/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Until and unless, commies effectively demonstrate why socdem is bad, it's over for the movement.

>>1770800
Try going on welfare or get UHC and still tell me socdem is good

>>1770791
>/siberia/ shit
Stay in your containment thread. Please.
Sage & Report.

Are you not tired making essentially same troll treads cosntantly? Do you not have anything better to do with your life or something?

>>1770800
How about you read a fucking book dipshit. Rosa Luxemburg explained thoroughly the misguidedness of social democracy and the German revolution literally failed because socdems sided with fascists over communists.

>>1770835
Not a troll thread and shit like this proves my point
Like I said, you can't take a lick of criticism
A lot of us actually do have a victim complex and it needs to fucking end
Were you bombed by the US? Did you lose your job in the Red Scare? No? Then stop whining and pretending like you're beyond reproach.

>>1770791
This is why the whole "dirtbag left" thing in english-speaking countries, while short-lived, was kind of a step in the right direction.

Communists know that branding is a bunch of horseshit, but the sad fact is that it's how people get introduced to politics. And the unfortunate fact is that apart from the dirtbags, the left's public image in the anglophonic world is being held hostage by a confluence of impotent status-quo defenders simping for rotting political parties and a vocal minority radlib scolds and puriteen freaks who get boosted by the algorithm. You want the working class to give a shit about what we say? Step number one is start calling the status quo and these puritanical weirdos out visibly and in public. Don't hide who you are, make it clear to anyone watching that.

But the most important part is don't become them. And a lot of people here have already made that mistake.

Just look at the recent threads and some of the most notorious anons on here:

>weirdo third-worldists crashing threads screaming "YOU ALL DESERVE TO DIE"
>white boy orientalists treating China like the family from Get Out
>/ISG/ schizos
>aesthetics-obsessed patsoc larpers

A bunch of you already failed that test. Get it through your head that:

1. Nobody likes being fucking scolded and told they deserve to die for circumstances of their birth they have no control over
2. Shut the fuck up about aesthetics and let people enjoy whatever inconsequential taste in art they have. Stop screaming about how media you don't like is counterrevolutionary because you *might* be able to interpret it in a negative light. Nobody gives a fuck, and people compartmentalize that shit away from their political beliefs all the time. Stop acting like everybody who consumes media is stupid except you. You're acting like a fucking radlib bitching and moaning about things being "problematic," or worse, some /pol/ schizo paranoid about "wokeness" in media.
3. Enough with the necrophilia. Yes, Marx is good. Yes, Engels is good. Yes, by all means, read Lenin and Luxemburg and Ho Chi Minh and Kropotkin and Malatesta and etc etc etc. But you know what? Theory did not begin and end in the 20th century. Get new references. Read new shit. Read shit that's up to current standards instead of being an epistemological hypochondriac acting paranoid over "bourgeois empiricism" or "revisionism." Statistics and evidence are not "bourgeois idealism." Engaging with other schools of thought is not "bourgeois idealism." Engaging with heterodoxy isn't going to fucking kill you. AND. Stop fucking sucking the dick of dead countries and movements. "Ohhh, but anon, we have to defend our honor against anticommuni-" Nobody gives a fuck. If the topic comes up, fine, but stop fucking making everything about it. The workers do not give a single fuck about dead countries and dead movements, they have real-life right-now shit to worry about, and they have every right to not give a fuck. Jerking off to fucking Hoxha pamphlets will not pay their bills. Screaming at people to read a 300 page pdf will not help them get out of medical debt or keep their jobs. And arguing about it endlessly on a dying imageboard isn't doing it either.
4. And that brings me to the last point, which is stop acting like a fucking radlib and meet people where they are at. Theory is not a special cool-kids club jargon for you to beat down the cringe normies or whatever. If you do that, they will file you away with whatever petit-bourgeois radlib last talked down to them. If you can't say it without jargon, don't fucking say it. Not everybody has time to study this shit.

>>1770885 (me)
>If you can't say it without jargon, don't fucking say it. Not everybody has time to study this shit.

Meant to say

>If you can't say it to a normie without jargon, don't fucking say it.

>>1770885
>>1770897

Oh, and number five:

DON'T BE TERMINALLY FUCKING ONLINE.

Yes, the internet is more prevalent than ever. Yes, it's a major propaganda channel. Yes, it's embedded in everyday life now.

That does not mean that normies are all obsessed with the niche micro-drama you've fried your brain with. Get out of /ISG/ and pay attention to issues people actually care about. Most people do not give a fuck about Redscarepod or XYZ youtuber. They are not using these platforms the same way you are. And no, Peter Thiel is not hiding in your walls.

>>1770902 (me)
IN CONCLUSION

A huge part of our image problem is that we act like the world is our personal book club where we get to act pedantic and lord our Theory Brains over people while acting just as condescending and abrasive as the radlibs we try to separate ourselves from. As long as you do that, nobody will care about what you have to say, they will just file you away as "That One Cringe Tankie That Pops Up Every Time Someone Talks About This"

>>1770885
I agree with all of this. Except the dead countries thing. I do think it's important to fight back against historical revisionism. Especially if your a burger. Don't suck the dick of the ussr or Stalin. You just have to contextualize it but not in a mean way. But I do agree only bring it up if it gets brought up.

Another thing too, I think there's a vast difference between the IRL movement and the online movement. And while we're frailing over here on the online space the IRL movement has made massive strides in labor organizing and the PSL is looking promising. Socialism isn't a dirty word anymore and that was a massive feat.

In order for us to make an impact online we need to be more covert and create content. Content that acts as a pipeline. How come we don't have a leftist Andrew tate telling young boys they can get a girl by having basic hygiene and getting involved in their community? How come we don't have any leftist fitness content or other hobbie content? Content about overcoming addictions or interesting stories? We're lacking figures that can relate to people on their personal issues and slowly drive them towards the content that gives them the solution. Abolition of capitalism.

>>1770930
I think a lot of it is just a failure of breadtube, which is a symptom of how the anglophonic left just got overrun by PMCs in the wake of neoliberalism destroying the left intelligensia's connection with the working class.

Leftist creators need to really focus on real-life shit, and not

>IS REN AND STIMPY PROBLEMATIC?!?!??!?!
<IS EVANGELION INCEL FANFIC!?!??!?!?
>WHAT IF BAYFORMERS IS SECRETLY GOOD!!??!??!
<DOES STEVEN UNIVERSE CHUNGUS BUNGUS INTO WHOLESOME FUNGUS!??!?!?

Fucking meet people where they're at. Not everybody who likes popular "nerdy" media is a fucked up weirdo about it.

>>1770791
>>1770930
I would say there is a certain value in actually defending the ussr, but in like an irreverent way. Saying shit like "Yeah what's the issue with gulags, problem with society nowadays is you don't get all these annoying right-wing boomers in the labor camps" or something along those lines. People like edgelords, at least in the states.

>>1770885
>Get new references. Read new shit.
I'd argue reading old theory is more about finding philosophical applicability in the modern world. Most read theory like its schoolwork, then regurgitate it like gospel. When old theory provides important frameworks to jump off from. The reason the New Left failed so spectacularly is they did not want to think. They wanted slogans and easily digestible solutions to complex problems

>>1770791 (OP)
>Leftist culture centers around critique and polemics at this point, i.e. negativity
I think that's right and it doesn't sustain itself without a positive (+) charge to make the circuit work. I'm not an electrician but it seems like it needs both to make it perform "work." But historically, that positive charge was provided by the party (and also by extension a state like the Soviet Union) and which is something to be loyal towards and loyalty is a positive (+) relationship. And its leadership, its strategy, and traditions or machinery of struggle itself which provides the material to inspire cadres, lift their self-confidence, and to make sacrifices. (Which is also somewhat different from how the party relates to the masses.)

But "socialism" is an abstraction when stacked up next to a concrete organizational form, and nowadays, most of us are just spread out in this oort cloud where we all just believe whatever, and the people who are even in these parties don't even like them very much, and it sounds kind of "evil" to demand or command people to act like this. I think people will keep trying out different things though.

>>1770963
People like gawking at edgelords but they rarely gain mass popularity or if they do its more like getting your 8 minutes of hate in. Edgelordness also has the issue of always having to up the ante to stay edgy and eventually youll alienate people. I also think we got plenty edge lords. We need some people with normie aesthetics and plugged into normie culture. Again I think edgyness is becoming albatross and it's not solving people's problems. I want to bring up again young men, I got daughter and I'm on tic tok and all I see are young women complaining about how all men are autistic weirdos that smell bad and have alienating and eccentric politics. We need to give young men an out from being smelly weirdos that aren't properly socialized.

Lastly look at corporate propaganda. It always presents nice friendly people who are looking out for you. The kinda of people you would see at your kids tee ball game or at a BBQ. Pitch leftistsim as a community project to cure societies alienation. To cure our sickness and overcome the fear and hate in society we have to come together to build communism. We've built it before, they've built it before. We can build it again and we can build it right.

Sorry if this is all over I'm doing this in the middle of chats at work

>>1770986
I mean this is exactly it. Critique is necessary but you need something positive to go for. That's something that I see a lot of post-left nihilists fall into. They talk about how they're all about "reall living," but in practice, it just seems like torpor and death-rive

good post OP, and good posts, nothing to add

>>1770930
>>1770907
>>1770902
>>1770885

>>1770986
>Lastly look at corporate propaganda. It always presents nice friendly people who are looking out for you.
I thought AKEL in Cyprus does a pretty good job. It's very normie and has a good vibe in their particular context. In the U.S., it'd probably look a little bit "liberal." It's somewhat difficult to make this argument on chans like this because part of the culture of these places to be the opposite of whatever "Reddit" is. I mean the culture of Reddit and particularly what people don't like about it: the consumer-friendly, comfort-food vibe posting about heckin doggos and how epic Keanu Reeves is. It's so weirdly artificial.

And 4chan was the opposite of all of that. Reddit are the normalfags and you better not use Reddit spacing or you're obviously a homosexual liberal soyboy who doesn't know what Pepe is, gets intimidated by The Fire Rises memes from The Dark Knight or to know tf when no gf. 4chan is a Redditor's bad dream and a dark shadow. On the other hand, I don't think that's all bad, it might be even be necessary because Reddit is… cringe. But of course there's positives to Reddit too and I think the internet-spawned left has to ultimately "negate their own negation" of it. Thesis = Reddit. Antithesis = 4chan. You get the idea.

>>1770998
Also barista spotted at 0:13… but he's a very masculine Cypriot barista so don't worry.

All of your points are the same. Partisanship is based. Stop whining
>Communists can't take criticism
Such as? Give valid examples of criticisms which Communists cannot take. Let's see how valid they are

>>1771002
we need this thread every week

>>1770885
agreed with all of this except the implication that the dirtbag left has a positive public image or isn't filled with conceited and arrogant people

>>1771001
>Give valid examples of criticisms which Communists cannot take
Let's start with the fact that your immediate response to the criticism that you can't handle criticism is by whining about being criticized?
>>1771002
And yet nothing fucking changes and you keep walking further down the path of autism, so…?
Not you specifically, CPUSA anon, you're like one of the few normies here that's actually active irl, but you have to have seen it too
>>1771015
The dirtbag left are even bigger autistic freaks than the radlibs they hate
Radlibs are basically just progressive normies
Dirtbag left are freaks that are obsessed with literally who's and think trans people are what's stopping a leftist movement in America and not creeps like themselves

>>1771017
>Dirtbag left are freaks that are obsessed with literally who's and think trans people are what's stopping a leftist movement in America and not creeps like themselves

No, those are patsocs. "Dirtbag" mainly refers to the Chapo/Drilcore left

>>1771018
Not really, I mean yes originally, but chapo is more or less dead now that Amber's been gone for years and Matt had his stroke, the "Dirtbag Left" has sadly became less of a venn diagram with Patsoc and more of a circle that mostly comprises fucktards like stupidpol and RSP and the freaks they represent

>>1770885
>>1770930
>Another thing too, I think there's a vast difference between the IRL movement and the online movement. And while we're frailing over here on the online space the IRL movement has made massive strides in labor organizing and the PSL is looking promising. Socialism isn't a dirty word anymore and that was a massive feat.
The online space is not being used sensibly, it is true, but it is also a space that is necessarily owned by capitalists. People still use the internet like they used it in the 90s when it was mostly a wild west consisting of people's basic webpages where they shared shit with each other mostly for free but now people still share shit for free but on these "platforms" where they make the person who owns said platform money, whether their use of the platform is specifically ecommerce or social media or a recipes database or a wiki site, online games, etc. https://youtu.be/JKzlB_jrOyk

>>1771002
Maybe it keeps appearing for a good reason.

>>1770885
>Arguing strictly from USA standpoint
<Maybe the problem is communism itself?
Outside of Haz, Maup and a few others, commies are universally associated with
>you will own nothing and be happy
Every commie I talked to hates private houses, private cars, suburbs etc.
You love bikes, public transit, small apartments and most people don't want that.
You are just jealous you cannot have nice things and want everyone else to share your poverty.
It also doesn't help that any attempt to defend the USSR will be met with mocking/disbelief etc. You can really thank gorbachev for giving up and cucktin being such a conservatard who wants to get along with everyone.
>Commies don't have powerful think tanks
>Massive karma/profits made in anticommunism
>Only costs and pain in defending communism or limited reach with already like-minded people
>the red scare already infected most minds irreverisbly
Communism will never happen to america because every american sees himself as an atomized individual who will one day rise to the top of the food chain and become a billionaire to shit on everyone else. Why are MAGAtards so obsessed over epstein and soros?
>They want to BECOME them
Face it guys you already lost to the nazis of 4chan. More and more people are talking about the judeo-bolsheviks and nothing will stop that because entropy. It is so much easier to blame visible minorities than to admit the system and desires to shit on everyone else are the problem.
It must suck to be a commie. You guys lost the historical narrative and are now being replaced by angry chinlets.

<If I were you, I would lead the angry hordes of chinlets.

>>1770791
Yeah, you are correct. The reasons are pretty simple: modern "leftists" are mostly petty bourgeois who happen to have a tiny bit of awareness. They are a subculture, as you said correctly. They just want to be cool, not to make change. This is actually very widespread historically, most "communist" parties either died out or became liberal.

>>1770800
Because socdem can't work. It inevitably slides back into increasingly "reasonable" and austere governments. It's still not your state, it belongs to Jeff and it will as long as his property exists. It's the reality of the situation in all European states, no matter how hard you want it not to be.

The attachment to overbearing aesthetics is nauseating. The fact that some of you are incapable of understanding how unappealing you look by flying the soviet flag in the middle of western Europe or the USA indicates that, at least some of you, are either retarded or posturing. Understand this. It is never about the truth. It does not matter what you identify with. It does not matter what actually happened in the USSR, in China, or in the DPRK today. All that matters is whether you have a mass aligned to you. And you don't. And as long as you don't, you will not win this fight.

>>1805762
This based retard gets it.
But of course, there are deeper reasons why they don't have a mass aligned.

>>1770885
Shut up lil uygha

>>1770885
pin this somewhere

First time popping into the thread, I think it’s pretty helpful and I broadly agree we’ve got a subculture issue. People unfortunately turn politics into their personality. For a communist movement to reach the masses you shouldn’t have to look or sound like a communist to be one. I think being a “passive communist” should be valid—that’s to say, you work a 9 to 5, invite people over for barbecues, and be conversant in things that aren’t politics. If you don’t watch sports, find a sport you can follow and get into it—even if you end up rooting for a niche team or sport, it’s something. The guy who’s a football super fan and the guy who’s a cricket super fan have more in common with each other than with the guy who can only talk about niche Marxist tendencies and starts scrolling Twitter when the game is on.

I mean we were making fun of the white nationalist that moved to an all white town and discovered he hated it, but how many Communists would move to the USSR given the chance, then complain that it doesn’t have bowling alleys? More than you think I’d imagine.

Live as close to a full human life as you can. Get a diverse group of friends and interests. If you can talk sports with a guy, then even if he likes football and you like cricket, you stand a good chance of getting him to give cricket a chance. I’ve got a few right wing friends living in a right wing town, and we joke that my best friend’s autistic nephew brings up Communism (to talk about how bad it is and how much I suck for it) more than I do. To my buddy’s parents I’m just the polite guy who’s part of their Church. To my other friends I’m just the guy who runs niche tabletop RPGs. The boomers at my local gun store/shooting range think of me as the guy with the loud-fucking-shotgun. Shit I had an encounter with cops turn into a chat about movies. The point is being a communist doesn’t have to direct how you act, what shows you watch, or what diet you have, you don’t have to eat Kosher only, leave that to the Jews.

Any of you watch Trumbo? There’s a great clip in the film where Dalton Trumbo’s daughter asks him what Communism is, because he just got outed as a commie and blacklisted from Hollywood. So Trumbo sits his daughter down and says, essentially, “if you’re in a class where one kid has tons of sandwiches and most of the kids have none, what do you think they should do?” Daughter thinks for a second then says: “They should share.” Trumbo chuckles and says “well then you should watch out, it sounds like you’re a communist!” And while it isn’t an accurate summation of Communism, I’d rather have someone with a slightly inaccurate idea of communism but a positive view over it, then whatever the fuck we have now.

A lot of Communists fall into what I would call the “Galileo” dilemma. Everyone knows the story: Galileo discovers the Earth orbits around the sun, the big bad Church suppresses his findings, he becomes the textbook example of the “martyr for science” persecuted by a big bad superstitious cult.

Well what a lot of people don’t know about the story is the other side of it. Which is to say, geocentrism was broadly supported by both the Church and the scientific community at the time—at least to the extent that what was broadly well known about the movement of the stars relied heavily on geocentric models of the galaxy. So it was, undeniably, a major disruption in the scientific community of Europe at the time as well. But the thing is, Galileo did have friends in the Church. And he’d eventually managed to persuade them to be open to his model. So the Pope says one day that he can make his case as long as he addresses the geocentrist arguments. So what does Galileo do?

He writes a dialogue between himself and a caricature of his scientific rivals, whose name roughly translates to “Idiot” and discusses his theories while ruthlessly attacking anyone who believed in geocentrism as a moron. Again, the scientific consensus at the time. Then this guy starts loudly telling people that his discovery is so important they’ll have to rewrite the Bible… while Europe was currently embroiled in a massive religious war over interpretations of the Bible.

Now I’ve heard many people say that his attitude doesn’t justify the Church repressing his findings and arresting him. I agree. At the same time however, we’re way too in love with this idea of the “abrasive genius.” The guy who’s so smart or right about something he thinks it gives him a license to be a total douchebag. Sherlock, House, etc. we think that by being right we can just bend people to our will and force our lessers to obey us. But the truth is, just being correct doesn’t give you a license to be an asshole. In fact I would argue it’s a disservice to the truth to present it in such an abrasive way. To tell people that you’re going to force them to change their views by virtue of how right you are. One wonders how much quicker and less dramatically we could have accepted Heliocentrism had Galileo been a little more humble.

>>1806298
Beatiful post, i shall secure this information for future projects of mine

>>1806298
>Sherlock, House, etc. we think that by being right we can just bend people to our will and force our lessers to obey us. But the truth is, just being correct doesn’t give you a license to be an asshole.
In the U.S. in 2020, there were a decent number of online Bernie supporters who became convinced he would win and adopted an abrasive attitude of "bend the knee shitlibs" and they were hit with whiplash when it turned around, and some of that turned into despair. The funny thing about it that a lot of normie Democrats actually liked Bernie (which is why he was in a good position to win!).

>>1806317
Maybe one of the most insightful things I heard about the Homeopathy industry was comparing it to modern medicine. I forget where I heard this, some kind of podcast, but the gist was that neither the Doctor nor the homeopathic quack actually cares about you beyond what money you can give them. The difference is that the person shilling crystals at least understands the concept of "Customer Service." So they'll make a big show of speaking softly and kindly, winning you over in a sense. Is it any fucking surprise then that you've got people who'll end up killing themselves following bunk medical advice promoted by grifters? You go to a doctor's office and it's cold and sterile. You go to some homeopath and their business can only survive if they keep wooing you.

As I've said before: the irony of Fascists and Communists is that Fascists will try to make bad ideas sound as appealing as possible. Communists will try to make good ideas sound as unappealing as possible. This is something the Right has across the board; I've seen plenty of variations of the same political cartoon, some liberal stamping their feet and screaming "WHY WON'T THESE STUPID FUCKING INBRED HICKS STOP VOTING AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERESTS?!"

The temptation of the abrasive genius is that, when you're right, you can get some sadistic glee from rubbing it in everyone's faces. The downside is that when you're wrong, as everyone is liable to be eventually, you'll have destroyed so many bridges and angered so many people that no one will support you, or even worse, they'll stick a knife in you and twist.

If there's one thing I learned in studying Fascism, it's that the truth is that no amount factual correctness, consistency, or rationality can truly overcome someone set on a certain path, it'll only make them angrier. It doesn't matter if you lose the debate if you're stubborn enough to keep going on the path you're on. You'll just feel angry at the person who gave you cognitive dissonance.

>>1770791
I have found the way, the secret formula for a revolution:

>find a millionaire willing to fund the cause (such as global warming)
>recruit people by telling them they can quit their job and the organization will cover living costs. Also recruit homeless.
>since nobody wants to work a huge number of people will join
>make them engage in civil disobedience on a regular basis. Since all costs are covered there is no economical worry
>revolution is inevitable

>>1770885
basedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbased

>>1806578
Wrong. It's just paragraphs of westoid cope

>>1770791
>>1770885
capped

>>1806584
kill yourself you will never achieve shit

>>1806622
Also regular pdf i keep pushing. We're not even on the same continent as the PSL, this book is just a good starter for breaking this kind of shit behaviour and getting a grasp on how making people communist works.

>>1806298
This is a big part of it. Communists have a hard time just enjoying life. They double down on their resentment, and let it pervasively influence every element of their lives. Every little thing is recontextualized through a communist lens. Everything is a problem to be solved. You alienate yourselves, ironically, by doing this.
Learn to appreciate and respect your life, including its hardships and your enemies. Elevate it all to holiness for all I care. And for the love of God, don't be afraid to just be *some guy*. Your resentment and self-alienation rubs off on both others and yourself, until you become an unlikeable pedantic retard.

>>1806343
Communists in general tend to reject psychology believing that everything everyone does can be boiled down to class war shit when a good chunk of human existence happened in a much more primitive time. Granted the conditions WERE like communism but it is not exactly the same, and people here in particular underestimate the effects the ego/persona has on people.

>>1770791
These issues mostly apply to Westoid communists, who have indeed a superiority complex, going as far as denouncing successful communist movements in the imperial periphery, despite themselves never having any success whatsoever.
Why is that? Because:
All real/good communists are dead. They died, fighting for communism. Are we dead? No.

The point is the real, principled, well-educated and dedicated communists, willing to give their lives for the liberation of humaniry, are gone. Only the lowest of the low tiers of communists are left…
Sorry for repoosting twice. I kept messing up the formatting

>>1806298
That's a lot of words to say lifestylists are cringe and we should all touch grass.

>>1806879
>Our movement is a rotted corpse.
the story of socialism is driven by burying dead corpses and starting anew

>>1806884
<That's a lot of words to say lifestylists are cringe and we should all touch grass.
Daily reminder, we wuz /lit/ 'n' shiet…

>>1806873
Possibly the most interesting critique I've heard "learned" Fascists charge at Marxist-Leninists is that all too often our own understanding of materialism is a "vulgar materialism" that contradicts Marx himself.

It's an interesting critique because it gets to one of the unspoken conflicts between Fascism and Communism: Idealism vs Materialism which, in its extremes, leads to absurdity and a kind of magical thinking on both ends. There's a passage in the "Doctrine of Fascism" wherein it tries to express a "reality" to idealism by saying that a soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades is being driven by idealism, not necessarily material interest.

Now personally I think people are a mix of Idealism and Materialism. I've certainly seen enough so-called "Christians" justify their worst impulses with intentionally skewed religious views. I know a guy who, at one point, was snorting coke near-daily who told me to my face that he won't take the Covid Vaccine because "I don't know what's in it." Even funnier, he said he never trusted vaccines and wouldn't ever willingly take them. Just the other week he told me he got a Tetanus shot and felt sick afterwards.

People are strange and often contradictory, and while I'd say it's generally wise to presume they'll pursue their own interests, even at the expense of their purported ideals, I don't think it's correct to presume that image and ideals don't matter. That the abrasive Socialist will win over the worker by virtue of the fact he's ostensibly arguing for the man's material interests. One only needs to look at the history of Fascism to see that you can get surprisingly far without a program. At it's peak the BUF had claimed 50k people in membership, while the CPGB had 60k. If the difference between radicals operating on idealist principals and those operating on materialist ones is a few thousand members, then it seems to me that on some level you have to at least pay lipservice to idealism. Just beating people over the head with facts won't win hearts and minds.

>>1806298
They didn't have bowling alleys in the USSR?

>>1806890
I was referencing an infamous line from Lee Harvey Oswald. Among the reasons he gave for returning to the U.S. after supposedly defecting to the USSR was, among other things, that it didn't have any bowling alleys. Specifically, he complained in his diary that he was getting paid a lot but had "nowhere to spend the money". There were no nightclubs, no bowling alleys, and only trade union dances as places to relax. Supposedly his Soviet friends were privately skeptical of the Socialist system, which only served to make him more depressed.

Honestly, he seems like he'd be an excellent caricature of a certain kind of Western Communist. Supposedly in the Marines he got the nickname "Oswaldkovich" because he wouldn't shut the fuck up about Communism. He tried defecting to the USSR and attempted to commit suicide when his visa was originally denied. When the Soviets did relent and let him in, they told him he'd be staying in Minsk and he asked if that was in Siberia. He was allegedly a shitty worker, and his reaction to living in what he thought would be a Socialist paradise was boredom. Eventually he went back to America, where he was the scapegoat for Kennedy's murder. I think he also pestered Gus Hall and the CPUSA by constantly writing letters asking to join.

The moral of the story is to not be annoying and make Communism your whole personality, you're gonna end up disappointed and then blamed for the assassination of the President.

>>1806889
Nietzsche's will to power contains strong explanatory power as a psychological principle. To die honorably in battle *and* to strive for being a capitalist are both manifestations of that impulse to power - or, to essentially *imprint yourself onto the other*, a form of domination in the widest sense.
The thing is that both the will to power and historical materialism and other narratives such as these only serve limited functionality, and I think marxists need to engage with historical materialism only insofar as it is applicable. It can only deal with societal generalities from an economic perspective; it plays a role, but is not the 'whole story' so to speak, and that role may lessen or do the opposite in specific contexts. For your example, the notion of a will to power appears to not really explain why your acquiantance acts the way he does, and neither does historical materialism. Perhaps another theory, that *isn't necessarily contradicting either*, can fill in the gap.

>>1806889
I mean I would still primarily focus on materialism. It's just that there is a thing such as evolutionary psychology that is still part of what materialism is about. You simply don't just get rid of your instincts after all.

>>1806903
Look at this musical, i like it a lot

My fear is that is there any way to improve at all at this point? It seems like no matter what we do, we either fall inot stupidpol-tier obsession with idpol and owning THOSE people to the poitn where we just become a version of some modern form of ultra-communists or do we just sink into irrelevance, forever hated

>>1806906
>>1806910
I want to say I'm not dismissing materialism. Rather I'm rejecting the vulgar "Love is just chemicals in the brain" kind of materialism. Materialism divorced of spirit as it were.

I've been thinking about the collapse of the USSR recently. Among the many explanations for its collapse, can we not point to the fact that certain segments of the Communist Party itself were actively working towards that end? Isn't there evidence from Gorbachev himself, that he admitted he wanted to overturn Communism and reforge the USSR as a social democracy? It's fascinating, as I can't think of many examples of a man so determined to destroy his own country. And why? Some misguided idealism I suspect. Though Gorbachev likely isn't the only reason for its fall, he certainly influenced it. The question, naturally, is why; especially if simple "materialism" were an answer, one would think it'd be in his best interests to preserve the USSR as it was. And to some extent, the old ideals of Nationalism won out over Socialist fraternity.

I dunno, I've been kind of introspective lately. One hypothesis I've tossed around is that the USSR failed to recuperate its ideological opponents. Which is to say, I personally don't think Revolutions happen all at once or that society moves as a whole from different stages to the next. I think there's a lot of push and pull involved in dragging progress forward. Liberalism couldn't do away with all the trappings of Feudalism immediately; the Church is still around. Some monarchs too. I tend to see societal progress as kind of like a river propelling itself forward, but picking up sediment from its origin which is carried along the current.

An interesting little fact I learned was that some of the earliest Russian NazBols were formerly Whites who saw which way the wind was blowing. The Smenovekhovtsy were one of these early iterations that sought to come to terms with the New Russia. Here was their message to Russian emigres:

>"The Civil War is lost definitely. For a long time Russia has been travelling on its own path, not our path … Either recognize this Russia, hated by you all, or stay without Russia, because a 'third Russia' by your recipes does not and will not exist … The Soviet regime saved Russia - the Soviet regime is justified, regardless of how weighty the arguments against it are … The mere fact of its enduring existence proves its popular character, and the historical belonging of its dictatorship and harshness."

Stranger still, you have the Mladorossi, which tried to fuse a love of the USSR as well as Tsarism. Ideas rarely exit history in their entirety. The question is how much of this sediment from the old do we try to filter out? A problem in the ideological foundations of the USSR could be seen in its constant warring with the past: Stalinism versus Destalinization, for example. It planted seeds one day, only to rip them out of the soil the next, then wondered why nothing could take root.

As an American, I sometimes wonder if our path towards Socialism will to some extent be an inverse of China's. Call it "Capitalism, American Style." Where China opened up, we would close down. We'd both arrive at a point where the State finally subdues Capital and orders it, but it may not even be a conscious move toward Socialism; in the same way that Liberalism gradually progressed and moderated itself in Europe. It wouldn't be an entirely peaceful process, not in the slightest, in fact, it could be wracked with instability and chaos, but I could see it as a pragmatic move on the part of the State to save itself.

>>1807151
>Materialism divorced of spirit
Spirit i.e. essence is literally idealism.

>>1807154
I honestly don’t see materialism and idealism as, like, Fire and Water. Hence why I brought up the “love is just chemicals in the brain” thing. Which is to say; understanding that “love” is often a product of synapses and chemical reactions doesn’t make “love” less real nor detract from its effect on people. Best way I can describe what I’m trying to get at is Socialism with Poetry.

>>1807163
well your assertions seem deranged tbf
the reason why left wing movements are currently receding is precisely because they abandoned materialism and stopped studying their own realities with their own heads. most "leftist" intellectuals switched sides and are either postmodern or a degraded version of postmodernism, chavistas

>>1770881
I totally agree with you.
Imageboards are especially the worst. LeftyPol os the only imageboard I see so far with left wimg policies amd all they do is waste their brain cells on pussy, classic childrens media, NATO, etc.


Theyre just as toxic as the right wing folks they hate.

I get banned for disagreeing with their go-to critique of capitalism for anything wrong in modern society.

>>1805731
>>1807109
>>1805762
Tbf, politics, regardless of orientation, is mainly aesthetics and petty scholastic drama.

Theres a reason why most political figures were upper class folks.

>>1807591
>Theyre just as toxic as the right wing folks they hate.
meaningless drivel
>>1807591
>I get banned for disagreeing with their go-to critique of capitalism for anything wrong in modern society.
you might not understand what leftism is or means! socialism is when a workplace is owned by the people who work there, capitalism is when a workplace is owned by whoever the bank says it is; this is the fundamental issue that all other issues arise from, and if you refuse to engage with this concept you're a liberal, not a leftist

>>1807109
Go outside, join an org that isn't a sect.

>>1806298
>friends in the Church
The pope himself. Urban the whatever. Now he's mostly known as the guy who had a heated gamer moment and said: Show this lil uygha the instruments. He was an interesting guy. Galileo saw the instruments and rescinded on the spot. None of that "Eppur si muove" shit.

Now something more contemporary is Ignaz Semmelweis, who had more backbone. Where did that get him? The sanatorium.

It's amazing how the OP correctly points out how conceited leftists are in the modern era despite their total lack of power or recent accomplishments, and all the replies are seething and conceited ex-LF or ex-reddit millennials who have done nothing with their lives besides watch everything burn to a crisp.

As gen z I fucking hate you people. I hope our generation sets things right for once. You failed us and failed the world.

Every sect brand of leftoid cultism thinking they're the special, unique chosen ones to lead the revolution and the only reason they're not is because of some CIA conspiracy to keep them down is never not funny.

>>1770791
You won't find a "fertile base" for communism from the number of people in general who are sympathetic to what they perceive as being communism. A fertile base for communism is anywhere in which proletarians are organized and struggling for their interests.

>>1807662
>Ignaz Semmelweis

Just looked the guy up. Another victim to the backwards and authoritarian scientific establishment 😔✊

Jokes aside I’ve always found the “age of scientific repression” nonsense to be the silliest shit. Like that old meme where it’s some line graph showing “scientific progress” with a huge dip in the “Christian dark ages” it’s all congruent with this ridiculous propaganda that Roman Slave Society was this paradise of progress or civilization that the Christians dragged into the mud.

>>1807565
>>1807154
engels is talking about you here

>>1770885
We should ban third-worldists then

>>1807758
define third-worldism

>>1807761
It is the only word he knows

>>1807697
Lmao
The Middle Ages was literally more technologically advanced and dynamic than Antiquity
It's literally all just civil law cope

>>1807761
De facto supporting third world capitalists as an end. But they will say it's national liberation.

>>1807779
Technologically advanced yes but arguably Rome was more politically/socially developed at least before the late empire

>>1807625
Thanks for proving OP's point.

>>1807666
Millennials are even more shallow than boomers in their politics which is astonishing tbh. But then again, who else but boomers raised them?
Millennials think hitting thirty is entering old age.

>>1807810
That's what I meant by civil law cope
And tbf almost all the advancements were actually made by Arabs and Africans and Chinese people while euroids were going "We wuz romanz n shiet" while raping and killing each other for about 1000 years

>>1770959
This problem isnt just a leftist problem.
Right wingers also morally obsess over pop cultural products

>>1807812
Let's not be reductive, plenty of people from plenty of places were involved in advances

>>1807666
Unless you can actually propose and implement something better then your critique is just silly. It's easy to point out problems without actually creating a way to fix them other than "well everyone should just agree with me*.

>>1807779
Yeah, it's especially silly because for most of the middle ages it was the Church that was trying to keep scientific progress alive. Advancements in architecture, translation of old Greek and Roman texts, and so on. But people think we'd be in space by now if Rome continued.

>>1807810
>Technologically advanced yes but arguably Rome was more politically/socially developed at least before the late empire

Ehh, it's a mixed bag. I would say that papal inquisitorial courts helped develop some important legal theories despite the reputation of being "scary religious gestapo". They regulated the use of torture to extract confessions, had a codified legal framework that wasn't just "how's the King feeling today?"

>>1807812
>>1807815
I would say that the European experience through the Middle Ages, thanks in part to quirks of history and geography, created a mixed bag when it comes to the development of technology. Which is to say that a benefit the Orient had were these huge, at times fairly stable states that could advance technology yet often didn't have a drive or necessity to utilize it.

Okay, so that sounds complex. I'll try to explain a little. Europe, since the fall of Rome, hadn't really developed a coherent "state" in the same sense that China could or Islamic Caliphates did. You had all these small and medium-sized principalities fighting with each other. The dream of the early Middle Ages was, in part, the restoration of a true "State" like the Roman Empire of old. A lot of dynasties (I think the Habsburgs were the most notable) had hoped for the unity of Christendom (predominantly European Christendom) through a true Christian monarch. However, in part because of the constraints of the feudal system, it was a historical impossibility for Europe to be united under any one king. So instead, these medium powers struggled with one another and had to utilize whatever advantage they could get. If Europe couldn't produce spice and they couldn't trade with the Islamic world, then they'd invest in expeditions to find direct routes to India, whereas China could bring in enough resources under its state that there wasn't any pressing need beyond passing fancy to explore. They discover gunpowder but they use it for fireworks while Euros use it for guns.

Simply put, necessity is the mother of invention.

>>1807812
that is really not a historically tenable position. of course there has been plenty of innovations in technology and masterpieces of culture to come out of europe, it is deluded overcorrection to say otherwise. acknowledging contributions european history would only strike you as somehow excluding the rest of the world if youre invested in a deeply moralistic view of history, i.e. not materialist. youre tacitly accepting the terms established by the era of european colonial hegemony to think you can only choose europe or the rest of the world to appreciate and identify with

>>1807831
Good explanation. I think some other things also helped like Europe's mild climate and relative isolation from things like the Mongols.

>>1807810
>>1807831
i know were all aware but its worth reiterating that the slave mode of production/imperial polity lent itself to vastly different forms of legal & political forms than were relevant to the manorialist economy/distributed dynastic patriarchy. not sure it makes too much sense to compare them as advanced/primitive in the sense people usually talk about the dark ages in europe, and the medieval urban commune clearly emerges as a synthesis of the 2 in a lot of ways. also notable that the through-line between antique and medieval governance was contract law, which was then universalized throughout society with the establishment of capitalism

>>1807845
Yes I guess it's a bit difficult to say what is more or less advanced but Roman views on citizenship for example seem a lot closer to ours than medieval ones. Not to mention that Rome and Greece had elections and an organised civil service. Property rights were a bit more fluid in the dark ages too from what I know. Obviously it's kind of a silly question though since obviously modern society is influenced by both.

>>1807852
yeah i think youre right as far as those similarities with antiquity, but gotta remember that in both Rome and most of Greece most of the population were slaveobv eastern roman empire the situation was different, but thats why you end up with the 'oriental' distributist-empire mode of governance lasting so much longer there while europe had that imperial mode imposed as a latifundia slave system directly on top of cheifdom/clan systems and the combination following decline of western rome wasnt able to preserve the formalistic civil law in the form of bureaucracy thats recognizable to us, but the merging of imperial administration with warrior/priest/commoner castes of cheifdom societies did allow for a greater degree of de facto "civil law" among the wider population. honestly its interesting how much early medieval europe resembles say west africa or rural india around the same time compared to mediterranean antiquity or west asia

>>1807831
>They discover gunpowder but they use it for fireworks while Euros use it for guns.
This! CPUSAnon gets it it's more application & scale… The Aeolipile for example…

>>1807839
Oh that was definitely a big help. Europeans could consistently war with one another and develop unique innovations without one massive Empire emerging to Order it and bring peace. I can't remember where I heard this, but I believe during the Crusader period, a lot of Muslims remarked that Europeans were really good at building fortresses. Namely because there weren't these long stretches of peace. War was really fucking common and really horrifying.

And while I don't want to appear as "justifying" or "excusing" the colonialism of Europe, I think what's left out of the discourse often enough is that, in the early days of colonialism, the brutality Europeans visited on indigenous peoples wasn't too alien to what they were visiting upon each other. I've heard excerpts and accounts of what happened to people during the Wars of Reformation, and it's grotesque. It's no wonder they were praying for the return of some continent-spanning Empire because if you were living in Germany there was a very real chance that some feudal lord's levy would rape your wife, eat all your food, steal everything not nailed down, and then force feed you literal feces to interrogate you for any money. It was a horrifyingly brutal time.

>>1807845
>>1807852
I'd say part of the "fluidity" of medieval property rights and the like are because the nature of Feudalism then meant you'd have a real hard time developing a coherent bureaucracy and civil service. Like the closest thing Western Europe had to "bureaucracy" for a period was the Roman Catholic Church, and even then there was a lot of struggles with that. As I understand it, the reason Catholic sacraments (Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation) have these gaps between them is because quite often there just weren't enough priests to administer them all. The Church was the closest thing to bureaucracy and it would often get into struggles with local lords over rights and duties.

>>1807890
The Aeolipile is another good example. A lot of people point to it to imagine that Rome could've undergone some sort of "industrial revolution" but without the pressing need to, then it could've just been a curiosity or source of entertainment. When you've got a bunch of middling states all competing with each other and looking for any advantage over one another, then you have the drive to make the steam engine.

>>1807921
CPUSA i recommend you read andersons passages from antiquity to feudalism and banajis history as theory, i think youd get a kick out of them