The spite, hate, rage, apathy and mild irritation thread...

[psychic vampire.]

Capitalism otoh has never killed anyone, ever.

From each according to his credit line, to each according to his buying power. Amirite?

Can't tell if this is directed at me, because i'm about as far from loving capitalism as one can reasonably get. But, You know, don't need an answer to point out the question, ideally we should have just never become civilized in the first place.

[Disarm D'arcy]

I personally believe Marxism is a little outdated, and all of the popular attempts to amend or update it have been pretty miserable failures, but baby/bathwater, you know, i'm willing to acknowledge it has its moments, even if i'm a very different end of the fringe left wingnut spectrum.

You should study a bit more about French and Italian recent history. Because we kinda worked it out by building socialists republics. As Jean Jaurès would have said, socialism means that a political republic should also be a social one.

By the way, Jaurès reinvented marxism in a way that pretty much inspired all of Europe and Latin america. He kinda created an intellectual syncretism between republicanism and socialism. And if you wanna go deeper than that, a little over 10 years ago, we had a few ministers who were members of the communist party. Modern France, after WW2, was organized as a social republic by a government that was a blend of commies, socialists and Gaullists. Even today, a marxist workers union is blocking oil refinery and shipyards to protest a law that brings our country 30 years back in workers right. I can't say I'm unhappy about having marxists around

Even today, Marxism is a necessity in the good old EU. Marxian analysis is the only left wing philosophy that is advanced and comprehensive enough to understand market capitalism and it's crisis as they have evolved. Some of our most renowned economists amongst the like of Jacques Généreux (pretty much what's best IMO in macroeconomics nowadays) or Jacques Sapir. One of our presidential candidates who also happens to be a philosopher has worked a lot to reinvent marxism and republicanism through the environmental crisis to found a new branch of socialism he calls ecosocialism. Central idea is that because we are all as humans dependent on a unique and irreplaceable ecosystem, the republicanist intuition that we are alike and therefore deserve similar rights is confirmed. And because to preserve the only ecosystem that's compatible with human life we need to protect nature, it means there are common goods that cannot be privatized as everyone depends on them (water, breathable air... are only a few), and there, you have the communist intuition. That guy is Jean Luc Mélenchon who's a former minister, senator and is now a member of the european parliament, so not exactly a joke. Last presidential election, he did 12%. The guy who got elected in the end did 27%. That gives you an idea of how marxism is perceived as very alive by the French.

Plus I'm a convinced historical materialist so

Capitalism otoh has never killed anyone, ever.

From each according to his credit line, to each according to his buying power. Amirite?

Can I have ketchup on top of that?

(though I'm always amazed that pretty no much no one knows that WWI was a war caused by capitalism, and the only way it was actually stopped was thanks to a sovietic revolution in Russia and if after that we managed to keep the capitalistic world running with no so much crisis was because a third of humanity - the red ones - removed itself from the global market)

/rant

[UglyCasanova]

Yeah, it's easy to point to Stalin, Mao, Tito etc.. plenty of countries have an evolved socialist/marxist structure and work amazingly well (including Norway).

[Disarm D'arcy]

Yeah, it's easy to point to Stalin, Mao, Tito etc.. plenty of countries have an evolved socialist/marxist structure and work amazingly well (including Norway).

STFU you guys still have royal overlords.

[D.o.S.]

P. sure WWI lead to no actual loss of human life, despite what the New World Order would have you believe.

[Disarm D'arcy]

Does the now world order have ketchup?

[D.o.S.]

Freedom sauce.

[UglyCasanova]

Yeah, it's easy to point to Stalin, Mao, Tito etc.. plenty of countries have an evolved socialist/marxist structure and work amazingly well (including Norway).

STFU you guys still have royal overlords.

Meh. They're a symbol. They have no power.

[Disarm D'arcy]

Freedom sauce.

*Merely privilege extended sauce.

Yeah, it's easy to point to Stalin, Mao, Tito etc.. plenty of countries have an evolved socialist/marxist structure and work amazingly well (including Norway).

STFU you guys still have royal overlords.

Meh. They're a symbol. They have no power.

Yes, but how do you accept the fact that some people can be the symbol of a nation and represent it just because they're born from the right womb and preferably male and not based on their merit as human beings? I seriously do not get it.

[UglyCasanova]

When your crown-princess is an ex-drug addict and the princess runs an Angel School and is married to the author behind "Sad as Fuck", you know it's just a big old joke. A tradition turning sour.

Let them have the money. It's entertaining to watch them crash and burn.

[Disarm D'arcy]

HE SAID. ROYAL OVERLORDS ARE A JOKE. LOOK INTERNET HE SAID IT HIMSELF.

[snipelfritz]

Woah, can't you get thrown in the stocks or something for saying those sorts of things?

In other (not) news, I'm a fatty.

[psychic vampire.]

D'arcy, i understand that. End of the day i'm a confused anarchist thrust into a mostly capitalist society. I understand that there are Marxist tendencies outside the Lenin->Stalin->Mao thrust, but even the ones that you're pointing to are still statist. And really, we could go down the line advanced by individualists that would posit that the very idea of a socialist or communist practice (even outside state apparatuses) is an inherently authoritarian gesture, or go down the road Perlman did that posits the Marxist ideology as a leftist replacement for Nationalism. I understand that Marxist analyses do work in many different ways, and can work in even more ways than that, but the background i am coming from is one of thinking "The world would have been better without Civilization and Technology" which leads right away from Marxism, regardless.

I don't really come here to get too down and dirty about where i'm at, and don't really love talking about it on the internet. Lets just say i'm firmly in the "Post-Marxist Fringe Looney" camp and let it be. Marxism is not inherently Teh Evulz, and critiques of capitalism are very useful, i am just wary of an analysis that can be fully recuperated into the world we live, which has a lot more wrong with it than just Capital.

[Invisible Man]

I mean if you say that you're a Marxist you kind of get lumped in with the mass extinction of political dissidents and most people aren't really a fan of that.

Sure, but that's dumb. That's not Marx...but it does explain some of why MARX is a four letter word for many. I think you already 'get it,' but the ideology and the misapplication of it should not be confused for one another.

[Invisible Man]

Am I the only one here that hasn't gone to college?

Hahahaha fuck college. For reals. And I am employed at a college, so do with that what you will.