The Great Reset

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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Rogue 9 »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 09:10pm
Rogue 9 wrote: 2022-12-25 09:07pm I realize they're not proposing Communism. I'm saying what they're proposing has the same structural flaw.
Haha, this is just capitalism my man. That's my point. The experience of humanity in the 19th and 20th centuries so far has been that of early, progressive capitalism. This is what comes next (and has been occurring, as I've shown, for decades in America). Communism does indeed come next (actual, workable Communism) as a product of this and the revolution it must inevitably compel.
The answer for this is, naturally, fully enfranchised and engaged democracy because Communist revolution as a cure is as we have seen throughout the 20th century worse than the disease. Capitalists are ultimately less powerful than the government. An informed and engaged public can elect representatives so as to avoid regulatory capture, and this bullfuckery stops. Getting there isn't easy, but Communist revolution is oh, so much worse.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Straha »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 09:10pm
Rogue 9 wrote: 2022-12-25 09:07pm I realize they're not proposing Communism. I'm saying what they're proposing has the same structural flaw.
Haha, this is just capitalism my man. That's my point. The experience of humanity in the 19th and 20th centuries so far has been that of early, progressive capitalism. This is what comes next (and has been occurring, as I've shown, for decades in America). Communism does indeed come next (actual, workable Communism) as a product of this and the revolution it must inevitably compel.
It does not inevitably compel a revolution or, at least, not a communist one. Especially in a post-Atomic and biopolitical paradigm shift where it is now easier and cheaper to kill to maintain authority than it is propogate and protect life. If you want to read deeper into this I suggest Agamben's Homo Sacer, State of Exception, and Stasis.

This, again, is the underpants gnome stuff. You declare "The working class shall revolt!" without understanding that the working class, as much as it can be understood as an entity, is complicated and complex in its understanding of itself and its desires. The working class has in the past, is now, and will will in the future gladly align against its own interests for all sorts of reasons ranging from the great to the insignificant. The American Working class's positioning of itself as an imperial center, its still unaddressed racial origins, and its complicated relationship all complicate and trouble this narrative (to say nothing of the lack of education.) To say nothing of a lack of basic education on politics of this sort and, in many cases, a cooptation of the most powerful tools of the working class (Unions, notably) into anti-revolutionary tools, see: the History of American Organized Labor post-World War I.
Last edited by Straha on 2022-12-25 09:28pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Great Reset

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Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 09:15pm Fair enough.

So, yeah. This is the realization of Marxist theory in full. I don't say it occurs in our time - there won't be a global revolution this century. I don't say it will occur even next century. I do say this is unavoidable, intrinsic to the system, will result in immense human suffering, and cannot be stopped. After it occurs, the only logical solution will be to do unto this class as it has done unto humanity.
And you claim to be a Marxist.

You are interpreting the world! Believing it occurs inside a neat eschatological frame, with victory assured. This is no different than the Christian dogmatically believing in the second coming to alleviate all woes or the vulgar believer in Fukuyama who thinks "We have found where Hegel ends. Anything from here is but a road bump on a long and straight interstate!"

The point is to CHANGE the world. Not to believe in the change that is coming.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Rogue 9 wrote: 2022-12-25 09:17pm
Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 09:10pm
Rogue 9 wrote: 2022-12-25 09:07pm I realize they're not proposing Communism. I'm saying what they're proposing has the same structural flaw.
Haha, this is just capitalism my man. That's my point. The experience of humanity in the 19th and 20th centuries so far has been that of early, progressive capitalism. This is what comes next (and has been occurring, as I've shown, for decades in America). Communism does indeed come next (actual, workable Communism) as a product of this and the revolution it must inevitably compel.
The answer for this is, naturally, fully enfranchised and engaged democracy because Communist revolution as a cure is as we have seen throughout the 20th century worse than the disease. Capitalists are ultimately less powerful than the government. An informed and engaged public can elect representatives so as to avoid regulatory capture, and this bullfuckery stops. Getting there isn't easy, but Communist revolution is oh, so much worse.
The secret is of course that what occurred in the 20th century wasn't a Communist revolution. Or rather, it wasn't what Marx was talking about, and it's something he argued shouldn't occur. I'll try to keep the quotations more succinct this time.

https://redsails.org/marx-on-bakunin/
A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people... Balunin wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level
You have to have sufficient capitalist development to get to the point of capitalist immiseration - while Tzarist Russia was a miserable place, it wasn't caused by capitalism extracting property from the workers. Marx thought it could be possible that a Russian revolution presaged a general European revolution, but in no way could Russia be the lynchpin of the thing, nor could the peasant societies of East Asia.

You have to have a future in which humanity is basically living out Mega-City One to get here. Fully enfranchised democracy will not stop or even substantially mitigate this phenomenon.

Government intervention in the economy won't solve this. It helps accelerate it through regulatory capture, crowding out small businesses through licensing restrictions, etc. The State is part of this total system.
Especially in a post-Atomic and biopolitical paradigm shift where it is now easier and cheaper to kill to maintain authority than it is propogate and protect life. If you want to read deeper into this I suggest Agamben's Homo Sacer, State of Exception, and Stasis.
I've read Agamben, and I've read Carl Schmitt and Foucault too. I understand the state of exception, homo sacer, etc, biopower an an instrumentality of class rule, etc.I understand that the coming revolution will not resemble little men lined up in Napoleonic battle formation like February or a coup like Octoberw.
To say nothing of a lack of basic education on politics of this sort and, in many cases, a cooptation of the most powerful tools of the working class (Unions, notably) into anti-revolutionary tools, see: the History of American Organized Labor post-World War I.
Absolutely, unions are worthless to the working class for any meaningful development. Paul Mattick, the American council communist, is recommended reading here.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattic ... /lebel.htm
Of course, with capitalism still in the saddle, the old labour organisations, parliamentary parties and trade unions, could also be maintained. But they are already recognised, and recognise themselves, as part and parcel of capitalism, destined to go down with the system on which their existence depends. Long before it became an obvious fact, it was clear to Pannekoek that the old labour movement was a historical product of the rising capitalism, bound to this particular stage of development, wherein the question of revolution and socialism could only be raised but not answered. At such a time, these labour organisations were destined to degenerate into tools of capitalism.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Ralin »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 07:17pm
But of course they can't fight it. Fighting it would take... an international movement (conservatives do not accept internationalism)
Going to single this out here. Recent years show that right-wingers/fascists have been vastly more successful at creating successful international movements than anyone on the left. You might say it's one of the great ironies of the 21st century.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Ralin wrote: 2022-12-26 12:27am
Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 07:17pm
But of course they can't fight it. Fighting it would take... an international movement (conservatives do not accept internationalism)
Going to single this out here. Recent years show that right-wingers/fascists have been vastly more successful at creating successful international movements than anyone on the left. You might say it's one of the great ironies of the 21st century.
Right-wing workers (and small business owners) can't achieve particularly meaningful goals, however. They can't organize an international movement against capitalism. Do stop the Great Reset, you have to take property off the class doing it, which means you have to get rid of your own property in doing so.

As an example, let's look at the recent trucker strikes. Sure, they were organized "internationally" against the system of Covid restrictions... But they couldn't actually stop the regime or meaningfully bring it down. Was it a kind of internationalism? Certainly. But it was necessarily ineffective because it was incapable of challenging the logic of capitalism.

I will note something, however. Here's something Marx wrote about the revolutionary movement he thought would come in the future.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... 1/ch28.htm
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the “natural laws of production,” i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves.
The bolded part is the relevant quote here - "The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature."

What this implies, to me, is that the revolutionary working class Marx envisages is not necessarily leftist ("left" and "right" originates in the French Revolution, with antecedents in Roman history, and dies with the social order that Revolution helped to create). It is internally "conservative", identifies itself with the process of production, and does not understand why this system of production which it takes as a natural and eternal truth no longer properly functions. In the feudal epoch, you saw anti-feudal protesters attacking the lords of the land in the name of the King. That logic probably applies here.

For this reason revolution shouldn't be conceived as a leftist project tied to the party-political Left, whether the official Left (Labour, Democrats, SPD) or the " Marxist" Left. It has to be located in this conservative working class itself.
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Re: The Great Reset

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I'm confused here. If you are a Marxist, why are you so uncritically spewing propaganda from the World Economic Forum? Typically, Marxist revolutionaries are the type to target thise kinds of rich pricks in order to redistribute their wealth by force, possibly French revolution style if they're following the classical model laid out by the man himself. That's why there is no Tzar any more, all of his family were shot when the Soviets took over. All of them. Lenin decided they couldn't take chances. Shouldn't you be a bit more skeptical of the motives behind the message these people are espousing? Or even the message itself? Because to lower class people, they hear "you will own nothing and still be happy" as "YOU will own nothing. We will own everything because we're already halfway there and if we control the message, you won't get any ideas of hanging the lot of us from trees".

I mean, I believe in a lot of Marxist stuff, but to make an analogy, I'm also a fan of Gerrard O'Neil's ideas of colonizing space and hope that we will do that at some point, but whenever I hear Jeff Bezos parrot those same ideas, I have to pause to wonder what his angle is. Like, he says its about offloading manufacturing to space, which is neat, but considering what its like to work for Amazon, I can't help but feel that putting him in charge of colonizing space will lead to the colonists becoming like the Belters in The Expanse. If the super rich are already exploiting the rest of us, any time they propose radical changes to society, we have to wonder how they are looking to exploit us worse after the change.
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Re: The Great Reset

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Formless wrote: 2022-12-26 01:00am I'm confused here. If you are a Marxist, why are you so uncritically spewing propaganda from the World Economic Forum? Typically, Marxist revolutionaries are the type to target thise kinds of rich pricks in order to redistribute their wealth by force, possibly French revolution style if they're following the classical model laid out by the man himself. That's why there is no Tzar any more, all of his family were shot when the Soviets took over. All of them. Lenin decided they couldn't take chances. Shouldn't you be a bit more skeptical of the motives behind the message these people are espousing? Or even the message itself? Because to lower class people, they hear "you will own nothing and still be happy" as "YOU will own nothing. We will own everything because we're already halfway there and if we control the message, you won't get any ideas of hanging the lot of us from trees".

I mean, I believe in a lot of Marxist stuff, but to make an analogy, I'm also a fan of Gerrard O'Neil's ideas of colonizing space and hope that we will do that at some point, but whenever I hear Jeff Bezos parrot those same ideas, I have to pause to wonder what his angle is. Like, he says its about offloading manufacturing to space, which is neat, but considering what its like to work for Amazon, I can't help but feel that putting him in charge of colonizing space will lead to the colonists becoming like the Belters in The Expanse. If the super rich are already exploiting the rest of us, any time they propose radical changes to society, we have to wonder how they are looking to exploit us worse after the change.
I'm not endorsing it as a Good Thing. This is what Lady Tevar thought also. I am saying that this movement validates the basic Marxist thesis: that capitalism must strip property from the workers. And the workers are absolutely correct to hear " YOU will own nothing ". That's 100% what this is. That is absolutely what I'm saying. What the World Economic Forum means is " you will own nothing, we (or our class - this isn't localized to the WEF) will own everything ". That's absolutely what this is, and it's been occurring for some time now - it is just unrecognized, because you literally cannot resist it with the tools allowed you by the system: strict historical materialist analyses of phenomenon in society is excluded from the discourse.

I am, again, not saying that I want the Great Reset - property for the bourgeoisie, propertylessness for the overwhelming mass of humanity. I want Communism - propertylessness for all humans, mutual care and production from all humans. And the Great Reset is a radically destructive phase of capitalist society which will result in Communism when its conditions become intolerable. This is the Marxist thesis.
This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development...
What it means is that history has absolutely not reached its End. And that the Marxist theory of history is vindicated. And that the precondition for world working class revolution is, as we speak, in formation. You will almost certainly not live to see that revolution, but you can understand where it is headed,wither it is tending. Taking property from the workers (and the small businessmen) absolutely implies, in the future, that the workers will either relieve the capitalists of their property or perish. What it is is the birth pang of a new social order within the womb of the old, and this process may last decades, more probably centuries, but we are underway now.
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Re: The Great Reset

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Marxism doesn't need to be validated. Its already been validated, at least the parts that describe society and how capitalism works in practice. Its literally in my sociology 101 textbook. He's literally considered one of the three founders of the entire field. That's how influential his socio-economic theories are. And frankly, your posts read like a sociology 101 student's. You haven't gotten deeper into the subject to learn about the third school of sociology, which is critical to understanding soft power like mass media and social conformity.

The other problem is that I don't see a movement out there working towards revolution, so I have no idea what you are talking about. It sounds almost cultish coming from you. All I see in my daily life are assholes wearing MAGA hats and people complaining that my state is about to start charging people at retail for the plastic/paper bags because that's never been done-- and most of the complainers absolutely make it out to be a "them democrats are stealing muh freedoms!" kind of thing. Seriously. We might be headed towards a revolt of some sort in this country, but it sure as hell ain't a Socialist revolution. Marxism can't be stagnant and ought to give up on the idea that there will ever be an "end of history". You can't have an old school Soviet takeover in a globalized world. It just doesn't work like that anymore. Marx was writing in the 19'th century when it maybe would have had a chance, but even he had a blind spot to colonialism and its effects. He never predicted that the revolution would happen in Russia because it wasn't industrialized, he thought it might happen in France or Britain, maybe some parts of the States. But the Soviets modified his philosophy explicitly and had a revolution there anyway. That's the problem with trying to predict the future. Even if your description of social systems is spot on, you still have to account for human behavior and politics, and that's never been reliable.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Straha »

So, I know you edited in your reply to me, but a note that it's helpful to actually keep replies to two different people separate. It keeps the conversations relatively compartmentalized, doesn't cross flows, and these days it sends a handy notification to the person you're replying to.

I know you're new here (how the hell did you find the board?), but there's a way this works here and there's two decades of built up norms. If you want to be taken seriously you have to at the very least try to not flout all of them.


Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-25 09:28pm
Especially in a post-Atomic and biopolitical paradigm shift where it is now easier and cheaper to kill to maintain authority than it is propogate and protect life. If you want to read deeper into this I suggest Agamben's Homo Sacer, State of Exception, and Stasis.
I've read Agamben, and I've read Carl Schmitt and Foucault too. I understand the state of exception, homo sacer, etc, biopower an an instrumentality of class rule, etc.I understand that the coming revolution will not resemble little men lined up in Napoleonic battle formation like February or a coup like Octoberw.
You may have read Agamben and Foucault but have you learned from them? Have you applied their lessons to what you're spouting now? Because just taking away "This will not be a 18th century revolution!" is neither what they say nor a useful takeaway.
To say nothing of a lack of basic education on politics of this sort and, in many cases, a cooptation of the most powerful tools of the working class (Unions, notably) into anti-revolutionary tools, see: the History of American Organized Labor post-World War I.
Absolutely, unions are worthless to the working class for any meaningful development. Paul Mattick, the American council communist, is recommended reading here.
>snip<
Some notes:

1. You see how you did the thing? The thing I told you not to do and how to avoid both by engaging in a very poorly formatted quote and by not making an argument and instead just hoping someone will basically become a de facto member of your book club? If you want engagement and discussion learn to engage and discuss as is done here, don't just shit everywhere and expect to be taken seriously.

2. You have this habit of trying to claim faith in the working class and then discounting anything that they do as not being properly of the working class. I hate to break it to you but the AFL, CIO, and other unions are definitely representations of working class desires and interests. Were they killed and coopted? Sure. But that they were done so doesn't mean that the members of the working class weren't in the driver's seat of that process the entire time.

There's a sort of perverse double-bind to what you're espousing here. Either you really do truly believe in an almost eschatological end of labor through this process at some time decades or centuries in the future through a Panglossian ideological commitment, in which case you are, and I mean this seriously, a counter-revolutionary of the worst sort who is willing to sell out everything that matters in terms of recognizing and mobilizing struggle in the present into your conviction that it'll all be okay in the future. Alternatively you really do believe that there is really a tiny nugget of the working class that can be trusted to do what is right, in which case I hate to break it to you but you're de facto just another schismatic splitter creating a new de facto vanguard in all but name while furiously denying it.

I'm not going to dwell too deep on Mattick. (As a dues paying Wobbly I am not... unsympathetic? to his vision of the world, nor his writings.) But it's important to note that his vision of past examples of what worked failued utterly, even in his own description of it. And if you have nothing to offer or add other than "One day it will work!" then you're spouting nonsense pablum that's not worth engaging with.

3. Re: Your constant pointing of people to outside sources in hopes that this will deflect from criticism of both your ideas and presentation of them, to put the shoe on the other foot for a moment: I encourage you to read Mao's essay Oppose Book Worship.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Formless wrote: 2022-12-26 01:39am Marxism doesn't need to be validated. Its already been validated, at least the parts that describe society and how capitalism works in practice. Its literally in my sociology 101 textbook. He's literally considered one of the three founders of the entire field. That's how influential his socio-economic theories are. And frankly, your posts read like a sociology 101 student's. You haven't gotten deeper into the subject to learn about the third school of sociology, which is critical to understanding soft power like mass media and social conformity.
I've read pretty much everything there is to read on the subject. But to go down the line:
The other problem is that I don't see a movement out there working towards revolution, so I have no idea what you are talking about
At the moment, no. But would you recognize it when it comes? Because the "real movement that abolishes the present state of things" won't be party-political. It probably starts in informal workers' groups - not unions, but small worker's councils responding to immediate crises.
. It sounds almost cultish coming from you. All I see in my daily life are assholes wearing MAGA hats and people complaining that my state is about to start charging people at retail for the plastic/paper bags because that's never been done-- and most of the complainers absolutely make it out to be a "them democrats are stealing muh freedoms!" kind of thing. Seriously. We might be headed towards a revolt of some sort in this country, but it sure as hell ain't a Socialist revolution.
Yes, we're absolutely about to pass through a massive reactionary phase. This is in response however to these same issues inherent to capitalism.

.
Mrxism can't be stagnant and ought to give up on the idea that there will ever be an "end of history".
Marx never said that there is an end to history. He said that the end of capitalism is the start of self-directed human history.

htps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/185 ... reface.htm

The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

You can't have an old school Soviet takeover in a globalized world. It just doesn't work like that anymore.
You can only have a world revolution - not a nation-state style Soviet takeover, but a revolution from below - in a globalized world.
Marx was writing in the 19'th century when it maybe would have had a chance, but even he had a blind spot to colonialism and its effects.
Marx writes extensively about colonialism.


https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardca ... ialism.htm
In recent years there has been a steady flow of English language re-issues of and commentaries on the works of Marx and Engels. This new work, edited by Shlomo Avineri, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, covers a range not attempted before in a single volume. About 400 pages consist of articles by Marx (including some written by Engels at Marx's request) on China, India, the Middle East and North Africa, preceded by excerpts from The Poverty of Philosophy, the Communist Manifesto, The Critique of Political Economy, and Capital, and followed by some relevant letters written by Marx and Engels.
He never predicted that the revolution would happen in Russia because it wasn't industrialized
He knew it could happen in Russia. He simply thought it was a poor idea if the collective farms there - the mir/obschina - were dissolved by marker forces, as they were after the Stolypin reforms of 1905/06.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... 20February.
The ‘historical inevitability’ of this course is therefore expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe. The reason for this restriction is indicated in Ch. XXXII: ‘Private property, founded upon personal labour ... is supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on exploitation of the labour of others, on wage­labour.’ (loc. cit., p. 340).

In the Western case, then, one form of private property is transformed into another form of private property. In the case of the Russian peasants, however, their communal property would have to be transformed into private property.

The analysis in Capital therefore provides no reasons either for or against the vitality of the Russian commune. But the special study I have made of it, including a search for original source­ material, has convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. But in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development.
he thought it might happen in France or Britain, maybe some parts of the States. But the Soviets modified his philosophy explicitly and had a revolution there anyway. That's the problem with trying to predict the future. Even if your description of social systems is spot on, you still have to account for human behavior and politics, and that's never been reliable.
Again, he allowed for the possibility. He simply thought it was a bad idea without the pre-existing communal farms, which Stalin's collectivizations were an attempt to create.
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Re: The Great Reset

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Re: The Great Reset

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Jebus fuck it's like staring at a trainwreck.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Formless »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-26 01:52am
The other problem is that I don't see a movement out there working towards revolution, so I have no idea what you are talking about
At the moment, no.
Then what the fuck are you blathering about? You cannot claim we are about to pass through any kind of phase if there is no social movement in that direction! Nothing else you have said matters! You are wasting everyone's time and mental capacity to deal with the mentally deranged by writing all that crap.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Let me focus on this, as it seems to be the crux of your objections here:

Straha wrote: 2022-12-26 01:48am2. You have this habit of trying to claim faith in the working class and then discounting anything that they do as not being properly of the working class. I hate to break it to you but the AFL, CIO, and other unions are definitely representations of working class desires and interests. Were they killed and coopted? Sure. But that they were done so doesn't mean that the members of the working class weren't in the driver's seat of that process the entire time.

There's a sort of perverse double-bind to what you're espousing here. Either you really do truly believe in an almost eschatological end of labor through this process at some time decades or centuries in the future through a Panglossian ideological commitment, in which case you are, and I mean this seriously, a counter-revolutionary of the worst sort who is willing to sell out everything that matters in terms of recognizing and mobilizing struggle in the present into your conviction that it'll all be okay in the future. Alternatively you really do believe that there is really a tiny nugget of the working class that can be trusted to do what is right, in which case I hate to break it to you but you're de facto just another schismatic splitter creating a new de facto vanguard in all but name while furiously denying it.
Nope. What I think will happen is that conditions are going to grow so dire that the working class at the time will have to revolt. It doesn't matter what they want now or even in the moment. Again I'm going to do that thing you hate and quote Marx:
When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods.
In other words, workers can absolutely be shitty people.
Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need — the practical expression of necessity — is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life... It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today.
In other words, they'll *have to do it at some point or another, because conditions n will not allow them to do anything else*.

You have to extrapolate from what exists to attempt to see where we are going. What is emerging, as you implied in your mention of Agamben, is a system of social control predicated on bio politics: security systems using biometric data to monitor the whole population, credit scores tied into employability, etc. One might even be skeptical of universal health care because it can be used as a system of social control. These are the conditions which will exist in the future, and will necessitate forms of organization completely different from the traditional workers' parties in the 20th century.

The movement is produced by the circumstance. You are currently seeing a big push for traditional unions for example in the United States, which isn't going to work but which might lead to further radicalization when it's seen how awful the unions actually are.
Last edited by Mastr Blastr on 2022-12-26 02:12am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Straha »

You truly are an empty vessel, sounding a hollow noise with no content.

I wish you a better life, and improved, life.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Straha wrote: 2022-12-26 02:09am You truly are an empty vessel, sounding a hollow noise with no content.

I wish you a better life, and improved, life.
Lmao, what?
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Formless »

He's bowing out because he considers you too sophomoric to debate with, and your posting style too frustrating to read. That should have been obvious.
"Still, I would love to see human beings, and their constituent organ systems, trivialized and commercialized to the same extent as damn iPods and other crappy consumer products. It would be absolutely horrific, yet so wonderful." — Shroom Man 777
"To Err is Human; to Arrr is Pirate." — Skallagrim
“I would suggest "Schmuckulating", which is what Futurists do and, by extension, what they are." — Commenter "Rayneau"
The Magic Eight Ball Conspiracy.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Formless wrote: 2022-12-26 02:13am He's bowing out because he considers you too sophomoric to debate with, and your posting style too frustrating to read. That should have been obvious.
Right, but he's literally not doing anything to debate me in particular. I'm not even sure if he understands my position, which is:

1. This Great Reset is happening
2. It probably can't be stopped on the basis of present conditions
3. It will necessitate revolt in the future, but circumstances aren't bad enough for it yet.
4. It confirms Marx's predictions for a future revolutionary situation.

That's all. It could result in the destruction of all human life, absolutely. I'm sure nukes would be used. That doesn't mean I'm wrong about what's happening. I'm not happy it's happening. I'm not cheerleading it. But the logic follows.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Formless »

What makes you sophomoric is that every single premise of yours is without evidence, and when challenged by multiple people to demonstrate even premise 1, you just repost the same shit over and over again in lieu of meeting the challenge. The closest you come... is admitting that I'm right, and there is no Marxist movement in this country at the moment to respond to our current economic challenges. And frankly, if you are trying to argue that MAGA counts, everyone in this room will laugh in your face.
"Still, I would love to see human beings, and their constituent organ systems, trivialized and commercialized to the same extent as damn iPods and other crappy consumer products. It would be absolutely horrific, yet so wonderful." — Shroom Man 777
"To Err is Human; to Arrr is Pirate." — Skallagrim
“I would suggest "Schmuckulating", which is what Futurists do and, by extension, what they are." — Commenter "Rayneau"
The Magic Eight Ball Conspiracy.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by Mastr Blastr »

Formless wrote: 2022-12-26 02:27am What makes you sophomoric is that every single premise of yours is without evidence
I've provided, uh, A shitton of evidence?

These are the facts:

1. A Great Reset has been proposed that professes to aim to do away with property for most people. Nobody is foolish enough to believe it will do away with property for the wealthy.

2. Economic data going back decades shows that this has been occurring for a long time: housing statistics, small business ownership, small farm ownership, all of it has been declining for some time.

Nobody disputes these facts. Here's another fact.

3. This tallies almost perfectly with Marx's description of late capitalist society - though he never uses this terminology - or of a fully mature capitalism inching towards revolution.

All that I have been posting so far has been to demonstrate these basic facts.

Fact 1 is established with the, uh, actual declaration of the Great Reset.

Fact 2 is established via the charts I posted in the OP.

Fact 3 is established via the texts from Marx.
d when challenged by multiple people to demonstrate even premise 1, you just repost the same shit over and over again in lieu of meeting the challenge. The closest you come... is admitting that I'm right, and there is no Marxist movement in this country at the moment to respond to our current economic challenges. And frankly, if you are trying to argue that MAGA counts, everyone in this room will laugh in your face.
I know there's no organized, disciplined Marxist movement at the moment. I've never said otherwise. What I have said is that these are the conditions which will produce such a movement. It won't be today. It won't be tomorrow, or next year, or this decade. But it seems likely that it will occur, given the three premises I outlined above.

I'm not saying that 2023 will be the year of the revolution. Absolutely not. What I'm saying is that we are heading in a direction amenable to revolutionary conditions. Yes, we likely will pass through fascism, as people conditioned to punch down in society do so as the people above them finish picking their pockets. But this van only go so far.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by loomer »

Well, you haven't actually established #2 properly. You've posted a scattering of poorly sourced charts that don't really establish a link to #1, and you haven't really engaged with any kind of rigorous critique or analysis of that data or even the reams of writing on the Reset concept and its associated offspring like degrowth economics.

To boot, any analysis of the environmental and climate constraints is utterly lacking in your posts, which added with your somewhat byzantine style and approach to Marxism of 'Well, Marx said, so' (by which you've alienated posters rather sympathetic to Marxist critiques) makes it all come off as somewhat... Well, pointless.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by LadyTevar »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-26 01:05am
I'm not endorsing it as a Good Thing. This is what Lady Tevar thought also.
And if more than one person is seeing your Argument as "He's Endorsing It", then you are doing a Piss Poor Job of explaining your position, which is what I was calling you out on before.

Perhaps if you weren't posting massive image drops you'd be making more sense and be more clear about your intent.
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by LadyTevar »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-26 02:10am
Straha wrote: 2022-12-26 02:09am You truly are an empty vessel, sounding a hollow noise with no content.

I wish you a better life, and improved, life.
Lmao, what?
He's saying you're an idiot and a broken record regurgitating the same thing over and over. In short -- you're not worth his time or effort to educate.
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Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
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Re: The Great Reset

Post by LadyTevar »

Mastr Blastr wrote: 2022-12-26 02:16am
Formless wrote: 2022-12-26 02:13am He's bowing out because he considers you too sophomoric to debate with, and your posting style too frustrating to read. That should have been obvious.
Right, but he's literally not doing anything to debate me in particular. I'm not even sure if he understands my position, which is:

1. This Great Reset is happening
Ok. PROVE IT.

Because in your very next post you say this:
Mastr Blastr wrote:1. A Great Reset has been proposed that professes to aim to do away with property for most people. Nobody is foolish enough to believe it will do away with property for the wealthy.
Which is TOTALLY OPPOSITE of "THIS IS HAPPENING"

It's bee PROPOSED. It's a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. And you have YET to prove it's more than just deranged rambling.

So why the fuck are you arguing for it, because despite what you THINK you're saying, every single post you've made has made you sound not only FOR the Great Reset, but damn near happy to see it happening.

NOW. Start doing more than posting links, and actually ADDRESS those people asking questions, or I will be locking this thread as a Waste of Time, as per the Rules Official Board Policies.

In other words -- PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
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Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
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