tbf the tolerance paradox is legitimately important
libshit is libshit though
The narwhal bacons at my axe
weird thing for someone who probably likes azov battalion to say
The commodification of human relationships is one of the worst blights that exists in this world, and whoever aims to prolongue it is an enemy of socialism. As long as one sees human interactions as something to bbe bought and sold, they will be unable to understand what the liberation of the working people entails.
Shouldn’t this be argued for everything in general, not just human relations? Isn’t the damage capital does inherent to how it commodified everything, not just human relationships?
I think I agree with you based on that (and already agreed that it would be impossible to do prostitution and therefore flawed to even try under communism), but I don’t think your criticism is limited to just sex or human relationships, it implies that we should seriously consider the risks of having any kind of trade in our theoretical utopian communist society and I think that tracks.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. You are comparing (in a frankly offensive manner) those who cannot work to those who are not willing to work.
Well, fair criticism, but in my experience the kind of people who are most often accused of not wanting to work tend to just be straight-up disabled people that can’t. My comparison was flawed, but I think my first reaction of disgust at the concept was warranted. Similar to how someone pointed out that removing the context from prostitution is silly, expecting me or anyone else to just ignore how similar concepts have been used to shit on disabled people is also silly. It’s not offensive to mention disabled people here, because what I’m talking about is their literal lived experience, being told they have to be productive to be valuable and then being blamed and gaslit when they tell others that they can’t. You can say that you’ll just listen to them when they protest but I honestly don’t believe you. Someone will ask “what stops a landlord from trying to reclaim their lifestyle by claiming they’re disabled?”, and then people will start casting doubt on disabled people’s experiences again, something that can only be avoided with a radical willingness to just let people not work.
The only consistent way we have right now to find out if someone mentally can’t do something, or is just choosing not to, is by pushing them to a breaking point, and I’ve seen too many people talk about how abusive that can be to even remotely want to fight for a society that keeps it around.
We should eliminate the impetus to work altogether. It’s toxic and shitty. If we have to force and coerce each other to do labor to survive as a species, I say we let ourselves die off. The void is better than torturing each other for the rest of time for no reason.
But that doesn’t have to be our future. Sure, we would need to remove reactionary elements and drastically reconstruct society, and that’s what a dictatorship of the proletariat is for. But, in my dream world (I understand this is absurd Utopianism, but bear with me), everyone would contribute to collective goals of their own free volition, because that’s what they naturally are inclined to do. There would be no need to coerce, or threaten, or even abandon anyone. Those who could work naturally would be inclined to work because there would be no systems or unfulfilled needs or contradictory goals stopping them (though personal goals would still exist, just encouraged to not be antisocial). And then, with no reactionary elements or notions of selfish grandeur or enlightenment through wealth in the heads of anyone, we would know that those who don’t want to work would actually just be the people who can’t, either because their brain won’t let them or because they’re phrasing having an unmet need badly.
In the meantime, I get the need for what is probably (in my view) a toxic level of discipline with a socialist state. We aren’t going to get rid of reactionaries by being nice to them. And I think the kind of people you refer to when you say that they don’t want to work, or social parasitism, only really exist as reaction. It is not a normal human inclination to just refuse to do anything for no reason. There has to be a system or condition to convince someone to do nothing helpful for anyone else, people get bored and will stumble their way into some level production otherwise. If we get rid of ideologically reactionary elements, the parasitic elements will wither. Trying to get rid of parasitic elements first is blindly shooting in the dark and we could end up with us shooting ourselves in the foot.
Labor shouldn’t be a painful process that human beings need to draw straws to fulfill. It is a natural aspect of our psychology. We can only imagine the idea of people willfully refusing to work out of “laziness” in a society where everyone works jobs that do no good and take disproportionate amounts of effort and time.
I mean i hate to say this but, other than the fact that they obviously support the wrong side, I don’t see how us doing literally nothing is any better than that (from a moral perspective). Edit: oh yeah, I guess other than the sort of parasitic usage of traumatized people for money… nvm
From a personal/benefit-to-her perspective, I didn’t even think of that, and I agree that this is coercive towards her
I mean, i think i agree with what you’re saying here, but in the context of communism specifically,
Wouldn’t communism not have a worker’s state anymore? Isn’t productivity kind of just a toxic hold over to be excised once the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary?
Also, what counts as production? Isn’t something produced just anything with a use-value? Isn’t sex technically a thing with a use-value? (Pleasure, or reproduction). Where’s the difference between it and, like, being a baker of sugary goods? Is this suggesting that people who specialize in making desserts should just stop doing that after we achieve socialism because it wouldn’t directly contribute to general production (and their products would disappear immediately after being consumed?)
Not defending prostitution under a communist or even socialist system, especially because i don’t think it’s possible, but I think it not being possible (or being somewhat coercive to the person doing it) would be the issue, not social parasitism (also, where’s the line between social parasitism and just being disabled? If someone can’t work, wouldn’t that mean that by this framework they deserve to either live without anything except bare necessities, or die from starvation?)
I am not defending prostitution as an act of liberation? I think even getting into this subject was a mistake, because I only cared about it because of the word “prostitute” being used to refer to something that I don’t think really counts as prostitution.
I was defending the abstract idea of someone having sex for reasons besides direct sexual attraction to their partner, not prostitution as we know or in any form our current definition would work with. Like, I don’t think prostitution would even be possible in a communist society, there wouldn’t be any goods or services to really bargain with if everything, including luxuries, was collectively owned
Like I know it looks like I’m moving the goalposts here, but I legitimately just think that the way I was explaining myself was incorrect
I was thinking of what the woman in the article was doing as prostitution, but thought that without any economic coercion or reason to do it, it wouldn’t be wrong. I realize now that without any economic coercion or reason to do it, it isn’t actually prostitution in the first place
It might be possible she is getting payment but the twitter post of her complaining about not getting with someone kind of makes me think she was just trying to get with people there? I mean, let’s be clear, being a weird war-sexpat is extremely gross, but it’s more horrifying and cynical than it is idiotic.
We are in a communist space. You have plenty context to work with: the last thing you have to expect of a critique of prostitution in a place like this is to be done from a point of view of religious puritanism and not from a perspective of principled marxist feminism, which is where @KommandoGZD 's comment and those following them came from.
The bourgeois state promotes the idea that all critiques to the existence of prostitution itself comes from conservative or reactionary perspectives. You are not immune to propaganda: before attempting to write a critique basing on the gut feeling that you get from reading something, try to read what is it that it is actually being said.
“We are communists so we can’t reproduce brainworms on accident” is not a valid defense and you even point that out in this very same comment. I’m not immune to propaganda, but you aren’t, either. Here’s an important question: What about a male prostitute? Do any of these supposed critiques of prostitution as a concept independent of other social context (something that is already blatantly impossible, because no action has any measurable value when removed from all context) hold up if talking about a man selling sex? If it doesn’t, then it indicates the issue is patriarchy, which is a social context.
That aside, because the morality was of prostitution in general is kind of off topic here,
The belief is that this women is an idiot, or some sort of brainwashed fool for deciding to… well, they’re not even selling their body for sex in this case, they’re just having a lot of sex “for free” as far as I can tell. This is so blatantly dehumanizing it’s absurd. It is not idiocy to decide you want to support a military you like by fucking them. It’s weird, and it is not a good idea, especially with how blatantly evil the Ukraine military is and the extremely suspicious power dynamics at play in any military, but lots of human beings enjoy having sex and it isn’t really indicative of someone being brainwashed or being especially stupid for wanting to do something like this.
You could at least acknowledge the wording was a little weird, or anything other than immediately jumping to accusing me of being a brainwashed stooge. I am providing light criticism of the phrasing and tone of a thread, a tone which I think is indicative of a certain kind of brainworms. You can do some self-introspection or not, I don’t really care.
Edit: you are downvoting me far before you would be able to finish reading this comment. I can only assume you’re just pissed about being called out
I mean... that's why I said "removed from context". All of this is context, context that was missing from previous comments (which read more like "how dare this woman not be traditional" to me). I agree that prostitution is coercive and wrong in every current implementation.
…Is it? I do not think it is a stretch to say that the despersonalization of a human being into a sexual object is indeed pretty degrading.
I mean, yeah, wanting to have sex is a pretty normal desire for a lot of people, so it’s not a surprise that some people would choose to do so professionally. There are definitely systemic issues at play that coerce people into becoming prostitutes, which makes the industry very bad altogether, but if removed from that context it’s pretty reasonable (and neither of the comments in the chain really seemed to have been complaining about the context)
This entire thread smacks of weirdly sexist brainworms to me
I’m not even talking about this because I’m believe in that “feminism is only about individual choice!” bs, but because it’s weird to imply that wanting to be a prostitute instead of a medic or a cook is some kind of mental degradation, and all three of those things being assumed as the only roles a woman would play in a war is just gross
I stg it was an accident please don't kill me
In case you're confused, check my username on my profile, not my display name
That’s not how convincing people works, though. Their concern might be silly in the short term but telling them it’s stupid is going to get people rightfully angry at you
When you point out that the goal is to have the state wither away, it’s a lot easier to convince someone to side with you then just going “states good actually 4head”
But that is what I am saying.
The article seems to miss the fact that the ultimate point of instating a dictatorship of the proletariat is to protect the creation of a mode of production that doesn’t need a State at all.
If the Anarchist says they are against the existence of the State, then that makes their desire ultimately the same as ours - a communist mode of production. The flaw of anarchist ideology seems to be this idea that the State is not justifiable even if it’s purpose is to destroy itself, which seems like a simple example of not reading about the tolerance paradox to me.
The arguments in the article just seem inefficient.
I agree that anarchists are often conceited, but do we really have to take the exact opposite position to them, and decree that because an oppressive proletarian State is in the interest of the proletariat, that we should not try and dissolve the state at all? Is limiting ourselves to the short-term desires of the proletarian class, not even considering what kind of class structures that could form in the future, really the best way forward?
This reads a strange form of vulgar Marxism to me, a kind of reaction to the idea of anarchism that arises when you criticize it from gut opposition at their “arrogance” rather than the actual issues with it. I’m not saying the article is actually saying this, but what it is saying is dangerously compatible with such a viewpoint.
I am a Marxist because I believe that the struggle of the proletariat has the greatest chance to end the constant class struggle of human society, not because I think that the state is a necessary or even remotely “ok” methods of human organization. It is only justifiable as a form of self-defense for the proletariat (which the dictatorship of the proletariat should fundamentally be viewed as). Anything more than that isn’t just bad from some abstract moral opinion, but because it’s completely pointless to the revolutionary struggle.
Apparently “on authority” is kind of a bad refutation of anarchism, which makes it very funny that people resort to dismissing it instead of pointing out it’s flaws.
I’m referring to something that isn’t really that nsfw but I don’t know where the line of NSFW begins and ends here
I’m referring to the Cuban animation “La pavita pechugona”. The main character has been featured in a lot of, uh, artwork, because of their design, and because the internet can’t let cute animations just exist smdh
I should probably have phrased that differently but either way I can’t specify more without toeing the line of the no-nsfw rule
I’ve literally never seen an anti-war person argue against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why? It’s the most sane argument against it.
I know it’s only tangentially related.
In the West, we are constantly bombarded with lies and blatantly incorrect statements about the living conditions of socialist countries. During the original Cold War, depictions of the USSR as a cold, purely utilitarian world with extreme restrictions on any sort of luxury were quite frequent, and though they were blatantly false, it still rubbed off on the West’s impression of socialism in numerous ways that affect even those ideologically committed to socialism subconsciously.
How else to explain the existence of “Nazbol” ideology? People, due to some degree of ignorance about the true nature of the USSR and of socialism in general, but drawn to ascetic, “anti-excessive” (excessive, a term butchered and vulgarized so much I could write an essay about that alone) aesthetics. These people could be drawn to this completely illusory ideology due to bigotry, mere aesthetic appeal, or any number of reasons, but the important thing to remember is that the majority of people are not like this.
The USSR greatly supported “excessive” things that the Nazbol would see as absurd. State-funded movie directors existed. And the USSR pioneered much of modern animation. And what a legacy that is! Not only is animation for the sake of art and self-expression the furthest from cold asceticism I can think of, this deeply important art form has direct ties with numerous current-day queer communities.
Socialism and “excessive” art does not end with the USSR. Anyone who has been in the furry community long enough knows this to be the case. I will not elaborate as to respect the instance’s rules against sexual content (though, arguably, the original content is not sexual, the internet’s general reaction to it definitely was, and the original was by no means drab). The fact I even have to specify that hopefully demonstrates my point.
In this present day, despite all of these obvious examples of rich, romantic and “excessive” art from socialist countries, the Western left still had a somewhat ascetic view of socialism, this could be based on a misguided belief that Lenin’s view of a responsible and likeable revolutionary was proposing excessive self-restraint, but if anyone truly believed that Lenin advocated that, it’s quite sad. Beating yourself up moralistically for enjoying anything is a fairly reliable way to get people to think you’re weird, in a way more unsettling to people than any kind of “excessive” activity the Nazbol would despise.
I propose that we must fight this tendency however we can. But how?
Does anyone else remember when a socialist subreddit banned catgirls for objectifying women?
I’m not going to get into if that was right or wrong here, but it sounds like a pretty good example of something “excessive”, something which, even when having it’s truly problematic character removed from it (possibly especially at that point given how misogynistic Nazbols probably are) scares the aesthetically committed revolutionary.
These days, the catgirl is not exclusively associated with misogyny. Plenty of queer and women-dominated spaces have adopted it as an icon of sorts. We can, then, fight two reactionary tendencies, social conservatism and Nazbol ideology, with one stone.
Let’s post more catgirls. And make them queer feminist ones.
I apologize in advance. This is one of the most badly edited things I have ever posted on the internet. I'm not even sure if I agree with it anymore.
Part 2 (I already have the entire thing written, but it's too big for one post) will be on my community. (yes i am shilling for my community here). Warning about that second part: It may veer into some vaguely "left unity" territory, so if you disagree with that but like this first part... you have been warned. Don't worry, I'm not necessarily going to say anarchists are right or anything like that i don't think they are
The approach that the United States, radical left has adapted is fundamentally flawed, as demonstrated by it’s almost complete lack of political power. Numerous explanations have been made for this, many of them rooting in the relative comfort of most United States citizens.
I do think this argument makes some sense, but that it doesn’t hold that much weight when inspected closer. If this were the main roadblock that socialism has encountered in the United States, I speculate that we would have a much higher portion of the less well-off (non-labor-aristocratic) proletariat participating in radically socialist politics. Instead, we see a resurgence of reactionary views, political apathy, and nihilism. While there could be other possible explanations for this, I think the most likely one is that socialist theory has not truly yet been adapted to existence in the imperial core. Indeed, the majority of successful figures and scientific Marxists figures have been in imperialized, and, sometimes, feudal countries.
These are quite noticeably, not in even remotely the same situation as the proletariat in the United States. Exact differences are numerous, but what should be first and foremost acknowledged is that it is fundamentally different. But, of course, this has been acknowledged by quite a few people, many of which are reactionaries pretending to be “socialist”. The laughable “pat-Soc”, or “patriotic socialist”, claims to be adapting a scientific Marxism for the United States, but if they are, they must not have been examining scientific Marxism too closely!
Indeed, the main flaw many of these aspiring revolutionaries share is a complete and total disregard for the findings of previous revolutionaries, a belief that they are irrelevant. But this is non-sensical. Of course they are relevant. If their analysis of the material environment in their imperialized countries was correct (and it most certainly was- A socialist revolution was successfully done to overthrow Tsarist Russia for a reason), then the insights gleamed there are still going to be valuable - Just with the caveat that they were observed from the perspective of an imperialized country, not the one doing the imperializing.
So what can we gleam from this? Well, the mistakes that the Western and especially the United States, socialists have made, is twofold. Not only have some socialists made the grave error of failing to acknowledge the importance of previous revolutionaries, but other socialists have interpreted their writings and experiences as being able to be directly translated to their current situation. An equally massive mistake.
We can take Lenin’s critiques, the internationalist approach to proletarian struggle, Mao’s examples of successful revolutions and conflicts, but we cannot use these people as one to one maps on what to do now. There is still theorizing to be done, desperate work to understand the United States proletariat, and it cannot be simplified to something as trivial and fatalistic (a tendency Lenin himself criticized!) as organization in the imperial core being impossible.
But how to reach the United States proletariat? If they can be reached, then what are we missing? They are not being organized now, and that is not due to lack of trying.
I suggest that most (modern, 2020) United States socialists have completely failed to understand the situation of both themselves and their peers on a fundamental level, in understanding the material conditions of the United States proletariat.
see title
(not radlib, actual left.)