☭ Sup Marxists? ☭

wrath
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If you think that communist/socialist language has taken over culture I think you are not really paying attention. First of all, you might want to read Shaw Communications, authoritarian personalities are far more likely to be right-wing (which means against gun control) in the states.

You want to talk about ‘gun nuts’ being a common term, what about “taxpayer” which is basically the universal way that citizens are now described - a term that essentially accepts that our worth as people is equivalent to the money we possess. Language has been infiltrated by a lot of loaded terms. Frankly, a lot of gun nuts are called gun nuts because they are pretty nutty. Then the term is generalized to apply to everyone who owns guns, but that’s an example of seeing the world in black-and-white, us-vs-them terms, which, again, is more of a right-wing mindset. Besides this, gun control has nothing to do with the economic system of the country - communists could have lots of guns in their society and capitalists could have virtually none allowed. America is the country where ‘guns’ is right wing and ‘not-guns’ is left wing, and even then that’s probably too simple.

The soviets may have defined disagreeing with their philosophy as a mental illness, but americans defined not wanting to be a housewife as a mental illness that needed a lobotomy and recently defines mental illness as whatever the big pharma companies have made a pill to cure. The definition of mental illness serves people in power, whether those people are communists are crony capitalists. Who is subverting this notion by presenting mental illness as a thing we want to understand and people with mental illnesses as people we should care about and respect? Why, it’s the left-wing pinko commies (who don’t want you to have guns, except the ones that do).

Recently international forum research showed that many Americans think that the gap between the rich and the poor is one of the biggest problems in America, and 60% think that raising taxes is the best way to address that. Where are all the politicians rushing to raise taxes? While I don’t doubt that progressives will once again have their day, right now the idea that some kind of communist idea is winning against capitalism (which in America might as well be the equivalent of “racism” in that it is merely a prejudice based on how much capital a person has) is fantastical. A more collective, interdependent view of society is eroding this notion slowly, but that’s because the current system of doing whatever the rich people say is a toxic, nearly totalitarian system.

I don’t want to be communist or capitalist, I’m just saying that the idea that the idea that communism-for-all is winning right now is disconnect from reality.

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He falls more into the poststructuralist category - the poststructuralist are speaking directly to the early structuralists, who they think are too binary in their thinking about structures. Poststructuralists tend to think in terms of interconnected systems of power and how they help to define how people think of themselves and each other.

Except that assumes that BB is itself a system within the ruling power structure, as opposed to a more nuanced space of opposition to power structures–it historically caters to outsider cultures and the people who love them.

Socialists in the US are in no way in power—if you think the current president is a “socialist” then you should probably recalibrate your definition of “socialist” a bit. I also think that the debates we have about gun control are a bit more nuanced than that. Part of the reasons we have these discussions where we talk pretty openly and at times forcefully about these issues is so we can find a better way forward and work out different strategies for political action. Just because not everyone agrees with you doesn’t mean you’re an oppressed class, I’m afraid.

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An excellent point, and one that’s in the spirit of critical theory. I would have gone this route.

There is, in fact, little of what Americans know as psychotherapy in Soviet psychiatry. Nor is that state of affairs accidental. Soviet distrust of psychotherapy has been strong ever since the 1930’s, when the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the originator of insight-oriented talk therapies, were declared inconsistent with Marxist science.

of course, that was published in 1983, and the reporter’s theorizing about the partially unconscious nature of politically motivated misdiagnoses has probably been vindicated or debunked in the years since.

The big problem with all of these insinuations is that they appear to to conflict with what Marcuse has written as a whole, and what Fromm has written, as a whole (though Fromm has criticized Marcuse for misusing Freud, and left the institute in 1939).

Perhaps this is intentional. David Horowitz’s conspiracy theories (Discover the Network) characterize intellectual engagement as connection between nodes. If one reads the works, instead of safely working with them in “atomized”, or quote-mined form, one runs the risk of infection.

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Obligatory.

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Well, if the idea of politically motivated misdiagnosis as-a-tool-of-state has been debunked then that, naturally, makes the argument that the soviets did this… um… weak?

But really I don’t know anything about it, I was just willing to accept the premise for the sake of argument because whether or not it happened it doesn’t really show what @TrollsOpinion wanted it to show. The USSR did a lot of bad things to people to quell dissent, and I find the tools they used are a bit immaterial. The Spanish Inquisition accused people of heresy to quell dissent, MI5 put out false claims in the newspapers about their director who was trying to root our internal corruption in the middle of the 20th century, people use terrorism, threats, beatings, killings, etc. People with power often use that power to eliminate or at the very least stifle those who propose that maybe they shouldn’t have so much power. The Soviet’s hardly invented that, nor did some people hanging around in Frankfurt in the 20s.

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Didn’t we already have this conversation?

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Now you’re thinking like a critical theorist you dirty little cultural marxist you, they were obsessive about self-examination, and critiquing their own conclusion based on historical fact, and failed solutions to social problems…

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I was referring to the disclosure of records after the fall of the soviet regime in Eastern Europe and in Russia. It’s one thing to speculate about behind the scenes machinations, it’s quite another to see documentary evidence of these things.

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Critical theorists realized that Marx’s view of history and predictions about the future were based on a far too simplistic and one-dimensional way of looking at the world. They widened the tent, academically, to try to use a more inter-disciplinary approach to the course of history and the structures of power. In hindsight, how can you leave psychology (the examination of of mental characteristics on an individual level) our of history, while still getting a full picture? Conflating this desire, on the part of highly self-critical academics to have a fuller picture of humanity with the some kind of organized cabal of leftist ninjas is what is laughable.

Those who seek power will use whatever the current resonant mode of understanding the world exists at the time they wish to rise to absolute power. Psychology is the hot new field? Let’s use the language of psychology to oppress group X. Monotheistic religion is the hot way to interpret the world these days? Oppress the pagans! When the Nazi’s used socialism, Critical theorists were taken aback, and thus tried to add nuance, and promised themselves that they would constantly reexamine their own theories, knowing now that power has the ability to twist and co-opt any narrative timeline of history. Blaming them for the weaponization of social history is a little like blaming Albert Einstein for Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

If the ways that this handful of academics framed the world has “invaded” the thinking of other people, it’s because it resonates, not because of their number stations.

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Not to be confused with the “one-dimensionality” of “one dimensional man”. IIRC, a free individual has a sense of self, and an imagination that can be contrasted to ones experiences in the world. This process can and does lead to political and societal revolution. In a “advanced capitalist” societies, this subjective dimension is conditioned and cajoled so that it does not represent a threat to the status quo. The typical citizen has inauthentic needs and desires.

(It’s been a while…)

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What about militant leftists?

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Right, not to be confused at all. I just meant that Marx’s approach was narrowly focused on economic history, leaving out the juicy details of human interaction, and the nuances of modes of oppression that were introduced by critical theorists.

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Could a marxist tark spark an anarchist arc for a lark?

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All three of them?

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He was focused on that because at the time people weren’t focused on that and because he thought that the best way to understand history was through how people interacted with the material realities created by a particular economy, right? Plus, tons of people who claim a marxist orientation have tried to reintegrate other aspects of live into a Marxist view with varying degrees of success, I’d say…

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Yuk yuk. Many of the people I have tried to discuss topics with here seem to prefer to let statistics speak for them. And fabricated statistics at that. I suppose I was hoping that more people here liked to think for themselves, rather than make everything a lame popularity contest. By all means, do tell us about how much more empowering your strategies are.

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There is just isn’t much of a coherent left and certainly even less hardcore left. The militant left consists of very few people, and it certainly doesn’t include anyone in any real positions of political or social power. The closest you have is Bernie Sanders, and he’s one senator from Vermont, who doesn’t get taken very seriously by anyone…

So, why don’t you tell me who you mean by the militant left? I made a joke because the let in general in the US has been both treated as a joke and have little to no real political power, at any point in American history.

And for the record, I want policies that benefit the most people and do the most good, not ones that institute a particular ideological agenda. At this point, I’m pretty certain that’s not the “free market” fundamentalist policies since Reagan.

And at what point have I spouted statistics at you… that’s not really my style.

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Maybe you can enlighten us?

Can you provide us with evidence of the vast network of militant leftists?

Perhaps a list of the super pacs they are funneling their dark money into?

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[quote=“colinInSpace, post:199, topic:43201, full:true”]
Maybe you can enlighten us?

Can you provide us with evidence of the vast network of militant leftists?[/quote]

I don’t think of a political or economic philosophy as being a club which people can identify with. Ideas are ways of life, and potentially tools for solving problems. Who is “The Scientific Method”? Who cares, it just works, regardless of who uses it!

My point with this is basically post-ideological. Devise your own policies with likeminded people. The only thing difficult about DIY politics is that people seem to be afraid to do it. When people assume that others “naturally” have power over them, I find that they complain but refuse to do anything which will make any actual difference. It’s as if most leftists have succumb to some form of Stockholm Syndrome where they can no longer define themselves without their oppressors. No, I do not have The System, and that is the whole point. The only system is plurality, that people need to network and make more systems. A “single system which is good for everybody” is the very definition of totalitarianism, it’s what they all preach. And even if the realizations weren’t corrupt, they would still be unworkably idealistic.

The closest thing to benefiting most people I think is to make Nation-States impossible to maintain, and let anybody create their own network-based crypto countries. Not to remove one prescribed way for people to do things and merely replace it with another. When people refuse to create their own kinds of families, or currencies, or states - it is not because it doesn’t or can’t work, it’s because anything which really gets rid of their old friend, the oppressive status quo, is a huge risk. Being kept like an animal with no agency of your own is “safe”, but in the same sense that being kept as livestock is “safe”. But this safety appears to be preferable to most people than striking out and doing anything different, in case they “get in trouble” by people who don’t deserve their respect or cooperation in the first place.

I am strictly anti-coercion, and don’t go along with anything which recognizes anyone as having, by default, power over others. Of course, if people want to do this, more power to them. I grew up a militant leftist, and I suppose I prefer to think that my outlook is not so unusual. But it’s not like it is a kind of view which people are generally encouraged to speak up about.

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