The American haute-bourgeoisie want a leftist form of capitalism.

[Alyrium Denryle]

You are not debating in good faith. Your insistence I read everything is an attempt to either make me feel small or convert me.

I’ll leave you to your cultish devotion

A debate is by definition an attempt to convince someone of your point of view, it isn't bad faith. There is a century and a half of Marxist theory, analysis, and criticism that is forming the backbone of the discussion he's having with you. It is impossible to reproduce that here in this forum unless you are willing to do a bit of reading yourself. He's doing the best he can. But it's also pretty obvious that you aren't willing to learn about that which you are discussing, to make informed criticisms.

This is SDN. You don't get to bitch when someone knows more than you. If you were clearly ignorant of basic physics, someone here should not have to reproduce a physics textbook for you, it is incumbent upon you to do your fucking homework.

[Proletarian]

On the subject of the topic, I'd like to address something concerning Richard Wolff, who postures as the public face of the 'Marxist' "workplace democracy" movement.

I'm only familiar with the man through his YouTube presentations and not his books, so I can only comment on those. But from what I've seen, I am bothered by his generalizations of Marxism, and his inability to understand that there is nothing inherently anti-capitalist about worker's co-operatives.

Compare and contrast Marx and Richard Wolff, who openly advertises himself as a Marxist.

Wolff:

https://www.rdwolff.com/the_new_socialism

One emerging and promising new socialism for the 21st century focuses on worker co-ops. Socialism becomes the campaign to establish and build a sizable worker co-op sector within contemporary capitalism. In worker co-op enterprises, all workers are equal members of a democratically run production operation. They debate and decide what, how and where to produce and how to utilize the net revenues. Worker co-op enterprises exist alongside traditional capitalist enterprises. They are eligible for and must obtain tax considerations, subsidies and state supports comparable to what capitalist enterprises received throughout capitalism's history. Indeed, in their initial, emergent phase, worker co-ops deserve extra government support so that the worker co-op sector quickly achieves a significant role in the economy. Until that role is established, people will remain unable to evaluate, compare and weigh in on what mix of capitalist and worker co-op enterprises they wish for their society.

Marx wrote almost a direct rejoinder to this position in the Gothakritik.

Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the "socialist organization of the total labor" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, "calls into being". It is worthy of Lassalle's imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!

...

That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois.

I am genuine concerned that we may see a revitalization of a "Marxist" movement channeled into mere support for so-called 'market socialism', just as in the 20th century it was channeled into support for 'social democracy' or 'State capitalism' - all of which preserve generalized commodity production for exchange. I have no problem envisioning a scenario in which the most foreard-thinking capitalists voluntsrily surrender their positions in a 'revolutionary' act while leaving the surplus-extraction mechanisms of their enterprise in place, so as to preserve (and even strengthen) the system of commodity production.

Rather, I support the (admittedly, and necessarily more vague) ideas of labor abolitionism associated with left-communism broadly and Communization in particular. I believe this is has both more support textually in Marx and makes the most sense analyticallly.

[Darth Yan]

You are not debating in good faith. Your insistence I read everything is an attempt to either make me feel small or convert me.

I’ll leave you to your cultish devotion

A debate is by definition an attempt to convince someone of your point of view, it isn't bad faith. There is a century and a half of Marxist theory, analysis, and criticism that is forming the backbone of the discussion he's having with you. It is impossible to reproduce that here in this forum unless you are willing to do a bit of reading yourself. He's doing the best he can. But it's also pretty obvious that you aren't willing to learn about that which you are discussing, to make informed criticisms.

This is SDN. You don't get to bitch when someone knows more than you. If you were clearly ignorant of basic physics, someone here should not have to reproduce a physics textbook for you, it is incumbent upon you to do your fucking homework.

I read some of the article he linked. It was enough to show Prolateriat was clearly refusing to acknowledge subtext and reaching in order to justify conclusions. A simple look at history will show that EVERY attempt at putting communism in place on a wide scale has always ended in bloodshed.

Marxism requires blind faith that the government WON'T abuse it's power. Where the capitalist blindly heeds the free market the communist blindly heeds the government.

Prolateriat is an idiot trying to defend an ideology that has proven time and again that it's little more than a cult.

[Proletarian]

I may as well do nothing but throw block quotes at you in the hopes you will read them.

. A simple look at history will show that EVERY attempt at putting communism in place on a wide scale has always ended in bloodshed.

(Of course, I do not oppose bloodshed in revolution. Neither does any American who reveres their nation's history, for that matter. They certainly do not need to be megadeath events, however.)

While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism.

- Lenin on the end-goal of the Soviet economy

Marxism requires blind faith that the government WON'T abuse it's power. Where the capitalist blindly heeds the free market the communist blindly heeds the government.

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

- Marx on the State

Prolateriat is an idiot trying to defend an ideology that has proven time and again that it's little more than a cult.

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation. The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly “world-shattering" statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against “phrases.” They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world.

- Marx on ideology

[loomer]

You're not really being reasonable. You're a bully putting on an air of civility while saying that everything western and/or capitalistic must be bad, and a lot of other posters (loomer, Stas Bush, Gandalf) are also going along with it for their own personal reasons (Stas in particular is looking through rose colored glasses)

Hey, fuckface. Stop trying to invoke me as some kind of sinister enemy of the West. If I thought, as you keep alleging, that everything Western was bad, would I be a happy student of, theorist in, and reformer of the Western legal and philosophical tradition? Would I have an enormous love of the Cynics and Stoics and Epicureans, of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche? Would I delight in the works of Ignatius of Loyola and Mechthild, or study the works of Plotinus and his dubious sucessors? Would I delightedly go watch John Wick films, listen to rock and metal, and go to exhibitions of classical pieces of Western art? Would I love eating French cheese as well as Kangaroo?

Either shut the fuck up or challenge me to an actual debate, you gutless coward. I'm tired of stumbling on you trying to drag me when you think I'm not looking. How the hell do you think I'm going along with Proletarian's posts when I've been inactive the entire time he's been at it? Are you so fucking stupid that you think we're all sitting in some secret discord chat plotting the downfall of the West because some of us agree that colonialism was bad and capitalism has some big issues? Because - and here's a radical idea for you - we've all arrived at those views largely independently and we all go about our lives pretty well independently of each others.

Honestly, the fucking nerve of an ineffectual pissant like you trying to drag me because I can recognize more than a strict good/bad dualism...

[Alyrium Denryle]

You are not debating in good faith. Your insistence I read everything is an attempt to either make me feel small or convert me.

I’ll leave you to your cultish devotion

A debate is by definition an attempt to convince someone of your point of view, it isn't bad faith. There is a century and a half of Marxist theory, analysis, and criticism that is forming the backbone of the discussion he's having with you. It is impossible to reproduce that here in this forum unless you are willing to do a bit of reading yourself. He's doing the best he can. But it's also pretty obvious that you aren't willing to learn about that which you are discussing, to make informed criticisms.

This is SDN. You don't get to bitch when someone knows more than you. If you were clearly ignorant of basic physics, someone here should not have to reproduce a physics textbook for you, it is incumbent upon you to do your fucking homework.

I read some of the article he linked. It was enough to show Prolateriat was clearly refusing to acknowledge subtext and reaching in order to justify conclusions. A simple look at history will show that EVERY attempt at putting communism in place on a wide scale has always ended in bloodshed.

Marxism requires blind faith that the government WON'T abuse it's power. Where the capitalist blindly heeds the free market the communist blindly heeds the government.

Prolateriat is an idiot trying to defend an ideology that has proven time and again that it's little more than a cult.

Are you even aware of the attempts other than the USSR, North Korea, the PRC, and Vietnam? Because the Latin American examples all ended in bloodshed, they were just US-backed military coups on democratically elected leftist governments. Spain ended the same way, they were democratically elected and fought a civil war after a fascist coup attempt.

And then there is Portugal, right now, which is doing a slow transition. Their DemSoc party and their communist party are in an elected coalition right now and it's fine.

Are you seeing a theme here? Might it be that the history is more complicated than you think it is? That what we're actually dealing with isn't something inherent to Marxist and other Communist ideology but a combination of founder-effects, low-sample size, and historical contingency? Take Vietnam as an example. If they weren't fighting a civil war with a US-puppet state, they wouldn't have engaged in some of the shit they got up to. That's just what happens in a civil war, ideology has nothing to do with it, and the south vietnamese/US were every bit as bad. They would have won the election in 1956 by a landslide, and it would have been done. No muss, no fuss. Or at the very least, very little muss and fuss. But civil war gives totalitarian assholes an opening to do things like seize power from Ho Chi Minh.

There are communists, I'm one of them, Loomer is another, though we differ slightly in our ideology (I'm a Luxemburgist, he's an anarchist) who reject the concept of the highly centralized state. He prefers no state, I prefer a far more distributed one where the concentrations of power that permit gulags don't exist. When there is no Politburo, you cannot have a Stalin.

[Straha]

I read some of the article he linked. It was enough to show Prolateriat was clearly refusing to acknowledge subtext and reaching in order to justify conclusions.

It is an astounding monument to your cluelessness that you think 'I read some of the article' benefits you here.

Are you so fucking stupid that you think we're all sitting in some secret discord chat plotting the downfall of the West because some of us agree that colonialism was bad and capitalism has some big issues?

... did... did you not get an invite? If not, ix-nay on the iscordday.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well there is the SDN discord channel, but that's more general. I do have a private channel lying around...

[Admiral Valdemar]

Wait, there's a Discord for SDN?

Reminds me of the old IRC chats we had for The Other Place, back in t'day.

[madd0ct0r]

On the subject of the topic, I'd like to address something concerning Richard Wolff, who postures as the public face of the 'Marxist' "workplace democracy" movement.

I'm only familiar with the man through his YouTube presentations and not his books, so I can only comment on those. But from what I've seen, I am bothered by his generalizations of Marxism, and his inability to understand that there is nothing inherently anti-capitalist about worker's co-operatives.
...

I am genuine concerned that we may see a revitalization of a "Marxist" movement channeled into mere support for so-called 'market socialism', just as in the 20th century it was channeled into support for 'social democracy' or 'State capitalism' - all of which preserve generalized commodity production for exchange. I have no problem envisioning a scenario in which the most foreard-thinking capitalists voluntsrily surrender their positions in a 'revolutionary' act while leaving the surplus-extraction mechanisms of their enterprise in place, so as to preserve (and even strengthen) the system of commodity production.

Rather, I support the (admittedly, and necessarily more vague) ideas of labor abolitionism associated with left-communism broadly and Communization in particular. I believe this is has both more support textually in Marx and makes the most sense analyticallly.

I've been discussing this on and off elsewhere. I also work at an employeed owned (large) corp so it's something I'm invested in (hah).

I think you undersell worker-coops for two reasons.
1) they make the life of people at them better, and, through the market, they drive up the min standard offered elsewhere. Citations needed. More importantly, they do that right now. No need to wait for the revolution. You might be scared it's a diffusion of energy that delays your revolution indefinetly. In my experience, since the members aren't being run ragged and terrfied of arbitary replacement, they have time and energy to look at things outside their immediate role and work to better society through charity, political outreach or research. A cadre of people thinking about the long term makes long term progress much more likely.
2) they outcompete capital. Citation needed. This is in two things. One they don't return value to the classic holders of cpaital: shareholders, founding familys, venture capatilists. They do not enable the rich to get richer. As they slowly grow into the market, they take up space and gradually taper off that particualur regressive feedback loop in society. The second is again, long term. With no shareholders chasing the marginal % increase between two corps quartely report, the coop is able to plan for the long term. The market will always drive things to zero profit, max effeciency, zero redunancy. The coop is able to resist that pressure. This is not the same as ignoring it, but a certain degree of redundancy can be maintained, and a certain level of internal investment in training helps it compete. When the market condition/buissness cycle swings to bad weather, the coop endures and expands again as weather improves.

here is the only timeline of market share I could find. I'm not currently motiviated enough to try and piece together the background data to update it.


from https://www.richardpriestley.co.uk/wait ... ownership/

edit. iamge tags

[Proletarian]

I have nothing against co-operatives as such, though even a society in which the vast majority of production was arranged on co-operative lines could not be said to be not capitalist in any meaningful sense.

But they aren't non-capitalist institutions in themselves. This is why e.g. Ronald Reagan could endorse them:

https://youtu.be/rJFcpRxju2g

I can’t help but believe that in the future we will see in the United States and throughout the western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step, employee ownership. It is a path that befits a free people.

Walter Reuther was one of the first major labor leaders to advocate that management and labor shift away from battling over wage and benefit levels to a cooperative effort aimed at sharing in the ownership of the new wealth being produced. He was looking far beyond the next contract. There is a story that Reuther was touring a highly automated Ford Assembly Plant when someone said, Walter, you’re going to have a hard time collecting union dues from all these machines. Reuther simply shot back, not as hard a time as you’re going to have selling them cars.

Reuther was killed in a tragic place accident in 1970, so he did not live to see passage of legislation sponsored by Senator Russell Long of Louisiana that provides incentives for Employee Stock Ownership Plans, or ESOP’s.

In recent years, we have witnessed medium-sized and even some large corporations being purchased, in part or in whole, by their employees. Weirton Steel in West Virginia, Lowe’s Companies in North Carolina, The Milwaukee Journal, Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio, and many others are now manned by employees who are also owners.

The energy and vitality unleashed by this kind of People’s Capitalism-free and open markets, robust competition, and broad-based ownership of the means of production- can serve this nation well. It can also be a boon, if given a chance, to the people of the developing world. Nowhere is the potential for this greater than in Central America.

[Elheru Aran]

Wait, there's a Discord for SDN?

Reminds me of the old IRC chats we had for The Other Place, back in t'day.

Yeah, drop a line by Ace Pace, he'll set you up. Mind you, it's mostly Straha and Fenix shooting the shit and some guys like Ace, Dartzap, Bakustra, Phongn and every now and then me and a few others sticking their heads in, but it's not a bad place to waste a few hours.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Yeah, drop a line by Ace Pace, he'll set you up. Mind you, it's mostly Straha and Fenix shooting the shit and some guys like Ace, Dartzap, Bakustra, Phongn and every now and then me and a few others sticking their heads in, but it's not a bad place to waste a few hours.

Sounds positively divine. I may just poke my head in.

[Darth Yan]

You're not really being reasonable. You're a bully putting on an air of civility while saying that everything western and/or capitalistic must be bad, and a lot of other posters (loomer, Stas Bush, Gandalf) are also going along with it for their own personal reasons (Stas in particular is looking through rose colored glasses)

Hey, fuckface. Stop trying to invoke me as some kind of sinister enemy of the West. If I thought, as you keep alleging, that everything Western was bad, would I be a happy student of, theorist in, and reformer of the Western legal and philosophical tradition? Would I have an enormous love of the Cynics and Stoics and Epicureans, of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche? Would I delight in the works of Ignatius of Loyola and Mechthild, or study the works of Plotinus and his dubious sucessors? Would I delightedly go watch John Wick films, listen to rock and metal, and go to exhibitions of classical pieces of Western art? Would I love eating French cheese as well as Kangaroo?

Either shut the fuck up or challenge me to an actual debate, you gutless coward. I'm tired of stumbling on you trying to drag me when you think I'm not looking. How the hell do you think I'm going along with Proletarian's posts when I've been inactive the entire time he's been at it? Are you so fucking stupid that you think we're all sitting in some secret discord chat plotting the downfall of the West because some of us agree that colonialism was bad and capitalism has some big issues? Because - and here's a radical idea for you - we've all arrived at those views largely independently and we all go about our lives pretty well independently of each others.

Honestly, the fucking nerve of an ineffectual pissant like you trying to drag me because I can recognize more than a strict good/bad dualism...

Bitch please. I never said you were all “sitting in a discord chat plotting the downfall of western civilization”. I was saying that you and the others were intellectually bankrupt and seemed overly eager to play up bad elements of the west compared to bad elements of native cultures (which you never bring up unless pressed) (and no listing all those philosophers/other stuff doesn’t mean much.)


As a debator you’re basically that guy who puts on a reasonable air while saying anyone who disagrees is a simpleton. You tried to set asinine debate conditions (saying I couldn’t cite human nature or the long ass record of people being assholes), refused to even address other other points (I read the original decolonization thread. You either dodged broomsticks points completely or accused her of not answering when she did) and far from seeing shades of grey you EMBRACE black and white dualism.

You advocated dismembering the US while naively assuming that a.) most native Americans would go along with even though there’s debate within native tribes themselves of what they want b.) that all native Americans who DID go along with it had pure motives and weren’t motivated by greed or racism or that c.) most Americans would be willing to incorporate tribal values into their culture d.) that tribal governments would be fair and not just devolve into granting the small minority of native Americans all the power.

You went beyond saying capitalism has problems as well. So do Gandalf and Stas. They outright say capitalism has NO value and repeatedly ignore all the hardship that occured in communist regimes.

So no. Drop this intellectual air you’re putting on. You’re a pissant child who wants to implement utopian daydreams and when challenged you spout platitudes give plans that ignore human nature or call your opponent stupid

I may as well do nothing but throw block quotes at you in the hopes you will read them.

. A simple look at history will show that EVERY attempt at putting communism in place on a wide scale has always ended in bloodshed.

(Of course, I do not oppose bloodshed in revolution. Neither does any American who reveres their nation's history, for that matter. They certainly do not need to be megadeath events, however.)

While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism.

- Lenin on the end-goal of the Soviet economy

Marxism requires blind faith that the government WON'T abuse it's power. Where the capitalist blindly heeds the free market the communist blindly heeds the government.

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

- Marx on the State

Prolateriat is an idiot trying to defend an ideology that has proven time and again that it's little more than a cult.

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation. The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly “world-shattering" statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against “phrases.” They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world.

- Marx on ideology

An entire class of millions cannot directly control or oversee every minute decision. There will ALWAYS be a small class of leaders and they’ll always be open to influence. Marx was a genius in some ways but in others good god the man was an idiot.

Lenin May have copied elements of state capitalism but he saw himself as a communist and was working to that end. If he used state capitalism it was as a means to an end.

Pretty much all communist regimes either starved or murdered large chunks of their people, just like capitalism.

[Darth Yan]

You can like western philosophers art and pop culture, and still support downright idiotic ideologies like communism and Straha’s brand of decolonization (which despite his protests seems to have a view of America is Evil and must be dismembered.)

Communism is no better than capitalism at the end of the day.

[loomer]

You're not really being reasonable. You're a bully putting on an air of civility while saying that everything western and/or capitalistic must be bad, and a lot of other posters (loomer, Stas Bush, Gandalf) are also going along with it for their own personal reasons (Stas in particular is looking through rose colored glasses)

Hey, fuckface. Stop trying to invoke me as some kind of sinister enemy of the West. If I thought, as you keep alleging, that everything Western was bad, would I be a happy student of, theorist in, and reformer of the Western legal and philosophical tradition? Would I have an enormous love of the Cynics and Stoics and Epicureans, of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche? Would I delight in the works of Ignatius of Loyola and Mechthild, or study the works of Plotinus and his dubious sucessors? Would I delightedly go watch John Wick films, listen to rock and metal, and go to exhibitions of classical pieces of Western art? Would I love eating French cheese as well as Kangaroo?

Either shut the fuck up or challenge me to an actual debate, you gutless coward. I'm tired of stumbling on you trying to drag me when you think I'm not looking. How the hell do you think I'm going along with Proletarian's posts when I've been inactive the entire time he's been at it? Are you so fucking stupid that you think we're all sitting in some secret discord chat plotting the downfall of the West because some of us agree that colonialism was bad and capitalism has some big issues? Because - and here's a radical idea for you - we've all arrived at those views largely independently and we all go about our lives pretty well independently of each others.

Honestly, the fucking nerve of an ineffectual pissant like you trying to drag me because I can recognize more than a strict good/bad dualism...

Bitch please. I never said you were all “sitting in a discord chat plotting the downfall of western civilization”. I was saying that you and the others were intellectually bankrupt and seemed overly eager to play up bad elements of the west compared to bad elements of native cultures (which you never bring up unless pressed) (and no listing all those philosophers/other stuff doesn’t mean much.)


As a debator you’re basically that guy who puts on a reasonable air while saying anyone who disagrees is a simpleton. You tried to set asinine debate conditions (saying I couldn’t cite human nature or the long ass record of people being assholes), refused to even address other other points (I read the original decolonization thread. You either dodged broomsticks points completely or accused her of not answering when she did) and far from seeing shades of grey you EMBRACE black and white dualism.

You advocated dismembering the US while naively assuming that a.) most native Americans would go along with even though there’s debate within native tribes themselves of what they want b.) that all native Americans who DID go along with it had pure motives and weren’t motivated by greed or racism or that c.) most Americans would be willing to incorporate tribal values into their culture d.) that tribal governments would be fair and not just devolve into granting the small minority of native Americans all the power.

You went beyond saying capitalism has problems as well. So do Gandalf and Stas. They outright say capitalism has NO value and repeatedly ignore all the hardship that occured in communist regimes.

So no. Drop this intellectual air you’re putting on. You’re a pissant child who wants to implement utopian daydreams and when challenged you spout platitudes give plans that ignore human nature or call your opponent stupid

You really aren't very good at understanding what people have said, are you, fuckwit? Or, for that matter, at not constantly resurrecting dead arguments - or even understanding what was going on, since in that thread I consistently addressed points made and simply demanded others do the same. Since you seem to think I'm a black and white dualist who can't debate, let's debate it. We can either debate decolonization or this idea you have that I hate the West, which will be interesting to see you prove since I've probably spent far more of my life engaging with, critiquing, appreciating, and trying to protect and redeem the panoply of cultures and contexts that 'the West' denote than you have. It is, quite literally, my goddamn job - and it's a job I love.

And hey, in this debate you can even cite the long history of people being assholes and even make an argument to human nature - but you have to be willing to actually defend those two things. That's the problem with your appeals to human nature, Yan - you just go 'well, humans are...' but you don't provide the slightest skerrick of evidence, not a single study, not a single philosophical or rational argument to back it beyond 'sometimes people have acted like dickheads'. That's not an asinine condition: That's basic fucking debate, buddy. Likewise, if someone refuses to actually read and answer my posts, why would I be obligated to read and answer theirs? That too is not an asinine condition, but rather a principle of mutuality, which is a basic precondition for a debate to happen.

As for an intellectual air? I don't need to put one on, buddy. If you're getting one off my posts, maybe it's because I'm just plain better read and informed than you.

I'm going to be blunt with you: Either you man up and actually debate me, since you seem to think you're a superior mind, or you shut the fuck up and stop mentioning me, and if you don't, I'll start to consider it harassment and proceed accordingly. If, as you allege, I'm a pissant child who can only spout platitudes and call my opponents stupid, you should be able to handle me, right? You should be able to demonstrate how I hate the West or even that I have an anti-Western bias generally, or that the idea of decolonization via democratic reform and indigenization is utopian nonsense as you keep alleging, right?

Or are you a gutless fucking wonder who tries to drag me when I'm not looking, and can only flail about pathetically shitting yourself while bringing up a dead argument you lost - twice, crybaby pisspants - and complaining that basic principles of debate like 'actually justify your positions' and 'don't expect answers if you refuse to give any' are unfair and unjust to you and your little baby smoothbrain? Are you going to bring up that time a communist professor gave you a good mark again next?

[Gandalf]

You're not really being reasonable. You're a bully putting on an air of civility while saying that everything western and/or capitalistic must be bad, and a lot of other posters (loomer, Stas Bush, Gandalf) are also going along with it for their own personal reasons (Stas in particular is looking through rose colored glasses)

What are my personal reasons?

If I had to guess resentment over the crappy way indigenous Australians are treated by white Australians both in previous years and to a lesser extent today, and systemic racism still present in Australia. I could very well be wrong but from what I’ve seen of your posts it’s an educated guess. You also described how communists were some of the only ones showing solidarity with anti racists (which I suspect makes you more inclined to be sympathetic).

Nope. Try again.

[Darth Yan]

Hey, fuckface. Stop trying to invoke me as some kind of sinister enemy of the West. If I thought, as you keep alleging, that everything Western was bad, would I be a happy student of, theorist in, and reformer of the Western legal and philosophical tradition? Would I have an enormous love of the Cynics and Stoics and Epicureans, of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche? Would I delight in the works of Ignatius of Loyola and Mechthild, or study the works of Plotinus and his dubious sucessors? Would I delightedly go watch John Wick films, listen to rock and metal, and go to exhibitions of classical pieces of Western art? Would I love eating French cheese as well as Kangaroo?

Either shut the fuck up or challenge me to an actual debate, you gutless coward. I'm tired of stumbling on you trying to drag me when you think I'm not looking. How the hell do you think I'm going along with Proletarian's posts when I've been inactive the entire time he's been at it? Are you so fucking stupid that you think we're all sitting in some secret discord chat plotting the downfall of the West because some of us agree that colonialism was bad and capitalism has some big issues? Because - and here's a radical idea for you - we've all arrived at those views largely independently and we all go about our lives pretty well independently of each others.

Honestly, the fucking nerve of an ineffectual pissant like you trying to drag me because I can recognize more than a strict good/bad dualism...

Bitch please. I never said you were all “sitting in a discord chat plotting the downfall of western civilization”. I was saying that you and the others were intellectually bankrupt and seemed overly eager to play up bad elements of the west compared to bad elements of native cultures (which you never bring up unless pressed) (and no listing all those philosophers/other stuff doesn’t mean much.)


As a debator you’re basically that guy who puts on a reasonable air while saying anyone who disagrees is a simpleton. You tried to set asinine debate conditions (saying I couldn’t cite human nature or the long ass record of people being assholes), refused to even address other other points (I read the original decolonization thread. You either dodged broomsticks points completely or accused her of not answering when she did) and far from seeing shades of grey you EMBRACE black and white dualism.

You advocated dismembering the US while naively assuming that a.) most native Americans would go along with even though there’s debate within native tribes themselves of what they want b.) that all native Americans who DID go along with it had pure motives and weren’t motivated by greed or racism or that c.) most Americans would be willing to incorporate tribal values into their culture d.) that tribal governments would be fair and not just devolve into granting the small minority of native Americans all the power.

You went beyond saying capitalism has problems as well. So do Gandalf and Stas. They outright say capitalism has NO value and repeatedly ignore all the hardship that occured in communist regimes.

So no. Drop this intellectual air you’re putting on. You’re a pissant child who wants to implement utopian daydreams and when challenged you spout platitudes give plans that ignore human nature or call your opponent stupid

You really aren't very good at understanding what people have said, are you, fuckwit? Or, for that matter, at not constantly resurrecting dead arguments - or even understanding what was going on, since in that thread I consistently addressed points made and simply demanded others do the same. Since you seem to think I'm a black and white dualist who can't debate, let's debate it. We can either debate decolonization or this idea you have that I hate the West, which will be interesting to see you prove since I've probably spent far more of my life engaging with, critiquing, appreciating, and trying to protect and redeem the panoply of cultures and contexts that 'the West' denote than you have. It is, quite literally, my goddamn job - and it's a job I love.

And hey, in this debate you can even cite the long history of people being assholes and even make an argument to human nature - but you have to be willing to actually defend those two things. That's the problem with your appeals to human nature, Yan - you just go 'well, humans are...' but you don't provide the slightest skerrick of evidence, not a single study, not a single philosophical or rational argument to back it beyond 'sometimes people have acted like dickheads'. That's not an asinine condition: That's basic fucking debate, buddy. Likewise, if someone refuses to actually read and answer my posts, why would I be obligated to read and answer theirs? That too is not an asinine condition, but rather a principle of mutuality, which is a basic precondition for a debate to happen.

As for an intellectual air? I don't need to put one on, buddy. If you're getting one off my posts, maybe it's because I'm just plain better read and informed than you.

I'm going to be blunt with you: Either you man up and actually debate me, since you seem to think you're a superior mind, or you shut the fuck up and stop mentioning me, and if you don't, I'll start to consider it harassment and proceed accordingly. If, as you allege, I'm a pissant child who can only spout platitudes and call my opponents stupid, you should be able to handle me, right? You should be able to demonstrate how I hate the West or even that I have an anti-Western bias generally, or that the idea of decolonization via democratic reform and indigenization is utopian nonsense as you keep alleging, right?

Or are you a gutless fucking wonder who tries to drag me when I'm not looking, and can only flail about pathetically shitting yourself while bringing up a dead argument you lost - twice, crybaby pisspants - and complaining that basic principles of debate like 'actually justify your positions' and 'don't expect answers if you refuse to give any' are unfair and unjust to you and your little baby smoothbrain? Are you going to bring up that time a communist professor gave you a good mark again next?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=45QgF9Ha7kE

Broomstick answered your posts and you mostly claimed she didn’t because they weren’t answers YOU liked. You dismissed her even though she laid out VERY clearly why your arguments were dogshit; you did NOT consistently address her points.

So even if I did do the research you’d just make up an excuse to ignore it.

All I will say on Decolonization via democratic reform is that it is never going to happen unless the majority is the group who was colonized (South Africa) because In any system people are going to game it (which means that there will definitely be those native Americans who will try to stack it so they are the ones in control.) Add in that native Americans are divided on what they want (some want a lump sum, some are assimilating into the larger culture) in a population that’s already a drop in the pond and you’d have to be an idiot to think it has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever coming to fruition.

That is why you’re ideas are naive Utopianism. You have very little knowledge about the nuances and complexity of my country and yet you act so high and mighty as to say it must be dismembered.

[Darth Yan]

If humans could pull of indigenization it would be lovely. There are admirable parts of native cultures. But just as there are white people who won’t ever play ball so too are there native cultural aspects as bad as those Europe shat out

[loomer]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=45QgF9Ha7kE

Broomstick answered your posts and you mostly claimed she didn’t because they weren’t answers YOU liked. You dismissed her even though she laid out VERY clearly why your arguments were dogshit; you did NOT consistently address her points.

So even if I did do the research you’d just make up an excuse to ignore it.

All I will say on Decolonization via democratic reform is that it is never going to happen unless the majority is the group who was colonized (South Africa) because In any system people are going to game it (which means that there will definitely be those native Americans who will try to stack it so they are the ones in control.) Add in that native Americans are divided on what they want (some want a lump sum, some are assimilating into the larger culture) in a population that’s already a drop in the pond and you’d have to be an idiot to think it has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever coming to fruition.

That is why you’re ideas are naive Utopianism. You have very little knowledge about the nuances and complexity of my country and yet you act so high and mighty as to say it must be dismembered.

She expressly and explicitly stated she wasn't reading or replying to every post (to the point of asking me to provide links to those posts and ignoring them), fuckface - what part of that did you fail to comprehend? Try again.

Now either man up and agree to a debate or shut the fuck up. Which is it? Are you going to have the guts to actually agree to a debate, or are you going to keep sniping over a debate that's over until they get fed up with you violating the posting rules by constantly trying to score cheap rhetorical points by resurrecting dead threads and sniping at people who aren't involved in the current conversation? Because I'm about done with you trying to use my name as some kind of argument when you don't even have the balls, let alone the know-how or chops, to face me down properly.

[Darth Yan]

Nope. I’ve said my piece.

[loomer]

Nope. I’ve said my piece.

Oh, what a shock. Crybaby pisspants wants to use my name as a rhetorical tool but doesn't have the guts to accept a challenge to debate. Don't use my name again.

[Darth Yan]

Nope. I’ve said my piece.

Oh, what a shock. Crybaby pisspants wants to use my name as a rhetorical tool but doesn't have the guts to accept a challenge to debate. Don't use my name again.

No its that again I don’t trust you. I laid down my position and why I feel that way. I don’t feel the need to say anything else.

Far as I see it you’re never going to consider anything outside your own utopian fantasies. There’s no use arguing with you; if I really wanted to MAYBE I could do the research but why waste time when you’d ignore it?

Don’t get surprised when people object to your advocating the dismemberment of their country. Rule of thumb there.

[loomer]

Nope. I’ve said my piece.

Oh, what a shock. Crybaby pisspants wants to use my name as a rhetorical tool but doesn't have the guts to accept a challenge to debate. Don't use my name again.

No its that again I don’t trust you. I laid down my position and why I feel that way. I don’t feel the need to say anything else.

Far as I see it you’re never going to consider anything outside your own utopian fantasies. There’s no use arguing with you; if I really wanted to MAYBE I could do the research but why waste time when you’d ignore it?

Don’t get surprised when people object to your advocating the dismemberment of their country. Rule of thumb there.

I don't ignore people's research, fucknuts - I just demand they answer my posts before I engage with their long, rambling attempts to relitigate issues I already addressed. I can understand why a borderline illiterate like yourself would find that a difficult distinction to make, but one thing you'll find among us law types is we're actually rather focused on engaging with and considering difficult research that contradicts our own positions.

You either have the guts to face me in a debate - one where the debate rules would apply, so I'd have no choice but to engage with your 'research' so your whining little crybaby bullshit about how I'd ignore it wouldn't be a factor since I'd eat disciplinary actions if I did what you're whining about - or you don't. You don't, and that means you forfeit the right to talk shit. I'm right here willing and ready to take you on with either subject, subject to the formal rules of debate on this board and you aren't, so quit using my name as a rhetorical tool if you aren't willing to actually argue. Want the right to use my name as a rhetorical tool? Earn it.

[Straha]

Far as I see it you’re never going to consider anything outside your own utopian fantasies. There’s no use arguing with you; if I really wanted to MAYBE I could do the research but why waste time when you’d ignore it?

See, this is what interests me the most about your posts. You don't even hide your ignorance. You publicly state that you haven't read the material other people are citing in response to you, you haven't seriously engaged the material you post to support your own stances, and you admit that you haven't even seriously researched the fields that you claim to know about all while accusing other people of being dogmatically hewn to their own positions (unnecessary explanation solely for your own benefit: all while you never even question your own ideological convictions).

I'm just astounded by the lack of self-reflection here. To be blunt, this isn't a content question. While the content of your posts is objectively abysmal and your lack of comprehension and responsiveness noteworthy, this is purely a question of character. Even in this thread where everyone else is in agreement that you're being an asswipe you keep doubling down and trying to flex on people who are leagues ahead of you on every front. I just don't get how dense you have to be to act like this. I suppose the question is: What would it take for you to get your head out of your own ass and realize what's going on?

In a weird way, it's almost refreshing though. You're like one of the 16 year olds who used to post on this board in the '05 - '07 era, trapped in the amber. Proof that some things will never change, no matter how much we want them to, and also a refreshing yardstick for how much other people on this board have improved.