Marxist thought

[zlemflolia]

8 minutes ago, Hugh Mughnus said:

 

This is an interesting paragraph to me. Do you see any parallels to hive mentality here?

PEEP;

place for everything and everything in its place 

In acknowledging people have different places, one is validating classism imo...

it is merely an observation of the present relations of production.  the hierarchies that can be observed in the modern capitalist mode of production are not eternal rules of organization, but rather built in purposely to generate the class society.  it is these hierarchies and the information asymmetries forced across company boundaries and between employer-employee relations that itself is the generator of bourgeois capitalist ideology, not the other way around.the class hierarchy is in this way retroactively justified, despite the fact that the present material conditions are ones which are capable of being advanced beyond, which can be observed only through experimentation and actually attempting to do so. socialism, or at least marx's conception of historical materialism and dialectical materialism, is not one of inventing an ideology and trying to implement it to achieve socialism

rather it's one of observing revolutions, learning from them, and applying what works in different regions.  this is why when Lenin's USSR succeeded so massively, the Marxist-Leninist approach was applied worldwide.  even the US capitalists feared this power of dialectical materialism and came up with their own "domino theory", because when it's observed working, there is no reason not to adopt it.  capitalists intend to keep examples to a minimum, and when they arise they distort their privately owned media's viewpoints on them

Edited April 20, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[zlemflolia]

4 minutes ago, Hugh Mughnus said:

Yes historical context is critical. I wonder what Marx would have written in this century?

one example of a self proclaimed socialist nation engaging in protectionism, to the extreme, is North Korea's Juche ideology of avoiding as many dependencies as possible to be completely self reliant.  this however is mostly imposed externally through severe trade sanctions.  in general once a country tries to become socialist, its capitalist previous trade partners and neighbors will apply harsh measures against them, and protectionism becomes a necessity rather than a choice

[Hugh Mughnus]

6 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

it is merely an observation of the present relations of production.  the hierarchies that can be observed in the modern capitalist mode of production are not eternal rules of organization, but rather built in purposely to generate the class society.  it is these hierarchies and the information asymmetries forced across company boundaries and between employer-employee relations that itself is the generator of bourgeois capitalist ideology, not the other way around.the class hierarchy is in this way retroactively justified, despite the fact that the present material conditions are ones which are capable of being advanced beyond, which can be observed only through experimentation and actually attempting to do so. socialism, or at least marx's conception of historical materialism and dialectical materialism, is not one of inventing an ideology and trying to implement it to achieve socialism

rather it's one of observing revolutions, learning from them, and applying what works in different regions.  this is why when Lenin's USSR succeeded so massively, the Marxist-Leninist approach was applied worldwide.  even the US capitalists feared this power of dialectical materialism and came up with their own "domino theory", because when it's observed working, there is no reason not to adopt it.  capitalists intend to keep examples to a minimum, and when they arise they distort their privately owned media's viewpoints on them

Yes. I guess what I’m trying to ask is that social ordering is really functional ordering and this is evident across a variety of species. Why is this ordering natural and fair for other species and not humans?

Understanding that other species also enjoy different benefits under their ordering.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Hugh Mughnus

[zlemflolia]

9 minutes ago, Hugh Mughnus said:

Yes. I guess what I’m trying to ask is that social ordering is really functional ordering and this is evident across a variety of species. Why is this ordering natural and fair for other species and not humans? 

many animals are more complex than we typically give them credit for.  bees and ants have achieved eusociality, the most advanced form of social cooperative behavior, a form of altruism beyond that of humans even.  they will commit suicide alone in the wilderness when it is good for the hive to avoid fungal spores spreading back into the nest.  the extent to which an animal species of capable of achieving its species being, a concept marx defines, probably among other places, in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_human_nature] depends on their material construction and the capabilities of their brains, mediated by their social conditioning, mediated by the material conditions in which they develop. 

lobsters cannot achieve what we can.  it's not a matter of whether it's fair that they are trapped in a sort of hierarchical dominant structure.  they are trapped, as we must avoid becoming trapped ourselves, which we currently are under capitalism.  humans have advanced symbolic reasoning capabilities, putting us orders of magnitudes above allother animals on earth.  but we should have no doubt of course that we are orders of magnitude below advanced alien species existing in the past or future

the hierarchies are observed and described retroactively, rather than being innate. material psychological tendencies can act as constituent parts of their material implementation, but in no way can it be said that those hierarchies themselves are innate, even if innate properties of the animal generates those hierarchies under particular conditions.  this applies heavily to humans, less so to other animals with inferior learning and teaching capabilities

Edited April 20, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[Hugh Mughnus]

5 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

many animals are more complex than we typically give them credit for.  bees and ants have achieved eusociality, the most advanced form of social cooperative behavior, a form of altruism beyond that of humans even.  they will commit suicide alone in the wilderness when it is good for the hive to avoid fungal spores spreading back into the nest.  the extent to which an animal species of capable of achieving its species being, a concept marx defines, probably among other places, in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_human_nature] depends on their material construction and the capabilities of their brains, mediated by their social conditioning, mediated by the material conditions in which they develop. 

lobsters cannot achieve what we can.  it's not a matter of whether it's fair that they are trapped in a sort of hierarchical dominant structure.  they are trapped, as we must avoid becoming trapped ourselves, which we currently are under capitalism.  humans have advanced symbolic reasoning capabilities, putting us orders of magnitudes above allother animals on earth.  but we should have no doubt of course that we are orders of magnitude below advanced alien species existing in the past or future

the hierarchies are observed and described retroactively, rather than being innate. material psychological tendencies can act as constituent parts of their material implementation, but in no way can it be said that those hierarchies themselves are innate, even if innate properties of the animal generates those hierarchies under particular conditions.  this applies heavily to humans, less so to other animals with inferior learning and teaching capabilities

Ty. I’ll have to think and educate myself a bit about this before I respond. Have a good night!!

[chenGOD]

Because WATMM's quoting system was obviously created by socialist management:

@cyanobacteria , you said:

Quote

if the people need more water, labor will be invested into water infrastructure.

To which I replied:

Quote

These would be specialists in water infrastructure, I assume?

 

To which you replied:

6 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

of course there would be specialists in water infrastructure, they are called civil engineers.

Sorry I wasn't clear: when you said there would be more labour invested in water infrastructure, where would this surplus of labour come from?

[cwmbrancity]

6 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

of course there would be specialists in water infrastructure, they are called civil engineers.  given that education is universally understood to be free under socialism and communism, and humans have the drive to achieve, no doubt there would be enough.  the USSR had plenty, enough to beat the US in just about every checkpoint of the space race, and they didn't even achieve socialism yet, so imagine how much more proiductive wed be if everyone was given free housing food water shelter education etc.  its so fucking obvious getting real sick of this shit because if you just imagine a simulation or a game, what society is going to do better, the one where everyone gets free water food shelter and education to learn how to play the game and achieve goals in it, or the one where you have to fucking work bullshit tier jobs just to earn supplies to progrees? no we have supplies, fucking give them to people and stop playing god with this BS "we need to force poor people to work for food to make them appreciate hard work or well never progress" nonsense.  im done seriouslyt

Wait,

4 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

one example of a self proclaimed socialist nation engaging in protectionism, to the extreme, is North Korea's Juche ideology of avoiding as many dependencies as possible to be completely self reliant.  this however is mostly imposed externally through severe trade sanctions.  in general once a country tries to become socialist, its capitalist previous trade partners and neighbors will apply harsh measures against them, and protectionism becomes a necessity rather than a choice

North Korea’s problems are vast, not sure this organ-harvesting state sure looks so swell from here. Is it all down to the Axis of Evil pariah outlook? Would you donate your kidneys at gun point? A perfect form of self-organising humans could be so cool maaaaan, but theory and practice are entirely different when it comes to large scale systems, particularly Left-Communism.

Good luck with the revolution though, elbow bumps, but ask the committee chairman to at least hold the reins

 

 

 

70B2B279-7FEC-4DDC-8FF8-A0B44F190250.webp

[cwmbrancity]

That’s Kim on a white horse all bundled up for fuck knows reason.

[chenGOD]

4 minutes ago, cwmbrancity said:

That’s Kim on a white horse

Can't see the picture, but Chollima plays a very important role in North Korean socialist propaganda.

I have a good picture of the statue from the last time I went, but it's on one of my hard drives somewhere, so the wiki version will have to do.

[zlemflolia]

5 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Because WATMM's quoting system was obviously created by socialist management:

@cyanobacteria , you said:

To which I replied:

 

To which you replied:

Sorry I wasn't clear: when you said there would be more labour invested in water infrastructure, where would this surplus of labour come from?

people would work on it or they would go without water.  it doesn't have to be a surplus of labor sitting around.  people can stop working in one field and go work in infrastructure if its needed

[chenGOD]

20 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

people can stop working in one field and go work in infrastructure if its needed

Specialization and opportunity cost are things that exist.

Do you know what happened when Mao did the very same thing you are proposing for steel production in China (China needed steel, so people stopped what they were doing and went and produced steel (as an important aside, this was not optional).

Also I don't know what kind of socialist government would let their workers go without literally the most important element for people to survive. The below sounds pretty harsh to me.

20 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

people would work on it or they would go without water

 

[zlemflolia]

15 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Specialization and opportunity cost are things that exist.

Do you know what happened when Mao did the very same thing you are proposing for steel production in China (China needed steel, so people stopped what they were doing and went and produced steel (as an important aside, this was not optional).

Also I don't know what kind of socialist government would let their workers go without literally the most important element for people to survive. The below sounds pretty harsh to me.

 

comparing "people will go without water if there is no infrastructure, and if they want it they will have to build it" to mao's initiatives surrounding steel is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.  do they have water infrastructure? then they have water and don't need to disproportionately go work in water infrastructure.  do they not have water infrastructure? then they better hope it rains or that they live by a river.  it's tautological

it's not "harsh" that people without water infrastructure go without water.  anti-communists always assuming the least charitable interpretation possible, as if "going without water" was intended to mean some state enforced punishment.  no, it means if you don't have water infrastructure you go without water, because that's how material reality works lmao. what do you think the water will magically appear?

Edited April 20, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[chenGOD]

10 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

this is why when Lenin's USSR succeeded so massively,

The USSR succeeded under Lenin because Lenin compromised in the face of famine and instituted the New Economic Policy on grain production, which was an obvious capitalist economic policy. After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin later reversed that course, leading to widespread famine in the Ukraine. Your lack of understanding of Soviet history is alarming.

 

[zlemflolia]

Just now, chenGOD said:

The USSR succeeded under Lenin because Lenin compromised in the face of famine and instituted the New Economic Policy on grain production, which was an obvious capitalist economic policy. After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin later reversed that course, leading to widespread famine in the Ukraine. Your lack of understanding of Soviet history is alarming.

 

ah yes, stalin forced the employers of peasant farmers to burn stores of grain and murder their cattle in the fields in protest against collectivization, apparently literal nazi propaganda is history now

[sweepstakes]

42 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

people would work on it or they would go without water.  it doesn't have to be a surplus of labor sitting around.  people can stop working in one field and go work in infrastructure if its needed

Fuck water, they should work on BRAWNDO infrastructure. It's got what plants crave!

[chenGOD]

28 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

  20 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

people can stop working in one field and go work in infrastructure if its needed

You understand that people can't just stop working as say, a computer programmer, and pick up work in  civil engineering/welding/construction for developing water infrastructure right? That was the point of the comparison with Mao's steel production initiatives. Peasants who were formerly farmers went to work on steel production using backyard furnaces, reducing their contribution to food production (subsequently leading to famine in China). This is called opportunity cost.

15 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

ah yes, stalin forced the employers of peasant farmers to burn stores of grain and murder their cattle in the fields in protest against collectivization, apparently literal nazi propaganda is history now

It's not nazi propaganda: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ca.secondwave/is-ussr-peasants.htm

It's a good lesson that people prefer to work for their own incentives, whatever they may be.

[zlemflolia]

Just now, chenGOD said:

You understand that people can't just stop working as say, a computer programmer, and pick up work in  civil engineering/welding/construction for developing water infrastructure right? That was the point of the comparison with Mao's steel production initiatives. Peasants who were formerly farmers went to work on steel production using backyard furnaces, reducing their contribution to food production (subsequently leading to famine in China). This is called opportunity cost.

It's not nazi propaganda: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ca.secondwave/is-ussr-peasants.htm

It's a good lesson that people prefer to work for their own incentives, whatever they may be.

you made up this scenario by asking the absurd question of whether civil engineers will exist under socialism.  if somehow a socialist country decided to fail so badly at planning that they just one day realized there weren't enough civil engineers and construction workers designing water infrastructure, and they had to race to get started right away, then yeah people have to move from one field to another

[chenGOD]

3 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

you made up this scenario by asking the absurd question of whether civil engineers will exist under socialism.

That's not what I asked at all - I asked where the extra labour to invest in water infrastructure would come from.

[zlemflolia]

also why are you assuming socialism inherently has the qualities of mao's china where everyone is a peasant and they have little to no industrial development? your comparisons are very historically ignorant

Just now, chenGOD said:

That's not what I asked at all - I asked where the extra labour to invest in water infrastructure would come from.

you need to state the preconditions of this question.  what does "extra labor" mean and how can it be considered "extra labor" to invest in something as essential as water infrastructure?  it's a baseline requirement for a civilization and if it's not there then people need to work on it ASAP.  you just invented a scenario with apparently no context and are asking where "extra" labor is to maintain water infrastructure.  it doesn't even make sense, I have no idea what I'm replying to.

[chenGOD]

You said this:

Quote

if the people need more water, labor will be invested into water infrastructure.

Where does that extra labour come from, assuming water infrastructure exists and is being maintained by civil engineers? If they need more, that implies more labour? Like how is that difficult to understand?

Your answer was:

16 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

  20 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

people can stop working in one field and go work in infrastructure if its needed

So again, I ask you: do you understand that people just can't pick up and move fields of work? How are you going to incentivize people to begin working in that field? Are you going to command them to do so? That's what the history lesson refers to, people are incentivized for their own reasons, some are not interested in doing more than they can to provide for their family, while others want to do more, and work for society on a larger scale.

[zlemflolia]

12 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

You said this:

Where does that extra labour come from, assuming water infrastructure exists and is being maintained by civil engineers? If they need more, that implies more labour? Like how is that difficult to understand?

Your answer was:

So again, I ask you: do you understand that people just can't pick up and move fields of work? How are you going to incentivize people to begin working in that field? Are you going to command them to do so? That's what the history lesson refers to, people are incentivized for their own reasons, some are not interested in doing more than they can to provide for their family, while others want to do more, and work for society on a larger scale.

it comes from people choosing to work in water infrastructure because if they don't then the people will be without clean water to drink.  this is somehow difficult for capitalists to understand because they justify their individualism through payment and economic incentivization schemes.  make no mistake I am aware that it requires significant improvements in class consciousness to reach this point, as are all socialists.  before it is reached, it can be incentivized through extra payments and social recognition.  from each according to his need, from each according to their ability.  if the people need more incentivization to work on the apparently horrible task of designing essential water infrastructure, clearly incentivization can be created

now let's ask the converse.  in capitalist countries where does it come from? from what I can see the water infrastructure is just not built.  ever heard of Flint, MI?

[chenGOD]

2 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

in capitalist countries where does it come from? from what I can see the water infrastructure is just not built.  ever heard of Flint, MI?

You choose one district? In one capitalist country? With terrible regulations and no enforcement?

Canada: you can drink straight from the tap in all cities and towns, barring areas where using artisanal wells makes more sense.

The vast majority of the US you can drink tap water, same in Japan, South Korea (though they don't for some weird reason), Western Europe. China on the other hand - don't ask for ice cubes in your glass for bottled water, comrade.

7 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

it comes from people choosing to work in water infrastructure because if they don't then the people will be without clean water to drink.

People already do this in, and they specialize in it, making them more efficient.

[zlemflolia]

15 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

You choose one district? In one capitalist country? With terrible regulations and no enforcement?

Canada: you can drink straight from the tap in all cities and towns, barring areas where using artisanal wells makes more sense.

The vast majority of the US you can drink tap water, same in Japan, South Korea (though they don't for some weird reason), Western Europe. China on the other hand - don't ask for ice cubes in your glass for bottled water, comrade.

People already do this in, and they specialize in it, making them more efficient.

you're really comparing china, a country which less than a century was a peasant agrarian nation and which now has a population of over 1 billion people, to the US, the largest empire on earth, and its various heavily developed allies? furthermore, let's start comparing the externalities in water quality the US causes, like the bombing of Libya's african irrigation project, and then we can make a fairer comparison to China.

if you want to continue this route of discussion I suggest you restate your original thesis.  do you think civil engineers won't exist under socialism?  what exactly is your point in bringing up this topic?

Edited April 20, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[chenGOD]

9 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

do you think civil engineers won't exist under socialism?  what exactly is your point in bringing up this topic?

Man stop constructing strawmen. I asked you where the surplus labout to invest in more water infrastructure was going to come from. You responded they would just move from one field to the other, as if it were something easy to do.

The idea behind bringing this up is that in order to increase efficiency in the use of materials, people (and industries) specialize, which is something your proposal of just moving from one field to another seems to ignore.

[zlemflolia]

4 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Man stop constructing strawmen. I asked you where the surplus labout to invest in more water infrastructure was going to come from. You responded they would just move from one field to the other, as if it were something easy to do.

The idea behind bringing this up is that in order to increase efficiency in the use of materials, people (and industries) specialize, which is something your proposal of just moving from one field to another seems to ignore.

you are still not comprehending my question.  within your question is embedded an assumption.  the assumption is that there is going to be some sort of event where previously there were enough civil engineers working in water infrastructure, and now there aren't and we need to find "surplus labor".  firstly describe how events like this are in any way unique to socialism, and secondly describe how capitalism is better at overcoming such events.  you think there is no specialization of labor under socialism?  once again you did not answer my question at all and are just continuing talking down your own path, not talking to me, not engaging in a dialogue, but a monologue