Laissez-faire Politics Thread - Praxis? I didn't play Deus Ex, sorry.

[Oblivion]

all i've learned from the last few pages is that the re-education camps clearly need new management 

[Himu]

Who's going to tell her the katorga were a holdover from the tsar and the United States has the largest prison population on earth

I already know that. It's disgusting.

[shosta]

I was hoping for someone to help me go through my thoughts here to help me understand why I'm so afraid of something I actually agree with.

Same reason you like guns, you don't trust people and your brain has been poisoned by uniquely American narratives about liberty and socialism

So I'm thinking,"what if someone takes advantage of very legitimate socialist views and makes something awful like Castro did with Cuba?"

What if someone comes along and tells the democratic socialists that he wants to get rid of the democratic part? Are you listening to yourself? What if half the country voted to shoot the other half in the head. What if someone comes along and says we should eat albino babies.

You live in a democracy and people like their freedom, trust them to be normal

[Himu]

Thanks.  You’re good at this.

[shosta]

Are we not supposed to eat albino babies?


 

you know, I wrote that and had forgotten that that actually happens

[BisMarckie]

I am teaching a class in Roman History  of Law next semester and I looking for some different perspectives. I am reading Zosimus‘ Historia Nea  and other shit of course, but what got my attention is Michael Parenti,‘s The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome .

I ordered it on amazon.

[Mandark]

Here I am, rooting for Sanders -  my guy from 2016 -  who I personally agree with a large amount. And then there's a voice in my head talking about how he's socialist and this will only bring about chaos and gulags because of socialist collectivism.

Bernie doesn't even want to get rid of the filibuster.

[shosta]

That's not what infantile leftism means

[BisMarckie]

It can‘t be worse than Marx‘s Ethnological notebooks.

That is like the third time I have brought them up to slam them on the Bore, at least they left an impression I guess. 

[Himu]

Shosta: how to trust people again then

[BisMarckie]

Shosta: how to trust people again then

Join the social democrats and trust them to fuck up.

[shosta]

[Himu]

Surprisingly found a lot of articles on loss of trust in government institutions and the overall loss of political trust in recent years. But also surprisingly a lot of in-depth ways on how I can hopefully gain it back.

https://apolitical.co/solution_article/trust-government-falling-can-stop/

http://theconversation.com/how-to-restore-trust-in-governments-and-institutions-106547

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trust-trump-america-world/550964/

https://www.opengovpartnership.org/trust/

[shosta]

you don't even know what people mean when they respond yes or no, which is a fundamental problem with polling in general, you can only ask the same question over several years and track if it goes up or down. It's the same as the congressional approval numbers, everyone hates Congress but they love their congressman.

[Tripon]

https://socialistra.org/

On Friday, July 19th, the Socialist Rifle Association became an official non-profit member of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF conducts expansive industry research, provides grants to colleges for firearms sports, and is the largest firearms trade association in America. The decision to become a member of the NSSF was made with the intent of living up to the SRA's goal of arming and training the working-class for self and community defense. While we understand the NSSF to be a fairly reactionary institution, our hope was to introduce the concept of left wing gun ownership and advocacy to the larger firearms community, especially through participation in events such as SHOT Show. Our announcement of membership in the NSSF was met with broad support from our members, who, like all proponents of the right to self-defense, want to ensure the protection of Americans' second amendment rights.

On Monday, July 22nd, the SRA received an email informing us that our membership in the NSSF had been rescinded and our $200 nonprofit membership dues were refunded. In a followup email, a representative of the organization claimed that the NSSF stands for "free market capitalism" and that a socialist organization being a member of their trade association would be contrary to their "core values". Further, they claimed both publicly and in the followup email that the SRA had joined through their "automated membership system", with the clear insinuation that they had accepted our membership without knowledge of our organization's values and purpose.

First, a point of fact. The SRA joined via the NSSF's online form, however we followed up with both phone and email correspondence to set up our account and spoke to an individual claiming the title of "Manager, Retail and Range Services". While setting up our online account, an NSSF employee even created the temporary password "Socialist1" for us. While the NSSF board may have been ignorant of our membership, their staff was clearly aware and comfortable with socialists joining their organization. The NSSF board appears to have been notified of our membership Monday due to a social media and phone campaign organized by members of the forum "AR15.com". While we don't wish to generalize the opinions of all members of AR15.com, the thread where this campaign was organized contains antisemitic memes, an individual proffering dox on one of the SRA's board members, and at least two death threats. One of the participants in the thread left a message on the NSSF's voicemail and received a response confirming our expulsion.

The decision by the NSSF to rescind its sponsorship of The Socialist Rifle Association follows a flurry of angry forum posts from those opposed to the SRA on issues unrelated to legal gun ownership. We at the SRA are greatly dismayed that the NSSF has allowed a minuscule, albeit vocal minority of supposed guns rights "activists" to dictate their membership policies to them. The SRA not only represents gun owners who align politically to the left, but also minority groups and members of the LGBTQ+ community who feel unwelcome in many circles that claim to support the Second Amendment rights of ALL Americans. The people that make up these circles represent the same voices that seem to have scared the NSSF away from its initial decision to broaden its scope to include a large contingent of gun owners that feel voiceless in regards to mainstream gun politics.

It is worth questioning the NSSF's wisdom in barring socialists from participating in their trade association. Free market capitalism is deeply unpopular – a 2018 Gallup poll found that a majority of millennials prefer socialism to capitalism, with the latter becoming less popular every year. While many of these millennials may define "socialism" as some form of social democratic system, it is undeniable that "free market capitalism" is not a winning message with the soon-to-be majority age demographic in America. If the NSSF wishes to preserve the right to bear arms, they would be well served by casting as wide an ideological net as possible, so as to avoid becoming irrelevant.

There is a misconception among many conservatives that liberalism and socialism are synonymous, and that both necessarily entail the disarming of the populace. But this is not the case. Gun control is a fundamental component of neo-liberal capitalism and its tendency to commodify, infantilize, and enslave working-class people. Socialism, on the other hand, is a philosophy concerned with emancipating working class people and allowing for their greatest development of individual will and expression. And the right to bear arms for self and community defense is a critical component of that mission. It's a common saying on the left that, "If you go far enough left, eventually you get your guns back." Indeed, there is a long tradition in both socialist and left-anarchist theory of supporting the right to bear arms.

"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." – Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital


"Recollect that in arming yourselves, as you are bound to do unless you are willing to be forced into abject slavery, you are safely within the spirit and letter of the law." – Eugene V. Debs, five-time US Presidential Candidate


"The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an 'equalizer.' Egalite implies liberte. And always will." – Edward Abbey, American anarchist author


"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." – George Orwell, author, member of the P.O.U.M. militia in the Spanish Civil War


"Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any moment." – Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party


While conservatives may doubt our conviction, or believe that our support for gun rights is temporary or conditional, we assure you that we are quite sincere. The right of self and community defense is essential, and firearms are the most practical and equalizing tools for securing that right. If the NSSF and other gun organizations are serious about preserving the second amendment, they would do well to set aside their petty partisan instincts and work to build a diverse coalition that protects the right of all working people to defend themselves.

 

[Himu]

I saw that on r/liberalgunowners.

Pathetic.

[OnlyRegret]

this went from debate to intervention real fast
I'm actually impressed

[benjipwns]

For what it's worth you're right to be skeptical and extremely critical of the state and whoever is in it, that's why I don't mind anarchists, they encourage everyone else to maintain a healthy check on state behavior.

FACT CHECK: No, we don't.

[shosta]

DSA took down the video of their conference

Now socialism is NEVER going to happen

[benjipwns]

I admit I only watched the clips everyone is making fun of, but I certainly saw a party desperately in need of some democratic centralism.

[benjipwns]

You couldn't interrupt a six hour Brezhnev speech like that.

[shosta]

I watched the whole thing and even posted highlights. It was meh. It was seriously wigging me out though that for the whole duration, a solid 10%-20% of the crowd committed to jazz hands

[benjipwns]

are all these pages of posts about how Cindi needs to just settle on malleable form of philosophical anarchism, the final radical view from which there is no escape (until one travels to Poland and sees the beautiful whiteness of all the people there)

[El Babua]

The tacit acknowledgment of our fucked up situation by the powers that be combined with our collective will to just sit by and argue over trivial bullshit is why I'm just getting drunk and high while waiting for the other shoe to drop tbh

[Brehvolution]

lol china isn't stealing our jobs. American businesses are taking those jobs from Americans to china and have been for over a decade.

[shosta]

The imperative of capitalist profitability ensures that no true assault on the commanding heights of world scientific development and the division of labour can be launched from a low material-social base. Storming the commanding heights would involve competition with the most advanced capital for the most advanced labour processes – a competition that a less developed or, as Che Guevara described it, ill formed capitalist social formation, is ill suited to carry out. This is why frontally challenging imperialism will not deliver the highest available profits to Chinese capital. Challenging imperialist monopoly at its margins is necessary to make profits. Yet a frontal challenge risks complete debacle.

For this reason, the interests of Chinese capital will never form the social basis for a full blooded assault on imperialist dominance (even ignoring the politically perilous level of working class social mobilisation that would be required for an underdeveloped society to wage such a serious campaign against imperialist supremacy). Chinese capitalism is not and can never become the revolutionary social force that can storm the heavens of US power.

There is no ladder from ordinary to advanced labour accessible to Third World societies – except with the cooperation of imperialist core states. Every Third World society is continuously pulled back into the mundane routine of ordinary labour for the simple reason that this is where their capitalists can make money. There has been no change in that basic social structure of imperialism over the last several decades. Only the technical composition of what constitutes high and low-end labour has evolved in tandem with the general development of the human labour process itself.

Incredible article.

[shosta]

In an unusual move, the Cuban government will defend itself in a U.S. federal court to fight a lawsuit filed by Exxon Mobil seeking compensation for a refinery confiscated by the Fidel Castro government in 1960.

“It’s a new departure. Based on historical records, most people assumed they would not defend themselves in a U.S. court,” said lawyer Robert Muse, an expert on U.S. laws regarding Cuba. “This is genuinely interesting.”

reminder that Cuba offered to compensate for lost business assets with Cuban bonds but the US was the only country to decline

[Crash Dummy]

based cage https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/07/magazine/nicolas-cage-interview.html

Oh, O.K. I thought you were being metaphorical about going on a grail quest. Yeah, if you go to Glastonbury and go to the Chalice Well, there’s a spring that does taste like blood. I guess it’s really because there’s a lot of iron in the water. But legend had it that in that place was a grail chalice, or two cruets rather, one of blood and one of sweat. But that led to there being talk that people had come to Rhode Island, and they were looking for something as well.

[Great Rumbler]

Cage is actually really interesting to listen to:

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/ssamcham/status/1159264644416061442

https://twitter.com/ssamcham/status/1159268405813403653

immigrant rights = worker rights

[shosta]

critical support for cpi (m)

[nachobro]

https://twitter.com/nickmullen/status/1159972587834925057

[nachobro]

https://twitter.com/nickmullen/status/1159973733542629378

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/RJWithOpinions/status/1158263418681528320

This person figured out that capitalism is the current system we have to work with.

 

[Rufus]

When did people start to think that everything's for free under socialism?

[shosta]

That's easy to say as a German nobody here knows that there were wages in the Soviet Union or what the gosplan accounting system was like and how the banks operated under that.

[shosta]

I know exactly how to start.

[shosta]

I can't believe he deleted this tweet

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/1159054550311100417

This guy is amazing.

[toku]

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1160418730217758720

 

[shosta]

[toku]

fucking miss lil peep  :'( rip king

https://twitter.com/a_nice_frog/status/1157635474212761601

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[shosta]

Kirchner won her primary

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1162084476874383362

one of these days someone is going to shoot don

[nachobro]

https://twitter.com/splinter_news/status/1161285305057628160

 

[shosta]

Ooh - I like.

https://twitter.com/AlexCKaufman/status/1161742328496873473

[VomKriege]

Roman sources heavily patrician or from the Senate party ?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Water wet ?

[close]

[BisMarckie]

I am teaching a class in Roman History  of Law next semester and I looking for some different perspectives. I am reading Zosimus‘ Historia Nea  and other shit of course, but what got my attention is Michael Parenti,‘s The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome .

I ordered it on amazon.

I flipped through this at a bookstore. I doubt its good from an academic perspective, but i like it  as a historiographical experiment. It's basically attempting to be a proletarian/People's History of Rome, which I wish we had more of. The only thing I've seen in a similar space is Settlers, I guess. The writer noted that most of our primary accounts of the time period are from the patrician class or people who benefited directly from upholding that class, so he tried to reverse-engineer a history from that. I'm not sure if the end conclusion is so perfect (Caesar was Good, Actually) and I can't help but read through the lines to see Parenti's underlying animus (Marxism-Leninism was Good Actually) but I enjoyed what I read as a thought experiment.

I haven’t gotten around to read it yet, but yeah pretty much every account is biased from a Senate perspective. Emperors who worked against the Senate were presented as history’s greatest monsters. Modern research suggests that Caligula, Domitian and other early emperors were probably better rulers than given credit by the senate because they were populists.(in the good sense)

I fully expect Parenti to take that perspective and run with it.

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/Millerheighife/status/1162517808170717185

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/livkittykat/status/1162898113725521921

[shosta]

Reading through this three part series on marxism and modernity by j moufawad paul. it's a fun read if you want some philosophical wall o' text.

Enlightenment, science, sovereign power in three parts.

http://www.abstraktdergi.net/radiating-disaster-triumphant-modernity-and-its-discontents/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/the-transplanting-of-heaven-to-earth-below/

Over 200 years after Kant attempted to conceptualize the meaning of Enlightenment some of its worst proponents, who speak its name in order to justify conservative ideology, are still trapped in the 18th century with Kant, acting as if science and human reason haven’t changed since this period. For these thinkers––the Jordan Petersons and Sam Harrises––Enlightenment is a static concept, an especial European event that occurred two and a half centuries ago. This mythologizing of the European Enlightenment is thus entirely immodern.

Leadbelly annihilated

[curly]

https://twitter.com/MitchellCares/status/1163131734713458688

lol

[Mandark]

Greenwald's disappointing cause he can actually do good work (or support others doing so) but spends so much time and focus in dumb internet beefs. With Khachiyan, Michael Tracey, etc. that's just water finding its level.

[benjipwns]

His Twitter beefs are like his entire being now, he doesn't produce much himself for The Intercept anymore.

Is there supposed to be some kind of symbolism behind the masks or is it just a random thing?

[shosta]

http://www.abstraktdergi.net/the-transplanting-of-heaven-to-earth-below/

And yet, post-Marx, radical political philosophy has re-centred the category of sovereign power. We thus find––thanks to Giorgio Agamben’s synthesis of Foucault, Heidegger, and Schmitt––a plethora of contemporary radical thinkers who utilize the category of sovereignty to think politics. Although these theorizations of sovereignty (and connected concepts such as “governmentality” and “biopolitics”) imagine themselves to be radical, what we are in fact witnessing is a return to the ideological constellation of bourgeois Enlightenment thought where pre-materialist categories were preserved so as to legitimate bourgeois power.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is it necessary for all philosophy to be expressed in "gotcha"s?

[close]

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1163220028822564864

[VomKriege]

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1161708111721185281

Resist oppression... NO, NOT LIKE THAT !

[shosta]

I like josh because rhe idea of an academic maoist is amazing and he pulls no punches. maoists who want to embody the spirit of the GPCR have to ruthlessly question and criticise authority, but.... As an academic he also has authority which manifests in some  analysis.


 I'm probably going to read his Continuity and Rupture book soon. Some other articles I like by him, but there's a lot of gold on his blog:

http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2010/11/j-sakais-settlers-meta-review.html?m=1 (#ReadSettlers)
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/05/trotsky-stalin-mimesis.html?m=1
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2012/06/hegemony-and-class-revolution.html?m=1

I looked it up because he mentioned that book in the second essay and... uh... if the height of marxist development is Shining Path, maybe we shouldn't have been making fun of Jason Unruhe all this time. Brb, signing up for Leading Light. 

Anyway I finally finished that trilogy and it was a great read. I'm glad I'm not the only one who tried getting into postmodern analyses of society and thought "hold up, what am I supposed to do with this?" Especially in the third essay, I did have a bit of trouble getting through the recap of postmodern sovereignty (I have trouble with basically anything postmodern), but then we return to the historical material analysis and suddenly I felt comfortable again, not because I was more familiar with it than the competing theories (I'm equally ignorant of both), but because it's tangible and evidently true. You can practically hold it in your hand and inspect it for yourself. You can immediately compare it to the history you know and the conditions you experience. And most importantly you can explain it to anyone in a fairly simple way (see: Mao's observation about peasantry vs. academics), which is why it's a timeless foundation, practicable, etc. etc.

Relating this to an earlier post, I'm still about halfway through Empire (I took a break to read Piketty's joint), and I'm coming across some of the same problems. [there is a good summary here.] Yeah, I see the theory they're building, I'm getting it, but it's not what I SEE with my own eyes in the real world, and that shows how quickly it aged (it was written in the late 90s, after the fall of the USSR and before the rise of a competing pole). I don't see a single Empire, capital E, with its organs spread across the globe, eradicating borders and identities, the permanent overthrow of imperial relations, and most controversially an inevitable "democratic insurgency" of its proletarian subjects. I still see a center and a periphery, I see Capital's position strengthening, I see multiple poles arising as the quest to dominate strategic resources and markets heats up again just like it did over a hundred years ago, I still see national rivalry; in short I see what Harry Magdoff laid out 70 years ago as late stage imperialism.

so question the marxists at your own risk and subscribe to monthly review

[shosta]

I think moists undersell how hard it is just to keep a socialist state together and you're seeing that right now in China with a 3 way pull in the CCP between maoists, nationalists and libs. The same shit happened in the USSR.

Once China experiences its first huge crisis during the extent of its capitalist development strategy and those 26 million farmers and fishers in the CCP start voting out the libs... that's gonna be crazy to watch

[Himu]

I'm on the verge of going socialist again with this Amazon fire shit. I google amazon and filter by news and just get a bunch of amazon.com crap. What a bunch of absolute fuck. These goddamn Brazilians.