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The Natural Instinct to stick to your own kind.
I've changed since I first joined this forum, now let me ask a question.
The Communist and Marxist Socialist ideas seem to ignore the fact that humans are naturally ethnocentric and bind together, that's how nations came to be. It's natural for people to wish to stick to their own culture, what's the communist opinion on 'culture' anyway? Do people even have a culture in an 'ideal communist society'?
Patriotism and a love for your own kind is just natural. Look at the past - tribes, nations, all of that. Hell, even violent street gangs tend to be Asian, or Black, White, whatever. The tribal instinct still exists.
Now, I'm not a White Nationalist. If anything, I'm a Nationalist, but not a Fascist. I support some Socialist policies as Classism DOES exist.
What are opinions on this natural instinct? And do people need to rid themselves of their culture in a communist society, and become drones?
Yes, let's ignore the fact that nationalism has been around for a few centuries during our hundreds of thousands of years on this earth as a species. As for tribalism, empirical evidence suggests that hostile groups can work together well and develop intergroup relations to accomplish shared goals. Refer to the Robbers Cave experiment:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Sherif/
You're looking at this in the context of how our world looks today and ignoring the totality of human history
"We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass." Karl Marx
Just to build on this question, what is the Communist opinion on diversity?
In a world without nationalism and ethnic culture, the world would be kind of a monolithic and uniform place. The cultures of what are now Mexico, Norway, Ghana, and Thailand would all be kind of the same.
I wouldn't call myself a White Nationalist either, but I do oppose large-scale immigration, because I think the earth's diverse cultures, languages, art forms, and such should be preserved.
I also agree that people naturally gravitate to their own kind, and programs to counteract this usually backfire in some ways.
...at the time of the great bourgeois revolutions. For most of their existence, the "naturally ethnocentric" humans did not have the concept of a nation. And this is why claims about humans being "naturally" ethnocentric or misogynist or capitalist or straight or whatever are daft - they're completely ahistorical and idealist. Human history is determined by the means of production and the productive forces, not the unfolding of some timeless "human nature".
A language of some sort is probably necessary for any form of social organisation. But if you meant to ask if separate cultures will survive, probably not, given both increased mobility and integration of various regions, the destruction of all bourgeois ideology, and the needs of administering a global society.Originally Posted by BlackFlag
My mate used anecdotal evidence once and turned out to be wrong.Originally Posted by BlackFlag
Ah, classism. Why should socialists care about a liberal attempt to replace discussion of the material relations of production with tedious, sanctimonious analysis of statements and attitudes? Socialists don't want the bourgeoisie to treat the proletariat with respect, we want to eliminate the bourgeoisie.Originally Posted by BlackFlag
The in-group/out-group dynamic is a common human drive but what makes up that "in-group" is entirely constructed. People are not "naturally" inclined to patriotism, as nation-states as we know them now are extremely recent developments, only a couple centuries old (the same goes for race, incidentally).
People can identify with an in-group based on literally anything. See: Ultras, "school pride", "corporate nationalism", local music scenes, online communities -- literally anything.
What an absurdly loaded question. People won't "rid themselves" of their "culture" -- what people consider their culture will change, as has happened since the dawn of humankind. It isn't as if being a communist erases every other identity one has. Being a communist or living in a communist society will become part of their culture.
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
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This is generally quite good at debunking this sort of understanding. Human society has naturally been evolving for years to incorporate more and more people from a broader base. The nationalism of capitalism superseded the feudal village/regionalism and that emerged from the tribal family etc. What you call 'tribal instinct' (ie contributing to mutually assist only groups you identify with) can logically be extended so that the 'tribe' is all the working class or all of humanity, if the class system has been abolished.
Modern democracy is nothing but the freedom to preach whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie - Lenin
There are no natural, or even 'culturally organic' predispositions towards nationalism. Nationalism is imposed, it is alien, it is a weapon of confusion against the natural predisposition towards proletarian consciousness.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
Yeah, but there were other forms of ethnic collectivism. In ancient Greece, people identified with their city-state ethnicity. Even then, they still considered the Greek race to be better than all other peoples, whom they called barbarian.
I don't think anyone would dispute that, but it still doesn't prove that multiculturalism works. Look at all of the historical instances of racists of difference races working together to fight off a common enemy, only to revert back to their own racially pure societies when the threat is gone.
Actually, the Greeks can be used as an example here too. As can the Germans when they fought off Rome.
Eventually nationalism hit Europe, and people's perceptions of identity changed, but it was a pretty organic process, and didn't expand beyond language-based cultures.
Also... Stalin? Really? Please tell me he's not like a mascot on this forum. I can sympathize with Communists, but not mass murders.
I guess that black flag is Fascist black, huh?
Good luck making my peasant ancestors in the Norwegian-Swedish borderland, who had their villages regularly burned by both sides, identify as "Norwegian" or "Swedish" prior to the 1800's.
There is no natural disposition towards nationalism, but there does seem to be a sort of disposition towards favoring an "in-group" over an "out-group". An in-group can constitute anything... from a family, to a dozen friends, all the way up to a society or civilization. You can probably figure out on your own why sticking with a group might be useful, evolutionarily speaking.
As for communists on culture, we don't need to get rid of our culture. Rather, our culture will blossom out from under the yoke of capitalism. Less idealistically speaking, culture is the primary force by which a communist society could be created from the kinds of people we have now who have been socialized under capitalism. It is the process of socialization - which explains pretty much everything we do - that will allow any realization of Marxism, anarchism, or really any economic or political situation. And it can overcome any biological impulse, especially considering how weak - if existent at all - these tend to be in humans.
I would say people "stick to their own" because of evolution. If somebody looks like you or speaks the same language as you, the chance that you're related is much higher than if you're really different. That's why people feel less empathy towards "foreigners" and why they don't take much to support foreign wars.
Okay, just maybe humans weren't nationalist from the start, either way Cultures grew proud of their own achievements.
These cultures also aren't really compatible, while you may advocate for religion to fade away or whatever it's still going to be in the Culture of people. But back to the compatibility of separate cultures - look at Sweden. 77% of rape cases (Sweden has the second highest rape rate in the world, next to South Africa) are committed by Muslim immigrants.
The correlation between the increase in the rape rate and the mass immigration of Muslims is not coincidence. This shows that these separate cultures DO NOT work well together.
Also, Hrafn - please don't resort to sad name calling such as 'Fascist' or 'Racist'. I'd like to avoid 'Reactionary' for once if we could, too.
Nations? Hahaha.
There are one human species worldwide.
"Nations" are bullshit created, maintained and dictated by STATES.
Why would regional culture not be preserved after communism and after the world is one?
What a load of bullshit.
I still cannot comprehend what must be going on in someone's head to write something such as the original post of this thread.
BlackFlag, stop reading Stormfront.
Or have fun being capital's stooge.
I'd just like to point out that your avatar is a state symbol.
It's amazing how quickly humanism slips into quasi-fascism in the name of justifying racism as some kind of "human nature". Good evidence of why humanism deserves to be a swear word rather than the current "yay" concept it is, on a par with democracy - "human nature" has always been used to exclude those who don't fit the "human". The flip side to the human is the inhuman.
And if you don't want us to call you a racist or a fascist, don't justify this abhorrent shit that even a passing knowledge of biology or sociology would quickly debunk.
“Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between “individualism” and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class?” - Josef Stalin, Marxism Versus Liberalism: An Interview With H.G. Wells, 1934
"Those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’." - Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1969
Humanism is the product of Enlightment - and Enlightment is bourgeois.
So yeah, I guess you're right.
La dialectique, peut-elle casser des briques?
The irony is your conception of culture is monolithic. You're claiming that in a given area there is one culture but there isn't. Culture often differs even generationally within the same family. My culture is fundamentally different to that of my parents. We're of different worlds.
The roots of it go further back, but yeah, humanism as we understand it is ultimately liberalism. Marx himself saw this, as Althusser pointed out:
“Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between “individualism” and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class?” - Josef Stalin, Marxism Versus Liberalism: An Interview With H.G. Wells, 1934
"Those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’." - Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1969
Well of course even withing a culture there is going to be diversity, especially between generations. I'm referring to ethnic and national cultures.
Right now we have America and Mexico, two distinctly different cultures. But if America continues to allow millions of Mexicans to come in, and at the current rate, then the American and Mexican cultures won't be distinctly different.
Due to globalization, lots of ancient languages are dying out, as English is quickly becoming the language everyone speaks, and the only one you need to know. Something like this makes the world a less diverse place.
That's what I mean by monolithic. The human species will soon appear as one ethnicity.
Like helot said, your idea of "culture" is monolithic. Not every Swede identifies with every other Swede they meet.
Source?
That's quite a leap to make. You realize the legal definition of rape in Sweden has broadened in the past decade or so, I hope, which would, of course, lead to an increase in reports and convictions. There's also the fact that Sweden ranks among the highest in terms of gender equality, and that levels of gender equality also correlate with increased reports of sexual violence, likely due to general attitudes regarding violence against women.
If the shoe fits...
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
