Crow posted:

if you dont do any research or reading and just want people to dance around and explain to you every fine point while you squirm around like a naughty baby refusing spoonfuls of them good eats then you can. Fuck. the hell. Along.

Lol, okay, so you saying Stalin was a great guy then? That somehow the Holodomor was justified even if it wasnt Stalin personally eating all the missing food? That I cant even enjoy my chai latte flavor reeses pieces just only because they echo with the cries of slaves?

NoFreeWill posted:

actually its true that historical materialism is a limited and antiquated philosophy even tho most of capital is objectively correct. feminist and environmentalist critics of marxism are pretty on point as well. besides theres no way you can escape the taint of being "defeated"

don't you have a phd? *facepalm*

stegosaurus posted:

In April 2014, The Baffler's editor-in-chief, John Summers, personally challenged forums posters at tHE r H i z z o n E to criticize the most recent issue at the time, #24. Despite several scathing but accurate essays, Summers has so far ignored the outcome of the contest, silently refusing to award the first prize to George W Bush as requested by the contest winner.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baffler

roseweird posted:

what if the worker is not in a position to exploit the value of their surplus product. i mean how much linen does one weaver need. what if the weaver does not want for example to run a storehouse and trading post in addition to practicing the weaver's craft.

they will be put into this position as producers in a coordinated economy in which they receive wages as compensation for labour under centralised firms owned and administered by the proletarian state, or agricultural product is purchased by state enterprises from co-operative or collective farms or communes. resource allocation will likely take the form of commodity exchange between centralised firms, within the limit of centrally defined parameters under a limited market system as a method of determining need and demand

with the expansion and development of the administrative functions of the state these needs and demands can be understood directly as opposed to indirectly through commodity exchange, as such superseding the necessity of commodity production & wage labour by allowing the direct distribution of resources as appropriate to social necessity. i mean that last point is largely theoretical (also to abolish commodity production would require an international socialist system large enough to conduct trade internally as trading with a capitalist economy is necessarily commodity exchange) but thats the process through which a socialist economy could develop a communist mode of production

like, socialism isnt some decentralised market economy of small scale commodity production identical to the capitalist mode except individual workers are also expected to fulfill administrative or managerial roles as well

i mean these are all really basic propositions you could get from the most cursory survey of the literature so its weird that you act like reading a book wouldnt help with your concerns? if you seek clarity or definition of concepts being discussed you should probably ask in good faith, as opposed to immediately rejecting them & then asking for clarification

roseweird posted:

my confusion is really more about the actual existence of such a thing as an Ironic Stalinist Forum, and my paranoia is that you are all just using Ironic Stalinist Language to mirror existing hierarchies and laugh your way thru till wakeup time.

just to be clear this is all Stalinist Irony, not Ironic Stalinism. what people talk about is based on sincere beliefs, even if they are expressed through a veil of detachment. i mean this place is for dumb jokes and rap youtubes and cat gifs but it is also a place where people at least try to discuss and learn things, obviously theres a shorthand and people take certain points for granted but that doesnt mean its necessarily insincere

roseweird posted:

if i seem to be using words like alienation in idiosyncratic ways i am actually only responding to the tendency here to freely switch between use of the term to describe both the worker's alienation from the products of labor, and to describe the individual's social alienation and atomization.

this is backpedalling, your original point was that marxist categories and terms are not as accurate as that of "greed, decay, death", concepts which you seem to be using solipsistically as marxism, at least in non-utopian formulations that most people here subscribe to, has no real pretension of addressing any conventional understanding of these concepts

roseweird posted:

and 'ecofemisocialism' or really more just very soft anarchism if we're honest, already has extensive religious content on its own. what are public schools run and staffed primarily by women and teaching pacifism and ecological responsibility if not our temples? big pictures of globes everywhere. oh my goddess would you look at that blue marble! just a bunch of soft-headed imperial stooges according to the revolutionary minds of the zzzzoneee.

this is bizarre because you seem to be promoting the idea that radical socialism is a current only existing outside the feminist movement, carried primarily by a bunch of internet posters? like why is your understanding of ecofeminisocialism relegated to a pacifist, voluntarist soft anarchism when there is a long and storied history of radical ecologically oriented socialist feminism? i mean, these people are politically active women, not just some boys on an internet forum. like you seem to be ignoring the existence of marxist feminism entirely? i mean autonomist-marxist feminists might tend away from the state but they are by no means "soft"... like are you suggesting there aren't radical feminist women that would be equally contemptuous of reformist efforts?

NoFreeWill posted:

actually its true that historical materialism is a limited and antiquated philosophy even tho most of capital is objectively correct. feminist and environmentalist critics of marxism are pretty on point as well. besides theres no way you can escape the taint of being "defeated"

uh do you realize that marxism as a body of thought has developed in substantial ways since the early 20th century, there are critiques from feminist or environmentalist critiques from within marxism, & there is no real reason (& i don't think it is very common at all) to subscribe to some humanist hegelian-marxist teleology where the proletariat are the chosen few destined to usher in the kingdom of god or whatever. there is no point to continue seeing marxism in strictly those terms following mao tse-tung's formulations or the elaborations in western marxism by althusser, della volpe or lucio colletti, the more sophisticated dialectics of ilyenkov or the critical realists, etc. etc.

like what are you talking about. are you going to slap the rifles out of the hands of insurgents in peru, colombia, nepal, india or the philippines & tell them they need to pick a new thing, marxism isn't relevant to their lives anymore? what makes you think you have a better grasp of the world than they do?

Edited by blinkandwheeze (June 10, 2014 10:03:31)

blinkandwheeze posted:

they will be put into this position as producers in a coordinated economy in which they receive wages as compensation for labour under centralised firms owned and administered by the proletarian state, or agricultural product is purchased by state enterprises from co-operative or collective farms or communes. resource allocation will likely take the form of commodity exchange between centralised firms, within the limit of centrally defined parameters under a limited market system as a method of determining need and demand

with the expansion and development of the administrative functions of the state these needs and demands can be understood directly as opposed to indirectly through commodity exchange, as such superseding the necessity of commodity production & wage labour by allowing the direct distribution of resources as appropriate to social necessity. i mean that last point is largely theoretical (also to abolish commodity production would require an international socialist system large enough to conduct trade internally as trading with a capitalist economy is necessarily commodity exchange) but thats the process through which a socialist economy could develop a communist mode of production

if the first paragraph implies that firms would exist and that productive assets would be commodities then it is a description of state capitalism. at least, according to stalin or mao it would be, since socialism was the administration of the economy as if it were an engineering problem. the use of centralized state firms, such as the industry-level system of limited markets in east germany, was considered by mao to be an obvious example of state capitalism.

of course, more comprehensive planning didn't work well, as you predict would happen, which is why all those countries quickly abandoned trying to implement it, and within a few decades all of them decided to restore more straightforward capitalism more or less.

getfiscal posted:

if the first paragraph implies that firms would exist and that productive assets would be commodities then it is a description of state capitalism. at least, according to stalin or mao it would be, since socialism was the administration of the economy as if it were an engineering problem. the use of centralized state firms, such as the industry-level system of limited markets in east germany, was considered by mao to be an obvious example of state capitalism.

sorry, that was an instance of unclear language on my part - enterprises is a more appropriate term than firms in the context i was intending to use it, i am not referring to autonomous or semi-autonomous firms in a market economy but state enterprises through which the law of value influences production by being able to determine losses, profitability, production costs & prices etc. in relation to a circulation of commodities between enterprises. while socialism might be the administration of the economy as if it were an engineering problem this process was done through a system of accounting with reference to money, costs, and prices, as products passing from one economic unit to another did so not simply out of administrative orders but circulated through sales and payments. using the terms "market" and "firms" was a mistake on my part because i don't intend to refer to autonomous albeit state owned firms in a general market economy but that state enterprises engaged in commodity circulation within the limits delineated by the state. all i am saying is that a socialist economy requires commodity circulation and wages for the purposes of accounting, because to supersede these categories you would need a comprehensive and effective administrative alternative

in addition to this point i think the reliance of commodity circulation and accounting means that a socialism can't advance to a more comprehensively communist mode of production through these processes, like mao says this requires putting politics in command & superstructural shift, stalin's failings being an inability to realize these. but i mean putting politics in command also requires political facilities capable of determining particular economic needs which gets back to the problems you raise which i of course can't claim to have any real answer to

getfiscal posted:

of course, more comprehensive planning didn't work well, as you predict would happen, which is why all those countries quickly abandoned trying to implement it, and within a few decades all of them decided to restore more straightforward capitalism more or less.

i dont actually predict that comprehensive planning would work well necessarily & i specified that this was a mostly theoretical point b.c i can't really point to any examples of where this was actually successful in existing socialist states - maybe there were instances where purely administrative demands functioned as effectively as value based accounting, i dont really know about it enough to say but on the whole my instinct is to agree with you that these were across the board unsuccessful, as the restoration of capitalism is testament to. i think what i am saying is more cynical a view than you give me credit, i am just elaborated that commodity production continues to exist under socialist economies because development towards a dominantly communist mode of production would require comprehensive planning facilities. that isn't a statement regarding whether they have existed or not, my instinct is to say they haven't but i am not knowledgeable enough to say that for sure. that point aside, though, i don't think any previous inability of this to emerge means that they are necessarily impossible

you know a lot more about this stuff then i do tho so i'd be pleased to see if you can point to any flaws i have in this understanding!

Edited by blinkandwheeze (June 10, 2014 12:08:32)