, to produce an abundance of beer for the greater region, but only at a multiplier rate of '6'.

Why would *anyone* give a shit about labor credits and agree to do shitwork, even for an increased rate of labor credits, you ask -- ?

Because anyone who can command a *premium* of labor credits, as from higher multiplier rates, are effectively gaining and consolidating their control of society's *reproduction of labor*. Most likely there would be social ('political') factionalism involved, where those who are most 'socially concerned' or 'philosophically driven' would be coordinating to cover as much *unwanted* work territory as possible, all for the sake of political consolidation. Increased numbers of labor credits in-hand would allow a group to *direct* what social work roles are 'activated' (funded), going-forward.

Perhaps it's about colonizing another planet, or about carving high-speed rail networks that criss-cross and connect all seven continents underground. Maybe it's a certain academic approach to history and the sciences, with a cache of pooled labor credits going towards that school of educational instruction. Perhaps it's an *art* faction ascending, funding all kinds of large-scale projects that decorate major urban centers in never-before-seen kinds of ways.

Whatever the program and motivation, society as a whole would be collectively *ceding ground* if it didn't keep the 'revolution' and collectivism going, with a steady pace of automation that precluded whole areas of production from social politics altogether. Technology / automation empowers the *individual* and takes power out of the hands of groups that enjoy cohesiveness based on sheer *numbers* and a concomitant control of social reproduction in their ideological direction. The circulation and usage of labor credits would be a live formal tracking of how *negligent* the social revolution happened to be at any given moment, just as the consolidation of private property is today against the forces of revolutionary politics and international labor solidarity.

[Guardia Rossa]

I request Rafiq and Xhar-Xhar to continue the discussion.
And to please also keep a "level of civility" in their mutual exchanges of 7.62 "NON-MARXIST!1!" bullets.

[Hatshepsut]

Would the society have ANY form of centralized regulation?

I see the debate between Xhar-Xhar and Rafiq as asking what communism is and how it functions. I agree with Rafiq that communism is a disciplined body of social relations. Ideally, it takes the form of self-discipline motivated by class consciousness. That’s why I’m trying to learn more about it. Therefore we can ask how it’s regulated. Under capitalism, labor discipline is maintained by the threats of unemployment and poverty. Lower communism replaces these with cadres and collectives. Higher communism then settles on self-discipline, the consciousness of production and consumption as social activity in a humanity consisting of a single class—the classless society, and on consultation, the reaching of consensus in collectives.

I disagree with Rafiq that production exists for its own sake. Production is half of a cycle of production and consumption. We don’t produce telephones just to pile them up unused until we have a plastic mountain. The production-consumption cycle for telephones then becomes one of a set of such cycles that together comprise an economy. The economy as a social system is then what exists for its own sake in the Marxian view that productive means determine social evolution.

Is communist society consumeristic, seeking out endless novelty, with collection of possessions as the path to status? Those unisex Chinese outfits served a purpose in reminding people the answer is no. All are approximately equal in communism, and status, such as it is, comes from how well one lives an ethos of “from each per ability, to each per need.” Still, needs are relative to a degree; what Americans consider poverty, folks in Cameroon would call wealth. We don’t come to communism with austerity and rigid regimentation as goals, although we’re willing to endure them for a while. We believe it’s the future and set our standards according to our technical capability and the natural resource budget of the planet as a whole, and seek to improve these technologies at a measured pace.


Hmm, do you think it's possible to achieve Communism democratically?

Democratically? Almost certainly not. The bourgeoisie will not quit their preferred position until forced out. This need to use force to effect a revolution then brings paradoxes: Violence corrupts, so that the proletarian revolutionary victors could turn out no less threatening to the physical safety of the proletariat than the capitalists they replace. The need to regulate a post-capitalist economy involves entrusting someone with power. But power corrupts, so that the proletarian revolutionary victors could turn out no more representative of the class interests of the proletariat than the capitalists they replace. They may instead become a new class operating in their own interest, even if they have desisted from accumulation of capital.

The bourgeoisie will point to these contradictions and say, “See, it’s hopeless. There’s nothing better than capitalism. Francis Fukuyama was right and history has ended.” Bullshit. A solution to the power-violence problem hasn’t been found yet. That means solving it should be the first priority of communist theoreticians. I agree with Marx that capitalism, which imposes a parasitic accumulation of capital onto the human production-consumption relation, cannot be the final stage of economic evolution. The next stage will eliminate this inefficiency of parasitic capital. Even the Soviet Union, as far short of the mark as it was, did achieve some success in the direction history calls for. It was just our first large-scale experiment with communism. More experiments will follow, soon in historical terms. And one of them will succeed.

[Guardia Rossa]

We can democratically achieve communism by building a "black State" or alternative State (black as a black Market) and then legitimizing it, expanding it and "seceding" from it by taking it's position without fighting. Or, soviets. But the reactionary factions would declare war on our new, legitimate state. Theorically a peacefull transition to socialism.

Theorically if you secede from the regular state by taking it's place and warring against it, the war would be considered not a revolution and theorically we would have a democratic transition to socialism while in war with another State. Of course, this doesn't makes sense :lol:

You can't have a peacefull transition to socialism not because we don't want, or the State doesn't wants, if there is a upper class it will struggle to keep it that way.

[ckaihatsu]

Democratically? Almost certainly not. The bourgeoisie will not quit their preferred position until forced out. This need to use force to effect a revolution then brings paradoxes: Violence corrupts, so that the proletarian revolutionary victors could turn out no less threatening to the physical safety of the proletariat than the capitalists they replace.


I think this is a spurious conclusion -- certainly any portion of the world revolutionary force could turn out to be like (U.S.) veterans today, a *heterogeneous* demographic mix, in relation to the state and 'power', like any other.

In other words, you seem to be making a fetish of *violence*, as though the whole world's population would automatically *defer* to those revolutionaries who wound up using physical violence in the course of the revolution that overthrew bourgeois rule.

Violence itself is *not* a social basis for power, or rule, itself, and can't be, because it can't be sustained indefinitely and is basically an extreme, volatile form of politics. It's inherently adventuristic and requires underlying common mass support for its sustenance -- a social debt on the part of those being violent which has to be repaid in the form of resulting long-term social *stability* for most. (As proof, U.S. imperialism can no longer go to war at will, as it had more latitude for doing during the 20th century, when it had more political capital / legitimacy in the eyes of the world.)





The need to regulate a post-capitalist economy involves entrusting someone with power.


This is a *horrible* premise -- why would you blithely assume that some kind of *elitism* would be required, following a worldwide proletarian revolution that just *overthrew* such elitist (bourgeois) rule -- ?





But power corrupts, so that the proletarian revolutionary victors could turn out no more representative of the class interests of the proletariat than the capitalists they replace. They may instead become a new class operating in their own interest, even if they have desisted from accumulation of capital.


Again, your assumptions are faulty -- don't you think that collectivist administration is politically and logistically 'doable', or not -- ? -- !

(If it *is*, then the actions of the 'revolutionary' period would be left in the past, in favor of a 'new era' that dissolved the bourgeoisie and proletariat, giving way to worldwide common administration.)


---





We can democratically achieve communism by building a "black State" or alternative State (black as a black Market) and then legitimizing it, expanding it and "seceding" from it by taking it's position without fighting. Or, soviets. But the reactionary factions would declare war on our new, legitimate state. Theorically a peacefull transition to socialism.

Theorically if you secede from the regular state by taking it's place and warring against it, the war would be considered not a revolution and theorically we would have a democratic transition to socialism while in war with another State. Of course, this doesn't makes sense :lol:

You can't have a peacefull transition to socialism not because we don't want, or the State doesn't wants, if there is a upper class it will struggle to keep it that way.


This is all reminiscent of Iraq and Iran....


The Invasion of Iraq: Dollar vs Euro

Re-denominating Iraqi oil in U. S. dollars, instead of the euro

by Sohan Sharma, Sue Tracy, & Surinder Kumar

Z magazine, February 2004

What prompted the U.S. attack on Iraq, a country under sanctions for 12 years (1991-2003), struggling to obtain clean water and basic medicines? A little discussed factor responsible for the invasion was the desire to preserve "dollar imperialism" as this hegemony began to be challenged by the euro.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar_vs_euro.html


Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse

by William Clark, originally published by Media Monitors Network | AUG 8, 2005

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-08-08/petrodollar-warfare-dollars-euros-and-upcoming-iranian-oil-bourse


Iranian oil bourse

The Iranian Oil Bourse (Persian: بورس نفت ایران‎), International Oil Bourse,[1] Iran Petroleum Exchange Kish Exchange[2] or Oil Bourse in Kish[3] (IOB; the official English language name is unclear) also known as Iran Crude Oil Exchange,[4] is a commodity exchange, which opened its first phase on 17 February 2008.[3][5][6][7]

It was created by cooperation between Iranian ministries, the Iran Mercantile Exchange and other state and private institutions in 2005.[8] The history of Iran Mercantile Exchange and its links with the "international trading floor of crude oil and petrochemical products in the Kish Island" (IOB) have been published.[9]

The IOB is intended as an oil bourse for petroleum, petrochemicals and gas in various currencies other than the United States dollar, primarily the euro and Iranian rial and a basket of other major (non-US) currencies. The geographical location is at the Persian Gulf island of Kish which is designated by Iran as a free trade zone.[10]

During 2007, Iran asked its petroleum customers to pay in non US dollar currencies. By December 8, 2007, Iran reported to have converted all of its oil export payments to non-dollar currencies.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The shortcoming of purely 'philosophical' approaches -- even including any 'utopia' imaginings -- is that it becomes difficult to *situate* them into any real-world context, since we *don't know* what that real-world context of the future might really *be*.

But why assume, as you seem to, that socialism is something that will happen at some remote point in the future? Obviously I don't know when and even if the socialist revolution will take place. But the objective conditions for socialism have existed, at this point, for over a century - hence the October Revolution, for example. Socialism is a real possibility now. And it is also a pressing need, both for the proletariat and for human society, because the alternative is only barbarism, and with each passing day that alternative becomes more likely.


Certainly we can *estimate* and *extrapolate*, but what if we're too *optimistic* about the world's abilities and capacities for a socialist future, especially after the period of a necessary (and arguably inevitable) world conflict with the forces of capital -- ?

Or, on the flipside, what if we're too *pessimistic* about our presentation of socialism's potentials, making it sound *worse* even than what capitalism enables today -- ?

Too positive and it sounds unrealistic, like everyone's unmitigated individual volitions would just perfectly fit-together socially, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And, too negative, and it begins to feel nightmarish, like an emergent mass mind would be paramount globally, reducing all individuality to the functioning of neurons in a brain, at best.

I think people are predisposed toward hedging their bets a bit, sounding more pessimistic than the situation warrants so as to not appear "unrealistic". But by the standards of current society, what could be more unrealistic than a classless, marketless, moneyless, stateless society? In any case when we take stock of how much we produce even as capitalism is rotting from within, the stories some people like to spin about how we won't be able to produce enough sugar or whatever become hard to take seriously. We already produce enough sugar the bourgeois state needs to destroy part of it. The civil war is a problem, of course, but again the reconstruction after the civil war will take place in the context of an industrial economy with high levels of automation etc. (this is not really negotiable - if the socialist area loses its industrial base, it's time to drink Kool-Aid and shove sleeping pills down our throat because we will be crushed).

I also don't think people's volitions will all line up magically. The difference between me and Rafiq is that Rafiq thinks the solution is to force people to do things he thinks should be done. (The question then arises, who will force people to do this? Apparently people are too stupid to come to an agreement but there is a special layer of people that isn't too stupid and in fact can make decisions for other people!) I think the way forward is for society to work it out on the basis of free discussion and agreement. Without anyone being forced to do things they don't want to be doing.


I see the debate between Xhar-Xhar and Rafiq as asking what communism is and how it functions. I agree with Rafiq that communism is a disciplined body of social relations. Ideally, it takes the form of self-discipline motivated by class consciousness. That’s why I’m trying to learn more about it. Therefore we can ask how it’s regulated. Under capitalism, labor discipline is maintained by the threats of unemployment and poverty. Lower communism replaces these with cadres and collectives. Higher communism then settles on self-discipline, the consciousness of production and consumption as social activity in a humanity consisting of a single class—the classless society, and on consultation, the reaching of consensus in collectives.

As per above, I don't deny discipline is necessary in socialism. If our steel plant has been assigned a certain target, X units of steel, and we're going to make much less because Geoff is drunk all day and needs to be babysat so he doesn't kill himself or others, then we're going to talk to Geoff and if it comes to that refuse to work with him. But this is self-discipline, we won't have some "socialist" police arresting Geoff and we certainly won't force Geoff to do things he doesn't like. The conflict here is not discipline vs. indiscipline but individual choice in matters such as what tasks any member of society will preform vs. people being forced to do work - and it would be work - they don't want to do - effectively the administration of things and direction of processes of production vs. government over men.

[Rafiq]

Xhar-Xhar, why do you deliberately lie? When I call you out on utter fucking bullshit, or at least - an IRREVERSIBLY, UNQUESTIONABLE mistake, you simply skim through, shrug it off and ignore it? Do me a favor for once: Actually own up to what you fucking say. Which means, I expect you to thoroughly address all of the rebuttals I've given you regarding certain allegations, I want you to back up and defend, for example, the allegation that Rafiq spoke of "evolutionary" conditioning in such a way, and so on. Or wait, do I really just want to see you squirm? Of course you can't respond, of course you can't do this. Because you basically just throw a bunch of shit against the wall and hope some will stick. You don't actually believe your drivel - which is why you have this attitude of "Oh, well whatever, I could have been right maybe". Try again.


but what I refuse to do is get involved in another "discussion" where Rafiq just posts snippets of his previous

Here, Xhar-Xhar basically admits he is quite conscious not only in his blatant misrepresentations, deliberate ignorance and vulgarization of my points , but of the very pathetic fact that the response to his own rebuttal is already present in my previous post - passively judging him already. I am actually quite excited for this discsusion, particularly the parts where we will discuss how apparently recognizing that wants and desires are not sufficient unto themselves translate into "Rafiq deciding what people want". It is a beautiful expression of the ethics of postmodern consumerist society, wherein IF we do not recognize the sacred wants of the consumer as being of their own free will, of their own free whims, then somehow this means "We will decide for them", as though we replace the subjectivity of the consumer with another all-powerful subject - the idealist philistines cannot even think outside of this logic, they are forever bound to the dichotomy of free choice and its restriction, between ritualistic hedonism and ascetic totalitarianism. The philistines cannot understand that choice and its restriction are one and the same, of the same totality, that one cannot exist without the other in capitalist society - that there is no pedophile priest without the pious priest and vice versa. We smash the yin and yang with the hammer of Communism. But we get ahead of ourselves already:


And this is far from the only time Rafiq's replies consists of irrelevant banalities. If I listed them all, I would be here all day, something I really haven't the slightest inclination for. But it is important to establish the sort of intellectual level we are dealing with.

Indeed, the intellectual level we find ourselves is one wherein Xhar-Xhar repetitively admits that he is not even intellectually equipped with addressing the substantive point of my arguments - but as any philistine, his own disability is taken as a measurement of the argument itself he so eagerly struggles to understand. Now, Xhar-Xhar, instead of this baseless, haughty posturing, instead of this arrogant philistinism, you are always free to ask what I mean when it is patently obvious you do not understand. Let us proceed step by step, don't worry, I know how difficult this is for you, so we'll work it out slow. You claim:

It makes no sense to call yourself a socialist unless you hold that socialism is a real possibility, and a real possibility can't be reduced to an empty abstract negation.

Now, embedded in this argument is a pretense to the notion that socialism merely becomes an abstract negation if one does not truly believe that it is possible. Am I wrong? I simply reply with:

And the point that you're missing is that what distinguishes Communism from merely being an abstract negation, has absolutely nothing to do with believing the viability of this or that is possible (Which, ironically, could only ever be abstract, considering that there is no organic predispositions to this utopia embedded in any real moving force - the party - in the 21st century) rather the point is that Communism is an affirmative force precisely because it derives from the present state of things, each reform, each concession, and each particular struggle of Communism has absolutely nothing to do with bringing society closer to this ridiculous dream-world you have posited, rather it pertains and concerns the conquest of political power first and foremost.

There are a number of possibilities here. Either Xhar-Xhar has the intellectual capacity of a 12 year old, or he is deliberately attempting to justify his basic dismissal of my argument as "irrelevant" by picking and choosing which snippets he wants to give us to illustrate this allegation. For example, Xhar-xhar conveniently leaves out, when quoting himself, the following phrase: and a real possibility can't be reduced to an empty abstract negation, precisely because without it it might indeed look like my response was irrelevant. And why does he do this? Quite succinctly, because he has no response for us. It is a deadlock for him, as we will demonstrate bellow.


Someone should have told Marx this great truth of Rafiqism. If this had been done he might not have written in the "Class Struggles in France" things like:

Xhar-Xhar again demonstrates his tendency to simply drop-quote texts which either gravely contradict him, or might have a semblance of similarity to his argument by merit of a phrase or two taken out of context. But let's evaluate what Marx is actually trying to say, in context:


"While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another – the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui. This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations."

Firstly, the context in question is not any argument that the ends-in-itself is the Communist movement that derives from the present state of things. Marx is not attempting to illustrate the point that the class-dictatorship, or the Communist movement is a means to an ends. Attempting to state this, while it is PATENTLY OBVIOUS IF ONE EVALUATES THE CONTEXT OF THE FUCKING PARAGRAPH that it is not true, is the epitome of dishonesty. And that is saying something, if we're talking about Xhar-Xhar. No, precisely what Marx is attacking, IRONICALLY, are those who attempt to DIVORCE the desire of (NOT "TOWARD") the abolition of class distinctions generally from the real-existing movement and the struggle for the conquest of power and class dictatorship. Either Xhar-Xhar is an intellectual masochist, or his drivel is so divorced from Marxism that he can't even manage to quote a single fucking paragraph from Marx that doesn't automatically contradict what he's trying to say. Of all the things you could have taken out of context, of all the paragraphs you could have quoted to suit your argument, from either Marx, Engels or Lenin, why oh why do you drop-quote something that literally could have been used against you without any further elaboration, or explanation whatsoever? One could think, almost, that Marx was responding to Xhar-Xhar himself - of course this cannot be the case, however, when we evaluate the fact that the phrase-mongering philistine he is, he will be the first to proclaim "No, the class struggle is important, society cannot be replaced with mere 'good ideas' alone". Of course, the point you're missing is that you argument emanates precisely an ideal that which society will have to adjust itself, of course, postulated as being testament to your belief that "Socialism is really, really possible". The socialism you give us is a false one, not simply because it is "impossible" but because again - YOU YOURSELF DO NOT BELIEVE IT, and you're quite sincere about being a phrase-mongerer.

What that means is that of course you don't just use empty phrases while CONSCIOUSLY thinking that you do not believe this - rather, you try to make something come close to sounding like it is viable in order to justify the identity you have built around yourself that necessitates belief in an alternative society. But this is precisely the criticism of Utopian socialism leveled by Marx, this is precisely why Marx EXPLICITLY stated that Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. What does Marx mean by this? He means THERE IS EFFECTIVELY NO COMMUNISM that is outside of the movement which derives from the present state of things, from the here and the now. Any possibility of a future society is embedded in controversies unique to present society, to the antagonisms, so to speak, of present-day society. To say that all of "this", the class struggle and the proletarian dictatorship, are merely means-to-an-ends begs the question of how, from a materialist perspective, can we even imagine the "ends" in any real way? Where does this "ends" come from, the whimsical brain-work of individual pedants whom have simply discovered that their fantasy can be realized by merit of material conveniences in existence, or the postulated result of real struggles that pertain solely to capitalist society? What you fail to understand is precisely this point: When Marx, Engels, and Lenin speak of the "end goal" of socialism, they do NOT refer to present events as being means to an ends. They simply answer the basic question of where such struggles would take the Communist movement and the implications this would have for society - ultimately, the POSSIBILITY of Communism is merely a justification for the pervading, relentless and uncompromising struggles that pertain to today, without which, many of the various reforms that citizens of liberal countries enjoy, could not and would not have been realized. Of course the point is to illustrate how having no illusions of reformism whatsoever was practically the only means by which the reforms that are oh-so beloved by liberals (Bernie Sanders) were able to have been realized. Of course, Xhar-Xhar wil try to construe this - Communism as deriving from the present state of things, as an argument that it is capitalism without capitalism, but Marx explicitly refers to this in the paragraph he himself conceives as somehow "proving" the non-Marxism of my point: while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows. It is clear that when Marx refers to Communism deriving from the present state of things, he is NOT referring to the wants projected by capitalist society - ESPECIALLY in the age of de-industrialized consumerism he was never able to live long enough to see, as somehow forming the basis of production in a socialist society. He was referring to the fact that precisely EVEN THE MERE INSISTENCE of Communism derives from present antagonisms and STRUGGLES, not some kind of abstract utopia that which material conveniences find themselves able to conform to. That is why Marx and Engels seldom spent time discussing what a communist society will look like, or function as: Because at that point, beyond the proletarian dictatorship, we only have a society wherein production is organized on lines that are self-conscious, we can say nothing about how it would actually function or how it would look, because these projections stem from abstractions of the here and now, none the less an epoch wherein there isn't even a Communist MOVEMENT yet that isn't just the vestige of the 20th century. Of course, talking to a Spart, what's to fucking talk about here?

Communism simply represents and encapsulates the hope that things today do not have to exist as they are, it is the ambiguous and vague horizon which is scientific NOT because it is a blueprint, but because it stands as the negation of the ideology, mysticism and superstition that is presently in its place, which by default has positive, affirmative implications: A society that is self-conscious socially, scientific, etc.


And now Rafiq, because he can't actually address anything I wrote, has to invent positions for me. No, Rafiq mon amour, I never insinuated there to be any kind of human nature and at this point, I don't even think you are deluding yourself into thinking I have, I think you're lying.

But this is how ideology works - you don't have to be consciously aware that you insinuated or implied this, fool, you directly imply it either way. Which is why, conveniently, you repetitively ignore the argument at hand: What is the source of these human wants and needs? Xhar-Xhar wants to pass their existence within capitalist society as the basis of those that would persist in a socialist society. Again, all the stores, markets and shelves, all the worthless shit - but everything is free. Now of course you insinuate the existence of a kind of human nature, for the unavoidable reason that he thinks that the wants and needs of humans exist objectively, but will be fulfilled in a more efficient fashion in a post-capitalist society, and that history, every mode of production is merely the way in which "objective human needs and wants" are fulfilled. But it is not the mode of production that which is the tool of men and women, rather, men and women are the instruments of the process of production, answerable only to itself and its reproduction. The reproduction of a SOCIETY is the only basis that which there can exist the reproduction of individual men and women, without which, there is NOTHING. Of course, Xhar-Xhar, with the mind of an ass, tells us that the implications of this is that production will take precedent over human wants - which of course conveniently presupposes that human wants exist objectively! Tell me, fool, if I insinuated that production will exist before human wants are considered, what on Earth do you imagine I posit to be the basis of production? Who would be magically embedded with the ability to know this?

My POINT is that human wants and needs would be entirely different, so much so to the point that using consumerist capitalist society as the basis, as the quota that which another mode of production would have to fulfill is FAULTY. Of course, for someone who thinks the proletarian dictatorship can happen tomorrow, of course he believes society as it exists now is simply a ready-made base for a socialist society - he does not understand that before there can be any revolution, the energy of the majority of society, of the working masses, must be invested in striving for a new tomorrow, social-self consciousness must be practically present in the productive basis of society - the working masses and those dispossessed (your own words) whom have nothing to lose. What that means? It means that through the course of struggle, through the course of the sophistication of the Communist MOVEMENT (which Xhar-Xhar thinks is already alive in the Spartacus cult), a fundamentally different, more sophisticated and more accurate picture of what a post-capitalist society, or should I say - a proletarian dictatorship, would develop. We are responsible for our fantasies, we do not choose them whimsically, for just like Iphones and Starbucks cappuccinos, there are vast ideological mechanisms at play which shape our desires and fantasies, which shape our vision of the future, even - which of course all relegate back to the social antagonism. Trying to give us a picture of a Communist society in such detail (I.e. "You can just take what you want) when there isn't even a fucking SEMBLANCE of a Communist movement, nay, a semblance of a Communist IDEA can only inevitably result in a gross perversion of society - an idealization of present society without any shadows.

What is the lesson of Marxism? The socialist consciousness of the intelligentsia is reciprocal - it builds off of the worker's movement that it leads to class dictatorship, no one ever just "knows" and then proceeds from there. Marx and Engels encapsulated this best - who can say that the Marx and Engels of 1844 learned nothing from practical experience and action, up to the Marx and Engels of 1880? Who could have said that the conspiracy of the equals like by Babeuf, who were basically bourgeois ideologues, wouldn't have learned anything from the vast swaths of proto-proletarian Frenchmen joining their movement - UNDOUBTEDLY this would have changed the character of the conspiracy!

You cannot answer, because I NEVER INSINUATED SUCH A THING. IN FACT, MY WHOLE ARGUMENT HAS NOT BEEN ABOUT HOW A SOCIALIST SOCIETY SHOULD CONDUCT ITSELF, BUT HOW XHAR-XHAR'S POSTULATION OF ONE IS A PERVERSE FANTASY. All we can understand is what a socialist society COULD NOT be, and I have demonstrated this much about your postulation of one.


It's completely bizarre - we are talking about the needs of human beings living in human society. Saying that needs on an "evolutionary level" amount to subsistence is completely baffling as evolution does not deal with needs. The idea here is to reduce the Marxist notion of human need to the principle of the poorhouse, the bare reproduction of labour-power, and to dress it up as "science" by the use of the buzzword "evolutionary". How very un-Marxist Marx was being when talking about tobacco and dance halls. Or was it that he was un-Rafiqist?

Listen, philistine, if you actually paid attention to the FUCKING CONTEXT from which I said "evolutionary level", you would understand that MY ONLY POINT WAS THAT EVEN IF THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS OBJECTIVE HUMAN NEEDS AND WANTS, ON AN EVOLUTIONARY LEVEL THIS COULD ONLY PRACTICALLY AMOUNT TO BARE SUBSISTENCE AND SURVIVAL. If society generates the standards of wants and needs, which I BEFORE ANYONE ELSE recognize with utmost conviction, then using capitalist society as a basis for measuring what people want and need is plainly fucking ridiculous. And of course, when Marx uses such abstractions - they are meant to convey external examples which pertain to entirely different arguments, NOT A DIRECT PRETENSE to how production would be conducted in a socialist society, but to illustrate a point about capitalist society. And of course we refer to needs as necessities of life, which include survival, otherwise we wouldn't distinguish them from wants at all. But I can't believe how fucking TWISTED, how DISHONEST you are. Ladies and gentlemen, look at the context from which this was wrought:

what he implies - that human wants and needs are somehow trans-historic, somehow not relegated back to how they REPRODUCE conditions of PRODUCTION, which truly exists in and for itself. This is the lesson of Marx - production does not exist to satisfy "Human needs and wants" (which on an "evolutionary" level amount to NOTHING more than subsistence), production exists for its own sake.

Is there a semblance of a notion that human needs relegate back to "evolutionary" impulses? No, my point was that IF THERE WAS a trans-historic human need, it would have to be bare subsistence "conditioned" by evolution, such as satisfying hunger. My point was PRECISELY THAT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO SATISFY HUMAN NEEDS AS SUCH, BECAUSE HUMAN NEEDS IN ANY SOCIETY ARE MUCH MORE COMPLEX THAN BARE SUBSISTENCE. My point? What is trans-historic in human needs is NOT ENOUGH to form a basis for what those needs would present themselves as in a socialist society and NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING more. For fuck's sake. He accuses me of trying to dress things up as "scientific" by talking about "evolution" as a cheap buzzword. Are you literally incapable of understanding contexts? Are you literally incapable of understanding an argument in its particular manifestation, or do you just love peddling back upon archetypes that you encounter, in order to find a semblance of meaning in my posts? Like, Xhar-Xhar actually thinks to himself, when he types, that Rafiq was trying to use "evolutionary" as anything but ironic - he attempts to construe that the goal was - rather than illustrating the point that human needs are RELEGATED BACK TO REPRODUCING CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION, that I was merely trying to sound "scientific". And this Philistine has the audacity, the haught to carry himself as though he emanates the same tone of all of the heroes of our tradition against philistines like Duhring - fool, it is so blasphemous that you would even mention Marx that one conjures up images of a re-enactment of the Spanish inquisition built on controversies in Marxist theory in a way that is, so to speak, not provoking of hostile sentiments. The fact of the matter is that when Engels dealt with duhring, he DEALT WITH DUHRING, he did not deal with Duhring desperately using the tone of a previous famous controversy, he dealt with Duhring for WHAT HE WAS. And on this account, you absolutely fucking fail - the fact that you have to fall back on previous controversies which at best have nothing to do with the discussion at hand (and more likely, actually are your own theoretical undoing) proves that you're not even suited to engage in this discussion, on an intellectual level. You're either too immature, or you're regularly being monitored by the Sparts psychologically or literally, so as to not fall out of line of book-club-circus's doctrine (this however may afford them too much credit, for at least a book club actually... Reads).


The "evolutionary" nonsense is the lead-up to the real corker here - the notion that production "exists for its own sake". First of all this is terrible nonsense even if we ignore for now the discrepancy between this sort of "producerism" and Marxism, as unless we accept the existence of the lord God, nothing exists for a reason unless consciously made by intelligent beings, or at any rate by humans. And while humans consciously undertake certain tasks, make certain objects etc., the entire process of production and the manner in which it is organised is not the conscious creation of men - in fact raising it to the level of the conscious creation of man is pretty much the point of revolutionary socialism.

At last, we have new words coined - "producerism" as though there is an actual dichotomy here with Marxism. I absolutely adore how you go ahead and basically admit that you're an idealist - precisely in the sense that Marx and Engels referred to when outlining the materialist conception of history. No, Xhar-Xhar, a mode of production is not consciously made by intelligent beings (With the exception of Communism, of course), that is to say, production is its own reason. Xhar-Xhar literally gives us an idealist conception of ontology wherein reason and INTENT are inevitably identified with each other. He doesn't understand the point: When we say, for example, that the biological organism exists for no other reason than its own sake, we do not refer to conscious intent, or a god, we refer explicitly to the fact that there is none - it is sufficient unto itself. Likewise, the social domain, a society, exists for its own sake, it has an inner-logic (which is only logic when we approach it consciously, of course) of its own. Of course, Marxism is not absurdism - Marxists recognize the universe as lawful (Laws which are only wrought out from the practical relationship between human consciousness and the world around it) to say something exists for "no reason" is to presuppose idealism. It is precisely why Marxists are not existentialists - existentialism is the perpetual disappointment with the non-existence of a god. Conversely materialists recognize that the world does exist for a reason - because reason and conscious intent are not inherently linked, the only thing which binds them is the conscious intent of UNDERSTANDING the reason.

What that means is quite simple: If one sais, for example, that the tree exists for no reason, one cannot contrast the existence of the tree with the existence of a moon. That is because divorcing reason with intent is precisely the point of materialism - there is no CONSCIOUS meaning behind any of it, but that does not mean it is not rationally conceivable. The idealist ontology, for example, will answer the basically theological question of "Why does X exist, rather than not exist?" by saying there is no reason, while a Marxist will quite amply posit the counter-question: Why would it NOT exist? Likewise, a mode of production exists for its own sake, and what does that mean? It means a society only exists to reproduce society, the only medium of human existence. A communist society is self-conscious NOT because it is simply self-conscious of what goods it is producing and for who (For your own example, German war-time state capitalism disproves this qualification for self-consciousness - nay, the various asiatic/caste societies that have existed throughout history disprove it quite thoroughly) but precisely because it is conscious of itself socially on a historic level - it is conscious of itself as a society. For this reason I stress its everlasting militancy, its discipline in the spirit of self-sacrifice, collective society-wide solidarity: Society is facilitated through social exercise, and rituals will exist to reproduce it - social rituals, so to speak (rather than superstitious ones). If society exists for its own sake, so too does a self-conscious society, with the contradiction persisting between the mind and the world around it forever. The great cynic Xhar-Xhar cannot seem to comprehend the fact that all meaning, all - dare I say, spiritual vitality of a society, all inherently ontological questions bound up with any society, will remain in approximation to the new conditions of life and production. The notion that humanity is a cynical conglomeration of Revleft Xhar-Xhar's who seek passively this or that emanates the same naivity that would befall someone who basically conceives socialism as an extra-ordinary idiosyncrasy beside the rest of his bourgeois pathological superstitions. Socialism will require the same aggrandous emotional investment, the same spiritual transformation and all the trauma with it that is basically constitutive of all historic change.

Xhar-Xhar, the great cynic, is under the impression that the same alien false egotism which befalls present-day capitalist society, this "individualist" privilege, so to speak, will persist in a post-capitalist society. The positive implications of this is not what draws our attention - of course these are all abstractions - the mere implications of this notion in pertinence to his actual ideological composition IN THE HERE AND NOW is what is of true concern - that is to say, Xhar-Xhar's relation to the struggle today is what is really being revealed, not this or that abstract preference. But more on this later (vis a vis Xhar-Xhar's 3rd grade conception of love).


And again, this "production existing for its own sake" has nothing to do with Marxism. Marxism posits that the development of human society is determined by the way in which the production of the necessities of human life (not just the means of subsistence) is organised. Rafiq strips this thought of everything but production, as if we can discuss production without discussing the life of the human species, and as if history were driven by statistics about the production of pig iron.

Ladies and gentlemen, want to see how you literally turn an argument into ash while barely even having to think? You say, firstly, the necessities of human life is a standard that regularly changes throughout history - the mechanism owed to this change is not the consumerist giest, but to the class struggle, in other words, things that uniquely relegate back to the process of production and the social antagonisms constitutive of it.

You then say, as a secondary matter, that production does not only concern industrial production, but the production of all things that separate man from a naked animal running around in the forest with only his bare fists to hunt (in other words, not a person at all, but an actual animal).

Xhar-Xhar insinuates that there is an independent standard of human desire and want (which we will get to bellow where he quotes Mandel) that exists separately from the conditions of production in a society, or more concisely, that has a mind of its own at the very least. Xhar-Xhar here insinuates that human want and need is answerable only to itself, that which the process of production is merely an instrument to which it can become realized. Human want and need is the ends-in-itself, we can imagine that class society arises from the ability of some being able to fulfill their needs and wants better than others, rather than different relationships to the process of production itself. The logic is consumerist (IDEOLOGICALLY) precisely because it is our postmodern consumerist society which posits precisely this - that from the "free choice" of the consumer arises the free choice of the subject to constitute his own identity, his own ideology, and so on. But this "free choice" is a sham, there is nothing free about it all, it mechanically relegates back to the needs and wants of capital. But nevermind this. To state this in 1844 would be forgivable at best, but to state this in 2015 in a society which literally has to generate needs and wants artificially, dare I say, even "scientifically" is the epitome of ridiculousness. Any idiot can see that consumerism is ritualistic, it takes on almost a theological dimension. People only desire commodities insofar as they are PRACTICALLY useful only as a secondary matter - the primacy of course relegates back to Marx's commodity fetishism, how social relations are conveyed through commodities themselves, which is all the more pertinent for our de-industrialized consumer society. But of course the great cynical Marxist (With a capital M) Xhar-Xhar will have none of that - things produced in capitalist society are just because "people want them", and socialism will assume this role in a more efficient manner.

Good on Xhar-Xhar for transforming Communism into the logical conclusion of neoliberal economics. Throw in some rational choice theory in there, why don't you?


it's meaningless because you string words together without regard for anything other than sounding impressive to the critical theory crowd.

Look at this arrogant philistine, everyone - can you believe the audacity? Allow me to rephrase myself: It doesn't matter if this society you describe is in-actuality possible or not, because you posit it as possible NOT BECAUSE you actually think it is possible deep in your heart, but because it derives from a pathology. That is to say, there is no concern for its actual possibility that is embedded in your presentation of it (the society).

I don't actually fucking believe you can't understand this, it's more likely that you're literally so dishonest, so intellectually bankrupt that you can't respond. "If I can't address it, it doesn't have no meaning". Good, our great cynical Marxist!


The technical level of society is already such that the production of goods needed to satisfy many basic needs exceeds the aggregate need for them, e.g. the production of food as measured in kcal per person.

That sais nothing about whether we are in a position to literally just throw all of our shit into a fucking corner with a sign saying "take wut u want, infinite supply lul". We are not in that position. Of course we can feed the world today many times over. That doesn't say anything about the absence of rationing as a necessity, at least for now - you can't understand this. Even if we can feed every individual right now 10,000 calories a day, there would still need to be rationing. It's one thing to satisfy "many basic needs", it's another thing to be able to satisfy those needs in such a way where you don't even have to ration them. To think that we are presently in this position is beyond fucking stupid.


It amuses me that anyone on the left uses terms like "consumerism" with a straight face, but there you have it. What is consumerism? It's the "bad" capitalism of conservative nightmare, where people may buy porn and perhaps someone can live comfortably without their ancestors living in poverty for at least three generations as per the Protestant work ethic. But squabbles between the factions of the bourgeoisie don't interest us.

You know, Xhar-Xhar, every time you say something I literally think about whether I myself am becoming as stupid as you are by even concerning this. If a child told me what you just said above, for example, I'd shrug it off.

First of all, CONSUMERISM IS NOT A CONTROVERSY. THERE IS NO SQUABBLE BETWEEN "FACTIONS" OF THE BOURGEOISIE IN PERTINENCE TO IT. IT REFERS TO AN OBJECTIVE SOCIAL CONDITION, AND AN OBJECTIVE QUALIFICATION OF CAPITALISM IN POST-INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS. There is no non-capitalist consumerism. Postmodern consumerist ethics are the de-facto hegemonic ideological discourse of capitalist society, even in so-called developing countries. It has nothing to fucking do with some kind of moral crime, or some kind of ethical criticism - when I refer to consumerism, I quite amply refer to a real material and social phenomena, and the idea that this is reducible to people "living better than their ancestors in poverty" is so beyond fucking stupid that I should probably just off myself now. I can't actually believe a self-proclaimed Marxist thinks and argues like this. I can't actually fucking believe what I'm reading.

Remember what I said before, everyone? How Xhar-Xhar can't even argue like an adult, how he must conform every single fucking argument in terms of the archetypes he's familiar with - as though (let me fucking vomit for a second at the face of this BLATANT fucking ignorance) I'm a left-liberal moralist talking about consumerism in such a way... My fucking god!


And again, saying "people are not magically embedded with being able to see the bigger picture when they desire iPhones and whatever" doesn't mean anything. Some people try to appear oh-so-smart by using synonyms until it's not immediately clear what is being meant, saying "we utilised a linear distance analyser" instead of "we used a ruler", but you seem to do that then randomly replace words with entirely unrelated words. "Embedded with being able to see"? Oh dear.

You know, what the fuck are you even talking about that this makes no sense? HOW THE FUCK does this not make sense? How does it not make sense that people are not ingrained with the ability to actually act in such a way that is in consideration of the bigger picture of things that which they rely on? Are you literally stupid? Do you FUCKING THINK when people buy iphones, they magically are able to take into account a measurement of all the blood of African children that was necessary to mine the precious minerals that went into their device? Do you think that they're actually thinking about, at that precise moment, the labor that went into the iPhone, and so on? "For capitalist society only with its alienation" you will say, but that is besides the point - a town in Mongolia's wants are not going to intrinsically take into account the wants and needs of a town in central America. End of fucking story. Of course, they will take these into account with a heavily structured, coordinated and socially regulated society, but that is far from the playground you're positing MUST exist to fit your precious qualifications (I.e. saying "Why would we want it otherwise?"). That means, oh Xhar-Xhar, that people's precious wants and desires might sometimes have to be curtailed for the greater good. The world is not in association because of magic, philistine, it is presently in association because of capital. A self-conscious society would have to assume the responsibility of administrating a world in association that does not rely on the superstition of markets and capital, which means there is no room for relying on the spontaneous inclinations of this or that locality, things would have to be consciously planned and coordinated.

Of course, the philistine Xhar-Xhar tries and tells us that while society will be planned to suit "human wants", the levels of consumption wouldn't have to correlate with a consideration of the labor being put it in to produce them. That is beyond fucking contradictory, and amply, plainly, and unambiguously stupid, because until the world is 100% automatized labor will have to fulfill the demands of the plans, too. Does Xhar-Xhar prophesize a return to hunter-forager bands or something?


But the intention is clear - people are stupid and moreover evil and need caesar Rafiq (or at least Rafiq, praetorian prefect) and his ilk to tell them what to do lest they ruin everything. And, again, this has nothing to do with Marxist socialism, which assumes anyone with basic numeracy and the ability to write can participate in the administration of the socialist society, although it has a lot with Duehring's "socialitarianism". But then have the resolve to state so.

Here is what Rafiq said, from which Xhar-Xhar, the great Marxist, draws the conclusion that he is saying "people are stupid and evil so Rafiq should make decisions for them (?)":

This has nothing to do with keeping "human nature" in check, but everything to do with the fact that freedom is not free - people are not magically embedded with an ability to act holistically, and the dissonance between local and central, between this city and that city, between this region and that, and so on will have to be regulated with some kind of centralized, trans-geographic force

Not only did I not make the allegation that humans are essentially stupid or evil (?), I explicitly and deliberately stated THERE ARE NO ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PERTINENCE. My POINT, my FUCKING POINT was that people are not magically embedded with the ABILITY to act in a way that emanates consideration of what is holistic - this has nothing to do with any purported stupidity or intelligence, but the fact that - big surprise - people are INDIVIDUALS who have their own lives in their own surroundings, not all-knowing, all-powerful gods who are able to give a shit about something that is so irreducibly beyond them and their daily needs and wants. I have stated nothing more and nothing less - the idea that the consumer patterns of individuals will "naturally" or "autonomously" or whatever the fuck you want to describe the whimsical expression of their so-called "free will" be "rational" from a productive standpoint is plainly fucking stupid. There is no human nature - humans act literally at random and by chance, there is no inherent meaning to it.

Of course, none of this concerns any policy of positive DECISION making, i.e. whether Xhar-Xhar should be Caesar or not, but the pathological dimension to it - the ideological implications of this insofar as one strives to understand present-day society in general. Which means what? It means, we will never be forced to actually "impose" this or that on people, because a Communist society from the onset entails mass-mobilized energetic enthusiasm of most of the people it concerns. Conversely for Xhar-Xhar, he thinks the political struggle is obsolete - all we do now is sit back, wait for the mythic moment of revolution to magically transpire and people as they exist now will simply be "freed". My very Practically modest point is one of prediction, not decision making: People will HAVE to conform to a new social order - there is never a natural blank slate, never a "return" to any human condition, for nature itself is the greatest sham of all. That is to say, there is no big other to fall back on, there is no god, no destiny, no geist (as such), absolutely no guarantee of the success of Communism without the conscious will, sacrifice, struggle and intuitions of men and women.


It also clashes, not just with Marxist assumptions, but with empirical data, as Mandel (for example) discusses with the example of food in his reply to Alec Nove:

"Not only does elasticity of demand tend towards zero and into the negative from the top of the priority list downwards, item per item, with each successive stage of economic growth. It also tends to do so by major categories of needs. Per capita consumption of staple foods (bread, potatoes, rice and so on) in the richest industrialized countries is today definitely dropping both in absolute physical quantities and in percentage of national expenditure in monetary terms. So is consumption of native fruit and vegetables and, at least in money values, of basic underwear and socks, as well as elementary items of furniture. Statistics also show that, in spite of growing differentiation of tastes and goods (many varieties of bread and cake, a much greater range of food and clothing generally), the overall consumption of food and clothing and footwear tends to become saturated and even starts to decline, measured in terms of calorie-intakes, square metres of cloth and pairs of shoes. These realities completely refute the bourgeois and Stalinist belief in a limitless growth of the needs of ordinary people. Nothing is further from the truth, as measurable by actual consumer behaviour. Saturation of basic needs is a verifiable trend in the West, not only because of a decline in their intensity once a certain threshold is passed, but also because of a change in motivation. Rational consumption patterns tend to replace supposedly instinctive desires to consume more and more

Here what is ‘rational’ does not need to be ‘dictated’ (should not be dictated) either by market forces or by bureaucratic planners or know-all experts. It emerges from growing consumers’ maturity itself, as people’s priorities shift and their self-interest becomes more self-aware.

Xhar-Xhar openly admits his true desire: Capitalism without capitalism. He attempts to divorce the "rational" process of consumer demand with the process of capitalism (market forces) in general, but there is absolutely no way one can go about this. You can't have your fucking cake and eat it too - the fact of the matter is that under the backdrop of these fluctuations of consumer want are processes of production, irreducible to the wants of the consumer, which are artificial. That is to say, the tendency described has absolutely fuck all to do with what people want in spite of changes in capitalist production, but precisely because of them. This saturation is conceived under the backdrop of the increased socialization of labor and the strengthening of the monopoly-bureaucratic apparatus, it has absolutely nothing to fucking do with the fact that people - get this, folks - naturally or spontaneously become "more mature" and "more self-aware" in their demands and wants in a way that rationally approximates itself holistically. Do you actually fucking believe what you're saying? Like do you ACTUALLY think this? In fact, the reality is that the consumer's "maturity" is NOT an objective social fact that takes on a trans-historic dimension, but exists under the backdrop of real changes in capitalist production, again, irreducible to levels of consumption, either. Have you ever thought, for example, of the reality that this isn't just about levels of consumption, but how goods are consumed IN APPROXIMATION to wider concerns (i.e. for example, ecology)? It is already a straw-man, because even if this is wholly correct, that total levels of consumption have declined, that sais nothing about whether consumption "rationally" approximates itself to wider social considerations.

I mean this is the fucking point of alienation, this is the fucking point of the contradictions inherent to capitalist production - there is no rational mechanism to facilitate this, whether in capitalism or otherwise, because for a rational mechanism to exist implies conscious regulation of how and what things are consumed. What constitutes a "rational consumption pattern", for example? But nevermind this, the point was never to claim that people should live in permanent austerity - the point is that people's wants and desires are NOT spontaneous, but - a great deal of them at least - are artificial and exist only to reproduce capitalist society. The wants, and needs of a population in an entirely different mode of production will necessarily be different insofar as they REPRODUCE ACTIVELY a new state of being. For someone who probably things Communism is merely a state of passivity, how would I be so naive as to think I can actually get this across, though?


Since time immemorial, humanity has hovered on the brink of famine and starvation. Even in our own century, this has been the plight of the great majority of the population of the planet. Under these conditions, it is only natural that human beings should be obsessed with eating. Five years of acute food shortages in continental Europe during World War II were enough to set off a veritable explosion of gluttony once something like ‘unlimited food consumption’ became possible again after 1945 (in some European countries much later). But how long did this spree last? Less than twenty years after food had once again become relatively plentiful (just one generation!), priorities started to shift dramatically. Eating less became the rule, not eating more. Health became more important than satiety. This change was not due to the ‘imposition’ of new consumption patterns by doctors or the health industry. It was the instinct of self-preservation that prompted it. Long before the health industry had emerged, similar alterations of outlook were discernible among the rich ‘who had realized socialism for themselves’."

Lovely, because the survival of humanity has largely been precarious, "it is only natural that people should be obsessed with food". Yes? How is this "naturally" facilitated, by what mechanisms, that is? The reality is that what you claim implies no causation whatsoever - it is PURE, baseless speculation which itself lazy thinking. "Dur, da people didnt have lots o food during da war so when dey did dey wanted 2 eat as much as possible but den stopped". Like where do you get this shit from? The reality is that following WWII, people's consumption patterns vis a vis food drastically spiked NOT BECAUSE people happened to be so happy to be free from nutritional precarity, but because again the rise of shameless mass-advertising campaigns vis a vis food that had no consideration whatsoever for health. If your little fucking theory had a semblance of truth to it, for example, it could account for the fact that the United States underwent a similar pattern in the post-war period too, and I am not aware of any great food shortages during the war (or will you speak of the great depression, then?). In fact people's dietary preferences can be fully, and unconditionally traced to a mixture between state-agricultural policies and the fluctuations and demands of capital vis a vis the food industry, of course relegating back to the law of value and the tendency for the rate of profit to decline. This has absolutely nothing to do with some kind of metaphysical narrative about how humanity is "always on the brink of starvation", "Den gets fat", and "den becomes responsible.

Because in case you weren't aware, there is absolutely NOTHING GENUINE whatsoever about the obsession of physical health that has become commonplace in post-industrialized countries. The explanation is far more complex: If it was merely about keeping their health in check owing to some kind of intrinsic "rational" consumerist mechanism, there would be no obsession with artisianal food, eating organic, and so on - health is just as pathologically imbibed with the desire to alleviate the guilt that befalls any consumer as buying a starbucks drink wherein some of the proceeds go to charity is. Again, even if it were anything otherwise, this would say nothing about a socialist society wherein there are no markets, no capital, but only a planned society: You at best make the argument (WHICH DOES NOT EVEN WORK) that consumer demands become "rational" over time owed to mechanisms inherent to capitalist production, and nothing more. Finally, where did this obsession with "eating healthy" derive from? It was NOT the spontaneous result of consumers sobering up from decades of shameless gluttony, it derived from a perversion of the logic of the counter-culture, which was of course anti-consumerist in nature and left its mark ingraining society with a perpetual guilt of mass-consumption. This permeates not only in the domain of people's dietary preferences, but in for example the decline of organized religion in favor of more "organic" spirituality, in the rise of charity-fetishism, green capitalism, and whatever you want. Next Xhar-Xhar will tell us that under the backdrop of mass industrialization capitalism is magically embedded with the ability to account for ecological concerns because it at least has the facade of trying to be "green". Yeah, try again, buddy. For such a cynic, it isn't hard to see that the obsession with eating healthy, being green, and being an ethical consumer is itself a very profitable enterprise.


And here we have another favourite tactic of Rafiq's: as he can't reply to the arguments people make, he settles for idle psychological speculation. Don't quit your day job.

But oh, Xhar-Xhar, am I wrong?


the same thing is pointed to you every time: production is planned in order to satisfy human need. This is inconceivable to you because your "socialism" is essentially a market one.

What is "human need", how does it come into existence, and finally, even aside from that, that people "want" things sais nothing about the ability for production to satisfy it in its entirety. Of course saying something so fucking stupid already presupposes the argument in your favor - that people naturally will just want to have an all-you-can-eat consumerist buffet. This is bullshit. This is not how consumerism works - people do not buy things today because of their practical utility, but because embedded in the commodities is a piece of the social pie they so desperately long for - it in their mind brings them closer and closer to conquering a hostile and alien power. Do you really think people buy iphones every year because of the new features? No, they do it because they don't want to be stuck with the excrement of the sublime power of a consumer good.

Zizek illustrates this so profoundly when he talks about Coca Cola - the sublime power of the Coca Cola, and all the advertising that goes into it when it's cold, but when it gets warm it loses its magic, it becomes excrement, waste, actual shit. It loses all the charm, the theological power even - and becomes precisely what it actually is: A piece of plastic with carbonated sugar water in it. In today's capitalist society, you are not passively sold an object to do what you please with it. Look at the shift in advertisement: Before, they'd show a product, list all of its pros and cons and you would be fixated on the mere object. Today, they are selling you EXPERIENCES, the experience of not feeling alien. But these are false - the authentic social experience in Communism is embedded in one's life-being, it doesn't have to be continually satisfied with such wasteful apetites generated by the alien, hungry capital. It's what you don't understand. THIS is why I criticize you so mercilessly: Because you reproduce this pathological sickness by talking about Communism "satisfying human need" so vaguely. Well, what the FUCK is human need, and why should we respect it in its present form? Should we respect rape, or pedophilia (Yes, I say that provocatively - our Spart friend) because it somehow involves objective human sexual desire?


And again, Rafiq spends a confusing paragraph - again full of "embedding" - fighting the figments of his imagination, alternately accusing other people of talking about human nature and talking about "artificial" needs. This just showcases your utter confusion. Obviously needs are articulated socially. But they are slow to change at best, unlike targets for production, the allocation of machines etc. Again, consider the example of food, from Mandel's text. If Our Committee ordains that people do not need more food than some ration, the need for "extra" food does not disappear; it is repressed. This fantasy of matching need to production instead of the other way around is ludicrous - and if it worked and constituted socialism, the "war socialism" of the German empire in WWI would be bona fide socialism.

If I actually was engaging in this dichotomy, you would already win. The trouble is thinking human need would exist in such a way following such a great social transformation. I argue it would not - you argue it would - hence, your conception of Communism is a capitalist fantasy. That is what I am striking at - not some kind of controversy about how we should fulfill production targets in pertinence to people's wants and needs. So when new users come and ask: How will I get my iphones? Instead of responding in such a depraved manner, you ask as a Communist: WHAT ABOUT iphones specifically (Not just smartphones in general) make you desire them? We ought to have young intellectuals who come on this site QUESTION their own desires - that they are responsible for them, understanding how they are, and so on. What you say is absolutely disgusting: "Well, people will just take it from the community Iphone bin". NO, we REJECT the faux hedonism all-together. THIS is precisely what you're scared of confronting: A fundamentally ontological change in your understanding of the world, questioning the BASIS of want rather than holding it as an axiom.

Of course you're correct that people will not automatically desire this or that, of course people will not automatically have the same standard of want that they will in 1000 years. That is not my point. My point is the reproduction of these wants and desires.


And here we have the "socialism" of our Kautskys - the Spartan garrison-state. Barely anything else needs to be said. Except to note that it is precisely against this sort of barracks-"socialism" that Engels directed his scorn. To quote extensively from Antiduehring:

What Rafiq said: but there will certainly be a government OF men, there will certainly be the regulation of people's behaviors on a collective level, collective discipline, the spirit of self-sacrifice, social cohesion - a Communist society will be closer to a Sparta than the Disneyland you're giving us. Of course, society is not one big "barrack", but I merely illustrate how far gone you are from actually understanding what it takes to maintain freedom.

It is not only from Kautsky that Rafiq draws his admiration of Sparta in this way, but none other than Leon Trotsky, hero-god of the Sparts. I touched upon this earlier:

However, one shouldn't be so dismissive. The legacy of Sparta belongs to the Communists, and anyone with a semblance of a desire to look at history should know this. During various periods of revoluitonary upheaval, including the French republic under the Jacobins, identification with ancient Sparta was very common. During the conspiracy of equals by Gracchus Babeuf, a poem (or song) praises Lycurgus alongside Robespierre and Marat as harbingers of sweet equality and fraternity and so on. Decades later, Karl Kautsky remarked that Spartan society was one of the first historic manifestations of Communism. In addition, during the Russian civil war, Trotsky compared Russia to a "proletarian sparta" and this same comparison was used to describe the Soviet Union during the late 1930's by someone prominent who I don't remember. So while if one were to be critically historicist - Sparta wasn't Communist, the connotations of Sparta as far as classical Greece goes to bourgeois society is indeed militant egalitarianism. Or if you want to put it this way: Plato and Aristotle really have fuck all to do with Renaissance Italy or enlightenment, their ideas of democracy and republic were entirely different and from entirely different contexts, the fascination with antiquity was solely a matter of abstracting and approximating that which happened to have real relevance as far as the then present conditions went. Sparta should serve as a rhetorical example of precisely what it means to be a Communist - egalitarian freedom is not free, and in the midst of the forces of domination and slavery, it must be sustained by the discipline of self-sacrifice.

Among our Kautsky's, we find the Jacobins, the leaders of the Conspiracy, and Trotsky himself. But nevermind Kautsky. Of course our resident philistine could not see that talk of Sparta itself derives from none other than S. Zizek:

True freedom is not freedom of choice made from a safe distance; it is not like choosing between a strawberry cake or a chocolate cake. True freedom overlaps with necessity - one makes a free choice when one's choice puts at stake one's very existence. One does it because one cannot do otherwise. When one's country is under foreign occupation and one is called by a resistance leader to join the fight against the occupiers, it is phrased not as, "You are free to choose," but, "Can't you see that this is the only thing you can do if you want to retain your dignity?" No wonder all early modern egalitarian radicals, from Rousseau to the Jacobins, admired the Spartans and imagined republican France as a new Sparta. There is an emancipatory core in the Spartan spirit of military discipline that survives once you subtract all the historical paraphernalia of Spartan class rule - the ruthless exploitation of slaves, and so on. No wonder Trotsky described the Soviet Union in the difficult years of "war communism" as a "proletarian Sparta".

But this has nothing to do with a society that is one big barrack, it has nothing to do with the Barrack's Communism that absolves all of its purported sins by doing away with all worldly pleasures in general - the point is that freedom does not exist by default - it is not free. This is why you can't even give us some context, or elaboration in the quotes you present - you can't back up the assertion that my argument mimics Duhrings because you basically yet again just fish for something that might "sound" like Engels is rebuttalling Rafiq. Let's look at these one by one:


"The Philosophie gives detailed prescriptions for the organisation of the state of the future. Here Rousseau, although “the sole important forerunner” {D. Ph. 264} of Herr Dühring, nevertheless did not lay the foundations deep enough; his more profound successor puts this right by completely watering down Rousseau and mixing in remnants of the Hegelian philosophy of right, also reduced to a watery mess. “The sovereignty of the individual” {268} forms the basis of the Dühringian state of the future; it is not to be suppressed by the rule of the majority, but to find its real culmination in it. How does this work? Very simply.

“If one presupposes agreements between each individual and every other individual in all directions, and if the object of these agreements is mutual aid against unjust offences — then the power required for the maintenance of right is only strengthened, and right is not deduced from the more superior strength of the many against the individual or of the majority against the minority” {268}.

Xhar-Xhar yet again quotes passages which are themselves his own undoing. If he bothered to pay attention to what Engels was actually trying to say, it is precisely AGAINST this notion that the "sovereignty of the individual forms the basis" of a future society. Is this what Xhar-Xhar agrees with? No, Xhar-Xhar precisely presents a Communist society as a consumerist free-for-all.


Such is the ease with which the living force of the hocus-pocus of the philosophy of reality surmounts the most impassable obstacles; and if the reader thinks that after that he is no wiser than he was before, Herr Dühring replies that he really must not think it is such a simple matter, for
“the slightest error in the conception of the role of the collective will would destroy the sovereignty of the individual, and this sovereignty is the only thing” (!) “conducive to the deduction of real rights” {268}.

How the FUCK does this pertain to the argument at hand, AT ALL, IN ANY CONCEIVABLE WAY? Do you literally just talk out of your ass? Do you literally just throw shit at the wall hoping it might just make the difference? I mean, I want to know exactly what was going through your head when you decided this snippet actually demonstrates that the arguments of Duhring and Rafiq were in any way similar.


Now the sovereignty of the individual consists essentially in that
“the individual is subject to absolute compulsion by the state”; this compulsion, however, can only be justified in so far as it “really serves natural justice” {271}. With this end in view there will be “legislative and judicial authority”, which, however, “must remain in the hands of the community” {272}; and there will also be an alliance for defence, which will find expression in “joint action in the army or in an executive section for the maintenance of internal security” {273},

I'm actually at a lost for words at this point. Ladies and gentlemen, Xhar-Xhar is trying to tell us that the basis of Engel's criticism of Duhring concerns whether or not the individual has free choices. Do you UNDERSTAND CONTEXT? ENGELS IS NOT EVEN REFERRING TO THIS AT ALL, IN FACT, WHEN HE SPEAKS OF "SUBJECT TO ABSOLUTE COMPULSION OT THE STATE", WHICH IS THE ONLY PHRASE (TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT) WHICH MIGHT MEAN SOMETHING IN THIS ARGUMENT, HE REFERS SPECIFICALLY TO THE STATE AS SUCH, NOT THE ACT OF COMPULSION IN PRINCIPLE. For fuck's sake. For fuck's, fucking sake. Xhar-Xhar's argument is apparently that Rafiq proposes:


that is to say, there will also be army, police, gendarmerie. Herr Dühring has many times already shown that he is a good Prussian; here he proves himself a peer of that model Prussian, who, as the late Minister von Rochow put it, “carries his gendarme in his breast”. This gendarmerie of the future, however, will not be so dangerous as the police thugs of the present day. Whatever the sovereign individual may suffer at their hands, he will always have one consolation:

“the right or wrong which, according to the circumstances, may then be dealt to him by free society can never be any worse than that which the state of nature would have brought with it” {D. Ph. 274}!

You know what's fucking ironic, Xhar-Xhar, is that precisely the basis of Engel's criticism of Duhring was that he projected the particularities of the Prussian state onto a future society, that this fantasy was precisely wrought out from an abstraction of things only inherent to Prussian society. If you actually understood the basis of Engels' criticism, it was NOT that individuals are so precious and sacred as to have their decisions or whims infringed upon by society, it was a criticism of Duhrings idealism and the pancea-mongering nature of his "socialism".


“The free society, as it is conceived today” {304}, gets steadily more and more mixed. Architects, porters, professional writers, gendarmes, and now also barristers! This “world of sober and critical thought” {D. C. 556-57} and the various heavenly kingdoms of the different religions, in which the believer always finds in transfigured form the things which have sweetened his earthly existence, are as like as two peas. And Herr Dühring is a citizen of the state where “everyone can be happy in his own way”. What more do we want?

But it does not matter what we want. What matters is what Herr Dühring wants. And he differs from Frederick II in this, that in the Dühringian future state certainly not everyone will be able to be happy in his own way."

The basis of Engel's criticism is quite succinctly in Duhring's conception of a future society as PRECISELY a perversion of present-day society, no ethical platitudes regarding the "infringement" of the individual free will are to be found anywhere. Of course it becomes even more pathetic when we confront the fact that when Marx and Engels referred to barrack's Communism, it was a basic criticism of Nachayev's anarchist hypocrisy regarding a supreme "committee" that would decide everything. Of course, this has nothing to do with the substantive point at hand: The point is that that a select few Committee members will decide or ration everything, or that society will be organized by merit of the whims of each individual, the point is that society will have to be structurally and institutionally inter-connected, and centralized in this manner. This is a far cry from the idea of a capitalism without capitalism at all.


Keep your universal Communist love in your pants, love. This entire paragraph, with Rafiq doing his best imitation of Deepdreck Chopra, is just the cutest exercise in dishonesty.

Very good, Xhar-Xhar demonstrates his conception of love in the same infantile, philistine matter that his counterpart Izvestia did in a previous thread:

But no, I won't pretend that the notion of love being presented here, rigorously grounded in the continental school by Marxists, is directly present in classical Marxism in terms of content, the point is the CONCLUSIONS drawn. Love will have to be constitutive of any Communist order, and I speak of the love of agape - the UNCONDITIONAL, non-romantic kind. OF course this is too much for you. Come back to me on your 15th birthday when you're mature enough to deal with the subject.

Of course, the notion that the idea of love being presented here has anything to do with new age mysticism is not only WRONG, it is PATENTLY IRONIC. Why? Because precisely the point of new age spirituality and eastern mysticism is the philosophy of anti-love: The kind of non-romantic, cold love being presented here has its origins in the legacy of Christianity (culminating in the enlightenment and atheism - see Ernst Bloch, though we all know your basic philosophical illiteracy), not some kind of new age bullshit. The point of new age ethics is precisely the opposite - to NOT fall, to not over-identify or invest yourself too much into things. For them, the Christian love is violent, dangerous and catastrophic, it violates the cosmic harmony and balance. When they speak of it, they refer to the vulgar: "Empathy" and wishy washy bullshit.

So when I say no reason that MORALITY and the ecstasy of joy, should exist in spite of each other. Not the self-aggrandizing, egoist pleasure (i.e. "treating oneself") but one that is a particular expression of the universal Communist love, I quite succinctly mean the love that binds a society together, the one that invokes unconditional solidarity between peoples. This is why Marx claims:

The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. The relation of man to woman is the most genuine relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behaviour has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become his natural essence. The relationship also reveals the extent to which man’s need has become a human need: the extent to which, therefore, the other person as a person has become for him a need.

Love will have to be the basis of a new Communist order precisely because Communism is nothing more than the politics of love. Again as with Izvestia, I would at least expect you to accuse me of more crazy Lacanian bullshit, but it would seem you're so unacquainted with identifying basic terminology in context that you basically have to refer back to stereotypes of the internet culture. The fact of the matter, however, is that


Sex scandals are impossible without sexual conservatism, but people don't want sex scandals, they want to fuck

No, philistine, the point is very succinctly that there is no objective sexual desire which is prohibited - its very prohibition fosters the desire, that's the fucking point. Pedophile priests are not an anomaly, they do not exist because old horny men are put into proximity with small children - it is STRICTLY a pathological phenomena and any idiot who has dealt with the subject beyond reading news headlines or official statements by the Vatican can understand how pathologically embedded pedophilia is in the Catholic ideology. The point is very simple: The hypersexualization in present day society is inevitably bound up with sexual repression, which is precisely why any fucking idiot can see that pedophilia IS NOT some kind of objective sexual idiosyncrasy - but a perversion, no different than the sexual fixation of inanimate objects in its pathological expression, aside of course the trauma and abuse endured by the child.

You're dead fucking wrong, however - sex scandals are CREATED not simply because they are labeled sex scandals, but even the acts themselves. It's like the famous story of the cheating spouse who, after being divorced, no longer finds any 'fun' in it. People "want to fuck", but under what conditions, and how is entirely different. Will sexuality be tainted with the degradation, filth, and hypersexualized ritualistic poison that exists in present day society? Certainly not, there is no reason to think that sexuality and love would be separate - because the connotations of love with institutionalized marriage would disappear, all sex would be the particular expression of the common love shared by society. Is this not frightening for our friend, Xhar-Xhar, that love can exist without individual commitment as such? Certainly it is, because it completely smashes both the hypersexualized cult of faux-hedonist rituals and its social conservative counterpart: it gravely de-eroticizes (and therefore de-commodities) sexuality and relegates it solely to what it would 'naturally' express itself as. Nothing is more un-erotic than the naked human body, for example, and yet the dissonance still exists between it and our desire for it. If there is such a stark difference between sexuality in East and West Germany, then you bet your fucking ass there will be in a society free of sexual antagonism compared to society today.


And again Marxist analysis has been replaced by discourse criticism.

Any idiot who reads any Marxist knows well: Marxism IS discourse criticism! Are you literally fucking kidding me? In your "Marxism" there is no room for ideological criticism? I suppose ideology has vanished past the 19th century, and there is no need for a criticism of ideology anymore. And you DARE protest at how I call you a PHILISTINE? THIS IS PRECISELY PHILISTINISM! "Oh, well this isn't Marxism in my mind, so I'll just ignore it" - again, I don't even know how the FUCK you defend yourself at this point. Did you literally just substitute a resopnse for dismissal? Like, are you literally incapable of actually responding to what is being said, or do you somehow feel absolved from having to bother with it? "Ruthless criticism" indeed, is what Xhar-Xhar the "Marxist" practices!


What a fool Marx was to not know this tenet of Rafiqism and write about the communist society, after the hypothetical period where rationing will be necessary as a "birthmark", governed by the exchange of equal values as a bourgeois principle, distribution is according to need, and not according to how caesar Rafiq deems your labour.

It has nothing to do with principle, it has everything to do with the persistence of forms of compensation, which of course would have nothing to do with the laws of value - that is precisely the point. And again, of course this is not based on the whims of some kind of... Elevated subject (What the FUCK are you talking about with this drivel?), the point is that compensation would have to be rationally allocated in approximation to the productive basis of society (unless a technical level is reached wherein this is not necessary). The only one who speaks of principles is our friend Xhar-Xhar, who quite openly stated "Well, why would anyone WANT otherwise?" - as though conditions themselves will be dictated by sheer will, as though it is a matter of ethics and not rationally taking into account the technical basis of society, and all the rest that follows from this. Marx's POINT was that there would be no dissonance between need and the required labor put forward, which is quite different from saying they would be entirely separate in practice. This is starkly different between "exchange of equal values" as such, labour vouchers, or any of that - the point is that one's labor would not be separate at all, it would fundamentally constitutive an irrevocable part of their life being. The needs would then follow to project from this. The abolition of wage labor has nothing at all to do with the abolition of actually fucking approximating labor to production rationally. I mean, how do you even think?


Another jumble of words from which we can only conclude that, one, you ignore the objective socialisation and global reach of modern production, where there are no isolated towns, but nearly each production process requires inputs from across the globe and provides outputs distributed across the same globe, and two, you imagine essentially market relations between towns (towns!) instead of human society, Social Man, organising the global flow of goods, allocation of resources etc.

There are no isolated towns preicsely because such towns are ONLY IN ASSOCIATION WITH EACH OTHER BECAUSE OF GLOBAL CAPITAL AND THE MARKET. This is not a magical fucking process that will inevitably resume in socialism, it will not be passively inherited, all the means by which the world is globalized would have to be actively accounted for in a conscious manner. The increased socialization of labor - INEVITABLY IMPLIES the destruction of any kind of whimsical "free" wants and needs that derive spontaneously, these will be regulated (of course, not necessarily "directly" but even if they are presented spontaneously) in approximation to a global totality, just like they are now. Again, Communism is not an all you can eat consumerist buffet. Do I speak of markets at all? No, only Xhar-Xhar speaks of markets. Who is this "human society", who is this "social man", what is the PRACTICAL MEDIUM OF ITS expression? Is it "Our committe", or does the various conglomerations of cities and localities constitute the particular expression of "human society" on its own, if so, HOW? Will human society "unconsciously" organize the global flow of goods, and allocation of resources? Again, balancing out the variations between different regions and localities will have to be necessary, and this would have definite implications for people's wants and needs.

Magic did not bring the world into association, the needs of global capital did. The question is NOT replacing this, but taking over the process consciously. To this, Xhar-Xhar gives us nothing.


Rafiq, did you even read the text in question?

The whole fucking page was the point of concern as far as your response. Of course I've read the entire thing:


In class society "activity is not voluntary", but an alien power seeming to stand over man, in class society "each man has a... sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape", unlike in communism, there is no "fixation of social activity" in communism and so on - all of this is in direct opposition to your nonsense about Our Committee ordering people to do this and that, undoubtedly lead by Rafiq himself.

Again more juvenile archetypes about the big scary man who wants all the power for himself - sorry, what is this? Did I fucking even mention an "Our committee"? What Marx meant had nothing to do with the abdication of SOCIAL OBLIGATION, but precisely the fixation of social activity - the abolition of which already takes on an embryonic form in capitalist society wherein one can learn any profession on a formal level. I went into this, thoroughly. Marx illustrates the point for me when he talks about his referring specifically to the dissonance between particular and social activity. Now, the point of concern IS NOT whether choices should be infringed upon, but the fetishization of choice itself as constituting a fantasy of consumerist capitalist society. Finally, upon evaluating Marx, the dichotomy he creates is NOT between voluntary labor and "forced" labor as such, but voluntary labor and NATURAL labor. What does this mean? The dichotomy was between a self-conscious society and a "natural" one, it had nothing to do with people doing whatever they want as some kind of sacred principle. Marx speaks of a labor that is forced upon the individual "from which he cannot escape", what this explicitly refers to is the labor constituting the very life-being of the individual in the exclusive sense. So again, you provide nothing that actually addresses the argument that I haven't already addressed.


I think this is more than enough. Rafiq's Duehringism is not Marxism but a petty power fantasy.

Xhar-Xhar loves to talk about "psychological" judgement I make as in principle dodging the argument, but when he posits his own petty, juvenile and undoubtedly philistine psychological evaluations, he expects us to just respect it. What have we learned? That all along, Rafiq argues what he's arguing just because he wants to be in charge of all of this. What sane individual would want to have the "power" to decide all of this? Do you know how strenuous, how much energy, labor and time this would take for even 200 individuals to decide all of this? Actually, I quite modestly would rather imagine various different conglomerations of institutions composed of elected individuals (or individuals who can always be elected-out), or perhaps a kind of demarchic jury-duty esque sorting of responsibilities, but again, all of this is abstract speculation.

[Rafiq]

I disagree with Rafiq that production exists for its own sake. Production is half of a cycle of production and consumption. We don’t produce telephones just to pile them up unused until we have a plastic mountain. The production-consumption cycle for telephones then becomes one of a set of such cycles that together comprise an economy. The economy as a social system is then what exists for its own sake in the Marxian view that productive means determine social evolution.


Well put it this way: In Marxist terms, consumption is irrevocably a part of a mode of production and a process of production. All production refers to here is the production and reproduction of the conditions of human life, in any form.

[BIXX]

How Xhar-Xhar can't even argue like an adult,

Oh the irony


I don't even know who I agree with in the debate (or if I even think the debate is important- or honestly what it's even about) but I am growing to enjoy the constant use of the word "philistine" and "fool". I'm not really a fan of either of them, but if 870 wants my vote he's gonna have to up the usage of words that make me laugh when I see them used seriously.

[Hatshepsut]

Violence itself is *not* a social basis for power, or rule, itself, and can't be, because it can't be sustained indefinitely...[It] requires underlying common mass support for its sustenance -- a social debt on the part of those being violent which has to be repaid...Again, your assumptions are faulty....

Violence can be effective when not in use. The mere presence of armed personnel and a demonstrated willingness to use them is usually enough to persuade the reluctant. That’s why warfare tends to come about once per generation in any given place instead of constantly. Indeed, continuous actual violence is unsustainable. Yet I didn’t make any assumptions for what I posted; I just looked at history. Few revolutions in the past, communist or otherwise, have led to peaceful aftermaths. There are variations as history isn’t simple; the recent transitions away from communism in the former Warsaw Pact come to mind. Even these “velvet” revolutions still carried undercurrents of violent potential, which surfaced in Romania for instance. If the Communist Party leaders hadn’t stepped down, they might have faced civil wars at the same time the loyalty of their militaries was in question and support from the USSR gone. So, you are also correct to say that mass support props governance. It need not be majority support, however. A leadership group may be able to keep politics in a hammerlock for a long time with only 10% of the population behind them, as in Rhodesia.

I don’t think violence and power deserve a fetish. But their existence must be accounted for, or we’re likely to repeat earlier mistakes in revolution. My fears enjoy better chances to prove groundless only if post-revolutionary demobilization is planned in advance.

Legitimacy, which in communist society arises from class consciousness, doesn’t depend on a naïve abandonment of self-interest. People instead become convinced that their own self-interest is better served if they subordinate it to the requirements of a classless society. Else they would be thinking themselves above class antagonism, as did the petty bourgeoisie in Lukacs’ treatment of class consciousness.


Re-denominating Iraqi oil in U. S. dollars, instead of the euro.


Thanks for the petrodollar casus belli story, one that can’t get enough telling. It serves to mark my points—Should we believe ourselves immune to motives we ascribe to the capitalists? Struggle against violence itself had little place in the original communist programming. If partly due to historical contingencies of reactionary backlash, nonetheless a blind spot regarding this danger also figured.

[Hatshepsut]

If...we're going to make much less because Geoff is drunk all day...then we're going to talk to Geoff and if it comes to that refuse to work with him. But this is self-discipline, we won't have some "socialist" police arresting Geoff and we certainly won't force Geoff to do things he doesn't like. The conflict here is not discipline vs. indiscipline but individual choice in matters such as what tasks any member of society will preform vs. people being forced to do work...

The Geoff who drinks on the job has a definite discipline problem. He’s not too committed to his comrades. And in a sense, we’re all forced to work. Suppose we don’t bother to harvest our crops this fall because we’d rather be plastered? Whether we’re in deep doo-doo will depend on how many Geoffs there are. When we refuse to work with Geoff, we’ll also refuse to share with him and he will starve. This is the extreme case; our technical means determine how tough the actual discipline must be.

But communists expect every swinging rump will work. We don’t want the unemployment capitalism has. Work is shared out socially just as goods are, which cuts down on the load each individual worker faces.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Xhar-Xhar, why do you deliberately lie? When I call you out on utter fucking bullshit, or at least - an IRREVERSIBLY, UNQUESTIONABLE mistake, you simply skim through, shrug it off and ignore it? Do me a favor for once: Actually own up to what you fucking say. Which means, I expect you to thoroughly address all of the rebuttals I've given you regarding certain allegations, I want you to back up and defend, for example, the allegation that Rafiq spoke of "evolutionary" conditioning in such a way, and so on. Or wait, do I really just want to see you squirm? Of course you can't respond, of course you can't do this. Because you basically just throw a bunch of shit against the wall and hope some will stick. You don't actually believe your drivel - which is why you have this attitude of "Oh, well whatever, I could have been right maybe". Try again.

You can expect anything you like, you ridiculous little man, but reality will often prove your expectations quite wrong. I will continue to ignore walls of text that consist of nothing but insults (not even good insults) and chest-beating about how you are possessed by the spirit of Communist or whatever. And the last thing I'm going to do is take orders from a SPUSA roleplayer. So calm down.


Here, Xhar-Xhar basically admits he is quite conscious not only in his blatant misrepresentations, deliberate ignorance and vulgarization of my points , but of the very pathetic fact that the response to his own rebuttal is already present in my previous post - passively judging him already.

No, there Xhar-Xhar "basically admits" that you constantly post the same drivel and, unsatisfied with posting new walls of text every time, you have in the past resorted to quoted walls of text you already posted.


Indeed, the intellectual level we find ourselves is one wherein Xhar-Xhar repetitively admits that he is not even intellectually equipped with addressing the substantive point of my arguments - but as any philistine, his own disability is taken as a measurement of the argument itself he so eagerly struggles to understand.

I imagine some people are afraid of calling you out concerning this obscurantist tripe, if they can even muster the strength to read through your posts and their surreal repetition, creative formatting and so on, because they're afraid they will seem unintelligent in comparison. As for me, however, I am satisfied that I'm of average intelligence, and probably you are as well. Not understanding drivel like people "being embedded to see" is not due to any intellectual deficiency on my part, but your tendency to string together words that, taken together, mean nothing. The problem is with your "argument", not with the people reading it. The sooner you realise this - and the sooner you realise saying "linear distance analyser" instead of "a ruler" doesn't make you sound smart to anyone but high-school students - the better, but I wouldn't exactly hold my breath.


You claim:

It makes no sense to call yourself a socialist unless you hold that socialism is a real possibility, and a real possibility can't be reduced to an empty abstract negation.

Now, embedded in this argument is a pretense to the notion that socialism merely becomes an abstract negation if one does not truly believe that it is possible. Am I wrong?

You are, and you will continue to be wrong as long as you base yourself on "pretenses" "embedded" (there's that word again) in other people's arguments - in other words, what you imagine, or pretend to imagine, people are saying. That we (well, some of us) are socialists means that we uphold socialism as a real possibility, as such any sort of "socialism" that happens in the remote future, like the "socialism" that was supposed to succeed Pablo's "centuries of deformed workers' states", is simply outside the confines of the discussion here. If you want to discuss some kind of socialism that will happen after centuries of social-democratic governments, this site has the "Opposing Ideologies" section.

Now for something to be an actual possibility, it must have content. An abstract opposition to current society is not enough, although that does not stop people from claiming to uphold "socialism" that is "socialism" because it opposes one or the other aspect of the current society (the cheerleaders of the PKK on RevLeft come to mind). However, the reverse does not follow (for someone who constantly accuses other people of being stupid, you seem to have a fairly slapdash approach to basic logic). Someone in the IOPS might not believe that the horrible Albertian vision of calculating indicative prices for the rest of your life is possible, at least not in the current period. This does not mean ParEcon is without content, or abstract - it is rather concrete (and concretely has nothing to do with socialism).


Firstly, the context in question is not any argument that the ends-in-itself is the Communist movement that derives from the present state of things. Marx is not attempting to illustrate the point that the class-dictatorship, or the Communist movement is a means to an ends. Attempting to state this, while it is PATENTLY OBVIOUS IF ONE EVALUATES THE CONTEXT OF THE FUCKING PARAGRAPH that it is not true, is the epitome of dishonesty. And that is saying something, if we're talking about Xhar-Xhar. No, precisely what Marx is attacking, IRONICALLY, are those who attempt to DIVORCE the desire of (NOT "TOWARD") the abolition of class distinctions generally from the real-existing movement and the struggle for the conquest of power and class dictatorship. Either Xhar-Xhar is an intellectual masochist, or his drivel is so divorced from Marxism that he can't even manage to quote a single fucking paragraph from Marx that doesn't automatically contradict what he's trying to say. Of all the things you could have taken out of context, of all the paragraphs you could have quoted to suit your argument, from either Marx, Engels or Lenin, why oh why do you drop-quote something that literally could have been used against you without any further elaboration, or explanation whatsoever? One could think, almost, that Marx was responding to Xhar-Xhar himself - of course this cannot be the case, however, when we evaluate the fact that the phrase-mongering philistine he is, he will be the first to proclaim "No, the class struggle is important, society cannot be replaced with mere 'good ideas' alone". Of course, the point you're missing is that you argument emanates precisely an ideal that which society will have to adjust itself, of course, postulated as being testament to your belief that "Socialism is really, really possible". The socialism you give us is a false one, not simply because it is "impossible" but because again - YOU YOURSELF DO NOT BELIEVE IT, and you're quite sincere about being a phrase-mongerer.

Congratulations, you've managed to post something that is not entirely a distortion of Marx's writing. Marx is in fact attacking those who deny the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a "transit point". The rest of your paragraph, with its usual psychotic phrasing and so on, does not follow, because it is apparent that Marx considers the d.o.t.p. as a transit point, not as you insinuated an end in itself.

This is an important point because the notion that the d.o.t.p. is an end in itself is the "revolutionary" cover for what amounts to Bernstein's "the end goal is nothing, the process everything". And as we know to you the "process" involves the rule of the patriotic petite bourgeoisie, SYRIZA etc. - "centuries of Third-World Caesarist states".


That is why Marx and Engels seldom spent time discussing what a communist society will look like, or function as: Because at that point, beyond the proletarian dictatorship, we only have a society wherein production is organized on lines that are self-conscious, we can say nothing about how it would actually function or how it would look, because these projections stem from abstractions of the here and now, none the less an epoch wherein there isn't even a Communist MOVEMENT yet that isn't just the vestige of the 20th century.

And congratulations on an internally inconsistent paragraph - on the minimal assumption that you do not consider Marx and Engels to have been idiots. Because Marx and Engels did in fact write quite a bit about the socialist society, from Marx's early manuscripts to Anti-Duehring, and much of it in periods where the communist movement was in a far worse condition than it is now.


Now of course you insinuate the existence of a kind of human nature, for the unavoidable reason that he thinks that the wants and needs of humans exist objectively, but will be fulfilled in a more efficient fashion in a post-capitalist society, and that history, every mode of production is merely the way in which "objective human needs and wants" are fulfilled.

This is the sort of sleight of hand Rafiq habitually engages in: if someone says that some social fact exists objectively, he will attack that someone as saying there is some sort of human nature. Now, certain human needs do result from the biological data of human existence, the fact that we need to eat food for example. Yet even these are articulated socially. The frumenty that would have satisfied the need for food in an earlier period would be considered poverty food at best now. More importantly, we can see how technical development results in new needs - prior to the discovery of metallurgy for example there was no need for arsenic. This does not mean needs are determined by the mode of production - this would be insanely circular (production is the creation of use-values, but what use-values are are determined by how production is organised, so we can't rationally delineate what production is and what it isn't) - particularly not in the linear manner Rafiq imagines. This is not Marxism, which treats the mode of production as a material fact, a description of how material processes of production, which take place in the material world and are not independent from it, occur, but a bad theology where the Lord God has been replaced by the Mode of Production.


Listen, philistine, if you actually paid attention to the FUCKING CONTEXT from which I said "evolutionary level", you would understand that MY ONLY POINT WAS THAT EVEN IF THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS OBJECTIVE HUMAN NEEDS AND WANTS, ON AN EVOLUTIONARY LEVEL THIS COULD ONLY PRACTICALLY AMOUNT TO BARE SUBSISTENCE AND SURVIVAL.

And this is still confused. Biology is not concerned with human needs.


Xhar-Xhar literally gives us an idealist conception of ontology wherein reason and INTENT are inevitably identified with each other. He doesn't understand the point: When we say, for example, that the biological organism exists for no other reason than its own sake, we do not refer to conscious intent, or a god, we refer explicitly to the fact that there is none - it is sufficient unto itself. Likewise, the social domain, a society, exists for its own sake, it has an inner-logic (which is only logic when we approach it consciously, of course) of its own. Of course, Marxism is not absurdism - Marxists recognize the universe as lawful (Laws which are only wrought out from the practical relationship between human consciousness and the world around it) to say something exists for "no reason" is to presuppose idealism. It is precisely why Marxists are not existentialists - existentialism is the perpetual disappointment with the non-existence of a god. Conversely materialists recognize that the world does exist for a reason - because reason and conscious intent are not inherently linked, the only thing which binds them is the conscious intent of UNDERSTANDING the reason.

Existentialism is the perpetual disappointment with the non-existence of a god, the world existing for no reason etc. (as categories such as reasons are not applicable to the material universe unless there is some sort of consciousness behind the material universe), and this warmed-over Hegelianism you're trying to pass off as Marxist materialism is the resolution of the disappointment - by smuggling in reason, a theology without an (explicit) god.


The idealist ontology, for example, will answer the basically theological question of "Why does X exist, rather than not exist?" by saying there is no reason, while a Marxist will quite amply posit the counter-question: Why would it NOT exist?

And this is supposed to be materialism. This. Not to mention that you conflate "reasons" why something exists - i.e. an account of its material causes - with "reasons for" existing, i.e. idealist drivel about spirituality and whatnot.


That sais nothing about whether we are in a position to literally just throw all of our shit into a fucking corner with a sign saying "take wut u want, infinite supply lul". We are not in that position. Of course we can feed the world today many times over. That doesn't say anything about the absence of rationing as a necessity, at least for now - you can't understand this. Even if we can feed every individual right now 10,000 calories a day, there would still need to be rationing. It's one thing to satisfy "many basic needs", it's another thing to be able to satisfy those needs in such a way where you don't even have to ration them. To think that we are presently in this position is beyond fucking stupid.

And why not? Because Rafiq believes that the evil consumerists demons will drive people to consume more than they need (as determined by Rafiq). In other words, behind the macho spiritual "communist" rhetoric is the usual right-wing objection (usually stated much more clearly by the Right, of course) that unless we ration products consumption will exceed need. And this is such a basic point it has been dealt with so many times on this site it's not funny. There are very real hard limits to consumption, for one thing. And consumption exceeding need only arises as the result of class society, where it sets certain individuals apart as able to acquire more things than they need for themselves. But this collapses in communism - precisely because we aren't rationing things out and because going around with a hundred bananas can't be used to demonstrate that someone has the favour of caesar Rafiq.


You know, Xhar-Xhar, every time you say something I literally think about whether I myself am becoming as stupid as you are by even concerning this.

No, I don't think so, you don't appear to be getting any smarter.


First of all, CONSUMERISM IS NOT A CONTROVERSY. THERE IS NO SQUABBLE BETWEEN "FACTIONS" OF THE BOURGEOISIE IN PERTINENCE TO IT. IT REFERS TO AN OBJECTIVE SOCIAL CONDITION, AND AN OBJECTIVE QUALIFICATION OF CAPITALISM IN POST-INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS. There is no non-capitalist consumerism. Postmodern consumerist ethics are the de-facto hegemonic ideological discourse of capitalist society, even in so-called developing countries.

LOOK AT ME MUTHER I CAN TYPE IN HUGE ANNOYING TYPE.

First an "objective social condition" is revealed to be "de-facto hegemonic ideological discourse", because apparently the material reality can be reduced to words, then even words (as it is always with Rafiq: words, words, words) that agitate against consumption are ignored.


You know, what the fuck are you even talking about that this makes no sense? HOW THE FUCK does this not make sense?

Because the word "embedded", preceded by "people" and followed by "being able to see", doesn't make sense, any more than "blitiri".


How does it not make sense that people are not ingrained with the ability to actually act in such a way that is in consideration of the bigger picture of things that which they rely on? Are you literally stupid? Do you FUCKING THINK when people buy iphones, they magically are able to take into account a measurement of all the blood of African children that was necessary to mine the precious minerals that went into their device? Do you think that they're actually thinking about, at that precise moment, the labor that went into the iPhone, and so on?

Do you think, no, wait, do you FUCKING THINK (of course, one of the moderators that see a fellow spiritual social-democrat in you might give me a warning here), that people are going to buy things in socialism? We aren't talking about people buying things but organising to plan production on a scientific, society-wide scale.


"For capitalist society only with its alienation" you will say, but that is besides the point - a town in Mongolia's wants are not going to intrinsically take into account the wants and needs of a town in central America. End of fucking story.

Another example of an irrelevant sentence: "a town in Mongolia's wants are not going to... take into account the wantes... of a town in central America". Well, no, needs are not the sort of thing that "takes into account" anything. But the people who live in that town in Mongolia (town!), or rather their representatives when the general plan of production is being drawn up, need to take into account the needs of the people in central America. Not simply by the logic of the situation - production for need (instead of the Rafiqist dream of rationing to fit production) - and the fact that with increased mobility they themselves might end up in central America fairly soon, but because no part of the world is autonomous. You act as if "Mongolia" and "central America" are two entities that exchange commodities.


Of course, the philistine Xhar-Xhar tries and tells us that while society will be planned to suit "human wants", the levels of consumption wouldn't have to correlate with a consideration of the labor being put it in to produce them. That is beyond fucking contradictory, and amply, plainly, and unambiguously stupid, because until the world is 100% automatized labor will have to fulfill the demands of the plans, too. Does Xhar-Xhar prophesize a return to hunter-forager bands or something?

"Correlate with a consideration"? Again, that's gibberish. And does Rafiq prophesise a return to pre-industrial society where the main determinant of productivity is living labour of people to be ordered around, and not the dead labour to be allocated by society in the form of machinery?


Lovely, because the survival of humanity has largely been precarious, "it is only natural that people should be obsessed with food". Yes? How is this "naturally" facilitated, by what mechanisms, that is? The reality is that what you claim implies no causation whatsoever - it is PURE, baseless speculation which itself lazy thinking. "Dur, da people didnt have lots o food during da war so when dey did dey wanted 2 eat as much as possible but den stopped". Like where do you get this shit from? The reality is that following WWII, people's consumption patterns vis a vis food drastically spiked NOT BECAUSE people happened to be so happy to be free from nutritional precarity, but because again the rise of shameless mass-advertising campaigns vis a vis food that had no consideration whatsoever for health.

Apparently I'm Ernest Mandel. Oh dear, I appear to be dead. Perhaps I have been sent to hell for writing nonsense about long waves and now I must read this drivel as punishment.

There were no "shameless advertising campaigns" (good grief) in Germany, in Japan or the Soviet Union, so this theory is obviously not true.




It is not only from Kautsky that Rafiq draws his admiration of Sparta in this way, but none other than Leon Trotsky, hero-god of the Sparts.

Oh Rafiq, you are such a one.

Trotsky talked about "a proletarian Sparta" in the context of his campaign for the militarisation of labour - i.e. the very thing every living Trotskyist rejects. Far from being our "hero-god" (what?) we are clear that Trotsky could fuck up (for example with the August Bloc, which you are closer to than any Trotskyist will ever be), Lenin could fuck up (the chimaerical "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry) and so on. Hell, "proletarian Sparta" was still better than the "Proletarian Military Policy", a sop to Allied militarism.


Among our Kautsky's, we find the Jacobins, the leaders of the Conspiracy, and Trotsky himself. But nevermind Kautsky. Of course our resident philistine could not see that talk of Sparta itself derives from none other than S. Zizek:

"None other than" implies that I should be impressed by the mention of Žižek. Well, no, Žižek is a washed-up social-democratic obscurantist, and if I find myself opposed to him, that strongly hints to me I'm doing something right.


You know what's fucking ironic, Xhar-Xhar, is that precisely the basis of Engel's criticism of Duhring was that he projected the particularities of the Prussian state onto a future society, that this fantasy was precisely wrought out from an abstraction of things only inherent to Prussian society. If you actually understood the basis of Engels' criticism, it was NOT that individuals are so precious and sacred as to have their decisions or whims infringed upon by society, it was a criticism of Duhrings idealism and the pancea-mongering nature of his "socialism".

The "particularities of the Prussian state" Duehring supposed would remain in the future society were the gendarmerie, compulsion regarding religion and so on, in other words - things far from peculiar to Prussia. Talking about Duehring as a true Prussian was a jibe on Engels's part - what you fail to address, and what is inconvenient to you, is that Engels pours scorn on Duehring for relying on compulsion, "government over men" (a phrase from Antiduehring), for dragooning the members of his imaginary "socialitarian" commune. Which is precisely your position - a "socialist" police force serving a "socialist" government that, like "Our Committee" of Nechayev doesn't have the guts to call itself a government.



Of course, the notion that the idea of love being presented here has anything to do with new age mysticism is not only WRONG, it is PATENTLY IRONIC.

No, I was talking about your ridiculous statements about "the Yin and the Yang". Your religious delusions I leave to you.


Any idiot who reads any Marxist knows well: Marxism IS discourse criticism!

It is patently not. Discourse criticism is an idealist reaction against Marxism, against revolutionary socialism and in support of social-democratic governments - so quite in line with your politics. After every Laclau there comes a Kirchner.


Marx's POINT was that there would be no dissonance between need and the required labor put forward, which is quite different from saying they would be entirely separate in practice.

No, Marx's point (which anyone who has read the text and is not talking out of his arse should know) was that in communism there is no rationing, no "equal proceeds of labour", that products are taken in accordance with human need, not some "compensation" scheme.


There are no isolated towns preicsely because such towns are ONLY IN ASSOCIATION WITH EACH OTHER BECAUSE OF GLOBAL CAPITAL AND THE MARKET.

No, these towns (towns! hello! as if the socialist society will be a collection of Podunk towns!) are in association because of the existence of global, objectively socialised industrial production, which is in fact in contradiction to capitalism, which makes socialism a real possibility and not simply a Nice Idea.


Will human society "unconsciously" organize the global flow of goods, and allocation of resources?

Will it balls. That you try to ascribe this position to me just shows that you can't be honest for a moment here, otherwise your entire "argument" falls to pieces. Yes, human society will consciously and centrally plan production, the flow of producer goods etc. The point is that this does not require compulsion - like Bernstein you can only conceive of centralisation on the basis of state methods, coercion, regulation, government. Socialist centralism is the centralism of labour liberated from class society. There is no socialist police to beat the workers into submission to whatever insane scheme you want to enforce and if anyone acts as one the workers will probably hang him from the first lamppost.


What Marx meant had nothing to do with the abdication of SOCIAL OBLIGATION, but precisely the fixation of social activity - the abolition of which already takes on an embryonic form in capitalist society wherein one can learn any profession on a formal level.

So you didn't read the text. Because Marx explicitly talks about:

"[T]he division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape."

"As activity is not voluntary", man's activity enslaves him - in socialism this, along with the division of labour, will be abolished. Or as Engels puts it in Antiduhring:

"In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionised from top to bottom, and in particular the former division of labour must disappear."

To take Marx for a proponent of forced labour, of work, is the most ridiculous vulgarisation of the man possible. And with that, I conclude this.

[Rafiq]

I will continue to ignore walls of text

First, Xhar-Xhar, let's make something absolutely clear: There are no walls of text to be found that consist of "nothing but insults", and to my word, if you (or any other user for that matter) manage to find a single wall of text in the post in question that properly fits this qualification, I will send you 100$ over paypal right now, my word on it. This philistine, this scoundrel complains that he suspects I will continually requote myself and yet shamelessly skips over, dismisses and condemns to the abyss substantive points that deal precisely with his "new" arguments. This is the epitome of dishonesty.

Xhar-Xhar, who wishes to save himself from embarrassment - like his own Jr. Izvestia, wants to respond, but doesn't want to put in the effort to actually show for it. You behave, post and engage the arguments as expected: As a coward would. This haughty philistine is so confident that he believes himself absolved of the responsibility to engage the points which pertain to the argument at hand: He thinks he can whimsically pick and choose what he wants to fucking respond to because apparently the only content of Rafiq's posts consist of what Xhar-Xhar, the intellectual dwarf deems worthy of a response. But nevermind this, fool, every idiot in this thread can see that every point you find yourself unable to address is one that you indirectly concede to me, so very well then. Is this all you have left, then? Good on you for making today a hell of a lot easier:


you have in the past resorted to quoted walls of text you already posted.

A practice I will soon find myself forced to repeat: Has it ever occurred to you that I must requote walls of text because of the tendency for our resident intellectual cowards and scoundrels: Izvestia and yourself, to shamelessly ignore important - nay, argumentatively pivotal content under the guise of "ignoring insults"? You bring this upon yourself, just as you yourself bring on these walls of text.

In Xhar-Xhar's mind, anything that cannot be summed up in 8 words is condemned to the abyss of nothingness - this haughty philistine literally looks at my posts, nose held high, and thinks to himself "Hmmm, yeah no, I'm not gonna respond to that". And why is this? It is for the precise reason that Xhar-Xhar, the anti-intellectual, despises theory in general of the Marxist tradition. Of course, Xhar-Xhar thinks the Trot-clowns of the 20th century constitute Marxist theorists - rather than the continental school and the critical theory (of which Orthodox Marxists like Lukacs had a great deal in fomenting) which solely inherited the legacy of Marxism while the Trot sect-lords merely re-hashed phrases. Xhar-Xhar absolves himself the responsibility of Marxism - instead, like any lazy pseudo-Marxist, he conceives the whole project of Marxism - on a theoretical level - to be complete and sufficient unto-itself. If one pays close attention to the criticisms made by "Marxists' as himself leveled against the likes of Zizek, one would not be able to distinguish the criticisms leveled against critical theory in general by the analytical school. Thus, knowingly or otherwise, our Trot pseudo-dogmatists, owing nothing more to their intellectual passivity over the past few decades, have come to accept and embrace the spirit of analytical "Marxism", clarity, conciseness indeed, free from all the Hegelian obscurantism. In fact, whether he knows it or not, Xhar-Xhar's presentation of the generation of use-values relies solely on rational choice theory to sustain itself.


As for me, however, I am satisfied that I'm of average intelligence, and probably you are as well. Not understanding drivel like people "being embedded to see" is not due to any intellectual deficiency on my part, but your tendency to string together words that, taken together, mean nothing.

This has nothing to do with "intelligence". Of course someone like Xhar-Xhar would conceive "intelligence" as, rather than a moral category, something essential. Tell me, Xhar-Xhar, how does one attain "intelligence"? Is one born with this? Please do open this can of worms, our great Marxist friend.

Nevermind such silly categories. We are both as unintelligent as each other. However, your intellectual deficiencies are owed to nothing more than your dignified philistinism and laziness in general. Any idiot can be like me, just as any idiot can be a Marxist and not a liberal. Why people remain Liberals, and not Marxists, is not owed to any kind of essential characteristic, but to ideological considerations (and yes fool, because we are not 15 years old, it is already directly implied that this pertains to the material, social domain. However, using such a crude reductionism is by all means vulgar - and quite amply in contradiction of the spirit of Marxism. When Marx wrote the German ideology, which was discourse criticism at its finest, he did not explore the intricacies of ideology by replacing the words with "da class"). Likewise, Xhar-Xhar, the pathological philistine, is intellectually deficient because there is dissonance between the conscious beliefs he holds on a theoretical level and the ideological pathology which sustains them. He therefore resorts to deliberate ignorance and dismissal in order to guise his inability to theoretical articulate the arguments of his opponent - an impairment solely owed to ideological considerations, again. When Rafiq calls you petite-bourgeois, it is not a cheap insult or buzzword - you are thoroughly a reactionary and your opposition to present conditions is thoroughly petite-bourgeois in character.

Let's finally deal with the word "embedded", however. If "being embedded to see" doesn't make sense, perhaps you should read "people are not magically embedded with being able to see the bigger picture" as "embedded with being able", rather than "embedded to". But my dearest, dearest apology poor Xhar-Xhar. I should have said "embedded with the ability to see" (where, as the good adult you are, you could replace embedded with ingrained, if it offends you so). I'm so sorry for that. Now want to actually address the FUCKING arguments that are embedded (yes, fuck you) in the paragraphs that use the word, instead of dismissing them because they apparently don't make grammatical sense? There, now you don't have an excuse. So put some big boy pants on, and actually engage the discussion.


That we (well, some of us) are socialists means that we uphold socialism as a real possibility, as such any sort of "socialism" that happens in the remote future, like the "socialism" that was supposed to succeed Pablo's "centuries of deformed workers' states", is simply outside the confines of the discussion here. If you want to discuss some kind of socialism that will happen after centuries of social-democratic governments, this site has the "Opposing Ideologies" section.

Now for something to be an actual possibility, it must have content. An abstract opposition to current society is not enough, although that does not stop people from claiming to uphold "socialism" that is "socialism" because it opposes one or the other aspect of the current society (the cheerleaders of the PKK on RevLeft come to mind). However, the reverse does not follow (for someone who constantly accuses other people of being stupid, you seem to have a fairly slapdash approach to basic logic). Someone in the IOPS might not believe that the horrible Albertian vision of calculating indicative prices for the rest of your life is possible, at least not in the current period. This does not mean ParEcon is without content, or abstract - it is rather concrete (and concretely has nothing to do with socialism).

And yet again Xhar-Xhar misses the entire point. It is not one of immanence, but the relationship between this "ideal" and present conditions of struggle. We run in circles: it relegates back to what I had initially stated:

And the point that you're missing is that what distinguishes Communism from merely being an abstract negation, has absolutely nothing to do with believing the viability of this or that is possible (Which, ironically, could only ever be abstract, considering that there is no organic predispositions to this utopia embedded in any real moving force - the party - in the 21st century) rather the point is that Communism is an affirmative force precisely because it derives from the present state of things, each reform, each concession, and each particular struggle of Communism has absolutely nothing to do with bringing society closer to this ridiculous dream-world you have posited, rather it pertains and concerns the conquest of political power first and foremost. That is to say, the "maximal" program is not the "latter phrase of Communist society", but the proletarian dictatorship. The prorletarian dictatorship and the FORCE of Communism, as it encapsulates struggles and antagonsims that exist in the HERE AND THE NOW are not a means to an ends, they are the ends-in-themsleves, in them are embedded the possibility of a different future.

Xhar-Xhar, the philistine at least takes it upon himself to be consistent in his dishonest etiquette where he falls short in the domain of theory. According to this scoundrel, this dignified pseudo-sectarian, Rafiq from here has been trying to claim the whole time that the conclusion of this is that the proletarian dictatorship is an actual ends. But I merely, ironically use the term "ends-in-itself" to succintly demonstrate that there is no such of a thing as an 'ends-in-itself', that is to say: there is only struggle and movement, without which there is no possibility of a future. I simply attempt to illustrate the idealist, utopian poverty of Xhar-Xhar's so-called socialism: He sees as a blueprint to which society adjusts itself in the domain of struggle, i.e. that which the proletariat realizes - PRECISELY as Marx accused the utopias of conceiving the movement as only a particular stage in their idealized system. For Marx, there is nothing beyond the movement - the movement is itself the ends, FROM WHICH a future society is derived. Rafiq however should not be forced to continually repeat himself, when he has the privilege of a wealth of content already posted (precisely a paragraph that Xhar-Xhar, we can presumably infer, dismissed as a personal attack not worth responding to):

But this is precisely the criticism of Utopian socialism leveled by Marx, this is precisely why Marx EXPLICITLY stated that Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. What does Marx mean by this? He means THERE IS EFFECTIVELY NO COMMUNISM that is outside of the movement which derives from the present state of things, from the here and the now. Any possibility of a future society is embedded in controversies unique to present society, to the antagonisms, so to speak, of present-day society. To say that all of "this", the class struggle and the proletarian dictatorship, are merely means-to-an-ends begs the question of how, from a materialist perspective, can we even imagine the "ends" in any real way? Where does this "ends" come from, the whimsical brain-work of individual pedants whom have simply discovered that their fantasy can be realized by merit of material conveniences in existence, or the postulated result of real struggles that pertain solely to capitalist society? What you fail to understand is precisely this point: When Marx, Engels, and Lenin speak of the "end goal" of socialism, they do NOT refer to present events as being means to an ends. They simply answer the basic question of where such struggles would take the Communist movement and the implications this would have for society - ultimately, the POSSIBILITY of Communism is merely a justification for the pervading, relentless and uncompromising struggles that pertain to today, without which, many of the various reforms that citizens of liberal countries enjoy, could not and would not have been realized. Of course the point is to illustrate how having no illusions of reformism whatsoever was practically the only means by which the reforms that are oh-so beloved by liberals (Bernie Sanders) were able to have been realized.

Of course, upon mere evaluation of what has actually been posted, there is no talk about the necessity of "centuries" of social democratic governments (?) being the obstacle to creating a blueprint for a socialist society. It is that when there isn't even a FUCKING MOVEMENT, talk of a future socialist society in the same detail you've given us is nothing more than a capitalist perversion, an idealization of capitalist society - as Marx said, a snapshot without any of the shadows. And this has been the substantive point of the argument all along, anyway: In case you weren't aware, all I have demonstrated is the pathological nature of your "socialism", not whether it is possible or not, not whether it is viable or not - but solely how this fantasy is a projection of bourgeois ideology. Again, Xhar-Xhar, every time I read anything you post I must take a 10 minute break to reflect on how horrible things have gotten for the Left. What the fuck are you talking about? Is this actually how you've INTERPRETED the point? Do you love just talking out of your ass?

But let us evaluate the primary argument at hand: Socialism's "actual possibility". As stated, you claim that without true belief that a socialist society is possible, it is relegated back to an "abstract opposition" (?), an empty negation with no characteristics. The point at hand is a rather simple one: believing this or that utopia is possible or not does not make the difference as far as the qualitative character of one's 'socialism' as an empty negation - in fact, the socialism your provide us is moreso a negation than anything, because implicit in it is lacking any consideration for the holistic complexity of capitalist society in general, it is knowingly impossible, consciously or otherwise. It is what in Lacanian terms one would describe impossible demands made by the hysteric. What separates Communism from being an empty negation is above all its ability to supersede (NOT simply reduce to ground level) present conditions of life and production. Hence, as I will quote bellow, Marx states: They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In preparation for the argument that this amounts to conceiving consumerist capitalist society as the ready-made basis that which a socialist society will merely "assume", I even stated in a previous post:

Of course, Xhar-Xhar wil try to construe this - Communism as deriving from the present state of things, as an argument that it is capitalism without capitalism, but Marx explicitly refers to this in the paragraph he himself conceives as somehow "proving" the non-Marxism of my point: while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows. It is clear that when Marx refers to Communism deriving from the present state of things, he is NOT referring to the wants projected by capitalist society - ESPECIALLY in the age of de-industrialized consumerism he was never able to live long enough to see, as somehow forming the basis of production in a socialist society. He was referring to the fact that precisely EVEN THE MERE INSISTENCE of Communism derives from present antagonisms and STRUGGLES, not some kind of abstract utopia that which material conveniences find themselves able to conform to

The point being that post-modern de-industrialized society provides a basis of ethics that relegates directly back to the class struggle. Consumerism will be no more "superseded" as racism or bourgeois sexual morality would, because postmodern consumerist ethics (and not just "consumerism" in general, which has existed since the end of WWII) constitutes an obstacle to the super-session of capitalism in general. That is to say, consumerism as an ideology is a fantastic reflection of material processes which will be superseded. The true abstraction is any blueprint provided of socialism: Believing socialism is possible IS purely a negation until it becomes pertinently relevant, because all that disallows us from conceiving a scientifically organized society is the inverse of science itself - ideology. To break free from bourgeois ideology is a critical position, it only equips you with the ability to understand that a class society does not HAVE to exist, that these things are regularly reinforced - not indebted to any natural, cosmic or divine laws. Precisely the basis of criticism of their utopian socialism is Zizek's unfounded criticism of Marx today: their Socialism as a fantastic abstraction, an idealization of present day capitalist society without the shadows, without the capitalism. This is why it is impossible to create blueprints for a future society in present-day society: We are not EQUIPPED with the necessary means to IMAGINE a society which entails not only vast material changes, but reciprocal ideological changes in general - changes which change the standard of possibility in our imaginations. We become able to get a clearer and clearer picture of a post-capitalist society through the course of struggle, and struggle alone.

We intellectuals are not magically "equipped" with being able to imagine what a socialist society would look like. The relationship between the revolutionary intelligentsia and the worker's movement is reciprocal. We do not use the workers to realize our fantasies (or even fantasies we imagine they would also desire). Let me put it plainly: You do not as a neutral observer simply arrive at the conclusion that socialism is possible, or as some individual with a fantastic idea. You take a position in the social antagonism, in relations of power (political power, that is) and from then on you are equipped with the ability to recognize that a different society is possible. What you are incapable of understanding is that the Communism of the Young Hegelians in general was not only "idealist", it was juvenile. Only with practical experience in locating which forces in society the ideas derived were Marx and Engels able to call themselves Communists in the vein that we understand it today. You don't become equipped with the ability to ACTUALLY BELIEVE the viability of a Communist society by merely saying you do, or thinking you do, anyway. How's that for you?


Marx is in fact attacking those who deny the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a "transit point". The rest of your paragraph, with its usual psychotic phrasing and so on, does not follow, because it is apparent that Marx considers the d.o.t.p. as a transit point, not as you insinuated an end in itself.

Of course I am not insinuating that nothing comes after the proletarian dictatorship. One merely has to ask the question of "What could happen after" to understand this is a ridiculous point. But this is not the point when I use ends-in-itself. Even the Communist struggle before the dictaorship is an ends-in-itself. Why? Because any imagination of the future relegates back to the controversies unique to antagonisms in present society. We (in our conditions) are responsible for our fantasies. Communism as an ideal, a society even has no history. It is inevitably bound up with real historical circumstances - beyond that, it is a worthless abstraction with no basis in reality. The dialectic, therefore, allows us to understand that the Communism of the 19th century is not the Communism of the 21st century. Not because they are historically separate - or in Hegelian mumbo-jumbo, constitute different geists, but because each represents a particular expression of the idea in entirely different circumstances. What that means is simple: NOTHING EXISTS without its continual reproduction. Things do not passively "exist", they must be constantly, and actively reproduced. For Xhar-Xhar, Socialism is an idea which exists in our imagination, which material conveniences allow to exist.

The question then goes on - has Xhar-Xhar, and the sectarian diadochi he serves, lived up to the task of properly conceiving a Communism in the 21st century (none the less, an application of Marxist analysis)? No one can look with a straight face and answer seriously "yes". He knows this. His cult is also aware of this. Or perhaps Rafiq is wrong, and that the historical culmination of Communism in the 21st century finds itself home in the great revolutionary task of defending child-fuckers. "Not fair" this great 'Marxist' will cry. And the irony will seep in.


This is an important point because the notion that the d.o.t.p. is an end in itself is the "revolutionary" cover for what amounts to Bernstein's "the end goal is nothing, the process everything". And as we know to you the "process" involves the rule of the patriotic petite bourgeoisie, SYRIZA etc. - "centuries of Third-World Caesarist states".

Let us look at the context from which Bernstein was saying this (Which Xhar-Xhar claims is unique to Bernstein):

And the ultimate aim? Well, that just remains an ultimate aim. “The working classes have no fixed and perfect Utopias to introduce by means of a vote of the nation. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation-and with it that higher form of life which the present form of society irresistibly makes for by its own economic development – they, the working classes, have to pass through long struggles, a whole series of historical processes, by means of which men and circumstances will be completely transformed. They have no ideals to realise, they have only to set at liberty the elements of the new society which have already been developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society.” So writes Marx in Civil War in France. I was thinking of this utterance, not in every point, but in its fundamental thought in writing down the sentence about the ultimate aim. For after all what does it say but that the movement, the series of processes, is everything, whilst every aim fixed beforehand in its details is immaterial to it. I have declared already that I willingly abandon the form of the sentence about the ultimate aim as far as it admits the interpretation that every general aim of the working class movement formulated as a principle should be declared valueless. But the preconceived theories about the drift of the movement which go beyond such a generally expressed aim, which try to determine the direction of the movement and its character without an ever-vigilant eye upon facts and experience, must necessarily always pass into Utopianism, and at some time or other stand in the way, and hinder the real theoretical and practical progress of the movement.

Why did Bernstein say that the "process was everything, the end goal was nothing"? If one evaluates this with just an iota of intellectual honesty, they realize that Bernstein was directly quoting Marx, and in fact, quote openly (and should I say, honestly) admitting his basic revision of Marx. This revision did not consist in recognizing that the "process is everything", the basic revision (in this paragraph) consisted in the notion that the aims of the movement stand as principles, which is a perfectly anti-Marxist conception. Xhar-Xhar, with his principled platitudes (One should NEVER engage in parliament - and if you want to call me out for irony, it doesn't matter that Bernstein was a reformist - the point directly concerns PRINCIPLES. Finally, let us return to Third-World-Caesarean Socialism, yet again.

Unlike the approach given to the infamy of Xhar-Xhar's organization, Rafiq is not scared of owning up to his positions in their entirety. Third World Caesarean Socialism, a phrase which was termed in pure self-irony (with an implicit recognition of its comical designation - a postmodern phenomena, if you will) refers specifically to a theoretical approach taken by DNZ to solve the demographic problem in so-called "developing" countries. He draws direct inspiration from the various petite-bourgeois strong-men in the 20th century (and today, Chavez) who represented the rule of the agrarian petite-bourgeoisie.

Throughout DNZ's approach to the topic, what he eminently deals with is the Trotskyist approach to the issue of the proletariat as a demographic minority. The rule of the "patriotic petite bourgeoisie" therefore has no pertinence in advanced developed countries, and furthermore, not even much pertinence in the countries DNZ is referring to - he simply recognizes that these classes could not be conceived as antagonistic to the rule of the proletariat. There is nothing particularly controversial about this, in fact, he regularly mentions Lenin's democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry as an inspiration. Now, as we see, in quotations Xhar-Xhar puts "centuries of the Third World Caesarist states". If one understands basic grammar, one would be led to the conclusion that this is a direct extrapolation from another text. But the ass-talking philistine, the dishonest scoundrel Xhar-Xhar is, we are unsurprised to come to the conclusion that no one has every said such a thing, that only Xhar-Xhar speaks of "centuries of" this or that in his inability to conceive Communism in Marxist terms. No, dear Xhar-Xhar, we do not oppose Utopianism because we believe in the necessity of centuries of anything, for even if we would have full socialism tomorrow, talk of socialism in the manner you give us remains an abstraction to justify and sustain - yes - empty negations. For someone who belongs to the Sparts, it is ironic that you speak of "abstract negation", considering that the Sparts do not even have any affirmative program at all - we're quite literally talking about a group which fancies itself upon making grand declarations of action here or there with nothing to show for it. Are they so stupid as to think saying "All workers against" etc. is going to make a difference? No, they are not. They know very well it makes no difference- but alas, they are "rightful" in their futility. They can shrivel away as dignified, "true" socialists.


And congratulations on an internally inconsistent paragraph - on the minimal assumption that you do not consider Marx and Engels to have been idiots. Because Marx and Engels did in fact write quite a bit about the socialist society, from Marx's early manuscripts to Anti-Duehring, and much of it in periods where the communist movement was in a far worse condition than it is now.

Show us this internal inconsistency. There is none. Claiming Communism is self-conscious has nothing to do with positing a blueprint. Finally, to say that Marx and Engels wrote "quote a bit" about the socialist society is nearly blasphemous: For the simple reason that if these are to be taken as their writings on what a socialist society would actually look like in-itself, they sure did a piss poor job fleshing out details and the irk. As I stated before, however, this is not the case: When Marx and Engels wrote about a "socialist society", they did so to solely illustrate its juxtaposition with present-day society. Which means? The Socialism they described, beyond being scientifically organized, referred purely to negatinos - the absence of this (and some negations irrevocably imply positive ramifications).


This is the sort of sleight of hand Rafiq habitually engages in: if someone says that some social fact exists objectively, he will attack that someone as saying there is some sort of human nature.

Again, because as a pseudo-dogmatist (you are not even afforded the privilege of being a dogmatist, if that helps), you find the notion of "human nature" particularly repulsive: as a phrase, you do not want to identify with it. However, "objectively existing social facts", among a plethora of other drivel, serve as a perfectly appropriate substitute. The fact of the matter is that you are being attacked on grounds of prattling of a "human nature" (in pertinence to peoples wants and desires) precisely because it is the only logical conclusion of your argument. You conceive socialism as fulfilling a role unique to capitalism - itself something you conceive as an "instrument" of people's material wants and desires. But a mode of production is not an instrument, it defines the very basis of life for the human individual, it defines not only how things are produced, but how those things are consumed -and how this very process is reproduced in thought.


Now, certain human needs do result from the biological data of human existence, the fact that we need to eat food for example.

Well, considering there cannot be any surviving humans so long as they do not manage to feed themselves, of course you're correct. But there isn't an objectively existing means by which humans learn to feed themselves that they're "wired" for. I even doubt this is the case for most mammals in general (though I could be wrong, of course). However, people's dietary preferences, for example, are by no means the inevitable result of the "biological data of human existence". There is nothing timeless, innocent or divorced from vast ideological networks about preferring artisianal food to industrial food, organic to artificial, and so on. This itself is the point of controversy: You conceive human needs as an ends-in-themselves, but Marx conceived human needs as being realized from the onset of a society consisting of free producers in association. This entails an entirely different standard of want and need, and for someone who is so myopic, it's best you just keep your mouth shut about it in general. It is not even imaginable what this would entail at the levels we're talking about, especially for a Xhar-Xhar who by merit of a bourgeois ideologue is PERPETUALLY incapable of thinking outside of the bounds of present-day society. Even his conception of sexuality of the future is just an edgy perversion of sexual morality today (Speaking of NAMBLA).


More importantly, we can see how technical development results in new needs - prior to the discovery of metallurgy for example there was no need for arsenic.

A worthless observation, because again, these needs relegate back to definite conditions of production, of which are not shaped by "discoveries" but by the social antagonism (which may be fostered by discoveries, but again, which forms the primary basis - "discoveries" don't have a history, men and women do).


This does not mean needs are determined by the mode of production - this would be insanely circular (production is the creation of use-values, but what use-values are are determined by how production is organised, so we can't rationally delineate what production is and what it isn't)

And this is the crux of the argument, you fool: ONE CANNOT BE OUTSIDE OF PRODUCTION, for a mode of production is axiomatic vis a vis the survival of humans. Without this basic recognition, there is no historical materialism - the point of historical materialism is not to "prove" that it is correct amidst a plethora of other explanations, but that there are precisely no other explanations, scientifically speaking, for understanding history. From the onset of a scientific evaluation of history, one must irrevocably arrive at the conclusion of historical materialism - the alternatives are IRREVERSIBLY superstition and ideology. Needs ARE determined by a mode of production, because a mode of production refers exclusively to the basis of human life itself. That someone calls themselves a Marxist, and does not understand this very basic, rudimentary Marxist notion is disgusting. In Xhar-Xhar's mind, you have a conglomeration of individuals in the wild who "constitute" a mode of production only after the axiom of their existence. There is no human existence without production, without a mode of production, so to speak - which means hunter-forager bands constitute just as much a mode of production as 21st century global capitalism. Production is the true axiom - it is the production and reproduction of human life. Why do I have to lecture you on this? Marx sais very clearly and succinctly:

The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself – geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] of individuals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again determined by production.

Now, beofre you dismiss this - which is your first instinct (Oh, Rafiq just quoting some banalities from Marx) - I make the special requiest that you read this VERY, VERY carefully. Squint your eyes if you much - do not fall back on your initial instinct of "Oh well I agree with all dat lulululu". Understand what Marx is actually trying to say. A mode of production is not something which men use as their instrument. It constitutes the basis of their existence, their very being. If Rafiq is worshiping the Mode of production, he has only learned to prostrate this way from his prophet Marx. This is the point of production existing for its own sake - production is the means by which human individuals, and moreover human communities don't non-exist. End of story.


particularly not in the linear manner Rafiq imagines. This is not Marxism, which treats the mode of production as a material fact, a description of how material processes of production, which take place in the material world and are not independent from it, occur, but a bad theology where the Lord God has been replaced by the Mode of Production.

Only someone as dim-witted, only someone as rabidly philistine with blind adherence so long as he is guided by the smell of excrement can try and mimic the tone of a Marxist in accusing me of thinking "material processes of production exist independently of the material world". Where have I insinuated this, you fool? What is the "material world" in pertinence that which hte mode of production exists in which I am ignoring? Is it the eternal human nature (sorry, objectively existing social fact) that demands year-round Iphones, an unlimited supply of bananas, the sacredness of human want from which on the onset all production occurs? (Which is why some businesses are equipped with vast consumer-psychology departments aimed solely at manipulating people into wanting shit they otherwise wouldn't: Quite directly). And of course, how one CONCEIVES the material world again relegates back to production - it is not as though the universe is literally built to suit human consciousness.

Xhar-Xhar, let me be honest to you - and I say this even almost in a sympathetic way. This little analogy of yours is - quite patently - actually stupid. No, I mean it - it is literally just stupid. Are you just trying to mimic my "bad prose" when you speak of "The Lord God has been replaced by the Mode of Production" (?) - do you simply say this because I mention the phrase a lot, or is it because I ascribe this - which refers to nothing more than the means by which humans express their existence - self-sufficiency in its existence?


And this is still confused. Biology is not concerned with human needs.

You either contradict yourself, or in this little snippet intentionally play STUPID fucking semantic games. Did I say biology concerns "huamn needs"? No, I said if needs were even trans-historic, they would relegate back to biological needs, which are not sufficient to account for human needs in general. I use this example to illustrate just how bankrupt it is to think that the standards of want and need in capitalism will remain in the society you're describing: A socialism that has moved past, far past a proletarian dictatorship, dealing with the remnants of geopolitical problems, creating structures and institutions to organize production (on any lines, mind you, whether for human need or the straw-man dystopia where people just make shit regardless of what people want - which I will again address later).

Xhar-Xhar gives us a picture of an objective human need whose varying degrees of expression relegate back to technical possibility - and that is quite the end of it. Who knew the hunter-foragers, the giest of history in general, was just so that humans could finally have a bag of Doritos™. Of course as usual he will accuse me of shoving words in his mouth, of accusing him of positions he does not himself hold - but this only goes to show how much of a hole our friend Xhar-Xhar is in - that he cannot even identify with the logical conclusion of his own position (which presupposes actually using critical thought, not "But i didn't say it!").


Existentialism is the perpetual disappointment with the non-existence of a god, the world existing for no reason etc. (as categories such as reasons are not applicable to the material universe unless there is some sort of consciousness behind the material universe), and this warmed-over Hegelianism you're trying to pass off as Marxist materialism is the resolution of the disappointment - by smuggling in reason, a theology without an (explicit) god.

No, no one speaks of a "reason" that is somehow outside human consciousness, the point is that how we conceive the material world relegates back to our relationships to it and nothing more. We therefore constitute a part of material reality because we ourselves are a part of it. Is Marxism the resolution of the "god" debate? Yes, it actually is - if one reads Marx's conception of atheism, one would be tempted to reserve for him the label of a post-theist: he considers the matter basically settled already, at least regarding philosophy. And yes categories like reason are applicable to the material universe, solely because reason is a social category - it refers to our practical relation between the void around us. If you fail to undersatnd this, yo ucannot distinguish the existence between the moon and a lion. "Why is the moon there, rather than a lion"? The answer in Xhar-Xhar's mind is "No reason", because this question in his idealist ontology already insinuates conscious intent. Meanwhile a materialist, perfectly over the whole thing, will say - "Why would a lion be there, based on what we practically know about moons and lions - which existed before we as a species were ever even around?" Undermining the idealist-loaded ontological question in the first place.


[/B]And this is supposed to be materialism. This. Not to mention that you conflate "reasons" why something exists - i.e. an account of its material causes - with "reasons for" existing, i.e. idealist drivel about spirituality and whatnot.

No, I did not say "this was materialism". I said this was the materialist approach to ontology (at least in Marxist terms). Did I FUCKING reduce the whole of materialism to this one EXPRESSION of materialism? No, I didn't. Finally, regarding "reasons for" existing, again, a materialist ontology would not a difference between this and "reasons why". If you automatically conceive "for" in terms of subservience to intent or conscious will - you're an idealist, end of story. Materialists do not see a difference between Why (or for) and How. And again, if one questions it - we ask - why wouldn't it?

Try again.


And why not? Because Rafiq believes that the evil consumerists demons will drive people to consume more than they need (as determined by Rafiq).

Not only did I not make the allegation that humans are essentially stupid or evil (?), I explicitly and deliberately stated THERE ARE NO ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PERTINENCE. My POINT, my FUCKING POINT was that people are not magically embedded with the ABILITY to act in a way that emanates consideration of what is holistic - this has nothing to do with any purported stupidity or intelligence, but the fact that - big surprise - people are INDIVIDUALS who have their own lives in their own surroundings, not all-knowing, all-powerful gods who are able to give a shit about something that is so irreducibly beyond them and their daily needs and wants. I have stated nothing more and nothing less - the idea that the consumer patterns of individuals will "naturally" or "autonomously" or whatever the fuck you want to describe the whimsical expression of their so-called "free will" be "rational" from a productive standpoint is plainly fucking stupid. There is no human nature - humans act literally at random and by chance, there is no inherent meaning to it.

Of course, none of this concerns any policy of positive DECISION making, i.e. whether Xhar-Xhar should be Caesar or not, but the pathological dimension to it - the ideological implications of this insofar as one strives to understand present-day society in general. Which means what? It means, we will never be forced to actually "impose" this or that on people, because a Communist society from the onset entails mass-mobilized energetic enthusiasm of most of the people it concerns. Conversely for Xhar-Xhar, he thinks the political struggle is obsolete - all we do now is sit back, wait for the mythic moment of revolution to magically transpire and people as they exist now will simply be "freed". My very Practically modest point is one of prediction, not decision making: People will HAVE to conform to a new social order - there is never a natural blank slate, never a "return" to any human condition, for nature itself is the greatest sham of all. That is to say, there is no big other to fall back on, there is no god, no destiny, no geist (as such), absolutely no guarantee of the success of Communism without the conscious will, sacrifice, struggle and intuitions of men and women.

Let's continue:


In other words, behind the macho spiritual "communist" rhetoric is the usual right-wing objection (usually stated much more clearly by the Right, of course) that unless we ration products consumption will exceed need. And this is such a basic point it has been dealt with so many times on this site it's not funny.

No, this has nothing to do with the point. Even if every individual perfectly only takes what they need, this implies a technical level we are not presently at. When you rationally plan a fucking economy, you need to take into account - at least right now - basic facts such as how much will be produced for a given community in accommodation for human need, the flexibility of those needs (the level of variance - X amount of people wanting something on Friday, X amount people want on Wednesday in approximation to storage, etc.) and so on implies rationing. But nevermind this. Ignore it all, in fact. The point is that this projection is pathological - it is the ultimate pathological paradise of the consumer. We are regularly bombarded with the drive to enjoy (so much that we feel guilty when we do not enjoy - literally), to consume and so on (just to have a semblance of connection with the spirit of the times, for one - and before you FUCKING quote me with your drivel, I went over this previously, which you ignored), and nothing feels better like a society wherein all the material restrictions in place that disallow us from getting all the useless shit we actually do not in fact need (vis a vis a Communist society) are destroyed. But again, the desire is contingent upon the restriction - one does not exist without the other. To talk out of my ass, for example, one could imagine consumer goods to be produced in far less quantities (if one looks at how wasteful production today is) with a greater focus on durability and practicality. There is nothing practical about an Apple product compared to the alternatives. There is nothing practical about a fucking Ferrari compared to the alternatives, and so on. Ignoring the ideological dimension behind all of these - for someone who has already exceeded the threshold of being a high philistine, is an offense even by the standards one would hold to a university Liberal - for a Marxist, it is abominably unforgivable. This is why Marx refers to commodities as "abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" - If Rafiq used this phrase, or if Xhar-Xhar did not know it originated with Marx, he would be accused of obscurantism, of saying that commodities which are "just things people want, dude" are literally gods or are embedded with spirits or whatever. Look, everyone, how out of tune these philistines are with our tradition! Marx:

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.

This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labor that produces them.

Of course Marx is not referring to consumerism as such, which did not exist. Nor is he referring to how people "fetishize" material things rather than "da important things, bro" as so many like to say with their pseudo-conservative criticism of consumerism. No, rather Marx is referring to the fact that commodities in capitalist society, the standards of peoples wants and needs, are not relegated back to mere use-values, but to the social relations embedded and expressed through the object. That is to say, commodities have almost a ritualistic property - they exist to reproduce the process of production, which for Marx, is what truly exists for its own sake (production does not exist for the production of commodities - commodities and their consumption are not the ends - the true ends is production itself, this MODE of existence, of life).

Communism for Xhar-Xhar is Rolex's, Ferraris and Beats™ Audio headphones for everyone! Hooray! The appetite is absolved of its perpetual hunger. Contra to Xhar-Xhar, no great social upheaval will ever occur in the 21st century that does not involve the ritualistic mass burning of Iphones, Ferraris and Rolex's. The power of men and women themselves will triumph over the idols of capital, as Mohommad beheaded the pagan idols in Mecca - only unlike this story, the last one will not be spared.

Of course, Xhar-Xhar begs us to spare him: "I didn't make this argument, in fact, no one actually needs these things, they are just for da capital" - and that is precisely the point - there is no objective standard of human need that is excelled or infringed upon. People need the Ferrari just as much, in present day capitalist society, as they need to survive, because their conditions of survival are dictated by a state of affairs that confers power upon he who drives the Ferrari.


But this collapses in communism - precisely because we aren't rationing things out and because going around with a hundred bananas can't be used to demonstrate that someone has the favour of caesar Rafiq.

This doesn't simply refer to hoarding. You will not tell us that rationing persisted in the Soviet Union so as to be able to distinguish the power of the party apparatus from the general population, of course privileged with various luxuries and the irk. The problems experienced in those states would not simply disappear. Rationing will be necessary so long as the technical basis of society cannot sustain throwing a bunch of shit in the middle of a city with a sign reading "take as you please". It has nothing to do with any essential view about human nature, but the reality that the mere existence of various different people, who will take goods at various different times, rates and for various different reasons. Of course, if what you say is possible, then who cares? My point is at the present moment, it is not. And why even fantasize about this? The point is rationing does not have to imply bourgeois principles of exchange, end of story. But again, this simply isn't ABOUT viability or possibility - put the pathology that fantasizes about it.



First an "objective social condition" is revealed to be "de-facto hegemonic ideological discourse", because apparently the material reality can be reduced to words, then even words (as it is always with Rafiq: words, words, words) that agitate against consumption are ignored.

I can't literally FUCKING believe what I'm reading. Deepest apology that I can't just throw a FUCKING objective social condition at you, i.e. that I have to represent objective social conditions with actual words. Do you fucking hear yourself? WHAT THE FUCK AM I FUCKING READING? IF SOMEONE POINTS TO A SIGN AND SAIS "LOOK, A SIGN", WILL XHAR-XHAR ACCUSE THEM OF REDUCING OBJECTIVE REALITY TO WORDS? LIKE WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A WORD IS? You know, it's BECAUSE you are not "essentially" stupid that you piss me the fuck off - only a dishonest scoundrel, or the most lazy, most contemptible philistine could say the shit you do. "as it is always with Rafiq: words, words, words" - WE ARE ON AN ONLINE DISCUSSION FORUM. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, A PICTURE? WANT ME TO FUCKING CALL YOU AND TALK TO YOU? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT? HOW THE FUCK DO YOU LITERALLY, OBJECTIVELY "PUT FORWARD" OBJECTIVE MATERIAL REALITY?

Oh my god. When I say I need 10 minutes to reflect, I'm literally not kidding. Like am I actually becoming stupid because of this? Here's a hint - THE OBJECTIVE SOCIAL CONDITION is EXPRESSED through de-facto HEGEMONIC IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE. HOW IS THIS HARD TO UNDERSTAND. I only stand as a worthy victim of this attack if Marx "reduces objective social conditions" to words when he wrote the German ideology. I didn't even just say "ideology of consumerism" either, i said the ideology that corresponds to our DE-INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETY. The kind of PATENTLY IDEALIST vulgar reductionism you espouse is not only vulgar (this would credit it too much) it defies any and every standard of reason.

Your conception of materialism is so fucking disgusting that I actually want to vomit, choking on my own shit-fumes would be more bearable than this. It's one thing to be fucking ignorant, and it's another to actually righteously defend your ignorance - THIS is what philistinism is, after all. It's becuase Xhar-Xhar talks about Marxism, and yet I have to lecture him on the most rudimentary materialist concepts - namely that there is no antagonsim between ideas and material reality, ideas perpetuate the conditions of production - the point isn't that materialism "proves" this or that positive point, as Marx stated, not from dogmas, or this or that arbitrary idea - but precisely from the onset of scientifically evaluating the basis of life. Hegel wasn't "empirically wrong", and in fact if Marx gave a narrative about hsitory, Hegel would not disagree with it, and vice versa (on an empirical level). The point is approaching the subject scientifically - what separates an abstraction-in-thought from an ESSENTIAL foundation of history. This is why Marxists do not talk about Geist except in ironic terms. Althusser further explored this in his criticism of empiricism. But to drape onself as a materialist while trotting around the dichotomy of "ideology vs mode of production" is disgustingly only a vulgarization a fucking philistine is capable of doing. It is only through ideological criticism that one can actually understand a mode of production and the material relations to production to their fullest degree, without this, one quite amply lacks a full and complete understanding of how society functions, END OF STORY - the point is that the essential foundation of this function is NOT rooted in the ideas, for ideas have no history - it is human life itself and its expression.


that people are going to buy things in socialism? We aren't talking about people buying things but organising to plan production on a scientific, society-wide scale.

It doesn't change the point. I didn't even fucking imply that. I said when people consume things in capitalism, which happens to be through the medium of BUYING THINGS. Replace that with "take" or "pull out of one's ass" for all I fucking care, the point still stands.


But the people who live in that town in Mongolia (town!), or rather their representatives when the general plan of production is being drawn up, need to take into account the needs of the people in central America.

Yes, and this has direct ramifications for people's standards of want and need. This is ALL I AM FUCKING SAYING. People's standards of want and needs will have to take into account wider, holistic concerns. They are not, by default, implicit. Of course wants will proceed from any revolution. But a revolution will not happen tomorrow: This ITSELF entails a huge social and ideological transformation - the "madness" of any revolution that includes great and enthusiastic mass mobilization, apocalyptic rituals (Yes I'm trying to provoke you), and so on which will change things permanently. As stated:

My POINT is that human wants and needs would be entirely different, so much so to the point that using consumerist capitalist society as the basis, as the quota that which another mode of production would have to fulfill is FAULTY. Of course, for someone who thinks the proletarian dictatorship can happen tomorrow, of course he believes society as it exists now is simply a ready-made base for a socialist society - he does not understand that before there can be any revolution, the energy of the majority of society, of the working masses, must be invested in striving for a new tomorrow, social-self consciousness must be practically present in the productive basis of society - the working masses and those dispossessed (your own words) whom have nothing to lose. What that means? It means that through the course of struggle, through the course of the sophistication of the Communist MOVEMENT (which Xhar-Xhar thinks is already alive in the Spartacus cult), a fundamentally different, more sophisticated and more accurate picture of what a post-capitalist society, or should I say - a proletarian dictatorship, would develop. We are responsible for our fantasies, we do not choose them whimsically, for just like Iphones and Starbucks cappuccinos, there are vast ideological mechanisms at play which shape our desires and fantasies, which shape our vision of the future, even - which of course all relegate back to the social antagonism


and the fact that with increased mobility they themselves might end up in central America fairly soon,

Will everyone be going there? What is your point here? It certainly should not be one of travel.


but because no part of the world is autonomous. You act as if "Mongolia" and "central America" are two entities that exchange commodities.

Towns and cities are not "autonomous" because they are in association through capital and the world market. We will bellow get to your silly, completely anti-dialectical, idealist notion of some kind of process of "socialization" that occurs autonomously from relations to capitalist production, though.


"Correlate with a consideration"? Again, that's gibberish.

Exist at the same time with a consideration. Is that better for you, child? Now respond: Of course, the philistine Xhar-Xhar tries and tells us that while society will be planned to suit "human wants", the levels of consumption wouldn't have to correlate with a consideration of the labor being put it in to produce them. That is beyond fucking contradictory, and amply, plainly, and unambiguously stupid, because until the world is 100% automatized labor will have to fulfill the demands of the plans, too. Does Xhar-Xhar prophesize a return to hunter-forager bands or something?

Frankly, correlate is the best fucking word you could use in this context. How the FUCK is it gibberish? The levels of consumption wouldn't have to correlate (https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&q=correlate+definition&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0CBsQvwUoAGoVChMIp6O59O3WxwIVwgqSCh3HEgNG&biw=1745&bih=881) (link for our dear Xhar-Xhar) with a consideration of the labor being put in to produce them. I fail to see how someone who is older than 9 years old cannot understand this. Then again, if you were that young, you probably wouldn't be an apologist for revolutionary sexual predationism.


There were no "shameless advertising campaigns" (good grief) in Germany, in Japan or the Soviet Union, so this theory is obviously not true.

For Germany, yes there fucking was. I don't know anything about Japan (or whether food shortages were present in the country), but there is no such statistic that confirms mas gluttony in the Soviet Union.


Trotsky talked about "a proletarian Sparta" in the context of his campaign for the militarisation of labour - i.e. the very thing every living Trotskyist rejects.

Have you found yourself acquainted with Kautsky, after all? Frankly, opposing the militarization of labor was the only solution in the situation: If Trotskyist sects oppose "in principle" this, then woe upon them all the more. I love how everything redeemable about Trotsky is mercilessly condemned - are you literally trying to be the worst? Tell us about the alternatives to the militarization of labor, however at the time. Tell us about how similar conundrums will not be faced in the proletarian dictatorship of the future. The ultimate lesson of the Russian civil war is that freedom is not free: Communism is not a passive process, it is sustained by the discipline, solidarity and militant spirit of those constituting the new order. There is no big other to fall back upon, no autonomous process that guarantees success, responsibility is in the hands of the new community that arises.


(for example with the August Bloc, which you are closer to than any Trotskyist will ever be),

Do you just talk out of your ass now? HOW in ANY meaningful sense?


Lenin could fuck up

He could, but he did not. Another discussion. Anyway, one speaks of Trotsky being a "hero-god" because it is Trotsky and Trotsky alone that held together the 4th International. Implicit in Trotsky already was the sectarian culty economism from the onset of the transitional program, just as implicit in Alexander was the rise of the diadochi, and in Mohommad the various conflicting Caliphates. Trotsky is your founding sin. End of story.


"None other than" implies that I should be impressed by the mention of Žižek.

You should be impressed by the reality that you don't even know how to properly attack your opponents. You talk shit about Zizek, but the fact that you know so little about him - or are at least so unfamiliar with the degree of how much Rafiq steals from him, suggests you are in no position to talk shit in the first place. You amply do not, and never will understand Zizek, and I believe you know this very well. So shrivel and fade into the abyss in your righteous ignorance, you fool.


The "particularities of the Prussian state" Duehring supposed would remain in the future society were the gendarmerie, compulsion regarding religion and so on, in other words - things far from peculiar to Prussia.

Here "particularities" refers to the fact that it was only because these were particularly present in the Prussian state that Duhring incorporates them into his future society. Duhring did this as a good Prussian, as a reflection of the conditions of the Prussian state. Engels himself goes into great detail in this.


Which is precisely your position - a "socialist" police force serving a "socialist" government that, like "Our Committee" of Nechayev doesn't have the guts to call itself a government.

Of course, you wouldn't know, becuase you've whimsically conferred upon yourself the privilege of picking and choosing what actually constitutes the substantive basis of my post:

The basis of Engel's criticism is quite succinctly in Duhring's conception of a future society as PRECISELY a perversion of present-day society, no ethical platitudes regarding the "infringement" of the individual free will are to be found anywhere. Of course it becomes even more pathetic when we confront the fact that when Marx and Engels referred to barrack's Communism, it was a basic criticism of Nachayev's anarchist hypocrisy regarding a supreme "committee" that would decide everything. Of course, this has nothing to do with the substantive point at hand: The point is [not, apologies for forgetting to insert this] that that a select few Committee members will decide or ration everything, or that society will be organized by merit of the whims of each individual, the point is that society will have to be structurally and institutionally inter-connected, and centralized in this manner. (the manner I have described earlier, not Nachayev's) This is a far cry from the idea of a capitalism without capitalism at all.

Engel's criticism was that precisely the persistence of a police force is just a fantastic abstraction of things unique to present day (or previous Prussian) society. That was basically IT: Again, the logic of infringement was not present. Finally, being that you conceive me as a Stalinist, I would at least prefer you to accuse me of insinuating a secret police force would exist. At least I wouldn't be offended by that, no matter how wrong it is. But no, there is no police in a society unified by militant discipline in the spirit of self-sacrifice, solidarity, and so on. There is probably collective coercion, but that is in every social order - unless one runs around naked in the woods by themselves, there is no such thing as an 'individual' that exists outside of a wider social context. Again, however, when Lenin spoke of a worker's militia - of course there is nothing wrong with this. Police can and only have ever existed to defend private property. The liberal-pathological notion of a big bad mega state beating workers into submission makes no sense. WHY would this happen? So Rafiq can have "all da power" (are you actually 9 years old)? What a great Marxist understanding of power you have, Xhar-Xhar. People just "want it", no doubt probably relegating back to some kind of "human nature". Of course, in reality, real power really never actually extends beyond a small group - beyond this, it is ritualistic.


No, I was talking about your ridiculous statements about "the Yin and the Yang".

Here Xhar-Xhar confers the accusation of new age spirituality upon the basic recognition that two things which may appear to be exactly the opposite are the conditions of each others existence.


against revolutionary socialism and in support of social-democratic governments - so quite in line with your politics. After every Laclau there comes a Kirchner.

Right, just as German idealism was a reaction against the First International. To 'react' against something implies it's vital existence. What revolutionary socialism was present after WWII, in your mind? It was a response precisely to the intellectual laziness of formalist Marxists - of the Leninist stripe. Of course, even calling it a response to THIS would be wrong - it developed within the crevices of western Marxism in general, beginning with minds like Lukacs, Gramsci, etc. The idea that these individuals give a flying fuck about your Sparts, or your SWP's is absolutely adorable - but patently not true. What you say has no actual, essential bearing in reality - of course, among those involved in discourse criticism you will find people leveraging out support for social democratic governments, you will also find theoretical insights in the vein of Badiou or Negri which basically condemn the strive for conquering political power, fetishize grassroots localism, etc. - Any individual who would want to critique them for this (Which Zizek did, thoroughly), rather than blindly dismiss them, already finds themselves playing the game - that is to say, employing discourse criticism. Compare what you would expect to find a criticism of Laclau by an organization - with Zizek's (http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm). But Xhar-Xhar, who cannot conceive theory in non-sectarian terms, will automatically identify the plethora of content with whichever so-called political position they ascribe to that can be rendered in sectarian terms. Thus, Kierkegaard is reduced to his opposition to the French revolution - Hegel to his apologism for monarchy, Gramsci for his well known sins, Lacan for his pessimism, Althusser for his sympathy with the Chinese, and so on. Of course, he will tell us "But they had those positions for reasons not unrelated to their theoretical work" - well then, isolating those positions and conceiving why they held them is already playing a game you refuse to engage.

Individuals like Zizek are either too comfortable with their position, or amply do not have faith. They do, however, provide the theoretical basis for a revival of revolutionary politics. As if Marx and Engels could have skipped all of their Hegelianism, theoretical struggle and jumped straight to the practical Marx and Engels. Of course, Xhar-Xhar finds himself sufficiently capable of already addressing the culmination of not only all material developments, but theoretical developments in the past several decades - which is why he by merit of his passivity finds himself in bed with the philistines of the analytic school upon approaching them. Every post you have given us, has had the tone of dismissal - as if every subject you engage in is a simple one.

Anti-intellectualism is anti-Marxism.


No, Marx's point (which anyone who has read the text and is not talking out of his arse should know) was that in communism there is no rationing, no "equal proceeds of labour", that products are taken in accordance with human need, not some "compensation" scheme.

Marx said nothing of compensation or rationing in generla. He spoke of rationing in terms of the bourgeois law of value - but not rationing in general. Marx was no "individualist". He conceived individual freedom to be synonymous with collective freedom. The voluntarism of the society is the voluntarism of each particular constitutive member of society - not the other way around. This is quite amply very clear if one reads Marx beyond abstracting a few phrases lost of any context. Some work, in the FORESEEABLE future will be more arduous and challenging, and so on. Xhar-Xhar mistakens statelessness with a conglomeration of people doing random shit. Of course, under the backdrop of "objectively socialized industrial production":


No, these towns (towns! hello! as if the socialist society will be a collection of Podunk towns!) are in association because of the existence of global, objectively socialised industrial production, which is in fact in contradiction to capitalism, which makes socialism a real possibility and not simply a Nice Idea.

"Which is in contradiction to capitalism" - no, capitalism is a totality, not an abstract ideal that its foundational basis is in "contradiction to". Rather, socialized industrial production is in contradiction with global capital, WITH capitalist production in general, not "to capitalism". However, that does not mean it is some kind of observable autonomous force which exists in spite of the global capitalist totality, which includes markets, profit, property and capital. That is patently ridiculous: People do not enter into association with each other because of some kind of "objective socializing force" which exists independently from capitalist production. The reason cities and towns are in association with each other - is owed to relations to market, to global capital, and so on. You cannot "abstract" this association from this fact. Locate for me how these cities and towns are in association in a way that is subtly independent from markets and global capital. LOCATE this so-called "contradiction". What you describe isn't a contradiction, it is paranoiac voodoo. The only reason the increased socialization of labor and production is a contradiction and a pre-requisite to Communism is because the forces which facilitate it are not planned, but blind forces of the market, of profit, and so on. A commons is created that extends beyond the reach of each conglomerate until actual mechanisms of planning (Corporate-state intervention), and so on, become required. The key word here is, however, planning in juxtaposition to the particular self-interest given to us by private property, which violates a commons we all belong to. Without this conscious, large-scale and centralized planning, which would of course involve the necessity of what every community must take into account each particular circumstance. From being able to house, feed, provide electricity, running water and clothing to the world, which would take abject priority, one could then discuss further wants and needs. Until this task is completed, which would have such a strong structural, social and even ideological change - there is no telling what people would want, or how they would want it.

The "calculation problem" is only a problem when socialism is presented in the vein that Xhar-Xhar gives it too us: What would make a socialist society "tick" - is not simply fulfilling "human need" (tautological) but something else entirely. The incessant drive for the cosmos, or whatever you want - but human need must have a basis of actualization because human life must have a basis of expression.


Will it balls. That you try to ascribe this position to me just shows that you can't be honest for a moment here, otherwise your entire "argument" falls to pieces. Yes, human society will consciously and centrally plan production, the flow of producer goods etc. The point is that this does not require compulsion

Well no, it depends on what means by "compulsion". The controversy here isn't about whether workers should be beat into submission - it's about fetishizing people's sacred choices in general. There is no free choice in a vacuum - that's the whole point: outlining your ideological pathology through your talk of this society. It has pertinence to the here and now - not this so-called 'society'. People's choices are never free, they exist under the backdrop of a wider social being. So the point is - there will be no "blank slate" of human nature that will be respected, humans are not born virtuous, or with anything that has moral significance for that manner - humans are born helpless, senselessly sobbing in their own lack-of hardwiring. So "compulsion" as in learning social rituals, discipline, and solidarity from birth will HAVE to exist. Should people gravitate this, as Lenin pointed out, would not require a police - but that doesn't mean society is composed of a conglomerate of random individuals bowing their hats at each other on the sidewalk in mutual respect of their own affairs, on their way to grab some Iphones and Rolex watches. Society is socialized to the very core. Lenin used the example of how people react to a women being assaulted on the street - this would be similar to someone who engages in sabotage, if you will. For a great deal of time, work will have to be done wherein abstaining can jeopardize the survival of society. Until this is no longer necessary, somehow, then yes - "compulsion" to work would be necessary.

Of course this is not comparable to "compulsion" in capitalist society - because labor is socialized, and because there is no private property, there is no exploitation, only holistic causes. Of course, if the great majority of the population is not enthusiastically devoted to building a new society, then we have already failed. Even during the civil war where factory workers who went on strike were punished, Lenin pointed out that it was not by means of the whip that the Bolsheviks won the war, but the enthusiasm, dedication Xhar-Xhar, who conceives revolution to be a matter of tomorrow, all the more cannot explain why random people would want to do any work (Well, socially necessary work specifically) in the first place. If I am arguing what you say, so was Lenin:

The enemies of the working people, the landowners and capitalists say that the workers and peasants cannot live without them. "If it were not for us," they say, "there would be nobody to maintain order, to give out work, and to compel people to work. If it were not for us everything would collapse, and the state would fall to pieces. We have been driven away, but chaos will bring us back again." But this sort of talk by the landowners and capitalists will not confuse, intimidate, or deceive the workers and peasants. An army needs the strictest discipline; nevertheless the class-conscious workers succeeded in uniting the peasants, succeeded in taking the old tsarist officers into their service, succeeded in building a victorious army.

The Red Army established unprecedentedly firm discipline-not by means of the lash, but based on the intelligence, loyalty and devotion of the workers and peasants themselves.

And so, to save the working people from the yoke of the landowners and capitalists for ever, to save them from the restoration of their power, it is necessary to build up a great Red Army of Labour. That army will be invincible if it is cemented by labour discipline. The workers and peasants must and will prove that they can properly distribute labour, establish devoted discipline and ensure loyalty in working for the common good, and can do it themselves, without the landowners and in spite of them, without the capitalists and in spite of them.

Labour discipline, enthusiasm for work, readiness for self-sacrifice, close alliance between the peasants and the workers-this is what will save the working people from the oppression of the landowners and capitalists for ever.

Mind you, this was "for ever", it did not refer to the emergency of the civil war, but what to do afterwards. The key point here? Masses will not have to be "cumpulsed", but individuals probably would be. If there is precarity of food, why should those who deliberately refuse to work eat?


So you didn't read the text. Because Marx explicitly talks about:

"[T]he division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape."

"As activity is not voluntary", man's activity enslaves him - in socialism this, along with the division of labour, will be abolished.

This philistine talks about not reading things? He should be surprised to know:

What Marx meant had nothing to do with the abdication of SOCIAL OBLIGATION, but precisely the fixation of social activity - the abolition of which already takes on an embryonic form in capitalist society wherein one can learn any profession on a formal level. I went into this, thoroughly. Marx illustrates the point for me when he talks about his referring specifically to the dissonance between particular and social activity. Now, the point of concern IS NOT whether choices should be infringed upon, but the fetishization of choice itself as constituting a fantasy of consumerist capitalist society. Finally, upon evaluating Marx, the dichotomy he creates is NOT between voluntary labor and "forced" labor as such, but voluntary labor and NATURAL labor. What does this mean? The dichotomy was between a self-conscious society and a "natural" one, it had nothing to do with people doing whatever they want as some kind of sacred principle. Marx speaks of a labor that is forced upon the individual "from which he cannot escape", what this explicitly refers to is the labor constituting the very life-being of the individual in the exclusive sense. So again, you provide nothing that actually addresses the argument that I haven't already addressed.

Read Marx carefully: as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided. What Marx is saying has nothing to do with social obligation or "free choice". His point concerns the self-consciosuness of society. The only semblance of agreement you find with Marx is the abstracted, out of context phrase "As activity is not voluntary" - what you fail to understand is that he makes no distinction here between collective activity or individual activity - becuase he amply is not dealing with this stupid fucking dichotomy - fortunately for him he did not live to see postmodern consumerist ethics as the rule of the day.

In socialism, the division of labor is abolished only insofar as the pre-requisites have already been abolished in capitalism, the fixation of labor FORMALLY, at level of state, is already gone. Everything today relegates back to private property, which is why formally anyone can become a capitalist as far as the law goes. Everyone is formally "equal", there are no castes in capitalism. Marx goes into this: The antithesis between lack of property and property, so long as it is not comprehended as the antithesis of labour and capital, still remains an indifferent antithesis, not grasped in its active connection, in its internal relation, not yet grasped as a contradiction. It can find expression in this first form even without the advanced development of private property (as in ancient Rome, Turkey, etc.). It does not yet appear as having been established by private property itself. But labour, the subjective essence of private property as exclusion of property, and capital, objective labour as exclusion of labour, constitute private property as its developed state of contradiction – hence a dynamic relationship driving towards resolution.

If some labor is required, ordered, to hurt your sensitivities - this would not be an individual constituting himself a profession, but an individual as the particular expression of a universal Communist man fulfilling his duty to the greater good, unbound, and unfixated upon his role - as - just as easily he can be transferred to study engineering or whatever you want, or just as easily insofar as this work is no longer vital he can do something else. There would be no dissonance between particular and common interest.


"In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionised from top to bottom, and in particular the former division of labour must disappear."

The former division of labor must disappear, interesting. Frankly, no one speaks of an end to the division of labor, but the "natural" division of labor. Nevermind this, though.

The qualifications for freedom does not amount to the postmodern consumerist qualifications for freedom wherein one can choose between the Chocolate or strawberry cake. In Marxist terms, freedom is freedom of necessity.

Engels on Duhring:

This second definition of freedom, which quite unceremoniously gives a knock-out blow to the first one, is again nothing but an extreme vulgarisation of the Hegelian conception. Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity (die Einsicht in die Notwendigheit).

"Necessity is blind only in so far as it is not understood ."

Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves — two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control. Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.

Lenin:

They imagine that if Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt, and all the authorities of theirs have not the slightest inkling of how Hegel and Marx [B]solved the problem (of freedom and necessity), this is purely acci-dental: why, it was simply because they overlooked a certain page in a certain book, and not because these “authorities” were and are utter ignoramuses on the subject of the real progress made by philosophy in the nineteenth century and because they were and are philosophical obscurantists https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/three6.htm

Freedom here has nothing to do with falling back on the whims of individuals and their "sacred" choices, for a choice only becomes free when it constitutes an understanding of necessity. Freedom, as Zizek stated again correctly, is the freedom insofar as it is a necessity - not simply an obligation, but a necessity, deep in your heart - where to do otherwise would compromise your very existence (in your own mind). That is true freedom. The subjugation of men to their own means of production has nothing to do with the mere absence of random people doing random shit.


To take Marx for a proponent of forced labour, of work,

All work and all labor is forced. There is no such thing as "non-forced" labor. Humans labor out of force- by merit of their being. There is no "non-work" or "non-labor", only different kinds of labor in their relation to society. Keep your liberal pathologies out of here, yes? Speaking of opposing ideologies...

[ckaihatsu]

Is there anyway to merge this thread with the Communism: What would the Utopia look like thread, that would make sense


Why I gave up on traditional communism

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-gave-up-t193405/index.html

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

First, Xhar-Xhar, let's make something absolutely clear: There are no walls of text to be found that consist of "nothing but insults", and to my word, if you (or any other user for that matter) manage to find a single wall of text in the post in question that properly fits this qualification, I will send you 100$ over paypal right now, my word on it.

Somehow I don't feel particularly motivated to give you my personal information. And this would not be as remotely funny if you didn't follow this with a wall of text "that contains nothing but insults and chest-beating about how you're possessed by the spirit of Communism or whatever":

Xhar-Xhar, who wishes to save himself from embarrassment - like his own Jr. Izvestia, wants to respond, but doesn't want to put in the effort to actually show for it. You behave, post and engage the arguments as expected: As a coward would. This haughty philistine is so confident that he believes himself absolved of the responsibility to engage the points which pertain to the argument at hand: He thinks he can whimsically pick and choose what he wants to fucking respond to because apparently the only content of Rafiq's posts consist of what Xhar-Xhar, the intellectual dwarf deems worthy of a response. But nevermind this, fool, every idiot in this thread can see that every point you find yourself unable to address is one that you indirectly concede to me, so very well then. Is this all you have left, then? Good on you for making today a hell of a lot easier[.]


This has nothing to do with "intelligence".

So by your own admission, your unreadable tirades about how "stupid" I am are besides the point. Quite so. Yet you need them because, when all the irrelevant and obscurantist drivel is stripped, what remains are obvious misrepresentations, of history, or Marxist thought and so on, and Lihite dogma.


When Marx wrote the German ideology, which was discourse criticism at its finest

And that's the crux of the issue: it's not. It's the work that introduces the first self-contained discussion of historical materialism, not a work about how the Junkertum or the squireocracy are saying this and that. I find it extremely difficult that anyone who has read the work could possibly write the quoted sentence, but there you have it, people manage a lot with limited honesty and intellectual resolve.


But I merely, ironically use the term "ends-in-itself" to succintly demonstrate that there is no such of a thing as an 'ends-in-itself', that is to say: there is only struggle and movement, without which there is no possibility of a future.

And so, stripping the completely extraneous "-in-itself", which is supposed to remind the reader of the Marxist terminology of the class in and for itself, but doesn't actually mean anything, you stand with Bernstein, who denied the relevance of the final goal of socialism, and against Marx, who clearly stated that the d.o.t.p. is a "transit point".


PRECISELY as Marx accused the utopias of conceiving the movement as only a particular stage in their idealized system.

And the falsification of history starts. The utopians did not "conceive the movement as... a particular stage", they did not conceive the movement at all and instead believed their "idealised systems" (which you forget Marx did not reject out of hand) would be realised on the merit of their universal (classless!) appeal, Fourier in particular going around and offering people caesarates for money.


It is that when there isn't even a FUCKING MOVEMENT

Why? Because the existing movement has been banished to nonexistence by decree of Rafiq, because it falls short of his "party-movement of the entire class" social-democratic nonsense.


As stated, you claim that without true belief that a socialist society is possible, it is relegated back to an "abstract opposition"

I already discussed this in my previous post and unlike you, I'm not going to repeat myself (unlike you, who constantly quote the same few paragraphs in an effort to drown the reader in shit). I'm not here to educate you on basic logic, I'm in fact not here to educate you at all but to point out what a revision of basic Marxist principles Rafiq spouts as The Only True Orthodox Marxism (TM).


Unlike the approach given to the infamy of Xhar-Xhar's organization, Rafiq is not scared of owning up to his positions in their entirety. Third World Caesarean Socialism, a phrase which was termed in pure self-irony (with an implicit recognition of its comical designation - a postmodern phenomena, if you will) refers specifically to a theoretical approach taken by DNZ to solve the demographic problem in so-called "developing" countries.

Gods preserve us from the Sect of Rafiq solving the demographs problem, it probably entails death camps. So now, TWCS is simply an ironic designation, completely innocuous, and we suppose also that the references to the March on Rome (the first one, honest), "people's monarchies of PODEMOS" (Spain is in the Third World?), Greek "tax secret police" and so on are also ironic.


Finally, to say that Marx and Engels wrote "quote a bit" about the socialist society is nearly blasphemous: For the simple reason that if these are to be taken as their writings on what a socialist society would actually look like in-itself, they sure did a piss poor job fleshing out details and the irk.

Of course Marx and Engels never stated how the centre for the production of glass would be called and whether it would have nine or twelve bureaus. That would entail, not "fleshing out details", but fantasy, like Fourier's six million phalansteries ruled over by an omniarch. They did, however, write more than enough about the socialist society, for example talking about scientific planning of production, the end to the division of labour, the withering away of the state etc. You refuse to acknowledge this because to you "socialism" is an empty symbol you recourse to to make your politics seem radical, and while you began this discussion ostensibly talking about socialism, increasingly you're denying anything can be said about it.


However, people's dietary preferences, for example, are by no means the inevitable result of the "biological data of human existence". There is nothing timeless, innocent or divorced from vast ideological networks about preferring artisianal food to industrial food, organic to artificial, and so on.

Of course some preferences are the result of biological givens; for most of the world, cow milk is simply indigestible (oddly enough we will return to the subject of milk later). But again, what are you talking about? There is no need for "organic" food because "organic food" is a scam. It doesn't mean anything. Likewise all food is equally "artificial". You appear to be battling some inner demon again.


And this is the crux of the argument, you fool: ONE CANNOT BE OUTSIDE OF PRODUCTION, for a mode of production is axiomatic vis a vis the survival of humans.

Yes, this is a favourite tactic of obscurantists: recognise the complete muddle you've reduced your argument to, then accept it, throwing some phrases about always-already to the reader. Fine by me - again, I'm not here to convince you or the crit theory crowd, but people who can think instead of just staring in reverent awe at tortured phrasing.


Without this basic recognition, there is no historical materialism - the point of historical materialism is not to "prove" that it is correct amidst a plethora of other explanations, but that there are precisely no other explanations, scientifically speaking, for understanding history.

Not as Marx understood it. Not only did he recognise other explanations for historical change (e.g. the insistence of an author - I forget the name - on the importance of climactic factors, which Marx mentions in a letter to Engels), they recognised the limitations of historical materialism as such (Marx noting he was discussing "pure capitalism", Engels talking about extra-economic factors and so on - in fact Engels speculated that what he took to be the higher level of development among Semites and Indo-Iranians was due to the consumption of milk).


Now, beofre you dismiss this - which is your first instinct (Oh, Rafiq just quoting some banalities from Marx) - I make the special requiest that you read this VERY, VERY carefully. Squint your eyes if you much - do not fall back on your initial instinct of "Oh well I agree with all dat lulululu". Understand what Marx is actually trying to say. A mode of production is not something which men use as their instrument. It constitutes the basis of their existence, their very being. If Rafiq is worshiping the Mode of production, he has only learned to prostrate this way from his prophet Marx. This is the point of production existing for its own sake - production is the means by which human individuals, and moreover human communities don't non-exist. End of story.

"Understand what Marx is actually trying to say", i.e. what Rafiq is trying to smuggle in as Marx's meaning. Nowhere does Marx say that production exists for its own sake, or however you wish to rephrase that. In fact he notes the significance of production as production of the necessities of human life. This production then forms part of the life of the human species, but is not identical with it, is not "their very being". Marx is clear on that - there are parts of human life that have nothing to do with production or reproduction. As is also obvious to anyone who has ever lived.


You either contradict yourself, or in this little snippet intentionally play STUPID fucking semantic games. Did I say biology concerns "huamn needs"? No, I said if needs were even trans-historic, they would relegate back to biological needs, which are not sufficient to account for human needs in general.

I'm not playing semantic games. That need, so long as you acknowledge it (and not relegate it to something to be dictated by Our Committee), can be reduced to "biological needs" (which you gloss over as "evolutionary", whatever that means in all this muddle), is your position, and the position of Malthusians who want to be leftists, but it was never the position of Marx, who speaks about non-"biological" needs (e.g. tobacco).


Who knew the hunter-foragers, the giest of history in general, was just so that humans could finally have a bag of Doritos™.

Who knew a "giest" (gist? geist?) of history even existed.


No, no one speaks of a "reason" that is somehow outside human consciousness

Except you do. If you did not you would not speak of the world as having some sort of "reason for" existence. Which makes your pretense to materialism all the more hilarious.


No, this has nothing to do with the point. Even if every individual perfectly only takes what they need, this implies a technical level we are not presently at. When you rationally plan a fucking economy, you need to take into account - at least right now - basic facts such as how much will be produced for a given community in accommodation for human need, the flexibility of those needs (the level of variance - X amount of people wanting something on Friday, X amount people want on Wednesday in approximation to storage, etc.) and so on implies rationing.

Planning on a day-to-day basis? Oh dear.

I have already dealt with claims about present technical capability. The rest is the familiar complaint - you assume, like our friend Baseball in another thread, there is a set number of products to satisfy human need, completely ignoring that human society controls production in socialism and will match production to need (instead of dragooning people to only "need" as much as is produced). This is reinforced by your mention of the so-called "calculation problem".


Of course Marx is not referring to consumerism as such, which did not exist. Nor is he referring to how people "fetishize" material things rather than "da important things, bro" as so many like to say with their pseudo-conservative criticism of consumerism. No, rather Marx is referring to the fact that commodities in capitalist society, the standards of peoples wants and needs, are not relegated back to mere use-values, but to the social relations embedded and expressed through the object.

No, Marx is referring to the character of a commodity as embodying a certain value by virtue of the labour expended to produce it, yet being viewed as possessing a value due to some intrinsic quality of the commodity itself - this is basic Marxist economics.


You will not tell us that rationing persisted in the Soviet Union so as to be able to distinguish the power of the party apparatus from the general population, of course privileged with various luxuries and the irk.

Rationing persisted because the Soviet Union was a transitional society embedded in a global market, and far from being something that should be celebrated it enabled the parasitic bureaucratic caste to politically expropriate the proletariat - something you probably secretly applaud lest those uppity proles start thinking about doing away with insane conservative regulations you want to enforce.


I can't literally FUCKING believe what I'm reading. Deepest apology that I can't just throw a FUCKING objective social condition at you, i.e. that I have to represent objective social conditions with actual words.

You haven't mentioned any objective social reality. All you mentioned is discourse - what people are saying. And even then you completely ignore all the discourse pointed against consumption.


Yes, and this has direct ramifications for people's standards of want and need. This is ALL I AM FUCKING SAYING. People's standards of want and needs will have to take into account wider, holistic concerns. They are not, by default, implicit. Of course wants will proceed from any revolution. But a revolution will not happen tomorrow: This ITSELF entails a huge social and ideological transformation - the "madness" of any revolution that includes great and enthusiastic mass mobilization, apocalyptic rituals (Yes I'm trying to provoke you), and so on which will change things permanently.

Religion is like shit, we all know it exists but you're not supposed to mention it in polite conversation. So when you come here and talk about your religious delusions it's the same to me as if you came and talked about the watery shit you had yesterday - it's not that I'm provoked, but you're exposing yourself for a rube. But yes, we all know this: for Rafiq the revolution is not a real possibility, it needs a "huge social and ideological transformation" courtesy of Rafiq and his social-demonrat buddies playing to the proletariat the music of the future. It's the same boring processist view we've all seen a hundred times, and it's not getting any fresher.


Towns and cities are not "autonomous" because they are in association through capital and the world market. We will bellow get to your silly, completely anti-dialectical, idealist notion of some kind of process of "socialization" that occurs autonomously from relations to capitalist production, though.

Also the "silly, completely anti-dialectical, idealist notion" of Engels, who in Antiduehring speaks of the means of production becoming socialised, how this comes into conflict with the capitalist mode of appropriation etc. But what did we expect?


Do you just talk out of your ass now? HOW in ANY meaningful sense?

The August Bloc was a gathering of social-democrats in the old sense, a pressure group for a "party-movement of the entire class". Sound familiar? It's the same Lihite orthodoxy being offered as the latest Orthodox Marxism (TM) on RevLeft.


WHY would this happen? So Rafiq can have "all da power" (are you actually 9 years old)? What a great Marxist understanding of power you have, Xhar-Xhar. People just "want it", no doubt probably relegating back to some kind of "human nature".

I have no idea why you're posting these power fantasies. Unlike you, I don't engage in idle psychological speculation. Maybe you want to wield power, maybe you want someone to wield power over you. Maybe you're just bored and trolling the site. Whatever the reason, the character of your posts as a power fantasy is unmistakable.


Right, just as German idealism was a reaction against the First International. To 'react' against something implies it's vital existence.

Which is why Kathedersozialismus, Staatsozialismus and so on became popular during the Anti-Socialist laws, surely.


But Xhar-Xhar, who cannot conceive theory in non-sectarian terms, will automatically identify the plethora of content with whichever so-called political position they ascribe to that can be rendered in sectarian terms.

No, surely not that. Anything but that. It is the greatest crime to recognise, as Lenin puts it (or more likely his translator), that there exists "blocs in philosophy and philosophical blockheads". We should rather devote ourselves to spreading the philosophies of Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and so on and when people ask us what the fuck we're doing accuse them of being philistines.


Marx said nothing of compensation or rationing in generla. He spoke of rationing in terms of the bourgeois law of value - but not rationing in general.

Of course he did. "To each according to his need" is quite independent of the law of value (the only one).


"Which is in contradiction to capitalism" - no, capitalism is a totality, not an abstract ideal that its foundational basis is in "contradiction to". Rather, socialized industrial production is in contradiction with global capital, WITH capitalist production in general, not "to capitalism"

Capitalism means capitalist production - here objectively socialised industrial production is in contradiction to the capitalist appropriation of commodities; the only way commodities can be produced today is in contradiction with commodity production. This is clear. The above paragraph is a stupid attempt to muddle this fundamental point so you can pretend objective socialisation will die out with capitalism, all the better for us to have "socialitarian" communes.


If I am arguing what you say, so was Lenin:

The enemies of the working people, the landowners and capitalists say that the workers and peasants cannot live without them. "If it were not for us," they say, "there would be nobody to maintain order, to give out work, and to compel people to work. If it were not for us everything would collapse, and the state would fall to pieces. We have been driven away, but chaos will bring us back again." But this sort of talk by the landowners and capitalists will not confuse, intimidate, or deceive the workers and peasants. An army needs the strictest discipline; nevertheless the class-conscious workers succeeded in uniting the peasants, succeeded in taking the old tsarist officers into their service, succeeded in building a victorious army.

The Red Army established unprecedentedly firm discipline-not by means of the lash, but based on the intelligence, loyalty and devotion of the workers and peasants themselves.

And so, to save the working people from the yoke of the landowners and capitalists for ever, to save them from the restoration of their power, it is necessary to build up a great Red Army of Labour. That army will be invincible if it is cemented by labour discipline. The workers and peasants must and will prove that they can properly distribute labour, establish devoted discipline and ensure loyalty in working for the common good, and can do it themselves, without the landowners and in spite of them, without the capitalists and in spite of them.

Labour discipline, enthusiasm for work, readiness for self-sacrifice, close alliance between the peasants and the workers-this is what will save the working people from the oppression of the landowners and capitalists for ever.

Mind you, this was "for ever", it did not refer to the emergency of the civil war, but what to do afterwards.

If you're illiterate. It's quite funny, that you (purposefully, as you seem to have finished elementary school at least) misread "save... for ever" as "labour discipline for ever", then act as if you're the sharpest bulb in the box.


The former division of labor must disappear, interesting. Frankly, no one speaks of an end to the division of labor, but the "natural" division of labor. Nevermind this, though.

Yes, "never mind this" because, once again, you're talking out of your arse.

"The division of labour is the economic expression of the social character of labour within the estrangement. Or, since labour is only an expression of human activity within alienation, of the manifestation of life as the alienation of life, the division of labour, too, is therefore nothing else but the estranged, alienated positing of human activity as a real activity of the species or as activity of man as a species-being." - from the manuscripts of 1844 (also note the point about labour, or work as we would say today).


The qualifications for freedom does not amount to the postmodern consumerist qualifications for freedom wherein one can choose between the Chocolate or strawberry cake. In Marxist terms, freedom is freedom of necessity.


This was Marx's position on the question of (metaphysical) "free will", not free action by individual humans, and you're forced to pretend the two are the same so you can portray being "subjugated" as free development of the sort Marx stood for.

[Sharia Lawn]

Any idiot who reads any Marxist knows well: Marxism IS discourse criticism!


When Marx wrote the German ideology, which was discourse criticism at its finest


And that's the crux of the issue: it's not. It's the work that introduces the first self-contained discussion of historical materialism, not a work about how the Junkertum or the squireocracy are saying this and that. I find it extremely difficult that anyone who has read the work could possibly write the quoted sentence, but there you have it, people manage a lot with limited honesty and intellectual resolve.

Bahahaha. You are letting Rafiq suck you into the bottomless pit that becomes any attempt to engage him seriously and substantively.

Of course Marx criticized the "discourse" of the Young Hegelians … by saying that it was detached from a scientific and materialist understanding of how the social world operates in a way that doesn't line up one-to-one with symbolic culture people produce. In this sense Marx called the Young Hegelians' critical criticism mere "phrases" to which, in the beginning of German Ideology, he sarcastically ascribes all manner of epoch-shattering transformations in the style that the Young Hegelians ... and Rafiq ... would have.

Most of the first part of the work in particular, as is obvious to anybody who’s bothered to read it and understand it on its own terms, isn’t about critiquing any "discourse" – it is a condensed history of the world interwoven with an explication of the theory of historical materialism, both of which invoke an objective reality existing independent of any human meaning or discourse. I suppose this theory can be called a "discourse" if you are prepared to accept all the methodologically idealist crit-theory continental philosophical baggage that comes attached to the term, as Rafiq seems prepared to do.

The claim that German Ideology is discourse analysis is, as with practically every statement Rafiq utters, meaninglessly ambiguous. It can be construed in any number of ways, so that if you try to introduce a greater level of specificity to the claim in your response to it, Rafiq can and will always wiggle away and claim he meant something else as a pretext to post more walls of either ambiguous or outright meaningless attempts at prose. And around and around you'll go.


http://www.snagglebox.com/sites/g/files/g974646/f/201401/Sarlacc-Pit.jpg

[PhoenixAsh]

General warning for everybody in this thread.

This is the learning forum.

There is a zero tolerance policy.

As of this post...any flaming & flame baiting will be infracted. As per the rules stickied in this forum.

[Rafiq]

Before we begin, let us take the following into consideration: We have already explored the pathology behind Xhar-Xhar's positions - but as of yet nothing can be said of his particular posting style. Ladies and gentlemen, take a good look at this thread. Take a good look at the course the interaction between Xhar-Xhar and I. Any honest individual can understand that I have put thorough effort into my posts, into taking into full consideration Xhar-Xhar's position and understanding it in its entirety - and furthermore making implicit in my response a full, thorough and complete understanding of his attempted rebuttals. I have gone to great lengths to explain my position, owing nothing more than the incessant use of reason, moreover, of criticism in general to justify such "great walls of text". There are few points in this discussion which I have not gone into great depth, and into great detail exploring. All Marxists understand the necessity of recognizing no such controversies are simple. And what have I received in turn?

Xhar-Xhar, who confers upon himself the special status of not having to actually engage, or address my arguments, can cheaply dismiss these as "meaningless nonsense". But even if this was true, he has not even come close to showing us just how this is, and the minute he has attempted to justify himself (For example, targeting the use of words such as "embedded" - which, after my rebuttal, we are now left with no word on) his failure - embarrassment that is - matches the king caught with his pants down (that is to say, there is NO ACTUAL BASIS OF JUSTIFICATION FOR XHAR-XHAR'S DISMISSAL THAT IS OUTSIDE OF PURE IGNORANCE). Xhar-Xhar may very well be covering his ears and going "lalalalla". And he basically admits this in the post - that he is not in the "business" of convincing me. As though recognition that this intellectual dwarf, this disgusting philistine, this dishonest contemptible scoundrel cannot convince me serves as a basis for an excuse to justify not SIMPLY a dismissive tone, but the outright BUTCHERING OF MY FUCKING POST into ready-made, easily approachable "phrases'. This is not a fucking discussion, it is a dick-waving contest, it is intellectual barbarism at its best. But alas, Any honest individual can see that Xhar-xhar has already exposed himself to everyone - BY MERIT of not simply being wrong, but not even possessing the fucking insight to keep up with me - that is to say, to UNDERSTAND ME, you're fucking done for! Now I will admit, when I read Xhar-Xhar's post, I thought long and hard about whether I should even respond. But alas, giving the Xhar-Xhar the satisfaction that his FUCKING BULLSHIT IS EVERY GOING TO HAVE A SEMBLANCE OF A FUCKING PLATFORM, giving this SCOUNDREL, this DIGNIFIED PHILISTINE a SEMBLANCE of relief that he might have scared me off, after all, is patently something I cannot live with - or at least honestly carry on my presence on this forum. So long as I am active on this website, I will not allow Xhar-Xhar to get away with such posts - it is not about simple theoretical controversies or disagreements. It is about a fight over the NATURE of discussion itself on this website: Critical engagement, or a defense of blind faith in the big other (i.e. of ruling ideology). What does this mean? Simple, to renounce the great force that which individuals derive their sense of guarantee, comfort and docility, is to bring forth the most rabid anxiety - like the abyss of unknowing when Christ screamed to the heavens "Father, why have you forsaken me?" (Prediction: Xhar-Xhar will accuse me of being a Christian).

The "obscurantism", meaningless nonsense, and so on that is being employed deals precisely with things that individuals like Xhar-Xhar are not even ideologically equipped with questioning in the first place. They are subjects that individuals like Xhar-Xhar already confer, contently and confidently, by falling back on ruling ideology, "common sense", the kind of force which provokes people to say "Well duh, bro, that's just how it is". This fosters lazy thinking, security and it allows one to consciously build a fortress around what would otherwise be very powerful ideas (For one's comfort, i.e. Communism) in order so that one can properly adjust to their surroundings. Marxism is abstracted of its substantial basis - Communism - its heart and soul, and relegated to mere phrases and archetypes that one nods their head in agreement to. They do not lead you to new analysis insofar as one does not think they violate their "dogma" (which is barely one at all). This has been how the various Diadochi of Trotskyism have endured, and survived not only the collapse of the 4th international, but the destruction of the worker's movement in general (which some acknowledge, while others, like the Sparts - believe is well and alive in their respective cults). All the controversies of the dead carcass of a previous society form the foundational basis of these phrases and archetypes, but in their practical application, they not only emanate a stunning lack of an understanding of the controversies unique to the 21st century, they - in their practical application, both in the ideological abyss which sustains them (which they REALLY adhere to) and in the practical action which follows, they are reactionaries. For as much as the displaced petite-bourgeoisie protests the destruction of the old world, the cultists deny the very existence of an old world all-together, and all that which reminds them of its non-existence (the rise of left-populism in Europe, precisely in a situation where they predicted the 4th international would rise from the ashes) they rabidly despise. This debate is already essentially over, and why? Xhar-Xhar might say Rafiq's posts are "meaningless", but certainly HE thinks there is some meaning to them. That Xhar-Xhar cannot understand what about them he finds meaning in gives me the argumentative edge - because there IS clearly meaning behind the words, and that you cannot bring yourself to understand them means you already fail.

So Xhar-Xhar, go on, go ahead - keep responding in the manner that you are - taking out a few words and reducing the entire argument to them. I will chase you to the end of the fucking forum, I will demonstrate each and every fucking time you do this how fucking PATENTLY dishonest, disgusting you are - in every little FUCKING snippet, in every botched response, I will bombard you with the substance that you so confidently thought you could condemn to the abyss. You will not get away with trying to make this forum, or this discussion "normal", you will not get away with trying to deflect the relentless, rabid, and RUTHLESS CRITICISM in its entirety with (which many will find ironic) expressing with words the same violence of the system which deflects all ruthless criticism of it: It doesn't have to be TRUE, all it has to do is confer relations of power - confer ideology (Similarly, empiricsts will say "You're not being scientific, you're just biased" as a way to do precisely the same thing).

Thus, this discussion relegates back to a far greater controversy - the tradition of Marxism, against anglo-Saxon reaction, against analytical philistinism. So, ladies and gentlemen, if any of you had doubts, let us begin:


Somehow I don't feel particularly motivated to give you my personal information. And this would not be as remotely funny if you didn't follow this with a wall of text "that contains nothing but insults and chest-beating about how you're possessed by the spirit of Communism or whatever":

And ironically, what is painfully disgusting, is the fact that I predictd you would take PRESCISELY THIS as evidence that my posts consist of nothing but "walls of text" that insult you. This is why I made the provision (before I posted) "the post in question" rather than in general. And why, to avoid irony, did I keep such walls of text? Because you DESERVE nothing but insults, walls and walls of nothing but ridicule, you deserve nothing less - because you are a dishonest scoundrel, a philistine, a baseless arrogant shit-talker, a phrase-mongering reactionary - you are without doubt if not the most, among the most dishonest users to ever post on this forum. You are CONSCIOUSLY dishonest, you don't have any care or consideration whatsoever to be consistent, or to defend your ideas - they just have to "sound okay" to the point where one MIGHT be able to "believe them" and that is quite enough for you. You cowardly exempt yourself not only from struggling with your ideas, but from ADDRESSING those who call you out - this itself would not be the problem, except you GO ON TO FUCKING RESPOND WITH THE SAME FUCKING BULLSHIT THAT YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY ADDRESSED. Well then, Xhar-Xhar, you might be able to BOTCH MY FUCKING POSTS to make it as though I haven't thoroughly addressed these things, but unfortunately you aren't privileged with the ability to DELETE them. That is to say, my arguments are there not only for all users to read, but for me to constantly - you guessed it - and incessantly requote so long as you try and condemn them into the abyss. I will make you look like a FUCKING CLOWN literally just by posting arguments that I've used before. Your little FUCKING tactic isn't going to work: Xhar-Xhar keeps a minimal standard of effort to put into his posts, so no matter how substantive, thorough or in-depth my arguments are, he can always respond without putting any effort whatsoever. And what does Rafiq do? Not only do I put effort into RESPONDING to your posts, I find myself conferred with the responsibility of EDUCATING you, whether you see it that way or not, in a matter of great depth.

That is the true test of a real fucking argument - whether substance can be derived beyond merely trying to make someone look like a stupid asshole, or beyond trying to defend this or that uncritically held platitude. What do we get from fucking Xhar-Xhar? NOTHING! You claim "And this would not be as remotely funny if you didn't follow this with a wall of text "that contains nothing but insults and chest-beating about how you're possessed by the spirit of Communism or whatever", but that's not the FUCKING POINT, I made this "wall" AFTER you said you would not respond to 'walls of text', so again, IT IS FUCKING CLEAR THAT YOUR REFUSAL TO ENGAGE THE ARGUMENTS HAVE NOTHING TO FUCKING DO WITH ANY PERCEIVED INSULTS OR CHEST BEATING WHATSOEVER, BUT THE SAME DIGNIFIED PHILISTINSIM OF WHICH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE POSITIONS YOU HAVE DEFENDED RESTS UPON.

This disgusting philistine, this dishonest scoundrel will literally isolate 8 words which out of context incriminate me to look like some kind of stupid asshole who has substantively nothing more to say - because Xhar-Xhar doesn't know how to engage in an argument. He thinks it's just about two people attacking each other, of which their words relegate back to. The truth is that it is the ideological discourse, the basis of the reproduction of ideology (and therefore of docility and comfort to one's surroundings) that is being attacked here. Just as Xhar-Xhar would have us believe that if there was no revolution in 15 years, that this was because nothing could have possibly been done. We'll get to that bellow.


So by your own admission, your unreadable tirades about how "stupid" I am are besides the point.

Of course, if my argument was reduced to "intelligence does not exist". What was said:

This has nothing to do with "intelligence". Of course someone like Xhar-Xhar would conceive "intelligence" as, rather than a moral category, something essential. Tell me, Xhar-Xhar, how does one attain "intelligence"? Is one born with this? Please do open this can of worms, our great Marxist friend.

Nevermind such silly categories. We are both as unintelligent as each other. However, your intellectual deficiencies are owed to nothing more than your dignified philistinism and laziness in general. Any idiot can be like me, just as any idiot can be a Marxist and not a liberal. Why people remain Liberals, and not Marxists, is not owed to any kind of essential characteristic, but to ideological considerations (and yes fool, because we are not 15 years old, it is already directly implied that this pertains to the material, social domain. However, using such a crude reductionism is by all means vulgar - and quite amply in contradiction of the spirit of Marxism. When Marx wrote the German ideology, which was discourse criticism at its finest, he did not explore the intricacies of ideology by replacing the words with "da class"). Likewise, Xhar-Xhar, the pathological philistine, is intellectually deficient because there is dissonance between the conscious beliefs he holds on a theoretical level and the ideological pathology which sustains them. He therefore resorts to deliberate ignorance and dismissal in order to guise his inability to theoretical articulate the arguments of his opponent - an impairment solely owed to ideological considerations, again. When Rafiq calls you petite-bourgeois, it is not a cheap insult or buzzword - you are thoroughly a reactionary and your opposition to present conditions is thoroughly petite-bourgeois in character.

The fact that you would equate matters of the intellect with what is today an essentially bourgeois notion - "intelligence" (which, as a result of the past decades, is now automatically conferred an innate basis), suggests your "materialism" is nothing more than a guilty pleasure, a side-dish, a personal idiosyncrasy that god-forbid doesn't contaminate your conditions of being. We will later get to however, the notion that humans can somehow be "outside of production". My tirades are "unreadable", just as Lacan's tirades are "unreadable", just like Hegel is "unreadable", just like Derrida was "unreadable", finally just like Zizek is "unreadable". Well, philistine I respond to you just as I respond to ALL THE FUCKING ANALYTICAL PHILISTINES: WE have already constructed our own intellectual culture wherein each and every one of us can understand each other perfectly, and what does that fucking mean? It means we're just as "unreadable" as a fucking children's book is to a rodent, our intellectual standards are already so much higher, so much more in depth and so much more vast than yours that of course it seems like it's "unreadable". But as always, your anti-critical philistinism will conceive YOUR OWN FUCKING IGNORANCE (and therefore laziness) for the content of the "tirades" in question, in general. We understand you all perfectly, and yet you all do not understand us. Do you even know what this fucking means? It means we DEVOUR your philistine analytics, you anglo-saxon shit-eaters, we SUBSUME you as algebra does the arithmetic. Seriously, what the fuck has been the basis of not only your criticism, but the criticism of scum like Chomsky against the continental tradition? NONE! There is no criticism, there is DISMISSAL - that it's "meaningless" and "not testable" and therefore "not worth my time". Well okay, we can't literally FORCE YOU to use your head and utilize reason, because truth is practical - if you're ideologically one who prostrates before the idols of capital, of course it is not in your practical interest to understand the man behind the curtain, just like it wasn't in the practical interest of the Church to use the telescope.

Like who the FUCK does Xhar-Xhar think he is? Does he think he can somehow defend positions without defending them in a way that involves posting it? Do you somehow think you don't have to FLESH OUT a fucking argument or lead it to its logical conclsuion? Your arguments are nothing more than a conglomeration of abstract, theoretically unrelated statements which are only true if they are taken at face value and in a vacuum.


And that's the crux of the issue: it's not. It's the work that introduces the first self-contained discussion of historical materialism, not a work about how the Junkertum or the squireocracy are saying this and that.

You fool, have you read the book? IT IS talking about what "people are saying" the whole fucking book is called the German ideology. Of course Marx finds himself forced to ASSERT historical materialism, because it was not a tacit given in the context of 1845 among the German socialists, but here on Revleft, where Rafiq is a well known - at least - self proclaimed materialist and Marxist, IT IS ALREADY IMPLICIT THAT THIS RELEGATES BACK TO RELATIONS TO PRODUCTION AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIFE. As already stated, you cannot understand the material foundations of life unless you understand how they are reproduced - which involves words. Ideology however is not REDUCIBLE to the words which confer its existence, ideology is precisely that which is insinuated which there are NO WORDS FOR AT ALL. Marx said of it - they are doing it, but they don't know it. That is ideology, and one of the ways in which you understand ideology is by understanding the precise messages, concsious or otherwise, that are predominant. Xhar-Xhar though takes them at face value like a 9 year old and sais "look at all the moralism against consumerism!". We'll explore that bellow, too, dear child.


And so, stripping the completely extraneous "-in-itself", which is supposed to remind the reader of the Marxist terminology of the class in and for itself, but doesn't actually mean anything, you stand with Bernstein, who denied the relevance of the final goal of socialism, and against Marx, who clearly stated that the d.o.t.p. is a "transit point".

No, IN ITSELF in terms of SUFFICIENT UNTO ITSELF, i.e. answerable only to itself. And this philistine, this disgusting reactionary talks about Bernstein, and "transit-points". Ladies and gentlemen, THIS IS WHAT HE FUCKING SAIS when I have already stated:

Of course I am not insinuating that nothing comes after the proletarian dictatorship. One merely has to ask the question of "What could happen after" to understand this is a ridiculous point. But this is not the point when I use ends-in-itself. Even the Communist struggle before the dictaorship is an ends-in-itself. Why? Because any imagination of the future relegates back to the controversies unique to antagonisms in present society. We (in our conditions) are responsible for our fantasies. Communism as an ideal, a society even has no history. It is inevitably bound up with real historical circumstances - beyond that, it is a worthless abstraction with no basis in reality. The dialectic, therefore, allows us to understand that the Communism of the 19th century is not the Communism of the 21st century. Not because they are historically separate - or in Hegelian mumbo-jumbo, constitute different geists, but because each represents a particular expression of the idea in entirely different circumstances. What that means is simple: NOTHING EXISTS without its continual reproduction. Things do not passively "exist", they must be constantly, and actively reproduced. For Xhar-Xhar, Socialism is an idea which exists in our imagination, which material conveniences allow to exist.

The question then goes on - has Xhar-Xhar, and the sectarian diadochi he serves, lived up to the task of properly conceiving a Communism in the 21st century (none the less, an application of Marxist analysis)? No one can look with a straight face and answer seriously "yes". He knows this. His cult is also aware of this. Or perhaps Rafiq is wrong, and that the historical culmination of Communism in the 21st century finds itself home in the great revolutionary task of defending child-fuckers. "Not fair" this great 'Marxist' will cry. And the irony will seep in.

[...]

Let us look at the context from which Bernstein was saying this (Which Xhar-Xhar claims is unique to Bernstein):

And the ultimate aim? Well, that just remains an ultimate aim. “The working classes have no fixed and perfect Utopias to introduce by means of a vote of the nation. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation-and with it that higher form of life which the present form of society irresistibly makes for by its own economic development – they, the working classes, have to pass through long struggles, a whole series of historical processes, by means of which men and circumstances will be completely transformed. They have no ideals to realise, they have only to set at liberty the elements of the new society which have already been developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society.” So writes Marx in Civil War in France. I was thinking of this utterance, not in every point, but in its fundamental thought in writing down the sentence about the ultimate aim. For after all what does it say but that the movement, the series of processes, is everything, whilst every aim fixed beforehand in its details is immaterial to it. I have declared already that I willingly abandon the form of the sentence about the ultimate aim as far as it admits the interpretation that every general aim of the working class movement formulated as a principle should be declared valueless. But the preconceived theories about the drift of the movement which go beyond such a generally expressed aim, which try to determine the direction of the movement and its character without an ever-vigilant eye upon facts and experience, must necessarily always pass into Utopianism, and at some time or other stand in the way, and hinder the real theoretical and practical progress of the movement.

Why did Bernstein say that the "process was everything, the end goal was nothing"? If one evaluates this with just an iota of intellectual honesty, they realize that Bernstein was directly quoting Marx, and in fact, quote openly (and should I say, honestly) admitting his basic revision of Marx. This revision did not consist in recognizing that the "process is everything", the basic revision (in this paragraph) consisted in the notion that the aims of the movement stand as principles, which is a perfectly anti-Marxist conception. Xhar-Xhar, with his principled platitudes (One should NEVER engage in parliament - and if you want to call me out for irony, it doesn't matter that Bernstein was a reformist - the point directly concerns PRINCIPLES.

As we can see, Xhar-Xhar, who is trying to make the process as the "ends-in-itself" as the idiosyncrasy of Bernstein, is incapable of defending this point. Is he correct, or is he not? Well, we cannot know, because he has conferred upon himself the special privilege of not having to respond in general. Even if buried in his fucking posts, Xhar-Xhar was somehow correct, we would never know. It goes to show just how fucking PITIFULLY uninsightful, dishonest and botched his fucking garbage is, because as it is with "scientists" like Steven Pinker, the minute they start entering our territory and engaging in these manners critically is the minute all of their fucking arguments are smashed to little itty bitty pieces - they precisely CANNOT convince us in this manner because ignorance is the condition of their position in the first place. For Marx, the process IS EVERYTHIGN, which is why Xhar-Xhar will try to explain away the following DIRECT FUCKING QUOTE:

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

Xhar-Xhar can try to use ass-covering abstractions all he wants, but it is clear what the ESSENTIAL POINT embedded in this phrase was: Communism is nothing more than the process, it is nothing more than the movement itself which derives from the present state of things. The implications of this movement are the conditions of its theoretical defense, of course, but to say Communism is some fucking idea that material conveniences happen to make possible is beyond fucking stupid and furthermore, idealist. The final goal of socialism is not something you can "find relevance in" by whimsically abstracting how this or that might look like, it only becomes relevant precisely when IT IS PERTINENTLY RELEVANT. Attempting to imagine this society now, which amounts to nothing more than trying to entice workers with a nice fantasy, is to idealize present society without its shadows. Bellow, with a straight face, Xhar-Xhar ACTUALLY INSINUATES that Marx has no problem with "idealized systems" in general but the naivety of Utopians in thinking they won't have to wage class struggle to realize it. We'll get to that later.



And the falsification of history starts. The utopians did not "conceive the movement as... a particular stage", they did not conceive the movement at all and instead believed their "idealised systems" (which you forget Marx did not reject out of hand) would be realised on the merit of their universal (classless!) appeal, Fourier in particular going around and offering people caesarates for money.

Does your FUCKING MEMORY not exceed two posts? YOU DIRECTLY QUOTED MARX WHEN HE SAID:

While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society ; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another – the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui. This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.

It is only the latter part of the paragraph that Xhar-Xhar naively conceived as evidence that Marx was trying to say that the class dictatorship is "only a transit point" to socialism, but if one evaluates the CONTEXT of this paragraph... Wait a fucking second, I ALREADY COVERED THIS, WHICH XHAR-XHAR DISMISSED AS A WALL OF TEXT COSNISTING OF NOTHING BUT INSULTS!:

No, precisely what Marx is attacking, IRONICALLY, are those who attempt to DIVORCE the desire of (NOT "TOWARD") the abolition of class distinctions generally from the real-existing movement and the struggle for the conquest of power and class dictatorship. Either Xhar-Xhar is an intellectual masochist, or his drivel is so divorced from Marxism that he can't even manage to quote a single fucking paragraph from Marx that doesn't automatically contradict what he's trying to say. Of all the things you could have taken out of context, of all the paragraphs you could have quoted to suit your argument, from either Marx, Engels or Lenin, why oh why do you drop-quote something that literally could have been used against you without any further elaboration, or explanation whatsoever? One could think, almost, that Marx was responding to Xhar-Xhar himself - of course this cannot be the case, however, when we evaluate the fact that the phrase-mongering philistine he is, he will be the first to proclaim "No, the class struggle is important, society cannot be replaced with mere 'good ideas' alone". Of course, the point you're missing is that you argument emanates precisely an ideal that which society will have to adjust itself, of course, postulated as being testament to your belief that "Socialism is really, really possible". The socialism you give us is a false one, not simply because it is "impossible" but because again - YOU YOURSELF DO NOT BELIEVE IT, and you're quite sincere about being a phrase-mongerer.

What that means is that of course you don't just use empty phrases while CONSCIOUSLY thinking that you do not believe this - rather, you try to make something come close to sounding like it is viable in order to justify the identity you have built around yourself that necessitates belief in an alternative society. But this is precisely the criticism of Utopian socialism leveled by Marx, this is precisely why Marx EXPLICITLY stated that Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. What does Marx mean by this? He means THERE IS EFFECTIVELY NO COMMUNISM that is outside of the movement which derives from the present state of things, from the here and the now. Any possibility of a future society is embedded in controversies unique to present society, to the antagonisms, so to speak, of present-day society. To say that all of "this", the class struggle and the proletarian dictatorship, are merely means-to-an-ends begs the question of how, from a materialist perspective, can we even imagine the "ends" in any real way? Where does this "ends" come from, the whimsical brain-work of individual pedants whom have simply discovered that their fantasy can be realized by merit of material conveniences in existence, or the postulated result of real struggles that pertain solely to capitalist society? What you fail to understand is precisely this point: When Marx, Engels, and Lenin speak of the "end goal" of socialism, they do NOT refer to present events as being means to an ends. They simply answer the basic question of where such struggles would take the Communist movement and the implications this would have for society - ultimately, the POSSIBILITY of Communism is merely a justification for the pervading, relentless and uncompromising struggles that pertain to today, without which, many of the various reforms that citizens of liberal countries enjoy, could not and would not have been realized. Of course the point is to illustrate how having no illusions of reformism whatsoever was practically the only means by which the reforms that are oh-so beloved by liberals (Bernie Sanders) were able to have been realized. Of course, Xhar-Xhar wil try to construe this - Communism as deriving from the present state of things, as an argument that it is capitalism without capitalism, but Marx explicitly refers to this in the paragraph he himself conceives as somehow "proving" the non-Marxism of my point: while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows. It is clear that when Marx refers to Communism deriving from the present state of things, he is NOT referring to the wants projected by capitalist society - ESPECIALLY in the age of de-industrialized consumerism he was never able to live long enough to see, as somehow forming the basis of production in a socialist society. He was referring to the fact that precisely EVEN THE MERE INSISTENCE of Communism derives from present antagonisms and STRUGGLES, not some kind of abstract utopia that which material conveniences find themselves able to conform to. That is why Marx and Engels seldom spent time discussing what a communist society will look like, or function as: Because at that point, beyond the proletarian dictatorship, we only have a society wherein production is organized on lines that are self-conscious, we can say nothing about how it would actually function or how it would look, because these projections stem from abstractions of the here and now, none the less an epoch wherein there isn't even a Communist MOVEMENT yet that isn't just the vestige of the 20th century. Of course, talking to a Spart, what's to fucking talk about here?

Communism simply represents and encapsulates the hope that things today do not have to exist as they are, it is the ambiguous and vague horizon which is scientific NOT because it is a blueprint, but because it stands as the negation of the ideology, mysticism and superstition that is presently in its place, which by default has positive, affirmative implications: A society that is self-conscious socially, scientific, etc.

Indeed, the Utopians DID CONCEIVE the movement as just a particular stage in the realization of their "idealized system", which Marx EXPLICITLY rejects, again:

They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par décret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistably tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the gentlemen’s gentlemen with pen and inkhorn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of scientific infallibility.

Even though I basically already FUCKING did this, for further elaboration, Xhar-Xhar merely interprets this as Marx attacking individuals who think that they won't have to struggle to realize the utopia. But that isn't what Marx is saying. Quite directly, Marx IDENTIFIES with the "long struggles" themselves, the HISTORIC PROCESSES THEMSELVES not as processes which Communism exists "in spite of", as though Communists are so eager to realize their utopias but are burdened with having to engage in reality to do so - but BECAUSE of. That is to say, the horizon of the future only exists, and only relegates back to the controversies of the present day - it is the ambiguous void which allows us to recognize that again, things DO NOT HAVE TO EXIST AS THEY PRESENTLY DO, the existence of that which we struggle against is provisional - it is not owed to any natural, cosmic or divine laws. In Xhar-Xhar's mind, when Marx claims long struggles will involve processes "transforming circumstances and men", he is under the impression that Communism as an idealized system - the one he himself presents forward in this very discussion - will exist and endure IN SPITE of these transformed circumstances and men (or he denies them all together, as he stated bellow - the notion that society will involve presently unfathomable transformation during and leading up to a revolution is just an excuse to block the great Proletarian revolution that can happen September 4th, 2015 - mark it down, folks!). But your 'system' HAS NO HISTORY, it is an IDEAL, it does not have a mind, spirit or vitality of its own, it relegates back to the conditions of men and women as they exist in the here and now. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE, AS A LIVING SOCIAL SUBJECT, FOR YOUR FANTASIES. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS? Your idealized system doesn't come from the fucking abyss, HOW you isolate which aspects of society, and so on, all of this relegates back to IDEOLOGY.

Of course, Xhar-Xhar wants us to just take what he sais at face value and say nothing from there - as though he is immune to criticism in general - "Well, what problem do you have with people freely taking what they want" - This itself is how ideology works. It designates so much more than the banal platitude it innocently deploys as its justification, hides itself through something simple, in other words. Don't you WANT Liberty, don't you WANT religious freedom, and so on. Xhar-Xhar, the great Marxist, will rebuke this by fleshing out, with "common sense" what this really means beyond what it sais it means. Irony beyond irony. Of course if there was some free market utopia with free choice and whatever there would be no problem. Who the fuck can say they have a problem with this? The point is what this CONFERS IN THE HERE AND THE NOW. Of course it is NOT POSSIBLE, it is a reflection of the fantasies and aspirations of a class, moreover, of a specific current of the society which exists before us.


Why? Because the existing movement has been banished to nonexistence by decree of Rafiq, because it falls short of his "party-movement of the entire class" social-democratic nonsense.

No, there patently is not "existing movement", revolutionary, reformist, or otherwise. There is absolutely no Communist movement right now, in 2015, and if you think there is, you PATENTLY have no idea about what Communism meant in the 19th century in juxtaposition to European society. What is ironic is that Xhar-Xhar's basis of criticism basically amounts to the idea that Rafiq is too picky or whimsically is choosing what constitutes a movement and what does not, but Xhar-Xhar of the Spart cult, this is the epitome of irony. In truth the only one who declares a special status in conceiving what a movement is or isn't by merit of particular uniqueness bestowed upon their judgement is - Xhar-Xhar himself, who alone (along with the other idealist formalists) can magically see where the movement is. Any and every movement commands recognition by society as a whole - whether to be antagonized or sympathized with, it exists in the public sphere. The "existing movement", which one cannot locate without Xhar-Xhar telling them it's there, is not spontaneously visible in the eyes of its constituents. Or even more hilariously, if this "existing movement" is taken to be none other than the Spartacus League... Do I even have to comment? There is absolutely nothing unique to the sparts - perhaps besides their pronounced and dignified defense of child-fucking (as well as some other cultish idiosyncrasies commonly reserved for the RCP - I suppose Jim Jones is at the end of this spectrum). Of course, the point of significance here is practice: Xhar-Xhar has us believe that if we are not closer to revolution in 15 years, this would have been owed to the fact that "conditions are not ripe". Of course, when conditions are ripe, in his mind (No, he actually believes this - this wannabe cynic!) the Sparts will take the lead, or at the very least - "would have been correct the entire time".

Moreover, this is precisely the crux of it all: This pathological insistence of the dissonance between "objective material conditions" and political activity with regard to worker's mobilization. Well, workers' are already being mobilized - the ones dissatisfied with Syriza in Greece and the ones in Europe disillusioned by the fight against austerity - to the Golden Dawn's of the continent. But Xhar-Xhar has promised that "we will go to the workers and tell them" and so on. We could expect you either haven not made good on this promise, or have already tried to do so and failed pathetically. No matter, "conditions are not yet ripe", and so they wait.

But let's get one thing absolutely fucking clear: Regarding the building of an actual socialist movement, a revolutionary movement that is, there is absolutely no model outside of revolutionary German social democracy - the party-principle remains the highest pinnacle of class struggle in practice - meanwhile, under the guise of prolonging the revolutionary epoch that has long passed us, the Trots, retreating to the most vile kind of economism (precisely the kind that incurred Lenin's wrath), and Bakuninism (precisely the kind that incurred Marx and Engel's wrath), along with the so-called ultra Left of this website, prattle of "social democracy". The tactic works in a number of ways: First, it does not distinguish the present connotations of social democracy and the politics of the Second international. It does this so as to obfuscate its origins - Social democracy today has absolutely nothing to do with social democracy even led by the renegades who voted for war credits. More unforgivably, it does not make the distinction - as Lenin did - between reformist and revolutionary social democracy.

The class-based party movement was the aim of every single revolutionary party to ever exist. For the Blanqui's, the Nachayev's, and the Bakunin's are reserved revolution led by a small "elite" conspiracy who merely take advantage of spontaneous material conveniences. Which means? This is not simply a basic qualification for "Leninism". It is a basic qualification for Marxism. Xhar-Xhar, who has no notion of the dialectic, who spins around and blindly points his finger in every which direction, cannot fathom this fact: There is nothing UNIQUE TO REFORMIST social democracy about the mass-party movement, that you continually mention it only shows how much of a fucking hole you cults have dug yourselves in and how divorced you are from the history you pretend to inherit. The absence of a huge mass democratic movement in Russia at least initially was owed to the particularities of the class composition of Russian society - in fact, Lenin wanted to EMULATE German social democracy but was struck with the conundrum of the reactionary nature of Rusisan capitalsim (i.e. the Russian autocracy, etc.) - as Lih himself points out, Lenin's first and foremost struggle was that for political freedom PRESCISELY BECAUSE he conceived it as a necessary pre-requiste for building class-consciousness. Lenin never abdicated from the German social-democratic model, and the notion that the Bolsheviks rendered this legacy incomplete, i.e. that after the breakup of the Second international social democracy as a whole was condemned does not stand to facts. Lenin explicitly states (as I demonstrated in another thread):

Now, in 1920, after all the ignominious failures and crises of the period of the war and the early post-war years, it can be plainly seen that of all the Western parties German revolutionary Social-Democracy produced the best leaders and recovered, recuperated, and gained new strength more rapidly than the others. This may be seen in the case both of the party of the Spartacists and the Left proletarian wing of the "Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany," which is waging an incessant struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours and Crispiens

In other words, in order for us to arrive at our Spartacists and our Communists, Social Democracy was a necessary pre-requisite - in fact, Lenin did not conceive the Spartacists as necessarily "building something new", HE DIRECTLY REFERS TO THEM AS THE RECUPERATION AND RECOVERY OF GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN GENERAL. If he did not, why else state: after all the ignominious failures and crises of the period of the war and the early post-war years, it can be plainly seen that of all the Western parties German revolutionary Social-Democracy produced the best leaders and recovered, recuperated, and gained new strength more rapidly than the others. Just what was being "recovered" here, in Lenin's mind? In fact, WHY WAS LENIN STATING THIS AT ALL? What was the CONTEXT of this assertion? The full context:

At its inception in 1903, Bolshevism took over the tradition of ruthless struggle against petty-bourgeois, semianarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism, the tradition which has always existed in revolutionary Social-Democracy, and be came particularly strong in 1900-03, when the foundations for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat were being laid in Russia. Bolshevism took over and continued the struggle against the party which more than any other expressed the tendencies of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, namely, the "Socialist-Revolutionary" Party, and waged this struggle on three main points. First, this party, rejecting Marxism, stubbornly refused (or, it would be more correct to say: was unable) to understand the need for a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their interrelations before undertaking any political action. Secondly, this party considered itself to be particularly "revolutionary," or "Left," because of its recognition of individual terror, assassination -- a thing which we Marxists emphatically rejected. Of course, we rejected individual terror only on grounds of expediency, whereas people who were capable of condemning "on principle" the terror of the Great French Revolution, or in general, the terror employed by a victorious revolutionary party which is besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, were ridiculed and laughed to scorn already by Plekhanov, in 1900-03, when he was a Marxist and a revolutionary. Thirdly, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries" thought it very "Left" to sneer at comparatively insignificant opportunist sins of the German Social-Democratic Party, while they themselves imitated the extreme opportunists of that party, for example, on the agrarian question, or on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

History, by the way, has now confirmed on a large, world-wide historic scale the opinion we have always advocated, namely, that revolutionary German Social-Democracy (note that as far back as 1900-03 Plekhanov demanded the expulsion of Bernstein from the party, and the Bolsheviks, always continuing this tradition, in 1913 exposed the utter baseness, vileness and treachery of Legien[7]) came closest to being the party which the revolutionary proletariat required in order to attain victory. Now, in 1920, after all the ignominious failures and crises of the war period and the early postwar years, it can be plainly seen that, of all the Western parties, German revolutionary Social-Democracy produced the best leaders, and recovered, recuperated, and gained new strength more rapidly than the others. This may be seen in the case both of the Spartacist party[8] and the Left, proletarian wing of the "Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany," which is waging an incessant struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours and Crispiens

The translation being used here is not Lars Lih's (whose translations are infinitely better), nor is this a "carefully selected quote". Anyone who has ever even fucking skimmed through Lenin rediscovered can understand quite sufficiently that there is no "picking and choosing" of any quotes - Lih goes into the greatest depths to defend his position. But that is for another time: Ultimately the point here is that the party-principle, which the Trot diadochi have rejected as a result of the fact that we are perpetually (apparently) living in a revolutionary epoch, adhering by the accursed Transitional program, whose revival they accuse of "Bernsteinism" or "social democracy" or whatever you want - IS IN NO WAY UNIQUE TO REFORMIST SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. I can provide an infinite amount of quotes - Lenin here DIRECTLY speaks of the "mass party of the revolutionary proletariat", which Xhar-Xhar who bathes in cow-shit knowingly ascribes to be "Social democratic nonsense". Xhar-Xhar does not call Rafiq a follower of Lenin, however, he calls him a follower of Bernstein - why? Because he associates being invested in the world with the tone used by Trotskyists against the tradition of social democracy... In the 1930's.

Many of you might see Rafiq as a madman howling of "dishonsety" when there is none to be found, but keep in mind Xhar-Xhar this whole time attempts to paint the picture that there are commonalities between the position laid forth and... Wait for it.... FUCKING BERNSTEIN, WHO WAS ALREADY OPPOSED BY KAUTSKY. He just TALKS OUT OF HIS FUCKING ASS, he DECREES things to be true and attempts to CONFORM facts to this.


I already discussed this in my previous post

No, you wouldn't requote yourself, because there is NOTHING I DID NOT ADDRESS ABOUT THIS CLAIM. That is to say, your little "discussion" in your previous post was THOROUGHLY AND COMPLETELY ADDRESSED. What in my post, tell me, what emanates a lack of complete and full understanding of your little position here? "I'm not going to repeat myself" - Well no, you COULDN'T fucking do that because I would just as sufficiently re-quite MYSELF. You don't have this privilege, because ou haven't given us SHIT - you haven't ADDRESSED my rebuttal. You couldn't repeat yourself because there is nothing Xhar-Xhar claimed which I didn't already fucking address. That you fall back on "not wanting to convince me" as an excuse to not actually fucking defend your STUPID fucking ideas, would consistently be justification for not resopnding at all. And yet Xhar-Xhar is resopnding - so we already must presuppose you are "trying to convince me", unless you're genuinely trying to:


point out what a revision of basic Marxist principles Rafiq spouts as The Only True Orthodox Marxism (TM).

And again, there is NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOING THIS. THAT IS HOW FUCKING REASON WORKS. That is what separates a FUCKING debate and a shouting match, or clobbing each over in the head. You're pointing it out to who? To EVERYONE, because we all share the same argumentative and rational space. But moreover, even if this was your sole goal, your sole intention, you would STILL have to confront the fucking points raised. You aren't fucking BETTER then me, we're on a WEBSITE, all we are, are our POSTS. There is nothing superior about your post than mine as far as anything ESSENTIAL goes, and the same goes vice versa. IN order to actually fucking attack someone, on a website that is (feel free to beat me over the head with a fucking baseball bat, this would be far more forgivable) you need to post in a way that directly intersects, addresses and occupies the same argumentative space as your opponent. If you just "say things" without explanation - what the fuck do you expect? "Fuck you too"? Again - iti s intellectual barbarism at its finest, actually, it precisely emanates the same anti-intellectualism of fascism.

Of course, Marx, Engels and Lenin, when dealing with revisionists, ADDRESSED THEM in their entirety and took the arguments they were ridiculing SERIOUSLY, i.e. actually taking them into critical consideration only to attack them. If this is what you're trying to do, you're doing a piss poor fucking job at it, Xhar-Xhar. But don't worry, we all know why you aren't doing this - it's because you CAN'T, you patently have NOTHING TO FUCKING SAY.


So now, TWCS is simply an ironic designation.

No, you fool, the TERM is. Considering that Xhar-Xhar doesn't understand the actual fucking difference between words and the reality they confer, just like ANY empiricist, we could never expect to get this across to him.


They did, however, write more than enough about the socialist society, for example talking about scientific planning of production, the end to the division of labour, the withering away of the state etc. You refuse to acknowledge this because to you "socialism" is an empty symbol you recourse to to make your politics seem radical, and while you began this discussion ostensibly talking about socialism, increasingly you're denying anything can be said about it.

When one evaluates the context of EVERY SINGLE time Marx and Engels reference socialism, they do so not because they're "writing about a future society", but because they are either to responding to Utopian postulations, or trying to make a critical point about capitalism. This is best seen in the text "Private Property and Communism". When Marx specifically mentions a future Communist society, he only does so insofar as it is a logical conclusion of controversies already inherent to our society. Furthermore, the whole origin of the "idea" of Communism, which derived from the Young Hegelians, had precisely nothing to do with making this or that Utopia but as a NEGATION of Prussian society, i.e. solving the ultimate Hegelian problem of the relationship between self-consciousness and the absolute idea. For this reason you find Feuerbach calling himself a Communist, and so on. So Communism is ONLY mentioned as a means to abstractly conceive the provisional nature of things unique to capitalism - of course without the notion that scientific planning is possible, you couldn't do that - what is unique to capitalism is unique to life in general, then.

And no, the point isn't that "nothing can be said about it", the point is that everything said about it relegates back to controversies inherent to our present condition. So when I talk about socialism, I am perfectly honest - just like Marx was - in EXPLICITLY stating that I merely seek to illustrate the character of our present-day aspirations and the potential for a Communist process (I use this word to spite you, by the way) today. If there was no Communism, then there is no critique of present day society - no logical conclusion of present day political or economic controversies if people are forced to think this is the ONLY possible world. Which is why, as stated, all great reforms were wrought directly or indirectly by revolutionaries. Only their vitality could see them through, or the general FEAR of revolution.


But again, what are you talking about? There is no need for "organic" food because "organic food" is a scam. It doesn't mean anything. Likewise all food is equally "artificial". You appear to be battling some inner demon again.

Who the FUCK are you to decide what is a need and what isn't, now? A great many humans today "need" organic food. Why don't they fucking need it? It makes them feel good, less guilty, and pure, while artificiality reminds them of the alienation of industrial production.


Yes, this is a favourite tactic of obscurantists: recognise the complete muddle you've reduced your argument to

Sure, if you take 16 words out of context as the entire fucking argument- WHY EVEN respond to this separately? WHY? Are you literally just fucking INTIMIDATED at quoting a 'wall of text' because of how fucking meek and disginstuingly uninsightful your response is in comparison? For fuck's sake this COWARD....

Xhar-Xhar's basic tactic, conforming to his empiricism all together, is to take a bunch of fucking phrases and sentences to be arguments sufficient unto-themselves, as though they can be addressed in an isolated and botched manner. Fucking rodent.


Not as Marx understood it. Not only did he recognise other explanations for historical change (e.g. the insistence of an author - I forget the name - on the importance of climactic factors, which Marx mentions in a letter to Engels), they recognised the limitations of historical materialism as such (Marx noting he was discussing "pure capitalism", Engels talking about extra-economic factors and so on - in fact Engels speculated that what he took to be the higher level of development among Semites and Indo-Iranians was due to the consumption of milk).

That is tantamount to recognizing that "not only the mode of production", but also geology and the moon's gravitational influence also constitute an "alternative explanation". In which case, it is a fucking banality that climactic, geological factors are important (for example, explaining how the Neolithic was late to Southern Africa or how it had to be spread to Northern Europe rather than organically originate). But climactic factors, or dietary factors, do not occupy a space as a matter of causation where class struggle or relations to production would otherwise. This is what you fail to fucking understand - THERE ARE NO OTHER EXPLANATIONS FOR HISTORICAL CHANGE that are SCIENTIFIC (which mean, explicitly refer to the essential basis of change, not just designate "all of that" one ice age at a time) that occupy the causal space where the mode of production and class struggle do. As Marx states, those "natural bases" are not of question when one approaches teh writing of history and historical processes - it presupposes them.

The context of Engels, finally:

In the East, the middle stage of barbarism began with the taming of milk and meat producing animals, while the cultivation of plants seems to have remained unknown far into this period. It appears that the taming and raising of animals and the formation of large herds gave rise to the separation of Aryans and Semites from the rest of the barbarians. Names of animals are still common to the languages of European and Asian Aryans, while this is almost never the case with the names of cultivated plants.

In suitable localities, the formation of herds led to a nomadic life, as with the Semites in the grassy plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, the Aryans in the plains of India, of the Oxus, Jaxartes, Don and Dnieper. Along the borders of such pasture lands, the taming of animals must have been accomplished first. But later generations conceived the mistaken idea that the nomadic tribes had their origin in regions supposed to be the cradle of humanity, while in reality their savage ancestors and even people in the lower stage of barbarism would have found these regions almost unfit for habitation. On the other hand, once these barbarians of the middle stage were accustomed to nomadic life, nothing could have induced them to return voluntarily from the grassy river plains to the forests that had been the home of their ancestors. Even when Semites and Aryans were forced further to the North and West, it was impossible for them to occupy the forest regions of Western Asia and Europe, until they were enabled by agriculture to feed their animals on this less favorable soil and especially to maintain them during the winter. It is more than probable that the cultivation of grain was due primarily to the demand for stock feed, and became an important factor of human sustenance at a later period.

The superior development of Aryans and Semites is, perhaps, attributable to the copious meat and milk diet of both races, more especially to the favorable influence of such food on the growth of children. As a matter of fact, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico who live on an almost purely vegetarian diet, have a smaller brain than the Indians in the lower stage of barbarism who eat more meat and fish. At any rate, cannibalism gradually disappears at this stage and is maintained only as a religious observance or, what is here nearly identical, as a magic remedy.

What is supremely ironic here is that Engels was plainly fucking wrong - and he was quite honest and sincere about the fact that this was pure speculation, regarding the diet of "Aryans and Semites". And hilariously, Engels was describing this under the backrdop of yes - changes in the mode of production which led to this. Even if Engels was correct, the notion that the dietary habits of Aryans and Semites is somehow outside the mode of production, somehow an "alternative" to a historical materialist analysis betrays a stunning lack of a fucking understanding of historical materialism - IT IS NOT a positive dogma which "replaces" this or that explanation, it is THE ONLY method of conceiving history scientifically. Karl Popper is not wrong because "falsifiability is obsolete", as you stated, he is wrong precisely because you cannot "prove" or "falsify" scientific practice (Vs. superstition, like astrology) in general. Look at Popper's fucking alternative - Rationality principle, WHICH HE HIMSELF could not theoretically justify BY HIS OWN qualifications for falsifiability.

The example has nothing to do with "other factors" because Marxists are not economic determinists. As I already stated: that production does not only concern industrial production, but the production of all things that separate man from a naked animal running around in the forest with only his bare fists to hunt (in other words, not a person at all, but an actual animal). The basis of this difference is of course the fact that man changes his nature, and therefore, the means by which man changes the world around him defines him and therefore his world. Consumption of meat and poultry are just as much "extra economic" factors as geological realities, they have no medium of expression outside a mode of production.

Xhar-Xhar's understanding of historical materialism is therefore formalist, and idealist in nature - it is take to be an arbitrary positive dogma, rather than something which begins from the onset of universally acknowledged scientific premises - HUMAN EXISTENCE itself.


"Understand what Marx is actually trying to say", i.e. what Rafiq is trying to smuggle in as Marx's meaning. Nowhere does Marx say that production exists for its own sake, or however you wish to rephrase that.

I didn't FUCKING SAY Marx said this - he didn't say this because he didn't HAVE to fucking say it, there weren't vulgar philistines like Xhar-Xhar who conceived production as existing to fulfill the objective substrate of "human needs and wants". But by far the most unforgivable part of this fucking post, the most disgusting, contemptible stupid fucking thing I've ever seen said in a month on this forum:


In fact he notes the significance of production as production of the necessities of human life. This production then forms part of the life of the human species, but is not identical with it, is not "their very being". Marx is clear on that - there are parts of human life that have nothing to do with production or reproduction. As is also obvious to anyone who has ever lived.

"There are parts of human life that have nothing to do with production or reproduction".

I want everyone to read this. Xhar-Xhar calls himself a Marxist. Read this. Do I need to say anything more? Firstly - for fuck's sake, NO, PRODUCTION IS NOT A "PART" OF THE LIFE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, IT IS THEIR FUCKING LIFE! DID YOU READ THE FUCKING TEXT? LET ME FUCKING WALK YOU THROUGH IT.

"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way."

"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself – geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men." [Marx here is saying that ANYTHING which can be conceived as "outside production" are the inevitable natural bases, which can only be confirmed in an empirical fashion, even then which is insufficient because how every historic epoch conceives or understands this "human nature" is relative and different, which suggests that these natural bases are just as malleable as raw materials]

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life

The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. [!!!!!!!!] Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. [DO YOU KNOW WHAT "DEFINITE" MEANS? IT MEANS NOT SIMPLY "REAL", BUT DEFINITE, AS IN, DEFINITIVE] As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] of individuals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again determined by production. [What Xhar-Xhar claims is "paradoxical" about it]

There is effectively NOTHING about human life that is outside of production, because there is no human life at all outside of production. NONE. Production is, wholly, unambiguously and absolutely axiomatic as far as the conditions of men and women go. Marx IS SAYING IT IS THEIR VERY BEING. You say "Marx is clear" that there are parts of human life that have nothing to do with production or reproduction. Very well, WHICH PARTS which are so "obvious" - WHICH PARTS of human life have "nothing to do with production or reproduction", Xhar-Xhar, [I]I want to know. Marx sais, implies or insinuates NO SUCH THING, and Xhar-Xhar, who ironically accuses me of "smuggle meaning into Marx" can't even fucking do this - he just outright talks out of his fucking ass and LIES. But this is not enough. It is not enough to demonstrate that Marx did not think this. It is important to understand WHY Xhar-Xhar must so adamantly defend the notion that there are "parts of human life outside of human production" - because this sacred field of human activity is precisely what he must leave UNTOUCHED, for the cult-discourse of the Sparts has not, and can not account for it - it in fact, construes these "harmless" inevitabilities of life as the conditions of their own ideological constitution. What does this mean? Quite amply, it means that Xhar-Xhar despises critical theory, he despises those who engage truly in RUTHLESS CRITICISM precisely because he must fall back on the notion, the guarantee that there are things which are righteously unknowable. The dietary consumption patterns in the west, for example, are just as harmlessly, innocently inevitable as the existence of trees rather than no trees at all - these (ideological platitudes) are ontological givens, in his mind. The reality that everything which pertains to the domain of human thought, and everything which pertains to the behavior, and activity of men and women is constitutive of the mode of production - production is not a "part" of life, it IS life, for what distinguishes one from a wild beast, or from a sobbing, helpless infant, is the production of one's expression and basis of life itself. A living being lives actively, not as the conglomeration of pseudo-cynics that Xhar-Xhar would have the world who can look down upon production and, like little Caesar's being fed grapes by the "production process", enjoy themselves to their fullest. Marx, conversely, conceived a mode of production, including production in Communism, as CONSTITUTING the very BEING of individuals, not some kind of particular problem - "among life's other problems", that we should "deal with".

In truth, Xhar-Xhar claims my "lord god" is the Mode of production. Very well, the lord god of Xhar-Xhar, "human wants and needs", are in truth the gods of pseudo-hedonism, the idols of postmodern consumerism. These are unquestionable givens, and for him, socialism, the grand utopia, is the consumerist paradise wherein all of the appetites conjured by capital will be unrestricted and realized to their fullest. Hence his attitude of "Well, that's just basically it" in each and every one of his stupid and fucking worthless posts.


I'm not playing semantic games. That need, so long as you acknowledge it (and not relegate it to something to be dictated by Our Committee), can be reduced to "biological needs" (which you gloss over as "evolutionary", whatever that means in all this muddle), is your position, and the position of Malthusians who want to be leftists, but it was never the position of Marx, who speaks about non-"biological" needs (e.g. tobacco).

Okay? What the fuck is your point? Did I SAY HUMAN NEEDS WERE REDUCIBLE TO BIOLOGICAL NEEDS? NO, I SAID THAT THIS WOULD BE THE ONLY WAY FOR YOUR ARGUMENT TO HOLD WATER. Do you know how fucking ironic this is? Do you even SEE YOURSELF? THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT is that THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF HUMAN NEED OR WANT, whether it answers to "technology" or otherwise. NONE. Communism presupposes a new, an entirely new standard of want and human need. That this argument has led you to the conclusion that my position is "Malthusian" - WHAT? YOU'RE THE FUCKING ONE WHO LITERALLY JUST SAiD THAT SOME DIETARY PREFERENCES ARE BIOLOGICAL GIVENS, AND THAT:

Now, certain human needs do result from the biological data of human existence, the fact that we need to eat food for example.

After I ACCUSE YOU of ascribing to a notion of human nature. My god. This is why I need to take 10 min breaks. The level of dishonesty is LITERALLY FUCKING UNPRECEDENTED. I accuse XHAR-XHAR of claiming that there is an objective (whether it is biological, magical or something else) standard of human want - a human nature, which he claims is an "objective social fact" and he FUCKING ACCUSES ME OF THIS POSITION? When I EXPLICITLY FUCKING STATED:

You either contradict yourself, or in this little snippet intentionally play STUPID fucking semantic games. Did I say biology concerns "huamn needs"? No, I said if needs were even trans-historic, they would relegate back to biological needs, which are not sufficient to account for human needs in general. I use this example to illustrate just how bankrupt it is to think that the standards of want and need in capitalism will remain in the society you're describing: A socialism that has moved past, far past a proletarian dictatorship, dealing with the remnants of geopolitical problems, creating structures and institutions to organize production (on any lines, mind you, whether for human need or the straw-man dystopia where people just make shit regardless of what people want - which I will again address later).

Need has neither anything to do with "Our Committe" (Listen you rodent, stop trying to mimic the tone of Marx and Engels - it is literally FUCKING STUPID in that it has no context whatsoever) or biological givens, but what is necessary to reproduce a mode of production, in which case - Communism - which will be scientifically organized and socially self-conscious. The notion that this is reducible to some committee deciding what is necessary and what is not is a BLATANT and INTENTIONALLY FUCKING crafted STRAW MAN, because I have NEVER stated this, in fact, I stated:

The basis of Engel's criticism is quite succinctly in Duhring's conception of a future society as PRECISELY a perversion of present-day society, no ethical platitudes regarding the "infringement" of the individual free will are to be found anywhere. Of course it becomes even more pathetic when we confront the fact that when Marx and Engels referred to barrack's Communism, it was a basic criticism of Nachayev's anarchist hypocrisy regarding a supreme "committee" that would decide everything. Of course, this has nothing to do with the substantive point at hand: The point is [not, apologies for forgetting to insert this] that that a select few Committee members will decide or ration everything, or that society will be organized by merit of the whims of each individual, the point is that society will have to be structurally and institutionally inter-connected, and centralized in this manner. (the manner I have described earlier, not Nachayev's) This is a far cry from the idea of a capitalism without capitalism at all.

Again more juvenile archetypes about the big scary man who wants all the power for himself - sorry, what is this? Did I fucking even mention an "Our committee"? What Marx meant had nothing to do with the abdication of SOCIAL OBLIGATION, but precisely the fixation of social activity - the abolition of which already takes on an embryonic form in capitalist society wherein one can learn any profession on a formal level. I went into this, thoroughly. Marx illustrates the point for me when he talks about his referring specifically to the dissonance between particular and social activity. Now, the point of concern IS NOT whether choices should be infringed upon, but the fetishization of choice itself as constituting a fantasy of consumerist capitalist society. Finally, upon evaluating Marx, the dichotomy he creates is NOT between voluntary labor and "forced" labor as such, but voluntary labor and NATURAL labor. What does this mean? The dichotomy was between a self-conscious society and a "natural" one, it had nothing to do with people doing whatever they want as some kind of sacred principle. Marx speaks of a labor that is forced upon the individual "from which he cannot escape", what this explicitly refers to is the labor constituting the very life-being of the individual in the exclusive sense. So again, you provide nothing that actually addresses the argument that I haven't already addressed.

And on and on it goes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is why, at the start of the thread, Xhar-Xhar, who openly stated he is "not going to get himself involved" in this (Just to show you his honesty), acknowledged that soon enough I will be re-quoting myself frequently - BECAUSE HE INTENTIONALLY DODGES THE FUCKING ARGUMENTS AND ATTEMPTS TO CREATE AN ARGUMENTATIVE FIELD WHEREIN THEY ARE FOREVER LOST. He does not want to ADDRESS them, so he ARGUES in a way that insinuates the arguments were never even made in the first place. The fact that I can literally just requote myself, shows how INCAPABLE he is of actually addressing the arguments. It's like, am I re-quoting things Xhar-Xhar has already addressed? NO, I'm requoting PRECISELY what he ignores in order so that he can continue to churn out the most REPREHEINSBLE, DISHONEST and VILE trash.


Who knew a "giest" (gist? geist?) of history even existed.

That's the FUCKING IRONY. As I stated before: Ladies and gentlemen, want to see how you literally turn an argument into ash while barely even having to think? You say, firstly, the necessities of human life is a standard that regularly changes throughout history - the mechanism owed to this change is not the consumerist giest, but to the class struggle, in other words, things that uniquely relegate back to the process of production and the social antagonisms constitutive of it.

That is to say, there is no big other to fall back on, there is no god, no destiny, no geist (as such), absolutely no guarantee of the success of Communism without the conscious will, sacrifice, struggle and intuitions of men and women.

This is why Marxists do not talk about Geist except in ironic terms. Althusser further explored this in his criticism of empiricism. But to drape onself as a materialist while trotting around the dichotomy of "ideology vs mode of production" is disgustingly only a vulgarization a fucking philistine is capable of doing. It is only through ideological criticism that one can actually understand a mode of production and the material relations to production to their fullest degree, without this, one quite amply lacks a full and complete understanding of how society functions, END OF STORY - the point is that the essential foundation of this function is NOT rooted in the ideas, for ideas have no history - it is human life itself and its expression.

Precisely the point is that there is NO GEIST AT ALL, but when you claim that there is an objective trans-historic standard of human want and need, you knowingly or not insinuate the existence of a consumerist geist, i.e. The point is that I ridicule you for thinking that Hunter-gatherers wanted a bag of Doritos, Tickle-Me-Elmo's, but just didn't know it yet or weren't at the technical level of being able to produce them. This is an idiotically tautological claim because of course in X position humans will inevitably want this - the point is that this is an ABSTRACTION because there is no human individual that exists outside of "X position" beyond the physiological human. This is what you patently do not understand - THERE IS NO LINEAR HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. If there was, Marx and Engels would have never spoke of "asiatic production" and the variances in production in North America. Society could have reached a level of technical development, for all we know (which is plainly knowing nothing at all), wherein human wants and needs are entirely fucking different. Even this is too abstract however, because attempting to divorce the level of technical development from the mode of production that which it either results from, or even helps foster, is plainly impossible. What we can do? Evaluate the fact that needs and wants serve to reproduce the condition of production. End of fucking story. New standards of want and need develop in the carcass of previous modes of production which in their own turn were generated by previous ones. However to say that there is a universal standard of human want and need which Communism will simply "assume" is FUCKING moronic, because it patently assumes Communism is merely just a matter that only concerns one part of life, rather than the definitive basis of ALL LIFE IN GENERAL.

Of course that is too cataclysmic, too scary, and induces too much anxiety in our comfortable Marxist friend Xhar-Xhar. For him, again, Communism is a fantasy, an abstract fantasy that is - where our innermost DESIRES (which are pathological, by nature of being desires) are finally realized which we will, unfortunately, only be able to achieve through means of struggle. But Marx is very explicit about the struggle defining our fantasies and projections in the first place. Of cousre the struggle exists from the onset of capitalsim being unable to fulfill its own standards. But in today's society - which is qualitatively different from society one hundred and fifty years ago, consumer goods have taken on a political role, which is why in outbursts of disattisfaction you have mass looting - people are bombarded with desires, advertisements and the reality that such commodities allow them to CONNECT with the spirit of the times, the only means by which htey protest the system is by playing its game.



Except you do. If you did not you would not speak of the world as having some sort of "reason for" existence

For "existence"? COMPARED TO WHAT? Non-existence? No, the point - which Marx and Engels understood, was negative - why would there be non-existence? Existence is axiomatic, what follows are ABSTRACTIONS. One doesn't have to "prove" existence, therefore, to talk about a reason for EXISTENCE IN GENERAL, rather than NO EXISTENCE is indeed fucking stupid, but only someone who adheres to an idealist ontology would even recognize this dichotomy. Marx:

You see, therefore, that even physically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect – the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progress which drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a [I]reasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, ||XI| then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?

You can reply: I do not want to postulate the nothingness of nature, etc. I ask you about its genesis, just as I ask the anatomist about the formation of bones, etc.

But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man – a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man – has become impossible in practice

Not only does it respond to theologists, it responds to the Chomsky's, the Pinkers, the Dawkins' and so on: They ask the question - "What makes man, a man, rather than an animal" as THE ontological question to justify and legitimize their own animalization of human-kind by creating absolute trans-historic standards of human want and need. But this is impossible by merit of consciousness - any trans-historic need, or a trans-historic "objective social fact" can only be conceived through human consciousness, and the fact that one asserts it positively under the backdrop of a negativity suggests it is already a false question - if it were any way otherwise, Rafiq wouldn't be able to QUESTION these innate, inevitable human wants. Hence only bourgeois ideologues do this - separate themselves from the unwashed masses by distinguishing "Hey, I'm just a rational guy" from "what people want in general". As stated, what is being criticized IS NOT the society you describe for what you say it is, but the REASONING behind WHY you posit it - I DO NOT PRIVILEGE YOU WITH THE RIGHT OF ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR UTOPIA AT FACE VALUE. I trace it directly to present-day pathologies. Xhar-Xhar, conversely, traces it to "common sense" human needs.


Planning on a day-to-day basis? Oh dear.

No, day-to-day variations will have to be accounted for.


ignoring that human society controls production in socialism and will match production to need (instead of dragooning people to only "need" as much as is produced).

And the point is not only that this is worthlessly vague, it does not even implicitly acknowledge what really constitutes need itself. Need would be entirely different in Communism, which is what I stated as a rebuttal to the calculation problem - Communism is NOT going to resume the production of iphones, what makes society "tick" in general will be different. What Xhar-Xhar fails to understand is that consumer goods serve more to solve metaphysical questions for people, existential conundrums, than satisfy some objective substrate of human enjoyment and desire. Assuming that you would "have" to "dragoon" people to need what can be matched in production assumes, AS MARX STATED a contradiction between general and particular interest. If this exists, there is no Communism. Marx's point is NOT that particular interests will whimsically transform into general interest - but the opposite. Xhar-Xhar conceives humans as selfish beings who magically want to enjoy Ferarris for sole egotist purposes, while in truth, the reason they do this is because this confers a specific social relation.

Thus, the point of achieving human freedom is SOCIAL solidarity, discipline and freeing man SOCIALLY before satisfying whatever appetites would exist - which would undoubtedly change afterwards. It is the mode of production, which generates human need. When humans are conscious of their relation to production, and therefore conscious of their own needs in relation to this society, neither this notion of "generating needs consciously" or needs generating society's basis of existence exists. Xhar-Xhar of course reduces production to INDUSTRIAL production, i.e. factories - which is fucking stupid. Society is what establishes the basis of needs. But tell me again of how big of a phenomena the selling of indulgences is in the 21st century.


No, Marx is referring to the character of a commodity as embodying a certain value by virtue of the labour expended to produce it, yet being viewed as possessing a value due to some intrinsic quality of the commodity itself - this is basic Marxist economics.

And because this is not a basic question, but a complex one, it is irreducible to this vague generalization. Of course you're right, but you need to demonstrate how this CONTRADICTS my point - read over your own painfully simplistic generalization of commodity fetishism and then come back to me about how people want things for what those things are alone. I mean, I do nothing more than lead to the logical conclsuion this "basic fact".

Of cousre, your intentions were not pure to begin with. Xhar-Xhar's point, ladies and gentlemen, was to RELEGATE commodtiy fetishism as only significant either on the level of the factory floor, or the direct "economic" trade between businesses, but in truth commodities, which are abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties reproduce society, and are craved precisely because of the fetishistic character of them today. Not because they satisfy some kind of objective standard of human want, but because they satisfy an appetite far more demanding, and far more complex. Again, Marx did not live to see de-industrialized consumerism - consumerism did not render the phenomena obsolete.


Rationing persisted because the Soviet Union was a transitional society embedded in a global market, and far from being something that should be celebrated it enabled the parasitic bureaucratic caste to politically expropriate the proletariat - something you probably secretly applaud lest those uppity proles start thinking about doing away with insane conservative regulations you want to enforce.

Which of course is besides the point, because you insinuated that people only "want" more because they distinguish class differences, i.e. buying a bunch of worthless shit. You stated that this was the sole reason for rationing in general, and I stated that this is fucking stupid because rationing existed in these countries while the necessity to do the former was not present. Stop trying to FUCKING divorce the arguments from their context, trying to make it fucking seem like I was saying the Soviet Union qualified as stateless or classless when I mention the "problem" of no rationing at today's technical level. But as stated: This doesn't simply refer to hoarding

Even though I can't prove it, I want you to know that you're so fucking predictable that I guessed you would say "but da soviet union and dose countires weren't da utopia'.


You haven't mentioned any objective social reality. All you mentioned is discourse - what people are saying. And even then you completely ignore all the discourse pointed against consumption.

And you idiot, what people are saying (NOT at face value, but what they insinuate) sais more about objective social reality than all the worthless Xhar-Xhar's ever could. WHICH OBJECTIVE SOCIAL REALITY AM I IGNORING IN FAVOR OF WORDS? You talk about how "there are things outside production" and yet you don't understand the necessity of those things, including ideology, to reproduce conditions of production. IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE DIRECTLY REPRODUCES OBJECTIVE SOCIAL REALITY. Nay, it is a PART of it. Thinking there is an antagonism between them is fucking stupid. And of course, only a philistine concieves IDEOLOGICAL discourse as "what people are saying" in general. NO, that's NOT the fucking point. Do people feel guilty for over-consumption? Yes, but mass consumption remains, they alleviate this guilt because people do not any longer consume objects as egoists in their mind, they consume EXPERIENCES. Look at a fucking advertisements from 2015 and the 1950's if you think I'm bullshitting. The irony is that this discourse is precisely embedded in advertisements themselves, and in commodities themselves- no commodity sells better than the ones that say "Oh look, we're repairing the rainforest" or some stupid fucking shit. Furthermore, the source of this guilt is a result of contradictions in capitalism in general - between the prerogatives of capital and its playground, hence you have Democrats and Republicans. You might explain Democrats are bourgeois vis a vis Communists, but you can't explain how liberals serve the IMMEDIATE prerogatives of capital in ways that conservatives do not - therefore, a basis of their difference needs to be understood in terms of ideological contradictions in capitalism (as a result of material ones).

But I suspect Xhar-Xhar thinks democrats exist to "hijack" revolutionary momentum.


Religion is like shit, we all know it exists but you're not supposed to mention it in polite conversation. So when you come here and talk about your religious delusions it's the same to me as if you came and talked about the watery shit you had yesterday - it's not that I'm provoked, but you're exposing yourself for a rube. But yes, we all know this: for Rafiq the revolution is not a real possibility, it needs a "huge social and ideological transformation" courtesy of Rafiq and his social-demonrat buddies playing to the proletariat the music of the future. It's the same boring processist view we've all seen a hundred times, and it's not getting any fresher.

A revolution is far more religious than the conglomeration of cynical Richard Dawkins', "reasoned' men and women than Xhar-Xhar makes it out to be. Of course, religion involves superstition, of which there is no room for in any proletarian revolution. That being said, as I stated, apocalyptic rituals, the general madness of a revolution - the FERVOR is anything but "religious delusions". When Engels said "Have any of these gentlemen ever seen a revolution.." he was all the more correct. But let us evaluate what Xhar-Xhar conceives of revolution: Snobby headed philistines, undoubtedly forged out of contempt for the conservative backwardness of Southern European culture, with their hedonistic ambitions, decide to *shrugs* have a revolution and then *shrugs* we'll deal with people if we need to. Xhar-Xhar, to say the least (and this requires saying a great deal, even) simply does not understand that the entirety of what it means to be a human, the very basis of life and meaning is transformed in a revolution. It isn't a fucking walk in the park, it isn't a bunch of Xhar-Xhar's who 'rationally' accept its necessity. It is the thin moment where all garuntee, all gods, everything vanishes and people themselves see teh chickens come home to roost - they see the extent to which the future is really in their hands. Of course, this isn't just about Xhar-Xhar denying all the sentiment, the ecstasy, terror, rituals and power of a revolution - the kind that drives men and women "mad" - it is that he himself, the coward he is, is actually scared of emotionally investing himself in the ideas of Communism and seeing through their implications. What really strikes deep in his heart, what really sparks his passion - bourgeois ruling ideology. For Xhar-Xhar Communism is the suspension of what is truly an inevitability of human existence - human passion, human love, and so on - he may reserve these, but he keeps them untainted from the Communism that he deems will simply give him more Iphones annually. He goes about this trying to make the dichotomy between Rafiq's "spiritualism" and concrete common sense reality, but the truth is that one isn't, and CAN NOT ever be free from these concerns - these "spiritual matters', i.e. one's own being, conception and relation to life, emotional investment, things you simply cannot say "I as a neutral observer understand" but say "I am, without condition, willing to die for" are CONDITIONS of ANY ideological engagement/investment. So if Xhar-Xhar laughs at, or calls "religious" how Communism as an idea, as a movement, how revolution is presented here, it is only becuase he is so confident IN HIS OWN GODS and in his OWN idols that he conceives their replacement the epitome of ridiculousness. So it's quite the opposite - the fact that you so readily and UNCRITICALLY accept hat "huge social and ideological transformation" is IMPOSSIBLE, suggests that you do not conceive revolution in general as possible except outside of processes in thought, i.e. pseudo-theoretical controversies (which are really dick-waving identity, "more socialist than thou games", hence why you actually admitted before that basically socialism is what sounds better for being a socialist").

Finally, let us evaluate "courtesy of Rafiq and his buddies". Consumerism begets consumerist ethics, and these ethics permeate the sphere of so-called self-described cultural and political identities. As stated, the logic follows - if one does not respect another's opinion, it is solely owed to the selfish expression of THEIR OWN opinion. I.e. if Xhar-Xhar is wrong, then the masses must imbibe truth and revolution from Rafiq who calls him out on it. IN today's epoch, one must respect an "opinion" for the sake of it being an "opinion" - a RIGHT, if you will, to designate one's own surroundings and reality as they please, whimsically, with of course the exception of "empirical science" being commonly accepted by everyone. The ideological and political sphere, is not however relegated to the whims of individuals, for individuals are not nearly as varied in their "opinion" as they think.


Also the "silly, completely anti-dialectical, idealist notion" of Engels, who in Antiduehring speaks of the means of production becoming socialised, how this comes into conflict with the capitalist mode of appropriation etc. But what did we expect?

The capitalist mode of appropriation and the totality that is capitalist production are entirely different, and finally, how this contradiction is realized is NOT because socialization is some autonomous Communist process, but that it opens up a void which makes Communism possible. Otherwise, the contradiction expresses itself in different ways, destructive and barbarous ones. If it were anything but, a revolution would not even be necessary. IN the context of how you claim towns (or cities, whatever) are in association because of "objectively socialized production" and not "markets", you TWIST Engels' words to make is as though he's saying that socialization is in contradiction with capital and markets IN GENERAL, but what is in contradiction directly relegates back to the hunger of capital and the only means by which this contradiction is expressed is through the market and through the capitalist economy (rise of monopolies with extensive bureaucratic-corporate planning mechanisms). Engels is not saying that the world is already objectively socailized and all you have to do is get rid of da capitalism, because socialization occurs under the backdrop of capitalism. IF SCIENTIFIC PLANNING and SOCIAL-CONSCIOUSNESS do not replace the "anarchy" of production, then guess what - there is no "objectively socialized production" that is not "objectively" bound by the limitations of capitalism.

The whole FUCKING point was that regarding scientific planning, how to deal with this issue. You said it would just 'sort itself out', I said presently these places are in association only by their relation to capital and the market, and that in taking over this process one must perpetuate their socialization in a different way - which entails not falling back on "objective socialization" (?) but scientific planning which of course refers to the rational (in pertinence to a new standard of functioning) allocation of raw materials, products, ETC. Of cousre the point was not even that "our committee" would regulate people's wants and needs, but society would - IN THE SAME WAY society regulates the fact that people want Ferraris rather than Hondas. Nobody fucking "forces" you to want the Ferrari - even if you aren't conscious of the vast mechanisms that make you want one - in Communism, you will be conscious of the basis of your wants and needs in relation to society. Using the present standard of need and want, which solely reproduces capitalism, simply proves the nature of this "Socialism". Of course you can't "consciously" generate this standard of need or want, but society - consisting of an energetic, enthusiastic and mobilized mass as a whole can.

[Rafiq]

The August Bloc was a gathering of social-democrats in the old sense, a pressure group for a "party-movement of the entire class". Sound familiar? It's the same Lihite orthodoxy being offered as the latest Orthodox Marxism (TM) on RevLeft

You talk out of your ass again. I feel a moral obligation to be angry, and yet I am not. I am not even surprised at this point. No, the August bloc was not a pressure group for a "part-movement of the entire class", and I would fucking give you 200$ again right now if you could show me how this uniquley was their position in juxtaposition to the Bolsheviks. Lenin, who commented:

And these near-Party people, who are unable to unite on their own “August” platform, try to deceive the workers with their shouts about “unity”! Vain efforts!

[Real] Unity means recognising the “old” and combating those who repudiate it. Unity means rallying the majority of the workers in Russia about decisions which have long been known, and which condemn liquidationism. Unity means that members of the Duma must work in harmony with the will of the majority of the workers, which the six workers’ deputies are doing. [Xhar-Xhar speaks of hte party of millions as a social democratic fantasy - staying more true to Trotsky than he would like to think, I suppose -because lenin is EXPLICITLY referring ]

But the liquidators and Trotsky, the Seven and Trotsky, who tore up their own August bloc, who flouted all the decisions of the Party and dissociated themselves from the “underground” as well as from the organised workers, are the worst splitters. Fortunately, the workers have already realised this, and all class-conscious workers are creating their own real unity against the liquidator disruptors of unity.

The point of controversy had NOTHING TO FUCKING DO with "party movements of the entire class" but their liquidationism. Opposing the program of the party, and of course, one cannot understand this without understanding their "underground" nature, and in turn, one cannot understand their "underground nature" outside of the context of the Tsarist Russia and the rule of an illiberal Autocracy. Lenin's point was not that he opposed unity in general, or a mass party-movement - in fact, what you're getting at, probably extracting from some stupid fucking Spart polemic, is that the fact that the August bloc wanted to unify the non-class independent organizations which consisted of workers means building a mass movement with the "whole working class". Which is fucking stupid, because that is tantamount to saying Communists seek to unify themselves with the BNP.

Try again.


I have no idea why you're posting these power fantasies. Unlike you, I don't engage in idle psychological speculation. Maybe you want to wield power, maybe you want someone to wield power over you. Maybe you're just bored and trolling the site. Whatever the reason, the character of your posts as a power fantasy is unmistakable.

If you cannot deduce a causal basis, you cannot INFER that I have a "power fantasy". In any case, you engage your pathological FEAR OF REAL POWER onto "power fantasies" - sorry, Xhar-Xhar, but Communism involves a great deal of the use of power. In any case, it is irrelevant, because you explicitly stated how what I mention involves "big bad guys" taking power and deciding everything for their own self-interest or whatever, which wasn't even the fucking case in the Stalinist states - if we don't fantasize about a consumerist paradise where everyone gets what they want and the standards of want are the same. Try again. There is nothing "pure" or "good" about human nature: human nature is the helplessness of the sobbing baby. Xhar-Xhar probably thinks the Kinderladen is Communism in practice, though.


Which is why Kathedersozialismus, Staatsozialismus and so on became popular during the Anti-Socialist laws, surely.

Right, the anti-Socialist laws, which the German idealists were a reaction against during the years of German idealism from 1781-1840's, decades before their existence. And of course, discourse criticism emerged during the revolutionary years of 1917-1920's, as a reaction to it - just like Fascism. In reality, I fucking decimated this insight - you're fucking DONE, plain and simple, the argument here is over. That goes for you too, Izvestia - nobody gives a fuck about your stupid platitudes "Oh, critical theorists don't want to go talk to the workers", they're idealist because they engage ideology beyond using a 11 year old definition of it. Oh, moreover, the notion that the German Ideology was written as a step to the analytical school is also fucking hilarious - it is patently obvious that the "Hegelian baggage" remained throughout Marx's entire life - his criticism of the Young Hegelians, which we can discuss in another thread in great detail, presupposed Hegelianism in general. And DISCOURSE CRITICISM is not about POSTULATING discourses, but CRITICIZING DISCOURSES - which mens? UNDERSTANDING THEM and fleshing them out. This is what Marx did when he wrote the German ideology - IT WAS CALLED THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT WAS ITSELF A CRITIQUE (critical understanding) OF IDEOLOGY (the way Zizek uses the term). Like what the fuck are you talking about? Izvestia is literally so fucking stupid, such a brainless rodent, that he talks about "discourse criticsm" implying that it's "criticism using discourse" rather "criticism OF discourse" (which is how Xhar-Xhar meant it). Historical materialism is, and always will, remain firmly in the tradition of the continental school - if not the continental school, than its own, independent school. CERTAINLY not, however, the analytical school. And precisely the criticism Marxists have against continental philosophy is NOT that we do not engage in it, but that it all-too-often respects the analytical cognitivist philistines to one degree or another, giving them "what they are due".


We should rather devote ourselves to spreading the philosophies of Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and so on and when people ask us what the fuck we're doing accuse them of being philistines.

If you ask that, you are a fucking philistine. Lenin DID NOT do this. He engaged them even on their own terms, he addressed them thoroughly and in their entirety, he engaged in RUTHLESS CRITICISM. The real philistines were precisely the targets of Lenin in Empirio-Criticism, for THEY THEMSELVES were righteously ignorant. Lenin demonstrated this very well.


Of course he did. "To each according to his need" is quite independent of the law of value (the only one).

"To each according to his need" is not an attack on rationing in general, as a matter of principle.


The above paragraph is a stupid attempt to muddle this fundamental point so you can pretend objective socialisation will die out with capitalism, all the better for us to have "socialitarian" communes.

The paragraph:

However, that does not mean it is some kind of observable autonomous force which exists in spite of the global capitalist totality, which includes markets, profit, property and capital. That is patently ridiculous: People do not enter into association with each other because of some kind of "objective socializing force" which exists independently from capitalist production. The reason cities and towns are in association with each other - is owed to relations to market, to global capital, and so on. You cannot "abstract" this association from this fact. Locate for me how these cities and towns are in association in a way that is subtly independent from markets and global capital. LOCATE this so-called "contradiction". What you describe isn't a contradiction, it is paranoiac voodoo. The only reason the increased socialization of labor and production is a contradiction and a pre-requisite to Communism is because the forces which facilitate it are not planned, but blind forces of the market, of profit, and so on. A commons is created that extends beyond the reach of each conglomerate until actual mechanisms of planning (Corporate-state intervention), and so on, become required. The key word here is, however, planning in juxtaposition to the particular self-interest given to us by private property, which violates a commons we all belong to. Without this conscious, large-scale and centralized planning, which would of course involve the necessity of what every community must take into account each particular circumstance. From being able to house, feed, provide electricity, running water and clothing to the world, which would take abject priority, one could then discuss further wants and needs. Until this task is completed, which would have such a strong structural, social and even ideological change - there is no telling what people would want, or how they would want it.

You literally just make inferences STRAIGHT out of your ass. No one talked about socialization dying out - but what socialization is owed to - planning, or voodoo?


If you're illiterate. It's quite funny, that you (purposefully, as you seem to have finished elementary school at least) misread "save... for ever" as "labour discipline for ever", then act as if you're the sharpest bulb in the box.

Right, Lenin's message was "Guys, let's just do this now and later we can do whatever we want". No it wasn't. READ THE FUCKING TEXT:

The enemies of the working people, the landowners and capitalists say that the workers and peasants cannot live without them. "If it were not for us," they say, "there would be nobody to maintain order, to give out work, and to compel people to work. If it were not for us everything would collapse, and the state would fall to pieces. We have been driven away, but chaos will bring us back again."

Lenin's lesson: Freedom is not free. End of story.


Yes, "never mind this" because, once again, you're talking out of your arse.

"The division of labour is the economic expression of the social character of labour within the estrangement. Or, since labour is only an expression of human activity within alienation, of the manifestation of life as the alienation of life, the division of labour, too, is therefore nothing else but the estranged, alienated positing of human activity as a real activity of the species or as activity of man as a species-being." - from the manuscripts of 1844 (also note the point about labour, or work as we would say today).

Every time we add context to your fucking quotes, your argument turns on its head. Marx was not talking about the division of labor as an ABSTRACT generality, but how the DIVISION OF LABOR in capitaslim was conceived by the political economist - which is why he proceeded to attack them right after:

Society [MARX is speaking of CAPITALIST society, not "any society"], as it appears to the political economist, is civil society [39] in which every individual is a totality of needs and only ||XXXV| exists for the other person, as the other exists for him, insofar as each becomes a means for the other. The political economist reduces everything (just as does politics in its Rights of Man) to man, i.e., to the individual whom he strips of all determinateness so as to class him as capitalist or worker.

The [Which one is he referring to? WHICH division of labor? If he states it in a trans-historic sense, this CONTRADICTS his passage in the German ideology which differentiates naturally divided, and "voluntarily" divided] division of labour is the economic expression of the social character of labour within the estrangement [NOT social character in general]. Or, since labour is only an expression of human activity within alienation, of the manifestation of life as the alienation of life, the division of labour, too, is therefore nothing else but the estranged, alienated positing of human activity as a real activity of the species or as activity of man as a species-being.

As for the essence of the division of labour – and of course the division of labour had to be conceived as a major driving force in the production of wealth as soon as labour was recognised as the essence of private property – i.e., as for the estranged and alienated form of human activity as an activity of the species – the political economists are very vague and self-contradictory about it.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm

But anyway, what's pertinent is what I said: The former division of labor must disappear, interesting. Frankly, no one speaks of an end to the division of labor, but the "natural" division of labor. If we are talking about a society wherein there is no antagonism between particular and general interest, then we are speaking about a voluntary division of labor - by society itself. But the division of labor in this context, as Marx conceives it - referring solely to

exchange. Besides, it is only the latter which makes such diversity useful. The particular attributes of the different breeds within a species of animal are by nature much more marked than the degrees of difference in human aptitude and activity. But because animals are unable to engage in exchange, no individual animal benefits from the difference in the attributes of animals of the same species but of different breeds. Animals are unable to combine the different attributes of their species, and are unable to contribute anything to the common advantage and comfort of the species. It is otherwise with men, amongst whom the most dissimilar talents and forms of activity are of use to one another, because they can bring their different products together into a common stock, from which each can purchase. As the division of labour springs from the propensity to exchange, so it grows and is limited by the extent of exchange – by the extent of the market. In advanced conditions, every man is a merchant, and society is a commercial society.

His point is not that certain people will do certain tasks for a greater good, but the fixation of those tasks insofar as they are definitive of one's life-being, i.e. one's "natural talents" (which do not exist at all, but result from the division itself, wrought from property relations). The key point is NOT "infringing" on free choice vs free choice, but precisely the absence of the latter at all - labor that is done for the common good does not contradict the particular interest of the laborer.


This was Marx's position on the question of (metaphysical) "free will", not free action by individual humans, and you're forced to pretend the two are the same so you can portray being "subjugated" as free development of the sort Marx stood for.

No, it was Hegel's, Marx's, Engels' and Lenin's position on FREEDOM IN GENERAL, what CONSTITUTES the basis of human freedom and its restriction. It had NOTHING to do with fucking free choice, or excuse me, "free action", it constitutes the very notion of freedom for them itself. NOT "free will", but PRECISELY freedom. Saying "freedom is the ability to recognize one's own conditions of necessity" IS NOT some kind of metaphysical platitude, it refers to the fact that true freedom isn't choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, it is freedom out of NECESSITY, freedom OF necessity.

[Sharia Lawn]

General warning for everybody in this thread.

This is the learning forum. There is a zero tolerance policy. As of this post...any flaming & flame baiting will be infracted. As per the rules stickied in this forum.

was followed by a rambling spam post containing the following flames


But alas, giving the Xhar-Xhar the satisfaction that his FUCKING BULLSHIT IS EVERY GOING TO HAVE A SEMBLANCE OF A FUCKING PLATFORM, giving this SCOUNDREL, this DIGNIFIED PHILISTINE a SEMBLANCE of relief that he might have scared me off,


I will chase you to the end of the fucking forum, I will demonstrate each and every fucking time you do this how fucking PATENTLY dishonest, disgusting you are - in every little FUCKING snippet, in every botched response, I will bombard you with the substance that you so confidently thought you could condemn to the abyss.
I will make you look like a FUCKING CLOWN literally just by posting arguments that I've used before. Your little FUCKING tactic isn't going to work
Like who the FUCK does Xhar-Xhar think he is?
NO, PRODUCTION IS NOT A "PART" OF THE LIFE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, IT IS THEIR FUCKING LIFE! DID YOU READ THE FUCKING TEXT? LET ME FUCKING WALK YOU THROUGH IT.
The fact that I can literally just requote myself, shows how INCAPABLE he is of actually addressing the arguments. It's like, am I re-quoting things Xhar-Xhar has already addressed? NO, I'm requoting PRECISELY what he ignores in order so that he can continue to churn out the most REPREHEINSBLE, DISHONEST and VILE trash.
Lenin's point was not that he opposed unity in general, or a mass party-movement - in fact, what you're getting at, probably extracting from some stupid fucking Spart polemic, And that’s not even a full listing.

[Rafiq]

My post was made hours before the warning. Admittedly, towards the end of it did I see the warning, but by that time I had already put so much time and effort into the post.

[Sharia Lawn]

My post was made hours before the warning. Admittedly, towards the end of it did I see the warning, but by that time I had already put so much time and effort into the post.

I guess editing out the flames (which would have shortened your post considerably) was out of the question, since you included so many of them that you'd have to do what you expect others to do -- and navigate through walls of text. I now know what excuse to whip out if I ever make posts that flagrantly violate what a moderator has explicitly stated.

[PhoenixAsh]

infraction to Rafiq

There is a zero tolerance policy in the learning forum. The warning was in itself superfluous and more a general courtesy I hoped would get the thread back on track.

[blake 3:17]

I would hope that Utopia wouldn't consist of people telling other people that they're wrong.

[Comrade V]

John Lennon's Imagine.

[Guardia Rossa]

It is a shame that 870 actively refuses to address anything that Rafiq brings up, relying on fallacies and/or empty accusations, when he doesn't simply ignores what Rafiq writes or doesn't understands it. Also, each two posts Xhar-Xhar changes his view of wich sectarian revisionist ideology Rafiq takes part in...

I won't bother quoting Xhar-Xhar, I just realized his WHOLE posts consists of annoying excuses for why he can't write a single argument.

[Sharia Lawn]

It is a shame that 870 actively refuses to address anything that Rafiq brings up, relying on fallacies and/or empty accusations, when he doesn't simply ignores what Rafiq writes or doesn't understands it. Also, each two posts Xhar-Xhar changes his view of wich sectarian revisionist ideology Rafiq takes part in...

I won't bother quoting Xhar-Xhar, I just realized his WHOLE posts consists of annoying excuses for why he can't write a single argument.

Which main point of Rafiq's do you feel Xhar-Xhar misrepresented or avoided addressing? Without specifics, your post here is basically flame bait, too, and should probably not have been posted.

[Guardia Rossa]

Which main point of Rafiq's do you feel Xhar-Xhar misrepresented or avoided addressing? Without specifics, your post here is basically flame bait, too, and should probably not have been posted.


I won't bother quoting Xhar-Xhar, I just realized his WHOLE posts consists of annoying excuses for why he can't write a single argument.

As I said... It isn't worth to quote him and remove the 3 or 4 paragraphs that are actually interesting and worth something. He doesn't seem to really care about the discussion, but nevertheless wants the last word. Or was baiting Rafiq into Infraction...

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It is a shame that 870 actively refuses to address anything that Rafiq brings up, relying on fallacies and/or empty accusations, when he doesn't simply ignores what Rafiq writes or doesn't understands it. Also, each two posts Xhar-Xhar changes his view of wich sectarian revisionist ideology Rafiq takes part in...

I won't bother quoting Xhar-Xhar, I just realized his WHOLE posts consists of annoying excuses for why he can't write a single argument.

I think it's simply amazing that so many people on RevLeft think I owe it to them to reply to certain posters, and to find some value in what I can only say is badly-formatted repetition of other badly-formatted posts. To each his own; because contrary to what you say, I don't care about "getting the last word" (but Rafiq by his own admission does). Anyone interested is invited to read the "debate", to read Marx, Engels and Lenin, then see if he can find this sort of apocalyptic religious nonsense in their work. Perhaps some will find it, who knows. People convince themselves of anything. In any case, I'm not the one to blame.

edit: Yeah, in fact, let me ***** some more. This is an interesting topic, and much more could be written about it than the bare summary I wrote on the first page. There are numerous questions to explore here, i.e. how might human society be organised spatially (the integration of the city and the countryside), the fluidity of "employment" in socialism and so on. But no, Rafiq has to come along with one of his mega-posts full of pointless posturing, in the process reducing the Marxist project of the liberation of labour to a warmed-over Nechayevshchina. And that was it. People mostly stopped responding after that. And he does this thread after thread.

[Sharia Lawn]

As I said... It isn't worth to quote him and remove the 3 or 4 paragraphs that are actually interesting and worth something. He doesn't seem to really care about the discussion, but nevertheless wants the last word. Or was baiting Rafiq into Infraction...

Ok, so you are condemning somebody for supposedly not caring about discussion, while you refuse to introduce anything of substance into your posts that can actually be discussed or debated. Makes sense. :rolleyes:

[Antiochus]

Cute, coming from someone that has made numerous posts on this thread and contributed absolutely nothing other than being Xhar Xhar's lapdog. Oh right and mutually "liking" posts and so forth.

[Sharia Lawn]

Cute, coming from someone that has made numerous posts on this thread and contributed absolutely nothing other than being Xhar Xhar's lapdog. Oh right and mutually "liking" posts and so forth.

I have contributed a discussion of the relationship of the German Ideology to the practice of "discourse analysis," as well as pointing out a flagrant violation of the forum's rules -- which your post here also comes very close to being. What have you contributed?

[Antiochus]

I have contributed a discussion of the relationship of the German Ideology to the practice of "discourse analysis," as well as pointing out a flagrant violation of the forum's rules -- which your post here also comes very close to being. What have you contributed?

Oh ok, I guess you are just the sanctimonious lawyer who carefully interprets the 'law' of an online forum. You've contributed absolutely nothing other than "hur dur rafiq fucking idiot bicuse he speaks like fooking young Hegelian", without even minimally attacking what he actually posted. Which is what every single post I've seen you write on this forum (not only in this thread) seem to be.

Now off course, I soon as I point this out, I suppose in a catch-22 way I am guilty of the same, so I'll extricate myself from this. And off course, while the posts are insufferably long, I read them, and Xhar Xhar's claim that Communism will be "fucking who you want to fuck, eating what you want to eat, dude", might earn him a place as Taylor Swift's lyricist, but not as a functioning Communist.

[Sharia Lawn]

Oh ok, I guess you are just the sanctimonious lawyer who carefully interprets the 'law' of an online forum. You've contributed absolutely nothing other than "hur dur rafiq fucking idiot bicuse he speaks like fooking young Hegelian", without even minimally attacking what he actually posted. Which is what every single post I've seen you write on this forum (not only in this thread) seem to be.

No, I explained that I also contributed a discussion on the German Ideology. Strange that you omit that. Or perhaps not so strange.


Now off course, I soon as I point this out, I suppose in a catch-22 way I am guilty of the same, so I'll extricate myself from this. And off course, while the posts are insufferably long, I read them, and Xhar Xhar's claim that Communism will be "fucking who you want to fuck, eating what you want to eat, dude", might earn him a place as Taylor Swift's lyricist, but not as a functioning Communist.I asked what you contributed, and I got no response. I take it the answer to the question, then, is "nothing."

Now if you really want to advocate on Rafiq's behalf, you should keep in mind that he'd be better served by having others pointing out the substance of where his posts are being misinterpreted or ignored. Instead, you seem intent on going down Rafiq's rule-breaking path.

You're the second person who has tried to "defend" Rafiq while remaining eerily silent when it comes to issues of substance. What could possibly explain this deafening silence? A scheme to derail the thread even more than it already has been by personal sniping?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Oh ok, I guess you are just the sanctimonious lawyer who carefully interprets the 'law' of an online forum. You've contributed absolutely nothing other than "hur dur rafiq fucking idiot bicuse he speaks like fooking young Hegelian", without even minimally attacking what he actually posted. Which is what every single post I've seen you write on this forum (not only in this thread) seem to be.

Now off course, I soon as I point this out, I suppose in a catch-22 way I am guilty of the same, so I'll extricate myself from this. And off course, while the posts are insufferably long, I read them, and Xhar Xhar's claim that Communism will be "fucking who you want to fuck, eating what you want to eat, dude", might earn him a place as Taylor Swift's lyricist, but not as a functioning Communist.

My, my, someone seems to still be upset about that thread where they talked about shooting "parasites". Well, I imagine I would be upset too, but it's not my fault you have weird positions.

I gather that Izvestia is older than me, and has much more experience when it comes to politics. Surely then I would be their lapdog? But no, Izvestia and I participate in different threads and generally carry on our posting independent of each other. Sometimes we cross paths, and I like many of their posts because they're good. Now compare this to posters like Things Make People Happy, who I've never seen do anything else on this site but thank Rafiq's posts and post in defense of the great master.

And perhaps you can enlighten us who should decide who we can fuck and what we can eat, Our Committee? Marx didn't oppose this sort of busybodyism by accident in his articles on Bakunin (indeed he compared Bakunin with his call for invisible dictatorships and careful regimentation of the private lives of the members of his "anarchist" society to Paraguayan Jesuits). The Marxist position is clear: socialism means society administering things and directing the processes of production, not governing men. That is the fundamental point you and Rafiq wish to avoid, or muddle.

[Antiochus]

I wrote up a post but it logged me out. I'll rewrite it:

This is one of the (many) threads in the debate between Rafiq and Xhar Xhar, I picked it out at random and is indicative of the entire debate, I also picked it because it was Xhar Xhar who brought it up, and thus it can't be dismissed as Rafiq "spamming text":


Since time immemorial, humanity has hovered on the brink of famine and starvation. Even in our own century, this has been the plight of the great majority of the population of the planet. Under these conditions, it is only natural that human beings should be obsessed with eating. Five years of acute food shortages in continental Europe during World War II were enough to set off a veritable explosion of gluttony once something like ‘unlimited food consumption’ became possible again after 1945 (in some European countries much later). But how long did this spree last? Less than twenty years after food had once again become relatively plentiful (just one generation!), priorities started to shift dramatically. Eating less became the rule, not eating more. Health became more important than satiety. This change was not due to the ‘imposition’ of new consumption patterns by doctors or the health industry. It was the instinct of self-preservation that prompted it. Long before the health industry had emerged, similar alterations of outlook were discernible among the rich ‘who had realized socialism for themselves’."-Xhar Xhar

Here he claims that the rising food consumption (gluttony I suppose) in the post-war period was due to some intrinsic human characteristic that "sought to eat" once food was readily available.

Replying to it, Rafiq (summarized) claims that it was not out of any biological "instinct" but rather advertisements and changes in capitalist production:

Lovely, because the survival of humanity has largely been precarious, "it is only natural that people should be obsessed with food". Yes? How is this "naturally" facilitated, by what mechanisms, that is? The reality is that what you claim implies no causation whatsoever - it is PURE, baseless speculation which itself lazy thinking. "Dur, da people didnt have lots o food during da war so when dey did dey wanted 2 eat as much as possible but den stopped". Like where do you get this shit from? The reality is that following WWII, people's consumption patterns vis a vis food drastically spiked NOT BECAUSE people happened to be so happy to be free from nutritional precarity, but because again the rise of shameless mass-advertising campaigns vis a vis food that had no consideration whatsoever for health. If your little fucking theory had a semblance of truth to it, for example, it could account for the fact that the United States underwent a similar pattern in the post-war period too, and I am not aware of any great food shortages during the war (or will you speak of the great depression, then?). In fact people's dietary preferences can be fully, and unconditionally traced to a mixture between state-agricultural policies and the fluctuations and demands of capital vis a vis the food industry, of course relegating back to the law of value and the tendency for the rate of profit to decline. This has absolutely nothing to do with some kind of metaphysical narrative about how humanity is "always on the brink of starvation", "Den gets fat", and "den becomes responsible.

Rafiq points out the fact that the U.S experienced a similar rise in consumption despite not undergoing any sort of catastrophic food shortage like most of Europe during WW2 (i.e there was no mass starvation or 1200 calorie rations).

Rafiq sums it up here:

It was NOT the spontaneous result of consumers sobering up from decades of shameless gluttony, it derived from a perversion of the logic of the counter-culture, which was of course anti-consumerist in nature and left its mark ingraining society with a perpetual guilt of mass-consumption. This permeates not only in the domain of people's dietary preferences, but in for example the decline of organized religion in favor of more "organic"


To all this, despite being the one who initiated the discussion, Xhar Xhar replies:

There were no "shameless advertising campaigns" (good grief) in Germany, in Japan or the Soviet Union, so this theory is obviously not true.

****My aside: This is bullshit. Off course there were mass advertisements relating to food consumption EVERYWHERE in the Capitalist West. In the U.S alone in the 1950s, the "timeless" image of a mother making a 20 course breakfast is synonomous with the era for example.*****

Rafiq responds:

For Germany, yes there fucking was. I don't know anything about Japan (or whether food shortages were present in the country), but there is no such statistic that confirms mas gluttony in the Soviet Union.

Xhar Xhar never brings up this point again (which he initiated). Now, just to be certain, yes there was mass advertisement all over Europe and Japan regarding food consumption. Why else were American (dominated mid 20th century Capitalism almost totally) food companies, i.e McDonalds, Coca-Cola and so forth so prominent after the war? If people just "wanted to eat more", why not simply continue to eat what they were eating previously but in larger quantities?

That is indicative of the entire debate between the two.


My, my, someone seems to still be upset about that thread where they talked about shooting "parasites". Well, I imagine I would be upset too, but it's not my fault you have weird positions.

I talked about the situation of "he that does not work, shall not eat". It is a far more lucid position than your own in that thread, which was "we shall have to requisition grain from the peasants!", hysterically anachronistic and moronic statement. What peasants? The Monsanto CEO's?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yes, I actually missed that, because (1) I wanted to dig up a source for Soviet food consumption and ran into some paywalls so I left it for later, and (2) because I genuinely lost that one sentence in the walls of spammy text about preversions of logics of counter-culture (in the fifties, apparently). If Rafiq wants people to promptly respond to his posts, he should at least do us the courtesy of not making them walls of text with creative formatting.

[Antiochus]

Yes, I actually missed that, because (1) I wanted to dig up a source for Soviet food consumption and ran into some paywalls so I left it for later, and (2) because I genuinely lost that one sentence in the walls of spammy text about preversions of logics of counter-culture (in the fifties, apparently). If Rafiq wants people to promptly respond to his posts, he should at least do us the courtesy of not making them walls of text with creative formatting.

Ok, and as also indicative of the typical cry-baby mentality, he lists excuses, suppositions and blames someone else for, get this, not reading properly. I mean seriously, grow up, what you are doing is tantamount to a 5 year old claiming he can solve the calculus problem but he won't because "he doesn't have to prove anything to a doodo head".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I talked about the situation of "he that does not work, shall not eat". It is a far more lucid position than your own in that thread, which was "we shall have to requisition grain from the peasants!", hysterically anachronistic and moronic statement. What peasants? The Monsanto CEO's?

Family farms make up around 96% of farms in the EU and around 66% of the cultivated land area. It's a crying anachronism but there you have it, that's capitalism for you.


Ok, and as also indicative of the typical cry-baby mentality, he lists excuses, suppositions and blames someone else for, get this, not reading properly. I mean seriously, grow up, what you are doing is tantamount to a 5 year old claiming he can solve the calculus problem but he won't because "he doesn't have to prove anything to a doodo head".

It's not an excuse, because I don't have to answer to you. It's what happened. It's also why almost no one responds to Rafiq's posts. You might want to consider seeing someone about your massive feelings of entitlement, they aren't appropriate in this setting.

[PhoenixAsh]

Sigh. God damnit. I really, really DON'T want to be the one having to do this.

The learning forum is a zero tolerance place. We allow no flaming, no flame baiting, no spam, no one liner...and this rule includes back seat modding posts....as per forum rules.

We only allow constrictive posts pertinent to the debate or contributing to the topic.



Infraction:


Izvestia
Greaveyard
Antiochus


I gave an extra general warning earlier in the thread....my mistake.

This is the last time a mod needs to step in or the thread will be closed.

[Hatshepsut]

Existentialism is the perpetual disappointment with the non-existence of a god....


There is absolutely no Communist movement right now, in 2015.....

This page may well reduce to those two statements. No one really knows what the communist utopia will look like, or even if such a utopia is possible. My guess is it's not. Political ideologies express goals beyond our reach, something like space travel to the distant stars. But that doesn't rip the meaning from them; like guide stars they influence our behavior. We might have never sent men to the moon or New Horizons to Pluto without a dream of going to the stars. We'll never have a society freed from capitalistic schemes of competition and dominance without a dream of communism.

The main problem we Marxists face is resurrecting the lighthouse that went out when the Soviet Union went down. As bad as its regime's practices were, while it lasted, hope for curbing imperialism continued. Oddly, living standards and life expectancy in the USSR peaked in 1989 just when it was falling apart. They had finally managed to quell the violence, having some real accomplishments such as near-abolition of unemployment and homelessness to their credit. In the 40 years of Cold War they committed fewer aggressions on the world stage than the USA and its lackeys did. Westerners were yelling of how much political overlordship the Soviets exercised upon Eastern Europe. Did they ever mention the fact that the USSR refrained from parasitizing the satellite economies; indeed being a net economic donor to the Warsaw Pact as a whole? All while America happily vacuumed material resources flung from Argentina to Congo to support its own massively wasteful dream? What a farce in the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate we saw back in 1959! A better future isn't about Corian countertops in folksy homes. It comes when people care more for what they can learn than what they can get.

Politics is inherently coercive. We cannot have a society of total individual freedom unless every human being lives in a cave 75 miles from the nearest neighbor. The first human social unit, the band of several nuclear families, was notoriously coercive, quite personal and in-your-face about disagreements, despite its egalitarian character and relative lack of homicidal violence. And communism stresses equality more than it does individual choice.

I think communism shares with existentialism the assertion that humans as moral agents can determine many of the parameters of their future, using their knowledge of material historical conditions to do so. We reject despair over the fact that whatever higher beings may exist are unlikely to help us chart a course, or that the journey may never end. There is no final stage; we're always building communism.

[Sharia Lawn]

That is not a quote of anything I have ever said. You may be confusing me with Xhar-Xhar Binks.

[Hatshepsut]

Acknowledged; I fixed the citation.

[Sharia Lawn]

I wrote up a post but it logged me out. I'll rewrite it:

This is one of the (many) threads in the debate between Rafiq and Xhar Xhar, I picked it out at random and is indicative of the entire debate, I also picked it because it was Xhar Xhar who brought it up, and thus it can't be dismissed as Rafiq "spamming text":

-Xhar Xhar

Here he claims that the rising food consumption (gluttony I suppose) in the post-war period was due to some intrinsic human characteristic that "sought to eat" once food was readily available.

Replying to it, Rafiq (summarized) claims that it was not out of any biological "instinct" but rather advertisements and changes in capitalist production:


Rafiq points out the fact that the U.S experienced a similar rise in consumption despite not undergoing any sort of catastrophic food shortage like most of Europe during WW2 (i.e there was no mass starvation or 1200 calorie rations).

Rafiq sums it up here:



To all this, despite being the one who initiated the discussion, Xhar Xhar replies:


****My aside: This is bullshit. Off course there were mass advertisements relating to food consumption EVERYWHERE in the Capitalist West. In the U.S alone in the 1950s, the "timeless" image of a mother making a 20 course breakfast is synonomous with the era for example.*****

Rafiq responds:


Xhar Xhar never brings up this point again (which he initiated). Now, just to be certain, yes there was mass advertisement all over Europe and Japan regarding food consumption. Why else were American (dominated mid 20th century Capitalism almost totally) food companies, i.e McDonalds, Coca-Cola and so forth so prominent after the war? If people just "wanted to eat more", why not simply continue to eat what they were eating previously but in larger quantities?

That is indicative of the entire debate between the two.



I talked about the situation of "he that does not work, shall not eat". It is a far more lucid position than your own in that thread, which was "we shall have to requisition grain from the peasants!", hysterically anachronistic and moronic statement. What peasants? The Monsanto CEO's?


I think you miss the entire point of the exchange. Xhar Xhar was making the unremarkable observation that markets and capitalism and advertisements may very well mold and shape people's appetites and desires, but they are molding shaping the appetites and desires of people. People who have an instinct for self-preservation, part of which entails a concern for having a plentiful food supply, because of how humans are biologically constituted. Another part of that aspect of that instinct for self-preservation is to try as much as possible (always within a definite social context of course) to maximize one's health by not becoming overly corpulent ... or plagued by disease. It is no accident that the world lives under capitalism, it represents the most economically progressive mode of production that a society can develop in conditions of scarcity. It is not by accident that capitalism compels maximum profit and accumulation -- these are birthmarks that remind us of the role that capitalism has played in the grand sweep of human history.

That's the "material" part of historical materialism that you'll never, ever hear Rafiq talk about as he bandies about fantasies of a paved-over planet inhabited by humans who have imposed mass extinction on millions of species just to show how unsentimental and authentically Communist the new society is, or talks about people "embedded in discursive apparatuses" and other such crit-theory jargon. There is no evidence in any of Rafiq's posts that people are anything other than a discourse. And this is a guy claiming the banner of Marxism.

Whether there are advertising campaigns in this country, or that country, or whatever, is all background noise to the larger point. And I think it is patently unfair to fault Xhar-Xhar for missing a line of conversation when Rafiq's go-to tactic in any discussion is to take a single topical thread and try to split it into thirty subthreads of semantic bickering, flaming, and block quoting in order to get the last word (his admitted goal) purely by attrition.