Critique of Marxism by a communist [Archive]

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condor

6th November 2015, 17:33

The following transcript of scratchings requires the reader to jump for the metaphysical grapes. Everything appears jangled, but that is how I want it.

Main: They have studied the past, and think it brings forward the future

The past has no precedence over the present. Only the pomposity of Marx would make us think so... Marxism only sees what is apparent, how things seem to develop. They cannot differentiate a mirage from a water." If something looks like, it must be" is the mantra they follow.

Marxism has one fatal flaw. It understands the world through observation instead of testing. Thus, it sees the world in its flaccid state. Thus, if one observed the human body without imagination, one would assume that the human penis never hardened. Related to this, male ejaculation is related to states of arousal, a question only art, not science can estimate.

Marxism is inherently Victorian and sees art as playing second fiddle to technology. It turns tendencies into laws through sophistry. The ultimate truth, however, is discovered by testing all imaginable possibilities, not all the possibilities that have previously occurred. Imagine if a chess player only examined the moves other players had played before. He would stay a mediocrity.

Marxism may be the best consciously laid out philosophy we have, but it is still not good enough. Theory is all well and good but any good communist must be trained in the theory of rhetoric as well as the theory of prediction.

The ultimate proof in Marxism not being up to the job is this. If Marxism is needed to produce the best, why is the best music not by Marxists, the best paintings not by Marxists, the best comedy by Marxists. The general public does not trust Marxism precisely because of this.
The answer is that Marxism speaks in the language of concious understanding because most advances in human thought have orginated thus. However, all human history is but a beginning. Comedy does not need concious theory because it relies on the phonics of words or inexplicable timing. And so does the rest.

What Marxism seeks is possible, the laws that govern consuming commodities, but life itself has no laws. Note, life only exists as the negation of consuming commodities, just as black only exists through the sun's light.

To excel at explaining capitalist society, one must excel at something else first: poetry, comedy, art. How can you be sure you are good at explaining capitalism if you have no other skill to judge it against? The idea that one can excel simply by studying enough theory is nonsense. It will only work for a small proportion of cadres.

Law 1: All gradualism will fail to eliminate capitalism. Not true. Gradualism tends to originate from the timid or vulgar. But, what if a social democratic party introduced free psycho-analysis for the general population? Could this not allow people to see through their petty personal jealousies of sex and money and liberate their minds enough that the unconscious brain can derive communistic conclusions?

Law 2: All idealism can never work. Simply because idealism has been used by the desperate does not mean it can never work. The proof in the pudding is the eating. If you cannot concretely disprove something, then merely sticking labels on an idea will only alienate possible converts to Marxism. What if how you think (whilst playing chess) affects how blood is pumped around the body. Is this not idealism, a thought controlling the body. A truly comprehensive explanation of how thoughts originate in the body
Law 3: Understanding dialects is enough. Without dialectic language, explained by people drawing what they hear, you will only gain the bare bones of an idea without the flesh and gristle.

What does history show? Ultimately, history can only show which factors or problems were most important and which ones least. History cannot show truth.

Ultimately, Marxism is the most insidious thought available, a belief in truth. But all proofs are proved untrue by the power of human imagination, and as history advances, most truths become untrue ever quicker than before...

The fact that Marxism explains history does not show any inherent depth but merely how willing the human brain is to enjoy life rather than test it and ditch imagination unless it resolves round a practical problem. The sleep of reason does not produce monsters but the sleep of imagination.

Even deeper than this, Marxism believes in things. Why, because the English language is constructed around the atom of the word. Unless you practice music, art and poetry, you will never realise the true continuum of communication and bicker everytime someone leaves the well-trodden paths of the dictionary.

What is life? Nobody knows. That's because it is a mirage, designed to please the body..in the emptiness of proto-existence...where there is no stimulace save the wind...
The ultimate irony is this. Marxism sees the 9/10ths of an iceberg beneath the water and misses the 1/10th above it. It's belief in everything beginning with a foundation is faulty. Without something to support, the walls of a building can sway as easily as if there were no foundations. If language were taught from the building blocks of syntax, people would quickly lose interest as there is nothing to entice them further...

If Marxism really put its trust in dialectics, it would not need to turn into part of concious philosophy. Just like if something was truly dynamic, it would not need to advertise that fact.

Appendix: What we can learn and what to put in its place
Marxists believe all critics of Marxism have simply not understood it. This is where their folly begins...Once again, most becomes all..

How can their be laws of human nature? There only appears laws when everything is mass produced. The very concept of laws is a failure to see anything other than modern Western capitalism. It is like saying that planting crops always brings forth locusts. Just because something has occured in all time, does not mean it occurs in all places. History is mere bunk. It is accidents that excite the nerve. Studying the exceptions brings forth much jucier morsels than simply boistering false wisdom that all water ends up at the sea.

Marxism involves thinking, thinking after reading. The more you read, the more the syntax slows down your brain...Only through poetry and inventive poetry at that, can we hope to understand, not through hands, not through our feet, but through our fright. Only by scaring ourselves senseless can we hope to lose ourselves and dump our ego at the door of an argument. English needs no reform or revolution but ridicule...

Marxism is deeply conservative: try to introduce a dialectical language and people will not understand it, it says ..Marx has deep pessimism in him. Try to phoneticise the language and people will not understand it, they say. It is like saying that without a fire curtain in the theatre, then we will all burn to death..It is surface logic at its worst..

The truth is, nothing is true from every perspective. There is no such thing as things..

Except for mirages, the symbol of water that holds no crocodiles, algae, salt, or excess depths, an Arabic heaven to strive for. There is an exception to every rule.

There is only one law to live by: always imply half your meaning and never explain anything because nothing is plain, trying to make it so only produces a pre-relativity view of human society. The human body is so lumpen and over-articulate that is seems to exist outside of psychedelics, the ability of the body to strive towards mirages...

Yesterday is no. Hanging grapes for people to jump up at exercises their corporeal body. Without making people jump for the meaning means people will understand something but not be energised enough to apply it outward.

Even to be productive as possible is a fool-proof law. And lastly, don't understand and don't read Nietzsche, it is a soap-box, a discussion tool to be kicked away so that those to weak to dance join society's jaws alongside those who can.

Ultimately, history is a set of nucleod branches that have yet to become strong enough to support the weight of human being...Another exception: History teaches one thing. Any great thought will require at least 5 drafts before it fleshes the crust...

We can learn one thing, Marxism, that collection of purified dust, may be finished but communism, the desire to live around a hall where musicians play, is only just beginning.
If you want to know where to start, read Nietzsche. And only remember 4 years back...

I hope the power of this comes through as I have imagined the sonics. I hope this hasn't made you wonder. Marxism has become a tool, NOT a philosophy.

EDIT: edited because of font size -- Tim Cornelis

BIXX

6th November 2015, 17:59

Armchair Partisan

6th November 2015, 18:03

I never drink alcohol or take any drugs, but just this once, I'd like to have some of whatever you're smoking, because even I think it would be a cardinal sin not to try it out.

(I hope someone else can give you a more constructive reply, though.)

Guardia Rossa

6th November 2015, 18:30

Just to read this I had to copy+paste it in Word and change the stupid font you used.

Just re-though on giving an answer, It's not worth it. You attack strawmans. Dozens of them. What the fuck Art and Staring at Penises has to do with understanding society, means of production, dialetics?

EDIT: You are right, Communism is a tool. It is the hammer we use to crush the Bourgeoisie.
Welcome to Revleft.

EDIT2: Just a hint, Revleft means Revolutionary Left.
Another hint, HISTORICALLY most of the intelligentsia were more left-leaning than the rest of the population, and for a long time they were the redoubt of Communism and Marxism.....

DOOM

6th November 2015, 18:32

fuckin dianetics man
workers need to like, visualize positivity, man

Comrade Jacob

6th November 2015, 18:39

yawn

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

6th November 2015, 18:54

Who approves these posts ffs?

condor

6th November 2015, 19:31

Tim Cornelis

6th November 2015, 20:47

The past has no precedence over the present. Only the pomposity of Marx would make us think so... Marxism only sees what is apparent, how things seem to develop. They cannot differentiate a mirage from a water." If something looks like, it must be" is the mantra they follow.

The whole point of Marxism, as method of social analysis, is that it critiqued such methods. Marxism seeks to uncover the inner essence from the phenomenal appearance. It says the very opposite of 'what is apparent is so'. So your whole critique of Marxism is based on the opposite of what Marxism says. With it, your whole points falls. And, the rest of the point wasn't very coherent either.

Marxism has one fatal flaw. It understands the world through observation instead of testing. Thus, it sees the world in its flaccid state. Thus, if one observed the human body without imagination, one would assume that the human penis never hardened.

Marxism is dialectical. It explicitly rejects that we can understand the world in isolation and momentary observations, we need to understand it in its motion -- the opposite of a 'flaccid state'. Therefore, again, your view of the Marxist method is, is the opposite of what is true.

Related to this, male ejaculation is related to states of arousal, a question only art, not science can estimate.

Eh no, you need science. Art doesn't have explanatory power by definition. Science, biology, anatomy, tells us how the human body works, not 'art'.

etc. etc. etc. etc.

Rafiq

7th November 2015, 00:56

Becuase of this huge influx of great, enlightened philistines who think that, after all this them, they have finally discovered a key insight into not only the present failure of the Left, but all the past failures: "Marxism", they say. What pretenses do philistines make to Marxism! Their notion of Marxism is to a child who overhears his parents having sex through the door, they have no notion of Marxism, only the direct and immediate power that derives of it. Their notion of Marxism is what lightning and thunder is to the savage, they will never, nor have nay inclination to, understand the reality of them beyond what is immediately apparent.

Main: They have studied the past, and think it brings forward the future

The past has no precedence over the present. Only the pomposity of Marx would make us think so... Marxism only sees what is apparent, how things seem to develop. They cannot differentiate a mirage from a water." If something looks like, it must be" is the mantra they follow.

Now, let us understand this accusation with some context: Is it unjustified for a philistine to come to the conclusion that Marxism entails a neutral study over the past in order to arrive to conclusions of the present? But first, let us get something sorted out: Condor speaks of the "pomposity" of Marx, because Marx lived in the 19th century and has a large beard, writes in a sophisticated manner, we now hear of the "pomposity" of Marx. The pomposity he sais. What is fascinating about this is not simply that it is stupid, but that it perfectly encapsulates the underlying philistine dismissal of Marx by this 4 year old user. For him, Marx is a walking stereotype, no different than the Assassins Creed syndicate character, it reflects the fact that this disgusting philistine has never even bothered to engage Marx. I would, again, cut off my testicles and send it to condor if I found out he has thoroughly even read any of Marx's works.

Finally, the epitome of stupidity is to assume that the "mess" he is dealing with owes everything to Marx himself. But it is you who accredits Marx with too much - Marx and Engels began a tradition, sprawling out of the ruins of German idealism triumphantly, which is irreducible to Marx and Engels. Marxism is above all a method, if it was reducible to Marx and Engels' personality, then only their biographers would be "Marxists". So listen very closely, condor, you will address us Marxists as "pompous" if you insinuate that anything inherent to our tradition derives from "pomposity", you literally sound so fucking outrageously stupid.... Now, onto the matter at hand, you claim that according to Marx, the past has "precedent" over the present. Why the fuck do you talk out of your ass? I would like you to provide just a single text, paragraph, sentence, ANYTHING you want from Marx which insinuates this idea - you cannot, because a common and recurring theme throughout the entirety of Marx's works is that it is precisely the present which determines our understanding of the past. Marx derives from the tradition of Hegelianism, and he is thoroughly Hegelian in the sense that he recognizes we learn nothing from history. Marx tells us that the key to understanding the anatomy of an ape is through the anatomy of a man. Marx sais in the grundrisse:

Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. But not at all in the manner of those economists who smudge over all historical differences and see bourgeois relations in all forms of society. One can understand tribute, tithe, etc., if one is acquainted with ground rent. But one must not identify them.

Now of course, it is not unjustified for someone who is already a philistine to get the impression that Marxism involves extrapolating the truth of Communism from observing the past in a "neutral" manner, after all, even Kautsky claimed that one becomes a Socialist because they are able to see derive scientific truth from reality. But this is why precisely even before the Zimmerwald schism, Lenin was already ahead of Kautsky in that in his translations, he would carefully be sure to not insinuate this. In reality, Marxists recognize that it is precisely the point that the past has no precedent over the future, we only observe history insofar as we are subjects OF the present, engaged in considerations that solely concern our living relationships to life and production. The freedom Marx derives in understanding the past is a freedom he has derived from being able to understand the present, being unbound by the superstitions that surround our understanding of the capitalist totality, by merit of being free enough to oppose this totality. You claim that Marxism only sees what is "apparent", but that is outrageously stupid for the simple reason that the opposite is true - idealists, philistines and bourgeois ideologues see the apparencies of reality as ossified, essential basis' of their functioning. That Marxism does not concern itself with superstitious metaphysical notions of ghosts or "hidden beings" pulling the strings amounts to the very simple fact that this has no practical function, it is wholly unscientific insofar as such metaphysics is only able to be conjured up because of abstractions-in-thought from real, practical realities (that are obfuscated). In Capital Vol. III, Marx states:

Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided

You accuse "Marxism", which apparently has a mind of its own, of seeing what is apparent and how things develop. But you haven't provided us an iota of an idea of what the "real" processes underlying these are, and how they reduce the materialist understanding of history to an analysis of a "mirage". To make pretenses to a mirage, you must make pretenses to what the real water is, but you have not done this and you are incapable of doing this. I mean, would you care to provide an actual viable example of taking outward appearances as ends-all truths by Marxists? What you say is completely fucking nonsensical, completely and wholly groundlessly stupid.

Marxism has one fatal flaw. It understands the world through observation instead of testing. Thus, it sees the world in its flaccid state. Thus, if one observed the human body without imagination, one would assume that the human penis never hardened. Related to this, male ejaculation is related to states of arousal, a question only art, not science can estimate.

Are you actually just trolling us at this point? A stupid answer begets a stupid claim, I suppose: What would be proper qualifications for "testing" that would confirm the truth of Marxism? Popper was closer to the truth than you ever will be - Marxism is "unfalsifiable", it makes no pretenses to needing to be "tested" in such a way. But what you fail to understand is that Marxism is above all practical, but you misunderstand the point of science if you think every human subject and every social group in our society is concerned with the same practical matters. Thinking this is purely ideological. In reality, Marxism does not have to be "tested" in a lab with human lab rats for the simple reason that Marxism does not make pretenses to trans-social truth, i.e. Marxism does not claim to have those special powers to be able to convince everyone in our society to engage it, for we already presuppose and recognize the necessary ideological apparatus that must reproduce present relations to production, tied to that class which, under prevailing conditions of production, has the most to lose from it. The men of the bourgeois scientific revolutions made no pretenses to being able to convince the Jesuit priests or catholic inquisitors when they were being put to trial and often times executed for what was then heresy, which today we accept as basic science.

Marxism derives from Communism, and not the other way around. What this means, very simply, is that if the intuition and the energy to oppose present conditions does not exist, then marxism is reduced to nonsense. But to assume that the energy is not there is the true fatal flaw: We can see SOLELY by merit of the explosive growth of the reaction that people indeed are fed up with the existing order, from history alone we can see that the propensity for the proletariat to fight and resist never has to be bestowed upon them by intellectuals, all intellectuals do is provide them the language to scientifically understand that which is already there.

"How does one prove that 'it' is there, that the predisposition to oppose the existing order is there for workers"?

And this is precisely the difference between the bourgeois intellectuals, who conceive the social sphere as though they themselves are not engaged in it, i.e. as an externality rather than something they themselves are entangled in, and those ENGAGED socialist intellectuals who consider this a practical point. We do not need to "prove" that workers have the inclination to oppose the existing order because it is a practical axiom for us. The only banal premises we need are: Workers face problems, and there is no reason to think, outside of the superstition of ruling ideology, that these problems have to exist or are inevitabilities of life in general.

Finally, to the more bizarre and abominably stupid of your claims, the ejaculation of the penis and states of arousal "science" cannot answer, but only art. But alas, the qualifications for what constitutes "science" that are presented are unquestionably and dogmatically positivist ones, i.e. your notion of science has no regard whatsoever for the social domain, so whether you want to substitute the psycho-sexual dimensions which are behind male arousal with vague things like "art" (as though art is outside of science, as though art cannot be scientifically understood), or "the soul', or even pseudo-evolutionary metaphysics, it does not matter: None of these are scientific insofar as they allow critical insight into the processes they make pretenses to. No, sexual arousal is ABSOLUTELY something that can be understood in scientific terms, that is the whole point of real psychology as it relates to the social domain in general. That is why only crude philistines oppose the method of psychoanalysis, which is indeed a scientific one. So even the most elementary allegory you have provided regarding Marxism's inability to understand things "under the surface" of their appearence falls flat on its fucking face, to say nothing about how you attempt to relate this back to Marxism itself. You claim that it takes "imagination" to understand the penis outside of its flaccid state. Are you actually stupid? No, please, entertain me, tell me that you actually think this. "One would assume the penis never hardened".... But the penis DOES get hardened independently of whether someone would have the capacity to know whether it would or not (which is an incredibly slim chance) without having first seen an erect penis. Are you literally trying to say that our understanding of the erection of the penis comes from "imagination" rather than the actual reality of penis's getting erect, you know, which is a basic pre-requisite for human beings to survive more than a single generation? What you say is astonishing - I do not know what it sais about me that I seriously engage these borderline schizophrenics, but it sure is nothing to brag about. Am I in fact inflicted with a special kind of stupidity which allows me to understand what you're saying?

You claim Marxism sees the world in its "flaccid" state. Mind you, what are the "erect" states of the world which Marxists have been unable to comprehend? It's pure irony what you are saying - the whole point of Marxism was precisely to add a HISTORICAL dimension to our understanding of hte world as it is - the whole point was to criticize the bourgeois political economists, philistine ideologues and "philosophers" for having an ahistorical understanding (a "flaccid" one, if you will) of the world as it is, taken for what it is as the ends-all of life and nature.

Marxism is inherently Victorian and sees art as playing second fiddle to technology. It turns tendencies into laws through sophistry. The ultimate truth, however, is discovered by testing all imaginable possibilities, not all the possibilities that have previously occurred. Imagine if a chess player only examined the moves other players had played before. He would stay a mediocrity.

You claim Marxism sees art as playing "second fiddle" to technology. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to claim that Marxism involves technological determinism, because again, this is completely fucking wrong. In reality, both technology and art play "second fiddle", in the sense that they have no independent histories or minds of their own, to the existence of real, living human beings with real and historically particular means of constituting human societies. Finally, you make pretenses to "laws", but you misunderstand the point: Marxism does not formalize "tendencies" into "laws" as ossified categories, for this is empiricism, it mistaken the understanding of the thing for the thing itself. The point of the Marxism of Marx, and later Lenin (succeeded by "western Marxism" from Lukacs to Althusser), is merely the assertion that one can understand historic processes scientifically, this has nothing to do with superimposing "laws". And I bring a final and controversial point: Marxism makes no pretenses to some new empirical truth, for the premises of the materialist method as layed down by Marx are premises which are empirically true for the whole of society. Likewise, in this sense, those who heralded the natural sciences did not necessarily bring about 'new' empirical truths, they merely, by scientific means, discovered new empirical truths. But science is not necessarily a pre-requisite to observing empirically observable phenomena, it is merely the means by which that phenomena is understood in knowledge. One does not have to understand photosynthesis in a scientific fashion, because one can claim that magic underlies such chemical processes.

Marxism only concerns an understanding of the social domain on scientific terms because this understanding is the basis of practically changing it. So, we can imagine "all imaginable possibilities", but insofar as they are not practical ones they are worthless abstractions. If magic is responsible for photosynthesis, that is also an "imagined" possibility but it is not justified by practice. Marxism does not introduce any new empirical truths without providing a means of empirically proving them. The point is that there are non-empirical truths, a dimension which exists independently of whether we want to approach it scientifically or not - our social inter-relations, the process of production, the basis of our lives and how it is reproduced, ETC.

This kind of pseudo-empiricist opportunism is precisely the same kind which justifies all of the most ridiculous superstitions of the 21st century, from the notion of a "god" to the existence of ghosts and angels. Time and time again we are told that there are no "absolute truths", and that there are truths we have not "discovered" yet. But the whole point is that pretenses to the notion of a god, ghosts and angels existed independently of any empirical verification for them, we therefore can understand that the chances that we would discover them "empirically" are just as slim as the chances that we would discover Zeus, invisible banana men, giant penis-shaped spaceships that are controlling our minds, and so on - these do not belong to the category of empirical truth, they are human abstractions that exist only in thought. From what we might gather you claim "art" occupies a space Marxists confer class processes to. But what you fail to understand ist hat class, or the social dimension, is NOT meant to substitute some other causal basis - when we speak of the base and the superstructure, it is not a mechanical relationship, it is not a pretense to a new empirical notion that class determines the social sphere instead of, say, banana-shaped aliens. The point rather is that at the onset of attempting to understand the social domain scientifically, free from superstitions and ideological assumptions, one arrives at the conclusion that it is the social which forms the basis of human society, and that the social can be practically changed, manipulated, independent of "forces of the unknown" getting in our way. This is what you amply fail to understand - you cannot "prove" science, you cannot "prove" that practical science is any more "true" than superstition, as far as idealist qualifications to truth are concerned - you cannot "prove" evolution, for example, because I can say that there are invisible forces that are responsible for such processes we cannot see.

Saying art forms the basis of historical development therefore rests upon the assumption that "art" has a history of its own, or that art is sufficient unto-itself. In a way, we do not even disagree with this notion - that art, religion, politics, ETC. determine the course of history. We do not necessarily disagree. WE simply recognize that at the onset of scientifically understanding these processes, IT IS THE SOCIAL DIMENSION, that is, the dimension that concerns real human life, and not abstractions-in-thought like "art", which forms the underlying basis of this. Art, politics, religion, and other such abstractions are only pertinent insofar as they concern a living, real human society, to say that human societies are organized around art, religion or other such abstractions is to presuppose that ideas are magical, trans-physical forces which use humans for intentions and ends which are external to them. Again, this is superstition.

Communism, and more specifically and subsequently Marxism implies nothing more than consciousness of social processes which we ourselves are engaged in, which form the basis of our own lives.

Of course, if what you imply is much more modest: That we need to re-think political strategies, tactics, that we need to take into consideration new changes that have occurred in capitalism which make old methods of not only practice but analysis obsolete (in assuming that the social antagonism of our society is exactly the same as before, in its expression, ETC.) then I agree with you, it is just patently stupid to think this would involve discarding Marxism - the point is to repeat Lenin and re-invent Marxism in approximation to one's own time, and in dialectical terms, re-approximating the Marxist analysis to new social coordinates is the ultimate Marxist orthodoxy. For the CONTENT of Marxists' understanding of the world, for them to superimpose old categories wrought from previous class analysis's is PRECISELY revisionism. The point is that Marxism remains as solid as rock as far as the employment of the METHOD is concerned- the method does not change, times may change, and therefore the practical expression of the method might, but the method remains the same. IF Marxists have failed to understand present social relations in their totality, that is a failure of Marxists and not Marxism, for through Marxism can we understand present social relations in their totality in a way that emanates an understanding of their ESSENTIAL basis, and nothing else.

Marxism may be the best consciously laid out philosophy we have, but it is still not good enough. Theory is all well and good but any good communist must be trained in the theory of rhetoric as well as the theory of prediction.

The problem here is that rhetoric is being used in a cynical way. Rhetoric must be self-conscious. We are often accused of opportunism, the truth however is that when we speak of defending "democracy" here but discard it there, it is NOT to say we are inconsistent, it is simply the fact that we recognize the social-conditional nature of such abstractions. I basically agree with the point you are trying to get at - but these are questions which concern political tactics and strategy, and understanding proletarian consciousness in the 21st century.

This, more plainly, concerns matters of ideology, and subsequently of geist. What is ironic however is that this is not a problem of Marxism, but a problem of Communism - locating what it means to be a Communist in the 21st century is a task that no one has stepped up to, and only Marxists are capable of doing it. That most Marxists are stubbornly unwilling to says nothing about Marxism as a historic tradition, however.

The ultimate proof in Marxism not being up to the job is this. If Marxism is needed to produce the best, why is the best music not by Marxists, the best paintings not by Marxists, the best comedy by Marxists. The general public does not trust Marxism precisely because of this.
The answer is that Marxism speaks in the language of concious understanding because most advances in human thought have orginated thus. However, all human history is but a beginning. Comedy does not need concious theory because it relies on the phonics of words or inexplicable timing. And so does the rest.

Condor, such arguments might hold up if we were to discard the tradition of western Marxism, that is - the Frankfrut school, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and finally ideological criticism. They deal with precisely this, with not only culture, but IDEOLOGY - that which is precisely not an apparency. Your argument begins with positivist nonsense, and then you resort to telling us that we need to look "deeper" than the apparenices before us? Nothing is more ironic. But more generally, independent of this tradition, you are right, the best musicians, paintings and comics are not Marxists for the simple fucking reason that we are not living in a proletarian dictatorship. If the best comics, musicians, and paintings were Marxists, don't you think this would have societal ramifications that would threaten the reproduction of a society that must necessarily instill a lack of consciousness of itself, by merit of the fact that Marxists precisely concern this? This is why if you actually pay attention to the history of western civilization (for lack of a better term, really) after the 19th century, the propensity for Marxists to be popular artists and comics (I.e. Brecht) coincides with the state of the (political) class struggle. In fact, what you fail to understand is the fact that what constitutes the "best" painters, comics and musicians is not judged by some trans-historic god, but is relative to societal considerations. Certainly in the early Soviet Union the best artists were all Marxists, but what is the point here? A good example is the fact that many remember Martin Luther King as the face of the American black civil rights movement. But the only reason for this is generally because he was easily white-washed by the present order insofar as he is not a harmless figure to our society today. Such is the nature of history - we do not learn anything from it. That the best painters, comics and musicians (moreover, filmmakers, etc.) suggests that the public indeed does not "trust" Marxism.

But is this a fault of Marxism, or of Marxists? That they do not trust it, does this mean that it is inevitable that they do not, or are there real, rationally explicable reasons for this? You can skip all the bullshit and basically just admit that your argument amounts to: Because we are not living in a proletarian dictatorship, Marxism fails to provide a viable understanding of human societies. Sorry, but the class struggle is not some fucking debate about "truth", IT IS A REAL STRUGGLE. Nothing guarantees that we will not fail in it, the point is that we can do it, the possibility of failure is just that - a possibility among the possibility of victory. I will go as far as saying that our failure is a failure of leadership and will - not even one of material considerations.

What Marxism seeks is possible, the laws that govern consuming commodities, but life itself has no laws. Note, life only exists as the negation of consuming commodities, just as black only exists through the sun's light.

"Life has no laws", what does that actually mean? Do extrapolations from life form the basis of life itself? No, likewise, there are no "natural" laws either - that does not mean that the law of conservation of matter is not a real one, it means that laws are human categories made by humans in order to practically understand things. So what you say is in effect nothing more than a pure abstraction. "Life only exists as the negation of consuming commodities", do you know how abjectly stupid this is? How is life supposed to constitute the "negation" of consuming commodities in a way similar to the blackness relates to sunlight? Life is not the negation of consuming commodities, for if this were the case there would not be any life at all in capitalism. That's really all there is to it.

To excel at explaining capitalist society, one must excel at something else first: poetry, comedy, art. How can you be sure you are good at explaining capitalism if you have no other skill to judge it against? The idea that one can excel simply by studying enough theory is nonsense. It will only work for a small proportion of cadres.

What the fuck are you trying to say? Are you saying we need to "prove" that poetry, comedy and art can exist in a post-capitalist society? Saying this assumes that there is something specific about class society, or capitalism, which makes art, poetry and comedy possible. So tell us what that is, and prove it to us. Why stop there? Why not, for example, claim that we must excel at waste-management, plumbing, gold mining, etc. so we can have these "skills" to judge it against. This is literally the most juvenile fucking thing I have ever heard- so what, we need to "excel" at some arbitrary skill to be bestowed the legitimacy to be able to critically understand capitalist society? Well, how about this: I am not a poet, comic or artist. And yet I can still understand capitalist society. So fuck you? You need to elaborate as to how my lack of engagement in these things (personally, that is) detracts from my ability to explain or understand capitalist society. In reality, our lack of engagement with such cultural matters probably reflects the fact that we are not bestowed the legitimacy of "truth" by ruling ideology and subsequently by society as a whole. That you cannot resolve this conundrum with your own dedication to the ideas of Communism personally is not our fucking problem, plain and simple, it reflects your own spiritual weakness and cowardice. We Marxists engage in ruthless criticism, that is our business.

Law 1: All gradualism will fail to eliminate capitalism. /QUOTE]

Ladies and gentlemen, what the fuck am I reading? Are we supposed to take this as some kind of essential, specific law in Marxism? No, you fucking idiot, you and you alone have isolated this incidental conclusion of Marxism (i.e. that capitalism will not gradually disappear), as its ESSENTIAL basis. I'm so fucking sick of this opportunistic, juvenile usage of words, I am so fucking sick of how these anglo-philistines fucking think. "Gradualism" he sais - all of these "isms" he pulls out of his ass and then bestows the unique power of having their own giest, historical, material being. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 'GRADUALISM', 'GRADUALISM' CANNOT FAIL BECAUSE IT IS A FUCKING IDEA, one that you have pulled out of your ass at that!

Oh my god. What despair these philistines bring us. "Law 1" he fucking sais. I am so fucking sick of how arrogant these kids are, I'm so sick of how they literally are so confident in their own stupidty. "Law 1"? "Law 1"? HOW THE FUCK DO YOU ARRIVE AT THIS CONCLUSION? HOW do you arrive at the conclusion that this is some ESSENTIAL law implicit in Marxism, i.e. not just an incidental conclusion but actually the DISTINCT BASIS of Marxism? Are anarchists "gradualists"? If not, does that make them Marxism? I'm so fucking sick of this - how they use these STUPID fucking abstractions to make pretenses about reality.

[QUOTE]Not true. Gradualism tends to originate from the timid or vulgar. But, what if a social democratic party introduced free psycho-analysis for the general population? Could this not allow people to see through their petty personal jealousies of sex and money and liberate their minds enough that the unconscious brain can derive communistic conclusions?

I have a better idea, why don't we just, as a population, whimsically decide to have Communism? Why don't we try and convince those in power? You don't fucking understand that even if the social-democratic party intorudced "free psycho-analysis" for the population, THIS ALONE ASSUMES THE FOLLOWING:

1. That you can actually build a fucking new social-democratic party on this platform that will attract the support of a sufficient number of people. If you can attract the support of a sufficient number of people to intordocue "free psycho-analysis" whose logical conclusion is Communism, then the population would already be at a level of consciousness that FAR exceeds what we have now - if you could get this much fucking support, what would the need for this be? You could literally have a revolution already.

2. Even assuming we can just "sneak" it through and trick the population (again, how FUCKING stupid these ideas are never ceases to surprise me) there is no reason to think that the propensity for them to spend their time being psycho-analyzed and drawing sufficient conclusions from psycho-analysts that would give them the necessary class consciousness to "liberate their minds" would conform to this stupid fucking fantasy (Also, if you could find enough psycho-analysts to fucking do this who are Communists, THIS WOULD ALREADY HAVE HAD SOCIETY WIDE RAMIFICATIONS WE ARE NOT PRESENTLY AT.

3. In addition, what is more to the point of being utterly and desperately confused about this notion is that YOU fail to isolate what exactly sustains the basis of capitalism - you speak of trivialities like "petty personal jealousies of sex and money", but who the FUCK are you to claim these are "petty"? They are clearly not petty, they clearly have incredibly complex dimensions to them, they clearly are sustained by a complex network of ideological, psycho-sexual forces that you CLEARLY fail to fucking understand. Why can't Church teach them this? After all, such trivialities are precisely of ruling ideology - do you fucking think that people consciously justify the "petty jealousies" as you call it? No, they don't, the point is that there is nothing petty about them, for their consciousness of such processes is just as myopic and illiterate as YOURS. You are not above them in this sense - your understanding of sexuality and the ritualistic power of money is just as "petty" as your average fucking joe, if not infinitely more petty because at least your average joe does not make pretenses to such great profound revelations. For money to lose its power, for sexuality to change, this implies a change at the level of people's actual fucking lives that far exceeds the capacity of a state-sponsored army of psycho-analysts, for the simple reason that money and present sexual relations did not come out of nowhere, they exist insofar as they reproduce the conditions of production and subsequently human life in its particular expression.

Did "money" proceed the existence of real human beings, for example? It did not. Money and present sexuality has no history. The social dimension alone does. The only real fucking example you need is: Look at the counter-culture, look at how RESILIENT and dynamic capitalism is in subordinating such super-structural ruptures.

Law 2: All idealism can never work. Simply because idealism has been used by the desperate does not mean it can never work. The proof in the pudding is the eating. If you cannot concretely disprove something, then merely sticking labels on an idea will only alienate possible converts to Marxism. What if how you think (whilst playing chess) affects how blood is pumped around the body. Is this not idealism, a thought controlling the body. A truly comprehensive explanation of how thoughts originate in the body

Our materialism is the scientific twist of a very particular form of idealism: Absolute idealism, Hegel's idealism. Idealism and materialism do not mean what you think they do for Marxists. We are not, for example, neurological determinists - OF COURSE thoughts control the body! One cannot stress this enough, the body is absolutely subservient to psychological processes where it counts. But the conclusion we draw from this is NOT that there is a "soul" or that the ideas are sufficient unto-themselves, the point is that thoughts and ideas themselves are only exercised, given meaning, and are wrought from a specific SOCIAL and historical context. The psychological is a subset of the social, for every human psychologically articulates his own totality of social relations. In fact, to claim that the body takes primacy over our thoughts, as though we are animals, IS not only "vulgar" materialism, it is idealism of the highest offense, insofar as it assumes essential characteritics about the body which are exclusive abstractions in human thought, i.e. that "ideas" actually exist in the physical structure of humans and produce what it means to be human on a essential level. Little separates genetic determinism from Christian superstition hundreds of years ago who spoke of "souls". You claim idealism can "never work". We never made such a ridiculous claim. Of course idealism "Works", it works, for example, insofar as it obfuscates and mystifies how people interpret and understand their own social being. Of course idealism "works", otherwise idealism would not exist. But what does it "work" for? In reference to what? Do you see how fucking stupid, how outrageous your terminology is? You assume we are all on the same page here about what we want - and this is a fatal flaw. "All idealism can never work" you claim.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the criticism of idealism leveled by Marx, Engels and later Lenin - the essence of their criticism, and the rejection of idealism inherent to Marxism thus, according to condor, the 12 year old genius, amounts to: Idealism can never work. No, you terribly, insufferably confused child, you have no notion of basic appropriate word-usage in real theoretical contexts, because you are a philistine who hasn't the slightest clue about what you're talking about. Finally the most unforgivable trope: "You'll alienate possible converts to Marxism!". Ironically enough, over five years ago when I was more or less as stupid as you were, I made a thread about "stop alienating the Muslims". Nothing is more despicably opportunistic than this - we must firmly and unconditionally remain true to Hegel: We should hope the masses rise to our level, but we will not degrade ourselves to the level of the masses.

We are anti-fascists, rabidly. Do we "alienate" potential converts to Marxism? No, precisely because of the fact that these irk are never going to be potential converts insofar as they are fascists. Likewise, we do not need to degrade Marxism so that religious people will not be 'alienated' from it. Such opportunistic language really guises something inherent into YOU, condor: YOU are alienated by our rejection to idealism, and your extrapolate your experiences to be some huge political-demographic problem of strategy. But it is not - for so long as we can remain political at a PRACTICAL level, the masses more or less will not give a fuck about whether we reject idealism or religion, they will care about the actual practical issues we are dealing with. You don't understand that idealism, religion, has a real practical purpose in people's lives: One that is DESTROYED by their engagement in the class struggle and class-consciousness.

This is why Engels famously remarked that the English workers were already atheists in practice- through class struggle their religious consciousnesses simply disappeared. Marxists rather must understand how idealism/religion relates to peoples lives at the level of practicality, and we already have. Even the league of militant atheists in the Soviet Union was immensely popular for how backward the peasant masses were, to say nothing of what remained of the industrial proletariat (thoroughly atheist). Marxists make no compromise. Marxism does not degrade itself, the ignorance of the masses for Marxists is a provisionality, not some inevitability we have to lower ourselves to.

Law 3: Understanding dialects is enough. Without dialectic language, explained by people drawing what they hear, you will only gain the bare bones of an idea without the flesh and gristle.

Child, just stop. Literally at this point it is embarrassing to read your post.

Stop speaking of "people", stop making pretenses to ideas you have no notion of.

What does history show? Ultimately, history can only show which factors or problems were most important and which ones least. History cannot show truth.

Ultimately, Marxism is the most insidious thought available, a belief in truth. But all proofs are proved untrue by the power of human imagination, and as history advances, most truths become untrue ever quicker than before...

"History cannot show truth" ONLY insofar as truth is concieved as some metaphysical scroll written in the fabric of the cosmos or encoded into our DNA. In reality, TRUTH is practical, because our lived existence as human BEINGS is an axiom, it does not need to be proved. You speak of drawing "importance" from problems in history. IMPORTANCE IN PERTINENCE TO WHAT? Again, STOP assuming we are on the same fucking page, stop assuming that "importance" is some universal category shared by everyone. It is not. What is important to you, a bourgeois ideologue entangled in confusion, is not important for a Communist.

Let's just repeat Lenin and Engels, even though you are not worthy of either the response they gave, or of assuming the role of their opponents: You claim "all proofs are proved untrue by the power of human imagination, and that most truths become untrue even quicker than before". Okay, so are you admitting that this very statement is not true? You claim there is no truth. But is this statement true:

But all proofs are proved untrue by the power of human imagination, and as history advances, most truths become untrue ever quicker than before.

By the qualifications you have given us, no one can ever know. The month is November right now. Is that untrue? If so, why? Truth concerns PRACTICE, that is, the active, practical prerogative to do something, and labor requires no "proof" to justify itself, it is an axiom of the human condition. Some things are no longer practically true, others become true. The reason that no one believes in Amun-Ra anymore has nothing to fucking do with the fact that they had a "lack of evidence" or because truth does not exist, the reason is because Amun-Ra serves no practical purpose in reproducing our society, i.e. there is no reason for anyone to believe in Amun-Ra unless they're some pretentious dolt. It is true that history destroys previous truths, and that truth is historically relative - this is not because there is no truth, this is because truth is not something outside of the human brain - truth is nothing more than practical truth. That you're so fucking lazy, and for that matter ignorant that you are going to extrapolate "there is not truth" from the traumatic encounter with the fact that previous things which were thought to be true are no longer considered true emanates the same "run wild with arms flailing around blindly" JUVENILE, haughty philistinism of bourgeois ideologues who lack the capacity to think critically.

"most truths become untrue ever quicker than before"

Yes, child, and there is a reason for that, one that is rationally explicable. Have you ever even considered this possibility?

The fact that Marxism explains history does not show any inherent depth but merely how willing the human brain is to enjoy life rather than test it and ditch imagination unless it resolves round a practical problem. The sleep of reason does not produce monsters but the sleep of imagination.

Again, you keep prattling of abstractions like "imagination". Has it ever occurred to you that imagination is only relaxant insofar as one recognizes how it is constrained by the reality that is before it? Has it ever fucking occurred to you that the substrate of possibility to which we are allowed to compare the imaginative capacity of society in 2015 to that of 2015 B.C. is not in fact owed to "imagination" but to the fact that imagination is nothing more than the creative abstraction of real, actual material truths? Shocking, no? I mean for fuck's sake this idiot sounds like that dolt Ilstar. You abstract words that are meant to denote real things, and ossify them into having a mind of their own, thus, holy "imagination" is now an idol capable of conscious intent over humans, thus holy "reason" exists in juxtaposition to it, and so on.

It is so fucking infuriatingly stupid that you actually are thinking to yourself as you're typing this shit that you're producing a real criticism of Marxism. You are literally doing nothing more than embarrassing yourself, plain and simple.

Even deeper than this, Marxism believes in things. Why, because the English language is constructed around the atom of the word. Unless you practice music, art and poetry, you will never realise the true continuum of communication and bicker everytime someone leaves the well-trodden paths of the dictionary.

"Marxism believes in things". Interesting, who knew Marxism was a conscious being capable of "belief" in human terms. In reality, does Marxism imply belief in certain things? Yes, but it offers consistent and scientific means by which such beliefs are justified. What is your fucking point here, though? It's almost as if you are so incapable of addressing Marxism that you have to remind us of the fact that there are complex dimensions behind communication. What is this supposed to prove? We do not resort to mysticism and superstition because things are so complex as you do. You claim that without practicing music, art and poetry we will not realize the complexity of communication. Perhaps one can make the case that without thoroughly and critically understanding communication forms outside of bare language one will never understand the complexity of a great many things, but there is no fucking reason to think that one must be a painter, a ukulele player or a poet in order to understand capitalism. In addition, these are not practical categories insofar as it concerns consciously changing society, these would SUBSEQUENTLY be changed, but that means absolutely fucking nothing as far as we are able to understand capitalism. Marx of course made no pretense to aesthetics or poetry. But Marxism is not reducible to Marx. He provided the framework which allows us to truly understand the historic, spiritual dimension behind aesthetics and so on.

I mean, it might seem like you're getting at something here, but you're literally not. You're literally just wrong, plain and simple. The argument amounts to the notion that because communication extends beyond plain written and spoken language, Marxism fails to understand the world because communication is irreducible to written and spoken language. But that communication is irreducible to written and spoken language DOES NOT FUCKING MEAN THAT THE SAME MESSAGES CAN BE CONVEYED ACROSS ALL MEDIUMS OF COMMUNICATION. YOU CANNOT CONVEY THE MESSAGES OF MARX'S CAPITAL BY PLAYING AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR. YOU CANNOT LIKEWISE ENCAPSULATE THE ESSENCE OF BEETHOVEN BY TRANSLATING APPASSIONATA TO A FEW PARAGRAPHS.

Music, poetry and the irk deal with different things, they deal with spiritual dimensions that are not "outside" science but at the same time not interchangeable with it. Deepest apologies that the Grundisse was not written in the form of a haiku or that Lacan did not deliver his seminars by means of a mariachi band.

What is life? Nobody knows. That's because it is a mirage, designed to please the body..in the emptiness of proto-existence...where there is no stimulace save the wind...
The ultimate irony is this. Marxism sees the 9/10ths of an iceberg beneath the water and misses the 1/10th above it. It's belief in everything beginning with a foundation is faulty. Without something to support, the walls of a building can sway as easily as if there were no foundations.

"What is life" he claims, awe-inspired, like every haughty fucking philistine who thinks they have discovered some grand truths, unaware of the bare practical implications of their DRIVEL, unaware of the fact that their grand revelations are of the most myopic, shameless stupidity and the intellectual cowardice that must prostrate before the existing order. Amidst all of these practical realities, "what is life? No one knows" is meant to be some battering ram into the fortress of Marxism.

Making pretenses to such grand, eternal truths in order to deal with that which is particularly concerning the here and now: The epitmoe of bourgeois intellectual reaction. You claim life is a "mirage", but you are fucking WRONG for the simple reason that in claiming life is "designed" to please the body, YOU ARE DESIGNATING AND INSINUATING THERE IS AN EXTERNAL REALITY OUTSIDE OF THE HUMAN BODY THAT WHICH WE ARE INCAPABLE OF PERCEIVING. But this is IMPOSSIBLE - reality and life are human cateogries and concerns, there are no gods, there are no divine beings, non-human spectators concerned with such things. If you are saying that life is a mirage of the "true" reality, then I am going to grab you by the fucking balls and tell you that your "true reality" is JUST AS MUCH as a mirage as the one that appears in front of you. Such is the idioitcally paradoxical reality of such claims.

If language were taught from the building blocks of syntax, people would quickly lose interest as there is nothing to entice them further...

This has nothing to do with some eternal inevitability of human life, but the fact that humans must be mesmerized and mystified by the processes which constitute the basis of their existence for the same reason that you idiotically make pretenses to "What is life?" and the irk: It, above all, reflects the mechanisms that suppress the means by which we achieve social-consciousnesses. But even then, language cannot be taught from the building blocks of syntax for the same fucking reason that puberty cannot be bestowed by merit of being conscious of the biological processes which sustain it: Language is its own external dimension, subservient to the social one, which is sufficient unto-itself as far as how humans relate to it. Teaching humans language in terms of syntax would be impossible for the simple reason that this itself would have to be taught in some sort of underlying language. The point is not a profound one, it merely reflects the fact that language does not "guise" the true reality, rather, syntax and understanding the "building blocs of language" only come AFTER LANGUAGE IS TAKEN TO BE AN AXIOM AND A PRESUPPOSITION. You think there is something profound to what you are saying, but again, you are an embarrassment not only to yourself but to everyone observing this thread. If language were taught from the building blocs of syntax, it is not a matter of whether it would "interest" people, the point is that this is IMPOSSIBLE, you cannot understand something without already presupposing language. You can be conscious of your language, and how you use it, but this would derive from a wider social context that which language is contingent upon. Language, communication, CONFERS reality. Communication between jackals is not for the sake of language but for the sake of sending messages that pertain to their survival. Communication among humans therefore confers the essential basis of their own lives - their own inter-relations to production on a social level. Again, you are an empiricist in the Althusserian sense: You are conflating a THING from the THING IN KNOWLEDGE. They are not the same. That you extrapolate truth from something does not mean this truth has a "mind of its own'.

If Marxism really put its trust in dialectics, it would not need to turn into part of concious philosophy.

WHAT? "Dialectics" is a matter of consciousness, you do not "trust" dialectics because dialectics has no intentions or history. Dialectics merely refers to the dynamic processes that surround change. So your argument is a false one to begin with - no one puts their "faith" in dialectics, dialectics is indeed something which belongs to the realm of a conscious understanding of the world around us.

You literally talk out of your ass, make a false claim about us, and then proceed from there? Wow, what a profound argument condor.

10/10.

How can their be laws of human nature? There only appears laws when everything is mass produced. The very concept of laws is a failure to see anything other than modern Western capitalism. It is like saying that planting crops always brings forth locusts. Just because something has occured in all time, does not mean it occurs in all places. History is mere bunk. It is accidents that excite the nerve. Studying the exceptions brings forth much jucier morsels than simply boistering false wisdom that all water ends up at the sea.

We make no pretenses to laws of human nature, that your own MISINTERPRETATION of Marxism, undoubtedly not unique to you, has led you to this conclusion sais nothing about Marxism. Actually, a great deal of my posts deal precisely with this : There is no trans-historic, objective human nature, it is indeed ridiculous to think there is a trans-historic standard of human want that Communism will somehow be better at fulfilling. But again, at he same time, Marx is very open about the fact that this understanding of history derives from extrapolations of capitalism: that is why he basically states that the first two classes in history are the proletariat and the bourgeois, because it is from their antagonism, and more generally the most heightened antagonism between private property and labor that all previous history can now be understood - we have entered the epoch of historic self consciousness in capitalism. This is what you don't get: Marxism would have NOT been possible 1000 years ago, for the simple reason that the reason we are now conscious of classes and how they underly historic processes is because for the first time we are met with the possibility of the abolition of classes and the historical self-consciousness of the whole of human society.

We do not fall back on history to justify the controversies of the 21st century. We, however, look at history to help us understand them. As for "exceptions", yes, we get it, you want oh so badly to believe in a world outside of the one understood by Marxists. But for Marxists there are no "exceptions" were such matters are concerned, for exceptions can be explained consciously. if there are "exceptions", it suggests incompleteness and internal antagonism, such is the nature of scientific discovery.

Marxism involves thinking, thinking after reading. The more you read, the more the syntax slows down your brain...Only through poetry and inventive poetry at that, can we hope to understand, not through hands, not through our feet, but through our fright. Only by scaring ourselves senseless can we hope to lose ourselves and dump our ego at the door of an argument. .

I want everyone to appreciate the thoroughly reactionary, anti-enlightenment mysticism of such a claim. It "slows down our brain'? Very well, we don't give a shit. You keep talking about "to understand" - to understand WHAT? Without the existence of real language, there couldn't be any poetry. Poetry is precisely striking because it insinuates real linguistic categories. So in fact if poetry replaced "ordinary language" or the language of enlightenment rationality, this would itself constitute its own new symbolic order and its own new language, and it would make poetry obsolete. You are literally plainly a confused person. But thank you for basically admitting that you are a rabid reactionary who is confidnet in his own ignorance -we don't care about your superstition. We have nothing to say to you, in this respect.

Marxism is deeply conservative: try to introduce a dialectical language and people will not understand it, it says ..Marx has deep pessimism in him. Try to phoneticise the language and people will not understand it, they say.

No, actually, I mean your point is very stupid and nonsensical, but let me entertain the notion that saying introducing socially self-conscious art to the masses would be mistaken constitutes "pessimism'. They would indeed not understand it. That does not mean they can never, and will never understand it, it simply means that we need to take into consideration real, practical circumstances at the onset of practically attempting to politically mobilize them. You speak of a "dialectical langauge". Look at fucking langauge for fuck's sake - language is never simply about its apparent grammatical rules and so on, if this were the case, we would be a "less complex" civilization for the simple reason that older languages in more primitive socieites are much more complex than English. In reality, what makes a language a language is NOT understood at the level of syntax but precisely what is NOT insinuated - rules in the English language are not simply about when to follow those rules, but also when to know how to break them. Precisely what does NOT have to be said but language, but is conferred anyway by language is what is important. That is why English is the most dynamic language to ever exist - so many words which sound exactly the same confer very different things, only distinguished by written grammar. To speak of a "dialectical language" is the most gross and abominably stupid vulgarity. One cannot even begin with such nonsense. Like are you actually joking? Of course, who knows how language will change in a post-capitalist society, certainly one can imagine that language would be more amply suited to dealing with change than present language with all its formality. But attempting to "introduce" this is a gross perversion, for DIALECTICS and our understanding of it RIGHT NOW ALREADY confers the reality that we are not living in a Communist society - it already takes into consideration, implicitly, the fact that formal logic prevails.

The truth is, nothing is true from every perspective. There is no such thing as things..

And what you fail to understand is that the reason for this is because different perspectives confer different practical ends and interests - there is no homogeneous interest in capitalist society. Truth is only an importnat cateogry insofar as there are real human beings, real engaged subjects, not neutral spectators which are trans-historical.

There is an exception to every rule.

What is the exception to the rule that: There is an exception to every rule.

There is only one law to live by: always imply half your meaning and never explain anything because nothing is plain, trying to make it so only produces a pre-relativity view of human society.

Okay, are you trolling now? Is this some analytical philistine or some bitter positivist trying to troll the forum by attempting to mock us continental intellectuals? That is literally what it sounds like. If so, it's not even cute - you literally still have no fucking idea of what you're talking about as this is not even a real parody of our tradition - it's literally talking out of your ass and isolating that of our tradition which makes an impression on you which you can't understand. You're like a child who attempts to imitate what he has heard about sex by hugging someone in a small bed (i.e. as this is what is shown on movies and TV).

Try again.

"always imply half your meaning and never explain anything because nothing is plain."

Actually I am quite convinced you are a troll now. Nothing is plain? Of course nothing is plain, but only an analytical philistine who fails abysmally at trolling would assume that things which are COMPLEX cannot be consciously understood or thoroughly engaged critically. When we accuse your irk of being simplistic, it's not that we claim the importance of implying "half our meaning", it is that YOU ARE PRECISELY implying half of your meaning - in all your simplicity, you are precisely assuming things which are not given to us in the words you use, i.e. up for debate and on the table in knowledge.

Without making people jump for the meaning means people will understand something but not be energised enough to apply it outward.

Behold, the tacit logic of the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and online pop-science. Mesmerize and mystify people even when the capacity to understand things rationally is there.

Even to be productive as possible is a fool-proof law.

No one cares about being as "productive as possible" except the bloodsuckers.

History teaches one thing. Any great thought will require at least 5 drafts before it fleshes the crust...

At least 5? Not 4?

We can learn one thing, Marxism, that collection of purified dust, may be finished but communism, the desire to live around a hall where musicians play, is only just beginning.
If you want to know where to start, read Nietzsche. And only remember 4 years back...

Indeed, Marxism is finished. Discussion over. Condor has single-handedly destroyed Marxism.

Unless we are meant to believe Marxism is dead already. But what does that make of Rafiq? What does that make of many users on Revleft? We have nothing to say to you. If Marxism is dead, then Communism is certainly dead you fool - because the only indication you have that "Marxism is dead" is that it is not particularly popular. And oh, Communism totally is. Please shut the fuck up.

Rafiq

7th November 2015, 05:54

Actually thinking about it I am quite convinced condor is a troll:

Condor appears to be a bitter positivist philistine who attempts to parody certain theoretical traditions. Which is hilarious becuase, if his point was to say "hey look how ridiculous this is when I do it", then it's interesting that literally only when they do this, and he is not the only one, are works of such a nature. Only when anglo-philistines try to "parody" us do we get shit like this. It's like you so rabidly and desperately want to defend your worthless superstitions that your last, desperate resort is a pretense to common decency and "normality": Is this not similar to the pseudo self-irony and mockery that reactionaries use when dealing with cultural manners? From Richard Dawkins' Dear Muslima, etc.? Is this not similar ot how the hysterical feminist, or the steroetypically "ridiculous" post-colonial studies professor is portrayed by their irk? Since right wingers have no notion of critical thought, they must resort to common ignorance, they must resort to this bare bones, uncritically accepted standard of normality, the "come on guys, this is ridiculous!" kind of attitude.

And what the post in question shows, above all, is the brute and barbarous uncritical irrationality that underlies their thoughts. THIS is what is produced when they try to make mockery of critical thought - THIS is what is produced when they give themselves the permission to break out of this bare bones, formal blind adherence to "common sense" philistinism and "normality". Philistines think precisely in this way - everything is a formality, everything conforms to a set of pre-established rules that are adhered to NOT because of how they are critically assessed, or even intellectually justified, but because they are tacit givens. This is degenerate even by the standards of the enlightenment and the Anglo-philistines that were wrought form it. The first positivists, for example, had to rigorously defend themselves affirmatively - now, people just want to be "normal" and bark like a good dog...

They are so threatened and astonished by the AUDACITY we Marxists have to challenge blindly accepted language. Never forget Althusser's notion of the state apparatus, for this is precisely the point: If you are illegitimate in the eyes of the ideological state apparatus, there is no distinction between saying "if one observed the human body without imagination, one would assume that the human penis never hardened. Related to this, male ejaculation is related to states of arousal, a question only art, not science can estimate" and saying "there is no big other".

However, the attempt failed miserably, and why? Because the post was not dismissed. It was critically assessed and attacked by its merits, not by how "ridiculous" was. Rafiq, or others, were supposed to emulate the same philistine dismissal anglo-saxons give our works, but instead, the troll-post was triumphantly subject to the same ruthless criticism as anything else. What a failure! What an absolute, abject fucking failure! Condor, how the fuck does that feel? Yes, that's right, crawl back into your little hole you fucking creep.

Up from the very beginning: The following transcript of scratchings requires the reader to jump for the metaphysical grapes. Everything appears jangled, but that is how I want it.

I am truly the stupid one for not seeing that he is purely trolling us. Not to be self-obsessed, but I would not be surprised if this was entirely directed at me, solely judging from the font-size and my outspoken history of dealing with evo-psyche types, from which I regularly am accused of "postmodernism" and "relativism'. It just goes to show how these types have no notion of understanding things critically - it seems like they themselves are so fascinated with "relativism' that they must assume the entirety of our criticism of them amounts to it.

Not to mention the fact that my posts, or the works of certain figures of our tradition, have regularly been subject to criticism by anglo-philistines for being "jangled" and incomprehensible.

It's so cute how our little positivist philistine is trying so hard to decipher the basis of the criticisms leveled against what is probably persuasions that involve evolutionary psychology, genetic determinism, ETC. It doesn't even work, it's that stupid. But thank you condor, I appreciate the honesty - I appreciate teh fact that you're actually admitting this is what you think continental philosophy is like. Thank you for admitting you are incapable of critical thought and have no notion of the criticisms leveled against your traditions and subsequently the pure BULLSHIT that spawns from it.

Comrade #138672

13th November 2015, 11:24

Marxism has become a tool, NOT a philosophy.Good. We need less philosophy and more tools.

Tim Redd

24th November 2015, 04:53

Good. We need less philosophy and more tools.

This is a typical bourgeois pragmatic view of how we should understand and approach reality.

Properly comprehended and utilized philosophy is in fact a powerful tool for the analysis and transformation of reality.

In many if not most cases positing tools as the primary goal over philosophy is a sign of placing the bourgeois pragmatist or utilitarian viewpoint above the Marxist standpoint of how revolutionary dynamic materialist philosophy should guide and drive revolutionary activity and thinking.

Tim Redd

24th November 2015, 05:05

...

Why are some people allowed to dump a hot, stinky load in/on RevLeft day after day? Why are they allowed to crap all over and detract from what should be the RevLeft goal of enhancing an understanding of revolutionary theory and building the most powerful struggle possible against capitalism?

What is up with the thinking and values of the Revleft moderators that they allow this to go on and on? Is this what anarchism freely condones - allowing a psychopathic, narcissist to time and time again rant and fulminate like a child ad inifinitum?

Emmett Till

24th November 2015, 08:11

Why are some people allowed to dump a hot, stinky load in/on RevLeft day after day? Why are they allowed to crap all over and detract from what should be the RevLeft goal of enhancing an understanding of revolutionary theory and building the most powerful struggle possible against capitalism?

What is up with the thinking and values of the Revleft moderators that they allow this to go on and on? Is this what anarchism freely condones - allowing a psychopathic, narcissist to time and time again rant and fulminate like a child ad inifinitum?

The idea of simply banning anyone who ever says a good word about that insidious class enemy Nietzche is tempting, but hey, here we have Rafiq, this is a situation for which his usual text wall is the ideal cure. It seem to have stifled the Condor nicely.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

24th November 2015, 08:58

Why are some people allowed to dump a hot, stinky load in/on RevLeft day after day?

I don't know if you've noticed but the BA have pretty much given up on this site; most of them haven't even logged on for ages. That, and RevLeft has always been massively biased. If you're an "Orthodox Marxist (TM)" (lol) Lihite or Small Party of Good Boys sympathiser, you can pretty much get away with anything.

RedKobra

24th November 2015, 09:10

Rafiq, seriously mate. The joke isn't funny any more.

Sibotic

24th November 2015, 11:07

Remember that thing that Marx said about appearance and essence? Well, Marx pretty much never mentioned penises. So like what if you introduced those, and then revealed that as their truth can only be revealed through smut, therefore you take issue with Marx's theory?

There's a flaw with that logic somewhere, but obviously you could just not bother. Clearly the 'Marx didn't take into account the following more or less recent phenomenon' posts have reached their logical conclusion.

Comrade #138672

26th November 2015, 07:51

This is a typical bourgeois pragmatic view of how we should understand and approach reality.

Properly comprehended and utilized philosophy is in fact a powerful tool for the analysis and transformation of reality.

In many if not most cases positing tools as the primary goal over philosophy is a sign of placing the bourgeois pragmatist or utilitarian viewpoint above the Marxist standpoint of how revolutionary dynamic materialist philosophy should guide and drive revolutionary activity and thinking.
I am quite pragmatic, yes. However, I would not consider that inherently bourgeois. It is not because I am pragmatic that I reject the need for revolution, for example.

I am quite skeptical of the use of philosophy. The most important insights are already a part of Marxism. The revolution will not come because some intellectuals have philosophized about it. The revolution will come when the material conditions are right and the working class seizes power. In this sense Marxism is nothing but a tool to accomplish the goal of communism.

I would even go as far as to claim that philosophy is dead. Science has basically replaced philosophy entirely. There is nothing that philosophy has to offer that science cannot offer.

Бай Ганьо

26th November 2015, 11:43

Why are some people allowed to dump a hot, stinky load in/on RevLeft day after day? Why are they allowed to crap all over and detract from what should be the RevLeft goal of enhancing an understanding of revolutionary theory and building the most powerful struggle possible against capitalism?

What is up with the thinking and values of the Revleft moderators that they allow this to go on and on? Is this what anarchism freely condones - allowing a psychopathic, narcissist to time and time again rant and fulminate like a child ad inifinitum?

More disturbing is the fact that those vacuous messages get thanked.

I would even go as far as to claim that philosophy is dead. Science has basically replaced philosophy entirely. There is nothing that philosophy has to offer that science cannot offer.

That's Hawking's position, isn't it? I think there's a lot of literature (by philosophers and scientists) on the net on why it is baloney.

Comrade #138672

26th November 2015, 12:29

More disturbing is the fact that those vacuous messages get thanked.

That's Hawking's position, isn't it? I think there's a lot of literature (by philosophers and scientists) on the net on why it is baloney.Yes, it is. Obviously philosophers will disagree. That is to be expected.

Sibotic

26th November 2015, 13:51

The revolution will not come because some intellectuals have philosophized about it.This is an unfortunate way of terming this, obviously philosophy is so far from identification with 'intellectuals' that they are generally the ones denigrating it and have been hopeless at it for decades, as opposed of course to people who are intellectual which you would assume could have helped. You're smuggling in class terms for really little reason.

Yes, it is. Obviously philosophers will disagree. That is to be expected.
Why, empirical measurements on philosophers on the whole, presumably meaning people with such a 'job,' or because philosophers would do philosophy? It stands to reason (which is a decent phrase) that philosophy isn't particularly identical with science, in terms of its range, and can hardly be replaced by it in its own field. Thought is inimical to scientists as they are, and scientists never too good at thought, unfortunately for scientists (Hawking might have some sort of excuse, being physically disabled and unable to get over this).

In any case attempts by the sciences to substitute for aesthetics, ethics, etc., are generally just reducible to relativism, or statements of feeling, and merely conflate fields and make unwanted presuppositions. Philosophy is thought about thought, which science has nothing to do with, being by and large an attempt to reduce the necessity of thought to science although such things led to most of its 'major' advances since Einstein, Newton, etc. Philosophy isn't an attempt to manufacture scientific 'facts,' they don't even have qualitatively identical ends in the first place that would raise the question. That's a philosophical question, mind, not a result of scientific research on science, which is sociology and merely manages to measure trends and fads.

Obviously, though, the goal of communism is a part of Marxism, so again hopefully you were using a microscope on their works to tell, and thereby give an account of the relation of Marxism to ethics.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

26th November 2015, 14:04

Marxism is an anti-philosophy; like the "terrible men" Plato agonised over it pulls everything from the heavens down to the Earth. Rather than obsessing over what is True and Real and Good, it explains the development of human society and thought with reference to the material facts of human existence. Often, Marxism as it actually existed has failed to be a science, either pathologically sticking to half-baked theories or resorting to outright idealism (Gramsci, Bloch, Žižek etc.). But it is a failure. And our task is to go beyond that failure and not glorify it in vague emotional terms.

Thought is inimical to scientists as they are, and scientists never too good at thought, unfortunately for scientists (Hawking might have some sort of excuse, being physically disabled and unable to get over this).

What. The. Fuck.

In any case attempts by the sciences to substitute for aesthetics, ethics, etc., are generally just reducible to relativism, or statements of feeling, and merely conflate fields and make unwanted presuppositions.

The point of a scientific approach is not to substitute for aesthetics or ethics but to take these normative (and therefore blatantly unscientific) disciplines down a peg, something it has succeeded in doing admirably.

Philosophy is thought about thought, which science has nothing to do with, being by and large an attempt to reduce the necessity of thought to science although such things led to most of its 'major' advances since Einstein, Newton, etc.

No one is trying to "reduce the necessity of thought to science", although the necessity of thought to producing academic philosophy is very much an open question. Nor has philosophy led "to most of its 'major' advances since Einstein", that's something philosophers tell themselves at night so they don't cry over getting a philosophy degree.

Philosophy isn't an attempt to manufacture scientific 'facts,'

"I'm not interested in these 'facts' you speak about."

Obviously, though, the goal of communism is a part of Marxism, so again hopefully you were using a microscope on their works to tell, and thereby give an account of the relation of Marxism to ethics.

No, it's not. Marxism is not normative, but descriptive. Reading a Marxist text is not going to magically impart to you a proletarian perspective, but an existing proletarian perspective finds ways to orient itself in the world and guide its actions against capitalism in Marxism.

Sibotic

26th November 2015, 14:13

The point of a scientific approach is not to substitute for aesthetics or ethics but to take these normative (and therefore blatantly unscientific) disciplines down a pegWell, obviously.

Comrade #138672

26th November 2015, 14:29

This is an unfortunate way of terming this, obviously philosophy is so far from identification with 'intellectuals' that they are generally the ones denigrating it and have been hopeless at it for decades, as opposed of course to people who are intellectual which you would assume could have helped.I am not saying intellectuals cannot help. Otherwise I would not have cared about reading Marx. I am saying that philosophizing about revolution is a waste of time (which is different from theorizing about revolution).

You're smuggling in class terms for really little reason.What am I smuggling?

Why, empirical measurements on philosophers on the whole, presumably meaning people with such a 'job,' or because philosophers would do philosophy? It stands to reason (which is a decent phrase) that philosophy isn't particularly identical with science, in terms of its range, and can hardly be replaced by it in its own field. Thought is inimical to scientists as they are, and scientists never too good at thought, unfortunately for scientists (Hawking might have some sort of excuse, being physically disabled and unable to get over this).Thought =/= philosophy.

In any case attempts by the sciences to substitute for aesthetics, ethics, etc., are generally just reducible to relativism, or statements of feeling, and merely conflate fields and make unwanted presuppositions. Philosophy is thought about thought, which science has nothing to do with, being by and large an attempt to reduce the necessity of thought to science although such things led to most of its 'major' advances since Einstein, Newton, etc. Philosophy isn't an attempt to manufacture scientific 'facts,' they don't even have qualitatively identical ends in the first place that would raise the question. That's a philosophical question, mind, not a result of scientific research on science, which is sociology and merely manages to measure trends and fads.Science is not about manufacturing facts either. Science is about discovering facts and explaining them. If philosophy is not about that (and you are probably right about that), then I do not see any use for philosophy.

By the way, science is perfectly capable of explaining ethics and aesthetics.

Obviously, though, the goal of communism is a part of Marxism, so again hopefully you were using a microscope on their works to tell, and thereby give an account of the relation of Marxism to ethics.Can you be more specific? I am not sure what you are asking. Does Marxism have anything to say about ethics? Yes. Without the need for philosophy.

Rafiq

26th November 2015, 19:25

allowing a psychopathic, narcissist

The U.S. Worker's Political Party of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Redd Thought

[...]

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[...]

RISP uses the scientific method and creatively applies the most advanced thinking of humanity, the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Redd Thought (MLMRT or "Redd Thought") to chart the course to successful revolution in the US. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as advanced by Redd Thought is the theoretical framework for the most rapid victory of socialism in all countries with the least amount of sacrifice. Tim Redd has renewed Marxism for the needs of revolution today. In 1977, he laid out the correct roadmap for revolution in the U.S. that has been followed by Maoists in the U.S. since that time. That roadmap may be summed up in the maxim: "Create Public Opinion, Prepare, Seize Power". In the same year Tim Redd made it clear that in order to succeed the revolutionary movement in the U.S. must act and subordinate its interests to the interests of the proletarian struggle internationally. Tim Redd has analyzed key events of world history and the socialist movement throughout his study and application of Marxist theory for 35 years. During the course of this analysis, he has made a number of ground breaking insights in Marxist theory in the areas of political economy, political science, philosophy and culture [links to some his papers in these areas are located 2 sections below]. Redd Thought is meant to provide broad theoretical guidance for the socialist revolutionary struggle, it is not meant to impose direct organizational leadership within, or outside of RISP by Tim Redd, or any one else. A key component of RISP's work is raising the consciousness of the masses of people by educating them in MLMRT during the course of revolutionary struggle so that they can better take history into their own hands.

Please don't get me started. Please.

Rafiq, seriously mate. The joke isn't funny any more.

You're right, it isn't. But you have to understand not all of us conceive such matters as jokes - you attempt to radiate the facade of a communist in the same way little kids dress up for Halloween. It is nothing more than a joke for you, you silly person.

Your "Communism" exists under the backdrop of the substrate of conventional ideas, your pop-politics is no more political than a Reddit sub-forum.

If you're an "Orthodox Marxist (TM)" (lol) Lihite or Small Party of Good Boys sympathiser, you can pretty much get away with anything.

I fail to see how being an Orthodox Marxist, an identity which makes no pretenses to having already built the necessary predispositions to a worker's movement, an identity which entails nothing but the acknowledgment that Marxism must be re-approximated amidst all of the distortions, and entanglements underwent over the course of the 20th century. You literally are in no position with the "lul, pure internet tendency here, haha these guys actually think they're relevant".

Listen, Xhar, you're in the Spartacist League, an organization which is literally nothing more than a cult. You are in no position to be making these "(lol)"s.

I am quite skeptical of the use of philosophy. The most important insights are already a part of Marxism.

When you talk shit like this - you say it as an intellectual. When you talk about "philosophy" being worthless in the midst of your "material conditions", you say so as an intellectual. But what do you do? You abdicate from the responsibility of THOROUGHLY approaching these notions critically, from the responsibility of BEING an intellectual and instead decide to fall back on some big other. From Marxism we learn there are no gods, and there are no big others - the proletariat is ONLY a revolutionary class insofar as it has nothing to lose. There are no "material forces" coming to the rescue, the class struggle in capitalism is the struggle of consciousness of social forces against the insistence that it is an unknowable mystery, whether this concerns theory or practice. Things will not "work themselves out", that is the POINT of science - the POINT of science is mastery over processes made knowable, the point of science is NOT leaving things to chance or superstition, for fuck's sake.

In the 21st century, following the death of the Left and with it the worker's movements, leftists have re-adjustedt hemselves to conform to ideological discourse in both the most depressing and amusing ways. Marxists have taken it upon themselves to bastardize the theoretical tradition they make pretenses to following in the most disgusting way: From "dialectics" being employed as a worthless buzzword to accommodate for superstition and pure irrationality, a kind of metaphysical ontology (by far exceeding whatever metaphysics was present in Engels' dialectics) to the reduction of materialism/idealism to a metaphysical controversy about 'what da universe is made of'.

By far the most sickening of these vulgarizations is the twisting of Marx's: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it" to accommodate for anglo-saxon philistinism and predominant ideological discourse which is not only wholly and totally alien, but hostile to Marxism.

Marx did not mean that philosophy ought to be abandoned, because Marx did not make this statement in a fucking vacuum. He made this statement during the climax of German idealism, precisely at the moment where philosophers were reaching deadlocks which were supplemented by re-asserting the legitimacy of the existing order. Marx's point can be read, essentially, in such a way that insinuates: the philosohpers of the world have failed to take their philosophizing to its highest conclusions - which Marx certainly did.

You say the most important insights are already a part of Marxism. Sure, but Marxism is much more broad and encompassing than you would like to think - there are few prominent philosophic currents that remain today that are not part of, or associated with, the tradition of Marxism in one way or another. Western thought has diverged into basically two ways: Positivist philistinism and the western tradition of philosophy SUCCEEDED by 'Marxism'. Finally, Marxism is a method, it is not a set of empirical, metaphysical or ontological truths that are adhered to, it is merely a systematizing method to which we conceive truths in a practical matter.

One cannot be outside the domain of philosophy. One can simply be a philistine, someone who is righteously ignorant, a rabid anti-intellectual whose irrationalism dwarfs even that of Giovanni Gentile, whose "actual idealism" was nothing more than pseudo-Hegelian anti-intellectualism.

The revolution will not come because some intellectuals have philosophized about it. The revolution will come when the material conditions are right and the working class seizes power. In this sense Marxism is nothing but a tool to accomplish the goal of communism

So now we can see why you are inf act "quite skeptical" of the use of philosophy and insist on its abandonment: YOu want to make ridiculous, juvenile claims that concern the highest philosophic controversies and get away with it, you want us to appraoch this statement uncritically, that is. In fact, the "material conditions", a catch-phrase that has been rendered meaningless by pseudo-Marxists who are more acquainted with the special use of jargon than what these words actually entail, are already 'right', there is absolutely no excuse outside of the inability for Marxists themselves to engage in politics that there is no Communism and no worker's movement.

What is pathetic about Marxists is that they don't understand THE POINT of historical materialism as a science: Marx tells us - all truth is practical. HIstorical materialism is not some pretenses to some metahpysical ontology. Historical materialism does not tell us to be superstitoius and "wait for the material condtiions to become ripe, because we are all humbled by them". To be aware of a limitation is already to be beyond that limitation.

Consciousness of social processes, class-consciousnesses, THIS IS ALREADY a material force itself. Marxists from Engels to even Trotsky speak of man mastering his own means of life. The point of historical materialism is that it allows us to MASTER so-called "material conditions", and the banal notion that we are not in total control of our circumstances has nothing to do with Marxism, it is simply and quite succinctly a truism for any sane person. The notion that this constitutes some kind of ground-breaking thing that is unique to Marxism is so soberingly pathetic that it might just be warranting of my own suicide.

That we are not in total control of our circumstances sais nothing about having to wait for "material conditions" to be ripe. Material conditions are always ripe, insofar as circumstances are not in our favor, THAT IS A PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION in the midst of the active struggle for Communism and NOTHING more, not some fucking greenlight to justify the most crude philistinism and "da material forces are more important than actually thinking". Like "material forces" are not some ghost that possessed Marx one day that led him to his epistemological break - he did this by thoroughly THINKING on theoretical terms and employing ruthless criticism.

I would even go as far as to claim that philosophy is dead. Science has basically replaced philosophy entirely. There is nothing that philosophy has to offer that science cannot offer.

Let's start with matters that pertain to human psychology: Do you think "science", that is, neuroscience can do this? Let's start with explaining society in the 21st century, for starters - how society functions, the ruling ideas that predominant. Do you think "science" on empiricist terms can do this? Please don't make me laugh. THIS, ladies and gentlemen, THIS is philistinism - this is all I mean by the word - a righteous ignorance, absolving oneself of the responsibility of critically thinking.

Again, what you say is confused. There is no contradiction between science and philosophy, "science" as we use the term today is nothing more than a fetish, a buzzword - the word carries a sense of authority. All science concerns inherently philosophical controversies. You claim that Marxism is "scientific" as opposed to philosophical. But again, you have no notion of how the word "scientific", or wissenschaft was used in the context of the 19th century. Not only Marx, but Hegel himself sought to distinguish his understanding of historical controversies as 'scientific'. These were words that were used before the term was almost completely associated with positivism and Anglo-saxon empiricism, and they never made pretenses to the cheap ideological buzzword, "science" today, there could never have been a pop-wissenschaft in the same way we have pop-science.

Instead, science was juxtaposed to that which was made unknowable, a designated mystery. Science was nothing more than the affirmation that things which were previously made not knowable, could be in fact knowable. Science begins at the onset of consciousness. You see, you can approach this description with "lalalala philosophical bs" like any philistine, or you can take it seriously. The onset of doing the latter puts you squarely in philosophical discourse.

During the Renaissance, the first scientists could have been taken seriously, or, they could have been imprisoned, harassed, discouraged and their findings could have been met with 'lalalala'. After all, what was the practical use of natural science to the vatican, to feudalism? You have the right to do this too, but in doing so you are a philistine, intellectual barbarian and nothing more.

So let's ask the question: What distinguishes 'philosophy', in your mind, from 'science'? The reason it was positivism, and not "philosophy" which succeeded ruling 'legitimized' truth in bourgeois society, was for the simple reason that positivist qualifications for science only concern the natural sciences, or those "truths" which are only accessible in common by bourgeois society as a whole - those truths to which bourgeois society as a whole is capable of observing as true, and the closer these truths bang on the door of the social dimension of life, the more controversial the 'science' is.

You claim "there is nothing philosophy has to offer that science cannot offer". Offer to who? Surely the bourgeoisie, and their technocratic state have no use for philosophy, which the humanities departments of universities have gradually waned in sized and are continually under attack to this day. That is because despite how desperately the 'philosophers' of the universities have tried to make it more accommodating, philosophy is only useful for those who employ a radical critique of society, who engage in criticism. Capitalism does not need criticism, it needs experts who know how to administrate it.

Pseudo-marxists to accommodate to this underlying barbaric logic are a disgrace to our tradition. They do this solely out of pure intellectual laziness, solely because they are so intimidated and unfamiliar with actual philosophy that they conceive it to be so beyond their grasp. "If I can't understand it at first glance, I'll just let it invoke a mindless knee-jerk reaction to feel better about myself". When WWI broke out, and Lenin was absolutely horrified by the SPD and their betrayal, do you know what he did? He retreated into a cave and read Hegel. He emerged as the sole successor to the tradition of Marxism - we will never get another Marxist like Lenin, we can only repeat him.

Marxism is an anti-philosophy; like the "terrible men" Plato agonised over it pulls everything from the heavens down to the Earth. Rather than obsessing over what is True and Real and Good,

According to Xhar-Xhar, philosophy is nothing more than metaphysics. No, philosophy does not ask what is "true and real and good", THIS is precisely anti-philosophy. Philosophy asks: What do you mean when you say something is true, or good?

You have no notion of philosophy. It's that simple. Anyone who thinks philosophy amounts to asking what is "true and real and good" is a philistine who has no notion of philosophy. Marx explicitly pointed out that following the waning of German idealism, pseudo-philosophers would ask these questions, use them as philosophic crutches to their inability to actual address practical matters. It was they who regressed into philistinism and anti-philosophy, not Marx - he triumphantly re-invigorated it, which is why the western-philosophic tradition following his death would have to embrace him.

it explains the development of human society and thought with reference to the material facts of human existence.

And what constitutes the material facts of human existence, sorry to say, is infinitely more complex than "da base" and "da superstructure" magical pseudo-theoretical remedy.

Xhar-Xhar actually thinks that "material reality" and "thoughts" are in contradiction according to Marxism. As if thoughts belong to some ethereal sphere of existence, as if thoughts are themselves actually acknowledged to be immaterial. The reality ist hat THE POINT of Marxism is to make thoughts controversial INSOFAR as they designate (practical) knowledge of our social dimension of life - NOTHING MORE. Marxism is not the abandonment of philosophy, or thought, in favor of "material facts", but conceiving thoughts and philosophy in terms of our real conditions of life.

Marx's criticism of 'philosophers' WAS NOT that htey were ignoring material facts. It was that they were ignoring htem CONSCIOUSLY - if you actually fucking READ Marx, ou will find that his criticism of them amounts to the fact that whether they know it or not, what gave vitality to their works was its relationship to the real conditions of life. Marx's opint was NOT that they were stuck in lala land ignoring material reality, but that precisely they were SO IMMERSED in real conditions of life without acknowledging it. Marx gives us consciousness of social processes, he does not make them some big other that we have to prostate before superstitiously, i.e. "material forces will do their work". '

You make pretense to "materiel forces", some externality, in juxtaposition to thought, and yet the only means by which you can articulate this dichotomy is through thought. The only means by which you can conceive 'material facts' is through thought. Your "materialism" is in fact far more related to Gentile's Actual Idealism, and I am so glad you mention Gramsci:

Giovanni Gentile's criticism of Gramsci was PRECISELY that he conceived Gramsci's works as an impediment to "real action", he PRECISELY reduced Gramsci to some intellectual in an ivory tower who didn't do "real things", who wasn't a "man of action", . Using different words, the SAME pathological language is being conveyed by Xhar-Xhar's pseudo-Marxism. What is hilarious is that it perfectly follows the caricature of Marx's epistemological break employed by pseudo-Marxists - Gentile and Gramsci were both engaged intellectuals, and Gentile would go on to "actually do da stuff" and break with the philosophizing ivory-tower intellectuals in favor of real action. This kind of irrationalism and anti-intellectualism is PRECISELY the intellectual character of Fascism.

As someone previously acquainted with Sorel, who is very well acquainted with the darkness and filth this leads one to, let this warning sound for well-intentioned users: NEVER give into the temptation of falling back into philistinism and anti-intellectualism so lazily. FIGHT with yourself, struggle, there is no big other that will come save you, not "material forces", not anything.

The whole POINT of Marxism is the dissemination of theory to the broad masses - Marxism does NOT revert back to the masses to supplement an abandonment of thought, Marxism is the WEAPONIZATION of the broad masses with the key insights of philosophy and theory - Marxism is the SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS which abdicates all superstitions and mysteries of the social domain - Marxism is the act of seizing one's historical destiny and SUBORDINATING one's real, material conditions of life to scientific consciousness. Anyone who would dare say otherwise is a philistine, a pseudo-Marxist and a disgrace to our tradition.

Often, Marxism as it actually existed has failed to be a science, either pathologically sticking to half-baked theories or resorting to outright idealism (Gramsci, Bloch, Žižek etc.). But it is a failure. And our task is to go beyond that failure and not glorify it in vague emotional terms.

"Outright idealism". You have no notion of what actually constitutes idealism, like no, you don't get to 'repeat Marx'. These pseudo-Marxists think they're so fucking clever - that the only problem with intellectuals today is that they do not appreciate "material facts" and that they are "idealists". You don't know what these words mean, frankly - and your schizophrenic choice of philosophic name-dropping only proves that you are so totally unfamiliar, divorced from this tradition that you are in no position to even mention it on a superficial level.

But you're right, we have failed to accommodate to your underlying petty bourgeois sensitivities, we have failed to offer you the same recipe of glorified philistinsim provided by fascists. Fuck off to 4chan if that's what you're looking for.

Rafiq

26th November 2015, 19:31

In any case attempts by the sciences to substitute for aesthetics, ethics, etc., are generally just reducible to relativism, or statements of feeling, and merely conflate fields and make unwanted presuppositions. Philosophy is thought about thought, which science has nothing to do with, being by and large an attempt to reduce the necessity of thought to science although such things led to most of its 'major' advances since Einstein, Newton, etc.

And by saying this not only do you accredit the positivists with far too much, one should not employ the word "science" that radiates the same superstitious aura as conceived by the general masses. "Science" itself has become a language of mystery, reserved for 'experts' who so kindly bestow truth to the masses through the medium of pop-science.

In reality, natural sciences, or the sciences acceptable and founded by bourgeois society, has nothing to do with consciousness of thought only insofar as it exists divorced from a scientific understanding of the social and historic. There is no dissonance between science and philosophy - ALL philosophy as it concerns us Marxists is scientific in nature, ALL PHILOSOPHY in general at the level of history has been scientific. Mathematics was - a philosophical controversy. Astronomy was - a philosophical controversy.

Why did Marxism develop out of Hegelianism? Because Hegel's was the beginning of the science of HISTORY, Marx simply became more Hegelian than Hegel himself in his criticism of philosophy of right. Marx and Engels used the term wissenschaft in a manner that was no different than that which was employed by Hegel. The word, in context, meant nothing more than - on an epistemological level - systematizing, making knowable, the science of thinking, ETC. The German word Wissen is to think, thinking, etc. - they did not say that to Hegel, they employ a naturwissenschaft. Thus the point of Marx and Engels' break is to be more scientific than Hegel why abiding by the same qualifications set forth for science by German idealism, which includes matters that encompass not only natural sciences, but philosophy, humanities, EVEN theology, ETC.

The only reason the dichotomy now exists is because positivist science has been institutionally ingrained into the edifice of our society - it is accepted uncritically. (positivist) "Science" is nothing more than uncritically accepted philosophy, while 'philosophy' is that domain which approaches such matters critically. Marx's historical materialism has INFINITELY more in common with absolute idealism than the "materialism" of the French vulgarists, whose "materialism" is no different than the "materialism" of evolutionary psychologists, genetic determinists and neo-Fascist racists today.

Guardia Rossa

26th November 2015, 19:43

Congrats. Beat me to it and wrote a entire fucking book;
EDIT: And with a second part.

EDIT2: Although my 3-line criticism of ComradeHashtag wouldn't be so abrasive.

Rafiq

26th November 2015, 19:53

Well to be clear, it wasn't actually directed at him per se, but the ideas which are by no means exclusive to him. If only he was the problem, I would send him a constructive PM. This is directed at the discussion at large.

Tim Redd

26th November 2015, 22:29

I don't know if you've noticed but the BA have pretty much given up on this site; most of them haven't even logged on for ages. That, and RevLeft has always been massively biased. If you're an "Orthodox Marxist (TM)" (lol) Lihite or Small Party of Good Boys sympathiser, you can pretty much get away with anything.

What's the 'BA" ?

Tim Redd

26th November 2015, 22:46

I would even go as far as to claim that philosophy is dead. Science has basically replaced philosophy entirely. There is nothing that philosophy has to offer that science cannot offer.

There are overarching issues applicable to all or many sciences that no particular science addresses like: 1) principles and laws of dynamics that apply to all or many sciences (of which dialectics is one - follow my sig url to see a discussion or more kinds of dynamics), 2) scientific methods and practices, 3) sociological and psychological issues related to the pursuit of science, 4) how science relates to the arts and other areas of living and reality. So there is a need for an overarching discipline and I think it's best to call it "philosophy". It is philosophy at a higher level as it has evolved to fulfill the tasks I just listed.

The key is that such a practice of philosophy should itself be approached as a science and carried out in a scientific manner. There's absolutely no place for metaphysics in philosophy.

RedKobra

26th November 2015, 22:49

You're right, it isn't. But you have to understand not all of us conceive such matters as jokes - you attempt to radiate the facade of a communist in the same way little kids dress up for Halloween. It is nothing more than a joke for you, you silly person.

Your "Communism" exists under the backdrop of the substrate of conventional ideas, your pop-politics is no more political than a Reddit sub-forum.

Go and have a lay down before you dislocate a finger.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

26th November 2015, 22:59

What's the 'BA" ?

Our Benefactors, the Board Administration. The moderators and administrators, many of which haven't logged onto this site in months. Still fewer of them seem to participate in content editing. At this point, the site seems to have fallen to the perfidious Dutch; Sasha, Phoenix, Quail and Tim are the only ones who seem to be doing something.

There are overarching issues applicable to all or many sciences that any particular doesn't address like: 1) principles and laws of dynamics that apply to all or many sciences (of which dialectics is one - follow my sig url to see a discussion or more kinds of dynamics), 2) scientific methods and practices, 3) sociological and psychological issues related to the pursuit of science, 4) how science relates to the arts and other areas of living and reality. So there is a need for an overarching discipline and I think it's best to call it "philosophy". It is the philosophy at a higher level as it has evolved to fulfill the tasks I just listed.

The key is that such a practice of philosophy should itself be approached as a science and carried out as in a scientific manner. There's no place for metaphysics in philosophy.

I agree there are "overarching issues" - although I don't think the relation of science to art is an important issue, except to historians of art and so on. Generally, many artists seem to have an exaggerated view of their discipline, and that should not be indulged. But is philosophy, as it actually exists, addressing these overarching issues? It is not. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of talking about some nonexistent philosophy; philosophy is what is called philosophy. And to be frank, it's drivel. We can't even say "oh that's just bourgeois philosophy" as the greater part of ostensibly Marxist philosophy (just refer to the bloviations of Bloch or Žižek's attempts to understand quantum physics) is drivel as well.

Tim Redd

27th November 2015, 00:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Redd http://www.revleft.com/vb/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2859655#post2859655)
There are overarching issues applicable to all or many sciences that any particular doesn't address like: 1) principles and laws of dynamics that apply to all or many sciences (of which dialectics is one - follow my sig url to see a discussion or more kinds of dynamics), 2) scientific methods and practices, 3) sociological and psychological issues related to the pursuit of science, 4) how science relates to the arts and other areas of living and reality. So there is a need for an overarching discipline and I think it's best to call it "philosophy". It is the philosophy at a higher level as it has evolved to fulfill the tasks I just listed.

The key is that such a practice of philosophy should itself be approached as a science and carried out as in a scientific manner. There's no place for metaphysics in philosophy.

I agree there are "overarching issues" - although I don't think the relation of science to art is an important issue, except to historians of art and so on. Generally, many artists seem to have an exaggerated view of their discipline, and that should not be indulged.

Art is an important, even essential, activity because it serves to express and build the interior life of individuals in society. It seems to be the primary activity for doing this. Art builds the feeling, emotional side of the individual and that side has a dialectical interaction with what we know and are striving to better understand regarding the material circumstances and conditions of society. Art can and often does in fact provide a powerful impulse to impel the masses and their leaders to revolutionary action.

But is philosophy, as it actually exists, addressing these overarching issues? It is not. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of talking about some nonexistent philosophy; philosophy is what is called philosophy. And to be frank, it's drivel. We can't even say "oh that's just bourgeois philosophy" as the greater part of ostensibly Marxist philosophy (just refer to the bloviations of Bloch or Žižek's attempts to understand quantum physics) is drivel as well.

I think there is philosophical activity that addresses overarching issues. Good Marxists among others do so. But even if currently philosophy did not do so, or had weaknesses in doing so, that doesn't mean that knowing the real nature and role of philosophy, we shouldn't attempt to implement, or do a better job in practicing philosophy that does function in an overarching manner.

We should try to practice philosophy that deals with (to repeat): 1) principles and laws of dynamics that apply to all or many sciences (of which dialectics is one - follow my sig url to see a discussion or more kinds of dynamics), 2) scientific methods and practices that apply to the sciences, 3) sociological and psychological issues related to the pursuit of science, 4) how science relates to the arts and other areas of living and reality.

Philosophy should be the queen of the sciences.

Comrade #138672

27th November 2015, 07:20

Tim Redd. What you call philosophy, I call science.

Comrade #138672

27th November 2015, 07:30

I will reply to Rafiq's post later (it will not be a book though). I don't have much time right now. So don't get the idea that I am ignoring you.

Tim Redd

27th November 2015, 19:14

Tim Redd. What you call philosophy, I call science.

Which science?

Given the specific tasks I list, other sciences don't quite or don't fully encompass those tasks. Given the historical purview of topics in philosophy, I see the tasks I list as at least in part constituting a science called philosophy.

The Idler

29th November 2015, 15:02

Tim Redd

1st December 2015, 04:17

Such as what? No rules are being broken as far as I am aware but correct me if I am wrong.

Rafiq's overly long, profanity filled, personally abusive posts are in most cases piles of crap that dumps on the kind of environment that should facilitate discussion that bolsters the realization of socialist/communist revolution. The failure of Revleft moderators to end this abomination, puts Revleft way down in the level of respect I have for it as an effective tool to facilitate revolution that eliminates classes and all exploitation and oppression.

It's sad for what the forum could be. What is it about Rafiq or his posts that makes the moderators, who should be about an exploitation and oppression free communist future, accept his effectively counterrevolutionary boorishness? Why do the moderators allow this poison to flow freely?

condor

1st December 2015, 17:23

People need Marxists to act as a collective consciousness of the working class so they do not make the same mistakes twice...; that is why Marxists should act as historians, not leaders.

The Idler

2nd December 2015, 20:17

Tim Redd

3rd December 2015, 04:05

Perhaps but SPGB were mentioned as well but I don't know of any rules broken by SPGBers here.

What's SPGB?

And if Rafiq's style doesn't break rules, the rules are broke bigtime.

Puzzled Left

3rd December 2015, 07:43

Rafiq's overly long, profanity filled, personally abusive posts are in most cases piles of crap that dumps on the kind of environment that should facilitate discussion that bolsters the realization of socialist/communist revolution. The failure of Revleft moderators to end this abomination, puts Revleft way down in the level of respect I have for it as an effective tool to facilitate revolution that eliminates classes and all exploitation and oppression.

I believe your expectation of Revleft is way too high, in the context of 2015 at least.

It's sad for what the forum could be. What is it about Rafiq or his posts that makes the moderators, who should be about an exploitation and oppression free communist future, accept his effectively counterrevolutionary boorishness? Why do the moderators allow this poison to flow freely?

The word "counterrevolutionary" implies the existence of a revolution. What's this "revolution"? Where is it?

Црвена

3rd December 2015, 19:38

Rafiq's overly long, profanity filled, personally abusive posts are in most cases piles of crap that dumps on the kind of environment that should facilitate discussion that bolsters the realization of socialist/communist revolution. The failure of Revleft moderators to end this abomination, puts Revleft way down in the level of respect I have for it as an effective tool to facilitate revolution that eliminates classes and all exploitation and oppression.

It's sad for what the forum could be. What is it about Rafiq or his posts that makes the moderators, who should be about an exploitation and oppression free communist future, accept his effectively counterrevolutionary boorishness? Why do the moderators allow this poison to flow freely?

I don't see where being counterrevolutionary comes into this. Yeah, flaming isn't nice and yeah, the moderators sometimes don't pay enough attention to it. But how is this counterrevolutionary?

Also, jeez, this is just an internet forum, not an international communist vanguard or whatever.

(Oh and the SPGB is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the British section of the WSM, but I don't know if Rafiq is a sympathiser of theirs - I don't think I recall him identifying as such, but I don't know.)

Tim Redd

4th December 2015, 03:50

The word "counterrevolutionary" implies the existence of a revolution. What's this "revolution"? Where is it?

I take it that something/someone can be counter to achieving revolution (thus counterrevolutionary) even without highly active/physical force revolution taking place.

Tim Redd

4th December 2015, 04:05

I don't see where being counterrevolutionary comes into this. Yeah, flaming isn't nice and yeah, the moderators sometimes don't pay enough attention to it. But how is this counterrevolutionary?

Because self-centered bloviation on a forum principally dedicated to facilitating the achievement of power by revolutionary forces via discussion and the exchange of ideas runs counter to revolution (is counterrevolutionary).

Also, jeez, this is just an internet forum, not an international communist vanguard or whatever.

RevLeft is an internet forum oriented to achieve communism via the presentation, exchange and advancement of ideas. Also ReveLeft presents and facilitates the theoretical summary of practice related to revolution, the exposition of revolutionary agitation and propaganda and finally the exposition of revolutionary thinking in general.

(Oh and the SPGB is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the British section of the WSM, but I don't know if Rafiq is a sympathiser of theirs - I don't think I recall him identifying as such, but I don't know.)

Thanks for SPGB definition, except now I don't know what WSM means.:)

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

4th December 2015, 13:26

Art is an important, even essential, activity because it serves to express and build the interior life of individuals in society. It seems to be the primary activity for doing this. Art builds the feeling, emotional side of the individual and that side has a dialectical interaction with what we know and are striving to better understand regarding the material circumstances and conditions of society. Art can and often does in fact provide a powerful impulse to impel the masses and their leaders to revolutionary action.

See, I don't think this Romantic view of art describes the realities of modern society that well. Public interest in art is declining. And I don't think we can blame anyone except the artist circles for this - it stands to reason that not many people want to pay what is often a substantial sum of money to see someone's bed etc. Even if we disregard that (which is a pretty substantial thing to disregard), this ignores the influence of play, sex, science, sport, and other such activities on the development of an individual's inner life.

And what's particularly problematic is when artists try to claim some sort of mystical non-scientific knowledge. The modern left in particular is infected with this sort of mystical thought.

I think there is philosophical activity that addresses overarching issues. Good Marxists among others do so. But even if currently philosophy did not do so, or had weaknesses in doing so, that doesn't mean that knowing the real nature and role of philosophy, we shouldn't attempt to implement, or do a better job in practicing philosophy that does function in an overarching manner.

Appealing to the "nature" of philosophy is a bit of a cop-out, isn't it? and it clashes with the materialist commitment to analyse things as they are, not as imperfect copies of some timeless form. Today, most of philosophy is besides the point if not actively harmful (such as the various kinds of naive falsificationism). Some good work is done under the label, but not a lot of it (Bachelard and Lakatos, perhaps), and a lot of the work is done under other labels, from psychology to sociology of science. It's regrettable that the latter, in particular, came under fire from scientists reacting against the usual French-German academic nonsense, for no good reason

We should try to practice philosophy that deals with (to repeat): 1) principles and laws of dynamics that apply to all or many sciences (of which dialectics is one - follow my sig url to see a discussion or more kinds of dynamics), 2) scientific methods and practices that apply to the sciences, 3) sociological and psychological issues related to the pursuit of science, 4) how science relates to the arts and other areas of living and reality.

Philosophy should be the queen of the sciences.

That's not going to happen. It happened in the past when our scientific knowledge was slight, and conformed to the sort of "common sense" view of the world articulated by Stoic and Aristotelian philosophy. Now, on the other hand, our knowledge is substantial, and none of it conforms to common sense. Attempts to have philosophy guide science have always resulted in catastrophe. And why would anyone want a repeat of that? You know the old cliche - the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Well science lets us gorge on pudding, but philosophy talks a lot about pudding, but leaves everyone hungry.

Such as what? No rules are being broken as far as I am aware but correct me if I am wrong.

Yonks ago, Vanguard1917 was restricted (and eventually banned) for suggesting that the attacks on gay people in Britain, which he admitted existed, did not constitute systemic oppression. This was, of course, an immensely stupid position, but one apparently made without malicious intent. Later, Dave B the Amazing Menshevik flat out stated gay people were not oppressed in Britain and experienced no difficulties. Nothing happened. People are warned for using homophobic insults, as they should, but nothing happened when Doctor Robbotnik did the same. One other SPGB member got away with saying he agreed with a member banned for homophobia. And so on, and so on.

The Idler

4th December 2015, 18:04

Yonks ago, Vanguard1917 was restricted (and eventually banned) for suggesting that the attacks on gay people in Britain, which he admitted existed, did not constitute systemic oppression. This was, of course, an immensely stupid position, but one apparently made without malicious intent. Later, Dave B the Amazing Menshevik flat out stated gay people were not oppressed in Britain and experienced no difficulties. Nothing happened. People are warned for using homophobic insults, as they should, but nothing happened when Doctor Robbotnik did the same. One other SPGB member got away with saying he agreed with a member banned for homophobia. And so on, and so on.
I can try and raise this in party channels if you think appropriate.

Puzzled Left

4th December 2015, 18:32

See, I don't think this Romantic view of art describes the realities of modern society that well. Public interest in art is declining. And I don't think we can blame anyone except the artist circles for this - it stands to reason that not many people want to pay what is often a substantial sum of money to see someone's bed etc. Even if we disregard that (which is a pretty substantial thing to disregard), this ignores the influence of play, sex, science, sport, and other such activities on the development of an individual's inner life.

Don't you think that the degeneration of democratic principles and technocratization are responsible with the "decline of art" than the will of the "artist circles"? I mean, most are discouraged from participation in art simply because they are deprived of the economic means to do so, not because they are just disinterested.

Црвена

4th December 2015, 19:42

Because self-centered bloviation on a forum principally dedicated to facilitating the achievement of power by revolutionary forces via discussion and the exchange of ideas runs counter to revolution (is counterrevolutionary).

RevLeft is an internet forum oriented to achieve communism via the presentation, exchange and advancement of ideas. Also ReveLeft presents and facilitates the theoretical summary of practice related to revolution, the exposition of revolutionary agitation and propaganda and finally the exposition of revolutionary thinking in general.

Yes, but this forum is nowhere near as important as you seem to think it is - it's literally just another political forum on the internet. Bloviating and flaming on this forum has no more of an effect on the revolution than doing so on any other forum or social media platform, and much less of an effect than, say, supposedly socialist groups shilling for reformist parties.

Thanks for SPGB definition, except now I don't know what WSM means.:)

Sorry, that wasn't deliberate name-dropping or whatever, I just thought you might be more familiar with the international organisation. The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is these people: http://www.worldsocialism.org/

This alphabet soup stuff is confusing.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

4th December 2015, 20:15

I can try and raise this in party channels if you think appropriate.

I have no opinion on that, as it's not my concern. If the people in question were SPGB members it might be a concern for your control commission.

Don't you think that the degeneration of democratic principles and technocratization are responsible with the "decline of art" than the will of the "artist circles"? I mean, most are discouraged from participation in art simply because they are deprived of the economic means to do so, not because they are just disinterested.

I don't think these processes are happening in the first place. The democratic republic is as democratic as it has ever been, perhaps more. Only it turns out bourgeois democracy is shit, who knew. I also don't see any move toward "technocracy" (which presumably means expert administration and not energy funny money in this context). Quite the contrary, public administration and the academia are facing severe cuts as state policy becomes increasingly erratic and driven by impulses that are irrational even in a bourgeois context.

I also don't think many people would rush to see much of modern art, particularly conceptual art, even if it were free (which it isn't). Many modern artists seem interested only in causing shock and selling their work to galleries and so on. And that's their prerogative. As I said, I don't view art as somehow uniquely important; a simple activity such as playing does as much to develop the internal life of humanity as art.

Црвена

4th December 2015, 20:30

I also don't think many people would rush to see much of modern art, particularly conceptual art, even if it were free (which it isn't). Many modern artists seem interested only in causing shock and selling their work to galleries and so on. And that's their prerogative. As I said, I don't view art as somehow uniquely important; a simple activity such as playing does as much to develop the internal life of humanity as art.

Can I just ask, what do you think is the purpose of art? I doubt how popular art would be if it were free (actually, there are several free art galleries in the UK, but art is viewed as a preserve of pretentious yuppies here as much as anywhere else) in current society and I'm not keen on the commercialised and exaggerated art which is common, for obvious reasons, these days. But I don't think this always has to be the case.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

4th December 2015, 22:51

Can I just ask, what do you think is the purpose of art? I doubt how popular art would be if it were free (actually, there are several free art galleries in the UK, but art is viewed as a preserve of pretentious yuppies here as much as anywhere else) in current society and I'm not keen on the commercialised and exaggerated art which is common, for obvious reasons, these days. But I don't think this always has to be the case.

I'm not sure if the various things we call art really have one common purpose or function. At least it seems to me that there is a lot of difference between the swimming reindeer of the Magdalenian and a modern piece of conceptual art, something like The Physical Impossibility of Death..., because apparently YBEs pissed in my corn flakes this morning. Modern art, and I really do mean this without derision even though I'm not the biggest fan of most tendencies involved, is mostly production of things that are use-values to critics, galleries and so on, a very limited circle. In socialism one would assume art would be more like the reindeer, but who knows?

Tim Redd

5th December 2015, 07:57

Sorry, that wasn't deliberate name-dropping or whatever, I just thought you might be more familiar with the international organisation. The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is these people: http://www.worldsocialism.org/

Thanks for the def of WSM. Never heard of WSM despite wide reading.

My response to the meat of your reply to come.

Црвена

5th December 2015, 21:29

I'm not sure if the various things we call art really have one common purpose or function. At least it seems to me that there is a lot of difference between the swimming reindeer of the Magdalenian and a modern piece of conceptual art, something like The Physical Impossibility of Death..., because apparently YBEs pissed in my corn flakes this morning. Modern art, and I really do mean this without derision even though I'm not the biggest fan of most tendencies involved, is mostly production of things that are use-values to critics, galleries and so on, a very limited circle. In socialism one would assume art would be more like the reindeer, but who knows?

Ok, so what makes you skeptical of the importance and use of art?

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

6th December 2015, 18:35

Ok, so what makes you skeptical of the importance and use of art?

Like I said, obviously art plays a lesser role in the internal life of many people, unless we're willing to include every movie, all comic books, even games etc. - in other words, all forms of entertainment - as art. Claims about the importance of art are for the most part mechanically repeated from the era of Hegel and Goethe. And they ignore many things that were considered beneath notice then - entertainment, for example, but also play (although the neo-Kantians did discuss the importance of play in some later works), sex, and so on.

Црвена

8th December 2015, 23:29

Like I said, obviously art plays a lesser role in the internal life of many people, unless we're willing to include every movie, all comic books, even games etc. - in other words, all forms of entertainment - as art. Claims about the importance of art are for the most part mechanically repeated from the era of Hegel and Goethe. And they ignore many things that were considered beneath notice then - entertainment, for example, but also play (although the neo-Kantians did discuss the importance of play in some later works), sex, and so on.

Sorry for the late response :s

I generally see art defined, essentially, as "creative/imaginative expression" of any sort. So I guess we could include movies, comics and games as art, since they are in most cases examples of imaginative expression, but I think the fact that they're also entertainment is slightly beside the point. Most people express themselves imaginatively, even if they're not consciously doing so, and doing this is a unique way to express thoughts which often cannot adequately be expressed in any other way. Even the commercialised art which exists under capitalism expresses something: the way in which art is used as "prolefeed" of sorts, for instance, or the ideas which people derive from capitalist conditions. In a socialist society, art could possibly become a more individual outlet as opposed to a consumer product and would therefore express different things. But regardless, I think art can express certain ideas and phenomena in a much more raw way than other means can.

I haven't read Hegel's Aesthetics or, shamefully, anything at all by Goethe, so I don't know if I'm rehashing their points here. And I absolutely agree that the importance of play, sex etc. should not be underestimated, but these activities serve different functions from art: they're more about "discovery" than about "creation", I guess.

Rafiq

9th December 2015, 01:14

Quite the contrary, public administration and the academia are facing severe cuts as state policy becomes increasingly erratic and driven by impulses that are irrational even in a bourgeois context.

Literally, there are no words. You claim there is no general trend towards technocracy at the expense of bourgeois democracy (which you qualify by resorting to worthless abstractions - are we Americans more "democratic" today than in 1800? Maybe, but Hitler would be 'progressive' by the standards of that same time period. Amply shut up) and yet you give us the most PERFECT example of technocracy, which has EXACTLY been the cuts in academia and 'public administration' (aka democratic institutions).

Firstly, which departments in academia are being cut? The departments in academia which are facing the greatest cuts, are precisely those which are most encapsulating of our 'democratic' standards - the humanities, ETC., those which force us to QUESTION (even superficially) and instill SOMEWHAT of a sense of critical thinking, whether politically, culturally and whatever you want. Those departments which are 'useful' to the state and useful for the corporations, are being left alone - if even that (i.e. an increased expenditure is allocated to them in many cases). Universities are breeding grounds for a new caste of 'experts' which the state, and various corporations seek to recruit.

When we speak of technocracy, nobody fucking refers to 'experts' as some universal abstraction. We refer to the experts of those who manage the rule of capital. Democracy has been an impediment to this, slowly and slowly impassioned political conflict has been replaced by 'expert' administration. Literally every fucking political debate today is underlied by "Let's see what the experts have to say", "fact check", Etc.

"Public administration" has been slashed, yes, but not in the ways you would like to imagine. Public administration as it concerns things perceived to be 'trivial' have been slashed, but at the level of the degree of control or 'expert' administration, this is increasing at a rate which is so inconceivably fast. You live in Europe for fuck's sake: Anyone who thinks Europe's formal, bourgeois democracy is not declining in the midst of invisible, non-official institutions that actually manage the European economy at the level of policy making, like the Eurogroup, which literally debates and argues behind closed doors and outside of the public eye, is fooling themselves. Anyone who has looked at the recent trade agreements made and doesn't think democracy is in decline is fooling themselves. Nevermind that we didn't vote on it. WE didn't even KNOW about it, we weren't able to even DEBATE about it in public discourse.

Thirsty Crow

9th December 2015, 01:32

Oh jolly good.

Marxism has one fatal flaw. It understands the world through observation instead of testing. Thus, it sees the world in its flaccid state. Thus, if one observed the human body without imagination, one would assume that the human penis never hardened. Related to this, male ejaculation is related to states of arousal, a question only art, not science can estimate.

Marxism is inherently Victorian and sees art as playing second fiddle to technology. It turns tendencies into laws through sophistry. The ultimate truth, however, is discovered by testing all imaginable possibilities, not all the possibilities that have previously occurred. Imagine if a chess player only examined the moves other players had played before. He would stay a mediocrity.

Apart from the vivid image of a flaccid penis - and the presumable inability of Marxists to imagine it erect - not much is going on here.

The artistic impulse evident here...is interesting to say the least. Arousal being a foremost field of art and not everyday lives of human beings, or so the story goes. Or how about the inexplicable, unexplained inability of broadly scientific understanding to understand arousal?

But then again, art has nothing to do with justified knowledge. Or is this a symptom of the flaccid malaise?

But seriously now, it is beyond really possible to "test all imaginable possibilities". How should one go about testing the possibility of unicorns or Mr. Bloom (of Joyce's imagination)? Can't be done and asking that this be done is to fundamentally confuse the kind of thing Mr. Bloom and unicorns are.

Marxism may be the best consciously laid out philosophy we have, but it is still not good enough. Theory is all well and good but any good communist must be trained in the theory of rhetoric as well as the theory of prediction.
Very well, except for the fact that rhetoric doesn't have anything to do with standards of proof and validity.

The ultimate proof in Marxism not being up to the job is this. If Marxism is needed to produce the best, why is the best music not by Marxists, the best paintings not by Marxists, the best comedy by Marxists. The general public does not trust Marxism precisely because of this.
What?

Where did this idiosyncratic idea that Marxism "is needed to produce the best" come from?

The best painters are "the best" by virtue of critical consensus or majority opinion, and that has nothing to do with Marxism of any kind which would state that positively evaluated artistic production stands in any correlation with the correctness of proposition put forward (as part of the analysis informed by that overarching framework).

The answer is that Marxism speaks in the language of concious understanding because most advances in human thought have orginated thus. However, all human history is but a beginning. Comedy does not need concious theory because it relies on the phonics of words or inexplicable timing. And so does the rest.

Welp, yes, God help us all we are condemned to reason. What comedy has to do with understanding here, apart from a vague implication of an alternative mode of "understanding" by means of "phonics of words" (which by itself is a gross caricature of comedy as the sound properties of words are only a very limited part of the comic arsenal).

What Marxism seeks is possible, the laws that govern consuming commodities, but life itself has no laws. Note, life only exists as the negation of consuming commodities, just as black only exists through the sun's light.
What?

There's a common refrain to my responses to this highly artistic set of musings, namely "what?" or "dafuq" in degenerate internet-speak.

Life itself has common regularities, like gravity, encapsulated in the study of so called natural laws.
Apart from that, it is hard to see how "life" exists "as the negation of consuming commodities". Unless one was to argue that bacteria negate the consuming of commodities - which might be true in instances of lethal bacterial infection, but not pertinent to the views presented here I suppose.

And I've no interest in going on. Merry storry this is, full of appreciation for art and all sorts of un-reasonable skills.

Thirsty Crow

9th December 2015, 01:53

Now to get down to business, namely, artistic production, reception and the effect opon the recipients.

See, I don't think this Romantic view of art describes the realities of modern society that well.

This was written in response to the idea that art is the primary vehicle for fostering emotional sensibility - of one sort or another (incidentally, it's a weakness of this rightly called Romantic notion that it doesn't, and cannot, specify the sensibility it speaks of).

Not only is this true, but one can go further: almost never was there such a "primary vehicle" for the very simple reason that communal life and interpersonal relationships are a primary vehicle which this idea wants to illuminate.

In this sense, art is secondary. Dependent on and derived from that same set of communal relationships, in its more developed diffusion (think: modern society with its family, friends, cult of childhood/childhood friends, adolescent and subcultural groups, professional groups etc. etc.) or less developed (think: ancient slaveholding society).

To think of art - irrespective of the class base low-brow/high-brow and genre distinctions - as primary in this sense is to miss both the actual field of operation of art and the field of operation of interpersonal bonding.

It is controversial what the field of operation of art nowadays actually is - that much is sure. But it seems to me that this field is a) imaginary - dependent on imaginary play and thus b) intimately tied to interpersonal life.

Even if a particularly gripping piece of narrative - and I personally could give my own account of such a thing - modifies the acquired views of life and world, it refers to and modfies something that is entirely social.

Also:

And what's particularly problematic is when artists try to claim some sort of mystical non-scientific knowledge. The modern left in particular is infected with this sort of mystical thought.

This is particularly important to keep in mind. Unfortunately, and for a myriad of reasons, art has come to be viewed as an essentially cognitive practice - but it is no such a thing.
When I say "cognitive practice", I mean the practice of getting to know the world; but art constructs worlds, worlds similar or dissimilar to the actual world. In this it can serve as a link to knowledge, but it doesn't act as it if that makes sense.

EDIT:

And one last thing in this string of stuff: if anyone thinks there's some moderating and administrative actions to do which haven't be done, send a PM or use the report button. The benefactos are after all human all too human and therefore susceptible to all sorts of muck and crap which prevents them from attending to their tasks.

Tim Redd

10th December 2015, 01:34

Like I said, obviously art plays a lesser role in the internal life of many people, unless we're willing to include every movie, all comic books, even games etc. - in other words, all forms of entertainment - as art.

Why wouldn't those things at least part be a part of art. In other words I'm not beholden to the definition of art given by the people you mentioned like Hegel, or Goethe. You say you aren't either so why constrain what you consider to be art or at least to have some aspect of art?

Tim Redd

10th December 2015, 01:40

As I said, I don't view art as somehow uniquely important

There doesn't seem to be anything that's uniquely important. I agree

a simple activity such as playing does as much to develop the internal life of humanity as art.

Agreed. Thanks for helping me expand my understanding of the composition of "internal life".