It's true that conditions in Western countries are not such that the masses will revolt. However, that's because of factors way out of most people's control. Invasive and ubiquitous propaganda, a small piece of the capitalist pie (crumbs really), and apathy are enough to make most people neutral in the current Western world. But there's good news! In the absence of state sponsored communism, the capitalists have in their greed desired more of the crumbs. Because their propaganda is so ubiquitious, people who are losing their crumbs will lash out. Currently, that lashing out is directionless. But people are getting slowly less apathetic, so a leftist group could get more popular. They just need examples to follow..
The reason why leftism is unpopular is because it is ineffectual. People respect strength. A left party has to illustrate that it can help, can do something, to ever get power. Guevara figured that a small revolutionary army, even if not especially supported, could create a revolutionary situation merely by fighting, as the government would create additional enemies amongst the population as it became afraid. That's the number one thing people don't get about revolutions. It's only possible if the state gets afraid.
getfiscal posted:one thing i like about laclau and mouffe is that their understanding of political subjectivity is such that radical changes are possible within the self-understanding of a group. i think that sort of thing is essential to radical politics or else you're always going to be pitching your message to where people are at rather than where they could be.
i think the problem lies in establishing the "where they could be" part. laclau and mouffe seem to leave it open-ended, to be determined through agonism. but what if the changes in your examples were driven by something that is omitted from laclau and mouffe's framework? what if agonism alone doesn't lead to anything but more agonism, splitting, infighting, etc? what if identity groups don't come together to create hegemony, but actually do the opposite? i think that's what's happening now, and it doesn't seem like radical democracy has any necessary link to socialist outcomes.
to me there doesn't seem to be any way to move forward with radical political change without someone positing a new universal political subject, like new soviet man or whatever. neoliberalism really came into its own as a response to the lucas critique (observed economic relationships can't tell you anything about how those relationships will behave under a new social arrangement, basically the problem of induction), which is very very similar to laclau and mouffe's point that you describe. the way that the neoliberals argued that their ideas weren't contingent on current social arrangements and established hegemony was by naturalizing their ideology through the idea that humans are rational self-interested actors. the neoliberals basically declared that human nature is a certain way, structured social relations around that idea, and it became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (cue jameson quote).
i think that communists have to be willing to do the same thing or we're never going to get anywhere. like you just have to make a guess at what universal human nature is (with all the problems that that entails), and how it would give rise to different behaviours under different social arrangements. if you're close to being right, things will be better under those arrangements, but there's no way of really knowing until you try it.
it seems like laclau and mouffe present an easy way out that is pretty much just a license to procrastinate making any difficult decisions where there is a high risk of being wrong and serious consequences for failure. it doesn't seem like it would ever lead to revolutionary political change because there is a universality to radical change that i just don't see emerging from the agonistic process that they describe. laclau and mouffe have said that they don't think that revolutionary change is necessary, and so they are comfortable with this, but i'm not. and really, i don't think that they should be either. they advocate for a new socialist economic system, but they don't seem to grasp that it's utterly impossible to implement without revolutionary change.
solzhesnitchin posted:getfiscal posted:
one thing i like about laclau and mouffe is that their understanding of political subjectivity is such that radical changes are possible within the self-understanding of a group. i think that sort of thing is essential to radical politics or else you're always going to be pitching your message to where people are at rather than where they could be.
i think the problem lies in establishing the "where they could be" part. laclau and mouffe seem to leave it open-ended, to be determined through agonism. but what if the changes in your examples were driven by something that is omitted from laclau and mouffe's framework? what if agonism alone doesn't lead to anything but more agonism, splitting, infighting, etc? what if identity groups don't come together to create hegemony, but actually do the opposite? i think that's what's happening now, and it doesn't seem like radical democracy has any necessary link to socialist outcomes.
to me there doesn't seem to be any way to move forward with radical political change without someone positing a new universal political subject, like new soviet man or whatever. neoliberalism really came into its own as a response to the lucas critique (observed economic relationships can't tell you anything about how those relationships will behave under a new social arrangement, basically the problem of induction), which is very very similar to laclau and mouffe's point that you describe. the way that the neoliberals argued that their ideas weren't contingent on current social arrangements and established hegemony was by naturalizing their ideology through the idea that humans are rational self-interested actors. the neoliberals basically declared that human nature is a certain way, structured social relations around that idea, and it became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (cue jameson quote).
i think that communists have to be willing to do the same thing or we're never going to get anywhere. like you just have to make a guess at what universal human nature is (with all the problems that that entails), and how it would give rise to different behaviours under different social arrangements. if you're close to being right, things will be better under those arrangements, but there's no way of really knowing until you try it.
it seems like laclau and mouffe present an easy way out that is pretty much just a license to procrastinate making any difficult decisions where there is a high risk of being wrong and serious consequences for failure. it doesn't seem like it would ever lead to revolutionary political change because there is a universality to radical change that i just don't see emerging from the agonistic process that they describe. laclau and mouffe have said that they don't think that revolutionary change is necessary, and so they are comfortable with this, but i'm not. and really, i don't think that they should be either. they advocate for a new socialist economic system, but they don't seem to grasp that it's utterly impossible to implement without revolutionary change.
good post.
i need to read L&M.
Also, I think in some ways we're not quite there theoretically, as the little debate here surrounding laclau&mouffe is showing. I'm personally in the anti-humanist camp, but I think it's not completely clear yet what anti-humanism means for praxis and the gesture of universality is still important: even if there is no human nature, it's important to dogmatically assert certain truths as binding for all people. Of course people are always going to disagree, but the gesture of universality allows this to turn into productive sectarian splitting instead of mushy liberalism.
There is also the problem of feminism. Both Maria Mies and Luce Irigaray have extremely cogent criticisms of Marxism that I feel arn't taken sufficiently seriously. From Maria Mies is the criticism that the means of subsistence havn't been taken sufficiently seriously by communists at the cost of women's power. Also, the worst political failures of the USSR and Maoist China seem to come down to agricultural policy. Of course, there is the problem of the two roads, but I feel this wouldn't have been as intensely experienced if it wasn't for the failures of agricultural policy that precipitated the socialist famines. Perhaps this might make me more of an anarchist than a communist, but I still feel like MLMs have the best theory of how revolution occurs. From Luce Irigaray is the criticism that Marx's theory of value and productivism ignores sexual difference as an irreducible ontological problem. Not only does it have a problematic notion of nature (though this in large part has been solved by recent theoretical developments) it obscures the exchange of women that has occurred since the beginning of patriarchal civilization. The separation of use and exchange value is not unique to capitalism, but begins with the subjection of women to the exchange relations that characterize patrilineal kinship structures: virgins are exchange value, mothers are use value, and prostitutes are something in between. It seems to me therefore, that rather than feminist revolution being derivative of socialist revolution, it is the other way around. Also, if communists are to bring psychoanalysis to the service of its cause, it will have to internalize its most radical conclusions about sexual difference, which I feel is very well expressed by Luce Irigaray though she positions herself as a critic of psychoanalysis. Another theoretical issue close to the heart of feminism that hasn't been sufficiently explored by Marxists is the problem of biology. I've really enjoyed roseweird's posts about this issue and agree with her in a lot of what she says, though I disagree on a couple points: I'm not sure about the overall conclusion that men should be phased out and I don't think aggression is an inherently male or masculine trait. I prefer to think of aggression as more of a cosmological principle along the lines of Nietzsche's will-to-power, something that I feel can be reconciled with feminism as showed by Nick Land's early work, particularly "Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest" and the first essay in his book on Bataille. However, I do believe that all men should be sterilized and that this is the first step towards an ethical eugenics program. So uhh yeah, I feel like I've laid out all my cards on the table here, please feel free to criticize all of this ruthlessly (not that you need me to tell you...).
Of course this is all still better than getfiscal's mealy-mouthed equivocation and deploying scumbag reformist coward libtards Laclau & Mouffe, who can get shot for all I care, but it's still mega stupid in a different way
Lessons posted:Of course this is all still better than getfiscal's mealy-mouthed equivocation and deploying scumbag reformist coward libtards Laclau & Mouffe, who can get shot for all I care, but it's still mega stupid in a different way
haha
Lessons posted:And when you look at the actual struggles Baby Poopy is citing it's really clear that they aren't very good evidence for a third worldist analysis, the Maoists in India or the Philippines aren't super-exploited workers at all, they're mostly peasants and in fact some of the few people left on earth that haven't been absorbed fully into the global capitalist economy. That makes it extremely hard to argue that their militancy is a result of imperialist exploitation and unequal exchange because the militants are not actually parties within that framework. These are much more national struggles, mostly minority and indigenous groups with an agrarian basis resisting attempts of national governments to deprive them of land and generally destroy their way of life, and at BEST you can argue that this is a sort of ancillary effect of imperialism, not a direct result.
am i missing something obvious or is this not just enclosure, which can of course be a product of imperialism since privatization is an integral part of the standard neoliberal agenda? are you just saying that these particular enclosures would be happening regardless of pressures from foreign capitalist states, IMF, etc? i'm a liberal myself so i don't really know much about the naxilites or whatever but that was my personal picture
babyhueypnewton posted:And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.
...You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear.
and again and again this international workers solidarity refuses to happen, while the left's keen embrace of immigration to a country like England fractures it's working class solidarity ever more.
thirdplace posted:Lessons posted:And when you look at the actual struggles Baby Poopy is citing it's really clear that they aren't very good evidence for a third worldist analysis, the Maoists in India or the Philippines aren't super-exploited workers at all, they're mostly peasants and in fact some of the few people left on earth that haven't been absorbed fully into the global capitalist economy. That makes it extremely hard to argue that their militancy is a result of imperialist exploitation and unequal exchange because the militants are not actually parties within that framework. These are much more national struggles, mostly minority and indigenous groups with an agrarian basis resisting attempts of national governments to deprive them of land and generally destroy their way of life, and at BEST you can argue that this is a sort of ancillary effect of imperialism, not a direct result.
am i missing something obvious or is this not just enclosure, which can of course be a product of imperialism since privatization is an integral part of the standard neoliberal agenda? are you just saying that these particular enclosures would be happening regardless of pressures from foreign capitalist states, IMF, etc? i'm a liberal myself so i don't really know much about the naxilites or whatever but that was my personal picture
In India it's not so much about "privatization and enclosure" as the exploitation of mineral resource on indigenous lands and it seems hopeless naive to assume that this would never absent imperialism IMO, but ofc. you can't entirely separate the current process from the larger context of global capitalism imperialism. My point is more that when you're talking about labor aristocracy, (that is generalized benefits in the form of inflated wages, cheap goods, widespread social programs, etc. in the West as a result of more exploitation on the periphery in countries like India), there's basically no connection between that and what's going on with the Naxalites because there is no transfer of value between adivasi peasants and fir$t world "workkker$". Really the best argument you can make is that imperialism, including unequal exchange, has generally underdeveloped India and that said underdevelopment has resulted in the current condition + imperialism is the driving factor behind the expansion of India capitalism into adivasi lands, but this is a really tenuous connection with labor aristocracy per se.
Lessons posted:Of course this is all still better than getfiscal's mealy-mouthed equivocation and deploying scumbag reformist coward libtards Laclau & Mouffe, who can get shot for all I care, but it's still mega stupid in a different way
wow... alex... so tough... this must be the thug lesson
Lessons posted:the Maoists in India or the Philippines aren't super-exploited workers at all, they're mostly peasants and in fact some of the few people left on earth that haven't been absorbed fully into the global capitalist economy. That makes it extremely hard to argue that their militancy is a result of imperialist exploitation and unequal exchange because the militants are not actually parties within that framework.
this is something i, in my extremely limited education, have thought about in the context of the russian and chinese revolutions. they weren't particularly industrialized either and in fact did most of their industrialization after the revolution had started so i always wondered how that squared with the kind of thing that you're talking about (i.e. a revolution of the industrial proletariat)
marimite posted:I'm personally in the anti-humanist camp, but I think it's not completely clear yet what anti-humanism means for praxis and the gesture of universality is still important: even if there is no human nature, it's important to dogmatically assert certain truths as binding for all people
this is interesting because i guess i consider myself a humanist but i take what i think is a similar perspective. there is no "humanity" a priori, but it is probably necessary to work to create the "humanity" which we would like to be a part of. is that sort of what you had in mind?
c_man posted:.custom212718{}Lessons posted:the Maoists in India or the Philippines aren't super-exploited workers at all, they're mostly peasants and in fact some of the few people left on earth that haven't been absorbed fully into the global capitalist economy. That makes it extremely hard to argue that their militancy is a result of imperialist exploitation and unequal exchange because the militants are not actually parties within that framework.
this is something i, in my extremely limited education, have thought about in the context of the russian and chinese revolutions. they weren't particularly industrialized either and in fact did most of their industrialization after the revolution had started so i always wondered how that squared with the kind of thing that you're talking about (i.e. a revolution of the industrial proletariat)
.custom212717{}marimite posted:I'm personally in the anti-humanist camp, but I think it's not completely clear yet what anti-humanism means for praxis and the gesture of universality is still important: even if there is no human nature, it's important to dogmatically assert certain truths as binding for all people
this is interesting because i guess i consider myself a humanist but i take what i think is a similar perspective. there is no "humanity" a priori, but it is probably necessary to work to create the "humanity" which we would like to be a part of. is that sort of what you had in mind?
the industrial revolution concentrated workers in cities and made them work side by side in factories, leading to the development of workers movements. in Russia it was no different, even if industrialization was on a smaller scale.
getfiscal posted:wow... alex... so tough... this must be the thug lesson
6WJFjXtHcy4
NoFreeWill posted:the industrial revolution concentrated workers in cities and made them work side by side in factories, leading to the development of workers movements. in Russia it was no different, even if industrialization was on a smaller scale.
right but my question is about why russia and not someplace that had a higher degree of industrialization?
also again, re:marimite, i feel like some of what you're saying about the position of women has to do with the slow migration of women into labor to being with and the introduction of women to capitalist subjectivity? it sort of reminds me of some of the responses to how e.g. django unchained isnt marxist and consistently erases class, namely that the standard regressive "damsel in distress" story to begin with wasn't available to the black population to begin with and that this introduction could be seen in some small way as a liberation from marginality. i dunno if that's what you had in mind, idk
solzhesnitchin posted:to me there doesn't seem to be any way to move forward with radical political change without someone positing a new universal political subject,
♱
c_man posted:.custom212754{}NoFreeWill posted:the industrial revolution concentrated workers in cities and made them work side by side in factories, leading to the development of workers movements. in Russia it was no different, even if industrialization was on a smaller scale.
right but my question is about why russia and not someplace that had a higher degree of industrialization?
if you're interested in Marxism and feminism read Caliban & the Witch it's really good.
idk that much about history but it seems like part of the Russian revolution was just horrible mismanagement by the political elite/the tsar. and russia being a weird, back-asswards eurasian cultural mixup.
roseweird posted:hello and god bless you if you want— i've recently discovered that my entire life has taken place in a theoretically unaccountable time rift arcing from 1836 to 1993, repeating apparently infinitely in rotating succession without regard to the calendar year of their activity. this is a matter of some concern to me because the majority of persons are attuned to a temporogeographically proximal but practically quite distant and distinct rift arcing from 1865 to 1981, with a series of tentative and unintelligible (to me) but certainly (i think) meaningful secondary stops between 1949 and 1961. look, the theory isn't important right now. i am currently trapped in a box sedan of infinite dimensions ... please advise or send help, i do not know how long i can maintain the channel
mods change roseweirds name to Slaughterhouse Fivel
roseweird posted:hello and god bless you if you want— i've recently discovered that my entire life has taken place in a theoretically unaccountable time rift arcing from 1836 to 1993, repeating apparently infinitely in rotating succession without regard to the calendar year of their activity. this is a matter of some concern to me because the majority of persons are attuned to a temporogeographically proximal but practically quite distant and distinct rift arcing from 1865 to 1981, with a series of tentative and unintelligible (to me) but certainly (i think) meaningful secondary stops between 1949 and 1961. look, the theory isn't important right now. i am currently trapped in a box sedan of infinite dimensions ... please advise or send help, i do not know how long i can maintain the channel
DTc--4jz0GQ
roseweird posted:impper youre super creepy and i don't care about your opininsn
c_man posted:Lessons posted:the Maoists in India or the Philippines aren't super-exploited workers at all, they're mostly peasants and in fact some of the few people left on earth that haven't been absorbed fully into the global capitalist economy. That makes it extremely hard to argue that their militancy is a result of imperialist exploitation and unequal exchange because the militants are not actually parties within that framework.
this is something i, in my extremely limited education, have thought about in the context of the russian and chinese revolutions. they weren't particularly industrialized either and in fact did most of their industrialization after the revolution had started so i always wondered how that squared with the kind of thing that you're talking about (i.e. a revolution of the industrial proletariat)
marimite posted:I'm personally in the anti-humanist camp, but I think it's not completely clear yet what anti-humanism means for praxis and the gesture of universality is still important: even if there is no human nature, it's important to dogmatically assert certain truths as binding for all people
this is interesting because i guess i consider myself a humanist but i take what i think is a similar perspective. there is no "humanity" a priori, but it is probably necessary to work to create the "humanity" which we would like to be a part of. is that sort of what you had in mind?
Sort of. I think we as dasein are always reaching outside ourselves and becoming in relations to projects that are always incomplete. Humanism and other forms of metaphysics are always obscuring because they mistake the disclosure of being for a being. So a humanity which we would like to be apart of could be a goal, but this a contingent decision that's always open to failure and could conceal other forms of being. Basically, the goal shouldn't be something we rely on but a risk we take responsibility for in our finitude.
marimite posted:Basically, the goal shouldn't be something we rely on but a risk we take responsibility for in our finitude.
i agree here, i think. humanity, for me, is a sort of horizon that we should be working towards that requires us to be conscious of the ways in which our present actions betray that goal.
dipshit420 posted:getfiscal posted:wow... alex... so tough... this must be the thug lesson
6WJFjXtHcy4